Quarter in Review

Since I haven't been blogging much since Christmas, I thought I would give everyone a quarterly update of what I have been doing. Of course, there was the RootsMagic Genealogy Cruise in February, but I've been holding off on posting about that until I get my pictures on the computer. It was awesome to meet Bruce Buzbee and his family, George Morgan, Drew Smith, Gary Smith, Diana Crisman Smith, and all the new genealogy buddies I met on the cruise. I even found out that Bruce had read my blog prior to the cruise! I wrote several posts in late summer/early fall comparing RootsMagic and Legacy. But I'll refrain from posting too many details until I get the pics up because it would be much more fun to post with cruise pics.

My main project since the fall has been cleaning up my new RootsMagic database. First of all, I never completely finished entering everything in my Legacy database before transferring to RootsMagic in September 2009. Plus, everything I had entered in Legacy was mostly entered in Legacy 6.0 beginning in the fall of 2007. In December 2008, Legacy released a new version called Legacy 7.0, which included source templates based on Evidence Explained. I had never finished updating my sources in Legacy 7.0 to the new templates when I transferred over to RootsMagic. Too much transferring, but I am finally satisfied with RootsMagic. My goal now is to clean up what I do have in RootsMagic before entering the rest of my research. By clean up, I mean fixing my sources to match Evidence Explained citations, cleaning up the master source list, adding detail text and media to my source citations, and adding detail comments, when necessary. Of course, I cannot help myself and have been adding new sources to the database as well that I've found on Ancestry.com and FamilySearch. I'm also cleaning up the events lists for many of my ancestors.

I cleaned up the sources and events for my parents, myself, and my siblings first. Then I started working on those for my brother-in-law's family, going in the order of the ahnentafel numbering system. Since he joined the family in October 2008, I've been doing research on both his paternal and maternal lines. It's always fun to start researching a new family, isn't it? In the first quarter of 2010, I completed the following in my clean-up process:

1) Cleaned up all sources for my brother-in-law's parents and siblings.

2) Cleaned up sources and events for my brother-in-law's paternal grandparents, Peter Louis DeLUCA, Jr. (1916-2003) and Gertrude "Ernestine" HARTMAN (1917-2009). Found his grandparents in the 1939 St. Louis city directory, as well as 1941 and 1942 city directories for Coldwater, Michigan. Added these city directory source citations to my database. Also added Ernestine's obituary that I found online in The Desert Sun (Palm Springs, California) as a source citation for her death, burial, marriage, and birth.

3) Cleaned up sources and events for my brother-in-law's maternal grandparents, Gerald Frederick ROBERTS (1907-1988) and Eula HASTE (1903-1984). Found them in 1940, 1942, 1947-1948, and 1959 city directories for San Diego. Also found Gerald with his brother and mother in 1928, 1930, 1933, and 1934 city directories for Buffalo, New York and with his mother in the 1937 San Diego city directory. Found Eula in voter's registration lists for San Diego from 1924 to 1944. Added city directories and voter's registration lists as sources in my database.

4) Cleaned up sources and events for my brother-in-law's great-grandparents, Peter Louis DeLUCA, Sr. (1877/78-1945) and Clementina TRILLO (1886-1967). Found a funeral notice for Peter in the L.A. Times. Still need to add this to my database as a source.

5) Cleaned up sources and events for my brother-in-law's great-grandparents, Ralph Allen HARTMAN (1890-1930) and Inez SEE (1886-1974). Found Ralph in the 1895 and 1905 Kansas state census records. Added Ralph's death certificate from Illinois that I found on microfilm at the FHC a few months ago. Added a more legible copy of their marriage certificate from 1914 in Shannon County, Missouri, that I found on microfilm at the FHC. I had found the marriage certificate on Ancestry.com, but it was very faded and hard to read. Also added Inez's entry in the SSDI as a source.

6) Cleaned up sources and events for my brother-in-law's great-grandparents, George John ROBERTS (abt 1871-1908) and Catherine/Kathleen Sophia McGRATH (1877-1967). Found George and Catherine's marriage certificate from 1905 in Toronto, Canada. Found that the names of George's parents Thomas ROBERTS and Mary J. RUSSELL, but there was no clue as to what part of England George was from. Found that Catherine's parents were Felix McGRATH and Mary BARRETT and that Catherine was born in Quebec. Then found sources for Catherine's birth and baptism as well as that of all her siblings, her parent's marriage, some of her siblings' marriages, and her parent's burials and deaths in the Quebec church records at Ancestry.com. Found Catherine's entry in the California Death Index at Ancestry.com.

7) Cleaned up sources and events for my brother-in-law's great-grandparents, William Meadows HASTE (1861-1938) and Ella Olena GAMMILL (1872-1929). Found William and Ella's marriage record from 1894 in Benton County, Arkansas, at the new marriage record collection for Arkansas counties at FamilySearch. Found a FindAGrave entry for their daughter, Mimi HASTE, in Mt. Hope Cemetery in San Diego, and one for their son, Myron HASTE, at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery in San Diego. Learned Mimi died in 1918 at the age of 19, info which I previously didn't have. Also found newspaper articles about William's purchase of the Bank Hotel in Deming, Luna, New Mexico, in 1912, and his opening of an electrical supply and general contractor business in Deming in 1914. This helped explain why their oldest son, Glenn Roy HASTE, lived in New Mexico while the rest of the family lived in San Diego in 1930. It also helped explain why their oldest daughter, Gladys HASTE, married a guy who lived in Deming at the time of the WWI draft registration. I had previously thought they moved from Arkansas to Louisiana to California. Seems like they stopped in New Mexico on the way. Found William in voter's registration lists from 1922 to 1938 in San Diego.

Phew! Now that I've got the grandparents and great-grandparents done, I'm working on cleaning up the sources and events for the great-great-grandparents of my brother-in-law. A genealogist's work is never finished! I hope to provide updates every 2 weeks or so going forward.