Miss Maria S. Shultz

Ancestry.com has a new tool which allows you to copy the information from someone else’s tree to your tree. This new tool is easy to use; a click here, a click there, and the person is on your tree. I tell you this because by using the new tool I was able to find a family tree for a 1914 obituary which had been sitting in my “No Luck” folder.

The new Ancestry.com tool and my found way of  capturing the screen, allowed me to see new information and trace Maria S. Shultz from one branch of a family tree to distant cousin on another branch.

When I first came across Maria’s obituary I followed my usual method of finding a tree. I copied the link to the Obit;
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Adams County News – Jan 10, 1914, Gettysburg, Adams, Pennsylvania

Saturday, Page 1, Col 1

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=VBbLNo9YSJgC&dat=19140110&printsec=frontpage&hl=en
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I then typed in some text off of the Obit;
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Miss Maria S. Shultz

Died Tuesday Jan 6, 1914

Age 84

DOB abt 1830 Hanover, Penn

Father: David Shultz

he was attorney in Gettysburg, in a house on Seminary Ridge, where now lives Robert D. Bream

She built a house on West side, of Confederate Ave and lived alone.
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I used that information in an Ancestry.com search and up came a possible tree;
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Philip Forney Family Tree, Owner:  John Forney.
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I reviewed that tree and sure enough there was a Maria S. Shultz with a father named David on it but there was no other information which confirmed that it was the same Maria as in the obituary, so I sent the owner a cautionary message saying “I am not sure this is yours but just in case here is an obituary for her.”  I then created a fake tree for Maria, with her father and her obituary, but since I did not have much else to add to the tree no other possible family tree hints came up, so I put the text file away in my “No Luck” folder since the one tree I did find was not conclusive.

Months went by and then one day; as I relay in my previous post; I came across a way to capture the screen and clip old newspapers items off of the Enhanced News Archive list, so I went back to Maria’s obituary to capture her interesting life story.

Once I had clipped and pasted the newspaper item into a new file I reread the information and lo and behold there was a clue that I had missed in my original reading of the obituary. In the last few lines of the long obituary it said “The body was taken on Wednesday to the home of Mrs. H. M. Hartman, a cousin, on Baltimore Street…” I immediately went to the “Philip Forney Family Tree” and did a search for a person with the last name of Hartman. I found a person on the tree named Henry Miller Hartman married to an Elizabeth B. Forney and once again had a feeling of triumph.

The triumph was short lived because once I went into the profile pages for Henry and Elizabeth there was no documentation for a 1910 census; which is where an address would be found. It took me a minute to think of what to do; I could do a general search for a Henry Miller Hartman and hope that a 1910 census would come up but then again I wouldn’t know if that was the same H. M. Hartman. Since I was on someone else’s tree I could not do a general search for documents. If I had H. M. Hartman on my tree, I could click a search button and it would look for documentation, but I was not on my tree.

I had the fake tree I had created for Maria and on it I had her father and had found some census records (not the 1910 census) which listed a Mrs. Elizabeth Shultz and some siblings but nothing conclusive to point me to the “Philip Forney Family Tree”.

Found New Ancestry.com Tool

So there I was on the “Philip Forney Family Tree”, looking at the Henry Miller Hartman profile page but no way of connecting him to my Maria. It was then I noticed on the upper right corner a tool “Save this person to your tree”, so I clicked on it. I had used that tool in the past but was always disappointed because it gave me mixed results which seemed to possibly mess up my tree. The new look of the tool and the ease of using it lead me to believe that I would not be messing up my tree but instead would be adding Henry Miller Hartman to my tree, but where on my tree. I went back to my fake tree and saw that I had the father “David” on it, so I went back to “Philip tree” and looked for a David Shultz. I could add David’s information off of the “Philip tree” on to mine and that would add his branch and information which would allow me to get to Henry Miller Hartman.

This gets a little complicated but bear with me. I used the new tool to add David to my tree and that gave me all the data of the people linked to David including the full name of his wife; Elizabeth Forney with birth date of 1793. The Elizabeth B. Forney married to Henry had a birth date of 1878 so it was not the same one but the last name fit. I then went on her profile page in the “Philip tree” and once again clicked on the “add” tool; this gave me all the people linked to her. Her father and mother and siblings, and one of her siblings is Karle Forney. I then went to Karle’s profile page and added him on to my tree; which gave me his son Samuel. I then went to Samuel’s profile page and added him on to my tree which gave me Henry Miller Hartman. I added Henry Miller Hartman using the new tool and his wife (Mrs. H. M. Hartman) and children were now on my tree.

Now that I had Henry on my tree I did a search for documentation and up came the 1910 census. I brought up the original census document and lo and behold they live on Baltimore Street.  So, the circle was complete, Mrs. H. M. Hartman was the cousin to Maria and lived on Baltimore Street where Maria’s body was taken, as was told in her obituary in the “Adams County News – Jan 10, 1914, Gettysburg, Adams, Pennsylvania.”

Whew, that sure was the long way around to tell you that I found a home for an Obit.

But now you have the full story of my search and you have learned how valuable the capturing of newspaper clips can be if you pay attention to what is on the item you capture. You have also learned of the tool on Ancestry.com which is a new and better way of adding a person from one tree to your tree.  I hope this has helped and will give you confidence that you can find other trees for your ancestors and thus get new information off of them, no matter how hard it might seem to link one person on one tree to a person on your tree.

Thank You.

To View the Original Select Adams County News in this box: