Benjamin L. TRAFFORD was born on 05 August 1835 in New York City, NY. He was the son of Abraham Trafford and Basilea Harmer.

On 15 April 1857 he married Cecelia Merritt INGERSOLL in New York City, New York.

Cecelia was born 05 August 1837 in New York City, New York to Roswell R. Ingersoll and Caroline Merritt.

Benjamin died on 23 December 1883 and Cecelia died on 12 February 1915. They are both buried in the First Presbyterian Churchyard in Shrewsbury, Monmouth County New Jersey.

Most of the providers that have joined Genlighten so far perform lookups at repositories in the United States and Canada. From the feedback we’ve received, that’s a good fit for the majority of our users. But we’re well aware that many of you need lookups performed on the other side of the Atlantic, too. So this week we’re spotlighting one of our Eastern European providers: RusGenProject.

From RusGenProject’s profile:

Kirill Chashchin is currently preparing a book on Imperial Russian genealogy research. He’s also building a reference website covering the same topic. He blogs about the project here.

He specializes in research at repositories and archives throughout the former Soviet Union, including the countries of Russia, Ukraine, Byelorussia, Moldova, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Armenia, Kazakhskan, Kirgizstan, and Uzbekistan and the cities of Moscow, St Petersburg, Kiev, Odessa, and Minsk.

Nine Questions With RusGenProject

1)      How did you get started doing genealogy lookups/research?

It was about 10 years ago. I somewhat decided that I need to find ten generations of my ancestors. It was a personal challenge which took a couple of years and several thousand kilometers of travel to complete. This turned out to be fun. It matched wonderfully my lifetime passion for problem-solving. Then I started helping others.

2)      Do you have a genealogy superpower? If so, what is it?

I think I can easily read 100-200 years old handwriting in most of local languages. I can do it fast and can easily switch from one language to another. Another very helpful trick I like to do is to find an exact location from the short pieces of data usually available to the researcher. Finding the history of  particular village and the location of the records is a task I like to do and do easily.

3)      Describe a tricky research problem you’re particularly proud of having solved?

Last year I received a request to find information on the person who was a german prisonner of war in USSR after the WW2. I was very doubtful something can be found — the rarity of the request and the reputation of the archive to be very “secretive” on POWs led me to believe this is a kind of dead end in research. I was very surprised to receive the e-mail from archive stating the personal file is available and describing complicated but doable procedure to actually get a copy of it.

4)      What are the ideal elements you like to see in a well-formulated lookup or research query?

Names/Dates/Locations. The more you put in those three items the easier are your chances to find something. Getting at least the rudimentary knowledge of the area you are researching is also very good. I frequently quote this wikipedia article to people who send me their ininial requests — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guberniya . Thinking about the administrative-territorial division and its history is very good for the researcher.

5)      What’s the most interesting record source or repository you’ve utilized in your area?

Strange, but the Russian historical Library in Moscow, Russia with its very extensive genealogical collection is a very helpful place for plenty of research. They have city and phone directories for the number of places large and small of Russian Empire and USSR.

6)      What technical tools do you use to produce the digital images you provide to clients?

Just a scanner. GIMP for simple image editing. I do believe that you need to provide the better available image quality. Scanning, emailing, storing and editing 10MB picture is no longer a problem. You might have something interesting on the page which you might miss in the low resolution.

7)      Any new lookups you’re considering offering?

I might consider archive lookups in almost all the Moscow city archives, but it is frequently a procedure requiring a lot of time and effort. Just to get a “document not available” answer.

8)      What advice would you give to someone who wants to get started as a lookup provider?

Get to know how archive works. They have their communications codes allowing them to make a “friend-or-foe” determination on the fly. Learn to use those codes.

9)      What other passions do you pursue when you’re not doing lookups/research?

I am professional fraud examiner at http://sepmc.com specialising in international frauds, forensic accounting and computer crime. I am an old big fan of large database analysis and visualisation. I like to hear classical music concerts.

Lookups RusGenProject offers:

Kirill offers lookups covering Russian Empire Nobility. He can search Moscow City Directories and Moscow Necropolis tombstone inscriptions. And he provides translation services for both Russian and Ukrainian genealogical documents.

Last week, Bud Caddell posted a cool personal and family history startup idea on his blog “What Consumes Me“. Here’s Bud’s proposal:

At every demarcation of time, we look back. We sift through our memories for those bookmarks… for those vibrant moments, and we blur the rest into our periphery.

Now with so much of our social interaction tied to digital means – why aren’t we collecting our actions for posterity in a more accessible form? Why can’t I look back ten years and see the sites I visited, friends I accepted, content I created, and content I shared? Why can’t I look back to see the seeds of a new friendship or the first movements within a new social networking site?

I think this is BRILLIANT and I wish I had thought of it first! Why does this excite me? I’ll try to explain.

Archiving Social Media Preserves Status AND Relationships

For one thing, I find that I use Twitter and Facebook very much as our ancestors used a line-a-day diary to record seemingly trivial things such as who they visited, what the weather was like, what they did at work or what they made for dinner. So preserving my tweets and status updates for posterity performs the same function passively — without any intervention on my part. But because social media is about connections rather than just about status, preserving my social media content will also preserve the story arc of my relationships. This is huge!

When we’re successful in genealogy research today, we can construct basic timelines for our ancestors: where they lived when, the property they bought, the dates of key life events like birth, marriage, death, military service, employment. With great effort, we can piece together basic family relationships… but we can seldom see those relationships unfold in quasi-real-time.

If we are sharing our daily lives, thoughts and interactions with family and friends through tweets, blog posts, and “likes” on Facebook, then archiving that content will make those details available to our descendants much as a dusty journal would. But a particularly smart web application could do much more than that.

Curating My Social Media Artifacts

By tapping the power of context-sensitive tagging, our hypothetical website could categorize our social media participation and make it easy for future generations to mine our content for trends, relationships, ideas, disappointments, and epiphanies. All the things that we worry about social media doing while we’re alive — letting marketers target ads towards us based on our preferences and interests for instance — could be turned into something much more benign and beneficial after we’re gone.

Some Basic Specifications

Here’s a quick list of what I’d want this hypothetical web application to do for me:

• Monitor the social media content I consume, including blogs I subscribe to, posts I bookmark or “favorite”, friends’ newsfeed items that I “like”, comments I accept on my own blog, people I follow on Twitter, etc.
• Track the content I create and contribute, such as blog posts I write, tweets I submit, stuff I post on others’ walls, websites I link to…
• Continually sift through my email and keep a running log of who I communicate with most and what topics I discuss with them.
• Build tags, categories, “trending topics” and other high-level organizational infrastructure to facilitate future search and analysis tasks undertaken by my descendants (and by me, for that matter!)
• Do all of this in a transparent yet unobtrusive manner that doesn’t require me to change the way I’m currently using social media tools and doesn’t bog down my computer or my browser.

A Few Caveats

Of course, I can already anticipate numerous objections to this entire concept:

• In the wrong hands, this kind of information could and would be exploited for nefarious purposes
• As Facebook and Twitter evolve or are replaced by newer, shinier online toys, our web app will need to constantly reinvent itself to keep up with the latest social media innovations
• Given the difficulties we experience now getting our family members interested in our shared genealogy, we might go to all the effort of archiving our social media interactions only to find that none of our posterity cares!

Smarter people than me will have to tackle these legitimate concerns. I’m convinced, however, that there is real value in the service Bud proposes.

How Much Value?

Bud suggests he’d be willing to pay $99/year for such an application. I’d probably want an entry-level price point closer to  $50/year, with the premium version going for $99. How about you?

Care to Give it a Try?

I suspect several companies are already working on something like this (here’s one I know of.) But I doubt that anyone has much of a head start yet. The idea strikes me as an ideal one to propose in an application to either Techstars or YCombinator. If any of you reading this decide to do it, I’d love to help!

Allen Chapman Richardson

Since this is my first Surname Saturday post, it seems appropriate to start with my own surname: Richardson. Here’s what I know (or think I do!) about my Richardson line:

1. Dean Richardson

2. David Richardson, born 17 Nov 1935 in Erie, Erie County, PA; died 16 Oct 1998 in Stanford, Santa Clara County, CA

3. Owen Richardson, born 02 Dec 1899 in Baltimore, Baltimore County, MD; died 05 Dec 1993 in Edinboro, Erie County, PA

4. Allen Chapman Richardson, born 18 Jun 1859 in Baltimore, Baltimore, MD; died 21 Dec 1908 in Erie, Erie County, PA

5. James Arnold Richardson, born 09 Dec 1830 in Baltimore, Baltimore, MD; died 12 August 1883 in Carroll County, MD

6. George Whatcoat Richardson, born 19 Mar 1805 in Baltimore County, MD; died 02 Oct 1846 in Baltimore County, MD

I’ve found several compiled genealogies that extend the line further to Arnold, Vincent, and Thomas Richardson, but I’m far from comfortable including them at this point.

If any Richardson cousins come across this, and if you think you might tie in to my line or if you have evidence contradicting the details I’ve given above, I’d love to hear from you.

I subscribe to about 30 or so genealogy blogs via RSS. They range from folksy/funny to serious-news-focused to technique/strategy-oriented. One I consistently enjoy is Mark Tucker’s ThinkGenealogy. His posts frequently address some of my favorite genealogy topics:

• The genealogy research process, and the ways in which beginners can increase the seriousness of their efforts
• The “Genealogical Proof Standard” and practical ways to follow it
• “Evidence Explained”-style source citations (in a way that motivates me rather than makes me feel looked-down-upon)
• Genealogy software innovation (including original ideas of his own and suggestions for the major genealogy software vendors)

And we seem to share a number of interests beyond genealogy:

• Scouting (Mark has blogged about being a genealogy merit badge counselor; I enjoy doing this too)
• Web design and user experience
• Quality presentations (Mark introduced me to Nancy Duarte’s slide:ology, a book that has totally changed the way I prepare talks and Powerpoint decks at work, Church, and elsewhere)

He’ll also be a speaker at the upcoming Family History Expo in Mesa, Arizona. I haven’t yet experienced one of Mark’s talks in person, but I suspect his presentations will be refreshingly clear, entertaining and actionable.

If you haven’t visited Mark’s blog, I encourage you to do so. You’ll learn a lot, and you’ll come away motivated to improve the quality (and quantity!) of your genealogical research.

Amy Coffin (author of the WeTree blog and owner of the Texas-shaped waffle avatar on Twitter) has generated a series of genealogy exercises / blog prompts entitled 52 Weeks To Better Genealogy. I thought I’d give Amy’s challenges a try. Her first one is:

Go to your local public library branch. Make a note of the genealogy books in the collection that may help you gain research knowledge. Don’t forget to check the shelves in both the non-fiction section and the reference section. If you do not already have a library card, take the time to get one. If you have a genealogy blog, write about what you find in your library’s genealogy collection.

There weren’t any patrons tonight during our shift at the Wilmette FHC, and the director gave me permission to take a brief field trip. So I headed over to the Wilmette Public Library (WPL) to check out their genealogy collection.

Under Construction

The first thing I noticed was that the WPL is undergoing some serious renovation right now. As a result, two of their most unique and useful genealogy resources — the local history room and the historical newspaper collection on microfilm — aren’t directly accessible at the moment. So alas, no photos of them. The librarian did offer to retrieve microfilms for me, though.

From what I’m told, the local history room contains a number of records that would be particularly useful for a patron trying to research their Wilmette ancestors, including Wilmette telephone books back to the early part of the twentieth century and vertical files with information about early Wilmette residents. I plan to check back in the Spring when the contents have settled into their new home.

Reference Area

After apologizing for the impact of the renovations, the helpful reference librarians printed out a spiffy-looking brochure for me called “Genealogy: Getting Started” and pointed me downstairs to the 929.1 books in their reference collection.

Here I found about four shelves worth of books including the two-volume Cyndi’s List compilation, the Handy Book, and Tom Kemp’s Vital Records Handbook. Several Illinois-specific census abstracts and military histories were also located here.

Main 929.1 Area

The more popular and modern titles were located on the other side of the library in the usual 929.1 area. Here I found an excellent selection of books for beginners and intermediates alike, including Google Your Family Tree, The Source, and 500 Brickwall Solutions, along with a sizeable group of ethnicity-specific books such as Tracing Your Irish Ancestors and the Avotnayu Guide To Jewish Genealogy. I was pleasantly surprised to see two volumes from Elizabeth Shown Mills: a hardly-touched copy of ProGen and and older version of Evidence!

Local Titles

Since we’re located in Cook County, Illinois just north of Chicago, it was nice to see that the WPL also has Finding Your Chicago Ancestors by Grace Dumelle, and Chicago and Cook County: A Guide to Research by Loretto Dennis Szucs.

Online Resources

In addition to Ancestry Library Version and Heritage Quest Online, the WPL also offers access to databases of local interest including ProQuest Historical Newspapers Chicago Tribune (1849 – 1986). Particularly cool is the library’s index to Wilmette newspapers which is updated regularly. As I write this, the index contains 215,031 entries for the Wilmette Life spanning 18 Sep 1847 to 31 Dec 2009 and nearly 10,000 entries for Lake Shore News covering 1912 to 1923.

Thanks, Amy!

This was a fun challenge and I definitely learned some stuff about the WPL that I didn’t know before. Now when patrons visit our FHC and ask for something we don’t have, I’ll have a better feel for local alternatives to offer them. I also plan to go back soon to check out Google Your Family Tree and several other books that looked interesting.

You ordered a death certificate lookup on Genlighten a few days back, and the email just arrived letting you know that the provider completed your lookup successfully. You click on the link, log in, and there’s your document. It’s clear, it’s readable, and YES — it’s got the information you were hoping for. It’s almost happy dance time! But first, you need to save your document on your computer and print out a copy. In this step-by-step tutorial, we’ll show you how.

So How Do I Download and Print My Document?

Here are the steps you’ll need to follow to save and print your document(s) if you use Microsoft Vista. [If you use Windows XP, try this Printing Help Page instead.]

1) Navigate to the Lookup Status Detail / Document Delivery page from your Genlighten account.

2) Click on the image thumbnail. A new window should open and you’ll see a full-size version of your document displayed.

3) Right-click on the full-size document image and select “Save Image As”.

4) A dialog box will appear. Browse to the directory where you’d like to save the image file, give it a descriptive name, and click Save.

5) Locate your image on your hard drive by browsing to the directory into which you saved the image.

6) Right click on the image and select “Preview”.

7) A Windows application called “Windows Photo Gallery” should open with a large version of your image. Click on the “Print” menu at the top of the window and select the “Print” option.

8 ) This should bring up the “Print Pictures” option box. Select the printer you want to use and adjust any printing parameters as needed (size, quality, paper type, orientation, etc.) Then click “Print”. You may need to experiment with different orientations to get the best fit on the page. Depending on the image resolution your provider used when they scanned your document, printing may take several minutes.

9) That’s it… you did it! Woo-hoo!

Further Questions?

If after trying to print your documents you still have questions, just e-mail us at support@genlighten.com. Thanks!

I was taking a look at the list of sources of traffic to Genlighten today on Google Analytics, and I noticed several visits originated from findagrave.com. A little later in the day, I received a Google Alert that pointed me to a forum thread for Cook County Illinois mentioning Genlighten. I’ve reproduced part of it below, with the usernames obscured.

It’s probably not obvious from this screenshot, but the basic gist is this. A Find A Grave member posted a query on Find A Grave’s forum asking for help tracking down a Cook County Illinois death certificate. A helpful individual recommended that the original poster visit Cook County’s excellent site, which charges $15 for images of vital records. Another individual then mentioned “a cheaper alternative” and linked to chicagogenealogy’s profile on Genlighten. The original poster visited Genlighten, ordered the death certificate they wanted and received it promptly.

Our goal at Genlighten isn’t necessarily to always be the “cheaper alternative” (we often won’t be) but we very definitely want to continue to earn these kinds of referrals from satisfied customers. Thank you to all involved, and especially to Find A Grave for the tremendous service they provide to the genealogy community.

Carrie Henry of CarolinaAncestry

It’s always a highlight of our day here at “Genlighten World Headquarters” when new lookup providers register with our site and create their first lookup offerings. We plan to introduce you to some of our providers this year by posting occasional e-mail interviews with them on our blog. Today’s post profiles Carrie Henry, who goes by the username CarolinaAncestry on Genlighten.

