Tangent alert

So now that I have warned you about tangents and setting boundaries... I am off on a tangent. As I was working on filling out my files with expanded information on several ancestors I came across a new, to me anyway, tidbit of information that I wanted to share with everyone.

In my Thompson line I have me, my father, my grandfather, then Lex D. Thompson my Great Grand Father (GGF) then George David Thompson  2nd Great Grand Father (2GGF). I knew from Georges grave marker that he was a veteran.

What I did not know until yesterday was that he volunteered in 1898 for service as an Infantryman in the Spanish American War. He was assigned to the 1st Washington Volunteer Infantry Battalion, this has peaked my interest considering the unit was recruited and formed in and around Seattle Washington, and he was born and died in the Midwest. People didn't travel at that time like we do today, so that means that some time between the 1890 census and 1898 he made his way by horse or train from Indiana to Seattle, or that the information I got is wrong.

Lesson to be learned, before taking classes on genealogy, I probably would have set aside the piece of information connecting his with the unit in Washington, and probably would have figured it was a different George Thompson, since it is not a very unusual name. Now however I bring a more critical eye to my research. After a little more simple searching I found a grave marker request on Ancestry that George's wife Mary made just after his death. She sent a request through the War Department in 1936 to receive a free military headstone, it has his name, her name, their address in Illinois, and the unit that he served with. So in one piece of paper that was pretty easy to find I made a 99% certain addition to the information about an ancestor. Then things got interesting.

So after finding the grave receipt I went to a secret source I have that is very powerful for genealogy, they call it GOOGLE. I simply googled the unit name on the grave marker, and amongst all of the hits that popped up there was one that was interesting. It was an old page that had not been updated in a long time, it is kind of like the old hole in the wall bar that on the outside looks horrible, but when you get inside the food and atmosphere are amazing. They had full descriptions of almost every single unit that had participated in the Spanish American war.

George's unit was important for one reason, it's utter insignificance. The unit was formed in July of 1898 but failed to fill its ranks with enough volunteers, so they were given the title of 1st Washington Infantry Individual Battalion, they trained and organized trying to fill their ranks until October 1898 at which time the Treaty of Paris was signed and the battalion was mustered out. I mentioned it got interesting, well in further searching and after contacting a historian who wrote a book about the two Washington volunteer units, I found out that the unit lost one man, died of illness, and two men lost to disability from training, one of those two men was George Thompson. I have not yet received his records from the military but cannot wait to see if they have anything and what it tells me.

This page that I found the information on mentioned that the unit literally just ceased to exist, they are not sure if the whole unit was furloughed or what but there is no mention or record of them from the time the man died and two were injured until they are listed as mustered out in November of 1898. So I can't wait to see if there is anything interesting in his files. Tangent over I will return you to your normal program.

Setting a framework

Most researchers in any discipline will tell you that you need boundaries, without boundaries for your research you will quickly lose your way, and end up squandering time and resources with little to show for it. The same is true of Genealogy. When you decide to begin your endeavor lay down clear boundaries to focus your search, that doesn’t mean you won’t expand your boundaries or that you don’t need to have your eyes open to possibilities that fall outside of them. If you do not have a focus you will jump from clue to clue and line to line and your journey will be greatly slowed.
I learned this lesson the hard way, when I first started I did not choose which line I wanted to investigate first, instead I decided I wanted to get as much information about as many people as I could. What ended up happening is I got swamped by data and made erroneous assumptions and connections. All in an effort to push my lineage to another generation and then another.
After taking several online classes through the Genealogical Society of America and free lessons through Brigham Young University I started over. I may not have needed to start over, but after learning about all the places I went wrong, and how inaccurate my tree may have been, I went back and took a look at what I had.
My first three generations in all families were complete and accurate, I had my parents, my grandparents and my great grand parents information from living sources, mainly my mom and aunt Kathy. After that though I had been using Ancestry and had relied on other users tree’s for too much information. Much of which turned out to be incomplete or plain wrong. When your last name is Thompson, and some of the other surnames you are looking up are Stark, Cox, and Horton you would be surprised how many false trails there are to follow. Some of the other surnames are not so common, Ketchapaw, Reichenbach, Judd and Swinehart, but yet I had still took wrong turns and had too much bad information so, I started fresh.
I learned that I needed to concentrate on one line at a time, and delve deeply into all the information available to me, not just a cursory search of trees that had the same names. So my boundaries were clear, instead of jumping from Swinehart to Thompson to Judd depending on what I felt like that day, I would concentrate on the one line. While working on that line I documented everything imaginable in paper form, and saved in copies on my computer. I had binders dedicated to information that was not verified yet and information that was verified.
I started with Swinehart, simply because I knew the least about it. I had grown up knowing my Great Grandpa and Grandma Judd, and Thompson. I had what I thought was an accurate tree for the Judd line, and was able to get information readily about that side, the paternal side, of my family.
On the maternal side however, I had known my Grandpa and Grandma and knew I had a ton of other relatives but had no clue how I was related to them all. We rarely saw most of them, and when we did it was a yearly get together that stopped happening after my grandfather died in 1992. On top of all of that the family story was that my maternal line had Native American lineage and that intrigued me. So my journey began with the intent of finding where our native side originated. I set up the binders I mentioned, I set up an office area, I paid for the World subscription to Ancestry, I joined my local historical society which also had a genealogical section that I joined. I sat down with my mom and picked her brain for dates, names, and places of birth and death. I was lucky also that much of my maternal grandfathers family was buried in one cemetery near Manton, MI.
During my frequent trips to see my grandpa I would take a notepad and a camera. At first I took pictures of the markers that had the Swinehart surname, later I went through and took pictures of almost every stone. From this limited amount of information I managed to add two more generations to my Swinehart line, which I already had actually, but this time they were more than a name. I found pictures of my Great Grandfather Forrest Swinehart, I found pictures of his father Paul L. Swinehart, but I also came across people with stories to tell. I met people I didn’t know I was related to, and expanded my understanding of the whole clan we had. I had always known we were a big family but one day after taking a bunch of pictures and visiting the county records in Cadillac we drove through Manton, I stopped at a gas station and mentioned off hand to my wife, that our family is huge I bet if I go in the store and mention the name Swinehart someone inside is related. Sure enough not one but two people, the cashier and a customer were distant cousins of mine, and turns out the person I was looking for that ran the cemetery was also related. 
I spent 5 months searching property records, birth, death and marriage records, tax records and Ancestry databases to make sure that I had all the information available. When I was certain that I had every available record I took that information and moved on to the next level. At that point once you have a system, the majority of your ancestor can be discovered the same way. You will see soon enough though that some people, for one reason or another, are harder to find and you can spend weeks even months or years stuck, but I will get to those cases soon enough.
Now I am not saying each individual in your tree should take you 5 months to investigate, it just happens that there was a lot to discover and I didn’t have a lot of time each week to be working on genealogy. Just be sure whatever pace you set your information is thorough and accurate.

