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...OUR IOWA FAMILY |
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Here are questions you may have, and answers that you may or may not find adequate.
Click on a question, or scroll down to see them allWHY AREN'T THERE MORE DETAILS ON EVERYONE? WHY ARE THERE IN SOME CASES MORE DETAILS THAN SEEM NECESSARY, ON SIBLINGS FOR EXAMPLE? IT LOOKS LIKE YOU'VE MADE A FEW EXCEPTIONS TO YOUR POLICY OF NOT INCLUDING ANYONE WHO NEVER LIVED IN IOWA. WHAT WILL THE ADDENDUM TO THIS PROJECT COVER? WHEN WILL THE ADDENDUM BE FINISHED? AND WHY DO THESE THINGS TAKE SO MUCH TIME ANYWAY? WHY ARE LAST NAMES SPELLED IN DIFFERENT WAYS? WHY ARE BIRTH AND DEATH (AND OTHER) DATES NOT ALWAYS THE SAME IN RECORDS? WHY ARE THERE SOME TYPOGRAPHICAL ERRORS IN HERE? I PAID A MILLION BUCKS FOR THIS!WHO WROTE "THE IOWA FAMILY PROJECT?"
In some cases we don't have more details, and in others we have more but they are about people who are not our direct ancestors and would lead us away from what we're focusing on. Also, some of the information (and pictures) we have but did not use here is about people who did not live in Iowa at all, or people who lived in Iowa but were of the generation we will focus on in the addendum to this project (for instance in the case of Eleanor Goff).
These details supplement the often very skimpy details that we have on the life of the direct ancestor we would prefer to have focused on but who left hardly anything more than their name and perhaps an important event date or two behind when they died. At least we can know a little of what was going on around them -- things they were probably aware of. They help bring a time and place to life.
Yes, there are a few exceptions, mostly because this seemed necessary at times, for instance if we knew a fair amount about the the childhood of one of our direct ancestors, naturally that involved writing about their parents who might not ever have gone to Iowa. But even in these cases we still didn't write as much about those parents (even though they are our direct ancestors) as we would have if they had lived in Iowa. It was important to keep focused.
The addendum to this project will cover people born in Iowa after 1900 until the mid-30s, and also their parents (who have been mentioned in this project but not fully covered yet).
Heaven knows how long it will take to put the addendum together. It took years to get this project done (we told everyone we were going to do this, but some people probably thought we had given up on it; the truth is that we've been working on it off and on -- sometimes more off, sometimes more on -- for all these years), and it's time for a break.
To read about what went into preparing this project and what will go into putting the addendum together, read the Preface.
Because .... Well, actually for many reasons. This has been gone into on different pages, most specifically and extensively regarding Norwegian names (in the Martin and Christina Reagan section). In general, though, and this is also explained on different pages, it's usually due to people (for example census takers, and people who filled out ship passenger lists) who did not know how you spelled your name but put it down as it sounded to them -- Even when someone spelled it out for them, the person who spelled it may not have been the person whose name was being written down and they may not have really known how the name was spelled. Or, the name may have been spelled correctly, but later the name was changed; this is especially true in the case of immigrants who "Americanized" their names after they realized they sounded "foreign" (though sometimes they later changed them back). Another thing that happened is that the handwriting was not clear and later interpreters have had to guess at the spelling. Sometimes more than one of the above apply, and certainly there are other possible reasons, too.
There are different reasons for this. It might be due to the bad memory of a husband or wife who is interviewed about their spouse, or the lady of the house about their boarder, or the farmer about his hired man who is at the time out working on the other side of the farm. A birth date that is days or even months or years different than another birth date you come across is sometimes puzzling, but then you often find out that the earlier date is the birth date and the later date (even years later, when the preacher came by) is the baptism date. And if you have just one birth date, it may not be the birth date, but the baptism date, which is more likely to have been officially recorded. Sometimes there are two marriage dates, or the one you think is right is not quite right. One reason might be that they applied for their marriage license on a certain date and then were married a day or two later, and you'll find that some people have recorded the marriage license date as the date of marriage. Another reason might be that the person who wrote down the date for official purposes may have entered it, for example, on Monday (when they were back to work) when the ceremony had taken place the Saturday before, and they noted the current date rather than the date the marriage actually took place. There are probably other reasons. As for date of death, there might be two of those, or the one you have might be wrong. Often it's because there is the date of death and then there is the date of burial, which usually is not the same day. In a very cold winter when the ground was frozen, in fact, people were not buried until the ground warmed up, which may have been months after they died.
This was finished in April, 2009 except for two pages which were finished in early July, 2009. An early trial copy was made on a CD in July, but we intend to distribute CDs to family members we know are interested (and who have been a huge help to us) in December as a special Christmas gift. Since July, a photograph was replaced with a better one and some small changes were made on several pages. The last page was corrected today, November 22, 2009. We won't consider this "published" until all the CDs are ready to send; this will probably occur within a week of Thanksgiving, though we probably won't send them until sometime in December.
Because we're human. This has been proofread many times, but those errors were not caught. Sorry!
Helen, the daughter of John Vincent Reagan/Regan, and her daughter Barbara.
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...OUR IOWA FAMILY |