Dick's Genealogy & History Corner

I have been adding web pages of veteran’s records since 2001. The last couple of years have been veterans buried in Holy Sepulchre Cemetery. I’m about 80% complete on the records of Holy Sepulchre. As I complete a few sections I create a web page with the data. Some of the records also include maps of the sections. I go to Holy Sepulchre and use their kiosk and get a map from them for each section, too. Then I decide if the map that they have or one in the veteran’s records is better and post that map.

M. Sarsfield Brennan

Today I went to the cemetery to get some maps. I input the name of M. Sarsfield Brennan, who my records say was buried in Section One South, lot 11. The kiosk said he was buried in Section 10 South, lot 11. I went to both places and I found Mr. Brennan in Section One (see picture). So the kiosk is wrong.

I didn’t expect that the records on the kiosk would be 100% correct. No extracted records are ever 100%. Not even the original records are perfect as the person recording data can make mistakes. There are probably errors on my web pages of veterans, as I’m not perfect, either. Try to get more than one source for your family facts, if you can, to prove every fact.

Tuesday as I was going into the Monroe County Courthouse there was an auction of property about to begin. This one was unusual; there were many people. Other auctions that I have seen on the (enclosed) Courthouse steps have usually just had someone from the bank that is owed the money and maybe one other person bidding. The opening bid is from the bank for what is owed on the property. That’s usually the only bid as the other person is surprised as how much that bid is for. Those auctions are over in a minute.

Auction

So at this sale on Tuesday, the property started at $265,000 and at first had 4 bidders but quickly got down to just two bidders. It ended up selling for $401,000. The bad economy probably forced the auction but I’ll bet that wherever this land is located that it will be back on the market in short time at a higher price.

This economy may have pushed more homes into auction but the auctions have been going on all the time. This auction in the news article on the right is from 1828 and the Sheriff is selling off property from someone that got in a bad financial situation. When a property is bought at an auction it is noted in the land transactions. One of my ancestors moved to Minnesota in the late 1850s. The land that they ended up on was rocky and farming was poor. Within a couple of years they bought a better piece of land at auction and it even had a cabin on the property so they didn’t have to build one. All of that was noted in the deeds. What always surprised me about deeds is that a father will sell property to his son but only very rarely is the relationship noted.

I spend way too much time in cemeteries but I almost got stuck in one earlier this week. I was down in Ulster County, NY and had visited five cemeteries looking for my extended family. There was just one more cemetery that I wanted to stop at; Ulster Park Community Cemetery. I had looked for the cemetery many years before but couldn’t find it. There were only two people that I wanted to find but I thought that it was possible that there might be more of the family buried there. This time before I left home, I had found good directions using Google. The cemetery wasn’t near the highway. No wonder that I couldn’t find it. It was behind a fruit, vegetable and garden store. I found the business and as I pulled in I could see the cemetery. I asked a man watering plants how to get to the cemetery and he pointed to a very narrow driveway between the main store and a greenhouse. I started down the driveway but there was a large (4ft by 4.5ft by 3 ft) apple crate in the way so I stopped my car. I could hear someone mowing in the distance but didn’t see anyone to help. The crate had many metal and plastic pipes. It weighed so much that I had to inch it out of my way. Got back in my car and drove the rest of the way to the cemetery. It looked like no one had been there in years and it was partially overgrown. The earliest burial was from about 1835 and the most recent burial was 1980 even though there was only about 100 graves. I couldn’t find the two people that I went there for; nor any other relatives. So I headed back out. This time, I got half way back to the highway and there was a forklift parked in the middle of the driveway. I was mad! I beeped my horn and hoped someone could hear me as there wasn’t any other way out of the cemetery. Just then, a man on the mower stopped and came over and apologized. My mood changed quickly and I laughed thinking I could have been stuck in the cemetery. I should have just walked from the highway back to the cemetery rather than trying to drive back there.

There is a new website available that has links to online city, county and farm directories. Simply called Online Directory Site, it has links to directories for the US and Canada. Miriam Robbins Midkiff is the host of the website and she indicates if the directory is free or on a fee based website, such as Ancestry.com.
See if there is a directory available on-line for a location that you are interested in.

I had to go to a New York State office today and fill out some paperwork. One of the questions on the form asked if I was a veteran. I checked, yes. I was in the National Guard from Jan. 1970 to July 1976. Then I went to see a person in the office who told me that I am not a veteran. That’s because you need to have at least 60 days of active duty and all I have was my basic training that they counted (122 days). I have an Honorable Discharge but my 6+ years of meetings was not good enough to even be classified as a vet. I wasn’t even asking for any benefits.

I spent many hours updating all the links on the links page on the GenWeb of Monroe County website. Pages on the internet come and go all the time. Plus some websites just love to redesign their site and move their pages around. This time, the City of Rochester and the Rochester Public Library had many updates. The old links to the RPL pages would have worked for a while but they would eventually have gone away. So I updated to the new links. Old style websites like the GenWeb site are static pages that don’t change much. Newer websites and even this blog are constructed each time you go to the page by putting together many pieces. Those pieces can be updated every few seconds if needed. So it can be difficult to pin down links on some websites.

If you find a web page that has valuable information that you want to refer to years from now, the best way to insure that you have the data is to save a copy of the web page to your computer. Then if the website disappears, you will still have the information.