My Trails into the Past

This week I am taking a military class virtually at the Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh (GRIP) called “Answering the Call of Uncle Sam: Research in Military Records,” with instructors Sandra Rumble and Jonathan Deiss. [1] So far, it has been wonderful. Tuesday, we’re explored examples of Compiled Military Service Records (CMSR) and I thought I would locate a file for someone in my family tree. There are some complete files digitized on Fold3 . The best way to find these records is to use the browse function. I click Civil War (Union) and then browsed to find Civil War Service Records (CMSR) – Union and the state of interest. Once there, look for the military unit, and then the first letter of the last name. Most of my known Civil War soldiers served out of Ohio and unfortunately, there were only index cards for Ohio soldiers. I did find a Missouri soldier with a complete file: Andreas Pfotenhauer. He was the grandfather of Fred James Davey’s wife, Christine Pfotenhau...

Genealogists are great at documenting our ancestors’ lives but not so great documenting our own. I’ll write about what I’ve been doing the past week. This idea came from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musing, who started this meme. Genealogy Education The major education event this past week was attending GRIP (Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh), where I attended the class, “Tools and Strategies for Tackling Tough Research Problems , ” coordinated by Kimberly T. Powell, and along with additional instructors, Angela McGhie, Karen Stanbary, and Karen Mauer Jones. It was packed with lots of tools and ideas for researching and keeping track of our research results. I will now consider lists, timelines, charts, tables, and spreadsheets to manage all of the data I will accumulate with researching my ancestors’ FAN club. I might even give Scrivener another try. Check out the blog post linked below, where I describe my takeaways from the class. I traveled to Pittsburgh with m...

I became a Certified Genealogist® officially on December 22, 2018 and will hold the certification for five years. I was so excited when I got the news. I submitted on October 5 and waited (not so patiently) over two and half months. What helped, was I started working on another project: looking for the father of Samuel Johnston. To become certified, I had to submit a seven-part portfolio to the Board for the Certification of Genealogists that demonstrated my ability to follow the Genealogical Proof Standard (GPS). [1] It really was the culmination of many years of research practice, several years of education, and then putting together the portfolio. This portfolio was then judged by three competent genealogists who use a rubrics to determine whether I have met the standards of the GPS. Education was a major factor in helping me prepare for certification. I had started conducting genealogy research as a self-taught researcher. I read The Source and attended presentations b...