A little off topic but still relevant to family historians. I'm sure that when you search for ancestors or living relatives you eventually end up on one of the many Intelius (no link scumbags!) pages out there.

A couple of days ago the Washington State Attorney General slapped this company with a bunch of fines and injunctions for using what's called "post transaction marketing" practices. I won't do the story much justice so go ahead and read the following articles on TechCrunch. Then go get your refunds:

May 29, 2008: Naveen Jain's Latest Scam: Intelius

Aug 9, 2010: Washington Attorney General Settlement Announcement Tomorrow: Let’s Hope It’s Intelius

Aug 10, 2010: Washington Attorney General Hits Intelius With Fine, Injunctions

I had to head out to a conference in New York and decided to extend our family tradition of driving there and back. We've done it twice before when my oldest daughter was 6 months old and 1.5 years old. This time around we had both girls with us and we had a blast.

While I didn't have any plans to stop along the way and conduct any research, we did find out some interesting family facts. On the way north we drove through Spartanburg, SC where the Bishops and Brannons are from. It's good to know the drive up there is not that long and when I get my act together I will get out there again to try to figure out what happened to Calvin Rufus Bishop, who he married and what her maiden name was (my guess is Margaret Timmons). Then maybe I can figure out who her parents were and open up that branch in the tree.

We drove through Virginia from west to east on our way to DC and stopped at Luray Caverns. If you have never been, I highly recommend it. The line was not too long to get in and once inside, the caverns are just fantastic. But there was nothing of genealogical significance there so let's move on.

We didn't get a chance to see any of DC on the way up because we were already running late and just drove around in the rain. We decided to stop on the way back and visit the White House (which to my surprise is open to visitors only by appointment which can be made through your congressman up to 6 months in advance), the Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial and maybe one of the museums at the mall. It was a blazing hot day on the way back and we barely walked around the White House and made our way to the Natural History Museum. We then high-tailed it out of DC right smack into afternoon traffic. Lucky for us we were able to hit the HOV lane and zoom right out of the city.

We stopped to visit friends in Richmond and on our way out the following day we drove down Monument Avenue. When drove by the massive statue of General Lee, I commented to my wife and daughters that he was their cousin and then made a mental note to find the exact connection. I knew that one of my wife's great-grandmothers was Dorothy Lee who was married to Lodowick Tuggle but I wasn't sure how they were linked to the famous general. My father-in-law had scribbled something on an old family tree about being related to him but I have never made the connection.

We then stopped at Berkeley Plantation on the banks of the James River. Originally settled in 1619, where the first official Thanksgiving was celebrated, it is rich with American history. Benjamin Harrison who signed the declaration of independence lived there and his son William Henry Harrison, the 9th president of the USA was born there. Berkeley is one of several famous plantations in the area.

We then made our way along the east coast back to Atlanta. We drove through Greene County where Lodowick and Dorothy settled after moving south from Virginia. Lodowick sold his Middlesex County, VA plantation in 1769, where his family had lived for 100 years. There are a couple of Tuggle cemeteries in Greene County today that I need to visit at some point in the future.

So last night I did a little bit of research and found that Dorothy Lee, my wife's fifth great-grandmother, was the third cousin of Henry "Light-Horse Harry" Lee III, who was Robert E. Lee's father. So that makes General Lee my wife's fourth cousin, 6 times removed.

But there is another family connection there that I need to investigate further. Robert's mother was Anne Hill Carter Lee and was part of the Carter family of Virginia. Her father actually owned Shirley Plantation which is located right next to Berkeley Plantation. I've known that my wife's Carter branch is pretty big and in fact her 3rd great-grandmother was Sarah Whitehead Battle Carter Tuggle. She descends from more Virginia Carters.

So that's it for our trip report. I'll try to add some photos in a later post.

I know, I know. I have been away for a while. Nothing new is happening in my research as I don't have a lot of time lately. But I did come across this fun post and thought I might share. Spoiler Alert - If you want to try to solve the puzzle, don't read click the link yet.

BestWeekEver is a funny sarcastic blog that I read from time to time (when I have... time). In this post they decided to tackle a common genealogical dilema of trying to reconstruct ages of people in a family from an oral (in this case filmed commercial on YouTube) history. Can you figure out the kids age from the video below:



There's actually a second video with a few more details:



Ok, figure it out yet? Now go read the post on BestWeekEver.

