Of Broken Links and Sources

L i n k s . . .

Just a quick note to say that the broken links that I wrote about three days ago have all been fixed.  Well ... maybe I should say that I believe they have all been fixed!  Bottom line is that this blog and my West Virginia Heritage website are in sync again.

However, if you do find a link in one of the older posts that doesn't work, please let me know so I can get it corrected.

S o u r c e s . . .

One thing I did note while I was going back through posts was that one of the older posts contained a link to a Sources page on the website - but I haven't had a Sources page online for quite some time.  At the end of each person's info you will find Citations giving a "short" version of my source.  The purpose of the old Sources page was to provide the "full" version of the source.

Why did I pull that page?  Well ... I noticed that there were a lot of discrepancies in how the full sources were appearing and I wanted to get them cleaned up.  Like I said, that was a while ago ... (make that a long while ago) ... and I sort of moved on to other things ... (make that forgot about working on the full sources).

Actually, I've done enough cleanup since then that those sources are probably much better than they used to be as the Citations (short versions) are in pretty good shape.  Well ... maybe I should say that I believe they are in pretty good shape.

The Citations on the website will give you a fair amount of detail about my sources, but I may have additional info about a given source - just send me an email using the link at the bottom of the website page you're viewing if you want to ask about a specific source.

The big hold-up on putting the full version of sources online again is that I know I need to update many that relate to census records.  I changed the way I recorded census info in my database a long time ago, but never finished making updates so that older entries would read correctly.  I have the info ... it just doesn't present well at this time. 

Looks like another job to add to my "to do" list (it keeps growing longer rather than getting shorter)!

Advice Is Meant To Be Taken

It dawned on me yesterday that changes I had made on my WV Heritage website in March rendered all of the person links from this blog to the website obsolete.

Here's the explanation I had put on the website:

If you have previously saved any links to specific people, please use one of the indexes to find each individual and replace the old link with the new one. This is necessary as the site has been changed from a "one folder, one person" basis to a one folder, multiple persons" basis. As a result, URLs now reflect a page number that specifies the folder in addition to the individual's ID number in my database. Here is an example of how this affects the old links using Herbert Samuel Kuhn, who is ID#9. His old link ended with p9.htm, while the new link ends with p1.htm#i9.

So....

I have started looking back through posts and changing the non-working links to valid links.  It has actually turned into a good exercise as I am finding a few other links to sites that now have a new address.  I was rolling right along until I got to mid 2012 and hit a brick wall.  No, not a genealogist's idea of a brick wall; it was more of a "it's time to get some sleep" brick wall.  I have another couple years to go as this blog was born on 11 November 2010.

Bottom line:  I hope that folks that visit the website are better at taking my advice than I was.  I had cautioned that old links would no longer work ~ I even notified another blogger that he needed to update a link ~ and yet it took another month for it to dawn on me that I needed to update my own blog!

Yep, advice is meant to be taken.  Hi ho, hi ho, it's back to work I go ...

Surprise - the Update is Online!

I finally finished reviewing all the changes in the long-promised update AND have uploaded it to my West Virginia Heritage website.  Yay!!!  When the dust settled, I had added the following:

• Information from nine different tag types (Anecdote, Biography, Education, Employment, MailAddress, MilitaryDraft, Naturalization, Occupation and Residence)
• 82 new persons - list is at New Persons Added on 23 March 2018
• Five more census pages - list is at New Census Pages on 23 March 2018

In addition, there are a couple important notices about the website:

1. The secure “https” protocol is now available for the site, meaning that you can access it using https://www.wv-heritage.com/. What this means to you is that the session between the web server that hosts my site and your browser is encrypted to provide more security.


2. If you have previously saved any links to specific people, please use one of the indexes to find each individual and replace the old link with the new one. This is necessary as the site has been changed from a "one folder, one person" basis to a one folder, multiple persons" basis. As a result, URLs now reflect a page number that specifies the folder in addition to the individual's ID number in my database. Here is an example of how this affects the old links using Herbert Samuel Kuhn, who is ID#9. His old link ended with p9.htm, while the new link ends with p1.htm#i9.

So what now?  I need to resume my planned series of blog posts about Henry and Hannah Church.  There have been three posts so far:

• Birth of Henry Church, aka Old Hundred on 08 June 2017
• Birth of Henry Church, aka Old Hundred – Part 2 on 11 June 2017
• When did Henry Church marry Hannah Keine? on 18 June 2017

Next step is to go back and get my head wrapped around the Church family again to remember where I was in my thoughts.  While you wait for the next post, you can check out this discussion of Henry Church Names.

