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Writer's pictureApolonia Behm

Genealogy!

June 7, 2023, 8:10am-12:00pm, 12:20pm-5:00pm

My name is Apolonia Behm. I am interning at Cushing Memorial Library and Archive, and my supervisors names are Jeremy Brett and John Bondurant.


All night long, I had been thinking about what I had learned about the Albert and Barnes family. If someone somewhere had found documentation about what my family was like and who they were, going all the way back to the Civil War, I would want them to tell me. I began doing some genealogy research about this family to see if I can find anything. (On one of the documents in the Barnes file is a list of all the family members of Martha Albert who were also denied enrollment as Cherokee Freedmen, so I have a few names to go off of.) I have found Henry Albert and his family listed in the 1900 United States Census (pictured below). I have also found a form where Lillie White, daughter of Martha Albert, enrolled her children and her nephews (Henry Albert’s sons) in school in 1912 (pictured below), and many other historical documents pertaining to this family. Before lunch time, Jeremy came to check on me to see how I was doing so I showed him all of the genealogy work I have done on this family. He said that while he was impressed, he reminded me to stay focused on the metadata for now because there is a lot of it to complete.


Before the end of the day, I asked Jeremy to look over the lines of metadata I have created so far because I have not yet received the feedback on my initial few lines from Jeanette Ho, the Cataloging/Metadata librarian. I was not sure if I was including too much information or too little, or if I was even writing the date correctly since there had been conflicting information in Jeanette’s instructions. Jeremy told me not to stress out because I am doing a great job and that “metadata is an art, not a science.” He said after a while it becomes easier to understand what should be entered into metadata and what doesn’t have to be. He said that some people say that all names and locations mentioned within a document should be entered into the metadata. However, he then mentioned that that is when metadata becomes really overwhelming, so maybe if I were to just enter the names and locations that are directly related to the person the file is about and not worry so much about the witnesses that are testifying for or against the person the file is about. This is extremely helpful because now I have something to focus on instead of worrying about the little details.


I think it would be really interesting to maybe work with genealogy in some capacity in the future.



These are screenshots from the website, Family Search, about the family of Henry Albert. I created an account on this website, and it allows me to be able to search for people based on their name, location, and their birth or death dates.

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