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Monday's Diggings: Mentzer Marriage Announcement

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Do you remember sitting at a microfilm reader, turning the handle as you scrolled through page after page of an old newspaper looking for a marriage announcement? When you finally found what you were searching for, did you print a copy, transcribe the entire article, or simply jot down the information that seemed important at the time? I have to admit that I sometimes chose that last option. Printing an article from microfilm wasn’t always convenient. At the library where I was researching, I had to rewind the roll, move it to a separate reader/printer, relocate the article, and then spend a quarter to make a copy. Apparently, that was enough of an obstacle for me to decide that handwritten notes would do! One of those sets of notes concerned the marriage of my great-grandparents, Charles O. Mentzer and Nettie E. Wells . Their wedding announcement appeared in the 20 October 1893 issue of The Yates Center News . Fortunately, genealogy research has changed considerably since I made those...
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Saturday Night Genealogy Fun

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    Calling all Genea-Musings Fans:   It's Saturday Night again -  time for some more Genealogy Fun!! Here is your assignment if you choose to play along (cue the Mission Impossible music, please!): 1)  How do you use Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools to help you understand the lives, history, and geography associated with your family and your ancestors, that aid your genealogy and family history research?   Instead of composing my own answer to this post, I asked my primary AI partner, ChatGPT to answer the question. Below is the complete answer from ChatGPT. You’ve used AI less as a simple “answer machine” and more as a research partner for interpreting records, understanding historical context, exploring geography, testing hypotheses, and turning evidence into family stories . Based on the genealogy projects we’ve worked on, your uses fall into several broad areas: Reading and interpreting historical records. You’ve used ChatGPT and other AI...
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Fifteen and Riding: The Civil War Service of James Marshall Ricketts

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Have you ever discovered that a military record doesn't tell quite the whole story? While researching the Civil War service of James Marshall Ricketts , I initially had a fairly straightforward account of his service. James enlisted in the 7th Indiana Cavalry, was hospitalized in Memphis, returned to his regiment, was promoted to corporal, and eventually mustered out in Texas. Then I looked more closely at his age. Enlisting in the 7th Indiana Cavalry According to his military records, James M. Ricketts enrolled on 18 August 1863 at Indianapolis, Indiana , for a term of three years. He was mustered into service on 11 September 1863 as a private in Company K, 7th Indiana Cavalry. His Company Descriptive Book provides additional information about the young soldier. It describes James as about 5 feet 4½ inches tall, with a light complexion, gray eyes and light hair. He was born in Clinton County, Indiana, and had been working as a farmer. Most importantly, the military record gives h...
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Friday Find - Cora Adams Crawford Obituary

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Do you have photocopies of newspaper articles tucked away in your genealogy files—clippings you copied years ago and perhaps haven't looked at since? Today's Friday Find is one of those items from my Kansas CRAWFORD files: an obituary for Cora Adams Crawford published in the Dodge City Daily Globe on December 6, 1947. Cora Adams married Nelson G. Crawford , a brother of my great-grandfather, Judson Foster Crawford . Although Cora isn't a direct ancestor, her obituary adds details to the story of the extended Crawford family in Dodge City. Beyond documenting her death, the obituary provides a glimpse into Cora's life and community connections. It identifies her parents, tells when the family came to Kansas and later moved to Dodge City, gives her marriage date, names her surviving siblings, and describes her involvement with the Methodist Church, Eastern Star, and P.E.O. It's a good reminder of why those old photocopies are worth revisiting. A single obituary ...
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A Hutchinson DNA Experiment: Using the Scientific Method in Genealogy

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Do you remember learning about the scientific method in high school—or perhaps even earlier? Have you ever considered how closely the process of genealogy research can resemble the scientific method? Most genealogy researchers will tell you to begin with a question. From there, genealogists may use different terminology, but I often find myself mentally following the familiar steps of the scientific method: Question Hypothesis — a proposed answer to the question Test the hypothesis Collect data Evaluate the data Draw a conclusion Translated into genealogy, those steps might look something like this: Question: Who are the parents of _____? Hypothesis: Preliminary research suggests that X may be the son or daughter of Y. Research/Test: Locate records for Y, X, and their relatives while documenting the research. Collect Data: Gather census records, land records, probate records, DNA matches, family trees, and other evidence. Evaluate: Does the accumulated evidence support or contrad...
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New Netherland Settlers

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Do you have ancestral lines going back to the settlement of New Netherland ? I knew that my husband's SEBRING line could be traced back to New Netherland. However, it wasn't until recently, when I connected my third great-grandmother, Rachel Harris Currey, to her parents, that I uncovered several Dutch lines in my own tree. Suddenly, New Netherland research became much more relevant to my genealogy. Thus, when I recently saw a Facebook post from the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society (NYG&B) about its New Netherland Settlers project, I immediately clicked to learn more. The project has an ambitious goal: to develop detailed, peer-reviewed biographical sketches of the people who resided in New Netherland prior to 1664. The first completed sketches were released online in July 2025, and additional sketches are being added as research is completed. What makes these sketches especially valuable to genealogists is their scope. Depending on the records available for...
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Unlinking Albert Hutchinson

