Musings on family statistics

My cousin recently mentioned to me that she has no full siblings, only halfs (halves?). That got me to thinking about things that we all take for granted and never think about.

My mother’s mother had six children, five of whom lived to adulthood. (Grandma lost a three-year-old in the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic.) Of those five, three of them had only one child each. One had two, each from a different marriage. I have to wonder if there would have been any more from the first marriage had it not ended in divorce. But if there’d been no divorce, I wouldn’t have this cousin who is like a younger sister to me.

The fifth child was my mother. If she and Dad hadn’t adopted my brother, I, too, would have been an only child. Fourteen years after my birth, my mother had my sister. She and I are the only ones in the family with a full sibling.

Have you ever counted your cousins? On Dad’s side, I have ten first cousins including two who were adopted by my uncle. On Mom’s side, I have five first cousins. I know all of them, having grown up with my maternal cousins and visiting the paternal ones many times over the years.

My Dad had thirty four first cousins, twenty one from his Mother’s side and thirteen from his Dad’s. I think he may have known all of them, but I don’t think they were all local to him growing up, so some of them he might not have been as close to as the others. Some of them lived in Seattle, but they came and visited once or twice. Some lived in Illinois, which wasn’t terribly far, and it’s a good bet that they were able to come for holidays or family functions.

My Mother had forty seven first cousins, but per her cousin and family history book writer, Glenda Pagan Hibdon, there are a few I haven’t been able to document. If they died young, there wouldn’t have been any records, so I have to take her word for them. Twenty eight of them were from her Mother’s side and nineteen from her Dad’s. I think Mom knew most all of these cousins. Or at least she knew of them. A few were in Texas and Michigan/Indiana, I believe, and if they didn’t come visit Jonesboro, they were certainly talked about so Mom would have recognized their names.

These stats probably don’t interest anyone but me, but I wanted to document my ramblings in case I want to refer to them again in the future.

Where in Hazel Green, Wisconsin did my Grimm ancestors live?

I love maps. I don’t know why, but I guess it’s part of my being a visual person. I pore over maps to get a broader understanding of where I am, where I’ve been or where I’m going.

Because I’ve never lived where my ancestors did (save my maternal grandmother, who lived with us when I was little), I am curious about their lives and where and how they lived.

Killian and Regina Bachmann Grimm were my 2nd great-grandparents on my Dad’s side. Born in Bavaria, Germany, they brought two little girls to America about 1856 and settled in Hazel Green, Grant County, Wisconsin. (I have not been able to find them on a passenger list, so I don’t know their port of entry or exactly when they arrived.)  They had several more children once they got here.

Killian appeared on only one U.S. Federal census before he died in 1869: the 1860 census. He was listed as a laborer, rather than a farmer as one might expect in this rural area. There is a box on the census for “value of real estate” and Killian’s box is blank. So as renters, determining where they lived could be a challenge. Renters don’t leave many records.

Their neighbors that year were: Peter Myers, a tailor and John Wilkinson, a miner. Neither of them had any real estate in 1860 so they were likely renters, too. But two households down the list was a John S. Williams, farmer. The value of his real estate was $2,000. Indeed, a look at an 1877 plat map shows several parcels owned by J.S. Williams:

So while I don’t expect I’ll ever know for sure where they lived while Killian was alive, I believe I can say it was somewhere near one of these parcels.

On the 1870 census, Regina Grimm was a recent widow. This time, it’s easier to determine where she was. Her nearest neighbor was Bernard Vosberg and his wife. Also in their household were Killian and Regina’s two older children. Living with Regina in a separate household were their two younger children.

On this 1877 plat map, I have highlighted Bernard Vosberg’s farm. Note the tiny black square in the lower left corner. This is where the house was at the time. I’m thinking there might have been two houses, the larger main one and a smaller one. Perhaps the smaller one wasn’t big enough for Regina and four children, which is why two of them lived in the main house. Bernard and his wife, also Regina, didn’t have children.

