GenealogyAtHeart – Page 44 – GenealogyAtHeart.com

Genealogy At Heart Website Update

I’ve been writing a lot about technology lately. I do love it but it certainly is a pain when it glitches! Last year I created a free website using Sidengo called www.GenealogyAtHeart.com. I linked my blog posts to it and featured genealogical special offers, photos of recent research trips I’d taken and information for clients who were interested in contacting me. In July, I received an email from Sidengo that in less than 3 weeks my account was going to be closed unless I moved to a paid option. I was leaving town for a two week research trip the next day, had a client deadline I had to finish before I left and was returning to my teaching job three days after the research trip ended so I felt rushed into making a decision. Hubby thought I should just pay up to make my life easier but I didn’t want to do that as I thought it was poor customer service to pressure folks into paying. During my evenings while I was on my research trip I searched for alternatives. I settled on another company but wasn’t really happy with it – I was only able to get one page so the website was a long scroll AND I couldn’t link to my blog posts so I had to list them which was cumbersome for readers.

In September, the Association of Professional Genealogists had a webinar about WordPress. I had explored them in July but didn’t find the site intuitive enough for me to figure out how to quickly put together my webpages. After watching the webinar I thought I’d give it another try and in just a few hours I had my webpages almost back to where it was from the beginning. It’s officially live so I’ll continue to post my blogs on blogspot and then archive at genealogyatheart.com. So, if you want to find an older post and you remember the month – you can look on blogger. If you can’t remember when it was published but are looking for the topic – visit genealogyatheart.com where I’ve tagged and archived by area.

Tips for Attending a Family History Day and What I Learned from Attendees

Originally published on genealogyatheart.blogspot.com on 9 Oct 2016.

October is Family History Month and if you’re a newbie planning on attending a local event to get some genealogical assistance, I’ve got some recommendations to make your experience a happy one:

Bring what you know written down. Even better – bring how you know what you know! (Was it your parents who told you or did you find a record? It’s important to record where you got the information as you build your tree because trust me, before you know it you’ll have a lot of info and won’t remember where you got most of it!)
Have a specific question you’d like answered in mind. Specific is not, “I want to know everything about my mom’s family.” Specific is, “I’d like to find out when my great grandmother Elizabeth Smithson died.”
You probably have a lot of questions but rank them in order of your interest; it’s only fair as other people have questions, too, and are patiently waiting!
Prepare yourself for not immediately finding an answer – very little is online so it might take a phone call, email, letter or a visit to discover the answer you seek. You might not ever find what your looking for, either. Today an attendee demanded of one of my colleagues that he find an obituary from 1877 in a rural area of Pennsylvania. Checked the largest town newspapers online but couldn’t find one. He had checked several databases (Chronicling America, Newspapers.com, GenealogyBank, Ancestry) so I recommended calling the local history center and asking what papers were in existence then. The woman was not happy and demanded that someone find the obituary immediately. We couldn’t give her what she wanted so she left in a huff.
Remember to thank the researcher – they are volunteering their time and could be doing their own research instead of helping you with yours.

We had a nice turn out today at our county day and I met some incredibly wonderful folks with some very good questions and a few brick walls we were able to start tearing down. My three most memorable of the day involved:

