Monday, September 10, 2007

Nelson J. Lambertson - Butler Co., OH

Nelson J. LAMBERTSON appears in the 1900-1920 census in Hamilton, Butler Co., OH. Nelson is my maternal 3rd great granduncle, the son of John and Sarah A. (WILLSON) LAMBERTSON.

Nelson appears as the head of household in the 1900 census, aged 31 years. His occupation was that of a wagon maker with a real estate value of $500. Also appearing with Nelson was his widowed daughter, Mary LOY, and her son Lewis. Lewis was shown as being born June 1891 in Ohio.

Nelson appears in the 1910 and 1920 census in the household of daughter Mary and her new husband David CREWS. In the 1920 census, David's surname is spelled CRUSS. David was born ca. 1871 in Indiana his occupation was that of an electrician.

The 1920 census shows son Lora CRUSS, aged 28, born Ohio who is an electrician. I believe that this may be Mary's son, Lewis, from her first marriage. It is possible that the census enumerator assigned him to the wrong surname. More investigation will have to be done.

Nelson J. LAMBERTSON was born April 4, 1838 Stillwell Corner, Butler Co., OH, d. October 3, 1929 Dayton, Montgomery Co., OH and was buried in the Abbottsville Cemetery in Darke Co., OH. Nelson married June 26, 1858 Riley Twp., Butler Co., OH to Eliza Jane JOHNSON, b. December 1837 Ohio and died July 6, 1899. Nelson was a Civil War veteran of Co. I, 167th Regt., OH National Guard.

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

Leona D. Lambertson - 1920 Madison Co., IN

My maternal great-grandaunt, Leona D. Lambertson, appears in the 1920 census of Elwood, Madison Co., IN as a lodger in the home of Sherman B. Harting. In this capacity, she was listed as a servant.

Leona was the daughter of Charles Wilson and Pearl May (Beals) Lambertson, born August 20, 1904 in Hamilton Co., IN.

I did not know that she was working at such a young age as a domestic, nor do I know of any relationship with this particular Harting family. I was surprised to not find Leona listed with the rest of her family in the 3rd ward of Elwood.

Sunday, September 02, 2007

Initial Conversion Experiences with RootsMagic

Having recently converted from FamilyTreeMaker to RootsMagic, I must say that I have been overwhelmed and pleasantly pleased with the experience. As previously noted, I had been using FTM since the mid-1990s when I obtained my first PC. Although I had only upgraded to FTM 6.0, I was still pleased with the database and it meet my needs. With each new upgrade to FTM, I hesitated to spend money going after minor tweaks to the program and/or additional 'bells and whistles' that I did not need. It was not until reading about the reviews of the new FTM 2008 that I decided to investigate upgrading my genealogical software and after doing so, I decided that FTM would not be the way to go. I am so glad that I found RootsMagic.

The database converted my FTM file into RootsMagic with ease, and I immediately set about looking at the various reports and charts. There are so many ways to 'tweak' the data, that I can tell that I am going to love using this program for a long time. Over the past few days I have been modifying some information in my database, correcting known problems, and adding a few 'to-do' list items.

I would recommend this program to anyone who is serious about doing family history research just for the powerful source wizard alone. Already I have been able to use it to create source data for census records, etc. and found that in just a few quick steps, I had a source that was standardized along the lines of Elizabeth Shown Mills work "Evidence..." The family view in RootsMagic has allowed me to notice missing pieces of data in my research, and I've already created a few 'to-do' lists for my next research trip. The merge option was easy to use, and I found a few individuals that needed to be merged together. I have even played with the error reports and will slowly be correcting or ignoring potential errors that the program finds.

I can't praise this program enough! It is an easy to use and powerful database, with so many options and discoveries that await. It's hard to stay focused and realize that I have to go to work each day and not just stay at home and look at my family history in a new light.