How to Find EDs using alookatcook.com

I'm writing this post as a quick response to a Chicago Genealogy Facebook page question about how to use an address to determine a 1920 Census ED using the maps found on alookatcook.com.

1) Find the address using Google Maps. I'm going to try 2711 Hillock.

2) Once you've found the address, note the large cross streets. In this case, the canal/river is prominent and I notice that the address is southwest of the curve.

3) Go to alookatcook.com and click on the 1920 Ward map.

4) Notice how prominent the canal is. Based on the Google map, I guess that the address is part or the 4th ward so I click on the number 4 to see the map of EDs within the ward.

5) Going back to the Google map, I look for large streets and try to find them on the ED map.

I see that the address is west of Halsted and south of Cermak. Does that help?

Yes. I see Halsted on the ED map so that narrows down the eastern border.

6) I go back to the Google map and look for other streets close to the address. I see names like Throop, Grove, Loomis, Lock, Poplar.

7) I go back to the ED map and try to find those streets.

I see that Throop and Loomis are boundaries for some EDs and I notice that the river, Archer, Lyman, and 31st are the north/south boundaries.

8) I go back to the Google map to find the Archer, Lyman, etc. and finally I'm able to say that my address looks like it's south of the river and north of Archiver between Throop and Loomis.

9) ED 218 is a good guess so from there, I go to Ancestry.com (or another site with the census) and scroll through looking for the Hillock address. Most times when I do that I refer back to the map(s), and I can often tell the path that the enumerator was taking. It can help me to guess whether I need to look at the beginning, middle, or end of the image set.

Hope that helps! It's not an easy process--lots of trial and error--but it does work.

Requesting Images from FamilySearch's Photoduplication Services

In a previous post, Some Images No Longer Available on FamilySearch, I noted that the FamilySearch Wiki article on Illinois, Cook County Death Records mentioned that digital images could be obtained through FamilySearch's Photoduplication Services. In order to be able to better answer questions about the service, I decided to try it myself.

Submitting the Test Request
On January 29, I sent an email asking for a copy of a New York City church baptismal record for Sarah Catherine Trafford. She appears on my husband's family tree and it was a record that we sincerely wanted. I provided a link to the FamilySearch index entry and included the index information. I also provided my name, address, telephone number, and email address, as requested.

Reply to the Test Request
Today I received an email with the subject "You have received a file from photoduplication Shared." It included a link, good for 14 days, that I could use to download the file. Clicking on it took me to a page that let me download a zip file.

The zip file contained two files -- a jpg and a pdf, both of which were created on February 14. The jpg was large (2416 x 2966 pixels) and very readable. The pdf was a cover letter that told me the record was the "best copy available." It also gave me details on how to order additional records by email and wished me success.

Why I'll Continue to Order Films
So, in summary, I received a quality image by email for free in three weeks. Can't beat that! I'm grateful to the volunteer(s) at FamilySearch who retrieved the image and forward it to me, but I don't think I will use the service again. Why?

Well, for one thing, a new message has been added to the current Photoduplication Services FamilySearch Wiki page:

I have easy access to a Family History Center and so I can't justify asking someone else to obtain records for me. I'm pretty sure the image retrieval service wasn't meant to take the place of film ordering.

But there's more to it than that. Looking at the record that I got today, I saw an entry for Sarah Catherine Trafford, born to Abraham and Basilia, but two lines below I also saw an entry for an Abraham--an adult. I think Sarah's father might have been baptized a year and a half after she was born. It made me wonder if other family members might have appeared on the reel?

I also found myself wishing that I had a title page from whatever volume the page was from (I probably should have asked for it,  but I didn't think about it when I sent in my request) and it's likely that the baptism was just a one-page entry but some registers span two pages and I'd feel more comfortable if I had seen the register myself. I guess I'm just an independent sort at heart. : )

How This Relates to Chicago Record Retrieval
So, how does this relate to the Chicago vital records that were taken offline? It's an awkward question for me to answer in an unbiased way, but I'll try.

If you're not in a hurry for a record and you don't have access to a Family History Center, then I'd say it's a great way to go!

If you do have access to a Family History Center, then it's up to you to decide whether to use the service or to order in a film.

Where does my service fit in?
If you need a record in a hurry (I can visit the Family History Center on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday) or if you've decided, for whatever reason, not to use the free service, then I'm still here, ready to help. I'm planning to offer a discount on multiple-record orders going forward and I'll be updating my Genlighten.com offerings soon.

