Every day/week I tell myself I am going to go through the different genealogy blogs I have bookmarked and make up a blog post calendar for what days people post what meme’s/genealogy questions, etc. Have I done this yet? Nope, for I am nothing if not a procrastinator combined with a person who constantly has brain fog.
Anyway, I remembered it was Saturday and that I should check Genea-Musings. Each Saturday, Randy posts a different topic to write about (all related to genealogy of course).
Today’s question is…
1) How many persons named John Smith do you have in your genealogy management program or online family tree? How many persons named John Smith are ancestors?
2) Pick out one of those persons named John Smith and do some online research for them in Ancestry, FamilySearch, or another set of record collections. Your goal is to add something to your database.
3) Tell us about it in your own blog post, in a comment to this blog post, or in a post on Facebook or Google+.
Here are my answers…
1) None. I have zero John Smith’s in my tree. I have 2 females with the maiden name of Smith and 1 with the maiden name of Smyth, but nobody named John Smith/Smyth.
2) Since I don’t have a John Smith to do a search on, I’ll use one of the Smith’s I do have. I picked Margaret Smith (about 1382 – about 1430). She is my 18th great-grandmother on my paternal’s maternal’s side. So my dad’s mother’s side. She married Thomas Spencer (1378 – 1433) in 1403 in Eaton, Bedfordshire, England. They had one son, Robert Spencer (1406 – 1477).
After doing a search on Google, I found through a few other family tree and genealogy websites that she was actually born in 1380. None are sure where she actually died, other than that it was still in England. Looking at the hints for her on my tree on ancestry.com, there is a marriage record, a millennium file record and infomation on 18 other ancestry member trees available. I do not have a paid subscription to the site, so those will all have to wait.
3) I’ll be making a comment on the post over at Genea-Musings with a link to here. As well as on Google+.
One Reply to “Saturday Night Genealogy Fun – Do You Have a John Smith?”