I have been slacking off from my blogging duties lately. Mostly because of vacation and work, but also because of a general malaise I think. Here's what's been going on lately:

I ran across the following Saturday Night Live sketch with Christopher Walken and Tim Meadows which I thought was very good (unlike most of what SNL has done in the past decade):

Well, I did a little more soul searching and clear thinking and have a few more thoughts. I watched parts of the show again and read some other comments and blog posts and found a few things that were disturbing:

1. If you're going to touch the subject of the Holocaust and go into gory details of what happened in Ilya then you have to tell the whole truth. What I mean is that there is more than one side to this story. It's not as clear cut as the show makes you believe. There was a Jewish resistance. There were local Nazi collaborators. This happened in hundreds of villages around in Ilya. Some of the massacres weren't the Nazis themselves but were actually carried out by the non-Jewish population against their neighbors who lived side-by-sisde with them for centuries. There were a lot of unimaginable stories. But to make it sound like one day the Nazis showed up, gathered up the Jews and murdered them is not giving the audience the complete picture. And if the show decided to touch the subject, then tell the whole story.

2. I've read more than once that the show's producers (namely Lisa) had to fight with NBC to air what they eventually did. And that a lot of the show was edited down for the sake of "entertainment." I think that's the wrong way to do it. You can't edit history, because the result is that it fools a lot of people who don't know the truth and the real facts. If you want to read some of the comments on Facebook go here. You can see that most of the viewers 'liked' the show, but many missed the point.

I watched the latest WDYTYA? episode about Lisa Kudrow as it aired on Friday night. I have a lot to say about this from many different aspects. As usual, my thought may be a bit scattered but I hope you can follow along.

1. I watched the show with my wife, who I have to say has been a trooper and has willingly watched the first two episodes with me. But I think this may be the last one she watches. I think it was just the expectation that this was going to be a family history and discovery show and not a grueling reminder of the atrocities of the Holocaust. I think the graphic descriptions of what happened to Lisa's family and the Jews of Ilya were a bit too much and may have missed the target audience. I can see this kind of discussion coming up in a Holocaust documentary, as it should. But on an 8pm, Friday night, national TV show? A bit much.

2. My first point does not in any way mean that reminding people what happened during the Holocaust is not important. It certainly is. And the best example of why it is important is Lisa herself. How can a descendant of Holocaust victims have absolutely no idea what went on? It could be the suburban, southern California upbringing. But in a Jewish family? I find that hard to believe. I hope for her sake her discussion with her father was staged for the show because otherwise she should be ashamed.

3. 6 of my 8 great-grandparents perished in the Holocaust. My father grew up without ever meeting or knowing his grandparents. My mother only knew her maternal grandparents because they fled from Beltsy, Romania (now Moldova) to Tashkent, Russia. You grow up knowing these things, even though none of my grandparents ever talked about their parents. Not once that I can recall. You could see how painful it was for Lisa's father to bring up these memories and he had never met his grandparents either. But my grandparents said where they were from and did discuss a little about their families. I remember that my grandmother had an Yizkor book about her town, Dolhinov (Dolginovo). I remember reading it as a teenager. I guess growing up in Israel makes the Holocaust a lot more real than it does anywhere else.

4. Speaking of Yizkor books, the New York Public Library has the Ilya book. If you go to image 316 which is page 312 you can find the names of Lisa's Mordechevitz family:

Mordechovitz Mera
____"____ Liba
____"____ Avraham

If you go a few pages further to image 321 which is page 317 you can read the article that Lisa read in the market square. It's the testimony of David Rubin and it's in Hebrew (it was translated on the screen by Eilat Gordin Levitan who is a very active member of JewishGen, managed several of the shtetl pages and has many websites with wonderful photographs and other information). I couldn't find this specific translation on the Yizkor pages on JewishGen, but there are several others.

UPDATE: Miriam Robbins Midkiff, from the excellent Ancestories blog, left a comment with the link to the translated page that Lisa read. It's after the list of martyrs (which also lists the Mordechovitz family). Thanks Miriam!

4a. I am going to email Eilat and see if I can get a copy of the article she translated so I can share it with my readers or at least point you to a link.

4b. I am in touch with another Rubin from Dolhinov and I sent him an email to see if he is related to the David Rubin who wrote the chapter in the Ilya Yizkor book.

5. I wonder why Ancestry did not play up it's relationship with JewishGen for this episode. Strange. I think that would have been a huge win for all involved.

6. Now just to show how much this episode hit home for me, if you look at Eilat's website and check out the map, you will see that my grandmother's shtetl, Dolhinov (number 1 on the map), is right next to Ilya (number 19 on the map):



7. Doing the kind of research that Lisa did during this show in the Polish and other state archives is not as easy as it seems. From what I know, nothing is online and most records of anything less than 100 years old is not accessible to the general public. You would either need to go there in person and hire someone who's got the right connections or you may be able to do it remotely by hiring a local person, which is probably not something regular family historians can do.

8. I loved how the Polish archivist just plopped down a phone book in front of Lisa. There's no easier way to look for living relatives right?

