Tips – GenealogyAtHeart.com

Mathew Baines Who Died At Sea

A cup of tea on a Sunday morn,

Hopes for the week newly born.

With laughter and cheer,

To start the New Year,

A tradition that’s now well-worn.

Grab your favorite hot beverage and get comfy because I’m going to share what I’ve been working on for the past two weeks.

Last July, a distant cousin requested I look into the Baines family. She had heard that the British group originated in Scotland and were descendants of Donald III, who went to Ireland after his father was killed by Macbeth, of Shakespeare fame. He returned to Scotland, took the throne for a time but fled to Yorkshire, England where some of his children remained. The family spread to Westmorland and Lancashire (now Cumbria) over the following centuries.

I was about to travel to Great Britain and told her I’d do my best. My best ended up finding a Bains candy store next to my Edinburgh, Scotland hotel. I blogged earlier about meeting the owner but he had no idea of his genealogy other than his family had been in Scotland forever.

My cousin called me in October and and with voice rising exclaimed, “They all have it wrong! All of them!” She meant online family trees. I had too many other committments and promised I’d look into it. It wasn’t until December 23 that I had the time to do so.

Yes, cuz was indeed correct – there were over 13,000 online trees with the wrong info! How could that many people get it wrong? How did I know they had made a mistake?

Burke, Ashworth P. Burke’s Family Records. Baltimore: Clearfield, 1994, p 58, digital image; Ancestry.com: accessed 23 Dec 2024, image 42 of 117.

Almost everyone cited a Burke’s Family Record found on Ancestry.com that William Baynes was the son of Adam Baynes. EVERYONE missed the ending “d. an infant.” d. stands for died. Adam had no second son named William. William Baynes could not have been the son of the cited Adam Baynes. Undeterred, one copying the other, a pedigree for William was recorded that never happened. Sigh.

Looking into the family opened a can of worms. This was just the beginning of one misunderstanding after another. I’m still not done but what follows is to correct information regarding William’s purported grandchildren. To be honest, I’m not comfortable that the Williams I have in my tree is the right William so while I continue researching, I’ve disconnected that line. What I do know is that corrections need to be put forth regarding someone named William Baynes’s son, Mathew.

No baptism record for Mathew Baynes was found. He was noted in The History of Bucks County, Pennsylvania published in 1905, nearly 250 years after his death, to be of Wyersdale, Lancastershire, England. Notice it did not say he was born in Wyersdale; it said he was “of” Wyersdale. Personally, people could say I was “of Florida” since I lived the majority of my life there but I wasn’t born there and I don’t reside there now. I think the search for Mathew’s birth needs to be broadened to find the birth record.

The book and a non-conformist record was found for Mathew’s marriage to Margaret, daughter of Captain William Hatton of Bradley, Lancastershire. The distance from Bradley, a burb of Nelson to Wyresdale is 28 miles. Mathew was likely baptized into either Catholicism or the Church of England but as he grew, his parents, William and Deborah last name unknown, became associated with George Fox and followed Quakerism.

Only one document places Mathew with William and Deborah, whose nickname was Dorothy. In 1660 in Lancaster, the men were arrested and jailed for attending a Quaker meeting. The women’s names were also recorded.

Two years later, Mathew married in the Quaker faith at the Bradley Meeting.

The History of Bucks County and several works (Colonial Families of Philadelphia, 1911, & Duer Family of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, 1954) seem to have copied Mathew’s story from Ellwood Roberts Biographical Annal of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania (Vol. II, 1904, pp. 534, digital image; usgwarchives.net: accessed 23 December 2024). Over time, the story changed somewhat and the interpretation with it, therefore, misinformation became part of the narrative.

Roberts’ simply wrote, “William Baines, son of Matthew Maines [sic], of Lancashire, England, sailed for Pennsylvania in 1686, but he died at sea. His two children, William and Elinor, landed at Chester, and were taken charge of by Friends.” Short and sweet.

This led to “In 1686 Mathew Baines, with children, Elinor and William, left England for Pennsylvania, the father dying at sea. When the children landed, they were taken charge of by Friends of Chester montly meeting. The father’s dying request, as shown by a letter of Phineas Pemberton to John Walker, 1688, was that his children should be placed in care of James Harrison, but Harrison, having died bedore their arrival, his son-in-law, Pemberton, went to Chester to look after them, and finding them in good hands they were allowed to remain. As the record of the times put it: ‘The boy was put with Joseph Stidman and the girl with one John Simcock, and hath 40 or 50s wates per annum, the boy to be with said Stidman, who is said to be a very honest man, until he comes to ye age of 20 years, which is ye customary way of putting forth orphans in these parts.” (History of Bucks County, PA)

The next work reported “In the autumn of 1686 William and Margaret Baines, and at least two of their children, Eleanor, born October 22, 1677, and William, born July 14, 1681, embarked for America, but both parents died on the voyage, and the children on their arrival at Chester were taken in charge by Friends, of Chester County.” The text goes on to include a transcription of Phineas Pemberton’s letter to John Walker in England dated 1688. (Colonial Families)

The difference arising is that now Eleanor and Williams’ mother also sailed for America but she, too, died at sea. The second difference is that in the letter transcription, the children were the ones who requested to remain in the colony. In other words, it was their idea not to return to England.

The last text does not mention the mother; “In 1686 Mathew Baines, with children Elinor and William, left England for Pennsyvania, the father dying at sea.” (Duer Family of Bucks County).

Although only one work stated with no evidence that Margaret came on board almost every tree had that she died at sea. But there’s more…

Unfortunately, the History of Bucks County recorded Mathew and Margaret’s children as follows:

Thomas, born 11 mo., 11, 1675, married 4 mo., 21, 1718 Elizabeth Ellison;

Elinor, born 8 mo., 22, 1677, married (at Falls) 7 mo. 2 1694, Thomas Duer;

Timothy, born 1 mo. 1678, married 1710 Hannah Low;

William, born 5. 14, 1681, married 1707 Elizabeth ___;

Deborah, born 1, 1, 1683, married 1708 (at Falls), Thomas Ashton.

WHOA! Where were Thomas, Timothy, and Deborah after their parents died? How did they get to Bucks County since no account said they traveled on the ship with their parents? Why were they not deemed orphans as Elinor and William were if they were somehow left behind in England?

There is one more work – A Genealogical and Personal History of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, Vol II, published in 1975 which was a modified reprint of The History of Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Clearly, the new editors realized there was a problem with the original work, likely asking the same questions I raised. How they “fixed” the situation was to add “In the year 1687, Mathew Baines sailed for America with his family, but he and his wife and possibly two of their children died at sea.” Notice that the year of emigration is now different from any of the other works!

Which two of the three children died at sea? Why was one child left behind? Who was the child left behind in England? How did that child emigrate alone later and marry?

There are no ships registries for William Penn’s ships so this can’t be solved quickly with a look up. Too many generations back for autosomal assistance. The only way is to research the three children, wife Margaret, and grandfather William who remained in England.

William may have been the William Baines who was buried in Lancashire in September 1687. If so, he would not have been taking care of the remaining children for long. William supposedly had three other sons, the oldest, James, who had bought William’s estate, Joseph, and John. No records show the children with any of their uncles

No record of Margaret is found after the arrest in 1660. She likely died in England before Mathew sailed which would account for the surviving children being named orphans.

Timothy Baines was born in March 1678 in Lancaster to father Mathew.

There was a marriage of a Timothy to Hannah Low, daughter of Hugh Low, on 4 Apr 1710 in Haigh, Lancashire, England.

The couple had the following children:

Mary Bains born 25 Feb 1712 in Harshaw, Lancashire, England.

James, born in 1719 in Haigh, Hartshaw, England.

Then twins were born on 16 Aug 1720 in Haigh, Hartshaw, England. One was Hugh Bains, likely after Hannah’s father and the other was John Bains.

Hannah likely died 18 Aug 1775 in Mellin, Lancashire.

No death record was found for Timothy. He may have been one of the four Timothy Bains/Baynes that died inLancashire between 1726-1772.[1][2][3][4]

The Timothy that married Hannah is not likely to be the son of Mathew and Margaret Hatton Baines for several reasons. He was not named as emigrating with his father and two of his siblings in 1686. If he had somehow stayed behind in England he would have been considered an orphan as siblings Elinor and William were deemed by the Pennsylvania court. There is no record found that he became a ward in England. It is very unlikely that young Timothy would have been writing letters to his siblings in Pennsylvania notifying them of his marriage in Lancashire in 1710, given that the family had been separated as children for at least 24 years. There is no record that the Timothy who married Hannah ever emigrated to Bucks County, Pennsylvania which is implied by his inclusion in History of Bucks County, Pennsylvania. It is interesting that the text does not list any of his children, likely because they weren’t known to whoever submitted the information. If the family had been close his descendants would have known about his children. Most likely, someone found a marriage of Timothy Baines and decided it was the son of Mathew Baines that had died at sea. Clearly, it wasn’t.

Mathew’s son Thomas Baines was born on 11 January 1675 in Gousner, Lancashire.

A Thomas Baines was noted to have married an Eliz Ellison on either the 1^st or 21^st June 1718 in Bicursteth, Lancashire, England. No record for the couple’s parents was recorded.

No children for the couple was found. An Elizabeth Bains, wife of Thomas Bains died 14 August 1723 in Lancashire; she was a Non-Conformist. Another Non-Conformist Elizabeth Bain, wife of Thomas Bains died on 14 June 1723 in Lancashire. It is not known if either or another Elizabeth was the wife of interest who had died.

There were 26 Thomas Baines/Bains who had died in Lancastershire between 1718-1795, none providing a father’s name of Mathew.

It is more likely that Thomas Baines, son of Mathew and Margaret Hatton Baines was not the Thomas who had married Elizabeth Ellison in Lancashire in 1718.

Like sibling Timothy, if the Thomas of interest had stayed behind in England when his father emigrated with two of his younger siblings, Thomas would have been named an orphan after his father’s death but there are not records that he became a ward of England. It is also unlikely that after being separated from his emigrating siblings Elinor and William that he would have begun correspondence with them after 32 years to notify them of his marriage. There is no record that Thomas emigrated to Bucks County, Pennsylvania. He likely died in England, probably before 1686/7 when his father Mathew sailed for America.

Lucky for me, I did not have to research the last missing child, Deborah, as a wonderful blog article had already done so. The Deborah of Bucks County, Pennsylvania was not in the family group of Mathew and Margaret Hatton Baines of Lancaster.

What also does not make sense is why Mathew would have only selected two of his five children to emigrate with. I could understand that perhaps Margaret would remain home with the oldest, Thomas, to help her in Mathew’s absence, and maybe the two youngest, William and Deborah but William, at age 5 was sent. If William was considered old enough to embark why didn’t Mathew also take Timothy, the middle child, who was age 8 or 9? Or take William instead of Mathew? Likely because Timothy was already dead.

Although evidence is lacking, the only logical conclusion was that Mathew left England for a new beginning with his two remaining children, Ellin and William. Unfortunately, he did not survive and from the letter he wrote, his wife had pre-deceased him. We know this because Margaret, alive, would not cause the children to be named orphans. How soon she had died before Mathew wrote the letter on the boat in perhaps, autumn of 1686 we don’t know but she was dead before he requested wards for his unnamed remaining children. Records of orphan court do tell us those children were Ellin and William who went on to grow up and thrive in their new location. Why did the children want to remain in the colony? They had nothing to return to in England. If their mother and siblings were alive they would have wanted to return to them.

And one more problem with the trees who have William of Stangerwaith as Mathew of Wyersdale’s father – Mathew would have been the oldest son. Why did he not buy out the land from his father that had been in the family for hundreds of years? Many trees show that William had married twice and that Mathew was from the first marriage. The 1660 arrest showed that the first wife was still alive so William could not have married a second wife, Sarah, and gone on to have three children with her. Two men named William, both non-conformists, in a close geographic area are being confused.

Although online family trees can be helpful we do need caution in blindly accepting what has been placed there. Furthermore, we also need to use care when consulting published works. Just because information is written in a book does not make it correct. Thoroughly exhaustive research and careful analysis is important in establishing identity and relationship.

Photo Memories

I bet with the approaching holidays you and your loved ones will be taking loads of pictures! Back in the day, it was exciting to get the film developed. Sort of like reliving the same experience over. Now, I take so many photos that I use my cell camera for mundane tasks. What is the name of that weed or is it a native flower? Snap it and check and app. Love that item in a store but aren’t sure the price is right. Click the pic and then look for it elsewhere.

Although these new uses for a camera are wonderful, they aren’t if we are treating the important photos we take carelessly. Do you ever save your phone photos? If so, where?

Here’s what I’ve been doing since Google Photo lost some of my pictures several years ago. I now have my photos saved to a different Cloud. That way, I can remove them from my phone. Why do I do that? Because I’ve had phone accidents where I couldn’t retrieve data, and I don’t want my precious photo memories gone forever.

When my kids were young, I was a scrapbooker and I saved the best of the best by including them with a story of the event. It took a lot of time, but it was fun. I’m not sure it was worth it, though, as I’ve passed them on to my adult kids who have no space for them. One is in boxes in an attic and the other complained about having to move them twice this year while doing renovations. Those, too, ended up in the attic for a while. Sigh.

During the pandemic one of my kids gave me a photo album that can only hold one picture on each page. The idea was to only save a small amount of the very best photos from my overseas travels. I was pining to travel, and this was a way to get me to relive what I had done and plan for what was to come. And oh boy, did travel come! In the past year and a half, I’ve visited Germany twice, Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Sweden, Denmark, Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales, France, and Canada.

The weather outside is frightfully cold so I’ve ordered two more albums and will spend my time indoors reliving those memories by printing from my printer using photo paper and affixing those special pics into the book. They really are genealogical treasures as on my travels I always make time for family research.

The beauty of these albums is that they don’t take up much space and I’ll be passing on to future generations my findings as I write a sentence or two of what the location is about. Next week I’ll be writing about my most memorable learning experiences this year. It will be my last post of the year.

Cooking Up Memories

Do you get out your favorite family recipes during this time of year? Cookie recipes always remind me of my mom who once worked in a bakery. We’d spend the Saturday after Thanksgiving making batches of our favorites to share with family and friends – Mexican Wedding Cookies, Kolaches, Swedish Oatmeal Cookies, Chocolate Chip, Holiday Many Way (peanut butter/nut/sugar), and my favorite to get creative with – cookie cutter sugar cookies. One year I painted them like stained glass with food coloring. Other times I iced them with different color frosting. Mom would make those first so I’d stay out of the way decorating while she zipped through making the rest.

Perhaps your cookie recipes are getting a tad frayed. Batter stains, greasy fingers, and age aren’t kind to those old recipe cards. About 20 years ago, when my kids were starting to cook on their own in the kitchen, I retyped our favorite recipes into size 12 font so that my older eyes could read them easily. Once done, I made a decorative cover from card stock and took it to Office Depot to have it GBC bound. My kids still rely on that book but we’ve accumulated so many new recipes over the years that I decided it was time for an updated version.

I scanned the old book to my computer and have added new favorites. Instead of printing, I just share Google Docs with my kids. I keep a laptop in my kitchen so it’s easy for me to find the desired recipe and bring it up while I prepare the meal. The recipes have been shared so if one system fails there is a backup. No killing trees or clutter from another book. Since I store in the cloud, I can even look up ingredients needed when I’m at the grocery store. No excuses not to cook up some love!

Research Tips and Tricks Part 2

Last week I blogged about how I make connections. No matter where in the world you are researching, you need connections to help you find information that is not readily available.

My recent trip to France and Germany really drove home the point for me that NOT EVERYTHING IS ONLINE!

Today, we’ll be finding out how you can find out what is not online.

If you’ve made connections in the locale where you are researching then all you have to do is contact the person and ask.

I’m serious, it’s that simple.

If you have a well sourced public tree, write about your ancestor and stay abreast of tech you will make family connections. Contacting DNA matches is also helpful. You will also want to make professional connections of people that may or may not be related to you, too.

Academia.edu has been a good way to connect with historians that have insight into a place I don’t have expertise in. Last week, I mentioned APG and LinkedIn.

Why you need to connect with all of these folks is because there is no one all knowing human who can answer your question, “Where is the land records for someone who lived in Ulmet in the Pfalz in 1701?”

As Judy Russell often says the answer is, “It depends” and the Palatinate is one of those places that it truly does.

Records are sometimes found in the likely places:

The Mayors Office in Mietsheim and Uttenhoffen, France for birth and marriage
A Kusel archive for military records

But sometimes they are found in places you would never know to look for them:

A 6th cousin’s personal photo collection
In the home of a descendant of the first mayor after the 30 year war ended in a small German village
A tour guide
A small local museum with no website
The mid 1600s home of an archivist for a small village and a religious denomination

I’m not trying to be coy by excluding specifics of where I found records; I’m trying to explain that records are not always digitized and widely available.

I tried to impress upon the need for people holding private records to digitize their holdings but many were afraid that a larger archive would swoop in and demand their collection. You might think that would be a good thing but the problem is that many archives are making it extremely difficult for folks to access their holdings. From Sweden to Croatia I’ve heard – “all our records are available online at FamilySearch.” No, they aren’t.

FamilySearch has yet to get back with me on when those Croatian State Archive records will be available. I re-emailed a contact who requested I do so after a face to face meeting in Boston in September and I’ve yet to get a response. Since the records aren’t available online, I had to do boots on the ground last year to get them.