Just When I Was on a Roll -- Take 2

I readily admit that speed is not my forte ... especially when it comes to blogging ... but now genealogy is coming in a close second.  In my last post, I had set a goal of July 2017 for updating my West Virginia Heritage website, and it is now the middle of February 2018 and the update still isn't done.  Yes, I'm a whole lot closer, but I'm not even going to venture into the land of goal-setting.

For now, suffice it to say that I am alive and still working on my database.  It will simply have to be a pleasant surprise when the update is announced here!

Just When I Was On a Roll

I was rolling along pretty good this month, and even had set a goal to not only keep this blog going again but to add new info to my website. 

My database program uses "tags" to record different types of info, many of which I have never uploaded as they needed work before being ready to go online. My goal was to add eight new tags by the end of June:  anecdote, biography, education, employment, military draft, naturalization, occupation and residence. 

It was ambitious, but I was on a roll until the 27th when my software threw an error message at me and then laughed in my face, said "I quit," and refused to open my database again.  Murphy's Law at work - it happened right before the 4th of July weekend, so I'm patiently waiting for some advice from the experts. 

I suspect that I'll have to restore the project from a backup. Unfortunately, that means I will lose a couple days of work as I failed to backup every night - and yes, I'm kicking myself as I write this because I know better! 

It won't be hard to re-create those two days, just time-consuming.  So ... my June goal has now turned into my July goal.  July should bring an update to the website with the new tags included, AND I can resume my planned series of blog posts about Henry and Hannah Church.

Wish me luck!

When did Henry Church marry Hannah Keine?

Pretty much everything I have ever read about Henry Church’s marriage to Hannah Keine said that they got married circa 1778.  Seemed reasonable as I knew Henry came to America during the Revolutionary War, which started in 1775.  At least it seemed reasonable until cousin Rise’s questions made me start questioning myself and re-thinking the timeline.

According to a Harper’s New Monthly Magazine article from 1859, Henry “came to this country a British soldier, of the 63d Light Infantry, and served under Lord Cornwallis in the memorable campaign of 1781.”  The article notes that he was not at Yorktown when the final battle took place, because, “A short time previous, while on a scouting-party between Richmond and Petersburg, he was taken by the troops under Lafayette, and sent a prisoner to Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  He remained here until peace was proclaimed.”¹

In comparison, the write-up about Henry that is included in the History of Wetzel County, West Virginia, has similar wording except that it says Henry “served under Lord Cornwallis in the memorable campaign of 1791.”  Note the 10-year difference between the two accounts!  (Obviously 1791 was a typo as Cornwallis’ surrender in Yorktown took place in 1781 – that was the end of the “memorable campaign” and the final battle of the Revolutionary War.)  This Wetzel County history does agree that Henry was a prisoner until peace was declared.²

Yet a third source is an article from the Journal of the American Revolution website at  that says Henry came to America in 1780 as a recruit, was sent to Virginia in 1781 and was taken prisoner in the vicinity of Petersburg and sent to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, along with several other British.  Henry remained a prisoner there until 1783 when a peace treaty was signed.  The article, written by Don N. Hagist, cites his source:  Muster rolls, 63rd Regiment of Foot, WO 12/7242, British National Archives.  Additional information about these muster rolls can be found at the National Archives website.

Don Hagist also writes another blog, “British Soldiers, American Revolution,”  where he wrote a post about Henry Church in 2013. In that post he stated that Henry arrived in America as a recruit in October 1780 and was assigned directly to the regiment's light infantry company that was sent to Virginia in early 1781.  He was captured near Petersburg and sent to the prison at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where many British soldiers were housed.

The commonly accepted marriage date of circa 1778 has to be wrong if Henry didn’t come to America until 1780.  An account written by Ruth Hixenbaugh Jones of Hundred³ says they married after the war - is that factual or an assumption based on tradition?  Notes on the back of a photo of Hannah reportedly said that Hannah married Henry soon after they met.

Consider this scenario, bearing in mind that it is only a theory:  Henry arrived in America in October 1780 and met Hannah shortly thereafter.  They learned he was being sent to Virginia in 1781 and decided to get married immediately.  (Wouldn’t be the first time a couple got married right before one of them went off to war!)  While in Virginia, Henry was captured and remained a prisoner until 1783.

