Kansas, Is There A Problem?

Alice and Kathryn, I'm on the trail. Too bad I can't just fly to Pratt right now.

This all started with a list of birth/death days for my deceased grandparents, aunts, and uncles, kind of an "honor our ancestors on their special days" project, which became a topic of interest for my oldest son and me as we noticed that family members' deaths sometimes happen around the same time. Siblings, parents and children, or sometimes a grandparent, parent, and child, will die years apart, but in the same month, same week, or one day apart. It's weird.

To make my list, I worked my way up the family tree and eventually, my Smiths in Kentucky entered the picture. I found that I had no death date for auntie Alice Smith Anderson - just a death year (unacceptable!). Having conducted some half-assed research in the past, I still had no clue what happened to her daughter, 1C3R Catherine/Katherine/Kathryn Anderson Thomas. I did find them tonight in the same cemetery in Pratt, Kansas, along with a death year for Kathryn, which is more than I previously knew.

Kansas seems to be quite tight-lipped about who did what in their state, so on Monday I will call the cemetery to see if they can tell me anything about these ladies. If I have any luck, I'll be able to order Alice and Kathryn's death certificates from VitalChek, maybe, since I'm just a lowly niece and possibly unworthy. Hopefully, since Kathryn died almost a hundred years ago and Alice about fifteen years later, Kansas will take pity on me and cough up their death records.

Why is Kansas being so weird about their dead? Hmmm.

Happily, I will add that this is the kind of project that puts me in INTENSE RESEARCH mode. I'm still learning to add more details in my information for Future Me to see, such as adding the names of cemeteries to my loved ones' burial info - like, why would I not do that in the first place? - or add the entire date to census records (looking on the record for the day and month, not just the year). This is just another project that creates these deep research opportunities, along with the chance to do some of this detailing. I love that my brain works like this. 

There Was An Opportunity

 ... to visit the Family History Library (except it's now the FamilySearch Library) in Salt Lake City today, so of course I milked it. 

After creating a list of my direct line ancestors, mostly to determine whom I had parents for and who needed more work, I observed that my most problematic "problem child" is Mr. Alexander Keethler of Brown County, Ohio. I'm sure he's lovely, except that he has proven to be quite elusive.

While Hubby decided to rove SLC and amuse himself with his camera, I went upstairs to the third floor and found the books, and had some luck with a book of "walked" cemeteries in Brown County. While Alex continued to elude me, I did find his son's wife's mother, Caroline, buried with her parents and sister there. (I know where Alexander died, but have no record of his burial yet.)

A fun time was had and I can't wait until I can go again. 

The Portable, Durable Family Tree

Warning: Swear words

Since things have been so - what's the word? - frightening lately, I've been thinking about the possibility of having to evacuate my home, perhaps in a hurry, to escape whatever foreign or domestic shitbags may be invading or whatnot. 

Being prepared to leave is always a concern, although we're usually thinking of natural disasters causing such a situation, but with the current guy in charge, our chances of some dumb political thing happening within our borders just went way, way up. 

Along those lines, lots of "what ifs" are popping into mind - what if, after the shit hits the fan, I can't get to Ancestry, or we don't have electricity, or while fleeing the area, I forget to bring the laptop? How will I access my family tree? Maybe at that point, we won't really be worrying about such things, but my family history research is important to me, and I will want to have a copy with me. 

Paper copies will become necessary at that point, but bringing a whole stack of notebooks isn't realistic, so I've decided to do something a little different. It's probably nothing that hasn't been thought of before, but it seems like a workable solution for the above problem. 

At my workplace, I bought a stack of hole-punched white 3x5 cards with dividers, loaded onto a metal ring. On each card, I wrote the name of my direct ancestors with a number (1 for Dad or Mom, 2 for Dad or Mom's father, 3 for Dad or Mom's mother), along with their birth and death info, and burial place. 

So here's how a card looks:

1. DAD'S NAME

Father: 2. Dad's Father's Name

Mother: 3. Dad's Mother's Name

Born:

Died:

Burial:

The numbering system is nice because it just doubles. Any father will be double the number of his child, and any mother will be double +1. 

I'm thinking of also adding spouses, children, uncles (on blue cards), aunts (on pink), first cousins, records/sources for each fact, more possibly. 

At any rate, I'm feeling good about this much more portable system of analog family history records.