More Pictures, More Story

We have pondered last week's picture for more than a dozen years. For some reason it has always intrigued me. Sometimes you just need to put it aside. When you go back and ask the question again someone might have the answer. Or your brain may just kick in.

What's event? My sister's idea is likely the correct answer, Edward Daniel Ryan's birthday, what would be his last one, July 14, 1950. We already knew it was taken in the summer of 1950 and that would make sense as the reason.

Where are the rest of the relatives then? I have literally thousands of pictures. The original picture came from my files - although there are multiple copies of it around. But I had not seen these two from Tessa Rasnick, a great great granddaughter of Lillie and Edward. She sent them to me sometime in the last year and I hadn't really gotten to them [because there was another interesting picture in the group]. They are before her mother's time but her great grandmother Mary Ryan Veech is in the pictures.

Here are Edward and Lillie Wood Ryan with all five of their then surviving children. Obviously this is the same day and location. Margaret, Mary, Lillie, Ethel, Edward, Cora [partially hidden], Wilford.

And here are more people, not too many of the men - and this was before tv - and more children. Of the males I only know my uncle Orville, last one on the left. All my older cousins are in the picture but I am missing as is my aunt Patricia, soon to be a bride.










Now I wonder if there are more pictures of that day hiding in a box in the back of a closet somewhere.

Final Four - Who Are They?

This picture, taken during my lifetime, continues to baffle me. I am looking for the final four pieces in the puzzle. 


I can date the picture by the oldest and youngest. Edward Daniel Ryan died at Christmas 1950 and the infant is Jacqueline Green, born October 1949, making this warm weather after May 1950. From the background I would guess it was taken at Emagene Veech Green's home in the country between Mt. Pulaski and Illiopolis.


There are 19 relatives in this picture. I identified 13. Emagene Green was able to identify two more. That leaves four we don't know and yet we know they are almost undoubtedly descendants of Benjamin B. and Sarah Lucas Wood or the spouse of a descendant.

Back row, Irma Mae Ryan Sapp, Margaret Ryan Rentchler Graul, Janet Downing Rubin, Thelma Volle Downing, Vera Brown Downing, Ethel Ryan Downing, no clue, no clue, Bessie Wood Meade, Cora Ryan Lipp, no clue, Marie Wood Havener Heard, Mary Ryan Veech.


Front row, Betty Downing Rothwell Atwood, Lillie Wood Ryan, no clue, Edward Daniel Ryan, Emagene Veech Green, Jacqueline Green Kapper. I'm sure the two younger women in the front row got to sit because Emagene was holding a baby and Betty had had one in May.


Cora, Ethel, Mary and Margaret are among the 10 children of Lillie and Edward Ryan. The unknowns are not from their families. Bessie and Marie are daughters of Lillie's brother Caleb Wood and his wife Marcy Conaway. The unknowns may be connected to them.


And, I wonder, where are the men and the rest of the children. Without a doubt I was there. 


If you know the answer to this puzzle PLEASE let me know.

Take Your Books With You

I have a copy of Evidence Explained  which I bought when it came out in pdf. I have it on my computer for instant reference. I have copies of various other publications, either purchased, free online or that I bought and then scanned. It IS handy to have some of these reference books at your fingertips.

Have you thought about one of those reading devices that allows you read a book without a book? Most allow you to download a book instantly. Say you are researching at a library and realize you really need the census guide you saw at [chose your favorite retailer]. With one of these devices you can get it right now. The device may also read pdf and other formats that you may already own.

Those devices are nice but they are also pricey and are just one more piece of equipment to carry around.

Did you know you can download the app for those devices to your computer, laptop, netbook, iPad, even your smartphone? Did I mention the apps are all free? You could download them ALL to your laptop. Whether you chose one or all you can have the books - and access to more - but save money by using equipment you already have.

What devices you can use them with and what they can do varies as do the procedures and requirements. You can generally share between devices. With Amazon's Kindle, for example, you can read the book on your netbook at the library, make notes, then pick up where you left off - including the notes - at home on your desktop, then on your smartphone later.

Here are links to the three most popular readers. 

Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Sony

FamilySearch

FamilySearch is constantly adding searchable records.

