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!