So now to determine the location of this farm. I was able to identify landmarks: in red is Mill Road. In yellow is a segment of Hwy 11. Not highlighted, but running through the Vosberg property is the Sinsinawa River.  In green is the property of S. Lightcap, presumed owner of the Lightcap Mill which started operation in March 1848 but no longer exists. (And notice that one of J.S. Williams’s parcels is just south of Vosberg’s.)

I won’t bore you with the process of deciphering Township and Range land descriptions but with the help of some knowledgeable people in the Wisconsin Genealogy Network group on Facebook, Vosberg’s land description was found and plotted on a current map at randymajors.com.

You can see Mill Road and Hwy 11 just like on the plat map. If you right click on the image and choose to open the image in a new tab (that’s in Chrome, other browsers probably have something similar) you can see that those are buildings in the lower left corner. At least one of them is a house. It doesn’t look like there is access to the property from Mill Road. But Franklin Lane, hidden by that red grid line at the bottom of the property, comes off Logan Road on the west and goes right up to the doorstep of whoever owns the property now.

in 1880 Regina was living in Jamestown, surrounded by her daughters and grandchildren, Jacob and Mary Hames on one side and Henry and Clara Gable on the other. She died in 1897 and is buried in Cuba City. There is an 1895 plat map of Jamestown. Looking at the 1900 census for Jamestown where widowed Mary Hames still lived, she stated she owned her home free and clear. She’s not on the 1895 map although I believe I’ve found her neighbor, Henry Vosberg. His property is in the upper northeast corner, labeled “Jamestown P.O.,” just north of “Louisburg P.O.” It’s probably more accurate to think Mary owned her home on a block with other homes, rather than a home on a farm.

Sources: Atlas of Grant County, Wisconsin, published by Warner and Foote, Red Wing, Minnesota, 1877. U.S., Indexed County Land Ownership Maps, 1860-1918, Online at http://www.ancestry.com (subscription required).

State of Wisconsin, Grant County, Register of Deeds. 1867 deed for 40 acres of Bernard Vosberg’s total of 120, which provided the legal land description. Online at https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-C3Q8-92GF?i=308&cat=623450 (free).

 

 

What to make of Great-Great-Grandpa Hunt (part 3)

I discovered the name discrepancy a couple of years ago. Since then, I’ve been searching. Searching for Elizabeth, searching for Julia. No marriages for an Elizabeth Hunt. No Julia Hunts on a census. Incredibly frustrating.

But I did find one thing: there was an Elizabeth Hunt, the right age, in Georgia in 1870. She was in the household of a Mary Surratt, born Georgia, several Harper children, born Arkansas, a Surratt child, born Arkansas, Elizabeth, born Georgia and 10 year old Martha Hunt, born Arkansas. (And before you say anything, this was NOT the Mary Surratt who was hanged in Baltimore as a Civil War spy.)

This census record does not generate any record hints on Ancestry. Nothing that links these people to previous censuses. Nothing that would tell me anything about them. I came up with a hypothesis about them, however: Mary and Elizabeth were sisters, Mary was first married to Mr. Harper, had those children, then married Mr. Surratt and had that one child. Elizabeth was the mother of Martha, according to my made-up story. I know literally nothing about Elizabeth Cox Hunt. I found one 1860 census, with a David Cox and Elizabeth Cox, right age, born Georgia. They had two little boys. But they were in Hot Spring county which is quite a ways from Cross county. It seemed unlikely. Because she was about 34-35 years old when she married John/Jehu, I figured she had to have been married to Cox as opposed to it being her maiden name. Because of that, I concluded this family had nothing to do with my family. After all, Martha was too old to have been John/Jehu’s child unless she was born out of wedlock and it took him all those years to marry her mother.

So I’d put it down and come back to it later. Finally, a breakthrough of sorts: There is a Jehu Hunt, the right age, the wrong birthplace, on the 1870 Mortality Schedule in Fayetteville, Fayette county, Georgia who died in June 1869 of smallpox. The people on the mortality schedules are cross-referenced to their families on the corresponding population schedules and he is linked to the household of Mary Surratt, those Harper and Surratt children, Elizabeth and Martha Hunt.

