Color Coding and Civil War Soldiers

This is response to a comment made on this blog post 

http://ftmuser.blogspot.com/2017/07/color-coding-end-of-line.html 

In my reply to the comment, I said that I would do a blog post on how I would answer the question about the use of color coding for the Civil War Soldiers. My approach is to use the Filter In / Filter Out feature. Before I posted my response, I tested it out and it worked as expected. 

My focus is to Identify ONLY my Direct Line Ancestors who might have a Civil War Record that I may not have found before.

This video will demonstrate out I used the Color Coding and the Filter Feature to answer my question.


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Copyright © 2017 by H R Worthington

Civil War Pension Index Cards

DearMYRTLE’s Docu-Challenge: Phillips, William D
http://blog.dearmyrtle.com/2014/10/docuchallenge-phillips-william-d.html

Russ Worthington’s response:
DearMYRTLE’s DocuChallenge in A Worthington Weblog
http://worthy2be.wordpress.com/2014/11/02/dearmyrtles-docuchallenge

Russ’ Conversations with Dixie Petty on FB:
https://www.facebook.com/hrworth/posts/10205358785239170:0 

DearMYRTLE's
WACKY Wednesday: What kind of document is THAT?
https://plus.google.com/102461242403735457058/posts/idFLzywri2L

A BIG Thank you to +DearMYRTLE for this DocuChallenge




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Copyright © 2014 by H R Worthington

How to Identify Civil War Soldiers

In honor of Memorial Day, I thought I would demonstrate how to create a list of men who may have served in the Civil War.








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Copyright © 2014 by H R Worthington

The 2nd American Civil War Blog Challenge - and FTM2012 Timelines

Timing is everything.

Yesterday, I posted a Blog entry on the Timeline Feature of Family Tree Maker. In reading a Genea-Blogger friend's blog, Bill West put this challenge out to us.

THE SECOND AMERICAN CIVIL WAR GENEALOGY BLOG CHALLENGE

 I used the timeline feature last year, when trying to find the Parents of a Civil War ancestor. His name was mentioned in a PBS series of Gettysburg. Over the course of a couple of months, I found out who his parents were along with a lot of other interesting pieces of information about this soldier.

One of the Finds that I found was the history of his unit.

2nd Infantry Regiment Maryland

Since that article listed all of the Battles that the 2nd Infantry (CSA) faught in, I thought that I would enter it into Family Tree Maker, so that I could track what battles he fought in, and what battles he was NOT in. As it turned out, he was wounded in Gettysburg, but returned to be wounded again about a year later in another battle.

In the link above, listed the dates and places of the battles. That entered, here is what the timeline looked like.

Using the Timeline Report (Publish Workspace), Person Collection, the two battles are there and based on the information on this soldier, I made a note as to his two woundings.

How was this done? Simply created a New, Unrelated "person". To be able to show how long the Unit has been in place, I added a "birth" and "death" fact, for the unit, as the Organizational Date and Muster Out Date. That would tell me that he was wounded during the 7th month that the unit had been established and again at 21 months.

Looking at this soldier's Timeline, we see that he had enlisted into the CSA before his unit was formed, at the age of 18. He was wounded at 19 (the first time)

Looking down the timeline a little further, we see the 2nd wounding and his final "retirement" from the CSA. His Civil War Record showed that he was absent on August 14 because he was in a hospital in Charlottesville. Returned to Duty September 1863.

 The on August 19, 1864, he was wounded "in action" where the upper portion of his right thigh was amputated.

He lived to be 83 years old.
________________________________________________________________ Copyright © 2012 by H R Worthington

Civil War Pension - Blog Response

This is in response to a Blog post by my friend Randy Seaver:

Exploring Family Tree Maker 2012 - Post 22: Creating a Civil War Pension File Source

This is part of a series of blog posts in an effort to help us understand how to use FTM2012. As you may know, it has been frustrating at times, and in the area of Source / Citations, I would guess frustrating isn't the right word.

