Henry Jacob Kolk (1866-1916)

 Here is my first post from my WikiTree project!

 Henry Jacob Kolk (1866-1916)

 Henry Jacob Kolk was born in May 1866 in Godfrey, Madison County, Illinois. He was the son of Jacob Kolk and Mary Smith.

Henry married Emma Jane Kolk on April 30, 1894 in Upper Alton, Madison County, Illinois. They had two sons together, Harry Holton and William Clyde.

Henry was a farmer, as was his father. In 1900 he lived with his wife and two young sons on his father’s farm, where he worked as a farm hand. By 1910, his father had died and he owned the farm.

Henry died in the Jacksonville State Hospital in Jacksonville, Morgan County, Illinois on July 28, 1916. His funeral service was held at the Congregational church in Godfrey. He is buried in Godfrey Cemetery in Godfrey, Illinois.

This biography was first published to WikiTree. You can find the latest version of his biography by clicking here.

Sources 

1. Henry Kolk in the 1900 U.S. Census, Fosterburg Township, Madison, IL, 18 Jun 1900, FamilySearch.org, viewed in “United States Census, 1900," index and images,” image 18 of 25, citing NARA microfilm publication T623, accessed 31 May 2015, 
2. Marriage Record for Henry J Kolk and Emma Weiss, Marriage Record, Madison County Register of Marriages, File # 3125, Madison County, Illinois, 30 Apr 1894, photocopy from microfilm, IRAD, Carbondale, Illinois.
3. Henry Kolk in the 1870 U.S. Census, Monticello Post Office, Township 6, Range 9, Madison County, Illinois, 26 Jul 1870, FamilySearch.org, viewed in “United States Census, 1870," index and images,” image 35 of 44, citing NARA microfilm publication M593, accessed 1 Jun 2015.
4. Henry Kolk in the 1910 U.S. Census, Fosterburg Township, Madison County, Illinois, 18 Apr 1910, FamilySearch.org, viewed in “United States Census, 1910," database with images,” image 3 of 24, citing NARA microfilm publication T624, accessed 5 Feb 2019.
5. Henry Kolk in the 1880 U.S. Census, Fosterburg (T.6 R. 9), Madison County, Illinois, 16 Jun 1880, FamilySearch.org, viewed in “United States Census, 1880," index and images,” image 82 of 887, citing NARA microfilm publication T9, accessed 1 Jun 2015.
6. Death Certificate for Henry Kolk, Jacksonville, Morgan County, Illinois, File # 0028642 Roll 11, 28 Jul 1916, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, Sangamon County, Illinois, accessed 8 Jan 2004. (also available at FamilySearch.org.
7. Obituary for Henry Kolk, “Alton Evening Telegraph,” Alton, Madison County, Illinois, 29 Jul 1916, page 2 , Newspapers.com, accessed 1 Apr 2020.
8. Funeral announcement for Henry Kolk, Alton Evening Telegraph,” Alton, Madison County, Illinois, 31 Jul 1916, page 2, Newspapers.com, accessed 12 Apr 2019.

My WikiTree Project

I mentioned my WikiTree project in my last post. Today I'm going to share some details of the project and how I participate. It's early on, and I'm starting slowly, so my workflow may change, but this is how I am building the tree.

I start by adding a basic profile for a person. WikiTree requires at least one source before a profile can be created, so initially I add only birth and death dates and places, and the marriage if details are known. I then add a source or two, but these are not necessarily well-crafted sources at this point. They may be as simple as "Death Certificate found at FamilySearch.org". I create similar basic profiles for the spouse and parents of the person.

I then go back to my database and verify all the sources I have for information on the person, verifying where I found the source, and cleaning up the citations to a more 'standard' format—though they are NOT up to E.E. standards!

Once I've cleaned up my sources, I return to WikiTree and add a detailed biography to the profile. This may include occupations, residences, children, or other information I know about the person. I make sure I have a source for each piece of information I include in the biography, with the exception of the names of the children. (I work on those as I add profiles for each child.) If there is a conflict in my information (e.g., various places of birth), I include a section at the bottom of the biography explaining where I got the information and why I've accepted one piece of information as the more likely correct bit of information. If I have relevant photos, I also add those to the profile. Some contributors add photos of documents (e.g., death certificates, obituaries, etc.), but so far I have not, because I don't want to violate any copyright or user agreement.