Could it be? How could it be? Fayetteville, Georgia is a long way from Cross county, Arkansas. The only details here that match are Jehu Hunt, the right age and Elizabeth Hunt, the right age.

So I put it down and came back from time to time to try and find out more about Mary, her children, Elizabeth and Martha.

Yesterday, everything fell into place. Sometimes that darn Ancestry search engine will show you records it hadn’t shown you before, using the same search terms.

I found Mary on the 1850 census with her husband John HOPPER and oldest daughter, Nancy. They lived in Smith Township, St. Francis county, Arkansas. Where John/Jehu would live and buy land nearby in 1858. I found Mary and John HOPPER again in the same place in 1860. In their household was her presumed (by me) sister, Elizabeth Dearing and her daughter Martha J. Dearing. Mary’s daughter Elizabeth’s death certificate states her mother’s maiden name was Dearing.

I have come up with another hypothesis: Martha was born out of wedlock. She was Julia. John/Jehu gave her his name to give her legitimacy.

I went on to find Mary’s children in census/marriage/death and burial records. I found her grandchildren’s records. I couldn’t stop finding records. Except for Martha/Julia. And Elizabeth. 🙂

Being mindful of confirmation bias, I have another made-up story: John/Jehu, Elizabeth and Martha/Julia went to Georgia to visit her sister and possibly other family. For whatever reason. Maybe a health emergency. Maybe a death in the family. Farmers didn’t just up and go on vacation back then. John/Jehu contracted smallpox while there and died. Because his property and estate had to be probated in Arkansas, it took her some time to travel there from Georgia and that’s why she didn’t appear at the probate court until January.

My next steps are to track down living descendants of Mary. Find out if the family name was Hopper or Harper. The records have been about even for both spellings. See if they know what happened to Elizabeth. And Martha/Julia. Find out if they know where Jehu is buried. See if I can figure out if he was my GGGF Hunt. I’m not related to any of them, so DNA won’t help.

I’d like to put the finishing touches on his story.

 

What to make of Great-Great-Grandpa Hunt (part 2)

GGGF Hunt probably died before the end of June 1870. He is not to be found on the 1870 census in Cross county, Arkansas which was enumerated as of July 1, 1870 . But neither is his wife, Elizabeth. Was she dead, too? Actually, he probably died before the end of June, 1869 as he is not found on the Mortality Schedule of the 1870 census (deaths recorded from 7/1/1869-6/30/1870) for Cross county.

I took it a step further and went looking for a will and/or probate records.

And I found them.

The documentation is not as complete as I would expect, but at least enough of it survives (thank you so much Familysearch for microfilming the will books). The probate court of Cross county, Arkansas convened a few times a year, from what I can tell. The records are in two separate book filmings.

On page 547 of probate volume A, we find, dated 1/4/1870 (look at that date) :

“Est of Jahue Hunt, decd, vesting order. (take note of that name, it is spelled that way on all the documents) Now on this day comes Mrs. Hunt into court and presents the court here her appraise bill of Personal Property–to wit: 1 cow and calf $30.00, 1 heifer $18.00, 1 yoke cattle $75.00. The right to which said property is hereby vested absolutely in the widow.” I don’t know what this means but it looks to me like she is claiming these items from the estate (maybe she brought them to the marriage) and the court agreed. This is the last we hear of Mrs. Hunt. If she died before the 1870 census was taken a few months after this, I haven’t found a record of it. She was only about 35 years old at this time, she could easily have remarried, but I have not found a record. This seems more logical to me than her death, but anything is possible.

On page 59 of administration and guardian and bonds letters volume A in Cross county, we find the first entry in the matter of Jahue Hunt who died intestate. “Letters of Administration to B. Rolison in the Jahue Hunt Est.” Britton Rolison was the local county assessor. On 2/10/1870, Mr. Rolison was appointed to administer the estate. It doesn’t use the word “executor,” but that was his appointment, from what I can tell. It doesn’t say when Jahue died, but we know it was before 1/4/1870.

