Genealogy Toolkit: Custom Image Collections

In a recent bit of research I did on my 3rd great grandfather's Civil War records, I ended up adding a nice new tool to my genealogy toolkit.

I was trolling through an image collection of scanned documents for a Civil War widow's pension application and only a scattered handful had anything to do with my ancestor. (He only appeared in testimonies to the claims of another veteran. You can see the whole story in a separate post.) As I was digging around on Fold3, I saved down 9 different jpg images documents that seemed useful as sources. After I had these images, I was struck by the fact that the images themselves don't really tell the story (though they provide some evidence.) I was sitting with 9 separate "sources" for my family tree, each of which in isolation has limited value, and several of which don't even mention my own ancestors but are there for context. The prospect of adding, citing, and referencing them independently seemed rather futile, and in some cases didn't even seem to make sense. I thought it would be very handy to combine them into a single, multi-page document - a custom collection if you will. Then I could keep them together conveniently, attach them as a single media item to my tree, and not have a splatter of seemingly random images cluttering my media files. The finished product is here: Myers_Charles_b1842_18800000_Document_Military_BlakelyPensionClaim.pdf, and here's how I did it...

First, I downloaded all of the original images from Fold3 and saved them locally. My file naming convention is a modified version of Calvin Knight's and even though some of these images don't even refer to my ancestor Charles Wesley Myers, I decided to tie them to him to keep them organized. The only reason I am doing this is because he is my ancestor and they are pertinent to this story, so it made sense to me. In the file description, I was sure put the page (image) numbers in the collection at Fold3 as a reference.

Then I went to IrfanView, a lightweight but powerful image viewer. It is completely free and if you don't have it installed on your PC yet, I suggest you go get it. You should also get the plugins which you install by simply unzipping the files into the program's Plugins subfolder. The plugin iv_formats.zip has what you need for the next step. Once you've installed IrfanView and the plugins, go to Options > Multipage images > Create Multipage PDF select your images and click the button. After some processing, you will have in the destination folder a pdf file made up of the images you selected in order, and in their original quality. Piece of cake.

To cite the final product, I referenced the Fold3 catalog from which the images came, included the page numbers of the images in the pdf, and the URL for one of them (the most relevant of the bunch with my ancestor's own testimony.)

Case Files of Approved Pension Applications of Widows and Other Dependents of Civil War Veterans, ca. 1861- ca. 1934 (http://www.fold3.com/page/3496_civil_war_widows_pension_applications/, Fold3, 2008), www.fold3.com, Pension claim for Walter Blakely in record collection for William F Hoyt (application # WC14930). Images 121, 126, 127, 131, 137, 154, 162, 163, and 164. http://www.fold3.com/image/1/232077405/.

I would love to hear from others! Has anyone else done anything like this, or are you going to give it a try? How are you citing a custom image collection like this?

Charles Wesley Myers, Civil War Stevedore

My 3rd great grandfather was Charles Wesley Myers, born in Allen County Indiana on 27 Feb 1842. He moved with his family to Richland County Wisconsin when he was a boy and spent the rest of his life there. The comprehensive History of Richland County Wisconsin by Judge James H. Miner (1906) gives a nice biography of Charles and his life, which can be seen online in a scan of the book here, and in a full text transcription here. Side note: if you have any ancestors who were in that area in the later half of the 19th century, that book is a must-read!

In Miner's biography, it says that he served in the Civil War in 1865 in Alabama and Louisiana. I thought I would dig deeper on Fold3 during their free access to Civil War records, and aside from the typical Service Index records that don't give much more than a name, I came across Charles as a witness in a pension claim of another soldier. It took me a good while to piece together what was going on as Charles's name appeared on images numbered around 150 out of 253 in this collection and the claim was for a different soldier than the one where Charles appears. After reading through the documents imaged, I finally put the pieces together and figured out the story, and got a nice primary resource about Charles's service...

The documents in this image collection on Fold3 are actually for a Sgt. William F Hoyt who was killed by a gunshot wound in the Second Battle of Fredricksburg on 3 May 1863. His widow, Jane (nee Householder) filed an application for a widow's pension in 1869. Many documents in this collection pertain to Jane's request for her widow's pension, but in the middle there are documents requesting compensation for a Walter Blakely who was injured while unloading a ship in Mobile Harbor (Alabama). Walter was Jane's third husband and it was while they were married that these documents were filed - that is why they are grouped together with papers from Hoyt, who was Jane's first husband.