9. I would have liked to see how Yuri/Boleslaw was related to Kudrow. They kept referring to him as a cousin, but only at the end did they say that Lisa's grandmother was his Aunt.

10. Another important part of the show was when Boleslaw said he wasn't there in Ilya to see the massacre. He only heard about it. But the family had lived for 60 years thinking that he witnessed it. This is a recurring theme with oral histories that are handed down through generations.

11. So how did Boleslaw escape the fate of the rest of his family in Ilya? He escaped to Russia and joined the army. This is pretty much what my own grandfather did. But my grandfather lived in Warsaw, not Belarus. So "escaping" from Warsaw was not going to be as easy. I will need to get to the bottom of this story on my next visit to Israel. I am not sure how much my grandmother will be able to tell me, but I have to ask.

12. I had more thoughts during the show, but I can't remember them now. Overall, I thought that while the subject matter was extremely dark (yet extremely important), the show itself was fairly lacking when it came to actual research. Why had they not talked more about Ilya's history? What about the generation of Jews who lived there for centuries before the Nazis ended it all? I also felt that the constant recaps and previews were too much. There was very little actual footage that wasn't reused several times.

I'm looking forward to the rest of the season of WDYTYA? but I have to admit that this format is starting to get a little tiresome. Maybe they can tweak the format if they get a second season going.

Thanks to the genius that is Casefile Clues (read my post about why you should subscribe to this wonderful genealogy tutorial resource) I have been looking at old deeds from the County Clerk's Office. This can be somewhat difficult because there is no easy way to look for really old records other than going through all the indexes and looking for the surnames you are researching.

Anyway, this is not the topic of this post. I found the following paragraph in one of these old deeds:


It reads:

neither said property nor any part thereof shall be used for negro tenements nor rented to negroes, nor sold and conveyed, either directly or indirectly to any negro or person of African descrent [sic], within a period od [sic] fifty years from the date of this instrument.

This is from Decatur, DeKalb County, Georgia. What year do you think this is? Take a guess in the comments. I will write an update after a couple of days with the answer.

Not sure why I was so surprised about this. I guess I have never actually seen it in writing before. In a real live county document. How could this kind of discrimination take place out in the open? How is that possible?

I found another deed for the same property dated six years later and the same paragraph was in it except now they changed the limitation from 50 years to only 40.

Shocking!

I watched WDYTYA? last night with my wife (and almost 7 million others) and have to admit, we had a pretty good time. If you didn't get a chance to watch the first episode with Sarah Jessica Parker, you can do it right now:

I've been reading a lot of different reviews today and have to agree with most of them, but here is what stuck in my mind:

1. Wait a second, she comes from this big family and she's all about family and yet she had no idea who her great-grandmother was until the taping of this show? I find that hard to believe. I think this was just a setup for the show to be able to go and "discover" SJP's American roots.

2. The first thing I thought when they brought out the obit was that if the son was born in late September 1850 then his father couldn't have died in 1849. That would have been my first question when presented with the evidence and not "was he part of the gold rush?"

3. Geni.com published a family tree for SJP before the show aired. It had about 9 people in it. Today it looks like this and includes all the Hodges and Elwells:



You're going to need to click the image to see the a larger view of the tree. But I am surprised that the show didn't show a tree like this instead of the single vertical line that only showed parent-child relationships.

4. The funny thing is that a lot of the "findings" are pretty easy to replicate.

5. I wish they had followed the GPS to show why John S. Hodge in the 1850 census is the right one.

6. Only took about 11 minutes to mention Ancestry.com by name.

7. I wish they would have shown how they located the old letters detailing how John S. Hodge died.

8. I love some of the grandiose declarations such as "you find hundreds of documents like these."

9. One of my frustrations with Ancestry.com is that a lot of the database have no images. Here's the entry for Esther Elwell in the Salem Witches database:



Seriously, what does this give you? And I couldn't figure out how to find this entry through the regular search results. Because there are 348 results for the exact search of Esther Elwell and none of the categories are going to point me to the Salem Witches database:



10. By the way, if you do a Google search for Esther Elwell the first 5 pages of results (all I really checked) point you to a malware site. All the same site. Why would Google allow that to even happen? Someone did a great job of blasting the search engine and hoping people end up clicking one of those 50+ bogus links:



11. At some point in the show they show an Ancestry.com search and for some reason they use "old" search. I wonder why?

12. I wonder if they try to see if SJP's husband's tree (Matthew Broderick) overlap at all since they are both on the show.

13. I am surprised that the "young man with so much old information" couldn't have told SJP that Esther Elwell was not executed. I guess it's smart editing to make for good television.