Valentines on Our Family Tree

Sarah Ann Valentine Burr Ackley

My husband and I have three Valentines on our family tree--Valentine Mink, Valentine Smith, and Sarah Ann Valentine. I love them all.

Valentine Mink was born in Germany in 1805 but lived much of his life as a farmer in Floyd, New York. He carefully crafted his will to divide his estate fairly among his children. “The Cow or the thirty five Dollars that I gave to Janetta C. and the Horse or one hundred and twenty Dollars that I give to my sons George Franklin and John Philip is to make them equal to the elder children and not be included in the one eighth which each of them is to have.” I love him for that.

Valentine Smith was born in Chicago in 1873. As a descendant of an early settler and successful entrepreneur, she inherited a place in society that gave her the freedom to focus on her passions and one of them was history. She served, briefly, as Chicago’s first archivist and spearheaded a number of important local history projects. Many people who worked with Valentine found her difficult and demanding, but in the early 1900s she served as a constant reminder to the city fathers that Chicago’s history was worth preserving and worth celebrating. I love her for that.

And then there’s Sarah Ann Valentine, born in Schodack, New York in 1837. As a young woman she married a widower with children and then, three years after his death, she became my great-great grandfather’s third wife.

Sarah’s life was simple. She cooked. She cleaned. She went to church. She mothered stepchildren in addition to her own. Sometimes she was happy. Sometimes she wasn’t. But, she was grateful for family and friends.

On 8 Feb 1883 she wrote: "quite a pleasant Day washed flanel sheets, Baked Bread, commenced Mr A shirts, sewed some. … roads drifted some. Alone with my little family this eve my heart rises with thanks … "

I feel a surge of emotion when I read those words. I love Sarah for taking the time to keep the journals that allow me to feel close to her.

Happy Valentine’s Day to you and to the ancestors you love.

(This blog post originally appeared in the February 2013 Genlighten.com newsletter.)

Some Chicago Images No Longer Available on FamilySearch

This morning I received an email from a fellow researcher mentioning that the images for Illinois, Cook County Deaths, 1878-1922 are no longer available online at FamilySearch. Unfortunately, it's true. The same is true for the Cook County birth register, birth certificate, and marriage license collections. On a positive note, the indexes remain. Two steps forward + one step back still = one step forward for Chicago researchers.

If you visit the FamilySearch Wiki page Illinois, Cook County Death Records and scroll down to the "Image Visibility" section, it explains that a new contract has been negotiated with Cook County and that the records were removed as part of that agreement. The article continues on to explain that "FamilySearch will receive an additional 4.7 million records for FamilySearch patrons." I don't know what that means, but I hope it's good news.

If you need access to the images that were removed, the Wiki page offers three suggestions including submitting a request to FamilySearch's Photoduplication Services, a way to get limited number of records for free. Also, for those of you in the Chicago area, most all of the films for the early records are available at the Wilmette Family History Center but check their holdings before you make the trip.

I can't fill in the gap by offering free lookups, but I will add these records back to the list of documents that I can retrieve through my chicagogenealogy store on Genlighten.com. I'm wondering about the possibility of offering to take quick iPhone camera photos of the records for a budget-friendly price. They'd be quite large and readable, but they wouldn't look like images scanned directly from film or like the images that I get when I print and scan a paper copy. What do you think? Would that be of interest?

Chicago Naturalization Searches: What the "730" Means

If you search the Illinois, Northern District Naturalization Index, 1840-1950 at FamilySearch, you'll probably come up with a card like this one:

If the court is listed as Circuit, County, Criminal, or Superior then the record is held by the Cook County Circuit Court Archives. If the court is listed as District, then NARA Great Lakes has the record. But, what if no court is listed?

Recently I had a client send me the two cards below and I wasn't sure how to follow up because no courts were given. (I removed the names for posting.)

A quick email to NARA solved the mystery. The "730" prefix is the code for the United States District Court in Chicago.

If you visit NARA's page on naturalizations you'll find a link that will let you order copies of naturalization records online for $7.50 (includes postage).

If you need naturalization records from the Circuit Court Archives, you can submit a request by mail or I can retrieve them for you for a $10.00 fee.