Here is my take on this topic of dealing with Civil War files and not in response to Randy's very fine Blog.

In another Blog, not on Family Tree Maker, I told of my search for a Civil War hero using the Inferential Genealogy that Dr. Thomas Jones has described are conferences and in a video series on Family Search.

I am not sure that there is a right way, nor a wrong way of recording what we find on any of our Ancestors, especially our Hero's. I am only going to talk about how I do some of this recording.

We, as users, will have our own ways of doing this recording of information. I ask myself:

• What Facts do I want to use AND Why? 
• What does out data look like on Output?

With all of our choices what makes sense.

• What do I want to capture?
• What do I want to Share?

Having been working on a couple of Civil War soldiers, I thought about the questions above.

The limitless number of Facts that we have, and that we can have "Alt" Facts, or the multiple Facts that we can have, what makes sense for reports for myself and what might I want to share with others. There are some limitations, but what information do I want to use for my analysis and what do I need to try to tell the story of this hero.

I tend to record "just the facts" and where I found the Facts. I have a gentlemen in my file with 20 pages of Civil War Records, another with 30. So I captured his Civil War Journey, in fact I am still adding facts for the Military Service Fact. I am working on a timeline for his unit, with dates and places of battles that his unit participated in. All of that to say, that I use the Military Service Fact for the information from his Civil War records with one Source, a number of Citations, referring to pages within that record.

I consider the Military Service Fact for my information in helping me try to put the story together. The SmartStory feature I will probably use, and have used in the base. But the Notes Section for the person is where most of the story will be documented.

Here is a link to an earlier post for a Revolutionary War Hero.

Family Tree Maker 2011 - Smart Stories

Oh, but the Notes do not allow for Citations. But, what I do is to type in a Citation, that makes sense to me, and not in the Evidence Explained! format, but enough information. For example:

First and Second Maryland Infantry
Muster Rolls
Page 444

HOWARD, DAVID RIDGELY.

Pvt. Co. A, 2nd Md. Inf. b. 1844. Res. of Baltimore. Enl. Richmond 8/21/62 age 18. WIA (flesh wound to thigh) Gettysburg 7/3/63. Paid 7/17/63. Ab. wounded in Charlottesville hospital 8/14-17/63. Transf. Richmond hospital. Returned to duty 9/63. Paid 1/11/64. Present 3/31/64. WIA (upper portion of right thigh amputated) Weldon R.T. 8/19/65. Ab. wounded in Richmond hospital 8/21/64. Retired to Invalid Corps 12/24/64. Paroled Charlottesville 5/1/65. Member, Army & Navy Society, Maryland Line Association 1910, res of Baltimore. d. 12/23/27. Bur. Green Mount Cem. Brother of James McHenry Howard, 1st Md. Inf.

I already have a Citation for this document, for each of the facts that I took from the above paragraph. I normally will show these Notes when I share my research. If I were to generate a report, I would only reflect the Preferred Facts and not all of the Facts that I have collected. I think that the reader of the report is not as interested in how many Military Service Facts I have, but only the Preferred Fact which is

Bet 21 Aug 1862 - 01 May 1965 - 1st Maryland Infantry - CSA

The above documented summary is exactly the information that I found in the 20 pages from his Civil War Records. In fact, I am still inputting that data.

Back to my questions:

• What Facts do I want to use AND Why? 
• What does out data look like on Output?

The basic, normal facts that the reader can understand, using the Clearest and Preferred Fact and the Notes. I know which Facts help me with research but don't display all of the Alt Facts that I have. Those facts help be determine the Preferred Facts. I am also concerned about the reader.


In reality, I would put this information into a book on this Hero, using the Book feature of Family Tree Maker and would include a Bibliography. I doing usually include EndNotes in reports, but in the Book feature, I have a statement that if the reader would like the EndNotes, I can generate that, because I understand the need for them. But, my family really doesn't care. They want the Story, not how I got the Story.