14. I wish they would have said something about collaborating with other researchers because if you go to GenForum and look at the Elwell Family Forum and search for Esther Dutch you find this:

On page 12 of the Rev Jacob Thomas Elwell book "The Elwell Family in America", it says that Rachel Elwell was born Feb 21, 1688 (doesn't say where) and that she married Peter Lurvey. The timing is right.

Her parents were Jacob Elwell and Abigail Vinson. Jacob born Gloucester MA 8/10/1662.

Jacob's parents were Samuel Elwell and Esther Dutch. Samuel was born 1635 or 1636 in Dorchester MA. Esther was taken to Ipswich MA for examination on charges of witchcraft, but was released a week later.

15. They could have toned down the un-be-lievables and the wows a little. I wish I had a way (or time) to count the number of "incredible" and "amazing" that were said.

Anyway, I have a lot of other thoughts but I'm going to have to stop at this point. I loved the show and thought it was really well done. It captivates the audience and will probably encourage a lot of people to check out their own genealogies, so everyone wins. Sounds like Ancestry.com had a huge surge in traffic after the show with slow search times and general sluggishness.

Can't wait for next week!

Yesterday during scanfest, some people said they were going to sadly miss several of the episodes of Who Do You Think You Are? starting March 5th on NBC. Aside from the funny comments about setting up a DVR or (yikes!) a VCR, I mentioned that if the show was popular enough someone will do us all a favor and upload it to YouTube. So I figured I would go search the site for some of the BBC episodes and found them all there broken up into several short segments.

I have to say that none of the names of the people on the show rang a bell except for Stephen Fry. So here's the entire episode:

I've read that the US show will be significantly different than this in format and length (a lot of wasted time on commercials and previews of what we're going to see after the commercials), but this gives us a flavor of what's to come.

Like pretty much everyone else who's into genealogy I have been following the wave of new shows already shown on TV or coming soon to a screen near you. I have a few comments and wanted to share my thoughts with my readers.

Faces of America - I was very excited about this show, but overall I am a bit disappointed. I am not sure that the format of cutting a slice in time and then connecting the different stories to it is very appealing to me. I would probably prefer to go deeper than wider. The show is well done, but barely scratches the surface of what is possible to research. I guess PBS was trying to get wider appeal to its audience of non-genea-nuts.

I watched the first two episodes with my wife, who is a non-nut. I am not sure she was 'that' interested. Some historical facts are absolutely mind-boggling and could have been more throughly presented. For example, the fact that on one hand allied forces were liberating Jewish survivors from Nazi concentration camps compared with the incarceration in concentration camps of American citizens who happened to be of Japanese descent would have been interesting. How could something like this happen? How is it possible that this took place in America?

In any case, I like the historical aspect of the show, but as I've read elsewhere, I would have liked more meat on the bones. How were these resources located? How were these 'Book of Life' volumes put together, how long did it take and how much did it cost? Maybe that's just my curiousity...

The Generations Project - This is a fantastic show! The host is terrific and the filmed segments really show how any person can have an interesting ancestry. I would have liked to see a little more of the research, but perhaps that would have caused the show to be a little dull. I love this show and I think everyone reading this should tune in and watch it.

Who Do You Think You Are? - I am really looking forward to this show. I think that doing an episode on each celebrity is a better format than 'Faces' and will allow the viewer to follow the storyline better. It looks to have the most polished production as well, but that probably comes with a much higher price tag.

I will probably have more to say once WDYTYA starts. But so far, I love the new genealogy themed shows that are starting to sprout everywhere. Enjoy!

I've been going over old census entries to see if I can find new clues as well as cite my sources properly. While this is somewhat tedious, I've already found a lot of information I've overlooked in the past. Here's an interesting example, the 1930 US Census for my wife's great-grandfather Saul Hytowitz and his family. Here's the interesting bit:



These are the columns 25-31 that deal with occupation, employment and veterans. I couldn't figure out what his occupation was from the handwriting although I can clearly see he worked in the shoe industry. Luckily, I ran across a blog post on Ancestories that had a link to a website that details the instructions for the census enumerators. And then I found this:

217. Distinguish a traveling salesman from a salesman in a store; the former should be reported as a commercial traveler.

I knew he was a shoe salesman because I found that out in the 1930 Pittsburgh City Directory and other sources:



But I didn't know he was a travelling shoe salesman. And guess what? His son Joe does the exact same thing.

A few other interesting things:

1. The city directory shows Saul owning the house on Straka Street with his children renting space there. The 1930 census says he's the one renting the house for $73 a month. I wonder which one is right. I wonder if he bought the house sometime during the year.
2. I just noticed that Saul's parents, Jacob and Rose are also in the city directory. Didn't see that before.
3. The veterans section of the census shows that Saul was a veteran and served in World War I. His son Joe was also a veteran. I need to figure out how to get their service records. I didn't notice that before either.

