Trying to Get from Here to There

Update Note: As originally posted, this did not link to all of the sites I mentioned and one of the blog names was incorrect. I have made changes to correct these mistakes.

In reading about the 2010 GeneaBlogger Games, and the current COG, I decided to start a timeline for a couple of my female ancestors and see where it took me.  Seemed like a good idea at the time.  While it has become clear that I won’t be writing the Genealogy Gals’ COG entry this time around, this post will explain why.  You will see just how distractible I am in doing this work.  (I never knew how distractible I can be until I started thinking about how I do my genealogy research!)  To borrow an idea from the Gene Notes blog, I think I have Family Research Attention Deficit Disorder (FRADD which is not yet listed in the DSM but may be in the one coming out in 10-12 years).  So, over the course of the past week, this is what I’ve been doing.

Actually I started with one timeline, for Catherine Justice Coffin (1821-1866), and then something inspired me to start another, Laura Denman Booth (1828-1920).  Truthfully, what made me start the second one was looking at how little information I had about Catherine and remembering that I have a copy of a memoir written by Laura which should give me all kinds of details.  Opportunistic?  Yes, but she is an ancestor and I do have that memoir.  Now just where is it?  I know it’s here on one of the bookshelves…  Before I got too sidetracked looking I thought I’d just list the dates for Laura that I have information for in my computer program.  So I did that.  Now I have 2 little text files of dates and events to work from.

Then, I got distracted by the timeline file Miriam at AnceStories had suggested as an easy timeline form to use.  Some time later I finally had a computer file I thought I could use (either printing it out or filling it out on the computer).  Decided to try it out with my information on Catherine, so I printed one and started writing dates and events.  When I looked at the years I realized I had an 1850 census for her family so went back to my computer file to enter that information for her and source it.  Done.  Thought about the fact that I don’t yet have the other censuses that she should be in.  Contemplated going to look for them and decided that this would really be a distraction.  Better put it on a to-do list.  Then, when I looked at the deaths of some of her siblings when she was young it occurred to me to look at causes of death for them (I have cemetery card images for them).  This raised the question of cholera and when there were epidemics in southwestern Ohio.  Use my search engine to look for epidemics and cholera.  Read that cholera was introduced into the United States in 1832 and there were epidemics by 1833 (when one of Catherine’s infant brothers and a sister died).  Interesting.  There is a family story about one of Catherine’s cousins nursing a neighbor through cholera and  coming home to die of it herself just a brief time before she was to marry (one of my Salt ancestors).

Ok, so I refocused on Catherine’s information and remembered that she had died at a pretty young age (she was 44 in 1866) in Yellow Springs, Ohio (not where she lived) and I had a vague idea that there had been a health spa or something like it in Yellow Springs.  Looked at her cemetery card told me that she was said to have died from pulmonary consumption (probably tuberculosis).  That would fit with having gone to a health spa for treatment.  So I tried, using my trusty search engine, to find out about health spas and Yellow Springs.  With some, but not great, success.  So I thought of my friend the archivist at a college in Ohio who might know.  So I emailed him.  And got a couple of suggestions about where to look for information about the early history of Yellow Springs.  Stopped to look for a book I thought I remembered had been published on the history of Yellow Springs by the newspaper there.  Found it – shall I order it or not?

The other piece of information I noticed in my RootsMagic file was a note that I had a piece of silverware that had been Catherine’s, with her initials on the front and date on the back.  The date was what would have been their 25th wedding anniversary, so I’m guessing that this was a present for that important date.  I wanted to look at it to remind myself, so I went looking in the silverware drawer in the kitchen.

Didn’t find the small knife I was looking for but did find a pickle fork and it too has her initials and the same date on the back.

Finally found the knife put away in another drawer for safekeeping.  No legible mark on the back to tell me who the manufacturer was or the pattern.  Back online I went to try to track this down – I want to know about these pieces.  Hours later, I may have figured out the manufacturer but haven’t found a picture of the pattern I have yet.  Decided that I should take pictures with my digital camera of the two pieces to add to my files on old family possessions, and to add to the genealogy file on Catherine.  Got several that I thought are all right, downloaded them to the folders I want them in, made a version to attach to my genealogy file on Catherine.  And that is where that project stands.

Except that I read a comment on Miriam’s blog from someone (Michelle Goodrum) who left a link to show how she had used the timeline and when I looked at her site I realized that she had made the form landscape instead of portrait and added a Sources column to the others.  What a good idea!  So I’m off to edit my form.