What is their name?
The name I go by is Vicki Lais. However, it is not the name I was born with, nor the name on my driver's license. Gosh, what happened? Well, many of us get nicknames as children, and many of us change our names for various reasons, including marriage, adoption, divorce, or a desire to have another name. What does all this have to do with anything? Well, nothing. Unless you are interested in genealogy, that is. Then it is one of the most important pieces of knowledge you can obtain. Who is "Bud"? perhaps his name is really Frank, but everyone called him "Uncle Bud". How many of your gr-gr-gr-aunt's "disappeared" about the age of 18? They probably got married, and their husband's name hasn't yet been found. So, they're in the census records, but basically invisible, at least, until someone shines the light on some records, in the right place at the right time. Or, take my father's family, where all his 100+ first cousins had nicknames. He had no idea what their real names were so I could match them to census records.
Collecting Names and Information
And that's one of the main purposes of this genealogy website. The other goal is to share the research I have found with relatives. I have been working on my family's genealogy since the early 1980's, since a distant relative, Kenneth Sims, sent a book on Dorman genealogy to my grandmother, and about all it listed were her children and their husbands. None of us grandkids were mentioned, and I wanted to correct that situation. (There's another whole story about the state of computers and genealogy software back then, and losing my database three times, but I'll save that story for another day.) So I sat my grandmother down, week after week, digging out bits and pieces of information. Sure wish I had used a tape recorder back then. For those of you who know me well, you know my memory has never been very sharp. I'm not one of those people who remember everything. In fact, I'm lucky if I can remember why I went to the grocery store! Luckily, I wrote down the ancestor names on tiny slips of paper as she passed along the information, and later, realized I had come up with my own very simplistic "family group sheet". My grandmother would tell stories about her family, uncles, aunts, parents, great-uncles, grandparents, great-grandparents, cousins, people at school, just everyone. And because all I was looking for at the time was "just give me their names, birthdates, who they married, and their kids", I failed to recognize the tremendous gift she was giving to me - stories about my family. What I would give to have those stories retold by her just one more time! But this recognition didn't come until after she had died. Much too late for me to do anything about it. My advice to all of you just getting started on your search for family - TALK TO THE OLDER PEOPLE, RECORD THEIR STORIES, AND TRANSCRIBE THEM AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. Wish there had been someone back in the '80's to give me that advice. Oh, well, life goes on.
Images
This website contains a mixture of digital photographs and typed transcriptions. It does not attempt to show every single page of every document at this time. Right now, only the owner of the website, Vicki Lais, has proper authorization to load genealogy information. At a future time, if there is enough desire, this site can be made available for other family members to upload courthouse and other family related information. This site will only contain information personally obtained by the submitter. It is not acceptible to just copy someone else's book - for one thing, that's copyright infringement, for another, many transcriptions have errors or are out of date. All excerpts from published books must give proper credit to the original author or transcriber.
In the case of digital images, there will sometimes be multiple images of the same page, in hopes that at least one image will be clear enough to read. Images may have been taken from different angles, different times of day, different camera settings, different cameras, different dates, or perhaps edited/ enhanced to bring out lost detail.
Camera Talk
For taking images at home, my dining room table works well. My tripod middle post can be swung horizontal over the table, or I can set the tripod up over the pages, and point the camera down. If you're looking for a digital camera, here are some must have's for genealogy work - image stabilization, optical zoom, and a multi-angle LCD. My well used Canon PowerShot S5 IS has all these, and I have been very, very pleased with it, in spite of it being ancient now.
When taking photos of documents that have bleed through of the black writing from the other side, try placing a black piece of construction paper under the document. Most of the bleed through will disappear. Can be used on copy machines too, but try to get the black close to the size of the document, or place the document in a corner so the black paper can mostly hang out of the machine. Otherwise you will have a sloppy wet piece of mostly black paper come out of the machine!
A lot of the following is now out of date. When this website was started, there were no digital images from census records and courthouses online, for free. If you wanted the document, you went to the courthouse or library, had a copy made for 20 cents each, or took pictures of the documents yourself. I spent 6 weeks in 2010 traveling around the south to every courthouse that might have records of my family, taking pictures, and camping out along the way. My, have things changed!