UPDATE: Steve Morse has a great little page that deciphers the occupation codes in the 1930 Census. I entered 4290 and got 'Commercial travelers' in 'Retail store or retail trade'.

I saw the great 2010 Census ad on the SuperBowl last night and that gave me a great idea. First, check out the ad:



So anyway, that got me thinking. I don't really remember filling out a census form or talking to anyone in 2000. I think I got something in the mail, but not confident that I filled it out or mailed it in. I know I will be a lot more prepared this time around in 2010.

So my idea is to save my 2010 Census info in my genealogical database. And maybe even ask all living relatives in the tree to send me a copy of their forms. This way I will be 72 years ahead of the curve. And when I eventually pass this burden on to someone else, they won't have to wait until 2082 to see who we were and what we did. I can do the same thing every decade. Imagine my great-grandson's surprise when he is handed an antique flash drive that includes every census the family has taken in the past 70 years...

If you want to know what the 10 questions that will be asked, you can check out the interactive form guide here.

My question about doing this is - is it legal? From the 2010 Census site I got the following:

Census information is protected by law, and everyone who works for the census must swear that they will never disclose any personal information. Penalties for any employee who might share that information are severe: up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. By law, the Census Bureau can’t share your information with anyone — including other federal agencies and law enforcement. Your information is safe.

But does that mean I can't share my own information or ask relatives to send me their forms? I don't think so. Obviously if it's in a genealogical database that is not properly protected, this information might leak and cause all sorts of issues for some people, but the same can be said about all the info I already have about living relatives, right?

What do you think of this idea? Isn't it a great way to get a lot of information about your current living relatives that you might already know? I didn't see any question that might seem to personal.

Let me know in the comments!

I am not sure what the appeal is with the awful show called Jersey Shore, but I guess MTV has to air something since they don't show videos any more. So the whole Snooki phenomenon has gone insane and with it a couple of sites that let you download a PNG file of the orange one where you can insert her into other images (site 1, site 2).

I decided to have a little fun and add Snooki to some historical images. If you decide to make your own, post a link in the comments!

I can't believe I overlooked this resource. The Internet Archive is such a great research tool with so many family histories scanned in full and other terrific resources. So I was very surprised to find 30 (yes, that's thirty!) Atlanta City Directories on the site. The earliest is 1867, two years after the end of the civil war. The latest is 1923.

The beauty of this resource is that you can download the entire books to your hard drive in searchable PDF format or you can browse it online and run searches.

Here's the link to the "Atlanta City Directory" search I ran. Enjoy!

Most of the Atlanta City Directory information I have comes from the Fulton County Public Library. I have not been able to locate anything online except for one or two copies. Footnote doesn't have any and every time I searched Ancestry.com I found only 1889-1890 and the Strangers' Guide:



I get the above results when I enter "Atlanta Directory" in the keyword search in the card catalog.

So imagine my surprise when I got some hits that led me to other years. When I tried to find these specific results in the card catalog I couldn't. So I tried a different way. I decided to filter the catalog this way:



Same results including something that has nothing to do with Atlanta, the "Baronia anglica concentrata, or, A concentrated account of all the baronies commonly called baronies in fee." Whatever.

So this time, after I filtered by 'Directories & Member Lists' I chose the first option in the list which was 'U.S. City Directories' which has over 6 million records. The search on this screen is useless and if anyone knows how to get good results from it, I'm all ears. When I tried to search for 'Tuggle' in 'Atlanta' with an exact match I got no results. When I turned off the exact matches for 'Atlanta' I got 2,766 results starting with New York. So that's a complete waste of time.

On the right hand side of the screen you have the option to browse the collection, and that's done through another set of filters. And here's where you can find all the directories from 1877-1890 and one for 1948-1949:



From here it's easy to get to the correct year, but then you lose the ability to search that specific volume. So you have to browse through it and load all the images until you get to the right page. This is a terrible way to go through a City Directory because you can miss so much important information like the street listing or the business section.

I even tried to copy and paste the titles into the title and keyword search boxes in the card catalog but obviously that didn't work. The good news is that these are fairly good scans and I don't believe I had anything prior to 1887 at the library.

I wonder how many other important titles I've been missing on Ancestry.com because they are impossible to find in an easy way. Why do they hide these titles in this way?

I wanted to post this to give some folks an idea of the frustration you can expect when dealing with some free OCR tools. I try to use OCR (optical character recognition) to transcribe information from images I find mostly in online resources but sometimes also ones I scan or photograph. There are some extremely 'clean' resources out there that have been scanned in high-res and will look great in any OCR tool. But there are some awful scans out there as well. Let's run through an example.

