From Randy (a cousin discovery!!) over at Genea-Musings:
it's Saturday Night -
time for more Genealogy Fun!!!
Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to:
(1) What genealogy search/research did you do last week? Did you have a research goal or plan? Tell us about one or more search/research session(s).
(2) Tell us all about it in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, in a post on Facebook, or on Twitter.
Here's mine:
First of all, let me say how happy I am that Randy came through his bypass operation splendidly and is back home, recuperating. And writing blog posts!
As far as my research, as always, I have been all over the place. I have dabbled in several different genealogy plans.
My usual habit is to pick a line, either randomly or being lured by an obituary, and trace that line on Find A Grave and then Ancestry using their hints. For over a month, I have been tracing the Ozmun/Osman/Osmun line in this way. It seems that every line has many, many children. So I go down many rabbit holes and must fight my way back. My 8th great-grandparents were John Osman and Mary Wines, born in about the 1630s-1640s. I have been working through their descendants on Find A Grave, and when I get bored with that, I switch over to Ancestry, search for those I have found, and use the hints feature to add to my research.
The hints feature at Ancestry.com is great, BUT you have to stay vigilant and make sure the hint they provide is actually for the person you are working on. I have found that there is no name that is not a duplicate. There are many Liz or Elizabeth Tapleys out there. Even with a not-so-common name like Ozmun, there are many Isaacs or Marys or Abrahams in that line. So each and every hint provided by Ancestry must be looked at and deemed whether it is actually for your person. Even if it is, you must examine each piece of information to decide whether it is accurate or not. For instance, your person's birthdate is January 16, but a social security record says it is January 23. Well, I know that Social Security records are notoriously incorrect.
Doing this research has added many people and information to my database. However, it is time-consuming and seems to be taking FOREVER. So I've been a little more bored with it as time goes on. However, I am going to stick it out, because once I finish this Ozmun line, I am going to start working on Ranneys.
Another way I am drawn into using Ancestry.com hints is when they send me an email about hints from the 1950 census or what is new in their record collections (These emails also come with hints.). So I will follow those hints, which are about different family lines, and that helps ease my boredom. This happened today, and I found out some interesting things.
My grandmother, Ethel Ranney Tapley (1913-1973) was married to Avery Hazel Plumlee (1911-1997). He was her first husband. They had one son together, my uncle, Robert Avery "Bob" Plumlee (1937-1999). Grandma and Hazel divorced, and he married 4 more times in his lifetime. In my grandmother's diary from the 1930's, she talks about Hazel a lot, since they were dating and married during this time. She also talked often about his parents, his brother, Earl, and sister, Delma. Earl was married to Verda and they had a little girl named Dorothy, who my grandmother seemed quite fond of. Earl was killed in a car accident in 1933, when little Dorothy was only 3 years old.
Today, in one of my Ancestry emails, I received a hint about Hazel. When I followed it, I found that someone from the Plumlee line had been posting new and interesting information. Now I don't normally keep up with in-laws in my family tree. I add the spouse, but I don't add their parents or other spouses, or any children from other spouses UNLESS it is someone(s) interesting to me. For instance, the Plumlees. I guess it's because my grandmother knew them, was close with them, and wrote so much about them. So I was interested in this hint even though it is not a direct line for me.
In the hints, I found a picture of Hazel from his later years. Even more interestingly, I found that Earl and Verda actually had a second child, Donald, that I don't remember my grandmother mentioning at all. He would have been about 2 when Earl died. Then I discovered that Verda remarried, moved to Nevada, began going by her middle name, Viola, or "Vi", and her new husband adopted Dorothy and Donald. So without these hints, I never would have known that Dorothy and Donald Plumlee were Dorothy and Donald Ferris. I was able to submit edits on Donald's Find A Grave memorial to show who his biological father was and explain his adoption by his stepfather.
Tomorrow I will get back to work on those Ozmuns...
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