Many of these records are also available on Family History Library films. Search the catalog to check for availability.

Family History Expo Day 2: New Research Ideas

Okay. I'll be honest. The Springfield Family History Expo memory that will stay with me the longest--maybe forever--was my encounter with the warm pecan buns that were available as the final stop on the breakfast buffet that I splurged on the morning of the second day. They were delicious beyond words and I ended up eating four of them. (They were small. Really.)

After breakfast, I headed to the patio on the 14th floor, played a few fiddle tunes to relax and start the day off right, and then I headed to class.

First up, "Tracing American Ancestors Who Lived in Cities," a double-session workshop taught by Arlene H. Eakle, Ph.D. She shared many wise insights but here are three of my favorites:

• People move within cities. First they live on the top floor, then they moved to the basement. From there, they move to the first floor and then (I'm pretty sure I have this right) they move on to better neighborhoods. How many of us have followed families through address after address in the Chicago city directories? That might be a reason.

• Cities are big. Lots of people, right? And imagine how many births and deaths there would be to record in a single day. Imagine what it would be like for a single clerk handle that. Cities might  have kept multiple registers for events that happened during the same time period. Just because a name doesn't appear in one record doesn't mean that the event didn't happen in the area. Look for other records. This is relevant to Chicago/Cook research. For example, you WILL NOT find a "Chicago" birth recorded in a "Cook County" birth register even though Chicago is in Cook County. Why? Because Chicago births were recorded in "Chicago" birth registers. 

• Some occupations are tied to a geographic area. Makes sense, right? If you are a coal miner, you live where there's coal. If you are a commercial weaver then you live where there's a mill. If your immigrant ancestor had a trade, you might be able to use that occupation along with other clues to figure out where the family lived previously. 

As a side note, Arlene uses an overhead projector and carries her transparencies around in notebooks. It's refreshingly old-school and it gives her lectures breathing room and flexibility. I liked it.

After a short lunch break, I sat in on James L. Tanner's "A Review of Major Genealogical Libraries and Repositories." The take-away from that? Two websites--archive.org and loc.gov. I was aware of both, but hadn't really explored either in much depth. But, what's a lazy Sunday afternoon for if it isn't for that?

archive.org

Census records to 1930 are there, free, in an easy-to-browse format. And, of course, there are thousands of scanned books of interest to family history researchers.

I'm fascinated by the media section, though. t took a bit of digging through some modern uploads, but I stumbled on a number of Chicago-related movies. If you missed Chicago's 1933 Century of Progress Exposition, it's not too late to take a tour (no sound). Or maybe you just discovered that your ancestor was a sign monkey. A what? Check out this informative movie about Chicago's Chevrolet sign. (I wonder what happened to it? Anyone know?) And where could a family turn for a small depression-era loan? Check out Financing the American Family. 

loc.gov

You'll want to explore this site in some detail, but this morning I followed up on the class suggestion to look at the Historic Newspaper section.  I typed in "valentine smith" with "chicago" (Valentine, the subject of one of my long-term research projects, worked tirelessly to promote and preserve Chicago's history during the early 1900s) and got two results.

The one from Maysville, Kentucky caught my eye--I've visited there for research--and so I clicked through.

I have long sensed that Valentine was a "society woman" but it was nice to see that someone else viewed her that way, too. I knew that she was involved in Chicago's centennial celebration, but I didn't realize, specifically, that she'd written a poem for it and I had no idea that writing had been a passion for her since childhood. If James Whitcomb Riley was an "admirer," how did he become acquainted with her work? Did their lives cross paths? Did she publish any of her writing? And why would a Maysville paper mention Valentine and James? Research-wise, I'm off and running again.

My final class of the day was Jennifer Holik's "Branching Out: Teaching a Youth Workshop" presentation. She's recently published a series of books called Branching Out and she shared tips for introducing children to family history research. Jennifer will be teaching workshops for the younger generation at the upcoming Illinois State Genealogical Society Fall Conference in Rockford. Check them out.

The conference wrapped up with a closing keynote titled "Holly Shares Her Personal Research Magic and Awards the Grand Prize  Drawings" by Holly T. Hansen, president of Family History Expos, Inc. Her story highlighted the magic that she's seen in her own personal research quests and I suspect most people in the room were thinking what I was thinking: "Yes. Exactly." We've all experienced that magic. 

