{"id":2581,"date":"2023-09-09T13:59:00","date_gmt":"2023-09-09T13:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/?p=2581"},"modified":"2023-09-09T13:59:01","modified_gmt":"2023-09-09T13:59:01","slug":"when-your-genealogical-wishes-come-true","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/?p=2581","title":{"rendered":"When Your Genealogical Wishes Come True"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Photo courtesy of PBS<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Like me, you probably have spent years searching for a document to prove an identity or relationship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps you were looking for proof of where an individual lived between census years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe you are trying to pinpoint when a family relocated to another area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019ve searched high and low and after checking the regular recommendations, went as far as boots on the ground.  Then you began looking in unlikely places with the hope that just maybe the record you seek will appear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Geez, I\u2019ve even talked to pictures of the deceased based on author and genealogist Henry Z. Jones Jr.\u2019s books that seemed to work for some genealogists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year I have discovered several documents that shed light on my husband and my ancestors and I\u2019m going to spend the next few blog posts discussing how I FINALLY have gotten closer to finding what I was looking for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m beginning this series with the most unusual way I located my husband\u2019s maternal grandmother\u2019s family\u2019s school records. I never saw this one coming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back in 2014, I began looking for Elsie\u2019s school records because I had acquired her 8th-grade exams and certificates for school attendance and I was writing a book about her husband\u2019s line, Perseverance Amidst Adversity.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was living in Florida and contacted Crown Point, Indiana, the county seat of Lake County, to try to locate Elsie\u2019s enrollment records because the family changed the spelling of their last name and I wanted to see when it evolved from Johannesson to Johnson. I was told the records were never received from Gary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I tried calling Gary but never got a response. Their main library had been shut down for lack of funding and the messages I left at a school district office were never returned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking over the documents again I realized that the program for the 8th<\/sup> grade graduation that I had obtained from a relative stated Elsie resided in Miller, which was an unincorporated area in 1910 when she was in school. The diploma, however, stated she was attending school in Hobart, a town southeast of Miller. I called Hobart and was told that the records had been turned over to Gary when Miller became a part of Gary in 1919. This is a good reminder that boundaries change while the person of interest never moved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I then tried contacting the county\u2019s library and museums. No one had the record. Next, I tried the Indiana State Archives (ISA) which is supposed to keep records for schools that are no longer in existence, IF the school district has also ceased to exist. Elsie had attended a one-room schoolhouse, long gone. ISA also keeps records for districts that are or were unable to maintain the records. They had nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Obviously, I had first tried all the usual online sources and even some smaller ones, like Genweb and at that time, Rootsweb. Nothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, imagine my surprise one day when I was walking through the New England Genealogical and Biographical Society in Boston and decided to look at the Indiana shelf. There was a transcription of Lake County, Indiana school records and there was an Elsie, just not mine. To be honest, I was surprised that there were two Elsie Johnsons, close in age, in the same small school district but I shouldn\u2019t have been because Johnson is not an uncommon surname. Elsie\u2019s record I found listed her father, who had enrolled her, along with the enrollment date. She was a few years older than my Elsie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2020 I created a lecture on the importance of school records and one of my slides shows the record for \u201cElsie that is not related\u201d to my husband. I include it as I reminder to attendees how there is often more than one person at the same time in the same place with the same name. I also add that I\u2019m hopeful that one day, I\u2019ll find the records I seek, even though I\u2019ve been told they don\u2019t exist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hope is a beautiful thing and doesn\u2019t just work for Pandora! I never give up hope of breaking through brick walls and finding other records that will enrich the lives of my ancestors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earlier this year I wrote a journal article for the Indiana Genealogist<\/em> on the importance of school records that was published September 1. In the article, I mention the Boston find and my hope that one day I\u2019ll locate Elsie\u2019s records.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article was read by Lynn Jackson, a librarian at the Lake County Public Library. It is the same library where I began my genealogical journey in the late 1960s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lynn realized that the library was in the process of scanning the enrollment records for Indiana University North West. She did not find Elsie\u2019s page, however, she did find the school enumeration records for Elsie\u2019s half-siblings and a sister. I could not believe it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, I had never had someone read a journal article I wrote and took the time to search for a missing record I noted. My appreciation for this kind, knowledgeable librarian is immense! Give this lady a raise!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Second, I\u2019m kicking myself as I had reached out to IU NW years ago, but I never asked about school records. I asked about city directories as I mentioned in another lecture on interviewing how I never clarified my grandmother\u2019s response about where the family first lived when they moved to Gary. My grandmother responded on the corner of Washington and Ridge Road. It hadn\u2019t dawned on me to ask which corner; obviously, there are 4 and it was between census years. I had contacted IU NW for city directories they hold but it wasn\u2019t for the years I needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thirdly, I\u2019d like to remind you that you must reach out again to archives to verify that they don\u2019t have the information. Perhaps they acquired what you needed after you had first checked or, like me with a past blog about mysterious John Duer, a more knowledgeable staff member will look and find the record in an unlikely place. Lynn recommended I reach out to them to see if they have further information on Elsie which is a wonderful idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The enumeration record found does show that Johnson was used for the family when Elsie\u2019s older sister by one year began her school career. Yes, the information is limited but there is so much to discover even when data is not exactly what you are looking for. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The moral of the story, look everywhere, make contacts far and wide, and write a journal article. Who would have thought that?!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Like me, you probably have spent years searching for a document to prove an identity or relationship. Perhaps you were looking for proof of where an individual lived between census years. Maybe you are trying to pinpoint when a family relocated to another area. You\u2019ve searched high and low and after checking the regular recommendations, … Continue reading “When Your Genealogical Wishes Come True”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[1116,1117,1118,810,1119],"class_list":["post-2581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brick-walls","tag-article","tag-elsie-johnson-harbaugh","tag-iu","tag-journal","tag-lake-county-public-library"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2581"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2581\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2583,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2581\/revisions\/2583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogyatheart.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}