Family Tree Maker: Relationship Calculator

You may already know about this one but for those who don't, this is a handy little tool in FTM that allows you to see the relationship between two people, which is especially useful if you have reason to want to know the relationship between two distantly related people in your tree and it's too complicated to work out yourself.

I recently I had reason to use this tool when I discovered that a half sister of one of my ancestors married the half brother of another one of my ancestors. Yeah, try working that one out. Instead, I let FTM do the thinking for me.

While in the "People" view, select "Tools" and then "Relationship Calculator", shown left.

If you've already selected one of the two individuals you want to include, they should already show up when the Relationship Calculator opens. Probably, the other individual will be the home person. It doesn't really matter because you can change both individuals once in the calculator.

Just click the icon immediately the right of the individual's name, the one that looks like a folder with lines on it. Then select the names you want include and then their relationship should show below the names with the "path" of their relationship displayed to the right. If your situation is like mine, where there is more than one relationship between two people, you can choose which one to view in the drop down box where it displays the relationship. You can also click on the button at the bottom of the window which says "View Relationship Chart" - I found this visual path display easier to follow. All of this is shown in the screen shot to the right. You can print the chart but unfortunately you can't save it (and trust me, I've tried recreating it in the "Publish" section with the Relationship Chart - no luck).

In this case, there was no blood relation between husband and wife but the relationship calculator is also very useful for cousin marriages and working out their degree of relation. In these cases, you will see a name or names listed under the section "Nearest common relative(s)" and around the bottom right there will be numbers for Civil Degree and Canon Degree which are the degrees of relation as defined by Civil Law and Canon Law.

By the way, the hardest thing about doing these FTM tutorials is making sure I haven't inadvertently displayed information about living people in my tree when taking the screen shots!

Antiques: Slot Machine

Mills Novelty Co. Skyscraper
1c slot machine, 1932.

One of my favorite things about family history is all the antique heirlooms that get passed down generations. I think my favorite of my family's is my grandmother's old slot machine. It was labelled Mills Novelty Co. so after a bit of online research, I discovered this model was made in 1932 and known as "Skyscraper", appropriately named after it's design. I could only find 5 cent versions of this online but ours is definitely a penny machine.

It came into our family when my great grandfather found it dumped by the side of a road, all the money having been stolen out of it. He took it home, fixed it up, and it's been in our family ever since. As a child, I spent many hours entertained by putting penny after penny in and pulling the handle. My grandmother kept a container of pennies just for us grandkids to use with the slot machine and I can remember begging her for more pennies when the cupful she'd first give me would run out. It's a miracle I didn't grow up to develop a gambling addiction! But I suppose it's different when you can open the machine and get all your money back.

Detail of the brand name.

It doesn't look in great condition but I think it just needs to be cleaned; it probably hasn't been used since I was a kid. It still works, though apparently sometimes it breaks and fortunately my uncle knows how to fix it.

Of the 5c versions of it I found on the internet, sometimes the black paint is blue instead. One of them sold for $1,200 in 2007, another is currently being sold for $2,100, and an ebay auction recently sold one for $1,278. Other auctions have starting bids around $400 but are estimated up to $5,200.

Does anyone know why I can't seem to find another 1c version of this model? Were they rarer? Older? Any additional information would be welcome!

What antique treasures have you inherited?

Thanks to my mom for the pictures!

Think Outside the Household

1850 US Census showing patriarch listed separately
from family household.

This is another one of those "how could I have missed this?" moments. Sometimes, I get so caught up in trying to find a family on a census that I forget to look for an individual on his or her own. Recently, I was reminded of this when I assumed a male ancestor died before the 1850 US Census was taken on June 1 because I had already found his wife and children living together but he was not listed among the household.

Land ownership map showing the
two properties of my ancestors.

In fact, he was still alive and recorded on the census, he was just listed separately. Why? Because, as I should have remembered, I had a land ownership map which proved he had owned two separate properties - one large, main one where I think the family was living and another, smaller lot not far away. My guess is that my ancestor was tending to the secondary property when the census taker came around. And sure enough, I found him listed on the very same census page, just two house away from his family! He was only listed by his initials, which is probably another reason why I overlooked him or why he wasn't showing up in any auto hints. I am unsure whether he was actually permanently living there or just there temporarily to tend to the secondary property but I lean towards the latter being the case.

This is also a reminder of why land ownership maps can be very important! Without it, I may have still been scratching my head as to why my ancestor was listed separately. I might have assumed he had a second property but without confirmation, the facts would have remained muddled.

