Techno Chick?

 I've been busy the last couple of days. I haven't had a chance to write even though the research is ongoing. I stopped at the Ellis branch of the Monroe County Library. They have a wonderful research area and a huge collection available to genealogists.

For the past few weeks I've been on a hunt to learn more about my great-great aunt Meridia Palmer. I had only just found out through her sister's obituary that she was married. I still had no idea when or why she died.

I had followed her along the census route. In 1920 she was still living at home with her parents and sisters. The obituary said she was  married to someone by the last name of Southern. I eventually found him in 1930, widowed and living as a boarder in someone's home. I still didn't have all the information I needed.

So...off to the library and an amazing piece of technology known as the microfilm. Uh huh. You heard me right. Microfilm. It's the age of technology, people! Who uses this stuff anymore?

Apparently I do. The Monroe Evening News is our local paper. All...and I really do mean ALL of their archives up to...I'm not sure when...have been scanned and saved onto microfilm. (Their most current archives are online now. Did I scare you there for a minute? I nearly scared myself.)

The picture on the right is the machine I used to look through these archives. And look...and look...and look...and all of a sudden I saw it! Meridia Belle Southern (nee Palmer) had an obituary on October 14, 1927 with more details on the 15th.

I still don't know why she died. It only stated that she had passed away after an "illness of many months." One detail I was most excited about was finding out where she was buried. It's not everything I was hoping to find, but it's a start.


Another piece of slightly outdated technology is my new best friend, the flatbed scanner. It's an hp4700c. It's really old. In the great timeline of technology I suppose it really isn't that old. But it won't work on my lap top or my desk top. It only works with my dad's old computer. Or maybe it just doesn't like me?

Anyway...since my dad got it up and running, I've been scanning in photos like a crazy woman.

I had to be honest, I really didn't think the technology for affordable photography dated back that far. I finally looked up cameras of the 1900's and was surprised to find that Kodak's famous Brownie camera debuted in February of 1900. It was a cardboard case camera with a meniscus lens. It took 2 and a quarter inch square pictures.

This explains sooooo much! I was always wondering where all these smaller photos came from. And what's more, the first Brownie only cost $1.00. I know, a dollar was different back in those days...inflation...economy... It still doesn't change the fact that easily mobile photography had suddenly become affordable to the masses. Talk about some amazing technology!

And now I have the ability to scan all of these pictures. There are literally hundreds. And not just scan them, but clean them up. Make them clearer then they were before and fix up some of the wear and tear called time.

Just take a look at this before and after...

Whoa! There are distinguishable facial features. I can actually say for certain who two of these people are, even if I didn't have a note written on the back. (By the way, they are Left to Right: Rowland Kronbach, Rosannah Palmer, and Merrill Hunt Sr. Rosannah and Merrill were my great grandparents. Rowland was a great great uncle.) I've enjoyed using Picasa for the editing phase so far. It's not perfect and it doesn't have all the tools and effects other tools some of the other programs have. But it was free and it has tools enough for what I'm doing right now.

Working with all of these different things, it makes me wonder what they would think about all of the technology we have today.

The George Hubbards of Connecticut

I hit a snag the other night as I was researching the Hubbard family. Going back along the Sheldon line, I found a great grandmother by the name of Thankfull. This family was all in the Middleton, CT area in the early 1700's.

I had followed the Miller line back as far as I could through the male relatives, so I thought I'd look for the Hubbard family. I'd already seen their name pop up in a number of the same records so it didn't look like it was going to be overly difficult.

You would think that record keeping from this time would be missing or poorly kept. It happens that way sometimes, but I seem to find more vital (birth, marriage, and death) records for these people than I do for people of the 20th century. I untangled Thankfull from the rest of the group right away. I even found her father, Nathaniel Hubbard.

And that's where everything fell apart. There were two George Hubbards. Both were born within a few years of each other in England. Both immigrated around the same time. Both settled in Connecticut by way of Massachusetts. They even lived in a few of the same towns and both had a son, Daniel about 1645. Possibly even knew each other.

You see the problem here? Which one was my George? How was I going to get all these records straight when people already had the two of them tangled up in their own trees?

Ancestry.com gives you this great option of making your tree public to other members. It makes it super easy to connect other family members that other people have researched. The problem with it, is that some people just add records and names to their trees because someone else did. They don't look as closely at the dates or vital information as maybe they should. I've fallen into this sticky situation before too. (Remind me to tell you of the Joseph Moore/Blue Jacket fiasco sometime.)

So how can I untangle this crazy web? Well...I know that my George must be the George that died in Middleton. Why? Because the rest of the family settled there. It wouldn't make sense for him to have died in Guilford.

George of Guilford was also a little older. He married and had two children in England before he came to America.

 My George married Elizabeth Watts in Hartford, CT in 1640. I know I'm looking for an Elizabeth because I found records of Nathaniel's birth. And that's the final proof. George and Elizabeth Hubbard had a son, Nathaniel in 1652. They other George didn't have a Nathaniel. And Nathaniel is really important to me because he had a daughter, Thankfull who married a Miller who...ok, you see where I'm going.

I suppose they could be the same person. Elizabeth could be a second wife and they could have had these 15 or 16 children, but it's unlikely. And if you look closely at the dates, you realize that it's easier to see them as two different people with the same name. (Not all that uncommon actually.)

So, now that I've untangled the snag in my mind, I need to get all my ducks in a row on ancestry.com. Never fear 9th great grandpa George. I'll sort this all out in the end. (Here's a fun fact: You have 2,048 9th great grandparents. The number doubles with every generation.)

By the way...the picture above is from Middleton, CT. It has the names of my family on the plaques. How awesome is that!