I will be on vacation for the next 3 weeks, as I go home to NH to welcome the next generation into the family.  My daughter is due to have Jack Everett Bateman on May 11th.
I will check in here and answer any comments, or questions, but will not be doing blog posts in that time period.

Jill Ball, over at the blog Geniaus, has a great set up as far as keeping track of what she has learned, what webinars or conferences she has attended.  I really like the idea, and I hope she doesn't mind if I borrow it.  You can read more about her log here.  I am inspired to keep a better record of all that I learn....which is daily.

So, I have added a tab at the top for my "Learning Log" and will be adding items to it shortly.  I have a bunch of webinars I have watched (with notes on my laptop), as well as Youtube videos, books I am working my way through, as well as other learning items (handouts, blog posts etc).  When available I will provide a link to the source, so that if you are interested in checking it out too, you will be able to.

Yeah for self education!!!

Last Friday I watched a video from Crista Cowen, on Ancestry's live stream.  If you have never watched their videos, I highly recommend them.  I have learned a great deal about searching more wisely on Ancestry, especially when it comes to the card catalog.

In this particular video, she made a statement at the beginning that really hit me.  Basically (and I am paraphrasing here), we create our own brick walls sometimes by tripping over clues that we already have.

Case in point for me:

My step-cousin, Frank, shared this photo with me several years ago.  I was stoked to have something about my Great Great Grandfather Borsey, since at the time, we didn't know much.  But I tucked it away in my files, and didn't think much more of it until last week, when I decided to look at it again.  And there were some glaring clues that I had tripped over for sure!

On the first line it says "Transportation of remains from Eastview".  I had assumed that was a cemetery in Westchester County, NY.  So off to Find A Grave.

Once I click on that link, there was a rather long description:

"Cemetery notes and/or description:
In 1824, New York State legislated that each county had to establish an institution for the care of the poor. So Westchester County purchased 110 acres of farmland in East Tarrytown / Knapp's Corners, and built what is now known as the Westchester County Alms House. The Alms House opened up in 1828. Knapp's Corners later became known as 'East View', the name of a 350-acre estate purchased by James Butler in 1893. East View (or Eastview) is considered to be a hamlet in the town of Mount Pleasant, NY.

The County Alms House was actually a complex of buildings. It included a main building to accomodate the 'inmates', a laundry house, a tramp house, stables, & outhouses. It also had a small plot of land set aside for a cemetery (the 'County Alms House Cemetery'). I believe in 1914 the Alms House in Eastview was closed for use as the 'poor house', & that it was converted into a hospital for a short period of time (the 'Westchester County Hospital').

The County Alms House Cemetery was used to bury the poor of the county. It also included persons whose identities were unknown. Many of the cemetery burials were for people from the Alms House, local hospitals, nursing homes, & penitentiary.

The Westchester County Historical Society has old maps of the Alms House complex. On a 1901 map of Eastview, NY you can see the cemetery listed as the 'County House Cemetery.' It was also referred to as the 'County Alms House Cemetery'. This cemetery was used for close to 100 years (c.1827-c.1920).

After 1920, a new cemetery was built for the poor of Westchester County. This cemetery was called 'Potter's Field' and it was built on the 'Grasslands' complex in Valhalla, NY. The burials for this cemetery can be found on the FindAGrave website. There is a cemetery map which was created with all the occupants of the Potter's Field cemetery - it is available at the Westchester County Archives.

In 1935, the land where the County Alms House Cemetery was located was given over to make way for the construction of the Saw Mill River Parkway. Instead of disturbing any of the existing graves, the cemetery in Eastview was covered over with 20 feet of dirt and the Parkway was then built over it. This old cemetery would've been located somewhere around the present-day vicinity of Exit 23 off of the Saw Mill River Parkway." (you can find it at this link.

Well........So then back to the paper.  About half way down is this: "Cemetery Charges at St Mary's Cemetery".  Off to Find A Grave again to search.  There are five St. Mary's cemeteries in the Westchester area.  A search of all five comes up empty for a William Borsey.  But, that doesn't mean  he isn't in one.  I am going to next email to each one, asking for information, and a map.  I suspect he is either in the one in Yonkers, or Rye Brook.  The others are extremely small, and it's unlikely he would be there.

I look at this paper, and my first thought was..."gee, it didn't cost much to bury someone back then".  But I also had to put it into perspective:  My Great Grandparents had only been married two years at the time, and the cost of a funeral for a young couple just starting out must have been a huge burden.  Especially back then, when wages were pennies a day, compared today.

Always take time to go back over your research, and make sure you look at it with new eyes.  Don't just assume you know what that random scrap of history says.  Really stop and look at it, absorb it.