1850 US Census showing son apprenticing in another
household.

Also be sure to look for missing children with other households - a neighbor or relative may have taken in a child if the family didn't have enough living space (or financially couldn't support all their children) or if the child was actually helping out around the property of an older neighbor or relative or may have been apprenticing with the head of the household. I also thought a child of the same family may have died before 1850 but then I found him apprenticing as a blacksmith with another family.

Writing Your Family History

If you're thinking about writing your family history - or you've already started but need a nudge to pick it up again, check out The Family History Writing Challenge. This can help jump start your writing and offer support. It starts February 1st and runs for the month. Try not to get overwhelmed though - remember that you only have to take this as far as you want to.

For me, it will hopefully motivate me to update all my family histories. Since I already have most of them written up, I usually update them whenever I find new records or new information on an individual or branch. But lately, I got behind on my updates, so much so that I now can't remember what needs to be updated. This means I basically have to go through my whole tree and compare every branch to every corresponding family history and see what, if anything, needs to be added to the family history. It will probably be very time consuming, which is why I've been putting it off. So hopefully the challenge will motivate me to get this done.

Interesting Clippings #9: Jimmy Logue - Infamous Thief and a Murder Mystery

Read the rest of the
Paterson Daily Press
article from Oct 19, 1893 at
Google News Archives.

Jimmy Logue was born around 1837 in Philadelphia and began stealing when he was only 17. In his own words, thievery was "born in him" and he "couldn't help it." It's believed that over the course of his criminal career, he stole an accumulative of over $300,000. He began by sneaking into homes where he found himself adapt at finding the owner's most valuable possessions quickly, and eventually graduated to bank robberies. He spent time in and out of jail but got away with many of his robberies.

In 1860, Jimmy married a widow with a son by the name of Alphonso Cutaiar, though he had never formally divorced from his first wife, Mary Jane Andrews (I guess bigamy is no worse than theft). After the death of his second wife, he married her sister, Joanna (her maiden name is cited by different sources as Gantz, and Gahan so it's unclear which is accurate), in 1871 and thus making him both Alphonso's stepfather and uncle. Alphonso was a barber and Jimmy had set him up with a barber shop and with Jimmy as the legal owner, it provided a partial cover for his stolen income, though it was obvious he spent above what the shop made. Immediately after marrying Joanna, Jimmy was tried for one of his burglary jobs and sent to jail. Released in 1877, he could finally be with his bride.

Read the rest of the
Baltimore American
article from Apr 29, 1895 at
Google News Archive.

Only a couple years later in 1879, Joanna disappeared. 14 years go by and in this time, Jimmy became so distraught over her disappearance that he eventually left their home at 1250 N 11th Street and gave it to Alphonso. Alphonso wound up selling the place and when the new owners were having some floor boards fixed in 1893, a skeleton was found. It was confirmed to be Joanna by the personal artifacts left with the body, particularly her wedding ring with a specific inscription.

At first, Jimmy was the prime suspect, his motive being to steal Joanna's diamonds. But these were diamonds he bought her himself and when he turned himself in, his alibi was proved, in a bizarre twist, that he had actually been involved in a burglary at the time of Joanna's disappearance. Suspicion turned to Alphonso. Initially denying it, Alphonso was faced with the fact that he was the only one with access to the house at the time and he began to confess - multiple times. Multiple stories. Most were spun to make Joanna's death look like an accident and his improper disposal of her body done out of fear but Joanna's missing jewelry and bonds were likely his motive. And so the mystery was finally mostly solved.

Alphonso went to jail in the Eastern State Penitentiary and in 1904, a pardon for him was attempted but thankfully denied. The judge who denied it said that Alphonso should be considered lucky to have not received the death plenty. (The Philadelphia Record, Jan 7, 1904 - Google News Archives). In 1910, he can be found on the census still in prison but by 1920, he had apparently been released and living with his family again. He eventually died in 1940 at the ripe old age of about 80 (Find A Grave).

Read the rest of the
Philadelphia Record
article from Oct 5, 1899 at
Google News Archive.

Jimmy had lost his appetite for stealing and died penniless in an almshouse on Oct 4, 1899 after repenting his sins. He seems to have genuinely loved Joanna and grieved her disappearance and death greatly. He held onto his anger for his stepson/nephew and never believed it to be an accident.

One article, which is not available for free, suggested that Jimmy's real name was William Casey. This would explain why Jimmy seemingly can't be found on any census record, even prior to his criminal carrier, under the name Jimmy or James Logue.

