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

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:

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:

Every year I set a few goals for the year, and often time, goals about my family tree are in the works.  In the past I have been more concerned about "growing" the tree based on the number of individuals alone, but this year I am also looking to improve the "Quality" of the tree, by increasing the number and use of sources in the tree.  Previously, it was easy to discern if I had met my goal, just record the number of Individuals that I had before the year started, and compare to the number I have at the end of the year.  This year, I will be looking at more than just the number of individuals that are added, so I need to record more data at the start of the year.  This post is intended to do that.  With that said lets get started.

Every year I have set some goals and then through out the year post about my progress.  This year will be no different.  I hope to accomplish a few more of them this year.  I did not have a lot of luck in accomplishing last years goals.  

I use goals and not resolutions because a goal is something you work toward.  A resolution, one mistake, and the resolution is "blown" but a goal is the finish line, you just need to get there.  Does not matter how fast.

So on to the goals:

OK, its the end of 2011 (Hummmm... that was fast.).  At the start of the year I set a number of goals, lets see how I did on meeting those goals.... Red means I did not meet the goal and Green means I did meet the goal.