Sketches

I came across these on this site as I was doing some final research on Vicksburg. They're incredibly detailed. They originally appeared in Harper's Weekly on August 1, 1863.

And with this, I need to take a break from my Civil War era genealogy. I'm beginning a new job where my emphasis needs to be more focused on the American Revolution and Colonial history. I admit, my understanding and memory of that era is terribly lacking. I'm excited to begin a more fundamental study of American roots and my family's relationship to that period. You can look forward to much more on that at a later date.

Cheers!

Our Southern Journey: The Brogan Cemetery

Because we made such poor time leaving Texas, we tried to compensate by leaving earlier from Vicksburg. Which, admittedly, put us both into sort of a heated mood. The ongoing battle with the air conditioner in a twenty year old F-150 didn't help to cool things off either.

Which brings me to:

When my husband drives, it's like

Mistake #3--Don't assume you'll be able to "make up time" in the South

The posted highway speed in every state from Texas to Virginia was 70 miles an hour. In order to make up time, it requires you to drive faster than the posted speed limit. When your posted speed limit is 70 miles an hour, you never make up the time. Trust me. My husband tried, and it didn't happen.

Mistake #4--Have a back-up plan. If you don't have a back-up plan, be good at thinking on your feet

This one was all my fault, and I readily admit to that. I planned to go to three cemeteries. The Brogan and Clark cemeteries in Claiborne County, Tennessee and the McKenzie Cemetery in Grayson County, Virginia. Not only did I not calculate in nearly enough time and daylight to visit all three of these cemeteries, I didn't calculate any time in if something went wrong. And I fell right into the trap I had already seen coming.

There are two Brogan cemeteries in this part of Tennessee. I know this. I have seen them both on FindAGrave.com. I know that one of them is in the wrong county. And I even had it in mind that I needed to bring the locations of both in case I made a mistake.

Did I listen to my better judgment? No. Did we go to the wrong cemetery? Yes. Were we able to find the information for the other cemetery on our own? Not on your life. Did we have cell reception to fix it? Absolutely not.

At this point, I was already in hysterics. At least I had the presence of mind to say a prayer. If we could somehow find this one cemetery, the one I most needed to visit, I would be willing to give up going to the other two. And that was the price I had to pay for being unprepared.

My husband is amazing, and endlessly patient with me. Instead of becoming fed up and deciding to move on, he headed in the direction of town so we could at least get reception. He was going to stop at the town hall to see if they couldn't help us, while I was still dealing with my utter devastation in the passenger seat.

All of the sudden he pulls into the parking lot for a funeral home. I was somewhere between "That is a really good idea," and the bitterness of not getting my hopes up.

The two guys we talked to were obviously Southern gentlemen, and were very nice. We asked if they could tell us where the cemetery was, and they asked who we were looking for. I told them Willis I. Greene, and the elder of them pulled a book off the shelf and started looking for something. That's when he found this:

Brogan Cemetery roster--Caliborne County, Tennessee

My face must have given me away, because he said, in a perfect Southern drawl, "You didn't think we was gon' find this, did you?" I sincerely thanked them, and the younger gentleman gave us very detailed instructions on exactly how to get there. Together with the description on the cemetery roster, we had no problem finding the cemetery after that.

We drove down Upper Caney Valley Road, and I have to say that Tennessee is one of the more beautiful places God ever made. I loved it. And the only time I was grateful to be in an F-150 on that entire trip was when we got to the cemetery, because the entrance looked like:

Entrance to the Brogan Cemetery in Claiborne County, Tennessee

The cemetery itself wasn't in much better condition. The stones were in great shape, but it has grass and weeds as tall as I am.

After a very stressful afternoon, I finally found the headstone I had been searching for.

Headstone for Willis I. Greene and Laura Clark Greene, buried in Brogan Cemetery, Claiborne County, TN

Laura Clark Greene and Willis I. Greene

By the time we got into the cemetery and began taking pictures, it started to rain. And I mean, POUR. Between BillionGraves locking up my phone, the sheets of rain coming down, and our time being more limited than ever, we had to leave in a hurry.

We used all the time we had, and more, which made it impossible to wait out the rain or visit the Clark Cemetery. It makes me sad, because the Clark Cemetery was right down the street. But because it is even further off the beaten trail, it was safer in the end to leave it for another trip.

Brogan Cemetery--Claiborne County, TN

I've since added Brogan Cemetery to Google Maps, and will update the information for the cemetery on FindAGrave.com. Everything I can do to put this cemetery on the map is so important to keep Generation 2.0 from making the same mistake I just did. For better or worse, things that are not listed in the proper places on the internet are inaccessible in real life--and risk being lost to history.

Mistake #5--Don't forget to have enough to do

I was a passenger for the entire journey home because I can't drive a manual yet, and I was so bored. There is no reason for a genealogist to ever be bored, there is simply too much to do. Granted, most of the work on my to-do list required an internet connection, but there was plenty I could have done instead to pass the time.

