We had 12 members at our August 12th Research Group meeting, and there were many interesting stories and successes. Here's a synopsis:
* Nancy works at the Stein Family Farm, and is researching the family history of the Steins. She has Carl Stein's declaration of intention and naturalization certificate, but cannot figure out when he immigrated. The declaration does not list an immigration date or ship. The census records give different years - 1881, 1885 and 1884. The group suggested searching for a death certificate, an obituary or anniversary newspaper article to determine his birth date and birth place and perhaps the immigration date and ship.
* Phyllis has a problem with Family Tree Maker 16 - it won't print one family line on a pedigree chart even though the person has parents in the database. We suggested that she check to see if the person is identified as a "natural" child to the parents in the People > Other Parents screen.
* Gary received a box of family photos and papers from his father in Michigan. He passed photos around, and articles about an uncle's arrest for shooting melon thieves in the 1940s. He checked some older research and found that one source provided the parents of Solomon Roff and identified Yates County NY as their residence.
* John had some success at Carlsbad Library - he was able to eliminate one of the two William Patricks in NC in the 1760s.
* Randy showed the Dane county WI plat maps and Andrew County MO cemetery book pages he found at Carlsbad. He also discussed the Jefferson County NY Estate Papers for the Lanfear family, and passed the records around. Finally, he told about finding the McKnew house in San Francisco in Google Street Maps and being contacted by second cousins.
* Phyllis wants to distribute an ancestral book to her children and grandchildren. for each person, she is creating a page with their family data, pictures and an obituary. Two grandsons seem interested!
* Jean went to New York City in June and had great luck. She is adopted, and was able to find out the names of her birth parents from marriage records, her own adoption papers from the court, and contacted and met with her mother's sister in Philadelphia and a step-sister too.
* Helen S. said that she found some family records for one of her families in the next-door county.
* Cynthia found a book on Clough family while at Carlsbad Library. It said that one cousin married composer Stephen Foster, and she recalls meeting a Foster descendant who played the piano beautifully when she was a young girl.
* Ruth has traced both sides of her Hayley line back to Jamestown in Virginia. She's working on two family books or pamphlets to share with her family.
* Virginia passed around the Zionsville IN book she received, and is downloading the Demoss surname book from the BYU Family History Archive site.
* Bobbie had a wonderful research vacation in Lake county IL. Two sisters live on the Titus family farm in Fremont township, and she slept in the farmhouse. She made large plastic displays with nine family documents as gifts for her sisters. She came home with many pictures from the area, a plat map showing all of the family holdings in 1881, a picture of great-grandparents obtained from a local museum, and recent newspaper articles about selling one of the Titus farms and property. They are off to Nova Scotia next month for another trip.
This was a really good meeting with many good examples and research successes. It's fun to see our members applying lessons learned to advance their genealogy research.
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