Author Archives: Dawn Bingaman

Presidential Elections: 2012 and 1908

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J. R. Bigham Has Taken Part in Fourteen Presidential Elections

1908 Republican candidates, William Taft and James ShermanA campaign poster for 1908 Republican candidates, William Taft and James Sherman1

Here in the United States, we have been gearing up for today’s Presidential election for what seems like forever. In my precinct in Washington state, we’re being forced to vote by mail, which afforded me ample time to study my voter’s pamphlet and do additional research online. I dropped my ballot in the box at the elections office over the weekend with a tremendous feeling of being part of something greater, and with pride for having done my civic duty in a responsible fashion.

Part of what defines us as individuals is our politics, those issues we believe in. Our ancestors and their family members were no different. They, too, participated in the process if their laws at the time permitted it. Or, perhaps they may have been among those who fought for women’s suffrage. They learned the issues, and probably debated them, just like we do today. When they voted, they were undoubtedly proud of having done so.

One person in our Bigham family was singled out in his local Seattle newspaper for having voted in fourteen (or fifteen) Presidential elections. His name was John Reed Bigham, the brother of my ancestor, William Ross Bigham. What follows is a portion of that article, which contained a photo of Bigham, along with a good deal of biographical information.

HIs First Vote Was Cast for Winfield Scott
“His First Vote Was Cast For Winfield Scott”. Seattle Post-Intelligencer, undated clipping [1908], p. 1.

When doing historic newspaper research, don’t just focus on obituaries. Articles like these really add to the understanding of our ancestors and their family members as people.

And, if you’re in the United States and haven’t yet voted, please do so! Perhaps you or I will become the subject of a news item such as this in the future.

Sources:
1 (“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1908RepublicanPoster.png”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1908RepublicanPoster.png, accessed 06 Nov 2012).

From PDF to Evernote

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In my presentation entitled “Evernote for Genealogists” given at the Seattle Genealogical Society last Saturday (10/6/2012), I demonstrated some ways in which genealogists can use Evernote to record their research as it unfolds. Even though I had 90-minutes and a three-page syllabus, it still wasn’t enough time or space to delve into some of the details. Since I find Evernote to be an indispensable tool, I have decided to use this blog to share the occasional tip for genealogists (or any researcher, really) wanting to incorporate Evernote into his or her digital research process. In this example, I will use the NGS Magazine to illustrate this useful application.

One of the benefits of membership in the National Genealogical Society (NGS) is a subscription to NGS Magazine, a quarterly publication filled with useful articles for genealogists. Members are able to access PDF copies of the magazine by logging into the “Members Only” section of the website. You could download and store the entire issue in Evernote, but that would take up unnecessary space, and invariably include material like advertising that you may not wish to archive.

Today’s Evernote tip is how to extract a few pages from a larger PDF file using Adobe Acrobat and save those pages in Evernote for later reference. There are several different ways to accomplish this task that come readily to mind. I will share one method here. In my example, I am using an older version of Adobe Acrobat Standard (version 6.0 for Windows) and the free Evernote desktop client version 4.5.8.

  1. Download the complete PDF file to your computer.
  2. Open the downloaded file in Adobe Acrobat (not the free Adobe Acrobat Reader – there is a difference).
  3. Click the Pages tab on the left side of the window to expose thumbnail images of the pages within the file.

    Adober Acrobat | Pages tab

  4. Click the first page you want to extract, then press and hold the Ctrl key on your keyboard. Click the other three pages (then let go). You should see blue borders around the four thumbnail images indicating your selection.

  5. Right-click and select Extract Pages.Acrobat | Extract pages
  6. Press OK to confirm your selection in the Extract Pages dialog box.
  7. Save your extracted pages somewhere you can find later by going to File > Save As on the Adobe Acrobat menu. Browse to the location you want to save to, rename the file if you like, and click Save.
  8. In Evernote, click New Note.Evernote | Toolbar showing new note
  9. Right-click in the newly created blank note and click Attach File.Evernote | Attach Files
  10. Browse to the location you saved the file to in step 7, then click Open. Your extracted PDF article will appear in Evernote as a new note!

