My Plans for 2013

My plans for 2013

Another year has past.  I did not have the energy to work on my blog last year.  I dealt with several health issues, they took a lot out of me.  It was also a year, I had to depend on others a great deal, for a person who has always been independent, this was hard.  But was very grateful for those who were willing to help me.

A rainbow is like a friend, always there after the storm.

Amish Proverb

This year I want to blog about the 50 states – telling what I have seen if I have been there, or reasons why I would like to visit the state.  Currently, I have touched all of the western states, with California, the state I have only driven through Needles, and back out, with plans to cruise to Hawaii in 2014.  The Dakotas, the southern states, the very northeastern states, and the Carolinas are the states I have not had the opportunity to visit.

So over the next year, I plan on working through state by state, starting with Kansas, as it is my home state.

I plan to continue working on the Langston family, as my cousin and I are the current editors of “The Langston Family and Kinsmen Newsletter”.  We will be publishing the first issue for year 36.  A great deal of information has been included in this newsletter over the years.

I also would like to get back to work on the Weisleder family, as well as the Grossman and Voss families.

Also during this year I will be working on a history for the United Methodist Church of Larned, which will celebrate 140 years in September 2013.  Thankful the first 125 years have been well documented, so I will need to concentrate on the last 15 years. I will also try to get many of the photographs organized.

Hoping to travel to the Family History Library in Salt Lake this spring, and attend a couple of family reunions. I also plan on continuing my volunteer work at the Santa Fe Trail Center, here in Larned.

I hope to have some thing in place that will show my accomplished for the year 2013.

Looking forward to being healthier this year.  At least here at the beginning it is better.

Blessing for a wonderful New Year, with whatever you hope to accomplish.

Current genealogy activities

The past several months have been a very interesting time form me.  Health issues, and a pesky cataract have slowed me down, making it hard to make much progress.  After having cataract surgery in June and another one scheduled in Aug, I am now able to more mobile, not having to depend on others to take me places.  I have worked on indexing (about 26,000) most of them for the 1940 Census. I am also working on the Langston Family Tree.  Anticipating a trip to the Buffalo, New York area in the fall to work on the Voss tree, particularly the Weisleader family.

Most of last year was spent digitalizing 34 years of Langston Newsletter.  My cousin, Dedria and I have taken on the task of producing the current newsletter.  Preparing to publish our first issue shortly.

During our last visit, I helped a friend find some information about a great grandfather of her husband.  We were able to find where he was buried.  She called, I helped her find the cemetery again. Several weeks later, the family traveled to Iowa to the cemetery.  Their brick wall was where was his wife buried.  Upon finding the cemetery and the headstone, the picture showed that the headstone had fallen off its base.  I soon received another phone call.  They had picked up the headstone, turned it over and there was the information about the mother.  They were so excited.  Currently I am trying to find a time to visit with family and help them continue with their family journey.  The genealogy bug bite hard.

The Langston Family.

I have started work on the Langston Family.  As I digitalized 34 years of Langston Family Newsletters, I put all of the names into my genealogy software.  The names from the newsletter include family groups, stories, inquiries, birth, marriage and obituaries.  Over 4000 names were included in the database.  I am now trying to work my way through the names, finding last names, duplicates, and connecting families.

I put the tree on Ancestry, privately for now,  to check for documentation.  Now with this many names it is very easy to get distracted, so I am working my way through one name at a time alphabetically.  I will work through all of the names except the Langstons.  When I get to them, I will be 75% finished, as there are over 1000 Langstons.

One of the issues is how much information do you include about the families that married into the Langston family.  I have currently worked my way through the A’s and B’s, ready to start with the C’s.  Looking at the list I have worked with 363 names, occasionally adding information to some other names, but trying to stick to my plan of working through the alphabet.

I know this task will take some time, but hopefully I will have a family tree I feel I can go back and follow the family lines.  I have started with Caleb Langston who had several sons, 3 of which migrated to Arkansas in the early 1800’s.  I can trace my lineage back to 3 of Caleb’s sons.

I also need to start getting things organized for my trip to Buffalo and the questions I would like to have answered when I get there. The lastest issue of Family Tree Magazine has a city guide for genealogists.

Will post again after I have gotten through a couple more letters.

Update on 1940 Census

I worked on the state of Kansas at first, as that is where I would find my parents.  So exciting that is it one of the first states available for searching, but it need to continue.  I have worked on Montana, Michigan and Arkansas.  Montana is close to being ready for search, while Michigan and Arkansas have a ways to go.When these 3 become close to ready I will pick another 3 states, and keep working until this project is complete.

I am currently concentration on Arkansas, as I would like to be able to locate my mother’s family when it becomes searching.  I have indexed almost 18000 names since the 40′s Census became available.  A couple of interesting things  a 15 year old with a year old baby married to a 74 year old man.  What is the story behind this marriage? I can think of several scenario’s.  The names are always so interesting.  Reading some of the handwriting is quite a challenge.  There have been a few times I have looked back on the 1930′s census to check on the family, to find out how the name is spelled.

