Libby Custer - George's wife

lakertaker

First Sergeant
Joined
Oct 14, 2012
Dang. Thanks to CWT, have decided to sign-up for Ancestry to look for relations in the Civil War. Very time consuming, but did find something I've long suspected. Libby Custer's grandfather was my ggg(?) grandfather (sorry, Diane). My search for paternal roots dead-end in Litchfield Co., Conneticut with an ancestor born in 1770 and many with the same surname on the local Revolutionary War roster. Guess I am a Yankee after all! If there's any other Connecticut Yanks out there, could use some help with my Revolutionary War ancestry search!
 
Lakertaker, allow me as a very active Ancestry user, to offer some unsolicited advice. Ancestry can't be beat for access to primary documents -- census records, vital records, city directories and so on -- but individual users' family trees are often unreliable. Ancestry makes if very easy to copy over material from another user's public tree to your own, so these errors often get propagated across lots of other users' trees. There is no quality control there for that. You'll enjoy using Ancestry, but be a little cautious in following others' conclusions or interpretations of the evidence.
 
Lakertaker, allow me as a very active Ancestry user, to offer some unsolicited advice. Ancestry can't be beat for access to primary documents -- census records, vital records, city directories and so on -- but individual users' family trees are often unreliable. Ancestry makes if very easy to copy over material from another user's public tree to your own, so these errors often get propagated across lots of other users' trees. There is no quality control there for that. You'll enjoy using Ancestry, but be a little cautious in following others' conclusions or interpretations of the evidence.
Any advice on alternative research methods that don't involve travel?
 
Any advice on alternative research methods that don't involve travel?

Study up on the steps for family history. With all the online resources like Ancestry you eliminate all the travel I did in the 90s and cranking microfilm readers. It's so slick now. But there are steps. For example, don't pick someone and try to prove you are related. Go from the known to the unknown. Learn how the censuses worked and what to rely on.

But it's not all online. Learn to use the interlibrary loan at your local library branch. Learn to use a library. Join a genealogy society and take classes.
 
Study up on the steps for family history. With all the online resources like Ancestry you eliminate all the travel I did in the 90s and cranking microfilm readers. It's so slick now. But there are steps. For example, don't pick someone and try to prove you are related. Go from the known to the unknown. Learn how the censuses worked and what to rely on.

But it's not all online. Learn to use the interlibrary loan at your local library branch. Learn to use a library. Join a genealogy society and take classes.
Thanks. Good advice. Been meaning to do this for years; I get started, get frustrated, and usually end up quitting.
 
There's a tremendous amount that can be done online now that wasn't possible ten, or even five, years ago. Travel may still be necessary, but given the amount that's available online, or at least indexed online (so you at least have an idea what's available), the need to travel for basic genealogical research is hugely reduced.

Online newspapers are very valuable. A great many papers, some extremely obscure, are now text-searchable online, and available for free. See:

Google Newspaper Archive
http://news.google.com/newspapers

Google News Search (can search back into the 19th century)
https://news.google.com/news/advanced_news_search?as_drrb=a

Library of Congress Newspapers
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/

Historic Newspapers
http://guides.library.upenn.edu/historicalnewspapersonline

Portal to Texas History
http://texashistory.unt.edu/

I also use the subscription services at GenealogyBank.com and NewspaperArchive.com. These can get expensive, but I see them as being essential to the research I do, and so are part of the cost of entry. (They're tools, not extravagances.) I like GenealogyBank's user interface and OCR quality better, but there seems not to be much overlap in the material covered, so I've found it necessary to have both.
 
lakertaker, welcome to the wonderful crazy world of genealogy. You can do this. I actually did most of mine before Al Gore invented the Internet. :smile:

Andy and Dwilma01 have given you wonderful advice -- I don't see anything I would quibble with in anything anyone has said. One of my favorite sources has always been GenWeb. Each state and county has its own site, with local documents and links. I was lucky--I had several cousins who were years ahead of me.....however, I wanted more than just birth and death dates, so I started filling out the gaps. Gen Web is perfect for that. There are everything from copies of old newspapers, family bible records, cemetery records, military records, to links to cemeteries and town histories....you name it. It's a great resource. You may be surprised at what you find locally in your library or historical society--it varies from place to place as to what is the best. I also had the good luck to live in a town with an amazing little historical society, which gave me lots of unique research tools, and then went to university in a town with a wonderful library/genealogy society. Just keep poking around. Even with the internet, I still find I use my notebooks for copies of everything. There's something to be said for laying it all out and seeing the photos all together.