To show the Timeline of his Military Service, this is what is in FTM2012:

Each of these facts have Citations.



Copyright © 2011 by H R Worthington

How to Identify Civil War era members of your tree (revised)

As a follow up to: How to identify Civil War Family Members posted earlier today, it appears that the final step (Birth record Blank) did not remove everyone without a Birth Date by using that Filter. 

After reading a comment in that post, I re-ran the final filter with a much better set of results. I will include the text from that earlier message here.

The first screen is in the People Workspace, Family View, with the Index in the Left Hand Panel. In this file, I have 8,252 people. At the Bottom of that screen is the FILTER feature.

 

Clicking on Filter, will bring up a window where we will start to Filter people who meet our parameters. The first thing we need to do, is to click on Include All >>. This will move those 8,252 people from the Left Window to the Right Window. This is like Selecting ALL or everyone.

 

Notice the same number is in both sides of the window. Now we want to < Filter OUT certain groups of people. In this case, we will Filter Out all Females. So, select Sex from the list of Facts, then Equals, and select Female and click OK.

 

We have a new number (4,343) (see below). Our next Filter will be to < Filter OUT everyone who was born BEFORE 1818, in this example. Selecting the Birth Fact, "is before", and entering 1818. (you can use any date you wish).

 

Again, we have a new number (3,101) (see below). Next, < Filter OUT everyone who was born AFTER 1846. Again select the Birth Fact, "is after", and enter 1846.

 

Down to 2,491. Will now < Filter OUT anyone who Died Before 1861. Selecting the Death Fact, "is before" 1861 will do this.

 

Here is where the change is. In the < Filter OUT window, select the Birth Fact, but this time select "Any Date", just below the Birth Fact, and select Does Not Exist.

 

We now have reduced our list from 8,252, down to 197.

 

Looking at the results again, there are still some names without Birth Dates in the list. BUT each of those people have a Birth Place. Go back to the < Filter OUT, Select the Birth Fact, and in the menu just below the Birth Fact, select Place, then select "Is Not Blank". This action took my list down to 102.

The list of people with the Filter Applied, are Males, who were born between 1818 and 1846 and how have not died, but have Birth Date information. A good place to start to look for your Civil Wars family members.


Note: Will have to do some more investigation into why the last filter in the previous blog post didn't work as expected.



Copyright © 2011 by H R Worthington

How to identify Civil War Family Members

As we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, How can we identify who might have served in the Civil War? Perhaps we know some of them, but maybe not all of them.

Here is how to Filter your file down to identify those people.

The first screen is in the People Workspace, Family View, with the Index in the Left Hand Panel. In this file, I have 8,252 people. At the Bottom of that screen is the FILTER feature.

Clicking on Filter, will bring up a window where we will start to Filter people who meet our parameters. The first thing we need to do, is to click on Include All. This will move those 8,252 people from the Left Window to the Right Window. This is like Selecting ALL or everyone.

Notice the same number is in both sides of the window. Now we want to Filter OUT certain groups of people. In this case, we will Filter Out all Females. So, select Sex from the list of Facts, then Equals, and select Female and click OK.

We have a new number (4,343) (see below). Our next Filter will be to Filter OUT everyone who was born BEFORE 1818, in this example. Selecting the Birth Fact, "is before", and entering 1818. (you can use any date you wish).

Again, we have a new number (3,101) (see below). Next, Filter OUT everyone who was born AFTER 1846. Again select the Birth Fact, "is after", and enter 1846.

Down to 2,491. Will Filter OUT anyone who Died Before 1861. Selecting the Death Fact, "is before" 1861 will do this.

Reduced to 2,338. Now to Filter OUT anyone without a Birth Date. Birth Fact, "is blank".

This reduced the 8,252 people in my file to 2,304.

To remove the Filter, remove the Check Mark, on the Filter Line, and that will restore your file to everyone.

Copyright © 2011 by H R Worthington