This Genealogist's New Year's Resolutions for 2014

Another new year, full of hopes and dreams, and a few New Year’s Resolutions of a genealogical nature…

1.     Reading:  I want to read a dozen genealogy books in 2014.  One at the top of my list, when I have a little money to spend, is Professional Genealogy edited by Elizabeth Shown Mills, which is a collection of wonderful articles written by a number of genealogy experts.  Not every section would apply to me, but enough of them would.  I want to read Ancestral Trails by Mark D. Herber, which I’ve had on my bookshelf for a while, and which I hope can help me in my search for my husband’s Yorkshire roots.  Also on my list are couple of Christmas gifts from my wonderful step-kids:  Time Traveller’s Handbook: A Guide to the Past by Althea Douglas, for some historical context for my research, and Turn Your iPad into a Genealogy Powerhouse by Lisa Louise Cooke. 

2.     Message Boards:  I have had some wonderful breakthroughs by posting on genealogy message boards, mainly on ancestry.com.  This year I want to use the message boards more often and sooner.  There are some amazing researchers lurking on those boards, ready to take on someone else’s research challenges just for the fun of it.  They think of things I haven’t thought of, and look in places I haven’t looked.

3.     Giving Back:  I have an iphone now, and I want to use it to take photos for billiongraves.com in small cemeteries near my home, and in Amish Indiana when we visit.  I’ll try to do six cemeteries this year, walking the entire cemetery each time.

4.     Giving Back Some More:  I also have made it a habit lately, when I’m bored or can’t sleep, to transcribe gravestones online for billiongraves.com.  The website keeps a count at the top of the page of how many I’ve done…  I’ve transcribed about 750 at last count.  I’ll try to do at least 100 transcriptions a month.  I love findagrave.com and I use it all the time—I’ve contributed to it, and no doubt will again—but I think billiongraves.com is the wave of the future.

5.     Photographs:  In my never-ending search for photographs of my family and my husband’s family to add to my collection (and share with others), I’ll reach out to a few more distant and newly-discovered cousins this year—sharing what I have if they’ll do the same.  I have thousands of photos already, but the next exciting discovery is always around the corner!  Share, share, share—that’s the way to keep these photos from disappearing into the mists of time (or into someone’s closet or fried hard drive).

6.     Blogs:  I love to write posts for my genealogy blog, but this year I’m going to read more of other people’s blogs.  The only one to which I actually subscribe is Judy Russell’s blog, “The Legal Genealogist.”  I’m going to add a few more.  There are a lot of well-written ones out there, and it’s good reading when I have a few minutes to spare.

7.     A Field Trip:  Fort Wayne, Indiana isn’t that far away, and we travel to Northeastern Indiana regularly…  Maybe this will be the year I can visit the Allen County Public Library’s nationally famous Genealogy Center for the first time.  I’ve been told that it’s one of the finest genealogy libraries in the entire country.  We intend to retire to Northeastern Indiana in a few years, but I hope I don’t have to wait that long to check out this wonderful place that I’ve heard so much about! 

So that’s the plan, anyway.

My Graveyard Kit

Is it weird that I have a graveyard kit?  How else can you go grave hunting in an organized and well-equipped manner?  Mine is stored in a pink bucket with a decal on it.  (I’m a very girly grave hunter.)

The bucket contains all the stuff I need for proper gravestone hunting (except a goodly supply of water—never leave home without a goodly supply of water).  The bucket contains:

• A notebook and a pen, along with any information that I had the foresight to gather together beforehand.
• My camera, of course.  How else can I take photos to upload to findagrave.com?
• A little pink flashlight, for casting shadows on gravestones for better pictures.  The experts advise a big mirror for that purpose, but that won’t fit into my bucket.
• Grass snips, a trowel, and a whisk broom, for quick cleanup work as required.
• Cotton gloves.
• A second bucket just like the first one, for hauling water if there’s a faucet.  (But I learned the hard way to also bring plenty of gallon jugs of water, especially when going to very old or abandoned cemeteries.)
• A stiff-but-soft scrub brush that fits well into my husband’s hand.
• Liquid soap—a special kind.  (I did a lot of research on this subject.)  It’s called “Orvus” and it has three main uses, so I’m told:  Washing horses, washing antique fabrics, and washing gravestones.  Fancy that!…
• Wet wipes.  I like having clean hands when I use my camera (and all the rest of the time, too, actually).
• A big Ziploc bag, for kneeling upon to take photographs.  I don’t like dirty knees either.
• Bug repellent.  I once went wandering through some tall grass in the woods in cropped pants, looking for a few old gravestones which made up a small old family cemetery...  I came out with about a hundred bug bites on my lower legs.  I’m lucky I didn’t end up with Lyme disease!
• White chalk for marking trees and driveways for navigational purposes.  Don’t want to walk the same rows twice if I don’t have to.
• Little American flags.  I like to leave them at the graves of veterans.

Okay, so is this normal, or weird?  All genealogists love graveyards, right?  I once saw a coffee mug for genealogists that said, “I’m only interested in dead people.”  Well, yes, but I wouldn’t say only…  

Grave Hunting in the Heartland

It was my Grandma Wallin who first took me to a graveyard—as a recreational activity—when I was about eight. I’ve liked graveyards ever since.

Recently my husband and I were traveling to Holmes County, Ohio, and I thought we might as well visit a few graveyards on the way. His maternal ancestors are buried in a string of graveyards stretching from northern Indiana to central Ohio. So, armed with my “graveyard kit,” we spent a day hunting tombstones.

First stop: Eddy Cemetery, DeKalb County, Indiana—resting place of Charles and Elizabeth Alwood, my husband’s great-great-grandparents. Charles was a private in the Indiana Volunteers during the Civil War. He left seven children at home, the oldest a boy of twelve. His unit fought its way through the south, eventually ending up in North Carolina, where they occupied Raleigh and then cooled their heels waiting for the war to end. After it did, but before he could get back home, Charles died of typhoid in an army camp there. Elizabeth lived forty more years as a widow, running their farm as well as she could. We left a flag at his grave.

Second stop:  Independence Cemetery, Defiance County, Ohio—resting place of John Jr. and Mary Ann Garver, my husband’s great-great-grandparents.  There we had the great pleasure of meeting up with the woman who cared for this church cemetery along with her husband.  We had corresponded with her ahead of time and determined that her husband is a distant cousin of my husband, and she surprised us with an envelope of photographs which were ours to keep.

Third stop:  Florida Cemetery, Henry County, Ohio—final resting place of Jacob Heilman and his family—once again, my husband’s great-great-grandparents.  Jacob, an immigrant from Bavaria, was in the 68^th Ohio Infantry in the Civil War, and theirs is an incredible tale.  His unit fought in every Confederate state except Florida and Texas, and during the course of the war, he marched over 7,000 miles and rode trains or steamboats another 6,000.  He lived to tell the story, going on to have twelve children—six before the war and six after—and he died at 88.  After taking some photographs, we put a flag on his grave and were on our way.  We had a long drive to our next stop.

Fourth stop:  Walters Cemetery, Morrow County, Ohio—final resting place of John Garver Sr. and his wife Elizabeth—my husband’s great-great-great grandparents.  John Sr. was born in 1795 and died in 1879.  He fought in the Pennsylvania Militia in the War of 1812, and was given a 40-acre piece of government homesteading land (“bounty land”) for his service and a pension in his old age.  Three of their daughters predeceased them and are buried with them—all three died in the 1840s, at ages 20, 16, and 2.

Not every husband would spend an entire day finding cemeteries and cleaning gravestones for his wife, especially on vaction...  Kudos to mine for being such a good sport!