On page 106 of the same book, we find Mr. Rolison, Thomas G. Stanley and J.J. Carnes putting up bond to administer the estate. This is also dated 2/10/1870. But this is all that I find. At the very least, I would expect to find an inventory and a settlement. There is another book of settlements from 1866-1911 (volume D) but I didn’t find the Jahue Hunt estate in it. These films are not indexed and it could be that I just missed them. I will go through them again.

But one thing I did find that was unexpected and surprising:

On page 610 of probate volume A, dated “January term, 1871:”

“C.S. Hunt pet[ition] for Guar[dianship] of Julia Hunt

Now on this day the petition of C.S. Hunt, heretofore filed praying for letters of guardianship, which petition for want of bond is not granted.”

Wait, what? Who was Julia Hunt and how old was she? Did GGGF Hunt and Elizabeth have a child together? Glenda’s book doesn’t mention Julia, but it also doesn’t mention the 1868 marriage to Elizabeth Cox.

So the mystery deepens. If Elizabeth was still living, and if Julia was her child, where were they in 1870?

The answer may be in Part III. To be continued…

 

What to make of Great-Great-Grandpa Hunt (part 1)

If the only things you know about my 2x great-grandfather Hunt come from Glenda Pagan Hibdon’s book, The Pagan, Hunt and Sanderson Genealogies, you might think he could have been related to the founder of Huntsville, Alabama if you didn’t read it very closely. Glenda (my mother’s first cousin) talks about the possibility, but she does not state this to be a fact.

She makes other claims that aren’t sourced, such as the notion that because she couldn’t find them in the 1870 census (she was looking in the wrong county), they must have gone back to Tennessee (the supposed location of GGGF and GGGM Hunt’s marriage) and that her grandfather (my great-grandfather) C.S. Hunt married his first wife, Nancy Huggins, there. This must have been a family story, because I haven’t been able to find a marriage in any state for C.S. and Nancy. They had 3 children together who were born in Tennessee according to Glenda, but nearly every census they appear on says they were born in Arkansas. There was a Huggins family living in the same county in Arkansas who had a daughter named Nancy who was the same age as C.S.’s first wife. She was married to a Mr. Robison first, having 3 children with him, and the oldest son was born in Arkansas. So the story about Tennessee doesn’t add up for me.

She gives details about John Hunt Sr., the supposed founder of Huntsville, stating that one of his sons, David, married Elizabeth Larkin. She refers to GGGF Hunt as John Hunt II, stating he named one of his sons Larkin (which is true) and that makes this a definite connection but one she couldn’t prove. But then she goes on to show an unknown generation between John Hunt Sr. and John Hunt II with no way to connect the two. So her story should have started with GGGF Hunt, instead he’s Generation 3.

You might also think his name was John. I know I did. He is listed by name on the 1850 census in DeKalb county, Alabama and on the 1860 census in St. Francis county, Arkansas.

1850

1860

He got married in 1868 to Elizabeth Cox. Again, he is listed as John.

1868

So if you stopped there in your research, you’d come away with the satisfaction of knowing his name was John.

But let’s take it a step further. GGGF Hunt applied to purchase land in Cross county, Arkansas in 1857. His land patent was indexed by the Bureau of Land Management as:

Ok then, his name was John.

But if you find the purchase receipts and other documents related to that land sale you find this, dated 1861:

“I have carefully compared the within certificate with the original application in file in my office and have corrected the first name “Jehu” so as to agree with the application-instead of “John.”

Wait, what?

Sure enough, on that land patent, originally dated 1858, you can see that the name (in 5 places) was changed from John to Jehu and the date and other details changed to 1861. I wonder what brought that about? This was the first I heard that maybe I was wrong about his name.

So I took it another step further and found his 1866, 1868 and 1869 tax records for that land. While they don’t answer the question about his name, they do give me his middle initial, H.

So what do I do about this apparent name discrepancy? It’s true that GGGF Hunt named a son Jehu and he also had a grandson named Jehu. Could these be clues to the right name?

