{"id":6200,"date":"2018-02-06T16:39:31","date_gmt":"2018-02-06T16:39:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/?p=6200"},"modified":"2018-02-06T16:39:31","modified_gmt":"2018-02-06T16:39:31","slug":"no-leaves-for-benjamin-butler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/?p=6200","title":{"rendered":"No Leaves for Benjamin Butler"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-6201\" src=\"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/no-leaves-300x215.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"215\" srcset=\"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/no-leaves-300x215.jpg 300w, https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/02\/no-leaves.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><em>reprinted from 2015 with additions<\/em><\/p>\n<p>While generally speaking I am not a fan of the &#8220;leaves&#8221; at\u00a0<i>Ancestry.com<\/i>, there are times when I do check to see if there are suggestions for a person on whom I am really stuck. Sometimes the\u00a0<i>Ancestry.com\u00a0<\/i>leaves float and land in a logical place. Other times they don&#8217;t. <a href=\"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/?p=5714\">(<em>see where the &#8220;hints and suggestions&#8221;\u00a0<\/em><em>on\u00a0<\/em>Ancestry.com<em> come from)<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Benjamin Butler is one of those persons for whom a logically-placed leaf would be appreciated. \u00a0He is also one of those person for whom\u00a0<i>Ancestry.com<\/i>\u00a0can find no leaves. That said, I don&#8217;t rely on\u00a0<em>Ancestry.com<\/em> to do my research work for me. Too many researchers rely solely on the hints and suggestions to do their work.<\/p>\n<p>I do have records attached to him in my online tree at\u00a0<i>Ancestry.com\u00a0<\/i>so there is something there to use to find leaves. I have Benjamin in the following census records:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>1850-Port Huron, St. Clair County, Michigan&#8211;aged 31 born in New York State&#8211;apparent wife Margaret<\/li>\n<li>1870-Soap Creek, Davis County, Iowa&#8211;aged 51 born in Canada&#8211;apparent wife Nancy.<\/li>\n<li>1880-Drywood, Vernon County, Missouri&#8211;aged 61 born in New York State&#8211;wife Nancy.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div>\n<p>I&#8217;m not upset nor am I surprised that there are no leaves for my exact Benjamin. He&#8217;s been a difficult person to find in other records, partially because he moved around quite a bit. However, given that Benjamin Butler is not the most unusual name, I&#8217;m a little surprised that there were no leaves (even really moldy ones) at all for him. It&#8217;s not like his name is Providence Schneiderman or something equally unusual.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m even surprised that there were no leaves for a William Butler since that&#8217;s the name he is enumerated with in 1880.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>\u00a0There are &#8220;suggested&#8221; records for Benjamin when looking at his census records on\u00a0<i>Ancestry.com.\u00a0<\/i>The &#8220;suggested&#8221; records at\u00a0<i>Ancestry.com<\/i>\u00a0are not even for a Benjamin Butler. They are not even for a person with the last name of Butler. They appear to be later records related to Benjamin&#8217;s children or his children-in-law that another researcher has connected to him. The algorithm that generates &#8220;suggested&#8221; records is &#8220;suggesting&#8221; that since someone has connected these record to Benjamin that they may mention him as well.<\/p>\n<p>Benjamin is a good example of one of those people where it can be easy to get &#8220;stuck.&#8221; Part of the problem is the time period&#8211;a significant portion of Benjamin&#8217;s life was lived before 1850. He did not serve in a war. He did not apply for any pension or bounty land. He had little estate to probate when he died. He was likely born in a state that did not keep vital records at the time he was born, was not a member of a church that practiced infant baptism, moved frequently, and died in a time period and place where good vital records were not being kept. It really is his fault.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p>I need to revisit what I know about Benjamin and continue my work on his children. Not all of them are reasonably documented and there are several for whom I do not even have approximate dates of death.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s probably time to stop looking for leaves on the trees and focus on Benjamin&#8217;s children.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>reprinted from 2015 with additions While generally speaking I am not a fan of the &#8220;leaves&#8221; at\u00a0Ancestry.com, there are times when I do check to see if there are suggestions for a person on whom I am really stuck. Sometimes the\u00a0Ancestry.com\u00a0leaves float and land in a logical place. Other times they don&#8217;t. (see where the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6200\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rootdig.genealogytipoftheday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}