A woman in her 70’s who’s parents in their 90’s were still alive and all of them decided it was time to write the family history. They were having trouble starting because they wanted “to do it right.” HINT: There is no one way to do genealogy and that’s one of the major pluses for me! I showed several formats – Case Studies, Proof Arguments, Kinship Determinations, and several lineage forms. If you’re putting off writing because you don’t know where to begin just begin with whoever your favorite individual is. You can ascend or descend from there. I understand that footnotes/endnotes are a pain but citations are critical. How is anyone going to know where you found that document unless you write it down?! The lady today didn’t like the look of footnotes; I explained why they are often used over endnotes – people tend to not think the citation is important so they save paper by not copying them. I recommended that she use page numbers that say 1 of X so if someone does make a copy in the future they’d know they might be missing the endnotes. I think the family just needed reassurance that their work was not going to be up for a Pulitzer Prize. It’s okay if you aren’t an author; it’s not ok to let all that research go to waste by not communicating in the best way you are able to for the next generation.
A lovely lady who wanted to know why her step-grandmother who she had never met was mean. What I loved about this woman was her matter of factness; she wasn’t emotional about the situation. Instead, she just wanted an explanation for why the older lady had been reportedly so miserable. I thought this was extremely interesting as most people don’t even fully research their blood relatives and here was someone who wanted to know about a step relative. I was able to find the woman’s death date in California and showed her the familysearch.org wiki so she can get further information about the many places out west the woman had lived. I also recommended she check out GoogleBooks and Hathi Trust for more information about events that were occurring at the time the grandma was residing in an area – like the dust bowl, for instance. I think that would have made me miserable! We were unable to find a marriage record or a death date for her grandfather but we did narrow down some cemeteries that she can contact to see if he is buried there. (Not on Find-a-grave, Billion Graves, etc.)
A woman who brought in the earliest photoshopped photo I’ve ever seen! Seriously, don’t know who or when it was done but some family member took a photo taken circa 1872 of a couple seated holding a baby and cut a photo of another baby out and pasted it over the woman’s lap. It was done fairly well, too. Weirdest thing I’ve ever seen! The family was afraid to remove the glued on kid, understandably, so I recommended taking it to a professional photographic restorer. For someone who just deleted all of her photos from her phone in error, I’m clearly the wrong person for the job! But the photoshopping brings up lots of interesting questions – why did someone do this? What’s underneath? Who did that? Who’s the baby? I have a tentative hypothesis that the family will have to pursue but my theory is this: Eleven months after the immigrant couple wed in Newark, New Jersey a male unnamed baby was born. The baby died 2 weeks later; he had been named Henry in the death records. The couple had another baby the following year. I suspect they had the first picture taken holding the dead baby as they looked miserable. Not having the money to sit for another photograph they had a picture of their second child taken and then wishing they had taken a photo when she was younger, cut it out and placed it over the original photo. The couple had 5 children, one every year, and then the father died. The mother died 2 years after him. The youngest two children were raised in an orphanage. Using GenWeb I was able to find where the orphanage records are housed. There was a memorial on find-a-grave for the couple but not for the baby. I recommended calling the cemetery to see if he was buried in plot 1 as the father was buried in plot 2 and the mom in plot 3. Hmm…who else could have been in plot 1 but the baby with no stone because they couldn’t afford one? Only way to find the answer is to make a call!

Happy Hunting!

Less Than 6 Degrees of Separation

Originally published on genealogyatheart.blogspot.com on 2 Oct 2016.

Yesterday I attended the Florida Genealogical Society’s sponsored seminar given by Judy Russell, CG. Judy is always such a dynamic presenter!

Typically, when I attend a seminar, I somehow find a relation to another attendee and yesterday was no exception. Judy had mentioned HIPPA and there was a question from an audience member regarding the number of years that records are held privately. I added that I had done some client work and discovered that I could obtain medically related records from a state facility and the court records regarding the medical issue were housed in the Florida State Library. This was for an individual that had died in 1973, just 43 years ago. The records I had received, though, were from a period over 50 years ago but the individual had continued to reside in the facility more recently than 50 years ago.

Shortly after there was a break and a woman sitting directly behind me introduced herself. Her father had been the psychologist at the facility from which I had obtained the records during the time the individual I was researching was living there. The attendee had just visited her father two weeks ago and had taken a trip to that area two weeks ago; she remarked that it looked the same.

It then hit me that I had once had a professor who also had been employed at the facility I asked her if her father had ever become a professor at a local college in the 1970’s as my instructor had been the psychologist at the same facility in the 1940’s and 1950’s. It appears that the seminar attendee’s father replaced the professor as her father had joined the facility in 1959 after an interim staff member was let go. So, I had connected with two of three psychologists that could have treated the client’s relative.

I live over 200 miles from the medical facility. The professor had lived in my county but the individual I was researching, the woman I met yesterday and her father never lived here. The father of the attendee lives over 300 miles away from me. Yet our paths all crossed. Definitely is a small world!

Saving Photos

Originally published on genealogyatheart.blogspot.com on 5 Oct 2016.

I’ve been on a technology kick lately and here’s why – I did something incredibly dumb and I don’t want you to do it!

We have a nice older digital camera that we rarely use. I rely on my phone for pictures of events and when I research as I prefer the document to be digitally available instead of having to lug the book to the copy machine, pay, and come home with yet another piece of paper that I have to then scan to save.

Yes, the camera phone has made my life better but I had taken so many pictures in the past two years that it stopped uploading about 45 photos ago. Now I knew this because I kept getting a warning that I was out of space but it was one of those things I put off correcting. I decided I wasn’t going to buy more space because I really needed to get into the habit of cleaning out the photos shortly after I’d taken them.