Evernote | Extracted pages from fileExtracted PDF article attached as a note in Evernote.1 The article text and a portion of the photograph have been deliberately blurred since I do not have permission to republish the article. The attached article in Evernote is for my own personal research.

The photograph used by the author in the above article is part of the Liljenquist Family Collection of Civil War Photographs housed at the Library of Congress. See a close-up of the image here: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2011645302/.

1 The article of interest was authored by Claire Prechtel-Kluskens, “Compiled Military Service Records, Part III: The record of events,” NGS Magazine, September 2012, 28-31; downloaded from the National Genealogical Society website (http://www.ngsgenealogy.org) : 07 October 2012.

[Post edited 2 Jan 2018]

A Little Bird Told Me…the Power of Twitter

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I spend an inordinate aTwitter iconmount of my free time researching early New Jersey history and sources for shreds of information about several of my ancestral lines that once lived in Trenton and surrounding communities: namely the Carson and Hopkins families of Middlesex, Monmouth and Mercer Counties.

My challenge is that I have never lived in New Jersey, nor have I ever traveled to New Jersey. I do the bulk of my research online, so I am always interested in learning about websites that focus on New Jersey history or have original New Jersey documents.

Yesterday, I learned through Twitter (a social networking site) that the journal called
New Jersey History is available online, for free:

I explored the link, and discovered not only the latest version of the journal online, but several additional issues, going back to 2009. Best of all, the journal is searchable, and browseable.

I quickly located three articles that were of interest to me, and may be of interest to other genealogists. I then shared these explicit links through Twitter. Since I’ve not yet integrated my Twitter feed into my blog, I thought I would share them here.

 Another: “To Reach Sweet Home Again”:The Impact of Soldiering on New Jersey’s Troops During the American Civil War.” njh.libraries.rutgers.edu/index.php/njh/…

— Dawn Bingaman (@AncestorRoundup) September 27, 2012

Contains map: “A Survey of the Canals and Water Raceways of New Jersey”. njh.libraries.rutgers.edu/index.php/njh/…. Thanks to @petermarsch for main URL.

— Dawn Bingaman (@AncestorRoundup) September 27, 2012

Tweets appear in Twitter  in reverse chronological order, with the newest at the top.

New Jersey History is a peer-reviewed journal, with issues dating back to 1845. I cannot wait to explore more than what is currently available online!

Twitter, like other social networks, has been maligned at times for having too much meaningless information (cruft). However, it can be used by genealogists to share information and resources. Even without a Twitter account, you can search public tweets. Look for common hashtags like #genealogy or #familyhistory.

[Edited 18 Feb 2018 to restore missing images.]

Chronicling Their Lives Using Historic Newspapers

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Basic search and navigation of the Chronicling America historic newspaper website of the Library of Congress

I am a huge proponent of using period newspapers for genealogical and historical research. Using newspapers, we are often able to tease out details of our ancestors’ lives that add color to otherwise dry facts. We’re also able to get a glimpse of how historic events unfolded during their lifetime, or what the prevailing opinions were about an event or issue.

One way to access this window on their world is by using the Chronicling America website, a product of the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP):

“The National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP), a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Library of Congress (LC), is a long-term effort to develop an Internet-based, searchable database of U.S. newspapers with descriptive information and select digitization of historic pages. Supported by NEH, this rich digital resource will be developed and permanently maintained at the Library of Congress. 1

Although the Chronicling America site has been online since about 2007, continuing improvements in search and viewer functionality and the growing database of digitized American newspapers have greatly improved its usefulness for researchers. Coverage has been greatly expanded, and the collection now has selected newspapers published from 1836-1922. Today, more than 5.2 million newspaper images are available from 25 states plus the District of Columbia. Another seven states received NDNP awards in 2011 or 2012; images from those newly participating institutions are not yet available. (Those states are: Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Michigan, North Carolina, North Dakota and West Virginia).2

