OVERVIEW 2021: Purpose of This Blog & FREE GENEALOGY TRAINING NOW!

Wishing you great success on your genealogical journey, accurately piecing together your family tree! Sometimes we all have to be Click-any-[TRUE-FACT]-ologists coinciding with careful fact-checking via surviving documents, a majority of which are digitized online, many at Ancestry.com or FamilySearch.org. (The drawback of trees posted on FamilySearch.org is everyone is editor & anyone can make changes to the ancestors in your tree, concept is every individual is only entered once. Yet at Ancestry.com, you choose if & with whom you share editorial access, ensuring ancestors & facts & relationships & timelines your tree doesn’t change unless you want it to.) The great thing about Ancestry.com is they’ve added the ability to attach online documents to every fact in the tree, (so has FamilySearch.org) so you can factually prove each relationship (marriage & births & deaths) with a document (sometimes, prior to official government certificates, proofs exist in Deeds or in Probate actions in lieu of a Will, or via a Bible Record confirmed by witnessing marriages, or lots of variables like that. (I’m currently attaching proof documents in the private tree I’m building prior to releasing it to the public.)

Here’s the specific foundational research methodology info that may help you. I am working toward AG accreditation (https://www.icapgen.org/), and in the meantime, I started this little website to aid my family (& friends & colleagues) in basic training on how to do genealogy research for those who’ve said: “I want to help you but I don’t know how & can you teach me!?” On my website, among other things, I’ve linked some video tutorials by the Ancestry.com corporate trainer, Crista Cowan. She’s an amazing teacher & she has made well over 300 videos, so I picked out the very best, the most basic ones, to make an easy user-friendly way to establish clear guidelines & a strong foundation in the Genealogical Proof Standard (basically how to be a detective & lawyer to build an accurate strong case that would meet proof requirements of any lineage society). I’ve also written articles on my own research experiences, giving basic how-to info.

In my own ancestry, I’ve been fighting a tidal wave of erroneous myths that have been prolifically published as fact, in which multiple people (&/or couples, &/or families) have been erroneously blended/conflated into one, then posted far-and-wide on multiple websites & even published in official county cemetery & history books. What a shame! I have the proofs separating these erroneously conflated Herndons & am doing my best to get the word out via every means available to me. To correct the problem, I’ve had to become a fun, but sometimes tedious, combo-Sherlock-Holmes-and-Perry-Mason to root through it all, to build the court-worthy interlaced wall of evidential & collective-linked circumstantial proofs that would be needed to prove true identity to a jury.

Utilization of the Genealogical Proof Standard is the only way to accuracy & truth. Crista Cowan’s amazing videos explain the incremental steps for the GPS standard, breaking them down into bite-sized, understandable chunks. She is VERY knowledgeable & her demeanor is very animated & fun like a good friend, so her video tutorials are very fun to watch so I HIGHLY recommend her free training. Here’s my foundational & supplemental training.

This little WordPress website (https://familydisambiguation.wordpress.com/?order=asc) is a preliminary foundation and will guide you to the most helpful tutorials (roughly 14-40 minutes, averaging about 20-30 minutes each). After savoring the foundation, getting the basic info via this blogging website, you can also go directly to Crista’s YouTube Channel (https://www.youtube.com/c/CristaCowan/playlists). After Crista’s you can go the Ancestry YouTube Channel (https://www.youtube.com/c/Ancestrycom/playlists). Another excellent free genealogy education resource is via the five years of archived videos at the RootsTech website (https://www.rootstech.org/video-archive2?lang=eng). Now, coming in just three weeks, for the first time ever, no doubt due to the lockdowns, the annual international RootsTech Conference, usually held in Salt Lake City, will be streamed entirely free online, for three days only, during February 25-27, 2021. See info on homepage (https://www.rootstech.org/?lang=eng) & register here (https://www.rootstech.org/rootstech-connect-2021-registration?lang=eng), to see details, go to menu tab & click on Virtual Event.

Enjoy! Happy Learning & Happy Hunting!
Blessings,
Rose

Hello 2021 Readers!

Just a quick hello to let you know that although I had to take a long Sabbatical-type break from this website, I have not abandoned it. I am okay & will resume as able.

I completed my 2018 ICAPGEN Study Group, but temporarily put my path to accreditation on hold. I’m recovering from a long series of difficulties, including the hardest, the metastatic cancer diagnosis & death of my closest family member (took all 2019), my low back & hip injury from being rear-ended in a car wreck (summer 2019), and my recent broken leg & surgery (Nov 2020), yet there is comfort & healing taking place. I’m just starting to get back on my feet to relearn proper walking. So I’m finally getting back into my genealogy, and to my website!

