Cold genealogy, finding random ancestors
Govanstown Cemetery Project The Whittle Plot When you feel like you want to scream after a day of asking Ancestry to “Bring Out Your Dead!”– it’s time to go Google for Dead People! As I had already searched the newspaper subsciptions for further mention of Samuel’s fall, I thought it would be a good idea … Read more
Govanstown Cemetery Project The Whittle Plot I have a few loose ends out there that I should tell you about. The hard part of writing this blog is keeping up with telling you about where my search goes. I may write about a census search on a certain day and the Footnote search on another … Read more
Govanstown Cemetery Project The Whittle Plot As I said earlier, Samuel Whittle has been an exercise in patience. The census records are usually our best bet for tracking someone through their life span, but Sam has been a tough nut to crack. To recap, we found Sam on the 1880 Federal Census by the “leaf” … Read more
Govanstown Cemetery Project The Whittle Plot For those of you that have not used Footnote it is the online outlet for the National Archives. You can search for free, and there is quite a bit of free content, but most of it is premium content that requires a subscription. A subscription goes for about $75 … Read more
Govanstown Cemetery Project The Whittle Plot Searching for Samuel Whittle has been a challenge in spelling and creativity. I found him on Ancestry in 1870 by using a Wildcard Search for Sam* Whit*. This picks up all the variations for the end of the names. Still, the only record I found was the 1870 census … Read more
Govanstown Cemetery Project The Whittle Plot Now that I’m comfortably sure I have the right man, I’m off to Ancestry for the basic grunt work – this is actually my favorite part! Put in a name and see what magic happens. Sometimes you get absolutely nothing and sometimes you get the whole family line. It’s … Read more
Govanstown Cemetery Project The Whittle Plot I went back to the little email from Dr. Anderson and while I was disappointed in my first attempt I wanted to try again. In looking at the list I felt something tug at me and noticed that I was unable to get past Samuel Whittle. No matter how … Read more
Govanstown Cemetery Project My current work in Cold Genealogy began almost a year ago as an offshoot of research on my maternal line. I began searching for my 3rd great grandfather, Washington Harford, in Baltimore, Maryland. The search eventually yielded an obituary from the Baltimore Sun dated 29 Jun 1875 in which the funeral was … Read more