So is it possible that they were actually married in late 1780/early 1781?  If so, it appears that 80 years is the maximum length of time that Henry and Hannah were married as both of them died in 1860.  So where did the idea that they were married for 82 years start?  In the account by Ruth Hixenbaugh Jones, she wrote, “They lived in blissful wedlock for 82 years.”  That number was also written on the back of Hannah’s photo, but it’s unclear who wrote it or when.  Did the writer have personal knowledge that 82 years was correct, or was that just the number that everyone believed was right according to “tradition”?

So just as I am still unsure when Henry was born, I am also still unsure when he and Hannah were married.  All I can say with any degree of certainty at this point, is that I believe the often-stated year of 1778 is incorrect.   Once again ... if anyone has additional info to settle the question, please step forward!  I would love to hear from you.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

¹ Harper's New Monthly Magazine Volume 0019 Issue 109 (June 1859)
² John C. McEldowney, History of Wetzel County, West Virginia, reprint of 1901 book.
³ "Hundred," submitted by Ruth Hixenbaugh Jones, presented by The Wetzel County WVGenWeb, online http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~wvwetzel/Communities/. Original source: History of Wetzel County, West Virginia 1983.

Birth of Henry Church, aka Old Hundred – Part 2

My last post noted three different birth dates that have been suggested for Henry Church of Hundred, West Virginia, fame: 30 November 1750, 13 December 1750, and 1751. There may be more, but those are the three I have found to date. I said I wanted to do a little more digging before I posted again … so here is my decision: I still don’t know for sure when Henry was born!

Here is a recap of all the U.S. census years in which I have found Henry along with his recorded age:

• 1810 = age 45 and over 
• 1820 = age 45 and over 
• 1830 = age 70 thru 79 
• 1840 = age 80 thru 89 
• 1850 = age 99 
• 1860 = age 110 

The 1850 census was the first one to show an actual age versus an age range - with an official date of 01 June 1850, the age of 99 would work with either the November or December 1750 birth date. Assuming one of those is the correct date, that would make Henry 109 as of the 1860 census and at the time of his death, agreeing with the age on his gravestone.

When no month is used, my date calculator shows Henry's age at death as 110 if he was born in 1750, and 109 if he was born in 1751.  Take a look at the photo of the new gravestone that was in the last post and you will see that it only gives years for birth and death.  I wonder if his birth was shown as 1751 on the new gravestone because subtracting 109 years from 1860 gives you 1751. The flip side is that subtracting 1750 from 1860 equals an age of 110, and that wasn’t the age engraved on the stone.

As near as I can tell, the November date comes from a 1983 history of Wetzel County, whereas the December date may just be a calculated date based on the gravestone info. That said, there just isn’t enough to convince me that one date is better than the other ... and I have not been able to find anything new to support one over the other.  It’s kind of like the old line of, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” In this case, “Which came first, knowledge of the actual birth date, or knowledge of Henry’s age at death? Once you know one, the other can simply be calculated.

So for now, the next update to my website will show Henry’s birth as Nov/Dec 1750 with 1751 as an alternate.  If anyone has additional info to settle the question, please step forward!  I would love to hear from you.

Birth of Henry Church, aka Old Hundred

Henry Church, aka Old Hundred, is a hard man to pin down.  There have been many articles in books and magazines and newspapers, coupled with info in blogs and genealogy forums, census records, and on and on.  The problem, though, is that there are a lot of discrepancies and I have yet to see actual documentation to really nail down specific dates.  This problem also applies to his wife, Hannah, as well as several of their offspring.

Some examples of the discrepancies:

• Was Henry born in 1750 or 1751?  Was the month November or December?
• Was Henry 109, 111 or somewhere in between when he died?
• Was Hannah born in 1754, 1755 or 1760?
• Was Hannah from Lancaster or Chester County?

You get the idea.

When my newly found cousin Rise started asking me questions, about conflicting dates, she really opened up a can of worms that I had put a lid on and set up on a shelf while I researched other family lines.  Now it’s time to pull that can back down off the shelf and see if I can make sense of what I only thought I had “sorta, kinda” figured out some time ago.

Henry’s birthplace is the easiest piece of the puzzle.  Everyone has always agreed that he was born in England, many say in Suffolk^2,3,4 or Suffolk County (or misspelled as Suffox county¹).  As to the date of Henry’s birth, that’s where the differences begin.  I mostly find 1750 as the year of his birth,^1,2,4 but the month varies between November 30³ and December 13.

Per this photo of the new gravestone purchased in 1972, Henry's age when he died was 109 years 9 months 1 day.⁵  Plug that age into a date calculator along with the reported date of his death (14 September 1860.^2,3) and it says he was born on 13 December 1750.