We were going to have an event at my primary job that involved taking lots and lots of photos over a short period of time. Charged the camera and put in a new SD card but I wanted a backup in case the old camera failed. I started going through the phone photos and hitting delete one by one. I guess I got a little over enthusiastic (actually, I got distracted by a phone call on the land line) and must have hit something wrong as I deleted everything at once. Oops!

I know what I lost and most are thankfully, somewhere else. I lost a picture of my son petting an armadillo he had rescued out of our hot tub last summer. The armadillo was making eye contact with him and looked like he was eternally grateful for being saved. I texted the pic to my daughter who promptly replied son better wash his hands as to not get a disease. So I have that picture in my texts.

I lost a picture of a peregrine falcon that landed on my fence during the hurricane but that’s okay, too, as he now lives in my hood so if I want, I can retake his photo.

What I’m upset about is birthday photos of my husband for the last two years. I don’t post to Facebook and I wouldn’t have texted them because everyone who cared was here. I know I was the only one taking photos so they’re gone for good. Hubby could care less but I’m kicking myself for being a goof.

Hard way to learn my lesson but I think I won’t be repeating this mistake.

Mexican War Soldiers – A Project You Can Help With

Originally published on genealogyatheart.blogspot.com on 29 Sep 2016.

Looking for a way to give back to the genealogical community? An awesome preservation indexing project has begun that may be of interest to you.

The U.S. National Park Service’s Palo Alto Battlefield National Historical Park partnered last month with the Federation of Genealogical Societies for the purpose of developing a database of individuals who served in the U.S.-Mexican War. The project will be ongoing – after the estimated 130,000 soldiers are entered to a searchable database, military unit information and related documents will be scanned and added.

You can help – just email Patricia Rand at projects@fgs.org.

The Adoption Trend

Originally published on genealogyatheart.blogspot.com on 25 Sep 2016

In the past six months I’ve been approached by two clients who had adoption inquiries. I used to be contacted by folks who were adopted and were searching for their birth parents but lately, I’ve noticed a different trend.

The first individual discovered she was adopted while she was at college. Her assigned roommate swore she knew someone back home that looked identical to her. This was before Facebook and email so seeing a picture or contacting the “twin” had to wait. In the spring of her freshman year the client visited the roommate’s home and upon entering, roommate’s family remarked about the resemblance. Unfortunately, the client wasn’t able to meet this “twin” because the “twin” was out of town as it was her spring break, too. Everywhere the client went that week she encountered people who called her by the “twin’s” name. Finally, someone showed her a picture and indeed, there was a striking resemblance. A few weeks after the client returned to college she was contacted by the “twin’s” father. He had heard of the client’s visit and wondered if perhaps, they were related. The client called her parents who fessed up – she had been adopted and they knew who her parents were. Yes, the “twin’s” father was her father, too. When this client called me I thought she was interested in tracing her birth parents’ lines but she wasn’t. Her adopted parents were an older couple who had recently died and she wanted to know about their families. She felt that they had given her their family’s customs and norms and she was more a part of their lineage than her birth parents. Shortly after working for this client an episode of Genealogy Roadshow aired and an adopted woman was to trying to verify a family story told to by her adopted parents. As part of their family, she felt the story was a part of her history, too.

Last month,I was contacted by another individual who asked me to complete lineage paperwork for her sister. I thought this was going to be fairly quick as the client’s mother had been a part of the organization. When I mentioned I would need the birth certificate the client let me know that her “sister” had been adopted. The organization that the ladies were interested in joining does not accept applications unless bloodline is proved. After explaining that I thought there might be a way around this dilemma. Often children are adopted by other family members and if that was the case, proving kinship might still be viable. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the situation. The woman, who is in her 50’s, had discovered who her birth parents were and confirmed it through dna testing a few years ago. I offered to research the birth parents but client and her sister weren’t interested. They had been raised as siblings and if they couldn’t join as siblings they weren’t interested.

As our society evolves so does the concept of family. My opinion is we are all related anyway. If the inquiry is to learn more about customs and norms than I understand why there is an interest. If the concern is medical, however, it may or may not be valid. We’re all aware that lifestyle effects health but so does our genetic makeup. My prediction is that genealogy software is going to catch up to enable a connection between two sets of parents.

