What is a Lassforeel?
Apparently it is a town in Vermont so my question became where is Lassforeel?
I like to write brief biographies of our ancestors and to do it effectively for my children, I add lots of maps, including contemporary, current, and sometimes a Google Earth shot. The above map is as close as I could get to the marriage date of ancestors Ichabod Clawson and Katherine Beden in 1807. I am particularly interested in Ichabod because he appears to have lived in several states over his 80+ year life-span. Rambling feet, our family calls it...
But to be efficient, I need to be able to pinpoint their whereabouts on the map. Henceforth the story of The Search For Lassforeel.
Ancestry.com's index information: Lassforeel, Vermont, USA.
I read histories of the county. I dug out my 1973 book by E. Kay Kirkham "The Handwriting of American Records for a Period of 300 Years" published by Everton Publishers (do you remember them?) I googled. I searched websites which specialized in maps. I looked at websites about towns from our history that no longer exist. I went off into other branches of the family and came back (repeatedly).
Maybe I shouldn't be so anal - maybe it was the name of a creek, or maybe he named his farm and it wasn't a town after all? Wasn't the source of Fairfield, Vermont enough?
As a last ditch effort [of 2018 research] I joined an active genealogy group on Facebook and uploaded a copy of the above file. The general consensus is: [tadaaaa] a very sloppy copy of Fairfield.
One generous research uploaded familysearch.org's version which clearly says "Fairfield, Vermont" on their index...
A. Call Number/Physical Location: G3750 1814 .C3 TIL. Repository: Library of Congress Geography and Map Division Washington, D.C. 20540-4650 dcu
B. Source Information: Title: Vermont, Vital Records, 1720-1908. Author: Ancestry.com. Publisher:
Ancestry.com Operations, Inc. Publisher Date: 2013. Publisher Location: Provo, UT, USA. Repository Information: Ancestry.com.
C."Vermont Vital Records, 1760-1954," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XFN4-VHK : 5 November 2017), Ichabod Clauson and Katherine Beden, 23 Aug 1807, Marriage; State Capitol Building, Montpelier; FHL microfilm 27,474.
Apparently it is a town in Vermont so my question became where is Lassforeel?
1814 Map of Vermont, from the Library of Congress by Carey & Doolittle
Digital ID: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.gmd/g3750.ct000094
I like to write brief biographies of our ancestors and to do it effectively for my children, I add lots of maps, including contemporary, current, and sometimes a Google Earth shot. The above map is as close as I could get to the marriage date of ancestors Ichabod Clawson and Katherine Beden in 1807. I am particularly interested in Ichabod because he appears to have lived in several states over his 80+ year life-span. Rambling feet, our family calls it...
But to be efficient, I need to be able to pinpoint their whereabouts on the map. Henceforth the story of The Search For Lassforeel.
(B) Marriage record of Ichabod Clawson and Katherine Beden 23 Aug 1807
by Benjamin Wooster, Minister.
Close-up.
Maybe I shouldn't be so anal - maybe it was the name of a creek, or maybe he named his farm and it wasn't a town after all? Wasn't the source of Fairfield, Vermont enough?
As a last ditch effort [of 2018 research] I joined an active genealogy group on Facebook and uploaded a copy of the above file. The general consensus is: [tadaaaa] a very sloppy copy of Fairfield.
One generous research uploaded familysearch.org's version which clearly says "Fairfield, Vermont" on their index...
(C) Index search results from familysearch.org.
...plus an added bonus of the back of the card:
"Fairfield, Book 1 Miscellaneous, Records in the office" although never in a million years would I translate it to be "Fairfield"!
We can also click forwards and backwards several pages to compare the handwriting, which is helpful.
Lessons Learned
1. Be anal, it's OK.
2. Reach out. Younger researchers will never grasp what we went through to find an answer to the most mundane question (do remember sending SASEs?). Researchers from my generation need to quit banging our heads against the wall and embrace the online communities where images can be easily and cheaply uploaded. Can't figure out how to do it? Call a kid :-)
3. Search multiple sources. I never thought to check FamilySearch against ancestry.com. As I understand it, the two companies use different indexers and different algorithms for different projects which is super cool. On the surface it would seem to be a waste of resources but in reality, more eyes are better!
-------------------------------------------------------------
B. Source Information: Title: Vermont, Vital Records, 1720-1908. Author: Ancestry.com. Publisher:
Ancestry.com Operations, Inc. Publisher Date: 2013. Publisher Location: Provo, UT, USA. Repository Information: Ancestry.com.
C."Vermont Vital Records, 1760-1954," database with images, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:XFN4-VHK : 5 November 2017), Ichabod Clauson and Katherine Beden, 23 Aug 1807, Marriage; State Capitol Building, Montpelier; FHL microfilm 27,474.
Comments
Post a Comment