Thank you for the comments, messages, & support. I hope to improve this website as I obtain more training. Due to the lockdowns, the conferences ordinarily open to the public are now being streamed online (both a benefit & a deficit since we cannot attend the exhibitor/vendor technology booths).

FYI: To begin this website in 2016, I just followed the WordPress starter prompts for the Baskerville Theme. It was pretty easy & I recommend it to you. Then in 2018, I attended RootsTech in SLC, where I was aided by onsite WordPress reps who helped me upgrade my website (to Baskerville-2, because Baskerville-1 was no longer supported, & by splitting articles with a “continue reading” button so the site would load faster). Although I don’t like the second welcome screen as well as I liked the first, I must use great care because I don’t want to lose data, so I need to meet with another WordPress professional before making further changes or upgrades. Unfortunately since RootsTech 2021 is completely online it removes the opportunity to meet in person with the WordPress professionals. So while upgrades will be on hold, I will continue managing and writing for this site.

The good news is: (1) You, yourself (dear readers & fellow family historians & beginning genealogists), can register for RootsTech for free! Introducing RootsTech Connect: A Free Online Conference Experience, February 25-27, 2021! Register at: https://www.rootstech.org/?lang=eng, click on “Virtual Event 2021” then click on “Register for Free.” And (2) I can continue the blog articles. Will resume & continue as able. In the meantime, enjoy free genealogical education online via RootsTech 2021!

Blessings,
Rose

Genetic Genealogy: To Do or Not to Do DNA Testing, That’s Been My Question, Seeking to Discern Accuracy & Specific Applicability

LOONNNGGGG story short: For several years now, I’ve been wondering if, and how, DNA testing can answer specific genealogy questions for my family: (1) to identify the paternity of a 1xGreat-grandfather (to determine which, if either of the two family stories/extant legends is correct); (2) to determine whether, or not, the Native American legend for a 4xGreat-grandfather is true (since there is zero info of this family or descendants on any prominent Indian Rolls, and they are recorded as white on the censuses); to determine whether there is any Native American blood at all (a similar legend crops up on another line, too).

Legal Definitions for Comprehending Genealogical Relationships

So what is a cousin? Someone who shares the same common ancestor you do, but through a different, yet related, line of descent.

To learn the exact relationship of two distant relatives, you need to identify the first shared ancestor in the closest generation to you both.

Decoding Penmanship for Genealogical Purposes: How to Use Principles of Paleography for Accurate Transcriptions So You Can Locate All Extant Documents Pertaining to Your Ancestors

I’ve been long now in the trenches of original genealogical research spanning more than three decades (progressing, along with younger siblings, from elementary-schoolers accompanying our parents to oral history interviews, cemetery traipsing & tombstone transcriptioning in the early 1970s, to an interested teen hand-copying from my parental pedigrees & family group sheets, to an adult beginning my own intensive research in microfilms of original documents at genealogical repositories throughout the 1980s & making family history trips, viewing originals held in courthouses in the 1990s, supplementing & establishing family history by personal & telephone interviews, correspondence & transcription of tape-recorded contributions with my grandparents & Great-aunts, & my last surviving Great-grandmother, expanding into correspondence with other historians & researching at courthouses, libraries, and historical societies in ancestral states). During that time, I’ve seen the problem caused by inaccurate spellings, transcriptions, indexing, and erroneous summarizing in publications. It’s HUGE, with so many far-reaching tentacles of error being adopted as truth and fact when it is nothing but fiction caused by a fundamental mistaken reading of a document.

This is why it’s so essential to keep going back to the original (since, with each transcription or publication & re-publication, more chance for error creeps in and you’re that many more generations removed from the actual document made at the time the ancestor was present). Sometimes it’s only much later, once experience is gained in methodology, and with the family, that a document is seen & transcribed accurately in historical context.

And when doing genealogical detective work, one small error can completely change the foundation &/or goal of what you’re searching for and how you ought to view it or weight it’s value.

Worldwide Records Preservation by the LDS Church via their Family History Library & Granite Mountain Records Vault in the Salt Lake City Utah Area

The LDS Church is world-leader in preservation of worldwide records of genealogical significance, including vital records of birth, marriage, death, as well as deeds, probate & other court data, and published family histories & genealogies as well as transcribed & submitted pedigrees & family group sheets. For a comprehensive overview of the Church’s preservation work, I recommend these instructional online videos:

How To: Learn & Implement Other Professional Genealogical Detective Research Techniques

Here’s more recommended free training via Continuing Education in Research Methodologies:

How To: Utilize the Skills of a Seasoned Genealogist to ASCERTAIN YOUR TRUE AUTHENTIC ANCESTRY rather than a mythical unproven fairytale legend (truth vs. error/red herring/delusion/fake/fraud)!