Citation Dilemma – Attributing Parent Marriage Info on a Child’s Ancestry Page

Originally published on genealogyatheart.blogspot.com on 22 Sep 2016.

About a month ago I was contacted by an Ancestry user who inquired the following: “How could George Mitchell Long marry Sarah Ford in 1807 in Tennessee when he wasn’t born until 1849?”

Excellent question! I went to my tree and checked the birth and death dates for the couple and their child and didn’t see that I had an error so I suspected my tree was confused with another; that was my reply.

Yesterday, I received a more detailed response which brings up an excellent point. Under sources, I had saved for George Mitchell Long (Jr.) his parents’ marriage record. It does not show under Facts, of course, since the marriage took place before George Jr. was born. The record does not show Jr. or Sr. either since the Sr. hadn’t yet had a son so there was no Jr. at the time of the marriage.

Why did I have the parents info on the son’s page? I put the record there so when I write kinship determinations I can pull everything from one page. I can understand how this would confuse someone looking at my tree and assuming I had the wrong information for that person’s page, though.

I do this a lot, too! I’m thinking about how the Social Security info provides kinship and I save to both the parents and their child. That is clearer since it shows the relationship that a parents marriage alone does not do.

I don’t know if there’s a better work around – if you know of one please let me know! I’ve requested that Ancestry add a feature like the shoebox to the Facts page so extraneous information could be saved and retrieved easily but I’m not holding my breath on that.

Originally, I put info that I just described under the Notes feature but I had to move it out because I was working on some lines with other family members and they couldn’t see the Notes section – it’s only visible to the owner. For awhile, I then added it as a Comment but I wasn’t scrolling down and was missing my own comments. I see that now a click on comments on the toolbar brings the comments to the right side for viewing so maybe I should go back to using that.

I’d appreciate your thoughts and suggestion…

A New Way to Identify Name Variations

Originally published on genealogyatheart.blogspot.com on 18 Sep 2016.

I was reading the article Guild of One-Name Studies Is Now Available at FamilySearch.org in The Genealogy News recently and thought I’d check out the database on Familysearch. On a few lines, I trace everyone who has that name in the US in an attempt to make a connection across the pond. Stop and read the article and then come back to my blog.

If you followed the articles link to Familysearch, (added here in case you didn’t), and you enter a surname in the search field, you probably were disappointed. I know I was! I first added HARBAUGH and got links to everything but Guild Of One-Name Studies. I know family historians, some quite renown, have traced the name back to a HARBO who was a court scribe in the 1200’s in Denmark. I expected to find that and more but all I got were records of Harbaughs.

I then typed in LEININGER and got lots of IGI records but nothing for the Guild of One-Name Studies.

Then it hit me! On the left hand side, I should have scrolled down and filtered out everything but Guild of One-Name Studies.

I still got nothing for Harbaugh and Leininger but when I entered KOS I got Cass and Coss,

Next I tried KABLE and that’s when it occurred to me – duh – this could be an innovative way to come up with surname variations! My Kables were listed as Cable, Cabel, Kabel, Cobbold and Cabot. I would have never come up with Cobbold and Cabot.

Next I tried DUER and got Dewhurst. Now that was very interesting to me as I’ve been heavy into deeds and wills of my John Duer in Trumbull/Mahoning Counties, Ohio who died in 1831 after his son, Thomas, and I keep seeing Dewhurst in the records. I pronounce Dewhurst as doo’ herst but I guess it could be pronounced doo’ ers. Hmm.

We’ve all seen creatively spelled names, likely recorded from pronunciations, in records but I’ve never been really good at coming up with more than obvious variations. I’m adding this tool to my genealogy tool box!

Researching at the National Archives

Originally published on genealogyatheart.blogspot.com on 14 Sep 2016.

My two most favorite locations to research are the Family History Library in Salt Lake City and the National Archives (NARA) in DC. Actually, NARA is by far the archive that I hold dearest to my heart as it’s the place where I am able to hold in my hands documents that my ancestors held years before. It’s a connection like no other!

It was my final day in the Capitol and as I was headed to the airport in late afternoon, I had with my my suitcase. My sister-in-law had dropped me off at the commuter station close to her home at 9 AM and it was a straight line to the archive.

Took this pic as I came up the steps from the train:

The building isn’t crooked – I was after being on the road for several days!

This view is of the researcher’s entrance – it’s around the side of the building from where the public enter to view the exhibits. Think National Treasure’s entrance.