Sweden insists all are on Arkivdigital, yet the company I hired, Minnesota Swede, was able to find church records that were not available on Arkivdigital. These were in history books held at the local church that contained information about the ancestor we were researching. A renter in a home built by one of the ancestors had done extensive research on who had once lived in the home he summered in and provided us with a wealth of knowledge we would not have found on Arkivdigital.

I was sent back and forth from a library to an archive in Stratford-on-Avon, England in my search for records on my Arden ancestor. Someone has something but what it is I never discovered. If I had made a contact before arriving I would bet that I would have found the answer.

Without the help of two genealogists in Germany I would never have been able to find the following:

My Leininger ancestors had a castle but were not nobles. The name was originally spelled Leiningen. The males were not looked on favorably by the neighbors who stormed the castle. The second castle storming ended well because of Eva Leiningen who invited the unhappy folks inside and fed them (does sound like something my grandmothers would have done). Although the museum was closed, actually the whole village closes between noon and 2 daily, my contact had gotten the info when they were open.
The Leiningens were associates of the Frankensteins of Mary Shelley fame. The Frankenstein at the time Shelley wrote was an alchemist.
In France, Leininger is spelled Linange. So, another hint to look for other records thanks to the Mayor’s Clerk sharing this tidbit with me.
1701 land records, wills, 1823-1829 school records, and photos that are kept in a home in a wooden “filing” cabinet made in 1699 by the men of a village who wrote in their town charter that a man from eight different families will always be assigned to go to the descendent of the first mayor’s home to retrieve a drawer (2 men per drawer) to safety if needed. Today, that could be a climate change threat as they do have flooding in the area but when the edict was made it was in case the 30 year war came back.
A local man who leads tours to South America who happened to know that I was related to a group who settled there in the early 1800s. Those were two lines I had never researched because I couldn’t find records. South America would not have been a place I would have thought that two single sisters would have emigrated to during that time period.
The archivist provided a behind the scene tour of his community and shared with me church records beginning in 1538 that contained a scam then going around hitting churches. Who knew?!
A local genealogist was conducting oral histories on the oldest village residents and upon visiting noticed pictures on the wall that looked vaguely familiar. When he asked he was informed they were from a family reunion held in northeast Indiana. The genealogist knew I was from that area and mentioned my name. This led me to having lunch with a 6th cousin who had even more pictures to share with me.
By my online connections and attending various conferences, I met a professional genealogist from the region who knew I was coming for a visit. We arranged to meet for dinner as he just happened to be staying close to where I was to attend a genealogy conference. During dinner I met with other attendees and discovered that we are related. One connection leads to another!

When you travel, make sure you have a list of your ancestors who were from the location, along with the dates that they lived there. This will help you readily share info with those you meet. Keep your tree online so that you can pull it up from anywhere, anytime. This helps in looking for a shared ancestor and then identifying how you are related to your new acquaintance. Putting genealogists heads together is a wonderful way to find those records you didn’t even know existed.

Putting Your Trust in Genealogy At Heart

positivessl.com/the-positivessl-trustlogo

Dear Readers,

Several of you have let me know that you were concerned about accessing my website, GenealogyAtHeart.com, because you received a popup that said my site was not secure.

The popup was a result of my website’s SSL Certificate expiring. I had used a credit card that had been updated with an expiration date that wasn’t changed on my hosting site. Therefore, the hosting site did not renew the certificate that validates my site is secure.

I first realized this was an issue when I was traveling in Great Britain. I was home for a week before attending a conference in Boston and tried to get the certificate reinstated, however, I erred by going to the content management system (CMS) I use instead of the hosting agent.

I purchased a new certificate from the CMS which said it would take 72 hours to activate. I realized when I was in Boston it had not worked. The company wanted my sign on and password which I was reluctant to provide for several reasons – they were not responsive as it took me 4 emails over 4 days to get a response which was that their business hours are 12 hours different from where I live so they couldn’t respond via a chat or phone call. I asked for my money back which they gave me.

I then tried two other companies but those didn’t work either.

Now that I’ve returned from France and Great Britain I began again to try to get the certificate reissued. I reached out to the Transitional Genealogy Forum and because of two kind posters there, was able to understand that I was seeking the certificate from the wrong entity.

On Friday, I purchased a new certificate. I received an email back with the instructions to reinstall and I have completed that.

Got to love technology because I’m still not seeing that it is operational, though I did receive an email that I could display the above logo on my website since the certificate was issued. You can verify that by going to the company link under the logo.