To be continued…

 

Absence of Evidence is not Evidence of Absence

I heard this statement on a tech podcast and I was struck by how relevant it is to a genealogical problem I have.

In the grand scheme of things, if I can’t solve this it wouldn’t be the end of the world, since it involves one of my grandmother’s great-uncles, not one of my direct ancestors. But the fact that I’ve been looking at this puzzle for years without resolution really bugs me.

My Grandma Hoff’s grandfather, Andrew Schmieder, born in Germany, had a number of siblings. For the longest time, I was only aware that one brother had also come to the U.S., Ferdinand.

Andrew was the 3rd born, Ferdinand was the youngest of 11, 9 of whom lived to adulthood. I don’t know if Andrew and Ferdinand came to America together or separately, I have not found them on a passenger list. Andrew was married in Grant County, Wisconsin in 1854. Ferdinand married too, but I don’t have a date. I think it likely the marriage occurred in the U.S.

Ferdinand and Maria Elizabeth Keller Schmieder had no children. He must have been fond of his nieces and nephews though, because he was very generous to them in his will which was probated in 1886/1887. His probate file was a goldmine of Schmieder family information for me, as he gave bequests to family members in Germany, naming the town he came from (Kappel) and also in the U.S. I was able to obtain church records from Germany detailing my family there. I was doing the genealogical happy dance!

He mentioned in his will that he was predeceased by his brother Anton who died in Cincinnati, Ohio. That’s all it said. He gave bequests to Anton’s children, Katy, Josephine and Xavier, who were over 21 years of age and lived in Cincinnati. And those were my only clues to track down any living descendants.

And track them I did. But there was an unexpected spelling change and I can’t be 100% sure I found the right Anton. The man I found and the family I traced spells their name “Schmidter,” pronounced “Schmitter.” Although to be fair, the 1850 Census spells this man’s name that way, but in 1860 it’s spelled “Smither.” My Dad always pronounced “Schmieder” as “Smeeder,” so if I try and imagine it with a thick German accent, maybe just maybe I could hear it as Schmitter if I wasn’t familiar with it. But I’m not sure how it morphed into Schmidter. And also to be fair, the Schmidter spelling wasn’t just made up, I’ve found the name in other census records for other families. If I couldn’t find anyone else with the spelling I’d feel sure I had the right guy.

And the family doesn’t know who their Anton’s family was or where exactly he came from in Germany. So they don’t have any information to contradict what I have, but they can’t confirm any of it, either.

I sat down and made a chart of the strong but circumstantial evidence to support my hypothesis that Anton Schmidter of Cincinnati, Ohio was the same person as Anton Schmieder of Kappel, Baden, Germany. (The screenshot is rather small, try the link if you need it larger.)

anton schmieder vs anton schmidter circumstantial evidence comparison 11.02.18

So where do I go from here? DNA!

I tested my Dad at Ancestry back in 2016. One of the Schmidter descendants also tested at Ancestry.

They do not match.

I keep searching Dad’s match list for names in the Schmidter family tree and there are none, nada, zip, zilch.

What does this mean? There are a few possibilities:

1. The obvious: my hypothesis is wrong
2. Dad and descendant would be 3rd cousins twice removed (3C2R) if related. Due to the way autosomal DNA works, there’s a 50/50 chance on average they’d shared enough DNA to show up as a match.
3. Family members of descendant have not tested

And this brings me to the title of this post: Absence of Evidence is not Evidence of Absence.

I’m not ready to give up yet. I still have work to do. Descendant says he has uploaded to Gedmatch. I need to get his number and look at his shared matches, see if he matches other Schmieder cousins who have tested. I need to persuade descendant to upload to MyHeritage. I put Dad’s test data there, but I have not identified any Schmieder matches there yet. MH has the reputation of having more European testers than Ancestry, so would have another pool of potential matches. (If we can’t match in the US maybe we can match in Germany.) I need to persuade other Schmieder cousins on Ancestry to also upload to MH. I need to pull out those German church records and make sure I didn’t overlook a death date for Anton Schmieder. If I don’t see one, I need to go back to the holder of those records and see if they have a death date listed somewhere else.