Montana is where my father’s mother will be indexed, his father died in 1938 so he will not be on the 1940′s Census.  Michigan is where my grandmother’s family lived before moving on to Buffalo, New York.  Missouri and Indiana will be places to look for my husband’s family.  So I am anxious for the indexing to be completed so I can research some family members.

Although this is not apart of the Census, have made contact with a distant cousin, who wants to share some pictures and information on my mother’s side.  But this is a very busy weekend, with graduation and time with friends, probably won’t get to much indexing done for the next several days.  Was glad to see more states have become searchable.  ONWARD and UPWARD and soon it will be complete.

1940 Census – day 4-5

The past two days have been very busy, as other activities made it difficult for me to work on the Census.  But I will keep plugging away.  I have done another 500 the past couple of days.  I was able to find my great grandmother Sophronia Sanders living with her son Loranzia Sanders and his wife Bertie.  His sister Ellen Pruitt was also living with them. They were in Izard, Union County the surrounding area.

Another couple day will be busy as I will attend the celebration of my sister’s 75th birthday, with her family.  And as celebrating another Easter.

I will see how much I can get indexed this next week.

 

 

 

1940 Census – Day 3

It has been a cool dreary day, a good day for staying inside, appreciate the moisture that has come the past couple of days.  This kind of day is a good day for staying in and working on indexing.  Over the past 3 days I have indexed 1800 names for the state of Kansas.  That means when a second person has looked over these pages and they are arbitrated they will be ready to be searched.  I have had the counties of Butler, Cherokee, Cheyenne, Clay, Chase, Cowley, Cloud, Decatur, Crawford, Ellis and Franklin.

When I took a break and checked Geneabloggers, Randy Seavers gave the address for finding the downloaded pages on Family Search.  I went to Kansas, Pawnee County and Enumeration Districk 73-7, which I found using Steve Morse’s web site. On page three here is what I found

1940 Census for Voss family

1940 Census – Day 2

Today I was able to index about 500 names on the 1940 Census for Kansas, I did pages for Brown, Bourbon, Anderson, and Butler.

The first page of Brown County, showed me the name of a student when I taught there in the 1970′s.  It was one of those name that is not pronounce the way it looks and I remember lots of people mispronouncing the name.  The names I indexed could have been her grandparents or great grandparents.  They were also members of the Kickapoo Indian Tribe.  The final name on the same page reminded me of another student.

Only a couple of other names brought up memories of my days in Brown County, which won’t be for 30 years.

There are only 105 counties in the state of Kansas:  “We have only just begun”. I am going to work on indexing for the time being.  I know that each page is indexed twice, thenan arbitrator goes reviews and compares the two, so it will still be awhile before we get to the Kansas Counties I am interested in.

Although as I was going through, I thought about where was I each of the Census years since I was born.  As I have a few year to make 72, I am not on the 40′s Census, but I will be on the 1950 Census.

In 1950 – my family was living near Mankato, Kansas

In 1960 – my family was living in country near Burr Oak, Kansa

In 1970 – I would be enumerated on the 1970 Census living at home with my parents in Manhattan, Kansas, although that summer I moved to Cedar Rapids, Iowa to start my teaching career.

In 1980 – I was married and living in Pratt County, Kansas

I was still there in 1990.

Then in 2000 I was in Larned, Kansas that year I was one of the fortunate ones to get the long form, which had so many, many questions to answer.

Of course in 2010 I was still in Larned.

Of course during those years, I also lived in Cedar Rapids, Iowa 1970-71, and then to Horton, Brown County, Kansas 1971 – 1975.  So someday someone will be looking for me, on those Census records.

Since I had other commitments today, I worked as much as I could, hopefully tomorrow, I can get closer to 1000 names done.

 

1940 Census – It is here.

The images of the 1940 Census became available this morning.  For me it has been a day of patiently waiting as the people I want to find are not in the cities therefore they do not have addresses. I was not successful at being able to find the pages, so I will just be patient as Kansas is one of the first to be available for indexing.

Having worked with computers, a project of this magnitude will probably have some glitches.  Also many people were wanting to see them and the numbers are amazing.  I anticipate it will be a week or more before Kansas is completely indexed and arbitrated so I can find my father, mother, brother and sister.   My Aunt may be living with them at the time, just have to wait and see.  I will be anxious for the Montana, and Arkansas pages to be completed.

Through out the day I had been checking Family Search to start indexing.  To help time pass, I did several indexing projects.  About 7 pm there is was 1940 Census ready to index.  I down loaded, and indexed 4 pages for Allen County Kansas and one for Atchinson County Kansas.

Tomorrow morning,  I will be doing some volunteer work with photos for the Santa Fe Trail Center. They have been scanned I just need to be able to make adjusts and hopefully some information about the photo to be uploaded to the Santa Fe Trail Center website.  I am just learning the program, which has not been user friendly.  Hope to have some success tomorrow.  In the afternoon I will continue to do some indexing.

The next several months will be quite exciting as the volunteers work on the indexing and getting the information out for another generation.