Organizing Your Paper files in a Computer Day and Age

Photo by biblioteekje (creative commons licence)

That is the title of the workshop I attended Thursday morning. Part 1 and Part 2 with Mary Hill. I would work entirely digitally if it made sense but the reality is the 4 jammed packed drawers in the legal sized file cabinet as well as the 2 full bookshelves with over 20 binders and various photo albums and news paper clippings and scrapbooks. That is all paper. And desperately needing a system.

The system Mary introduced wasn't new to me - I had picked up the "Each Family is a Circle" handout long ago and wondered if some kind of colour coding system would help. But it was great to hear her explain how to set it up - go through the 4 preliminary steps and then the 13 steps to get organized. It really is a system that is just a beginning point and I know that I will have items that I will wonder how to handle. But it is exactly what I needed to start. It is a way to identify what you have, what you don't have, and as you go along, document and source everything into your computer software program so that you have the information in a useful form for continuing your research.

I'm excited to get started on this - and love that she provides a shopping list and checklists are also available to work along with. I know I will adapt some of the directions to suit how I work (I have alot of legal sized paper and my cabinets are legal sized as well so the letter sized files won't work for me) but the idea will really move me from this state of multiple systems that don't allow me to work with the materials in a cohesive way.

I also made the decision to do this in conjunction with moving my information into a different software program. PAF has been good for me but I think Legacy will give me the options, sourcing support and other features that I will find beneficial moving ahead.

Interesting to hear that both the LDS church and Legacy have adopted her colour system in their charts as an option. The church also has included her step by step information on organizing in their research help section of the Family Search.

I'll post pictures when I get this working for me!

Why I really need the class Thursday!

Task number two...



After finding the Hunter home, I wanted to update my searches for any printed family histories related to the names in my line. I found 5 possibilities to pull off the shelves and explore to determine if there was a connection.

I quickly eliminated 3 of the books. The fourth I was sure I had previously looked at and had the same information in my own records.

The last was a history of the Gray family. It was clearly a match with the Grays in my line - through my Root family line. Jasper Edward Root had married Lillie Cora Gray. These were my great grandparents. Lillie had remarried later in life with Harry Bly and had done some good work on her family line. Some of her records were passed down to my father and then to me.

But as I turned the pages, scanning the contents and noting which sections of the book I wanted to make copies of, I realized I have a Gray family history at home. Much thinner. Different looking? Or was it just the format that was throwing me off? I don't know what I have. And I should because how will I ever move forward and make progress if I just keep finding what I already have and should know.

Well, I considered not copying the pages but I figured that $4.50 was not much to ensure that I take home what I found and if duplication occurs, I'll just count it as a back up copy and lesson learned. I hope.

One thing I discovered was the possibility that the Gray line is really a line with a different surname! The last Gray listed on the line was apparently orphaned and adopted by Gray and it isn't clear whether he was a relative with the same surname or not. More to learn about this!!

The Hunter Family Home

Task number one on Wednesday - Locate the Hunter residence

I realized looking at my list for the upcoming visit to the Salt Lake Cemetary is that this final resting place means there was also a residence before ending up there. I already knew the address for Emma Prosser Toone and have found the home and taken photographs on previous trips. But I had never thought to locate the Hunter home. So that was the goal. I didn't ask any questions (I have lost my voice and charades wasn't an appealing option). I just started searching for something that might lead me in the right direction. Maybe there was some family sketch or history for this family. No luck. Maybe I could find a directory or list of early residences. Well, that possibly exists but nothing I was searching could lead me to what I wanted. I just kept looking - ended up on Ancestry.com and this is where I found a record for 1880 that listed Elizabeth Hunter (widow of Adam Hunter) and her address as 703 East 1st South. I tried to look for this on Google map - found what I thought might be the address and changed to Street View but it didn't look like the houses remained in that location.



Today - I drove over, hopeful as I got closer and saw a number of homes that appeared to be from the same period. No such luck. This is what I found!


This is where 703 East 1st (100) South would be. No Hunter home standing.

Random Searching

One drawback of having as many files and good intentions but no system of organization is that I didn't exactly know what I wanted to accomplish on Day 2 of being at the Family History Library. Okay - no system of organization isn't exactly accurate, what is really going on is multiple systems of organization with at least 1/3 of my material in a "need to file" state. But how should I file something that could go in multiple locations and with my binder/file/digital systems, I don't really know what I ought to be doing next. I have used binders successfully in the past but nothing was ready for me to grab in this way for this trip. So I found myself with a day at the library and a few ideas and hoping that I would be inspired to do what was useful.

It all ended up with some success. I'll post a few things I did separately for searching purposes, and I ended up happy but motivated to do better the next time. Time at this library is valuable and I hate to think I wasn't as productive as I could have been but it is all a part of the process for me. I'm excited about attending a class on Organizing here at the library that may solve some of my problems!

Cemetery Plots

My focus to find the gravesites of ancestors in Salt Lake is one step further along. I opted to skip the microfilm/fiche route and instead found a 9 volume bound set of books in the oversized section of the Family History Library that included the Interment number, deed number, date of death, and plot location information for the Salt Lake Cemetery. Easy to just look up the four names I have on my line that passed away and were buried in the city.

(I found out that one ancestor passed away here in Salt Lake but was taken back to Canada to be buried in Lethbridge?? How did I never realize this before?)

So I now have the plot location information for Emma Prosser Toone, Adam Hunter, Elizabeth Patterson Hunter, and Anna (Susanna) Baillie Mulholland. That is two wives whose husbands are not buried with them. Emma Prosser was discussed in the previous entry - John Toone had been assigned to move to Croydon and she chose to stay in Salt Lake. She had moved to Payson before and lost a child in that time. I can't imagine the life would be easy in Croydon. The other woman buried without her husband is Anna Mulholland. I see her name written more often as Susanna - but I am not sure if one is the official record and the other is what she was known as.

Her husband was not cut out for farm life and was working on a ship when he passed. I remember hearing that the men had held an Irish wake for him and he was buried at sea. Somewhere in the Caribbean? Again - I should really be posting when I have actual records to refer to - but I'm still away from home and working from a very sketchy memory.

The plan is to visit the cemetery after Sunday afternoon conference. I just hope the weather holds out - pictures in the rain aren't what I'm going for.

John Toone's Cello

I just wanted to check on Emma's possible burial location - did a google search for her name and death date and discovered a wonderful little blog built around learning more about John Toone and his cello. The cello was even featured in a recital this past summer in the Temple Square concert series being played by his descendant - Kayson Brown, a member of the BYU faculty for the cello.



I have always wondered what happened to the instrument. It is wonderful to know more about it, see pictures and even a video of it being played. This is a link the family definitely should check out. I'm just sorry I discovered it two months too late to attend the concert!!


Since I'm not sure of the etiquette and process for posting pictures from other blogs as incentives to follow the link and check it out - I will let you discover the images from the site yourself. I know I have photocopies of the stories of the cello in my records but the quality is just too poor to link here.

Post practices

• I will try to line photos up with a bit more finesse.


• I will try to post weekly since my goal is to engage in some kind of family history activity at least that often.


• I will try to represent all four family lines and tag them appropriate so you can follow your own line of interest.


• I will gladly accept suggestions and content! (and considering the haphazard nature of my first post - CORRECTIONS).

I just hope that this is a way for me to motivate myself to do more and hopefully to clarify with others what might need some attention.

Bonus picture: Champion grain elevators (photo effect - watercolour)

Stumbling upon Croydon

I was on my way to Park City and I started to realize the road looked and felt familiar - back in 1991 I had driven down to Croydon, Morgan county, Utah for a Toone reunion. One of the things I remember doing was going up to the cemetary and taking a couple of photos of family tombstones.

I knew I was in the right place because I saw the Devil's Slide and realized that Croydon was just around the corner.

Croydon was the final home for John Toone after coming to the valley and living first in Salt Lake and later for a time in Payson, Utah. Emma Prosser was his first wife and the line which I am descended through. John Toone was born in 1813 in Birmingham, Warwickshire, England and he and Emma were married in England before coming to the US. Their son (William Henry Toone) was born in England as well and didn't meet his wife, Hannah Webb, until he left England. She came to America on her own in 1863 - crossing the Atlantic on a ship called "Amazon" that Charles Dickens toured and reported on before it left London.

It was in 1876 that John Toone settled in Croydon with his third wife, Jemima. Emma chose to remain behind in Salt Lake City. Emma's son, William Henry and his wife Hannah also joined John and Jemima in Croydon, as I'm sure other children did as well.

I'm writing this in Park City, Utah - and all my records on this family are home in Canada. So I hope my recollections and notes from other sources on the web are not adding any erroneous details to the stories.

Here are my new images of the tombstones. I took a lot more which I will add to my Flickr stream but the ones from my direct line are these.

Father: John Toone (b. 1813; d. 1893)

Son: William Henry Toone (b. 1842; d. 1923)

spouse: Hannah Webb (b. 1846; d. 1919)

Now, I am on a quest to find and take a photo of Emma Prosser's grave.