Update: I have looked at descendant’s Gedmatch data, there is no match to Dad and his match list doesn’t include any names I’m familiar with. If any of his family members have tested somewhere, it doesn’t look like they have uploaded to Gedmatch.

I looked at the church record for Anton and there is no death date. This tells me that Anton Schmieder did not live locally when he died and news of his death did not reach the priest back home. But that in itself is proof of nothing.

 

It’s time to just let this sit and revisit the match lists once a year. It’s likely to be one of those mysteries without a tidy conclusion. 😦

 

Scanning continued

Woohoo! One box of paper files scanned and emptied, papers recycled. Only 3 boxes to go.

In a lot of cases, I’m looking at source documents I haven’t seen in 20 years. The scanning process slows down because I’m checking for Findagrave memorials that didn’t exist back then, or I’m inputting the text of obituaries that I didn’t input at the time. Or, I’m finding Findagrave memorials for people I didn’t know have died recently, so I’m checking Genealogybank for their obituaries. My TMG* workflow has evolved over the years, not to mention the sourcing limitations I was under in the early years of PAF.** If I’m ever going to get my family lines output, I want my source citations cleaned up.

 

*The Master Genealogist

**Personal Ancestral File

 

 

Filing vs. Scanning

I’ve been absent from the blog for several months because I’ve been immersed in a genealogical/clerical project of massive proportions.

I’ve been researching our families since about 1989. A genealogy hobby or vocation can really bring out your inner “hoarder” just by virtue of the fact that you have to document your sources. You’ll more than likely encounter records that you think might be your person of interest, but you can’t tell for sure. I don’t know about you, but I print out and save all that stuff, for further research.

Over the years, my collection of documentation grew. When I moved to Richmond 20 years ago, I had two file boxes. Now I have five. My filing system back then was to create a file folder for each marriage that had documentation. If the marriage produced children who didn’t live to adulthood, those documents stayed in that folder. If the children had their own marriages, they got new folders and their documents went into it. If the children reached adulthood but never married, they got their own folder. It worked well for a long time. (Obviously, I didn’t make folders until I had something to file in them.)

But this system just wasn’t sustainable. I looked at those five file boxes and I imagined them expanding to 8 or 10. Yikes! And the stack of filing I needed to do reached at least 2.5 feet. I wish I’d taken the photo when it was at its highest, but I’ve indicated about where it was and I’m not exaggerating.

And on top of all this filing, I also had piles of papers and more folders sitting on the floor around this, my sewing room, of research in progress. Another unsustainable/unscalable system. I had a folder for each ancestral surname, which was better than nothing, but if you’ve done genealogical research before, you know that the number of direct ancestors increases exponentially with each generation.

In the olden days, a researcher probably relied on 5-drawer office filing cabinets. I would have easily run out of room for those. As it was, my husband shared this space with me as his office when the kids were still living at home. After they left, I quickly pushed him into one of the spare bedrooms and took over.

So I needed a solution and quick! I decided the only sane system for me was to digitize everything and recycle the paper documents. But I needed to make another decision: where to house the scans and how to find stuff later. A blogpost by Dick Eastman gave me my answer. He told about a hardware/software bundle and I bought it. It still took me a long time to decide between the Paperless software and Evernote.

I chose Evernote. I am not going to go into an in-depth review of this product, it’s been around long enough that you’ve probably at least heard of it, if not already familiar with it.

With the Fujitsu Scan Snap 1300i, I can scan directly to Evernote as a PDF document, or to Evernote or local folder on my MacBook Air as a jpeg. I use PDFs for documents, jpegs for photos. The scanner isn’t the fastest in the world, especially when I set it to convert the PDFs to searchable text. I get about 4 pages per minute that way. I also have it set for duplex scanning, meaning it will scan the front and back of the paper at the same time. If the back is blank, it discards it. That’s quite a time-saver! I also have it set to name each file with a date and time stamp. I can go back and rename them later, but not having to worry about it during scanning is also a huge time-saver!

