www.itowler.com - Ian's Home on the web

2012 is the 200th anniversary of the war of 1812.  While living in Baltimore, MD, I learned a bit about the war.  Baltimore played a pivotal role in the war, and was a hub of America Privateers.  I have many friends in Baltimore that are both members of the NSSAR and General Society of the War of 1812. 

With that in mind, Fold3 (Formerly Footnote) has made several records set free for the month of June.  You can click on the image below to take you to those record sets.

As of 24 April 2012, I am officially an Inventor, as declared by the United State Government!

How is that you might ask?  Well I was lucky enough to be part of a team of individuals that worked to produce a new piece of equipment that can  be used in Science.  We then filed for a patent on the machine, and now that patent has undergone prosecution (think examination), and has been issued!  We (the team) originally filed this patent in April of 2009, and it was just now issued.  

Today is Poem In your Pocket day, a day that has been decreed so by Poets.org.  April is National Poetry month, and in honor of that Poets.org has declared that today is poetry in your pocket day.  They state:

One of my stated goals this year was to work on improving my source citations in my Family tree.  Part of the reason that I find genealogy interesting, is that it is very much about the details.  I would imagine that it is very similar to detective work, and somewhat like science, in that you are trying to unravel a series of facts to figure out what happened.  In Science, the work that you do is only as good as the documentation you can present.  The documentation is presented so that others can review your work and then try to reproduce it.  Genealogy is (Or rather should be) the same.  All of the work that we do as genealogists is only as good as the documentation or sources that we provide for it.  Source citations are key, and that is why I am working on improving the sources in my family tree.  My goal (and I feel like it should be the goal of every genealogist) is to document my tree to the point that there is no question about the information presented.  When I do this, others in the future can work on solving issues that I could not, rather than re-inventing the wheel, covering the same ground that I already have.

Over time, I have improved with sourcing my research, but there is always work to be done.  When I first started I did not add sources to anything.  Eventually I started adding references to census records, but these entries were pretty lack luster and in retrospect, I doubt that they would have done anything to help other genealogists in the future.  

Great news for those of us out there that are always on the lookout for new source material.  After reading a post over on Dick Eastman’s blog, I learned that the familysearch.org website has announced that they have digitized over 40,000 family history books, and posted them online.  Here is what the Familyhistory website has to say:

One of my ancestors is Frederick Hoffman.  Frederick died on this day 123 years ago.  On February 25th, 1889 in Indiana Frederick Hoffman died sudden and unexpectedly.  While searching for information the Hoffman's I found an interesting record for Frederick Hoffman.  The record is a type that I had (and still have not seen an other) before, an official Coroner's Inquest.

What is a Coroner's Inquest?

A Coroner’s Inquest is an inquiry into the manner and cause of an individual’s death.  Apparently he died unexpectedly, and there was little concern from his family members.  An obituary in the Greensburg Standard dated March 1, 1889 indicated that:

The post-mortem examination of the body of Frederick Hoffman, who lived about eight miles east of this city, resulted in the finding by Dr. J. Y. Hitt that the deceased came to his death from apoplexy.  There was a small amount of opium salt in the stomach but not sufficient to cause death. The post-mortem was held on account of the peculiar circumstances under which Mr. Hoffman died, the seeming unconcern of his family about him and the openly expressed belief of some of the neighbors that his death had not resulted from natural causes.

The obit mentions a Coroner's inquest, and I was able to find the Inquest in the records at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah.  The inquest record that I have are just images, with no transcription provided, so I had to do my own. For the most part it was a fairly straight forward, but there were a few sections that were a little difficult to understand. See my transcription below: