I'm a "Case Study"

In the August 2009 edition of the BBC magazine, 'Who Do You Think You Are,' I'm a "Case Study." The article is '3 Easy Ways to Share Research Online', starting on page 56.

The first tip is to share photos online, and flickr is recommended as the website to do it with. I'm on the bottom right of the page, along with a screenshot of one of my photos on flickr and a description of some of my "success stories," like this one.

Also mentioned in tip 3 (Blogging) as a case study is Tomas MacEntee and GeneaBloggers.

The Augusta Chronicle Goldmine

The Augusta Chronicle's archive website is a wonderful resource for anyone researching ancestors in the Georgia and South Carolina border area. Their fully searchable, online collection spans the Daily Chronicle & Sentinel, The Augusta Chronicle and Gazette of the State, and The Daily Chronicle & Constitution. It's not clear what dates are covered, but I returned results from the 1990s to the 1880s. The newspapers cover a wide swath of area, covering news from across the region, including somewhat distant cities such as Lincolnton, GA and Greenwood and Columbia, SC.

I bought a one-day pass ($4.95) and was able to search their archive for a little over 24 hours. The search is based on OCR text recognition, so it's not perfect, but it is very good. I turned up a lot of obituaries for distant aunts and uncles, and a little infant I would not have otherwise known about.

One search I had luck with was "Surname NEAR town/county NEAR died." This turned up the obituaries of entire families in certain areas. Here are a few I found:

Roy's WWII Draft Card

Ancestry.com has been adding WWII "Old Man's" Draft Cards to their collection for a little while now. With most of my ancestors having lived in the south, I was disappointed to learn that I would not have access to their cards, as, according to ancestry.com "the original draft registration cards for the following states were destroyed several years ago and were never microfilmed before they were destroyed. Therefore, there will never be records for these states in this database." How sad!

But, the draft card that I was really interested in was my Grandfather's - and he didn't belong in the "Old Man" category, so, I had to go outside of ancestry.com anyway. I found this page, at the Selective Service System's website. It detailed how to apply for a copy of WWII draft cards, so I filled out the form and sent it off. For $15, the request was forwarded to the Southeast branch of the National Archives, where they searched for my Grandfather's draft card and classification. They didn't find the classification (which I really wanted! - why was he rejected?), but did find his draft card. Here it is:

Tombstone Tuesday - Sprouse

I found these photos on a tree at ancestry.com, thanks to their new member connect feature.

William W. and Nancy (Armstrong) Sprouse are my Great-Great-Great Grandparents. They were born in South Carolina and raised their children Abbeville County. Late in life the crossed the nearby border into Georgia, and were buried in Goshen Baptist Church Cemetery in Lincolnton, GA.