However, Henry's age at death is given by another source as 109 years 9 months 14 days - an additional 13 days³ which calculates backwards to the previously mentioned date of 30 November 1750.

On the other hand, the gravestone photo shows 1751 as the year of Henry's birth.⁵ That seems odd to me considering that Henry's age at death as it appears on the gravestone supports a birth date of 13 December 1750. Could that mean that the reported death date is incorrect?  I don't think so based on an article, "Death of a Patriarch," published in the Richmond Dispatch (Richmond, Virginia) on 01 October 1860.  It stated that Henry died "on the 13th ult.," meaning the 13th of the last month, i.e. 13 September 1860, a difference of only a day.

A birth year of 1751 is supported by the 1850 federal census in which Henry's age was given as 99.⁶  The 1860 federal census recorded Henry’s age as 110;⁷ if he had been born in 1750, he would have been 110 as of the date of the census, 01 June 1860.  Obviously this disagrees with his age at death shown on the gravestone.  If 1751 was the correct birth year, the census should have shown his age as 109, which would match the gravestone.

As if all this isn't enough, the previously mentioned article in the Richmond Dispatch stated that Henry was 111 years old at the time of his death.

So where does this leave me?  I'm already past my intended publish date for this post and there is a little more digging I want to do before I answer that question and move on to Henry's military service and his marriage to Hannah Keine.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 
¹    John C. McEldowney, History of Wetzel County, WV, reprint of 1901 book.
²    "History of Hundred," compiled by Courtney Dennis, presented by Hundred Area PRIDE, viewed online http://www.hundredareapride.com/Hundred%20History.htm 07 September 2010.
³    "Hundred," submitted by Ruth Hixenbaugh Jones, presented by The Wetzel County WVGenWeb, online http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~wvwetzel/Communities/. Original source: History of Wetzel County, West Virginia 1983.
⁴    “American Towns Named for British Soldiers,” by Don N. Hagist, online https://allthingsliberty.com/2013/09/american-towns-named-british-soldiers/.
⁵    Digital photo of Henry and Hannah Church gravestone in Hundred United Methodist Church Cemetery (Hundred, Wetzel County, West Virginia), taken by K. Alan Lewis on 29 December 2008.
⁶    Henry Church household, 1850 U.S. Census, Wetzel County, Virginia
⁷    Henry Church household, 1860 U.S. Census, Wetzel County, Virginia

Gotta Love Cousins

I have recently been in touch with two very distant cousins who have inspired me to turn this blog back into an active one again:

• The first cousin has a blog of her own, Living in the Past, that includes tie-ins to my Church line … descendants of Henry “Old Hundred” Church.  I love the look and feel of her blog that resulted from the "52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks" challenge that she completed and then continued even after the actual challenge was done.  Great job, Denise!

• The second cousin had contacted me after seeing my WV Heritage website to touch base on a couple possible connections, including “Old Hundred.”  Her own research led her to question some of the dates associated with Henry Church and his marriage to Hannah Keine, and that sent me back to my previous research.  As I wrote my initial response to her, it hit me that it was the perfect basis for a blog post.  Thanks, Rise!

So this is my “ok folks, I’m back” post. 

Tomorrow I’ll start sharing my new thoughts on the timing of Henry’s arrival in America, his marriage to Hannah, and the birth of their first son, William.

Fork Ridge Cemeteries

Two more cemetery pages will soon be added to my website for the Fork Ridge Universalist and Oak Grove United Methodist churches (Marshall County, West Virginia).  As I have been working my way through them, I've found gravestone photos that I never added along with a number of corrections and additions.

Here's one example I found working on the Oak Grove page:  I just noticed that someone (couldn't have been me!) made an error typing the date of death for Clarence D. Ferrell ... he died in 2002 according to his gravestone, not 2001. The next update will correct that error as well as add the photo of his gravestone that I had taken way back in 2003.

Several of my Harris, Lydick and Terrill relatives were buried at the Universalist cemetery; numerous Aston and McGary relatives were buried at Oak Grove.  I'll do a post with links to the new pages when they're ready ... keep watching!

Fork Ridge Christian Church Cemetery

In case you haven't noticed, the June 29 update to my website included a new cemetery page for the Fork Ridge Christian Church Cemetery.  It joins the two that were already there for the Bartlett-Rulong and Harris Family cemeteries, both also on Fork Ridge in Marshall County, West Virginia.

