Last week I was immersed in my pre-service teaching days and getting to know my new students. My school district is converting to a new online records-keeping system so the next year will be a learning experience for everyone. I spent little time working on genealogy, although I did sneak away for a few hours last Wednesday to the Family History Center.

Mostly I continued to scan the civil court records for my ancestor’s county. So much good stuff! I found one record for a man exposing himself in public. Oh my! And another for a woman accused of adultery. Apparently she had been living in sin with the gentleman for quite a while. The court’s punishment was to spend one minute in jail. However, the best part of the afternoon was finding the divorce record for a many times great aunt.

Judgement from the adultery case of Nancy King

Indiana appears to have been quite lenient in granting divorces in the 19th century. Most every quarter session of the civil court has two or three divorce cases in my county of interest. I figured my aunt had to have been divorced because I found two marriage records and the first husband appeared to be alive after the second marriage. The complete court records spell out very neatly why she wanted a divorce. Her husband had deserted her. Five years previously he had been wanted for larceny. It seems he fled the county and hadn’t been seen since.

Since my last post, I received a sampling of documents from the Indiana State Historical Society. I found a manuscript in their collection online through ArchiveGrid. I can’t recommend ArchiveGrid highly enough at the moment. Managed by WorldCat, ArchiveGrid is an online catalog of manuscript collections around the world. Unpublished manuscripts are an untapped resource for genealogical and historical information. They are also the least likely to be digitized, and can only be accessed by going to a repository. Or in my case, contacting the repository and/or hiring a researcher.

The document in question was an 1830s account book from a local merchant. I had no idea if any of my ancestors favored this merchant—there was more than one store in town. But I had to find out! I sent the historical society a preliminary surname list while the research form and my check followed in the mail. My ancestor appears over thirty times in the register. Below is one of my ancestor’s entries, likely purchases by, or for, his wife.

Account book entry for my ancestor

Jackonet is a lightweight cotton fabric. During the 1830s, Greek and Roman motifs/style influenced fashion.

The Rubrics

Another essential part of the portfolio process is understanding the rubrics. As a teacher, I rely on rubrics whenever I correct writing assignments or score non-multiple choice test questions. My biggest complaint during the Boston University Research Certificate program was the lack of rubrics. (I graduated many years ago so I do not know if this aspect has changed. I just know what it was like when I participated.)

I do not like to be graded in a vacuum. How do I know if I am achieving the goal of an assignment? Students perform better when they know their expectations. The same is true with the BCG portfolio. The portfolio rubrics are available to download on the BCG website. Two books are referenced in the rubrics: Genealogy Standards: 50th-anniversay edition and Val Greenwood’s The Researcher’s Guide to American Genealogy. These books should have a place in every serious genealogist’s library.

Other Genealogy Related Activities

• I submitted six lecture proposals for the 2018 SCGS Jamboree. Hopefully, at least one will be chosen!
• Yesterday was the monthly meeting of my DNA study group and my volunteer hours at the local library. I consider volunteering or mentoring others as a valuable component of my long-term education plan. One of my clients had a branch of her family who immigrated from Canada in the 1920s. There were many great record groups that I explored with her. I do not have anyone in my family who immigrated to the United States in the 20th century, so I have no reason to look at those records. Helping others is a great way to learn about records you might not access regularly.

©2017 copyright owned by Deborah Sweeney
Post originally found: https://genealogylady.net/2017/08/20/my-path-to-certification-issue-no-5/