Our Southern Journey: Vicksburg National Military Park

Anyone who follows me on Twitter knows that I recently had a very long road trip with my husband. We traveled from San Antonio, Texas to our home in the Dover, Delaware area--a trip which took us through 7 states and lasted 60 hours total.

It was a trip that began as a compromise and ended as a test of our ability to work together. Because the primary purpose of going to San Antonio was to pick up his truck, part of my condition for spending the money was that we would do genealogy stuff on the way home. We planned to stay the night in Vicksburg and visit the battlefield, stop at two cemeteries in Tennessee, stop at another cemetery in southern Virginia, then make our way home. Our anticipated arrival time at home was late Tuesday evening.

Allow me to break down our mistakes from the beginning:

Mistake #1--Budget enough drive time, especially when driving through Texas

Because of weather, we decided to drive through Austin and onto Dallas instead of Houston. This was our first mistake. Never, EVER drive through Austin. For any reason. The traffic was horrendous--entirely stop and go for absolutely no reason. There was no construction, no weather, it wasn't even rush hour. For lack of a better explanation, people in that area just don't know how to drive on a highway. We lost a lot of time driving through Texas in general.

Mistake #2--When you go to Vicksburg, don't forget to see it all

Vicksburg battlefield has over 1,300 monuments and markers throughout the park. We had no idea when we showed up that this meant that each of our ancestors' regiments were represented by different monuments, along with the monuments for the both states, monuments for the commanding officers, and monuments for the surrender. Not to mention a live artillery demonstration. And a gift shop. We only discovered all of this once we arrived, and still missed the Iowa monument and the live artillery demonstration. Had I not asked the park ranger at the help desk about all there was to see, we would have missed most of the things on this list.

View from the Confederate line over the Mississippi River at Vicksburg National Military Park

Confederate line marker for the 61st Tennessee Infantry Regiment

Me beside the monument for the 61st Tennessee Infantry monument at the Vicksburg National Military Park

The Tennessee memorial at Vicksburg National Military Park

Being able to stand on the very line where John M. P. Clark fought was a special experience for me. It was the very same feeling I had at Antietam and Gettysburg--like my ancestors who fought there were right beside me as I was walking through the place. My Civil War veterans have become special people to me, and I love them more now than I did before I made these trips. I feel a sense of kinship with them that simply having their names on paper or in a database didn't provide for me before. I needed to walk on the ground they hallowed and understand their suffering before I could appreciate them the way I do now. 

 One of the highlights from the museum was this fiber optic map, which helps to give a look into how the battle played out.

Vicksburg National Military Park was an amazing stop on our journey through the South. As far as national parks go, it left nothing to be desired and gave us exactly the insight we were seeking. But it was only the beginning to what became a very long trip.

To be continued...

Hallie Doyle

My wonderful husband and I are making a trip to San Antonio for a week to retrieve some affects of his from his best man. Because this is marriage and compromise is king, I agreed that we could afford to do this on the condition that we do some real genealogy on the way home.

We're stopping at Vicksburg National Battlefield, then head to the Brogan and Clark Cemeteries in Claiborne County, Tennessee, and finishing up with a trip to the McKenzie Cemetery in Galax, Virginia before we head home. I'll be taking pictures and using BillionGraves to index the cemeteries.

There is a stark difference between these cemeteries which I have found interesting in planning our visits. The hardest thing about planning the Tennessee visits has actually been locating the cemeteries on a map. Trying to travel on roads that Google Maps doesn't know, I have to admit, feels like striking out onto a new frontier. I've done the best I can to give us the most detailed instructions possible because I have no idea how rural this is about to become. But every time I try to explain to my husband where we're going, it's basically like:

It'll be a really special experience to go see John Clark's grave at the Clark Cemetery after going to Vicksburg. He fought with the 61st Tennessee for the Confederacy, and I will definitely want to pay my respects for his sacrifice. I'm excited to learn more about where he was throughout the battle, and to stand on the ground where he stood.

Planning for the McKenzie Cemetery was very different because the cemetery is much larger, and in a wide open, accessible place. Thanks to New River Notes, together with context clues in some of the pictures from FindAGrave.com, I was able to map out the McKenzie Cemetery pretty accurately. If we have the time, we'll map out the entire cemetery using BillionGraves. If not, we'll do my family members and hit the road. It was hard to be selective because I'm related to at least 1/3 of the cemetery, but we have our limitations on time. Sometimes we can't afford to do all the good we want to do, at least not in one sitting.

Planning for this trip has proved to be just as productive as actually going. As I was combing through the cemetery index on New River Notes, I found something surprising...

Hallie Doyle on the McKenzie Cemetery roster--available on New River Notes, 17 Jun 2013

Buried in this cemetery at an unmarked grave is a child of Glenn E. Doyle and Pearl May Bartlett. As far as I knew they had 10 children who were all accounted for--all raised in Cecil County, Maryland. But it never occurred to me to look in this part of Virginia where they met (and, I assume, married) to see if they lost any children there.

Hallie Doyle is their daughter. I'm assuming she was born and died in 1926. She is the only person with the last name Doyle buried in that cemetery. It is a special thing to think that my grandfather had another sister that I didn't know about, and I've found her after all this time. She isn't lost or forgotten anymore.