These pages include the person's name as it appears on the gravestone, their date of death, date of burial when known, and special transcriptions other than the typical birth and death dates.  The link attached to an individual's name will take you to their "person page" which in many cases will contain a link to a photo of their gravestone.

I won't be doing these pages for every cemetery in my database, but there will be more added in the future ... so check back soon.

Source Errors Fixed

Sometimes fixing something is a whole lot easier than figuring out what needs fixed!  

I discovered a number of errors on the Sources page for my website where the code for a particular piece of info was appearing rather than the actual info.

A couple examples:

• [DWELLING NO.] would appear rather than the actual dwelling number for a census year

• [STATE FILE NO.] would appear rather than the actual State file number from a death certificate.

It took me a while to notice that all of the codes ended with "NO."  It appears that using an abbreviation for "number" rather than spelling it out created havoc.  So the fix was really easy once I figured out what was happening. Yay!

I'll probably find more issues with the sources, but this was a huge step forward.  See me smiling???

Website Updated

Whew!  I barely beat midnight, but I accomplished my goal yesterday to update my West Virginia Heritage site on the one year anniversary.  If you think that means that this blog is one year old, guess again ... then check out yesterday's post.

Changes included in this update:

• 37 new people were added.


• Main menu bar: The Photos tab now has more choices in the drop-down menu so you can get to the family line photos a little faster.


• Main menu bar: Newly added is the Cemeteries tab which is still a work in progress.  So far, there are two cemeteries included but more will be added.  These links take you to new pages that contain my transcriptions of gravestone markers. 

For now ... that's all folks!

Back to Genealogy

The genealogy bug has finally bitten me again after several months away from all things related to family history/research.  The trigger?  One of my annual subscriptions was up for renewal.  Funny how spending money can be like a kick in the pants!

Last night I realized that it was exactly one year since I had updated my website ... and it had been even longer since posting here on the blog.  I had worked a little bit on genealogy during that time (key word "little"), but a lot of it had been on my husband's family - a whole different story that has no impact on my blog or website.

During the last year there has been a final phase of remodeling and trying to restore order to the house, vacations, and the pièce de résistance ... two days after Christmas I hurt my back moving boxes.  So bad that my doctor prescribed a muscle relaxer and Acetaminophen laced with codeine to handle the pain.  I spent January doing physical therapy three days a week.  I'm much, much better now but it's difficult admitting that there are limits to what I can do.  Good thing genealogy doesn't require much heavy lifting!

Back to triggers.  The annual renewal mentioned above is for historical newspapers - and I finally succeeded at finding articles on a story line that I had never been able to locate before.  My Church family will be interested in future posts about the 1878 murder of Mary Church and the subsequent lynching of John Wallace.  We knew the gist of the story, but I uncovered a lot of new details.  Stay tuned for those.

For my Harris and Aston families ... I have large, oval photos of my grandparents, Charles McClure Harris and Dessie Charlotte Aston - the kind that are usually in antique frames with bubble glass.  Over the years, they had faded and had developed a lot of cracks/scratches.  I finally took them to a photographer for restoration and the results are amazing!  He is working on a revised website and will be including the before and afters on it.  Once the new website for Studio Ten is online, I'll post more about this undertaking.

As for my website, I should be uploading an update later today - I don't want to miss that one year anniversary!  It will include 37 new people and some formatting changes that I had started last year.  More about that tomorrow.  For now ... let's just say "I'm baaack!" and planning to be more active with this blog.  It's a little late, but:

Happy New Year!

Birth Name or Commonly Used Name

My grandmother had two sisters who NEVER used their first names ... they hated them ... and they did not use them.  Up until now, I've always treated their full birth names as their "proper" names:  Carrie Vella Church and Hannah Elizabeth Church.

However, I'm about to change that approach having just looked back on an old blog post by Michael John Neill called Did They Ever Use Their "Real" Name?  He notes that,

"Your ancestor may never have used their "real" name. And if they never used their "real name" was that their real name?"

Interesting point.  So I will be changing my database to reflect the names they actually used:  Vella Church and Elizabeth Church.  I will leave their full birth names in the database, but treat them as alternative names with an explanatory note.

If they were still alive, it's a safe bet that my great-aunts would be much happier with me for putting more emphasis on the names they used rather than those they were given at birth.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Vella Church and Forrest Alley

91 years ago today, Vella Church and Forrest William Alley were married in West Virginia.  As I wrote on my West Virginia Heritage website:

"Although the marriage license was issued and recorded in Brooke County, the actual marriage apparently took place in Marshall County.  The preprinted location of Wellsburg is crossed out on the marriage record, and W. C. Harold certified that he united Forrest and Vella in marriage at Moundsville on 28 June 1922."