Going through security was not a problem and the guards pleasantly directed me to the locker room. For a quarter I could get a large locker to place my suitcase and purse. I hadn’t taken off the Kindle’s sleeve so I was sent back to place it with the rest of my belongings. The Kindle and/or a laptop is permissible but cannot have the cases with them. I also took with my my handy dandy plastic Baggie of goodies.

I was prepared and had viewed the Powerpoint presentation at home prior to my trip. The ppt had been updated the week before, however, so I was required to take a few moments to read it. You can check out Researcher Presentation here.

As with the Library of Congress, researchers must obtain a Research Card. You cannot preregister but there was no wait and within minutes I was on my way. The card you receive is free and valid for 1 year. Make sure you have a drivers license or passport with you!

I was directed to a desk where the kind ladies helped me complete the pull request paperwork. Since I had already checked out their holdings I knew exactly what I wanted to get. I highly advise you to do the legwork at home and save time while there. It’s amazing how quickly time flies when you’re into the documents!

The document pull requests must be turned in by the time deadlines or you miss that window. The pull times are 10, 11, 1, 2 and 3. I had already missed the 10 AM – when they open – as I had to get my Research Card. No worries, I was ready for the 11 AM pull. In the meantime, staff directed me to the microfilm room and I was happily viewing Postmaster Records from the late 1800s on several family members.

I was able to save what I found to my thumb drive but you have to put money on your card. A staff member helped me and I decided it was best to use my charge card to guesstimate how much I would spend. I wasn’t sure if the records I was requesting from the pulls were what I wanted and I didn’t want to put more money on the card than needed as I wasn’t planning on being back soon and you can’t get a refund once money is placed. The staff member suggested $5.00 and as it turned out, he was exactly on the money!

By noon I was on another floor asking at the desk if my items had been pulled. They hadn’t yet so I sat at a table and waited.

It was a Thursday midday in July and the place was hopping! Every table in the room was taken. The adjacent room was almost empty but those tables were reserved for Congressmen so the remaining researchers had to share space.

A kind researcher had noticed me downstairs earlier and asked me if I had found everything. I told him that my pull hadn’t come through yet. He suggested that I ask the staff member in another room as he found his request there. Sure enough, there was my goodies!

I’m not going to bore you with the process but this is government so you’ve got to sign and sign again and make sure you’re signing in the right place on the right color paper. Don’t worry – the staff is patient and kind and will help you if you forget what you learned in the ppt.

I had requested 3 pulls and all 3 had information. There are limits – from their website:

“The limit is four original files for each researcher for each pull during a business day up to 24 files in a given day.”

When I come back I plan on bringing my husband to expedite the process.

I sat in awe and read the War of 1812 pension petition of my 3 x’s great grandmother Mary “Polly” Dennis Hodge Adams Elder Search. You read that correctly – she was married four times, outliving 3 of the husbands. Her first husband, John Hodge, went off to the War of 1812 leaving her 8 months pregnant with twins in the wilds of Ohio. She survived the childrens’ births, he did not. I’m descended from her second husband, Edward Adams.

Polly couldn’t write, as evidenced from her X mark. One of her sons and daughters from her marriage to Edward accompanied her and signed the pension request.

I wanted a copy so I went back to the staff member where I had obtained the record and he helped me set up the document on the printer. They use blue paper so as to make sure that no one is walking out with an original. I had put money on the card in the microfilm room so it was quick to make the copies. I signed the document back in and then went through the process with the other two documents, one at a time.

I got teary eyed when I read the Civil War record of my husband’s 2nd great grandfather, Samuel Samuelson, who was the first of our surname. I knew he had sustained an injury but I didn’t know he had become a POW and was traded back to the Union, only to go on and fight another day. Wow.

The last document was another one of my husband’s great grandfathers, John Anderson Long, who had also had a lengthy enlistment in the Union. He had fled Tennessee in the 1830’s as his anti-slavery stance had gotten him in serious trouble. He eventually settled in northern Indiana and that’s where he enlisted when the war began. I hadn’t known he was a teamster. The documents contained his medical history – he had once had pneumonia but recovered.

