The Anderson Report: December 2006

The Andrus Organization has made it possible for Laura Anderson to spend a total of 12 weeks back in Ohio, Iowa, Illinois, Kansas Etc., and more recently 4 weeks in Vermont and New York, following Ruluf’s descendants to where they settled, obtaining pictures of headstones, and obtaining life histories of Ruluf’s children and descendants in the hopes that one of them can shed some light on our ancestry.

Also verifying Ruluf’s information figuring out where they lived in New York, acquiring 100’s of documents from the military records, court of common pleas etc. for the New York period and wills and petitions for the Vermont period.

We are putting together a web page displaying this information. I see this web page as more a research library than a finished project. I want all of the genealogists in the family to be able to evaluate my conclusions. No one person has all the correct answers. This is being used by Ruluf’s descendants and possible siblings descendants to do research on our family line. This information will be available as we start doing genetic research on our family. Genetic research may be the only way to determine the Andrus, and Smith lines going back as records in two of the areas have been destroyed by fire.

You as a family have been wonderful in supporting financially the work done thus far and I would ask that this support be continuing! My husband’s retirement will free up some additional time to do this work and funding will become more of an issue. Or so we thought before retirement where did he find time to work?

Vision: Where do we go from here?
Research.The records in New York, and Vermont are not as easy to access as in Ohio. In Ohio everything was kept at the County court house and are available during the regular business hours. In Vermont records were kept in the town hall and are now in collections that may be open for only a few hours during the week. It will take more time back east to discover all the needed information on our line.

Ray and Fay Andrus and Craig and Laura Anderson are planning another research trip in March 2007 to Vermont and New York. The Andrus problem can not be solved at the Salt Lake Library, we only have about 10% of the available records there. (Those who tell you they have found the line back and have never done this extensive research back east cannot know they are correct).

How can I help?
Inputing! I would like to see a site that has Milo’s descendants down to the present generation.

How do we accomplish such a project? Or LAURA… are you Crazy??? There could be 200,000 of us?
How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time! Since the first report that I am updating we have come into a file that contains most of the descendants information. Wife line reps have the information down to the grand-children’s families which includes the great grandchildren and I have the information down to about 1970 on the descendants. What a find! We have assigned out the imputing and this project should be well on its way.

With this project complete, we could log on when we meet someone from the Andrus family and see exactly how they are related. We could also see where branches of the family have settled, etc.

What about privacy?
Most genealogy programs only show information on the living to known users so you will need to ask for access if you want to get living information. You would have to identify yourself as a family member before you can gain access to the site. If not logged in, you see only Private in the spot for personal information. It would not be out on the net in general!

Laura
12 December 2006

Comments