Evernote allows you to set up notebooks to house your documents (aka notes). I have one called Inbox, which is where almost all my documents go straight from the scanner. If I have a gigantic stack of papers that would all go in the same notebook, I can set that one as the default, and the scanner targets it. Once the documents are scanned, I go through them one-by-one, tag them with the who-what-where and move them to a notebook I called Genealogy, which is just a big dump of documents that I’m finished with. I decided that rather than create tags with names, I’d use tags with the people’s ID numbers from my genealogy software, The Master Genealogist (that’s the “who”). If I want, I can rename the note with the person’s name. But with so many duplicate names in my family tree, I figured it would be hard to differentiate one from the other in a tag. But the ID numbers are unique and there’s always the searchable text! I also tag the type of document (the “what”), and the “where.” I haven’t been as good to tag the “where” as I probably should, but I can always go back and add tags later. And I decided against using date tags. I also tag each document with the surnames of the closest ancestors that I have in common with the subject of the document. For example, if the nearest closest ancestor pair that we share is my grandparents (it doesn’t matter if that pair are their grandparents too or any other generation) then I tag that document with “Hoff” and “Schmieder.” This is probably the hardest thing for me to describe, but it works for me.

The only thing about Evernote that I would put on a wishlist, is the ability to nest notebooks at least one more layer deep. I had to come up with a system for all that research-in-progress. So I created what Evernote calls a “stack” and named it Ongoing Research. Then I created a surname notebook for each of my ancestors and put those documents where they belong. It would be great if I could have one more level of notebooks in the hierarchy that I could name for specific people, just to organize the surname notebooks a little better. I suppose had I thought it out, I could have lots of surname stacks at the highest level and then put the specific person’s notebook below that. Something to think about for future.

I’ve been scanning for the last 6-9 months. I have over 6,700 notes and I should mention that I do pay for Evernote so that I have additional storage with them. All the piles of paper on the floor are gone. That pile of filing is gone. All I have left are the file folders in those 5 boxes plus another file of correspondence. I figure I should be done by Christmas.

 

 

 

Update on hydrangea propagation

Wow, it’s been almost a year since I posted about my attempt at propagating hydrangeas from cuttings. You’ve surely forgotten, so here’s a reminder: Grand Experiment, garden style.

I took 12 cuttings. Over the course of the year, I nursed them in the plastic box in my Florida room. Nursing is a relative term as all I had to do was water them a little every week or two. I ended up with 6 viable plants. I had labeled them with a pencil and they are unreadable. I think most or all of them are the Nikko Blue variety, now I am going to have to wait until they bloom (fingers-crossed) to confirm. Note to self, don’t use a pencil for the labels. Try a Sharpie next time. The labels are saturated and maybe if they dry out, the wording will reappear. We’ll see.

These first two came from my friend’s garden. She has several different varieties and I remember wanting to take cuttings from her white Annabelles (is that the name?) but as I recall, either I couldn’t reach them or the ground was too wet, or something. I think I ended up getting Nikko Blues from her, too.

The remaining 4 came from my plants. I thought I had lost the little one on the right just above, but after the original leaves fell off, it sprouted again. So I went ahead and potted it up with the others, it will just have to be the runt of the litter.

So, I’m pleased that we’ve gotten this far. One of the reasons I dragged my feet about potting them up last fall after they’d taken root, was I couldn’t find instructions on the internet about what to do next. I don’t really have a place to plant them in the ground yet (and I may just give them away) and I didn’t want them to sit outside in pots over the winter. I still have that cat and there’s no way I could keep the pots inside the house.

So I’ve placed all six of these in terra cotta pots so that they won’t easily tip over and placed them in the garden next to a Nikko Blue that is planted in the ground and doing well. I figure if the conditions are right for it, they should be good for these guys, too.

So my plastic box is empty, it’s time to do it again. This time, I’ll try for those Annabelles and some Oak Leafs.

Wordless Wednesday