Sometimes when I feel stuck with a certain family line, I start on tangents of the family. I look up siblings and aunts and uncles and such. Today was one of those days.
For my Belgian ancestors the records (online) go back to about the rule of the French Republic. But, the records aren't all online, there are gaps in the years covered and which records are available. Of course, some of the key years I need are part of the 'not-on-line' group. So, I went ahead and researched the family of a sibling and his wife.
I started with my 3rd great grandaunt Anna Catharina Claes. There are actually 2 people with this name in the same town. Luckily one is much older, so they are easy to separate. She was born 8 Aug 1825 in Testelt, Belgium. She married Petrus Josephus Pairoux (Peter Joseph) on 24 October 1853. She died in the nearby area of Averbode, Belgium on 9 May 1911.
I have found her parents, grandparents, and half her great-grandparents. There are also lots of aunts, uncles, and cousins. On family search there are even more people connected to her, but no sources are listed, so I will have to verify the relations before I add them to my personal tree. And I am pretty sure there are errors in the info on FamilySearch. They had an aunt born before her parents. But, at least with some basic info put down I have a place to start looking for them to double check that they are related as they claim.
Hopefully these records are on the list to be indexed as well as getting more digitized. Right now I am going through the images one by one (thankfully many have yearly or decade indexes).
A few of the other names I found and put in my tree today, all from Testelt, Vlaams-Brabant, Belgium--
Anna Catharina's parents:
Henri (Henricus) Claes 6 Dec 1784-18 Oct 1842
Maria Elizabeth Van Der Borght 23 Nov 1782-?
Henricus's parents:
Jean Ferdinand Claes 1758-?
Maria Therese Lemmens 1762 -?
Maria Elisabeth's parents:
Jean Baptiste Van Der Borght 9 Feb 1755-17 Nov 1811
Marie Elisabeth Grois 1758-1807
Setbacks
Sometimes we have setbacks in life. My recent one came at the end of October in the form of a computer crash. My laptop hard drive crashed and I cannot access any of the files on it. We have tried everything, and it is now in the hands of my brother (an IT specialist).
Along with all my photos and projects that were on my computer I also had my genealogy. Much of my genealogy was also stored in dropbox (so I can share with my relatives), but I didn't back up my full database to dropbox since March. I did have some smaller gedcom files from July and August. And I had uploaded recent files onto Ancestry and MyHeritage.
So, I am in the process of downloading those, and figuring out what I have and don't have, and need to re-enter. I did have some research notes, but they are in an excel file...on the defunct hard drive. Lesson learned.
Here is my PSA: Back up your files! Onto a second hard drive, a thumb drive, the cloud...just get a second copy of anything you actually want to keep.
Along with all my photos and projects that were on my computer I also had my genealogy. Much of my genealogy was also stored in dropbox (so I can share with my relatives), but I didn't back up my full database to dropbox since March. I did have some smaller gedcom files from July and August. And I had uploaded recent files onto Ancestry and MyHeritage.
So, I am in the process of downloading those, and figuring out what I have and don't have, and need to re-enter. I did have some research notes, but they are in an excel file...on the defunct hard drive. Lesson learned.
Here is my PSA: Back up your files! Onto a second hard drive, a thumb drive, the cloud...just get a second copy of anything you actually want to keep.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)