Potential Treasure Troves In User Submitted Media

I previously wrote about linking photos to everyone shown and the importance of noting all the unknown babies. Tonight these two concepts solidly collided as I researched William Harrison Short Sr (1837-1898), the 3rd great-grandfather of my ex-husband. The result was immensely gratifying!

I've previously corresponded with 2 DNA matches, who both have well researched trees with lots of user uploaded media items. One of the trees is a person who's been researching over 25 years. While I have, on occasion, had a difference of opinion on a few people in his tree, for the most part, it's generally accurate. Some people would shy away from a tree with 54,000+ people as being just a name collector. I cautiously view it as an opportunity. So long as the person has conducted research, why should I discount a large tree? There could be wonderful discoveries to be made! Tonight, this proved true.

I also recognize lots of users may be frustrated with user submitted media at times. Lately, the proliferation of color enhance images has frustrated me. While it's fun to see what our ancestors may have "really" looked like, I personally won't save these images. To me, the original is the best version since it's representative of the time it was taken. We all know what it's like to see census images uploaded by others, but they're just duplicates of hints we already have (and most Ancestry images are far better than the user uploaded ones). And when the same image comes up over and over as a hint, and you ignore it just as many times as being information you already have, only to have it popup again from another user...it can be...well, maddening. We all want to get to the valuable hints right? Not sift thru duplicate image after duplicate image, Word and PDF versions of the same transcription, or image vs transcription of the same document/article. But taking the time to look at each image or story before dismissing it is actually important. You might think all the information is the same...but you may be very wrong.

I freely admit, the sheer number of obituaries, items related to his numerous children and wife, and military records for William himself was daunting. I've been working on him all week and I'm not quite half way through all the hints and media items. He served in the Civil War for the Union. It would appear he may have volunteered, as he enlisted prior to the first draft. He fought in an impressive number of famous battles and skirmishes in several states. He suffered permanent injuries from a gunshot wound in his last battle and lay injured and suffering on the battlefield between 8-13 days (depending on the article). 

Equally impressive (in her own way) was his wife, Mary Ann Kemp (1844-1910). Over a 25 year period, starting when she was jut 17 years old, she bore 14 children. As of the 1900 census, she had 10 living children...and I had 4 unknown babies. I honestly didn't hold out much hope of finding their names. I felt very lucky to discover the name of one in an 1870 census, but I still had 3 I thought I might never know. Then I reviewed 2 seemingly similar user uploaded media items...

The first was an image of a single page from the Short Family Bible. The handwriting was clear enough and I set out to mine all the details. As I did, I gleefully discovered the names and birth dates for the other 3 missing babies! I'd now been introduced to Ida Almeta, Louisa Decia, Mary Ellen, and Ada Augusta Short  None of the other 3 were enumerated in any census or shown in any other records I've found. The eldest was a mere 5 years old when she passed away. The others were between 3 months and a year old.

Now, here's the important part. The 2nd image I reviewed was a 1950 transcription of the family Bible. One might assume it would just be a duplicate of the image I'd just finished working with. But unbeknownst to me, there were obviously more pages in the Bible. The transcription included death dates for all 4 babies who died before 1900, marriage dates for almost all the other children (some were just verification of already known facts), and birth/death/marriage information on Mary's parents (Edward Kemp and Elizabeth Jackson, who I already knew but some of the information was new to me or provided possible alternate dates to information I'd found elsewhere). There were additional notes about Mary's parents I need to review in the future because there are discrepancies with information I already have and they don't totally makes sense to me yet. There was also a notation about William's grandfather and when he moved to Indiana from Virginia in 1807. I don't know his grandfather's name yet, but it's still an important piece of information I'll be definitely be using in future research.

There's also a final paragraph with details about Mary's grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather and a potential link to President Andrew Jackson (including how they were his closest blood relatives who had any descendants). I'm going to need to review this particular information very carefully and find records to verify because I know how easy it is for family lore to spawn based solely on a matching surname. It seems a bit fantastical, and it may or may not be true. Stories morph as they're passed down. But even if it isn't true, I'll still record the information as a family story at some point, after I've determined if there's any validity to it at all.

As you can see, 2 similar images - one a photo of a page from a Bible, and the other a transcription of the information - were actually 2 very different documents, each providing their own wealth of details. There were 28 different people to link these 2 images to, and it took me a couple of hours to attach and cite them all, but it was so worth it! I now have no unknown babies for William and Mary and I'm positively thrilled! So next time you have 2 seemingly duplicate images, documents, transcriptions or stories, take the time to really compare them before dismissing either of them as not being useful. Even similar headstone images can provide different details, or one may be much clearer than the other. User submitted media can be a treasure trove of it's own, Make the most of mining those details!

Image by congerdesign from Pixabay