Unfortunately, it was time to leave as I had a plane to catch. I was directed to the desk where the staff looked through all of the items I had copied and secured them in a locked bag:

All I was allowed to keep out was my locker key and Research Card. I then took these items to the guard desk who cleared me to leave the room. I gathered my belongings and ironically, got a call from my son. He was in the process of getting security clearance for his job and he had called to vent that the security company had not been able to verify his employment from 3 years ago at a local hardware store. I had to laugh – here I was holding documents from the 1840’s through 60’s and there’s no records from 3 years ago locally. I understand how it happened – the store was sold and the new owners didn’t have the old owner’s records. Son had a W-2 but the company wouldn’t take it because they said anyone could make one of those up. I guess they could but I don’t think like that. I suggested he track down the old owner and ask him for verification which he did.

After the phone call I proceeded to the exit, which is the same place as the entrance. The guard opened the bag and returned my items to me. They had locked my suitcase upon entering the building and asked if I wanted it unlocked. It was a carryon and I didn’t need anything in it so I opted to leave the lock on.

I did complete a comment card – I was so impressed with the staff’s professionalism, especially after the lackadaisical attitude of the Library of Congress employees, I had to let the top brass know.

I’m hoping that next summer, I can take the week long class at NARA in July and spend more time. I’m already making a list of who I want to research.

I was sad to end my research trip but thankful that I had the opportunity to do it. I hope that you have gained some tips and tricks next time you are on a GLAM (Gallery, Library, Archive or Museum) quest. The trip took me through public (county and city libraries), private (DAR), and national genealogical repositories (NARA, Library of Congress). Each have their own processes and it’s best to know before you go. Take the time to read online the hours of operation, explore the collection holdings and make notes of what you want to see while you’re there. The findings may leave you with additional questions and a run through a different bread crumb trail than you expected but I assure you, it will be fun and thought provoking. I can’t wait to do it again

Researching at the Daughters of the American Revolution Library

Originally published on genealogyatheart.blogspot.com on 10 Sep 2016.

Recently I had the opportunity to research at the Daughter’s of the American Revolution (DAR) Library in Washington, DC. I was attending an educational conference and at its conclusion, had an afternoon free so a colleague who is a DAR and I decided to join forces on a research trip.

Since we didn’t have much time we took a cab from our hotel. There had been a wicked storm the prior evening so there were tree limbs littering the street and work crews trying to open closed roads. The taxi driver got us as close as possible due to this situation.

I had already checked out of the hotel so I had my suitcase with me when I arrived. I know the DAR has gotten a lot of flack over the years for some of their policies but I must say that these were the nicest people I had met in DC on this trip so far. The guard said to put my suitcase in a corner and he’d watch it for me. We got a visitor’s sticker and were directed to the library.

My colleague and I split up and I had two objectives; the first to find if John Duer was still open for new members and the second, what was the problem with Wilson Williams. I always planned on joining the DAR when I retired and I didn’t want to submit paperwork on John Duer if the line was closed. I was assured he was open. My concern with Wilson was due to a family member who had decided to join the DAR but was told she couldn’t because of paperwork problems for Wilson. I had helped with the research on Wilson and I wanted to know what was wrong. Did someone find out, gasp, he had aided the Loyalists? Was there another Wilson that we had mistakenly followed?

The Librarian checked and found no problem with Wilson. He believed the family member misunderstood what she was told – there are too many people who joined DAR with the short form for Wilson and if she would like to become a member, she would have to complete a long form. No worries there!

I headed for the stacks and found a few books that gave me some leads on my Thomas Duer connection. I also checked out surnames for the Kinship Determination Paper I was submitting for certification just in case there was something somewhere I had missed. Nope, had all of the derivatives and not surprisingly, no primary info to be found there.

After about an hour I texted my colleague who was wandering in the museum. I joined her and loved the displays. Reminded me of the historical museum in Morristown, New Jersey.

As we left she asked me if I had taken any photos of books with my phone. “Yes,” I replied, “a few.” I inquired as to why she asked. Evidently, that was not permitted. She had whipped out her phone to take a photo of a map and was informed by the Librarian that she owed $10.00. She didn’t have a ten so she gave them a $20. and told them the rest was a donation.

She’s a much better person than me, for sure! I would not have handled it like that. I questioned her as to where there was a sign posted that photo’s weren’t permitted. She said there hadn’t been any and that a patron overheard and also questioned the policy. The Librarian responded that it had always been the policy.

When I came home I searched the DAR website and didn’t find anything regarding a no using your camera policy but be warned if you visit – your photo might cost you a whole lot more than a copy would!

Next time I’ll write about behind the scenes at the National Archives.