For more details on this story, check out the clippings and links. The articles were too big to clip fully and there were too many to clip all of them but you can read the articles in their entirety for free if you follow all the URLs. I was so intrigued by this story that I even created a Wikipedia page for it. Maybe others will continue to add more details.

Many years later, in 1951, a paper in Milwaukee picked up the Logue story as one of their weekly "mystery" true stories. It's the longest article but therefore included the most details, however embellished they might be (some of the information conflicts with the other articles). It was printed in the Milwaukee Sentinel on April 1, though it's no April Fool's joke. Below is a clipping but if this story interests you, definitely click through the link to read the full article. It is broken up over a few pages so I will link to each one, just in case:

Page 1
Page 2
Page 3

Interesting Clippings #8: Temporary Insanity as a defense has a long history

Ambler Gazette, April 25, 1895, Page 2

My morbid side is coming out. I love a good historical mystery novel so it's not surprising that I go looking for true crime in history. I came across this 1895 clipping to the right from the Ambler Gazette (Ambler, PA) about a professor who murdered his wife in Media, PA. It appears he was deemed insane and put in a mental hospital but the article is discussing his release.

NY Times, Oct 11, 1900

Wanting to know more about this, I went Googling and found his full name was Professor Swithin C. Shortlidge and that he had founded the Media Academy for Young Men. He murdered his second wife on Dec 31, 1893 and interestingly, some time after his release from the hospital, began pursuing insurance money on his wife, as detailed in an article from the New York Times, Oct 11, 1900  (left). 

I also found an earlier article at the time of the murder (below, right) which claims Shortlidge's was suffering from "the grip", which supposedly caused his insanity. The grip is an old term for the flu but as we know today, influenza does not last as long as what this article from the New York Times is claiming. Supposedly, he'd been suffering from it before his wedding in November and then killed his wife the night of December 31. The flu can cause pneumonia which may extend the illness but someone suffering that long from pneumonia would not have the strength to be walking about and murdering someone. Furthermore, neither influenza or pneumonia are not known to cause insanity as far as I'm aware!

NY Times, Jan 1, 1894

If he was suffering from a physical illness that caused a mental illness, and not just using it as a get out of jail free card (the family of Shortlidge's wife contested that there were any signs of insanity), it was likely something else, though I don't know of anything that conveniently presents itself during the murder of your wife and then goes away for the next 30+ years (Shortlidge apparently died in 1931). It's not like treatment of mental illness was very advanced during this time period so it seems unlikely that he was "cured," as was claimed by Dr. Richardson, detailed in the Reading Eagle article below.

Reading Eagle May 6, 1895, Page 1

Shortlidge had been treated at the Norristown insane asylum and released in early May of 1895. What is interesting about this article is that is mentions Shortlidge's brother is mayor of Wilmington, DE. I wonder if any political strings were pulled to both keep Shortlidge out of jail and get him released from an insane asylum having been "cured" only two years later. Though Shortlidge was ordered to pay the mother and brother of his victim $5,000 to "keep the peace", they strongly objected to Shortlidge's release regardless. They claimed their own lives to be in danger but obviously the court didn't buy it and indeed, there is no record of harm falling to them after his release.

Only weeks after his release, Shortlidge applied for a passport. Though he remained a resident of Pennsylvania for some years, he eventually moved to England for some time (he can found on the 1911 Census) with his son, who was married there in 1906. Shortlidge left England and returned to New York in 1914, where he was also living by 1930.

A very interesting case that might warrant further investigation for those interested in the history of mental illness and/or crime.

Interesting Clippings #7: Christmas Feast 100 Years Ago (er, that'll be 205 years ago then)

In this San Francisco newspaper clipping from 1907 is an article about the Christmas feast and what it entailed 100 year ago (meaning we're talking about 1807). It is interesting to see how history, especially human and societal history, has always intrigued the public. Not to mention, you might get a few good recipe ideas for Christmas dinner!

Source: The Library of Congress, The San Francisco call. (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, December 22, 1907, Page 2, Image 2

More Mystery Photos

Following on from previous posts. If you recognize anyone here, please contact me by commenting below or  sending me a message on Ancestry.com.

Family Tree Data Analysis with FTM 2012 and Spreadsheets

One of the things that so interests me about genealogy and history is statistics that help show us how people live their lives. At what age did they typically marry and start having kids? At what age did they have their last child? How many children did they have in total? If you want to exam the answers to these questions within your own tree and look at the data without having to go through your tree manually, you can do so with software like Family Tree Maker. Other brands may have support for this too but since I only have FTM 2012, that's what I use to show you. This should work for some earlier versions of FTM as well though.