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Have you ever unlinked a child from parents in your family tree? If so, did you stop to consider all the different places where that relationship—and your reason for changing it—might need to be updated? Recently, I made the difficult decision to unlink my second great-grandfather, Albert Hutchinson , from the parents I had long assigned to him: Aaron Hutchinson and Sarah Merry . Why I Questioned the Relationship My recent research into the descendants of Aaron and Hannah Hutchinson , combined with a closer look at my autosomal DNA matches, has caused me to question whether Albert was actually their grandson. The problem is fairly simple: I have not found evidence directly connecting my Albert Hutchinson of Iowa to the Hutchinson family of Livingston County, New York. I do have records stating that Albert was born in Fulton County, New York . That location does not prove he wasn't related to the Livingston County family, but it adds to my concerns about a relationship that was alre...
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Monday Diggings

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Charles Mentzer and Nettie Wells Marry in 1893 Have you ever looked at a marriage record and realized how much more it tells you than simply the date of the wedding? As I continue digging through the records in my genealogy files, I came across the marriage record for my maternal great-grandparents, Charles O. Mentzer and Nettie A. Wells . They were married in Woodson County, Kansas, in October 1893. While I already had their marriage date in my family tree, the actual record adds several details about the beginning of their married life. The Marriage License The license was issued by the Woodson County Probate Court on 14 October 1893 . At the time, both Charles and Nettie were residents of Yates Center, Kansas . Charles was listed as 24 years old, while Nettie was 20. The couple did not marry on the day the license was issued. Instead, the certificate on the lower portion of the record documents their marriage four days later, on 18 October 1893 . The completed license was then retur...
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Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - A Turning Point in My LIfe

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  Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: It's Saturday Night again — time for some more Genealogy Fun!! This week's challenge asks us to identify an event, milestone or turning point in our own life—or that of an ancestor—and consider how that event could become the basis for a family story. When I started thinking about the milestones in my own life, one year quickly rose to the top: 1974 . In May 1974, I was finishing college at Kansas State Teachers College in Emporia. On May 17, I graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Education degree with a major in physical science education. The very next day, May 18, I married Michael Dean Philbrick at St. Mark's Lutheran Church in Emporia. Thus, in the space of about 24 hours, I went from being Marcia Crawford, college student, to Marcia Philbrick, college graduate and married woman. But the changes didn't stop there. That August, Michael and I moved to Seneca, Kansas, where we rented the upper floor of Chet and Madge Milne's h...
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Problem Solving with AI

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 When I decided to move Heartland Genealogy from WordPress to Blogger, I thought the biggest challenge would be moving the content. Instead, I've received an unexpected education in DNS records, custom domains, HTTPS certificates, RSS feeds, featured images, redirects, and social media previews . And, as has happened several times during this move, ChatGPT has served as my troubleshooting partner. The Custom Domain Adventure One of my goals was to use my Heartland Genealogy domain with Blogger. I already owned heartlandgenealogy.org , and I wanted readers to reach the Blogger site through www.heartlandgenealogy.org rather than a Blogspot address. That sounded simple. It wasn't. Blogger provided the CNAME records that needed to be added to my DNS settings. After making those changes, there was the inevitable waiting period while the new DNS information propagated. Then came the questions. Was the CNAME correct? Did I need to turn on Redirect domain in Blogger? Why did Blogger ...
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Following the Land

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A Timeline of Richard Foster’s Warren County Property Have you ever looked at an abstract of title and wondered how you were ever going to make sense of it? The abstract I've been working with traces land in Warren County, Indiana, back to my ancestor Richard Foster , who purchased it from the federal government in 1828. But the abstract is much more than a record of that original purchase. It follows the property through more than a century of wills, heirs, deeds, mortgages, court proceedings, and other transactions. And I probably wouldn't have this record at all if someone hadn't found me through my online genealogy research. A Genealogy Gift from a Stranger Some time ago, I was contacted by a woman who had discovered either my online family tree or my Heartland Genealogy blog and recognized my connection to the Foster family. She had an abstract of title for land that had once belonged to Richard Foster . As I recall, she wasn't researching the Foster family as her ...
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When Neighbors Have a Familiar Name

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Have you ever read another genealogist's blog and wondered whether your families might somehow be connected? I've followed fellow geneablogger Linda Stufflebeam  and her blog, Empty Branches on the Family Tre e, for quite some time. Since several of Linda's posts about her Stufflebeam research have mentioned Warren County, Indiana , I've occasionally wondered whether our families might cross paths somewhere in that county. It wasn't until I received an abstract of title for land originally purchased by my ancestor Richard Foster that I had a reason to look more closely. A Familiar Name on the Map Richard Foster purchased land in Section 10, Township 21 North, Range 9 West in Warren County, Indiana, in 1828. While looking at a map of the first landowners in the area, I noticed something interesting. John E. Stufflebeam owned land nearby. Stufflebeam! Since I recognized the surname from Linda's blog, that immediately caught my attention. Then I checked ...
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When AI Connected a Dower Record to a PIece of Medical History

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  When AI Connected a Dower Record to a Piece of Medical History Have you ever been working with a record for one reason only to discover that one of the people named in it had a much bigger story? That's what happened while I was working on a recent Friday Find involving Thomas D. Crawford and his widow, Jane. I started with a record, not with a famous person. The Original Record I have had a photocopy of a Jefferson County, Indiana, probate record in my files for years. I probably obtained the copy during a research trip to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. More recently, I found the record again in the digitized images on FamilySearch and obtained a much better copy. The record comes from the February 1836 term of the Jefferson County Probate Court and is headed: Jane Crawford vs. The Heirs of Thomas D. Crawford Decd — On Petition for Dower The proceeding involved the partition of land belonging to Thomas D. Crawford. His property was described as the Southwest Quart...
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