From CarolinaAncestry’s Profile:

Carrie has a master’s degree in Public History and eight years of genealogical research experience. She lives near the State Archives in Raleigh, North Carolina and is an active member of the North Carolina Genealogical Society, where she currently serves as book review editor. She’s also a member of the Association of Professional Genealogists (APG). Her archaeological expertise brings a unique perspective to her research efforts.

Nine Questions with CarolinaAncestry:

1)      How did you get started doing genealogy lookups/research?

I began researching my own family history in 2001 and immediately became hooked.  Through my “day job” at an archaeology/cultural resources firm I was able to incorporate genealogical research into quite a few of the projects.  My love for genealogy and the desire to help others is what has led me to provide lookup and research services.

2)      Do you have a genealogy superpower? If so, what is it?

I don’t think I have a genealogy superpower… I try to be open and honest with people about my limitations and capabilities.  However, I think I do provide a slightly different viewpoint since I developed my genealogical skills while conducting archaeological studies.

3)      Describe a tricky research problem you’re particularly proud of having solved.

I was very proud to have assisted a lawyer in his attempt to prove heirs to an estate.  This was a challenging project because the surname was one that was spelled many different ways in various documents.  Ultimately, I was able to find proof that the individuals claiming to be heirs were telling the truth.

4)      What are the ideal elements you like to see in a well-formulated lookup request/research query?

I find queries that are limited to a few specific goals and with details including full names, birth and death dates, and locations (city, county, state) easy to work with.

5)      What’s the most interesting record source or repository you’ve utilized in your area?

I have the privilege of living very close to the NC State Archives; needless to say the archives holds some amazing records.  However, I find data from the Office of State Archaeology or the State Historic Preservation Office quite useful in “fleshing out” someone’s family tree.

6)      What technical tools do you use to produce the digital images you provide to clients?

I sometimes utilize Family Tree Maker to organize data.  I often use a digital camera and scanner to provide electronic files for clients.

7)      Any new lookups you’re considering offering?

Not at this point.  I am still working on building a client base and want to focus on families with ties to NC.

8)      What advice would you give to someone who wants to get started as a lookup provider?

Join your state and/or local genealogical society and get involved.  You can learn so much from your colleagues.  Attend conferences as much as possible.  Take advantage of professional memberships like APG who will post your information on their website as well.

9)      What other passions do you pursue when you’re not at the archives doing lookups/research?

I keep working on my own family research and that of my husband’s.  I spend time with my cats and stepson.  I also read for pleasure and like to bake.

Lookups CarolinaAncestry offers:

Carrie offers lookups covering Land Records held at the North Carolina State Archives. She’s one of several providers on Genlighten who offer North Carolina genealogy record lookups.

The Harman Building (photo by swilsonmc on Flickr)

I’m a day late with my response to Randy Seaver’s weekly “Saturday Night Genealogy Fun” challenge. But when I saw that Thomas McEntee was too, I figured I’d go ahead and still be in good company.

My best genealogy moment of 2009 occurred as I sat at Genlighten’s exhibit booth at the BYU Conference on Computerized Family History and Genealogy back in March. It dawned on me suddenly that I had come full circle as a genealogy software vendor.

Twenty-six years before, I had attended one of the first versions of that same conference in the very same Caroline Hemenway Harman building on the BYU campus. Back then, as a newlywed sophomore majoring in Physics, I hoped to offer my first-generation Apple IIe-compatible Family Tree software (tentative title: “N-Gen”) for sale at the conference. But when I took one look at the competition, I knew I was completely out of my league. It was obvious to me that I didn’t know the first thing about marketing a useful product to the genealogy community. [Do I know any more now? I sure hope so!]

Now fast-forward to March of 2009: I’ve long since graduated from BYU, and I’m back at that same conference, once again surrounded by intimidating competitors, but this time as a reasonably legitimate vendor of a fledgling genealogy software product. Heady stuff. Scary, too. But I allowed myself to luxuriate in a rare moment of unabashed self-confidence. This time I would not go so quietly into the night of startup failure, I vowed softly.

The two times in my life I’ve launched entrepreneurial ventures, once as a twenty-something, and now again as a late forty-something, they’ve both had genealogy research at their core. It’s obviously got a powerful hold on me!