Main page of the Chronicling America website

Main page of the Chronicling America website showing newspaper front pages published 100 years ago

It is now possible to conduct a basic search from the main page of the site via the Search Pages tab. I am interested in learning more about my 3rd-great-grandfather, Samuel Fryman (1807-1889), so I run just a basic search using his name. A basic search can also be limited to a specific state or time period by making those selections using the drop-down arrows. In my case, I have opted to run the search across all currently available newspapers and years. Generally, I like to start with a broad search and will only begin narrowing my search parameters if I get an unwieldy number of hits at the outset.

Basic search terms: samuel fryman

Entering basic search terms: samuel fryman

By default, results are returned in Gallery view, sorted by relevance (determined by how many times your search terms appear on one page). I have received 19 hits with this search. Although it is not visible here, with one exception, all results are for Missouri newspapers. Samuel Fryman lived in Missouri the latter part of his life, so I know I am on the right track with this search.

Basic search results with terms: samuel fryman

Thumbnail images of actual newspaper pages are shown in Gallery view

Search terms are highlighted in red, so it is easy to see where on the page the search terms appear. It is also possible to see just a list of results without the images by clicking List next to where it says View. When using list view, I find that re-sorting my results by Date makes it easy to compare search results with a timeline of life events of my ancestor or person of interest.

I have chosen one of the search results at random (OK, maybe not so random – it had an interesting masthead) to further demonstrate how to work with search results.

The County Paper (Oregon, Mo.), 09 Jun 1882, p. 1

The title of the newspaper, date of publication and image number (i.e. page) number all appear above the image itself. This is important information to record in order to create a source citation. I’ll also make note of the persistent link below the image in my research log (I use Evernote) so I can return to this exact image at a later date.

Viewing the image is quite intuitive. Just position your cursor over the image and use your left mouse button and click to zoom in. Click and drag with your left mouse button to move the newspaper image within the viewer.

Close-up of image viewer options

Alternately, you can use the buttons to navigate – zoom in, zoom out or view full screen. If at any point you get lost, click the house button to “go home” (return to your original view).

Once I have located my highlighted search terms in the viewer there are several ways I can preserve the image. To print or save the image as seen in the viewer, click Clip Image.

Search viewer with terms highlighted

The section of the page that appeared in the viewer is what will print, along with associated citation information. Note that if you choose Download this image the citation information is not a part of the image. The highlight on the search terms is also omitted when printed or saved from this location.

Print or download newspaper clipping

You can do more than simply download or save an image to your computer from the Chronicling America site. There are a variety of social networking and bookmarking choices available by clicking the green Share/Save button in the upper right, immediately beneath the search bar. Explore them all by clicking through the three tabs.

Chronicling America Share/Save optionsIf a particular newspaper sparks your curiosity, you can also browse other pages within that day’s newspaper by clicking in one of the yellow highlighted areas shown below:

Browse options

Browse other pages within the selected issue (yellow) or browse other dates the newspaper was published (pink). Highlights added by the author.

To see other publication dates of the same newspaper in calendar view, click in the pink highlighted area of the toolbar. Choose one of the issues by clicking the bold date link on any calendar.

Browse other issues

That wraps up part one of this tutorial on navigating the Chronicling America website. Believe it or not, there is much more available than what was covered here. In part two, we’ll look at Advanced Search, and do a comparison with searches on another terrific newspaper site, Genealogy Bank, available by subscription-only.

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Post Script: No kidding. When I started collecting information for this blog post on 16 Sep 2012, the available page count was 4.83 million. Five days later, 5.20 million plus images were available. This is one website that is worth re-visiting often.

Sources:

1 http://www.loc.gov/ndnp/, accessed 23 Sep 2012.

2 http://www.loc.gov/ndnp/awards/index.html, accessed 23 Sep 2012.