Effie L Stephens - To Soon Gone

It is always the little ones that tug at my heart when walking a cemetery in search of relations and ancestors. My mind has been flitting back to little Effie L Stephens all day long. She was so small and so young when she died there would never be any descendants to remember her. Her short life might never be recorded if not for this little blog.

Effie was the daughter and first child of Almond Michael and Elizabeth Ann (Bosanko) Stephens. She was born about September 26, 1877 and lived only fourteen days, dying on October 10, 1877. I don't know the cause of death - whether she was sickly from the start or died suddenly without a symptom. I only know her death must have been devastating to her parents and relatives. A great loss to everyone.

We will never know the person she would have become because she never had the opportunity to be more than a sweet angel in her mother's arm. At least, for now, she is not forgotten.

Hillside Cemetery, Platteville, Wisconsin

~ Becky

Starting a New Project With a New Outlook

Just a quick note to say I'm anxious to embark on my new adventure in family history research and writing. I have done some work of these families - Davey, Ellstrom, Stephens, Christiansen -  in the past but haven't focused on them for a few years. I've already begun the process of looking over what I already have and determining what I need to do next.

The Davey and Stephens lines are both from Cornwall, England, the Ellstroms are from Sweden, and the Christiansen line is from Denmark. I'll be looking into those areas to some degree but, as is my usual way, the focus will be the family is this Country. The Davey and Stephens are mostly Dodgeville and Platteville, Wisconsin and the Ellstrom and Christiansen lines settled in Marquette and Ishpeming, Michigan.

I'll be looking at each line separately, of course, but I'm also interested in how they came together to eventually produce the center it all, Alice Davey.

Alice Davey abt 1933

Just in case you noticed, I changed the color scheme of this blog, it's because blue was Alice's favorite color.

I hope you'll come along with me on the journey.

~ Becky

My Leisure Book Is Out

Check out my post on my Leisure Family blog to get information for printing  the book. Also, information about getting the free PDF file.

Will soon begin a new project!

One Inspirational Person

Life sometimes places special people in your path, people who inspire you to accomplishment without any direct communication. I’m not talking about famous philosophers or well-known celebrities. I’m talking about people who go through their lives not even knowing the great affect they have on others.

Recently one of those exceptional people in my life, Sandy Granholm, passed away far too soon.

I had just seen her at the Elgin Genealogical Society’s (EGS) meeting in late January where she presented her third family history book to the Gail Borden Public Library. She appeared in good health and was her normal, jovial, smiling self. We had a short but interesting conversation about publications.

Researching, writing and publishing are the areas in which Sandy inspired me the most.  She had been a leader of EGS long before I joined in 1995 and was well on her way towards publishing her findings even when I was just a fledgling. She didn’t flaunt her abilities but gave quiet encouragement. She was simply Sandy going about her business and, by example, motivating others.

Since having met her I’ve published, in various forms, two family lines and two individual’s stories. I’m currently trying to decide how to best publish my Leisure line. This one I aspire to be as profession as Sandy’s work. I’ll miss not being able to get more advice from Sandy but am so happy I had the opportunity to know and learn from her.

~ Becky

Still Working on Citations

I just thought I'd post a quick update regarding my endeavor to get my sources and citations in order in my Family Tree Maker database. Though this is turning out to be a major project within my publishing project, I'm glad I decided to do it.

My original goal was to reformat my sources, as closely as possible, to match the recommendations in Evidence Explained by Elizabeth Mills. If I had kept to that goal, I'd be much further along; however, in conjunction with the "source" format, I'm also looking at each citation for each source. In the language of my young texting friends, OMG! The problems I'm finding are numerous and in some cases hard to explain.

I'm still working on reformatting my US census record sources. (Almost finished with 1910) I'm finding some citations linked to the wrong source - as in right state wrong county. Also, sometimes I wrote out "enumeration district" and sometimes I used "ED"; sometimes I used "pg" and sometimes I wrote "page. These may seem minor problems but when you see these citations next to each other they look really ugly.

Some issues resulted from using the merge option from Ancestry as Ancestry hasn't been any more consistent than I. Sometimes all the necessary information transferred and sometimes almost nothing came through. I've had to spend considerable time finding the record again (at least I've been able to do that with the information I have) and get everything I need for the citation. In the future, I'll make sure I format the detail on the screen before I merge.

This may take awhile but I'm sure I'll be happier with the result once I'm finished.

Updating My Status

Here I am again after a long stretch of silence. Partly the silence was caused for fun, partly for work, and partly for genealogy fun-work. The fun part was a cruise which brought relaxation and new friends. The work part was a remodel of our bathroom - legs and back are still reeling. The genealogy fun-work was/is the final preparations for publishing my Leisure line book which includes my current project of reformatting my citations - complete database - to conform to Evidence Explained.

There, now you have all my excuses! I'm planning to try to be more consistent with my posts from now on but, as I'm sure you know, life sometimes gets in the way. I'm no where near finished with my reformatting but am making progress. It is tedious and time-consuming but I know it will be worth it in the end. Once the reformatting is complete and once my current project is published, the next project should go more quickly as long as I stay consistent with my source and citation entries.

That's it for now.

~~ Becky

New Genealogy Software - Evidentia

Thanks to Shanon Bennett's (TNT Family History) review of a new software posted on The In-Depth Genealogists website on January 11, 2013, I decided to take a look at Evidentia. What I saw and read I liked so much I didn't even go for the free 30 day trial; I just bought it at the current sale price.

I'm sure Evidentia will be a great asset in my genealogy toolbox. It took some initial concentration to get my mind around this source-based way of looking at my work. I must admit for my first attempt I cheated just a little and used a person and event I had previously worked through by other methods. However, the evaluation of each source made clear not so much discrepancies but duplication of information.

I was looking at the sources used as evidence to prove the birth date and location of my 3rd great grandfather, George Washington Leisure. The sources I used are the US census records from 1850-1880, a county history book, and his obituary. His age in each census - except one - matched the year of birth recorded in the history book and his obituary and all sources showed his birth place as Kentucky.

What I really noticed through this evaluation, however, was the similarity between the writing in the history book and his obituary. So even though the information in each is the same, I can't really use them as separate evidence. That doesn't mean the obituary isn't useful though because the history book was written prior to George's death, making the obituary stand alone as evidence of his death date (no that's not my only evidence for his death date).

Another benefit of the software is the creation of correct bibliographic and citation listings.The citations are included on the Genealogical Proof Report created by the software based on the information submitted by the user.

Bottom line, this software provides a place to bring together all your sources for an event, evaluate their information, and make a logical conclusion. That conclusion, by the way, may be the need for further evidence. Evidentia works on the premise of providing a tool to assist the genealogist with compliance to the genealogical proof standard. The software is not meant to replace your current genealogy software and it does not import information from it. Everything must be input by the user either by keying or using the cut and paste method; however, by doing this entry methodically the user must consider each detail from the beginning and that's not a bad thing.

I like Evidentia and plan to use it as I work through my research, especially with my more controversial ancestors and events.

As a note, I am not affiliated with Evidentia in anyway other than a user. As I use it more, if I incur any major difficulties or triumphs, I'll be sure to let you know.

~Becky