Heartland Genealogy

Sometimes the most valuable result from using AI isn't a beautifully written story. Sometimes it is discovering that something in my genealogy database is wrong. That happened while I was working on an ABC Biography for Rachel Christy Ricketts . As part of my process, I had gathered information about Rachel from my RootsMagic database and the records I had collected for her. I then used that material with Google NotebookLM to explore different ways of turning genealogical research into a story. One of those experiments was an Audio Overview . Listening to Rachel's Story NotebookLM's Audio Overview takes the sources in a notebook and creates a podcast-like discussion of the material. Instead of simply reading my genealogy report back to me, the generated discussion attempted to interpret the records and explain Rachel's life. As I listened, something caught my attention. There was a problem with Rachel's birthplace . The birthplace recorded in my genealogy database d...

Following Samuel M. Crawford’s Ford County Homestead Sometimes a Friday Find isn't a newly discovered record. Sometimes one record leads to another—and then another—until a much fuller picture begins to emerge. That is what happened as I continued investigating Samuel M. Crawford , a man who lived in the Dodge City area and who may—or may not—connect to my Crawford family. My earlier research into Samuel centered largely on newspaper articles. Those records told me about the death of his daughter Nellie in 1901, Samuel's work as a railroad engineer, and his own tragic death in Torreon, Mexico, in 1902. More recently, a cemetery record led me to theorize about Samuel's family. Now land records are adding another layer to his story. A Ford County Homestead The Bureau of Land Management records contain a federal land patent issued to Samuel M. Crawford on June 10, 1891. The patent describes his property as: Lots 1 and 2 and the East half of the Northwest quarter of Section 18...

When researching a difficult ancestor, sometimes the people surrounding that ancestor become almost as important as the ancestor himself. That's certainly true in my continuing effort to untangle the various Crawford families of early Kentucky. One of those people is Moses Dooley . Moses isn't a Crawford, and I currently have no evidence that he was related to my Crawford family by blood or marriage. Yet the more I learn about him, the more convinced I am that he belongs in my Crawford FAN club. Why? Because Moses Dooley keeps showing up in the same places as the Crawfords I'm trying to understand. From Virginia to Sugar Creek Moses Dooley was born about 1748 in Virginia. By 1780, he was involved in Kentucky land acquisition. A survey for 500 acres on Sugar Creek was completed for him on May 26, 1780. He later filed land entry papers and received a grant for those 500 acres. Moses was also an early Baptist preacher associated with the Old Sugar Creek Meeting House in what...

Genealogy can be an expensive hobby—or at least it can seem that way. When someone tells me they are interested in researching their family but don't have enough time to justify paying for a subscription to Ancestry or another genealogy site, I don't want them to think they can't do genealogy. They can. In fact, there are an amazing number of genealogy resources available online for free . The challenge for a beginning researcher isn't necessarily finding records. Sometimes the challenge is knowing where to look. So, if I were helping someone get started without purchasing a subscription, where would I send them? Start Here: A Beginner's Genealogy Toolkit Rather than overwhelm a new researcher with dozens of websites, I would begin with a handful of sites that can either provide records or point toward other resources. FamilySearch FamilySearch would be my first stop. FamilySearch is much more than a website where you type an ancestor's name into a search box. ...

 Rachel’s Story in Song After writing about the life of my ancestor Rachel Elmeda Christy Ricketts (1845–1927) , I decided to tell her story in a different way—through music. Using information from Rachel’s biography, I worked with AI to create lyrics tracing her journey from her Christy family in Ohio and Indiana to her life with James Marshall Ricketts and their family in Woodson County, Kansas. I then gave the lyrics to Suno , asking it to create a ballad appropriate to the period from the 1860s through the 1920s. The resulting song, “From Indiana to Kansas,” became the soundtrack for a video that I created and shared on YouTube. It’s another experiment in turning genealogical records—names, dates, census entries, and family relationships—into a story that can be experienced in a different way. I hope you enjoy Rachel’s story in song.

What Was I Doing in 2001? It’s Saturday Night Genealogy Fun time! This week’s challenge asks: Do you recall what you were doing in 2001? Family, school, work, hobbies, technology, genealogy, vacations, etc.? At first, I wasn’t sure how much I could remember about 2001. After all, that was 25 years ago! But once I started thinking about where I was working, what technology I was using, and what I was doing with genealogy, pieces of that year began falling into place. And, appropriately enough, I used today’s technology to help me reconstruct my life with the technology of 2001. Work and School In 2001, I was the librarian and technology coordinator at Nemaha Valley High School in Seneca, Kansas. By then, technology was a major part of my job. I managed the computers throughout the high school along with a network of Novell servers. One of those servers handled our email. Think about that for a moment. Today we take cloud-based email, Google services, wireless networks and Internet acces...