But, what do they say? 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration. I don't really like that saying and you'd never find me saying it but I think it applies here. Much of the magic happens when we put the time in to learn the resources, create a plan, and  follow through without giving up. I came home with a number of new ideas for research and the motivation to follow through on them. Magic has already sprung from that.

Thanks to the Family History Expo folks for putting together a worthwhile (and delicious) weekend.

Family History Expo Day 1: Chicago-related Insights

Chicago from the train

Long day. I caught a 6:35 a.m. Metra train into Chicago’s Union Station, took  Amtrak’s 8:15 a.m. Saluki to Champaign, and rode the rest of the way to Springfield by bus. I arrived at the Illinois Family History Expo in time for the 2:00 p.m. opening keynote and spent the rest of the afternoon and evening attending conference sessions. The last class finished about 8:40 p.m. which left me some time to take my fiddle up to the 14th floor garden patio to practice and now I’m back in my room, ready to share a few of the many things that I learned that might be of use to Chicago researchers.

The opening keynote was a talk by Bernard E. Gracy, Jr. titled “Ancestral Echos” and a quick summary might go something like this: the times and places and events associated with the lives of our ancestors echo down through the generations. Our family history becomes richer and more understandable when we learn to identify those echoes.

As I’ve mentioned before, my husband’s ggg-grandfather, James Ayer Smith, traveled from upstate New York to Chicago in 1835 to establish himself as a manufacturing hatter, an occupation that would sustain his extended family for the next 40 years. There were setbacks and there were successes and family stories lead me to believe that his descendants were proud of his courage and his accomplishments.

I have to wonder if his example didn’t echo strongly in his granddaughter’s decision to run her husband’s business after his untimely death? And I wonder what role it played in her grandson’s decision to start his own business? I know that both my husband and I looked to him for inspiration as we made a decision to launch our own entrepreneurial endeavor.

So you have Chicago ancestors? What echoes from their lives have come down through the generations? Where did they come from? When did they arrive? Where did they live? Who were there neighbors? Did they move around the city or stay in one place? What were their communities like? Did they associate with any religious congregations? What about the schools they went to? Did they belong to any clubs? What did they do for recreation? The more you are able to place their lives in context, the better chance you'll have of identifying the echoes. Reading through early issues of the Chicago Tribune online is a very enjoyable way to see the city through the eyes of its former inhabitants.

The first two classes I attended were given by Arlene H. Eakle, Ph.D. One was titled “What is “The South,” and Why is it Such a Genealogy Research Challenge” and the other was titled “Want Land Will Travel: Land and Property Records in the Southern US--State-by-State.” I have no experience researching in southern states and I thought it would be both useful and enjoyable to learn something new. It was.

Most of the information was state and region specific but I came away with one tip that is universal. Put in terms of Chicago research, if you’re reading a book related to family history in Cook County, check out the sources listed and follow up. You might discover a new-to-you resource that would be of help in your research.

Another tip. Record loss is a stumbling block for southern research and a similar challenge exists for Chicago research because of the 1871 fire. Just because one record was destroyed doesn’t mean there isn’t an alternate source for the information. Look around and think creatively. You might be surprised at what you find.

The next class I went to was James L. Tanner’s “Ancestry.com for Experienced Users.” The take-away from that? Use the website’s card catalog to select specific databases to search. Try it. Type in “chicago” and look at the list that comes up. Narrow it by using the filters. “Chicago Irish Families, 1875-1925” is a valuable database for Chicago research but you might not find it doing a global search. Also check out Reminiscences of early Chicago and vicinity. It’s fun to read and it’s a useful way to gain insights into the lives of early Chicagoans.

Evening view from the 14th floor garden patio

The last class I attended was Jennifer Holik’s “Visualizing Your Genealogical Data.” Jennifer is a Chicago researcher and her talk on using Excel, OneNote, maps, and blogs to identify information gaps and craft focused research questions was sprinked with examples from her own Cook County research.

Here’s a tip I think you’ll like: if the streets your ancestors lived on no longer exist (maybe they’ve been replaced by a university or a shopping center) use historical maps to help in your search. Jennifer mentioned one in particular--Tillotson’s--and I’ve pulled up a 1910 version online for you. Check it out!

And so, a long day comes to an end. Four classes tomorrow and two of them will focus on research in cities. Certainly there will be something valuable for Chicago researchers there.