Research Note: Don't Overlook the Simple Way

Chris Dunham at The Genealogue has made genealogical "challenges" a somewhat regular feature of his blog. These are quite interesting, fun, and test one's rapid research skills. I enjoy them a lot, because I always learn something, either about the particular subject or about some research resource I may have not known about before. I always have to work fast if I want to post an answer because the East Coast folks have a time zone advantage!

Sometimes, a Challenge is so complex or obscure that it takes days and many folks working to figure it out. Sometimes they are disarmingly simple.

A few days ago, Chris's Challenge #126 was set up about "Stephen and Emilie Preen, who lived in Newark, New Jersey, in 1900." There was this link to a discussion thread about Preen family history. The Challenge was to discover Who was their very famous step-grandchild?
The link gave some important clues. [Don't look at the comments to Chris's Challenge #126 yet if you want to learn what I learned!]

The Challenge went unanswered for an unusually long time. I really didn't have time to do it, but I took a shot anyway. I first used some of the clues in the discussion thread along with census records to determine the names of the Preens' children. Then using census records and birth and marriage databases, I tried to determine their grandchildren. I had to check each of the children. A couple were quickly eliminated, and I soon focused on Sydney David Preen as the likely step-father. The somewhat unusual spelling of his first name likely came from the fact (found in the discussion thread and confirmed in census and passenger records) that Stephen and Emilie Preen had lived in Australia in New South Wales for several years. Indeed, their two oldest children, though not Sydney, had been born in Australia.

I then tracked Sydney to California and this made sense because perhaps the step-child was in the entertainment industry. Well, I wrestled with Sydney's records for quite awhile before giving up, partly because, as I said, I really didn't have time, and in part because I was now convinced that the answer could be found only by using some obscure database or research technique.

But the next day, I noticed in the comments that someone had come up with the right answer. Unfortunately, she didn't describe how she got there. [Don't look yet!]. But I discovered that knowing what was in the discussion thread or even just the question itself, a good thinker could come up with the answer in just a matter of minutes.

Try it yourself. Take the information in the question itself and find the name of their famous step-grandchild in fifteen minutes. Go ahead, we'll wait here.

--Fifteen Minute Interval--

Now, how long did it really take you to come up with John Wayne?

Here's how to do it: Look up the names of the Preen children in the 1900 census. "Google" each one in turn. For Charles Preen, you'll get about 98 hits, which you can click through quickly with no mention of anyone famous. For Albert Preen you get nine hits; again, not seeming to lead to anyone "famous." Now for Sydney Preen, you'll get five hits; again nobody of special notoriety. But then, the thinking researcher would decide that "Sydney" is not the only way, nor the typical American way, to spell that name for a male. So now you search Google for "Sidney" Preen, and guess what? The first two of five mentions refer to John Wayne's autobiography. Time elapsed: less than fifteen minutes.

Lesson: don't overlook the simple ways!

Research Note: Historic Missouri Newspaper Project

Thanks to a link I found in the Genealogical Research Resources Group started by Denise Olson, I found myself at the Historic Missouri Newspaper Research Project. The project is a collaboration among several institutions in Missouri, including Lincoln University, the University of Missouri- Columbia Libraries, the Kansas City Public Library, and the State Historical Society of Missouri.

There are not a lot of newspapers in the project right now, but those that are there are rich in historical data. Additionally, I think the software base of the project, called Active Paper, allows easier and more efficient searching and retrieval than some commercial newspaper archives. Active Paper is a product of Olive Software, a seven year old Silicon Valley-based company.

I've found a lot of stories about my northwest Missouri ancestors in the papers in this project. The search function is so easy to use that I find myself spending hours playing with it!

Research Note: On the Ground in Cemeteries

[Posted from Kansas City, Missouri]

I've spent several days in cemeteries on this trip and the following have proved useful:

1. Call ahead to ascertain the hours both the gates and the office (if there is one) will be open.

2. Stop by the office (if there is one) and interview the staff. Learn the history of the cemetery as well as its layout. Get a map if one is available.

3. Try not to go at the hottest time of day!

4. Of course, take a camera to record what you see.

5. Take a small pair of garden clippers to help clear away overgrown grass.

6. If you're visiting a few specific gravesites, take some flowers or other memorial items to pay respects.

7. Of course, be respectful of the place and other visitors.

8. To aid other researchers, share your pictures on your own Web site or a site like Find-a-Grave.com.

9. Record specific directions to the cemetery and the gravesites visited.

10. Thank the staff for their help.


What other tips can you think of?