At this point I double check the privacy settings, of which there are many choices. Obviously living people, if added, are completely private and  in most cases, unlisted.I try to keep parents of living people private also, so that only names and dates are listed, and cannot be edited by just any user. I do this so that information on living children cannot be exposed to public view. For most people without living children, I go case by case, but use a more open setting. A completely open profile that can be edited by anyone who has signed the Honor Code is the only option for profiles of people born over 150 years ago, which seems very fair.

I've done a few profiles now. My plan is to start sharing them here. I will update the profiles on WikiTree as I learn new information. I may not be as consistent in updating the profile here, so as I publish a profile here I will include a link to the WikiTree profile that will always contain the lasted information. This is a slow process, but so far it has been working for me. I feel that not only am I contributing to the WikiTree, and the genealogical community in general, but I am also taking time to get buy own research organized. I'll bee sharing my first profile here very soon! 

52 Ancestors in 2020 - Week 7: Favorite Discovery

 I’ve missed a couple of weeks of Amy Johnson Crow’s 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks, but I’m working on catching up. The prompt for week 7 is ‘Favorite Discovery’. I’ve had many ‘favorite discoveries through the years. My favorite discovery tends to be my most recent discovery. About a year ago it was the discovery that my father’s bachelor uncle had been married. A few months ago it was the discovery that my great-grandfather’s sister had married her second cousin; his paternal grandfather was a brother to her paternal grandmother! I'll post more about that later.

My most recent favorite discovery isn’t a specific person, but instead is a source! Newspapers.com had a free weekend for Presidents Day. I didn’t really expect much because I can access the site for free from home with my library card, but this also included the Plus edition. Still, I really didn’t expect much because I’d had a subscription a couple of years ago and thought I’d exhausted my options there. But it was free, so I decided to give it a try. I started by searching for some of my Petrini cousins. I found a handful of obituaries in New York newspapers. I already had most of them from online obituaries, but I like to have the scan of the print edition when possible, so that was a plus. Not a huge discovery, but still nice.

Next I decided to search for my Weiss line. It is a large line, and I’ve been researching it for almost twenty years, so I didn’t expect to fine much. I started by searching for my grandfather’s cousin, Josie Weiss Shirk. I’d found her in the California Death Index about 15 years ago, so I knew she’d died in 1958 in Los Angeles. I’ve been looking for an obituary ever since, with no success. But this time…..there it was! 

13 Mar 1958, Thu The Pomona Progress Bulletin (Pomona, California) Newspapers.com

I also found an obituary for her husband and one of her children. By the time the weekend ended, I had 14 new articles about Josie’s family and I saw other articles that I didn’t get clipped. The good news is that MOST were not from Plus newspapers!  I can go back and look for these with my library’s subscription! My new favorite discovery!

Hooray for Wild Cards!

 It's been awhile since I posted. I've been busily working on my genealogy with Zotero and Trello as my companions. I'll post more about those another time, but today I want to talk about wild cards. What is a wild card, you ask? Simply put, it is doing a search with an asterisk substituted for a letter or group of letters. This is useful when you aren't sure of the exact spelling of a name. For example, I have seen my Janco surname spelled alternately as Janko, Jansgo, and even Jansco. Rather than search for these individually, I could use a wild card to search for the name 'Ja*o'.

And that is exactly what I did early today. I've been searching for some time for my Paul Janco in ship manifests with no luck, even using creative spellings of the name. I knew that he was already in the US when the rest of his family arrived in 1911. Recently I found him in census records (another story!) and learned that he arrived in 1907. I did a quick search for him on Family Search, again with no luck! So I decided to try a wild card search.

First I narrowed my search. I knew that he family had arrived through the Port of Baltimore, and thought there was a good chance that he would have traveled through the same port before sending for his family. I knew I could widen the search to other ports if necessary, so I restricted my search to Baltimore Passenger Records. I typed 'Ja*o' into the surname box, but I knew that I'd searched for Paul Janco and Paul Jansco with no luck earlier. So on a hunch, I also used a wild card for the first name, typing in 'P*l'. I knew he was born about 1865, so I restricted the birth years from 1860-1870. I hit search and BOOM! — there it was! Along with yet another spelling — JANCSO.

Pal Jansco Maryland, Baltimore Passenger Lists, 1820-1948

From other information on the ship manifest, I can see that Paul is traveling to St. Louis to join George Kovacs. There is something written in front of Georg that I can't make out. I can also see that this is not the first time that Paul has entered the US. In 1904, he arrived in the US with a destination of Akron, Ohio.
​
​You can see the full image here.