This photo of Forrest and Vella was taken in 1919:

I never knew Forrest - he died before I was born; but I did know Vella, the oldest sister of my grandmother, Nellie (Church) Kuhn.  I've been told by some of my cousins that although Vella would visit Nellie on the small farm she and her husband, Herbert Kuhn, owned on Fork Ridge, Vella could never get back to town (Moundsville) soon enough.  Apparently she was not the country type!

Here are two links to get more info about this couple:

Vella Church

Forrest Alley

New Features

A genealogy software upgrade with new features gave me an excuse to take a break from my backwards review for a little play time.  Earlier this evening, I uploaded an update to my website that shows off some of these features.

The software now makes it a lot easier for me to create pull-down menus, so I added a Photographs button that includes links to photo pages for people by family lines, cemetery markers, places and buildings, and documents.  These pages were there before, but you can now get to them a little faster from any page.

I already had monthly calendars showing births, marriages and deaths separated by my primary lines:  Kuhn, Harris, Church and Aston.  The new Calendars button includes links to those four calendars as well as a link to the newest "Today in History" calendar, which includes all four lines on a day-by-day basis.

One more new feature is the expansion of the old Pop-Up Pedigree into what is now called the Family Explorer.  Many of the pages for individual persons included an image link that opened a pop-up window showing the parents and grandparents of that person in a pedigree format.  That image has been replaced by a new one that opens up a pop-up window that includes parents, siblings, spouses and children - hence the name Family Explorer!

I tried to include the two images for the old and new pedigree windows ... but Blogger won't let me add them right now.  Maybe later.  Using my grandfather's page, notice the red box underneath his name and above his parents - clicking that box will open his pedigree.

After a few more tweaks, I'll be resuming my backwards review.  Back to work!

Where was he buried?

I noticed a few days ago that some of the burial sentences weren't looking quite right on my website - turned out that a setting in my software had gotten changed and the result was that the names of the cemeteries were being left out of the sentences.  Now who on earth could have changed that setting?  So I corrected the setting and updated the site; the burial sentences are reading much better now.

Just in case you're wondering ... my backwards review has continued, and I'm now back to ID# 1250 (from 1526).  I just updated the website again to reflect the latest corrections I've been making.  Check out the Recent Updates page to see links to the folks who have had changes made.

Henry Church and Hannah Keine

If you read my last post, you'll be glad to know that my backwards trek through my database has progressed from person ID# 1644 to 1526.  Is it appropriate to say I progressed when I'm actually moving backward???  Hmmm.

Well, whatever it should be called, it's a little slower than I had hoped, but hopefully it is worth the wait.  I've done a lot of work on my pages for Henry "Old Hundred" Church and his wife, Hannah Keine, the founders of Hundred, West Virginia.  I updated the info about their births to include more about my thoughts regarding some of the various alternatives that I have found.  I hope you'll check them out!

Cobwebs Be Gone ... and Backwards It Is!

Considering that my last blog post was in October, it's a good thing that working on genealogy isn't dependent on writing new posts!

Blogging is a lot harder than it looks.
It takes time.
It takes ideas.
It takes creativity.
It takes dedication.
It takes more than I've been willing to give it the past few months.  An idea would pop into my brain, I would think about what I might write, then I would promptly move on to other things and another day/week/month would go by.  Sigh.

So winter passed and it's now spring ... time to start anew.  Shake off the cobwebs, so to speak.

Last October I thought I had a "substantial portion" of cleanup on my website done ... but I later discovered it wasn't as done as I thought it was!  I found some issues that required changing the way I was inputting parental and birth info.  It was one of those "back to the drawing board" moments that set me back considerably.

I'm now working backwards one person at a time through the folks that appear online.  I thought I would try working backward instead of forwards to see if it would help with momentum.  And I think it's actually working!

The technicalities involved with getting my website formatted the way I want have been more difficult than I expected.  The review I've been working on for months has started and stopped and started and stopped way too many times.  This time though I've made it from person ID# 2752 backwards through ID# 1644 making updates and corrections.  That may not mean much to you, but I'm quite pleased to have finally gotten this far.

I'm off to upload the latest updates to the website ... be sure to check out the Recent Updates and the New Persons Added.  Then I'll resume where I left off with my review.  If backwards is what works, then backwards it is!