In my last post I wrote about the obituary of Sarah Tuggle. I found the scan of the obit from 1883 on Ancestry.com and knew right away that this will not be an easy one to convert to text:


First of all, for some reason, Ancestry.com has recently started downloading images in PNG format. While this is a great format and is a close second to TIF, not many OCR applications can read it, so you have to convert it with some other tool. Luckily the basic Microsoft Office Picture Manager will do that in no time. But as you can see, the image is in extremely bad shape.

I tried first with PaperPort, which is a document organization tool that came with my DocuPen (an excellent handheld pen-sized scanner). PaperPort has a terrific OCR tool which works quickly and almost flawlessly when you deal with a good source image. But this is what I got with PaperPort:

sale.
.1 -d— of na
o~ueru~~ e siw rr.'i~'~:~ ~r ove.n~w a..n ne.. .eror..o

Close, right? That was the original PNG. Then I tried the converted JPG:

of a.. riu~~n r~ui:.
aim . .~ me .~ aor nee
wu r~
~:~~ ° .«ac.o

Not much better. I also have an OCR tool that came with my terrific HP OfficeJet Pro 8500. But I can never get it to work on images that were not scanned at a high DPI and it is clunky and not very user-friendly. I tried it anyway and just got frustrated some more.

Then I remembered that I had a great free OCR tool somewhere in the 70GB hard drive of my computer, but since I haven't used it in a while I couldn't remember what it was called and couldn't find it anywhere. So I went to look for some good OCR tool online. And there are a lot of those out there.

SimpleOCR looked promising but it couldn't convert the file at all. I tried another good image and it had a lot of errors anyway. The interesting feature was that it allowed you to chose from a drop-down list what word you want to use when it was not 100% sure what it scanned. Also, it has a 14-day trial for handwriting recognition but you have to teach the system how you write and go through a whole training exercise. That might come in handy some day.

Another free program that intrigued me was TopOCR. The interesting thing here is that it is intended for photo capture with cameras of at least 3 mega-pixel. I was sure it would be able to handle some bad scans but this is what I got:

A Adds Ads, Am, Carob Beef ~e, Bulb Or Err. PIU~DeJ Tugger

dled ~uddonl7 ye~lerd~^r at Me r~ld~ ace of h

46ugbler, Art. Plorco llf Inure, on Butler~l~eL 8,

nob * try dlnner *ad wry ~ppuenllr troll, 81 o^lr~n~d & IlUle ox ~^lll0~ d~, howe~ot, Al . dl^cd league -liar TV ~~ ~~

It basically found only one word right - Butler. So this was not going to work. It is a very quick tool though and let's you edit the outcome in a side-by-side view next to the original:


When I tried a good image I got pretty good results. But my problem is not with good images, it's the crappy ones I need help with.

So finally I found the program I had been using before. Obviously it's called FreeOCR. Doh! It also let's you view side-by-side with the original and open the recognized text in MS Word. I can't seem to get a screenshot of this application for some reason but here is what I got when I ran it:

A lnddan Death.
In. Earnh Tuggln, wits nt Hr. Plukncy Tuggle.
dlcd suddnnly yesterdny at the ruldcnce cl her
daughter, Mr:. Plame Mlm, nn llutlaralrael. Shu
aw s Imm dinner and wu nppu-entlr wall. Sha
rnmulnmnij A lime ou smlug clown, however, and
dlud \».|‘un; any cue could mach her. _

The recognition wasn't great, but it was the closest I could get. And there was no difference between PNG and JPG either. When I ran better scans through FreeOCR it did great too. And it's free!

Do you have a favorite OCR program (free or not)? I'd love to hear from some of you in the comments.

Last time I wrote about the death of Pinkney J. Tuggle and while searching for more information about his I ran across the obituary for his wife, Sarah Whitehead Battle Carter Tuggle. This one is shorter and very peculiar as it doesn't give a lot of information:

A Sudden Death.
Mrs. Sarah Tuggle, wife of Mr. Pinkney Tuggle,
died suddenly yesterday at the residence of her
daughter, Mrs. Pierce Mims, on Butler street. She
ate a hearty dinner and was apparently well. She
complained a little on sitting down, however, and
died before any one could reach her.

The Atlanta Constituion - 8 May 1883.

Once again, the name of their son-in-law, Pierce Mims is mentioned but this time they live on Butler street. I checked the 1883 Atlanta City Directory (page 439) and found that Pinckney J. Tuggle, a merchant, was renting at 9 Butler Street. In the address listings (page 119) there are actually 3 people listed as living at this address: P. Mims, J.P. (wrong initials) Tuggle and W. Hanley. I wonder who Hanley was.