Pauline Mentzer and the Class of 1913 Sometimes the most interesting genealogy finds aren't vital records, census records, or deeds. Sometimes they are the little pieces of everyday life that help us picture an ancestor at a particular moment in time. This week's digging takes me back to the school days of my grandmother, Pauline Mentzer . Among the family materials I have is a program for the Coffey County Rural School Commencement , held in Burlington, Kansas, on May 31, 1913, at 2 p.m. The program lists the members of the county's Class of 1913 , organized by rural school district. And there, among the graduates, is my grandmother: District No. 9 Hattie Carroll Glenn James Pauline Mentzer Teacher: Bertha Werts A County-Wide Commencement The program is interesting because it wasn't simply a graduation program for one school. It brought together graduates from rural school districts scattered across Coffey County. The long list of students and teachers gives us a gl...

28 April 1845 – 27 January 1927 Early Life and Parents Rachel Elmeda Christy was born on 28 April 1845. Her family group sheet gives her birthplace as Clinton County, Indiana. However, there is conflicting evidence about where she was born. The 1850 and 1860 censuses identify Ohio as her birthplace, as do numerous later census records and her obituary. Thus, although the family information gives Clinton County, Indiana, the records created during Rachel's lifetime generally point toward Ohio.  Rachel was the daughter of Samuel Henry St. George Christy and Lyda Gallimore. Samuel was born 11 September 1819 in Indiana, the son of Ebenezer Christy and Rachel Elizabeth Dawson. Lyda was born 25 March 1824 in Ohio, the daughter of Isom Gallimore and Judith Bentley. Samuel and Lyda married on 3 March 1842 in Fayette County, Ohio.  Rachel's childhood appears to have included moves between Indiana and Ohio. In 1850, five-year-old "Elmedia Cristy" was living in the household of ...

Marjorie Louise Machado Today's find from my CRAWFORD files is another obituary from a Dodge City newspaper, this one for Marjorie Louise Machado . Marjorie was the daughter of my great-aunt Helen Marjorie Crawford Horton, making Marjorie my first cousin once removed . Like much of my early genealogy research, my file contains a handwritten transcription rather than a copy of the actual newspaper article. The notation "KHS Newspapers" on the page tells me that I viewed the Dodge City Daily Globe on microfilm at the Kansas Historical Society. Marjorie H. Machade—Rites Here Monday A.M. Graveside services for Mrs. Marjorie Horton Machade, formerly of Dodge City, who died last week in Phoenix, Ariz., will be conducted by Rev. Arlon G. Ebright at 10 a.m. Monday in Maple Grove Cemetery. The body will lie in state at the Hulpieu-Swain Funeral Home until 9:45 Mon. Besides her parents and her 2 children, Mrs. Machade is survived by a brother and a sister. Mrs. Josie Crawford of ...

Following the Land Through Generations Have you ever wondered what happened to your ancestor's land after they died? Did the farm pass to a son or daughter? Was it divided among several heirs? Or was it sold to someone outside the family? One of my favorite tools for answering these questions is a county range index. Most Kansas counties kept range indexes, although Doniphan County did not. I've used these indexes extensively to track land owned by my ancestors. I find them particularly useful when an ancestor was an original landowner, since they provide a way to follow the property through subsequent transactions and, sometimes, across several generations. Unlike a traditional deed index, which is organized by the names of buyers and sellers, a range index is organized by the land itself. That difference makes it an incredibly useful tool for genealogy research. What Is a Range Index? A range index, sometimes called a tract index, organizes recorded land transactions accordin...

Digging Through the Paper Trail Do you remember the days of “paper genealogy,” when every record, note, and photocopy had to be filed somewhere? That is how my genealogy journey began. Like many researchers, I accumulated file drawers full of paper. At some point, I learned about the Dollarhide Method for organizing genealogical research. William Dollarhide is probably better known today for his maps, but he also proposed a system for numbering and filing research materials. My version followed this pattern: Surname.State Abbreviation.### By adding that number to a citation, I could trace the source back to the appropriate paper note, photocopy, or document in my files. Then scanners changed everything. Instead of relying on paper files, I could scan documents and attach the resulting image directly to the citation in my genealogy software. In theory, that eliminated the need for all of those old filing numbers. There was just one problem. I had to actually scan everything, identify i...

Nostalgia as a Hook: Why You Should Think Twice Before "Restoring" an Old GeoCities Site If you spent any time on the web in the late 1990s or early 2000s, you probably remember GeoCities . Long before social media feeds, many of us staked our digital claim in "neighborhoods" like Heartland , carefully hand-coding HTML tables, uploading tiny animated GIFs, and publishing family lineages or local history research. Recently, an interesting message arrived in my inbox from a service offering to build a "free preview" restoring my old GeoCities website. At first glance, it sounds wonderfully nostalgic: your old, lost corner of the web brought back to life with a single click. But behind the appeal of a blast from the past lies a modern digital marketing tactic that requires a healthy dose of caution. How Did They Find a 25-Year-Old Website? When GeoCities shut down its US operations in 2009, its content didn’t vanish completely. Digital archivists, including ...