The beginning

As far back as I can remember my grandma Thompson would tell me stories about our ancestors, on story in particular she told me was that we descended from William and George Rogers Clark, the great explorers and warriors of the American Revolution. When I was 8 I was given a book:

The book Background to Glory was one that my grandma kept in her personal library in her classroom, she was a 3rd grade Teacher at the local elementary school. I read that book cover to cover and was simply amazed that I was related to such an important person.

I was told stories about other ancestors as well, the great grand father that worked with Thomas Edison, the great Uncle that died in WWII, and the great grandpa that left his family to be a cowboy in the old west. Growing up I took the stories as gospel, as I got older the stories faded and I lost interest.

After getting out of the military myself in 2003 I was going through old pictures and things with my mom and came across an old piece of paper. On it it listed the lineage of my Great Grandfather Baxter Judd. Through a very confusing series of lines crisscrossing the paper it established his paternal lineage. In a small notation on the page it said Marblehead, Mass 1624. With the names and dates I made a profile on Ancestry.com

From that day on I have been assembling bits and pieces of our story. In the beginning I had little clue what I was doing or how to do it. I spent hours on Ancestry under the mistaken belief that everything on there was accurate. After more than a year of putting together what I thought was a pretty amazing family tree I learned that it was grossly inaccurate thanks to many small mistakes that sent me down errant lineages. It was not until I reached out to a professional genealogist that I realized that Ancestry is a resource, but a very unreliable one if you are using other users tree's. 

Now ten years later Ancestry has made a lot of great improvements, although other users trees are sketchy, the databases at your disposal are invaluable. Many thousands of dollars have been saved on travel thanks to instant access to their databases. I ended up starting completely over and went about it the proper way with instruction from the Family History section of Brigham Young University, who now have their free classes online. In my next couple of post's I am going to detail the steps I took to begin my research and the process I created for myself to ensure accurate information.

Getting Started

Have you ever wondered "is there anyone famous in my family?" or possibly "I wonder where we came from" if so you are not alone. Especially here in the United States, being a country of immigrants mixed with aboriginal peoples we frequently have no clue what our lineage is beyond our living family.

I started on my genealogy journey more than 11 yrs ago. I found a piece of paper amongst pictures my mother had tucked away. It was an old photocopy of what appeared to be a family tree that started at my Great Grandfather and went back to the first in his line to immigrate to the colonies back in 1624. Many of the names were illegible and the way it was constructed was confusing. So I made a copy of it and began trying to decipher it.

Shortly after, my curiosity stoked, I started asking questions about the other branches of my family tree, and I got some fascinating answers. I heard names like Von Reichenbach, Swinehart, Judd, Clark, Ketchepaw and many others. But, even more interesting, the stories that accompanied them were amazing. Little did I know that the stories the family knew were only a small part of the story of us.

I had head stories that included William Clark, of the Lewis and Clark expedition, and his brother General George Rogers Clark, and stories of an ancestor that worked with Thomas Edison. I heard stories of our Native American ancestors and of Cowboys on cattle drives. When I dug in the surprises I found both disappointed and impressed me. I found a much deeper appreciation for where I come from, and for the struggles that have made this country what it is. What I found was that we have a very American family.

I decided to write this blog, even though no one is waiting to read this first post when I post it, because I want to share our story but also as a way to keep a record of my work. The first couple posts will be more historical to record my experiences in research over the last 11 yrs. From then on though I will document my continuing research and findings, my genealogy education and experience, and hopefully provide access to my research for other genealogists to reference. Hopefully somewhere along the way I gain an audience!