So what does it mean that she "complained a little" and "died before any one could reach her?" This is very odd. I wonder how I can find out more about this incident.

Anyway, I just thought of another reason that Pinkney didn't want to be buried in Greene County at his father's plantation. His wife died 2 years before him and was buried at Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta.

I am going to write a follow up to this post on two topics that annoyed me:
1. Why does Ancestry.com hide the city directories where you can't easily find them?
2. Why are some OCR product so terrible?

We had a short visit to the Smyrna City Library today and I have to say their genealogy section is quite impressive for such a small library. I was also able to do a couple of quick searches on their ProQuest databases. I'm not sure why I can't get the Atlanta Contitution to show up on CobbCat, which is the Cobb County Library System and has home access to ProQuest, but I need to figure this out since it is a very good resource.

I also found out a few days ago that the Atlanta History Center has a great website and research room. If you go to search the collection (under research) you will find their Terminus system as well as photo albums, the architecture database and the Franklin Garrett Necrology Genealogical Resource. Franklin Garrett’s Necrology is a genealogical resource for white men from the metropolitan Atlanta area, twenty-one years of age or older, who died between 1857 and 1931. Women listed in the necrology are mentioned in reference to their male counterparts. It's a great resource because it can give you an idea if the information was found in an obituary.

So today, I found the obituary of my wife's 3rd-great-grandfather, Pinkney Jackson Tuggle:

Death of Mr. P.J. Tuggle. - Mr. Pinkney J. Tuggle, a well known citizen of Atlanta, died night before last at ten o'clock, at the residence of his son-in-law, Mr. Pierce Mims, 42 North Bell street. Mr. Tuggle was seventy years of age, having been born in Greene county in 1815. He was married to Miss Sarah W. D. Carter, daughter of Christopher Carter, of Newton county, and twelve children were born unto them, ten of whom are living. After the war Mr. Tuggle moved to Cherokee county, and later moved to Atlanta. During the last summer he was stricken with paralysis of the throat, and suffered much from that cause, but his death was the result of pneumonia. He will be buried at Oakland cemetery at ten o'clock today. Mr. Tuggle was a kind-hearted man and an affectionate husband and father, and had not an enemy in the world.

The Atlanta Constitution (1881-2001); Nov 8, 1885; ProQuest Historical Newspapers Atlanta Constitution (1868-1945) pg. 11

Most of the information in this obituary was already known to me, but there were a few things that were new:

1. I didn't know that Pinkney was a citizen of Atlanta. Everywhere I have found him his death place was Greene County. I even read in one place that he was buried at Oakland Cemetery because he refused to be buried at the William Tuggle plantation in Greene County. So I wonder why none of the researchers before me figure out that he died in Atlanta. I guess it's just the copy/paste nature of today's genealogy? Strange.

2. Up until now I hadn't researched all of Pinkney's children. I did a couple of quick searches for Pierce Mims and found out he was married to Lily Cola Tuggle and his full name was actually Franklin Pierce Mims. There are many trees for that family that I can now connect to. And I also found grave photos from Oakland Cemetery and actual family photos of Pierce and Lily. I also found their death certificates. Lots of great info to follow up on.

3. I only know of 10 children for Pinkney and Sarah, not 12. Two may have died in infancy but in any case, I wonder who they were and why I have not seen them before. Add to my ever-expanding to-do list.

4. I have only looked at Atlanta City Directories from 1887 onwards so I wonder what information I might find in 1885 if there is even a city directory for that time.

5. This last point reminded me to look at the census information I have for this family. I was shocked to see that I only had 1850 and 1860 information, when they lived in Greene County. I quickly pulled up 1870 (Canton, Cherokee County) and 1880 (Atlanta, Fulton County).

6. In 1880, Pinkney and Sarah lived with their daughter Mary J. (Martha Jenny) Vining and her husband David M. Vining at 225 Decatur Street. There are a total of 16 people living in this house including Paul Tuggle who was Pinkney's son and is buried next to his parents at Oakland.

7. Sarah's middle initials are wrong in the obituary. Her full name was Sarah Whitehead Battle (Tuggle) Carter. I wrote about her and her maternal line here.

Last year, I found Pinkney and Sarah's graves at Oakland Cemetery a while back and added pictures. I just looked at the photos again and noticed the Masonic symbol on the tombstone. Milton B. Tuggle, their son was also a mason. That's something else I need to check up on.

While searching for Pinkney Tuggle I came across an article in the Atlanta Constitution from 1895 about a scandalous legal custody battle over the 9 year-old grandson of P.J. Tuggle (who was named after him). There is a lot of drama in that story, including two parents who keep abducting the child from each other, private detectives, a chastity discussion by the Judge Westmoreland and much more. But that's a story for another post.