I tested their records for Cook County, Illinois. I note you cannot right click and save a section but if you have Windows 7 you can use the snipping tool. If you hover over a name you get more information, perhaps spouse, parents and/or children. And if it is a vital record you can order a copy from the Cook County Clerk.

It produced assorted birth, death and immigration records for the surname. I note they have not done a bang up job with the ethnic names or the foreign birthplaces so you need to be flexible. Needless to say, the document may not have spelled things correctly to begin with.

I then tried their Wisconsin records. Hovering produces information which can be copied.

I could not find a Civil War pension index card for my 2g grandfather - there is a widow's pension application and a dependent pension record. It's a work in progress and perhaps they haven't gotten to them.

You need to check back periodically to see if they have added a database you can use. You can also volunteer to help with the transcribing.

GEDViewer

Back on February 1, 2010, I said GEDViewer, a genealogy program for the iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad, looked promising but couldn't handle a large database. The programmer David Knight sent me an email saying yes it could, that the limit is based on your device memory. For my 3G iPod Touch 12 generations is probably the max. [GEDviewer is not to be confused with Genviewer, a useful product by Mudcreek Software.]


I loaded the program on my iPod Touch. It imported my 10,000+ name database efficiently. I was surprised at the speed. More, I was surprised that it didn't eat all my iPod memory. In fact I hardly noticed. [How do they do that?]


I find GEDViewer to be better than FamViewer not to mention quite a bit cheaper. It is faster. When I open FamViewer it wants to import my gedcom which takes awhile. When I open GEDViewer it opens to my data.


When I had a question Knight responded promptly, not with a canned response but an actual answer.


Totally aside, FamViewer comes with a Kennedy family database. GEDViewer comes with a British royals database. I'm a Ricardian so I was delighted to have the British royals database.

Spencer Turner Revisited

I have recently done more research on the Turners, not enough but more. Spencer Turner was one of the first settlers in DeWitt County, arriving in Wilson Township near Waynesville just east of Logan County in 1835. His parents had moved to Illinois in 1827 living first near Athens in Menard County, then Rocky Ford in Logan County, then to Waynesville in what became to DeWitt and eventually to Wapella.

From transcribed newspaper accounts of social goings on, which I read on the DeWitt County ILGenWeb site,  he apparently was not seriously damaged by being charged with murder and stiffing Abraham Lincoln. If I hadn't read the court record I would have strongly suspected the story was not factual or heavily embellished but no, it is true.

Spencer's stone in Sugar Grove Cemetery near Wapella does not look like that of a man who couldn't pay his legal bill. You can see the stone here. When his widow Nancy Hoblit died in 1900 she had three lots in the town of Wapella and an 80 acre farm.

Useful Tools Addendum

I have been a long time user of the Firefox browser but lately I have been using Chrome a lot. Both are free. Both have good and bad points. I think it is a personal thing. Safari, the browser from Apple, which you can use on a Windows computer, is visually interesting. It's on my iPod Touch. I have not figured out Opera. It's on my phone and I do plan to try it on my computer. I don't use Internet Explorer, mostly because it is the most prone to viruses but I think there is some rebellion there too. Some programs work better with some sites than others. If one isn't working well with a favorite site experiment with another. Yes you can use five browsers if you want. Web site managers generally have several.

Chrome has a slick add on that allows you to clip a page or part of a page and send it directly to Evernote. It integrates well with Evernote, just fill out the notebook and tags and it is gone. Firefox uses Evernote's clipper which has not worked all that well for me, not to mention it is always behind the current version. The two don't seem to be communicating. What? You are not using Evernote? You really are cheating yourself of an excellent free tool. I keep all my notes from everything in it. I don't know how people live without it.

Since I have scanned all my paper and saved it in pdf I am now looking for a program to read and manipulate pdf documents. I originally used Adobe Acrobat Pro, a good but expensive program from a less than supportive company. My version isn't working well with Windows 7 and I really don't want to buy the upgrade. I have used NitroPDF reader and PrimoPDF to print. I tried the entire suite but I had problems with it, probably more related to me than it since I insist on using WordPerfect and they use Word. [It's a bigger issue than you would imagine and seems to be getting worse. Think Corel v. Microsoft.] I'd prefer not to have six programs. If you have suggestions let me know.