Some Info On Texas Birth and Death Records

I have written occasionally about my mostly positive experience getting Texas birth and death records. I recently came across this article at Genealogymagazine.com that adds some important information about researching Texas death records.

By the way, Texas (not surprisingly) has an "Heirloom Birth Certificate" available for your favorite Native Texan. It can be ordered through Texas Online. I'm getting one soon for my favorite Native Texan (who I'll be writing about in this space very soon). I'll let you know how that goes.

Google Books

If you haven't searched on Google Books, go there immediately (immediately after reading this post, of course!). There are tens of thousands of genealogy and history references available there. Controversy initially dogged Google books when first introduced; Google was accused of copyright violations in its program to digitize entire libraries. Much of the initial hubbub has died down and now Google is reaching accommodations with publishers and libraries around the world.

Search results on Google Books may provide more than just a title and author. If the book is in the public domain or if the publisher has given permission, there may be a "full view" of the book available and you may be able to download a PDF version of the book. By agreement with numerous publishers even those works not in the public domain may have a "limited view" available from which you can get a pretty good look at the contents of the book. With full view or limited view books you can perform searches throughout the book. Some books have only available a "snippet" view, which provides three pieces of text from the book. For every book, the search engine provides links to publishers and booksellers as well as to libraries where the book may be borrowed.

Here some of the things that I've found recently on Google Books that I really liked:


Runaway and Freed Missouri Slaves and Those Who Helped Them, 1763-1865 (2004) By Harriet C. Frazier

French Roots in the Illinois Country: The Mississippi Frontier in Colonial Times (2000) by Carl J. Ekberg

The titles above are "limited view" books and are available at major booksellers. Then there's this:

History of the Catholic Church Within the Limits of the United States (1888) by John Gilmary Shea. This is a 700+ page comprehensive treatment of the history of the church of until 1888, written by the preeminent American Catholic historian of the 19th century. It's available from major booksellers for a mere $239. Fortunately, on Google Books it is a "full view" book.

Finding the LeJays: Parlez-vous Francais?

I have written before about the difficulty I have had finding the Lejay family. My great grandmother was Sylvia Lejay Gines and her mother was Syntrilla Brayboy Lejay. I believed that Sylvia's father's, and Syntrilla's husband's, name was Lewis. I know that they're connected to both Louisiana and South Carolina. Finding records of them has been very difficult especially in the case of Syntrilla Lejay. We know that an Isaac Lejay came to South Carolina in the 1680's with his wife Madeleine Fleury. After that we basically lose track of the Lejays until the 1870 census of Louisiana. So what happened to them? Well, I didn't really know, but finding out has been one of my research priorities. Isaac Lejay apparently was one of many thousands of Huguenots who came to America, indeed specifically to South Carolina, in the 17th century. Some sources have said that can be difficult to track Huguenot descendents and other French surnamed individuals because the use of articles such as "le," and "la," fell into disuse for various reasons. if that's the case then it would be difficult to distinguish a John Jay, who had Huguenot ancestors, from any John Jay, who may have been an Englishman. [The Founding Father John Jay was of Huguenot descent.] Of course the novice researcher soon learns that variations in spelling become important in genealogical research. Looking for Lejays, for example, one might look for the spelling "Legay,"or "Legauy," or "Lejau." None of these particularly fruitful in my research. Having run into what seemed to be a fairly thick brick wall, I recently put out in several media a request for help. A correspondent on the AfriGeneas forum gave me the clue I had been missing. He suggested trying the spellings "Legere" or "Legire." I would not have thought of either of these. Another AfriGeneas correspondent explained the reason for this suggestion: "the name Leger or Legere (sometimes with an accent grave ` over the second "e" in the second spelling) [are both] pronounced l'jay in French . . . ." In the 1880 census of De Soto Parish, Louisiana, there appears the household of Lewis "Legire" and his wife "Sintrilla." Among their children is a teenaged "Silvia." This appears to be the family I've been looking for. Living nearby is a couple named Edwin and Mary "Legire" who may be Lewis's parents. So had I known a little a bit about French pronunciation, this may have been a lot easier! Now I'm excited to find more Lejays hiding behind their francophone names.