The first papers with Walter's requests were filed on 2 Sep 1881 and state that he was injured in May 1865. He suffered then a "rupture in right groin caused by lifting and shouldering a heavy sack of feed." While he never did anything about it at the time, in 1881 now he claims "the disability has increased to such an extent as to render me unable to perform my usual business," which is farming. For good measure, he adds after this, "How I am going to make a living now, I don't know." So he's clearly in a bad way and looking for support from the government.

For his claim, Walter has included testimonies by a number of other citizens he knows. Some of these are people he served with in the war, some are people who live in his community, and some are both. One such man is Charles Wesley Myers. In 1885, Charles states in his Comrade's Testimony that he knew Walter and served with him in Mobile in May 1865 helping him unload the boat when he hurt himself. There is also a follow up letter in 1888 with further testimony from Charles saying that while he didn't see Blakely's injury at the time, he had been told afterward and has no doubt that that is when the injury occurred. It seems that Blakely was having a was being challenged to prove that he was injured in the service. In the end, Walter's claim was honored and he was paid a pension of $8 per month, that seems to have been effective starting in 1881. In 2015 dollars, this works out to about $200. Not enough to replace a regular income, but hopefully some help for a man who suffered for most of his life for serving our country.

If you want to look at a selection of documents I pulled out of the image collection that are relevant to Charles's involvement, have a look at this document.

Well, this was a lot of work to sort through and understand, and while I am glad to see some letters in my 3rd great grandfather's own hand and have a primary resource for his Civil War service, I have to admit it's a bit anti-climactic. For one, most of the story behind all this and most of the facts I uncovered are about Jane Householder and her husbands. Plus, I found out that while it was noble of Charles to volunteer in the Civil War, he only got into it after the fighting was pretty much over and the only service records I uncovered here is that he was unloading bags of corn in Alabama. :-/ Lot's of time and energy for a finding like that. I don't want to belittle the sacrifices he made and the risk he took by enlisting, but it's a pretty mundane story. It was a good research exercise digging through the papers to uncover the story though, underwhelming as it may have been in the end. Plus I got a nice additional tool (creating a pdf document from multiple images) in my genealogy toolkit I have described in a separate post.

Oh - one more thing. Jane's original pension application was filed with the help of a local attorney. His name was James H. Miner, who later went on to write the history of Richland County referenced above. A nice little bow for this package. :-)

Don't trust the census-taker... Or the transcriber... Or other people who touched the census

As amazing as it is to have access to all of the census records online and the great transcriptions and search tools out there, you can't always trust what you see. I was dealing with an entry this morning that was all kinds or wrong. Over the span of 115 years 3 different entities have messed up this record...

This image is from the 1900 census entry for my 2x great grandfather John Louis Schoonover. The first person to blow it was the enumerator. He correctly put down John as the head of the household and listed him as a widow. Then he put down his son Bert as "Pert" - really? Whose name is "Pert"? Even 100 years ago that was not a name. That's strike 1. Strike 2 is listing Bert's wife, Mary L (Turner) as "Wife" making it look like she was John's wife and Bert's mother. Then continuing on this flawed line of thinking, Bert and Mary's son Ansel is listed as "Son." Strike 3. Census enumerator out.

Second person messing up this record was whoever at the census department (probably mid-1900s?) who decided to write some kind of coding into the same space where John's name is written. I don't know what these numbers mean, but there's a lot of other blank space on this page to put it. Thanks to them, "John" is practically unintelligible. Sloppy sloppy.

And finally, Ancestry's transcription robots have read this written-over record as "Jason" Schoonover. Not helpful. Especially in these lazy days of genealogy where people blindly copy hints into their trees as gospel. I wonder how many Jason Schoonovers born in Virginia in 1827 are lurking about in Ancestry member trees thanks to the census clerk who scribbled on this important document.

So be careful! Check your facts. And don't trust anyone on the Internet... Or the census bureau.