After three decades as a family historian & direct-entry genealogist (in-the-trenches of original records), having researched on my own since 1981-82, building on the collaborative interviews made by my parents & grandparents of the Great-grandparents, learning incrementally by experience and self-study and taking classes at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City Utah (as well as regional genealogy conferences & local family history centers & courses at the annual BYU Edu Week), gathering my own data via personal & telephone interviews, family history trips with research visits to courthouses & cemeteries & libraries, as well as utilizing supplemental online databases of digitized original documents & forums for research collaboration—and coming to the end of all primary documents, after all that, still having questions—I began the search for internet examples of breaking through the proverbial genealogical brick walls.

Anxious & unashamed to view my research from various perspectives, I decided in effect to, very deliberately, go back to “Ground Zero.” I viewed many tutorials in my quest, and hit a goldmine, locating a favorite teacher in Crista Cowan (both animated & articulate), known as “the Barefoot Genealogist” of Ancestry.com (see Ancestry.com’s YouTube Channel Playlists: Desktop Education (324 videos), & Genealogical Proof Standard (7 videos). For anyone wanting to quickly & thoroughly learn & implement the rules & applications of evidence & the various ways of viewing it to reveal gaps & clues, here’s some amazingly superior free online education.

Officially, Just What is DISAMBIGUATION?

OFFICIALLY, JUST WHAT IS DISAMBIGUATON—AND WHY DID I CHOOSE THAT TERM?

My answer: Disambiguation (for genealogical application)
https://wordpress.com/post/familydisambiguation.wordpress.com/218

During my journey to correct the mass-proliferated errors of the mis-merged individuals, couples, and sets of children within our family tree, I kept coming across this term in Wikipedia, and though I believe I’d heard it in normal speech as well, it seemed quite a clever term. I adopted it, because it worked well with the concept of separating two individuals known by the same name, who did not exist as one entity but as an amalgamation of the two, which, therefore needed separation, clarification, & documentation.

This fictional character problem of the non-existent yet notorious ancestor, had grown to such mythical proportions—it was so enormous, so wide-spread, so convoluted, and such a genealogical brick wall—its solution needed a term not often used, but something with which researchers might have glancing familiarity, something equally attention-getting & memorable, SO I embraced, adopted & assimilated it for that purpose.

Not exactly “co-opting” the term “disambiguation” but, instead, honoring & saluting it, yet some meaning from “co-opt” has relevance to my intended usage:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/co%E2%80%93opt (paraphrased)
* to [utilize] something for your [appointed] purpose
* to cause … something … to become part of your movement
* [by] absorbing, assimilating, appropriating

In this sense, correction of erroneous data (inadvertent mis-identification & mis-representation of ancestral identity) is so crucial/essential/mandatory, it must become a “movement” in order to preserve truth & accuracy for future generations.

Find A Grave Contributions: The Battle & Current Status

Search Family Disambiguation’s cemetery records at findagrave.com

by clicking on this phrase: Family Disambiguation.

(So far, I haven’t figured out how to fix this link any other way, but there’s no harm in that. The first page you come to has links to my 6 memorials by clicking on that phrase in the upper right quadrant.)

My memorials are for public service clarification & differentiation (disambiguation) purposes.

I have added 6 memorials to Find A Grave (joined six months ago with this purpose, finally did it this week, alas, without photos). Of necessity for clarification, the bio-sketches run longer than I’d like (but I have benefited by a few lengthy ones I’ve found by others in the past, & the website allows the length so I hope it will pass muster):

For convenience, I’ve listed these in sets of couples (the first four entries are for disambiguation purposes, separating a massive mis-merge!):

* Find A Grave Memorial# 166553946: Younger Herndon (1785 – 1859)

* Find A Grave Memorial# 166714909: Sarah Ann possibly Wilson Herndon (1801 – 1860)

* Find A Grave Memorial# 166677991: Philip Herndon ([ca.] 1805 – 1848)

* Find A Grave Memorial# 166715088: Sarah Hitchcock Herndon (1807 – 1851)

* Find A Grave Memorial# 166738704: (PVT) Benjamin Herndon ([ca.] 1760 – 1814)

* Find A Grave Memorial# 166825324: Ann Newton Herndon ([ca.] 1763 – 1831)

ALERT: Immediately after posting those FindAGrave entries, having emailed FindAGrave editor asking for oversight & arbitration of the difficulty in separating an inaccurate mis-merged “fake” composite family on their website and to make a policy concerning mismerged individuals (two-in-ones) & couples (four-in-twos), having supplied all documentation, and after originally posting this blog, I received a very disturbing reply.