I have also emailed the company to try to determine why the warning is still showing when trying to access my website. Hopefully, there will be a resolution this week.

You may be wondering what an SSL Certificate is – it stands for Secure Sockets Layer and is a protocol that encrypts and then authenticates data over the internet. This enabled secure communication.

As a blogger, I’m providing one-way communication. I write and you read, however, I do have an option to “Leave a Comment.”

I also have a Specials to Share page where I publicize items that I find that my readers might be interested in. I do not take any money through my website but you would want to only use a website that did have an SSL Certificate if you were paying for items.

While I await the fix to my SSL tech issue, if you are hesitant to visit my website, you may also read my blogs at genealogyatheart.blogspot.com.

Thanks for your understanding.

A Little German Synchronicity

I’m back from my travels to France and Germany where I spent a week researching my husband and my ancestry in the Alsace-Lorraine region. I’m going to conclude my October series on synchronicity with another weird encounter that happened to me in a castle.

A little back story is needed to fully appreciate this odd encounter…

I’ve always known I was part German. My maiden name was Leininger so it was a no brainer figuring the ethnicity out. However, names alone don’t tell the whole story and the region from where my German ancestors once lived was fraught with turmoil for generations. I recently learned that some of it was from within the community – noble vs. peasants, but it also occurred with outsiders invading, such as during the 30 year war and Napoleon.

My paternal side never spoke about their heritage. Perhaps because it was too painful to recall or because they just weren’t great communicators. When my first child was born I asked my dad for genealogical info to put in the baby book and got the response, “When I’m dead, you’ll get the book.” My response, “Book, what book? Why do I have to wait ‘til your dead?”

He then informed me that he had two books that had been written by a family member about the Leiningers, which were also once known as Leiningen, and didn’t want to give me the books as he still referred to them occasionally. Like I wrote earlier, not great communicators!

Unfortunately, I didn’t get the books when he died as my stepmother refused to give them to me. I offered to pay for her time packing them and shipping but she said she didn’t have the time to do it. I turned to the internet and did receive an electronic copy of the first book from the author who was stationed in Germany at the time. Five years after my father’s death, when I stopped at my stepmother’s home after burying my mother, she produced the books and several photo albums.

The genealogies were not sourced and had a lot of errors. In fact, the second book was basically a fix it for the first as so many relatives had written to correct the wrong info. I used the book to do a surname study through “My Main Tree” on Ancestry.com as there were several lines mentioned that didn’t connect. This was before DNA.

I was not in contact with any close family members as it wasn’t a family that maintained ties. I don’t read or write German and with work, family, and other commitments, put the German research aside. Someday, I thought, I’d go back to it.

Someday became a year ago in June when I made a post on Whova, a conference app, asking if anyone had any info about the following surnames: Bollenbacher, Harbaugh, Kable, Kettering, Kuhn, Leininger, Mahler. One man from Germany responded and I’ve blogged about his help previously here and here.

Gerhard was the first family member I ever met on any of those surnames outside of my dad, grandfather, two aunts and three first cousins who were Leiningers. There are pictures of me with a great aunt but I don’t recall much as I was just 3 when the visit occurred.

Gerhard introduced me to two other conference attendees that were Kettingers. None of us were close (7^th cousins). While doing research last spring in Germany, Gerhard happened to meet a 96 year old woman named Irma who was providing Gerhard with an oral history of her town, Bedesbach. Gerhard noticed a photo on the wall in her living room and inquired about it. She told Gerhard it was taken in the 1980s when she had attended a Bollenbacher family reunion in northeastern Indiana. Gerhard told her about me as he had looked at my tree and knew I was descended from the Bollenbachers. She asked him to get in touch with me and check on people she had visited in Indiana. I blogged about that meeting here.

Something told me it was time to visit the Palatinate and see what I could find about my ancestors’ lives there. With Gerhard’s help after reviewing the little info I had found about them, my husband and I traveled to Frankfurt and then by car to the region of interest.

Within an hour and a half of landing, I was taken to what had once been a castle of a noble Leiningen. That’s me at the top and I do have a story to share but am saving that for another time. Rita, a friend of Gerhard’s what was accompanying us, told me that the next castle from the Leiningens were the Frankensteins, of Mary Shelley fame. One of them had been an alchemist. Perfect family info to learn on a fall October day!

Gerhard had a surprise for me every day and I’ll be blogging about the hints and tricks that I learned in researching this area beginning next week.