Selecting a custom report. Click to enlarge.

Step 1: You start by going to the "Publish" tab - I find this a rather misleading term to describe reports and charts so I'll start with this step.

Step 2: Make sure that the small pedigree chart at the top showing you which individual from your tree is selected is on yourself or the "home" individual.

Step 3: You should find a list of different types of reports and charts available on the left. Select "Person Reports", then "Custom Report". To the above right is a screen shot showing you these steps - don't mind the black boxes over the pedigree chart, that's just to protect the privacy of living individuals.

Items to include icon.

So with the Custom Report open, we have to customize the custom report. Step 4: Click the icon for "Items to include" - this is the first icon in the little row of them under where it says "Custom Report Options".

This will bring up a list of facts with the option to add or remove them, plus some flexibility in what to include with/of each of those facts. On the right are some general options that will apply to all facts and under the list of facts it will have a button saying "Name Options" (Name being the first fact highlighted, click on other facts to get the same option for them) and within this you can customize each fact.

Adding facts to include.

But first - Step 5: Click the plus icon and in the new window select "Age at birth of first child" and "Age at birth of second child". If you'd like, you can also scroll down and select "No. of children".

Next, I went into the birth, marriage, and death fact options and made sure "Description" and "Include 'in' before place" were deselected (they might already be deselected by default, I can't remember since I have long since played with the settings). This is a personal preference, you don't have to do this, I just found it unnecessary data for this purpose and therefore it was cluttering. I've included a screen shot of this below even though it's not a necessary step. Feel free to customize any other settings - notice that in step 5 (above) I've also deselected options like "Include person notes".

Minimizing "clutter" by removing irrelevant data is optional

Again, I just find this kind of thing unnecessary clutter but some people may rather have every piece of information available, even if it's not relevant to this specific report. You could even go as far as removing the birth, marriage, and death facts altogether but I prefer to have some reference for the time frame in which the individuals lived so I keep them in.

So we've added the facts we want included, now we have to customize the individuals from our tree we want included. This is done under the right panel in "Custom Report Options" (shown below).

This is also personal preference; you can choose "All individuals" or "Selected individuals" ("Immediate family" is an option as well but probably too restrictive for this purpose). If you choose all individuals, you can skip step 6 but while we're here, also note that you can change the title of your report, which I have (shown right).

Step 6: When you choose "Selected individuals", a new window should pop up (if not, just click "Individuals To Include"). Click "Ancestors" (shown below) - this will include all your direct ancestors (making sure you indicate a sufficient amount of generations to include everyone - to be safe, I make sure it says 999) and, if you choose, also include other descendants of those ancestors and how many generations you want to go down. I usually stick to one generation but keep in mind this will include individuals who don't necessarily have children.

 

We're now done customizing the report - if it doesn't generate automatically, just click "generate report", a button at the bottom of the Custom Report Options. At this point, you could stop and just save and use the report as it appears in FTM. You can print it or save it as a PDF. However, depending on the size of your tree, you may find the file is 50+ pages long! How do you sort through all this data to learn from it? This is where spreadsheets are beneficial and the next part of this will explain how to export the data to a spreadsheet and use it effectively. Unfortunately, I don't have Microsoft Office at the moment so I will be using an Open Office spreadsheet instead of Microsoft Excel but whatever you're using, it should work similarly.

Step 1: In the top right corner of FTM, there is a button that says "Share". Click this and select "Export to CSV" (not to be confused with the American drug store CVS). A window will pop up asking you to choose whether to export the data as columns or rows. Pick columns.

Step 2: You'll then get the save window where you can choose where to save the file on your computer and what to name the file. This is all up to you.

Step 3: Once you've saved it, you'll get another pop up window asking you if you want to open the file - click yes and it should open in your default spreadsheet program. If you don't have one, you can download Open Office (it's free and safe) or you can upload to Google Drive/Docs.

Step 4 (shown right): Now, I can't say what happens in Excel but in Open Office, I get a Text Import window in which it's really important that under the section that says "Separated by", you make sure "Space" is unticked and "Comma" is ticked. If you don't, the data will be all over the cells and a big mess.