I just learned about this fabulous resource yesterday.  I am a geek when it comes to digital forms of old books, and use Google Books a lot.  Some how though, I had never heard of this until now.  From their website:

"The HathiTrust Digital Library brings together the immense collections of partner institutions in digital form, preserving them securely to be accessed and used today, and in future generations."

I haven't fully explored all the options yet, but just a cursory search for Westchester County, New York brings up a wealth of information.

I will definitely be using this for a resource in my future research.  I love old books, and while I would much  rather have a paper copy to hold in my hands, this is the next best thing.  Thank you to the Roots Tech community for pointing this out to me (I found it in one of the handouts from online).

I just found out this morning about the attack on Cyndi's List, and it's amazing owner.  Apparently, someone has stolen ALL of her content, that she has always offered for free to users, and has put it in their own "paid" site.  You can read Cyndi's original Facebook post concerning this here.

I am no expert on copyright laws, but I do know that this is beyond wrong, and morally reprehensible.  To steal from someone, who has selflessly given of her time and resources to help others out in their genealogical research just leaves me speechless.  It breaks my heart and angers me at the same time.

Please, take a moment to visit Cyndi's List, and on the upper right hand corner of her main page is a donate button.  Take a moment to give what you can to help her fight this.  She deserves our support after all she has given the genealogy community over the years.

On page 342, of the "Wolverhampton St. Peter's Baptisms 1813-1875 A-Ed"  I found my GGGrandfather, Joseph Ede.  Further research in the other indexes for St. Peter's also found most of Edgar and Esther's other children, and even a listing for Edgar and Esther's marriage.  I have contacted the appropriate records department, and will be ordering copies of each of these records as the budget allows.

A quick jump over to Wikipedia, and this is what I found on St. Peter's:

"St Peter's Collegiate Church is located on the highest and the oldest developed site in central Wolverhampton, England.[1] For many centuries it was a chapel royal, and from 1480 a royal peculiar, independent of the Diocese of Lichfield and even the Province of Canterbury. The collegiate church was central to the development of the town of Wolverhampton, much of which belonged to its dean. Until the 18th century, it was the only church in Wolverhampton and the control of the college extended far into the surrounding area, with dependent chapels in several towns and villages of southern Staffordshire.

Fully integrated into the diocesan structure since 1848, today St Peter's is part of the Anglican Parish of Central Wolverhampton. The Grade I listed building, much of which is Perpendicular in style, dating from the 15th century, is of significant architectural and historical interest. Although it is not a cathedral, it has a strong choral foundation with the Music at St Peter's in keeping with English Cathedral tradition. The Father Willis organ is of particular note: a campaign to raise £270,000 for its restoration was launched in 2008.[2]" (courtesy of Wikipedia: St. Peter's Collegiate Church)

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia: St. Peter's Collegiate Church

That is one amazing church!  Maybe someday I will get to visit in person, and see this, as well as where they lived and worked.

The other day while working on some genealogy for a friend, my 16 year old asked if there were any "developments" in his father's genealogy.  I was honest, and admitted that I hadn't really worked on that side of the family in quite some time.

I corrupted all three of my children young, with my love of history.  But my 16 year old seems to be the one who is into genealogy as much as I am.  He loves to find out about amazing, and sometimes nutty people in our family tree.

So, I took a break from what I was working on, and we jumped into Ancestry to work on the Bateman/Keene side of the family.  We actually managed to add quite a bit of information.  I use MyHeritage software on my desktop, so after adding the updated GEDCOM, we took a look at what the tree would look like if I printed it out using our home printer.  "Wow, that would be cool to print!" said my son.  I agreed and looked at the number of pages it would take.....54.

For some reason, this morning I decided to do it.  I have added a few more people since then, and it ended up being 72 pages.  It takes up nearly one whole wall of my bedroom and took three of us to hang it.  It is only held up with scotch tape, and I sleep on an air mattress at the moment right below it, so it may well end up on top of me eventually, but for now it works.

I have always shared what I find with my kids.....I want them to know where they come from.  But this year we are trying to incorporate some of the family into our homeschooling.  We just recently studied the Puritan period, and we have Deacon John Blanchard in our family who was in that area during that time period.  My hope was to find some of his sermons to see where he stood on major issues of the day, but unfortunately I didn't.  But being able to put our own family in the various time periods is amazing to my children.  It makes history and learning a little more exciting.

And on the nutty side of things....you can read about the "Seige" of Cedar Island in 1896.  The kid's roots on their dad's side of the family go all the way back to the very beginning settlements on the Isles of Shoals, and we found this story funny as all get out.

Do you involve your children in your research?