The creepy part of the story, however, occurred on a Saturday night. Gerhard took us to a castle that supposedly was not associated with my family. We were going to have dinner with a group of attendees at a genealogical conference that was being held there that weekend. Another genealogist that I have worked with, Roland Geiger, was putting the conference on and thought it would be a good idea if we stopped by.

Remember, I don’t read, speak or UNDERSTAND much German but I wanted to see Roland so I was game. There were six chairs at each table in the dining room. Gerhard, Rita, my husband, Roland, and I took five of the seats. An attendee decided to join us. We had a nice dinner and then moved up to the bar area where more mingling was to occur. The tables there only sat four so Gerhard, Rita, my husband and I filled up a table. The woman that had joined us at dinner had some questions for me about genealogy practices so we pulled up another chair. On her iPad she brought up her Wiki Tree. I told her I don’t use that because my tree is too large to upload to them and I don’t have time to do it piecemeal. She explained that she prefers Wiki Tree to other companies because of the sources that are found on the trees. I can’t disagree with her but I wanted to show her how well sourced my Ancestry.com tree was. She brought it up on her iPad. I showed her my dad and grandfather’s info, then decided to show her the pedigree view. That’s when it got creepy.

Alesandra-Brigitte became very quiet and just stared at the tree. I encouraged her to click on any of the names to see the details. She blinked, looked at me seriously and said, “I’m a Bollenbacher, too.”

In seconds, we discovered we are 6^th cousins. I told her I would be meeting another 6^th cousin who was 96 the next day for lunch. She had no knowledge of the other woman who lived close to her.

So, by just dropping by for dinner at a castle in the middle of nowhere I connected with a distant family member who I was able to help connect with another family member that lived close to her. Simply amazing!

I only regret that I didn’t have more time to talk to other attendees as I suspect I was related to most of them.

Genealogy is both weird and wonderful! On this Halloween, I hope the spirits enable you to make some meaningful family connections.

RootsMagic10 Frustration Update

I am happy to say that RootsMagic did agree to refund my $20.00 for version 10 that would not sync with Ancestry.com. Unfortunately, the email that they sent me stated the refund would occur on August 19 but as of today, still has not shown on my credit card statement. So, I’ve reached out again to RootsMagic asking when this will occur. Sigh.

I will be travelling for the next two weeks so I won’t be blogging for a bit. In the interim, Happy Hunting!

Making the Most of Maps

Photo taken at Indiana Historical Society by Lori Samuelson

I came upon this map when I visited the Indiana Historical Society in Indianapolis in July with the Society of Indiana Pioneers (SIP). The map was devised by SIP in 1932 to assist potential members with locating their ancestor’s county’s founding between 1790 and 1844. Indiana became a state in 1816 but had become part of the U.S.’s Northwest Territory in 1787. After statehood, as the population rose and scattered, larger counties were made into smaller ones. The pioneer settlement period in Indiana ended in 1849 so this map noted most of those changes.

Here’s a recommendation if you find a unique map either in person or online – look for another. I realize my photo is a tad hard to read but under each county there is a code of “S, O, C, L.” What does that mean?

I searched online and found the identical map with notations that explained it: S was the date of the first white settler, O was the Date of Organization, C means the first Count Occurred, and L is the first Land Entry. The codes and a blow up of the map is available online here.

Maps are an important part of genealogy. Checking to see if the resource is widely available can help you get the most out of your research.

RootsMagic10 Frustration

AI Image

Did you receive an offer in June to upgrade your RootsMagic for $20.00 to the new version 10? I did but it took me a bit to decide if it was worth it to do or not. Here’s why…

I’m a long time RootsMagic user and was using version 7 because version 8 never worked for me. It couldn’t handle syncing my large Ancestry.com family tree. Last December I had to purchase version 9 since Ancestry.com changed to two-factor identification. The tree still didn’t sync correctly, however, I was able to transfer my working version 7 to it.

Enter Mid Summer’s Day when I receive another email from RootsMagic with the limited offer to upload to their supposedly latest and greatest version. It hadn’t even been six months since I bought the last one!

I did decide to purchase it but I’m getting a tad tired of forking over $20 every six months, especially when I wasn’t sure if it would even synch with Ancestry.

I have made radical changes to the last tree that I synced with RootsMagic7 so I deleted the tree and decided to start fresh with version 10. They have already updated to a version 10.1 or something in July so I updated again as I tried to get my files transferred.