I haven't put up a post in a while for several reasons, but mainly because I haven't had much time on my hands lately. My mom came for a visit, my daughter was on winter break and I've been pondering the point of genealogy in general. So I decided to share my thoughts on the subject and see what some of my readers have to say on the subject. I am sure that this has crossed peoples' minds in the past during the course of their own research.

And you're going to have to excuse the messy thought process because I am just writing things down as they pop into my head. So if none of this makes sense to you - sorry :-)

I was thinking of a way to put all these ideas into some kind of structure and eventually decided to take a look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs. I think we can safely skip the physiological and safety needs and take a look at love and belonging or in other words social needs.

I would venture to say that for some people genealogical research is a way to feel a deeper connection to their family, whether it be their immediate or extended family. That is certainly one of the reasons I started researching my family's history. Living so far away and not being in contact with relatives caused me to forget who's who and how we're all related. I don't know if it was an actual "need" but perhaps more of a curiosity and a way to stay connected to my past. I also wanted to be able to tell my daughters about my family at some point in their lives and I knew that without some sort of system I was going to forget a lot of people. By creating and sharing an online tree on Geni I've also managed to bring the rest of the family closer together, but that was not my original intention.

I am sure that most of the geneabloggers are fulfilling some sort of social need as well as getting their research out there for others to enjoy and potentially find a connection. And many have also taken to social networks to expand their reach and interactivity with others. Many researchers enjoy the social aspects of the various genealogical conferences, workshops and cruises as well. I've enjoyed this sort of interaction too, but I don't think this has been a leading driver for me. I would probably categorize it as a fun byproduct. This also brings up specific interests like old photos, ethnic background research or even military history.

I think we have to go higher up Maslow's pyramid. The next level is esteem.

I am certain many serious genealogists have a need to be respected by their peers and enjoy a sense of achievement when breaking down a brick wall. And then bragging about it. But once again, that is not the main reason I enjoy this hobby. So next and final step - Self-actualization.

I think the desire to know and understand our past is probably the main driver for genealogists. Where do I come from? How did I get here? What chain of coincidences and historical events came together to give me this life? These are some of the questions we ask ourselves as human beings from time to time. As genealogists, we try to answer those questions through systematic research.

But I think there's more past Maslow's pyramid. A lot more...

Some people just enjoy the historical aspect of it all and genealogy makes history a little more personal. If you can place one of your ancestors in a significant historical event, then you have a personal connection to it. I especially like this side of genealogy. That's probably why I enjoy reading biographies or general historical non-fiction about people and places.

But sometimes there are some flaws in this reasoning. Let me explain my thought process.

There are several levels to understanding your past. There's oral history that you hear from your parents, grand-parents and maybe great-grands. That will probably bring you back about 100 years. That's also where most of us will end up with old photos unless you have some rare items dating back to the 18th century, but those are few and far between. Then there are a few other research milestones.

My Jewish genealogy is probably going to end somewhere in the middle of the 18th century anyway. There aren't many records kept or left and most of my ancestors and their relatives perished in the Holocaust. Looking for descendants is a bit of an interest, but while finding a 4th cousin somewhere is great, it's not like we're going to be really close. I barely keep up with my 2nd cousins as it is.

On my wife's side there are a lot of long American lines that date back to colonial times, but eventually the all end up in Europe somewhere and that's where the research will end unless there is some noble or royalty and that's pretty much genealogical vanity. So we all know the origins of our ancestors after a short amount of research and that's that.

So is it the process that we like? Is it digging through archives and finding a clue that leads us to a "new" discovery? Well then we could do that sort of research for pretty much anyone, right? Because my 8th great-grands are so far removed from me personally that they might as well be strangers. Why don't we research strangers? Why don't we just randomly open up an old city directory, pick a name and research that person? Well, some of us do. But most won't want to invest time and money on complete strangers.

Some people love cemeteries. Some people love archives and old libraries. Some people love to travel to ancestral homelands or figure out an old plat from a recorded land deed. Some people want to find parallels in their past to their own lives.

Anyway, I've been rambling long enough. I think that for me personally, I have accomplished several things through genealogy:

1. I can now easily name pretty much all my living relatives out to my 2nd cousins.
2. I managed to get the family a little closer together.
3. I've been able to build a family tree for my daughters to enjoy later in life.
4. I've enjoyed the research process and connecting ancestors to historical events.
5. I virtually-met many interesting people who share my hobby.

I'm sure there's a lot more that I'm forgetting to add at the moment, but I think this post is long enough, don't you?

What's the point to your genealogy research? Let me know in the comments. I hope I gave you some food for thought.