I'm finding that LifeStory at Ancestry.com family trees is a great way to share the documents and newspaper articles I've collected. You can use Google Chrome. or another print feature that allows you to save the story as a PDF on your computer. You can bind a number of ancestral stories together using a PDF binder app.
Since I have documents, articles, messages, saved in a number of places it is time consuming to access and information can get lost. I do have files on my computers for ancestral couples, but I haven't always been good about transferring information from downloads or flash drives to these file explorer folders. I decided to go through the 3 computers I have and my flash drives and attach my documents to ancestral life stories at Ancestry so I could easily review these documents in a timeline format. As I was doing this I found mistakes in my tree. I also found out I left out information which I have added. It was a very fruitful exercise.
I had forgotten about some discrepancies which I discovered again while reviewing the documentation in a timeline format. For instance below, my 5th great-grandfather, John Melvin appears to travel back and forth hundreds of miles in the early 19th century, when travel was slow and difficult. In 1810 he is living in Worcester County, Maryland, according to the 1810 Census. We then find John Melvin in Bracken County, Kentucky in 1812, many miles from Worcester Maryland. In 1814 we find John Melvin back in Maryland selling land with his wife Polly (see PDF below).
This discrepancy needs to be resolved. To do this I need to establish the John Melvin of Bracken County, Kentucky is actually the same man as the John Melvin in Worcester County, Maryland.
John Melvin never left any information about exactly where he was born. The 1850 Census gives Maryland as his place of birth. John Melvin's children are listed below. The best way to establish exactly where the Melvin family came from is by researching his family members. All of the children state they were born in Maryland.
I had never found a document that stated exactly where in Maryland the children were born? I began researching this line again and found a Civil War disability form for John W. Melvin at Fold3. I didn't think any of the Melvin children were in the right age range to serve in that war. John W. Melvin may have lied about his age in order to serve or the crossed out age on the form is his actual age and someone changed it in error to age 45. The age appears to have been recorded as 45, then 58, and then 45 again on the form.
I have been able to confirm this is John W. Melvin of Bracken County, Kentucky. His wife applied for a widow's pension and she appears on the veterans' schedule for the 1890 Census in Bracken County, Kentucky.
I feel confident that I have proven my Melvin family of Kentucky migrated from Worcester County, Maryland. Maybe John Melvin traveled to Bracken County, Kentucky before bringing his wife and children? I'm continuing to research this family in hopes of finding more documentation.
I do like the LifeStory and how it presents my documentation and lays out a coherent story for my ancestors. It's a great way to share information we've collected and to refer back to this information while continuing research. Below is my grandfather Rudolph Kapple's LifeStory. I had forgotten about some of the information I collected about him before attaching information.
Going through the documents in a timeline format has helped me find several gaps in my information. It's going to help improve my documentation for my tree.
I've also downloaded the new version of
RootsMagic and downloaded all of the information I just attached to the Ancestry.com tree to this program. I know for a fact, after losing some information from a computer crash, that you can't have too many backups.
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