Tuesday's Tip: Check the Map!

Where did that ancestor live? Sometimes it's not enough to simply record the street address straight from the official document--map it and you'll often get extra insight, or at least confirmation that the address was accurate.*

Take my experience with Gussie and Michael, both living in the Bronx in 1919 when they married. I wanted to see where their residences were in relation to each other, having discovered more than once that my ancestors met or were introduced as a result of being in the neighborhood.

It was easy to find Clay Avenue on the map (see "Michael 1919" above). But no Linton Avenue seemed to exist in the Bronx. So I mapped where Gussie was living in 1915, according to the NY Census--on St. Paul's Place, a street only a few blocks long and within walking distance of Michael in 1919.

Checking the area more carefully, I noticed Clinton Avenue just a few streets away from St. Paul's Place. Nothing else even sounds like Linton Avenue. So Clinton Avenue is my best guess about where Gussie was living at the time of her marriage.

Would this couple have been introduced by family or friends? Or did they meet at a workplace or a local deli? I don't know the answer, but I do feel certain that Gussie made her home on Clinton Avenue, not Linton Avenue as recorded on her marriage license.

* As a Facebook comment pointed out, address numbers can change over the years, and streets may also go away or be renamed. Very good points! My goal in mapping addresses is to see whether the street or avenue is there--and if not, some online searching will usually turn up either evidence of its history or nothing at all (if nothing, good chance the street was not accurately spelled or listed).

Many of the tenements where my NYC ancestors lived have been torn down, but the streets or avenues are usually still to be found on the maps. Not always, but if not, I can often find them in other records (a newspaper report or a census page) to confirm the existence of that street or road in that place. And CHECK city directories, as the first comment below this blog post notes! Thanks again for the great comments.

Sentimental Sunday: Pages from the Story of Wood and Slatter

The Story of James Edgar Wood and Mary Slatter Wood is written, photos and maps are in place, and I'm going to bring the .pdf to be color-laser-printed in the local copy shop. In all, I needed 21 pages to tell the story of hubby's paternal grandparents James, Mary, their family backgrounds, along with a brief overview of what happened to their four sons (including my late father-in-law, who took these photos of the 1917 Ford).

Just in time for the June Genealogy Blog Party, here are two pages from this newest family memory booklet, and a few lessons learned along the way toward preserving this family history:

• Maps help readers follow along as ancestors migrate or take a trip (as in the page at top, a 1917 trip from Cleveland to Chicago).
• Photos personalize the story and bring readers face to face with faces and places from the family's past. I included lots of photos!
• Include quotes from ancestors to keep their voices alive for descendants who never met them. I had quotes from interviews, letters, a diary.
• Include a timeline to give descendants a better sense of what happened, where, and when. I constructed this last, after I pieced together the entire story.
• Include sources for that rare reader who asks: "How do we know that?" The actual booklet has a few document excerpts but full documents are sitting in my files.
• Caption all photos. I have 2 pages of captions at the end of the booklet, with lots of details, including a reminder of the relationships between people in the photo and the readers ("Mary Slatter's older sister" is an example, plus an explanation that Mary Slatter was my husband's paternal grandmother). 

Don't forget to include a family tree! I included one in the back of the booklet, showing this branch and how it extends back three generations on James's side and on Mary's side.

This is only one way I'm sharing my family's history with the next generation. More ideas are in my genealogy book, Planning a Future for Your Family's Past.

Genealogy Do-Over, Week 7: Digitizing Maps and More

Old maps have dates and memories that add richness and detail to my genealogy research.
In week 7 of the Do-Over, I'm digitizing the maps that have been passed down in my family because they're clues to my ancestors' daily lives and some of the places they lived and visited--places that were meaningful to them and to me.

My grandparents on both sides (Schwartz, Farkas, Mahler, Burk) settled in New York City. They never owned a car but they and their children and grandchildren knew the subway and bus routes very, very well.

My in-laws (Wood, McClure) liked to drive to New York City from their home in Cleveland to visit family, see Broadway shows, etc. My father-in-law also saved state maps that were given away by gas stations, including old maps for Indiana, Ohio, and beyond.

Above, part of the family's collection of New York City transit and street maps. The Hagstrom's maps are the oldest, and the World's Fair maps are the youngest (just 50 years old!). All being photographed and inventoried as part of Week 7 in the Do-Over.

PS: The Do-Over participants explained how to add my blog's name to photographs I post. Thank you!