A tip to try out - many of the images are on microfilm. My digital camera was used to take a picture of the projected image. Some cleanup is required as the picture is somewhat distorted, but for research purposes, it's good enough. Here are some sources to help anyone accomplish this. Check Ebay and Amazon for the camera clamps.
GSC Associates took the time to write down the procedure, including the camera settings. They also show a camera mount to temporarily attach the camera to the microfilm reader. The only thing I would add is to lay a couple pieces of typing/ printer paper on the panel where the image is projected. It will eliminate that "white out/ shiny/ bright spot" caused from the glare of the microfilm light.
I've been using the Sunpak ClampPod Pro Clamping Tripod for several months. This one is the right idea, but the short flexible post was not stiff enough to hold my heavy camera. Also, the small ballhead kept slipping and needing re-tightened. Would probably work fine for one of the smaller pocket sized digital cameras. Just so you'll know, the larger the ball, the heavier the camera it can hold. The post unscrews, so the heavy duty Joby Ballhead Mount for SLR Tripods is now used instead. Unfortunately, this does not allow for the camera to be placed at the ideal angle for taking the image, but it does hold it steady.
Here's another gadget for holding the camera, the Sharpics Tabletop Camera Stand with 3 way Panhead. Just ordered this one, will post back here after trying it out.
More on copyright issues
Rather than give my own, uneducated version of my particular understanding of copyright law, please read the article "Copyright Fundamentals for Genealogy" by Mike Goad. Since most of what we do in genealogy is collect facts, we will rarely infringe on copyrights under the rules of "fair use", and because the fact is, that "facts" can't be copyrighted. Plagerism is another story (copying something and pretending you wrote it) - please be honest and courteous to other researchers and give credit where credit is due. It's much better to come up with your own story of how all the facts are linked together for your family.
Sources and other cool stuff!
One more piece of advice. As much as I hated hearing it, everyone told me to KEEP SOURCES ON EVERYTHING. Well, gosh, that sounded like too much work, and all I wanted to do was find my family. After several months of diligently loading data, I encountered a source that had a different death date on one of my ancestors. And guess what, I had not documented where my FIRST date came from, and had no way to compare sources and decide which one I thought was the most accurate. After that happened several times, I went back to square one. Back to my old sources, and documented them (at least the ones I could find again). What a pain. But going forward, you better believe I document every tiny bit of information. Who gave me the month. Who gave me the middle name or initial. Who gave me the county. Controversy on this person's maiden name. The actual burial place of this person in comparison to the tombstone. Everything. For example: One of my gr-aunts bought a nice, fancy, new double tombstone with my gr-grandparent's names on it, and put it in the cemetery. About 100 feet from my gr-grandfather's ORIGINAL tombstone, which has a couple of unmarked spaces around it. So who is buried with the new stone? Probably no-one, but most certainly not MY gr-grandparents.
With that said, what you will find on this site is mostly dry data - information found at courthouses, in census records, pictures of family, and whatever information I've gathered over the years and want to share with my extended family. I am researching all the surnames of my direct ancestors, and other lines that tie into my own lines in some way. Basically, if I add your name or family to my genealogy database, I want to know how we are related. It's pretty cool to find out that a fellow researcher is my "6th cousin 3 times removed". Or that a surety is my '23rd gr-grandfather" and built a fort or castle in England somewhere. Or that a Cosby ancestor's "misbehavior" was the primary reason why we have freely published newspapers today. Or that a gr-gr-grandfather was promoting "racial equality" back in the late 1860's and got beaten up and left for dead under a bridge for his efforts. One never knows what ancient skeletons or unrecognized heros will come out of your genealogy closet, but they certainly make for interesting reading!
Browse around, see what I've dug up, and hopefully you will find something that helps you advance your own research.
--Vicki
If anyone's curious, here are some other activities that take up my time -
The Creek in Mt. Olive
