Wyatt Earp? Really Ancestry?

Warning shaky leaf failure!

While trying to add a document to my tree on Ancestry, I encountered an odd suggestion on the time line for this individual!

That’s right — according to the Ancestry hint, my ancestor may have encountered Wyatt Earp. Of course, I’m going to IGNORE this hint. After all, my ancestor would have only been two when Wyatt Earp died. That and the fact that Wyatt Earp moved away from Dodge City around 1879 makes this assertion somewhat ridiculous.

Now, I did grow up in Dodge City and watched my share of Gunsmoke. I’ve also wondered if any of my collateral relatives might have known Wyatt Earp. (My direct line wasn’t in the Dodge City area early enough.) Even though I had collateral lines that followed the same migration path as Wyatt Earp, my relatives were about 3-5 years behind Earp as they moved West. Thus, I won’t claim contact with this legendary sheriff and gambler.

Hopefully, no one else sharing my tree will fall for this hint!

Shaky Leaf Bonanza!

Since I started participating in the Genealogy Do-Over on Facebook, I’ve been more active on genealogy sites. Earlier this week, I uploaded a new tree to Ancestry and plan to try to keep that tree and my genealogy tree in sync.

I also decided to start paying attention to the hints. This is a challenge since I’ve already used those sources and have them cited in my database but don’t have the sources linked on Ancestry. Who knows how long it will take me to get the number of hints to drop below 99!

The first set of shaky leafs I checked were for my brother, who died as an infant. Curious as to who would have him in their tree, I contacted tree owners only to discover that for one the closest we could be is 4th cousins and probably 6th or 7th cousins.

A little disappointed in that find, I continued checking shaky leafs to find my father in a different tree, the Burke Family Tree. This tree is complete with a family picture (that could only have been obtained from my website) and census data that I would have sourced on my website but did not have linked on Ancestry.

Since this tree was obviously sourced, I decided to try and figure out the connection. Lo and behold, their tree will help me get thru a brick wall! They have the father of my ancestor Henry F. Burke.

Now, the challenge will be to prove that Henry F. Burke of Platte County, Missouri is the son of John Burke of Jackson County, Tennessee. I look forward to using the hints provided by the Burke Family Tree to locate resources to support this relationship.

Looking for more Shaky Leaf Bonanzas!

Resurrecting the Old

After a recent query about the old CCC website, I’ve been on a quest to find the old files and get them back on the web. In the process, I’ve discovered a need for

• a floppy drive – was able to borrow one
• software to open .epd files (express publisher)
• software to open .qic files (old backup files)

Unfortunately, I haven’t found the software to access the .epd and .qic files.

Fortunately, most of the old files were in .html format. Thus, I was able to use those old files to re-create the web sites. I elected to use a Google site since it is free and relatively easy to use. In order to get the old files into the new site, I copied the code into the ‘html’ view for each page. This project is still a work in progress, but I have a lot of the old Nemaha County Genealogy Society web site back online.

Within this site, I have included the Civilian Conservation Corps site that was created in 2001 as a student project at Nemaha Valley High School. I am planning to add the files for the other two projects completed at that time: Great Depression and Veterans.

Besides these student projects, I’m hoping to get some of my husband’s work on the web. This would include the 1995 History of Seneca booklet and hopefully the issues of Pioneer Press he wrote along with the Nemaha County cemetery map. (Wish me luck with this! This is the area where I need to find old software and perhaps an old computer.)