I made 10 attempts to sync in July. Each time the program timed out at some point – anywhere from a few minutes to 10 hours. You read that right – 10 hours as I let it go overnight. Once it times out RootsMagic is supposed to retry connecting with Ancestry.com, however, it won’t reconnect whether you click “reconnect” or let it try to do it on its own.

I reached out to RootsMagic’s IT Department on 29 July as I did when I had a problem with RootsMagic8. Thirteen messages back and forth and the final verdict:

…“I am sorry I do not know why it times out and will no longer sign back onto Ancestry. I can see where it did many times, disconnect to Ancestry, but signed back on, after so long it just did not sign on anymore.“…

I have followed their process to get a refund. It’s a software company that doesn’t allow you to do that process online. Sigh. Snail mail only. Their chat is also hidden so I had to rely on email to get help. The IT worker wrote that they would try to sync on their home computer as they didn’t have space on their work computer. Although I greatly appreciate someone going to that extent to help a customer, I do question why a software company doesn’t have enough RAM on their work computers to test their product. How can the sell it if it hasn’t been tested on large trees? Why haven’t they tried to fix the problem that I made them aware of 21 months ago?

The response now was not much better than on 8 December 2022 when they responded:

…”I too could not download your Ancestry tree, I do not know if it is because it is so large. The number of individual is okay, but you have so many citations. It might be how they are linked to different sources and some may not be linked to any source.

Downloading your file would take many many hours since you also have lots of photos.

If I find out what might be the problem, I will let you know.

Make sure your find is not being downloaded to oneDrive, iCloud or Dropbox
When downloading make sure you have lots of Ram. I download to an external drive which had more than enough room.“

That response never made sense to me – IT tried to save to an external drive that had enough room and it still didn’t work but I should try that?! I also didn’t understand the reasoning about the citations possibly being linked to different sources or none at all.

I am able to sync my tree with Family Tree Maker. The issue is not with storage on my end or the amount of media and sources.

The issue is that RootsMagic10, like RootsMagic8 & 9 software, cannot handle large trees if you have media for the individuals. The problem is on their end and perhaps they don’t have many customers with large fully cited trees so they don’t care to fix their problem.

Next month, I’ll share how Family Tree Maker’s software works as I have an upcoming blog book review about that product.

In the meantime, if you decided not to upgrade with RootsMagic because you’ve experienced what I have, you might want to take advantage of Legacy Family Tree’s latest version 10 which is FREE! Here is how to obtain that software. Although you can not sync with Ancestry.com, you can save your .gedcom so you can still work on your tree without being on Ancestry. The difference between sync and download/upload is that your media (photos and documents) does not transfer with download/upload. So you don’t see the picture but the data is still transferable.

Farewell, RootsMagic, I will miss using it. Like you wrote 21 months ago, let me know when you fix your software.

Thank you, Software MacKiev for fixing FamilyTreeMaker as years ago the former owners wouldn’t do that and LegacyFamilyTree for offering your product free. It’s good to know we still have a back up for our online tree.

Using Perplexity.AI To Find Archives & Record Sets

Last month I blogged about my latest genealogy trip to Chicago in May and my disappointment at visiting many archives and not finding the information I sought. I wish I had read about Perplexity.AI BEFORE my visit.

Typically when I plan a research trip, I consult FamilySearch.org’s Wiki for the area. There, I find the libraries, museums, societies, and other archives that may hold the information I seek. Going to each website, I look at the card catalog and note any record sets that seem promising. I list the address, note closures, add hours of operation, any fees, and where to park. If an appointment is needed I request via email a day and time. Then, I arrive early and am ready to research.

My experience in Chicago, however, was rather bleak. I’d arrive and ask to see a record set. A librarian would then tell me it wasn’t going to hold the answer and I should go to another archive. Or, they’d give me the record but had no knowledge about how it was acquired, what the cryptic notes written on a page meant, etc. I would then get in my car and drive to the next location and go through the same process. Consequently, I came home with finding some information but not everything I had hoped to.

A week after I returned I read an article in American Ancestors about Perpexity.AI and I decided to give it a try. I entered my research question regarding where to find records for a possible 1890s scam of a Civil War Union veteran in Indiana. I wanted to know what record in Indiana could help me uncover who was the individual impersonating a deceased soldier. I received a list of archives and what their record collection held. I haven’t gone to those archives yet but it does look promising. Having a free AI tool to use to not only identify an archive but a record set in it based on information you uploaded for analysis is a gamechanger!