Step 5: You may find you have a lot of data for people who don't even have any children, which is kind of pointless for this task, if you mainly want to see the age of every individual at first and last birth. If you're happy with the information remaining, there is no need to do this. But as I've mentioned before, I hate clutter. So if you're like me, what you need to do is highlight the column for number of children and sort by descending. In the pop up window, choose "Extend Selection". This all shown below:

Now you can scroll down, highlight the rows for each individual who have 0 children and delete! Once your data is "clean", you can play around with sorting by age at first or last birth too and you can add up all the ages or numbers of children to get an average. If you're writing a family history, you can incorporate this information into it. I find it fascinating to see who and at what age the youngest and oldest person in my tree had children and what the average number of children was in my tree and how it compares to national stats from the times. Granted, you have to keep in mind that probably some of the families in your tree may not be complete and therefore you may have some people listed as only having one child when they actually had more that you haven't discovered yet. That will skew your averages - but it's better than nothing and you can always update it as you learn more.

This is just one example of how you can use these tools to manage and analyze your genealogy - you can apply these same methods to nearly any type of data within your tree. It really illustrates the kind of advanced management and analysis tools which are available with genealogy software in comparison with a simplified online tree. I often see people asking what the difference is and whether it's worth the money to buy software - this is a great example of why it is.

Using Documents to Understand the Time Period

If you've gotten to a point with your research where finding new records is few and far between and you're looking to get more out of the records you already have, sometimes you can get an understanding of the time period just by carefully examining a document and browsing other records in the same collection. I will use the 1855 marriage license of my third great grandparents, William Henry Mills and Emma Elizabeth Sherwood, to illustrate.

Wyandot County, Ohio Marriage Applications and Licenses 1845 - 1858, vol 1, page 196

What is interesting about this is that it attests to the fact that William is "over twenty-one years of age". This suggests that in 1855 Ohio, a man had to be 21 or older to be married. Meanwhile, it confirms that Emma is over eighteen, which means women only had to be at least 18 to be married, but notice how there is a big gap in the document after that statement? That gap is to allow a hand written addendum, probably something along the lines of explaining that the bride is not 18 but her parents/guardians give approval to marry.

If this is true then I should be able to find an example of it on another record in the same collection - the Ohio County Marriages, 1789 - 1994 on FamilySearch.org. And indeed, it only took a few moments to find one of the many examples confirming this. In fact, you can see here that the bride is as young as 15 but that's okay because her father consents to it:

Wyandot County, Ohio Marriage Applications and Licenses 1845 - 1858, vol 1, Page 186

In my browsing, I didn't find a bride under fifteen so probably, that was the minimum age for a girl to marry with parental consent. But what about the men? You might think 21 seems rather high for a minimum age requirement of marriage, especially in history when we tend to assume that people married younger; but remember that men were expected to financially support their whole future family so they were encouraged to wait longer before marrying, until they had sufficient income. However, apparently exceptions could be made for men too. In the below example, the groom was only twenty but his legal guardian gives consent (though the guardian has the same surname, it does not specify it's the groom's father so it could have been a brother or uncle):

Wyandot County, Ohio Marriage Applications and Licenses 1845 - 1858, vol 1, page 192

I don't know why there is no gap in the document to allow for amendments regarding the groom's age as well. As you can see, it had to be squeezed in between lines. I suppose that means there weren't very many men marrying under the age of 21.

You'll notice how the default legal guardian is the father and only if the father is dead is someone else listed. If the father is deceased, typically the guardianship goes to the mother, as seen below in yet another example where the mother is described as the only surviving parent:

Wyandot County, Ohio Marriage Applications and Licenses 1845 - 1858, vol 1, page 191

What is the point of all this? Well, it tells me a lot about marriage laws, guardianship, and customs in Ohio in the mid 19th century without necessarily having to read a book on it. I now know that the minimum age for a bride was 18 but it was 21 for a groom, unless they had consent of a guardian to marry younger. I would have to look at more records to confirm 15 and 20 as the minimum ages with the consent of a guardian but this gives me an approximate idea for now. It also tells me that, not surprisingly, girls were more likely to marry under the age of 18 than boys were to marry under 21 (that is not to say girls were more likely to marry under 18 altogether though - in the majority of records, they were over 18). It also reminds me that the father was the only legal guardian who needed to give consent if the bride or groom was underage, which means the mother legally had no say. Only in the case of a deceased father did the mother become the legal guardian (though this may have changed if she remarried). And probably, if both parents were deceased, the legal guardian was a godparent. A little bit of browsing has given me a lot of information about this time period and location which I can add to my written family histories.

Going back to my ancestor's record, what is most interesting is that it says Emma is over 18 but according to my records, she was only 17 at the time! This could lend itself to speculation that perhaps she married without the approval of her parents and lied about her age. I am not going to make assumptions but it's something to keep in mind and make note of it. So definitely give your records a good analysis and do a bit of browsing in the collection - you never know what you might find!