And while her short little life no doubt brought anguish into the lives of her young parents, I know they're together with her now. There simple is not hurt on earth that heaven cannot heal, and I'm so happy that I can be apart of uncovering and preserving the history.

Using Google Books and WorldCat

Today I want to post about a match made in heaven. If you want to move into a position where you can do genealogy yourself, instead of paying someone/something else to do it for you, these two tools are pretty indispensable. 

Thor thinks your brick wall is LAME!

If only, right?

If we're going to have the success we want in our research, we need to embrace both old and new technology. When we're able to navigate them both, it helps us to have the maximum number of results.

The first tool is Google Books. There are plenty of tutorials on how to use Google and Google Books in genealogy. It helps you find digital copies of books. For clarity purposes, I will call these fake books. Here are some YouTube videos that explain how to navigate fake books if you need a place to start. If not, skip this part and go to....

This one takes less time to get a basic idea of what Google Books is and how to use it. However, Google Books has changed a lot since this video was made, so what you will see when you are using the site is different.

This tutorial is much more up to date and inclusive. It's a little long, but he covers all of the functions of Google Books and how to read fake books.

Here... This next tool will help you find real books in the libraries closest to you. It's called WorldCat.  Every fake book you find in Google Books is linked to WorldCat. WorldCat will allow you to search millions of libraries all over the world to find real copies of those same books.

Let's say you were looking in Google Books and you found a copy of a real book you really want to use. I'll show you one of mine, The Bartlett Tree & Thee by Hope Bartlett Taylor.

On the left hand side, there is a link that says Find in a library. Click on it, and it will take you over to WorldCat.

It will take you to a page that looks like this.

At the bottom of this page, you will see a Find a Copy in the Library section. It's the second thing I have circled in green above. If you continue to scroll, you will find a list of all the different locations closest to you which have a copy of that real book. Make sure that the zip code or postal code listed there is the most accurate one in relation to where you are living, or your results will not be as accurate.

World Cat has a useful feature where it allows you to add your results to a List, organized however you may wish. You can organize it by surname, by time period, by project, or by the library which has the real book. If you look at the image above, you'll see another green circle around a link for Add to List. Click on it, and this screen will appear.

An orange box appears, and this is where you can make a new list, right from your search result. You can also add this result to a list you have already created. Make sure you have either logged in or have created a log-in username for this site, or you won't be able to save your list.

Type the name of your new list in the box where the green circle is. I prefer to organize my results according to the library which holds the information. Now if you wanted to add that result to a list you have already created, you can do that by clicking on it in the list inside the orange box.

There are two organization methods I would recommend. Organize your list either according to your family surname, or according to library. If you list it according to library, you will have a complete list of all the books you need in that location. You can print the list and take it with you. The problem with organizing your list this way is if you forget for which family you wanted the book. (I did that once.) That was how I discovered that when you go to your actual list, there is a note feature for each book where you can record that information.

To get back to your list, log in and click on your name at the top of the screen. Your lists will be in the middle of the screen, under a heading that says Lists. Click on the list you want to view.

Note how the list page has your results. Under each result, there is a little Note button. Click on it and add whatever information will help you remember why you wanted the real book. If you organize it by library, it may be helpful to include the names of the family members that appear in it. If that's too much information, you can use the name of the county or state together with the time frame of the information included in the real book.

Some people like to keep all their lists together with the rest of their research notes in a tool like Evernote or OneNote. Personally, I find using WorldCat to be easier for me because I think there are better ways to use my time than copying and pasting information. Plus, as new copies of the real books are purchased, or old copies are moved or removed, you'll have the most up-to-date information available to you in WorldCat.

As you build your WorldCat lists, pay attention to other libraries that may not be the closest, but may also have the real books you want to use. If you can identify one library that appears for all of your real book results, it may be better to make one longer trip to a single library than five or six shorter trips to smaller libraries. You have to be the judge of that for yourself. As you can see, I had an extensive list going for the Library of Congress because it had all of the books I was looking for. But as I kept searching and finding more obscure real books, I noticed that the New York Public Library had just as many of the results--including some things the Library of Congress didn't have.

I keep both lists updated with the real books I find. That way, whenever the opportunity presents itself to make either trip, I will be ready.

Some of you will want to note that the real books from the Family History Library in Salt Lake City do not appear in WorldCat. They have their own websites here and here which you can use to search their collection. Those sites don't have a list function, but I could just as easily create one on WorldCat! Note that on the second link, they are beginning to digitize and make fake books too!

Times are changing. Those who like to keep their work strictly old school with real books are going to miss out on so many opportunities they will never even see passing them by. Those (like me) who have been relying too heavily on the digital tools are missing out as well, wasting time doing work that has already been done, making the same mistakes that have already been made.

To be a more complete genealogist means to change with the times in appropriate ways. Using Google Books and World Cat wisely has helped me to achieve that balance more completely.

 And now, as a reward to making it to the end of this post, here's something that can make us all feel better.