Don't forget your local LDS, either. They're experts and they want to help!
 
With all the online resources like Ancestry you eliminate all the travel I did in the 90s and cranking microfilm readers.
I didn't mind the cranking so much as having to spend $2 in quarters to get a readable printout (nominal cost: 25 cents) of a page I needed, and knowing it was a 50-50 chance whether the reader/printer would be working at all.
 
Dang. Thanks to CWT, have decided to sign-up for Ancestry to look for relations in the Civil War. Very time consuming, but did find something I've long suspected. Libby Custer's grandfather was my ggg(?) grandfather (sorry, Diane). My search for paternal roots dead-end in Litchfield Co., Conneticut with an ancestor born in 1770 and many with the same surname on the local Revolutionary War roster. Guess I am a Yankee after all! If there's any other Connecticut Yanks out there, could use some help with my Revolutionary War ancestry search!

Lol! Don't apologize - you may be a cousin! Talk about adding insult to injury, my husband is half Sioux/Blackfoot, rumored to be some kin to Crazy Horse but on his German side he is related to Custer himself, probably through Tom Custer. :frown: His great-aunt's maiden name was Custard, which was a variation of the Custer/Kuster/Kustar surname.
 
Yeah, one caveat....you don't get to pick your ancestors if you do this right. There have been some pleasant surprises (Fess Parker and Amos Horton, a captain under Francis Marion) and some not so nice ones (Black Jack Ketchum) and just plain WTH surprises (PURITANS? Sheesh!)
 
Yeah, one caveat....you don't get to pick your ancestors if you do this right. There have been some pleasant surprises (Fess Parker and Amos Horton, a captain under Francis Marion) and some not so nice ones (Black Jack Ketchum) and just plain WTH surprises (PURITANS? Sheesh!)
You are related to someone who knew the Swamp Fox!!!!???? Bless your soul!
 
Lakertaker, allow me as a very active Ancestry user, to offer some unsolicited advice. Ancestry can't be beat for access to primary documents -- census records, vital records, city directories and so on -- but individual users' family trees are often unreliable. Ancestry makes if very easy to copy over material from another user's public tree to your own, so these errors often get propagated across lots of other users' trees. There is no quality control there for that. You'll enjoy using Ancestry, but be a little cautious in following others' conclusions or interpretations of the evidence.


I use other's trees and info as another research tool but Andy is very correct. If one person got something wrong you have lots of other people who dont do the research, they just copy that to their tree and then it spirals from there. I will look at other's trees and then research something and if it checks out to be true then and only then will I add it to my tree there on Ancestry.com.
 
Always look at the sources, just like on this forum. Web cites are interesting, but where did the poster get the information. One thing that impresses me about this community is its insistence on evidence. That evidence might be the imperfect recollection of an aging veteran or a frightened teen age soldier, but it's more than speculation.
 
My search for paternal roots dead-end in Litchfield Co., Conneticut with an ancestor born in 1770 and many with the same surname on the local Revolutionary War roster. Guess I am a Yankee after all!

We all are Yankees. Most trace our ancestors back to the original colonies. And back then the nasty Brits called all Americans by that name.
 
We all are Yankees. Most trace our ancestors back to the original colonies. And back then the nasty Brits called all Americans by that name.
No, we most assuredly are not all yankees. My family came from Norway and I'm sure the nasty Brits had a different name for us.
 
On another front, if you do end up being sure of your findings, let it alone. Genealogy also contains folks who appear to waste a great deal of time challenging other's claims- it's just wierd. Certainly there are those ninnies out there who have Queen Nefertitti and George Washington all in the same line erroneously, just to I guess have Big Pants or something. ( As Andy said, Ancestry is riddled with this kind of thing. Maddening because you can inadvertantly stick incorrect information in your tree if you're not extremely vigilent. ) Seems silly but whatever. There are also those who seem to just LOVE nit-picking the bejeesis out of anyone who has a connection which might appear 'important'. We have one we've just always known, like we know who Mom is- just always been there. I'd rather chew off my arm than mention it because BOOM- Scoffers Unite, Inc. collectively begin the Inquisition. Little distant, just apparently no one has ever been related to anyone, ever on the planet. My point being, once you're comfortable with your proof, try not to allow SU, Inc. rattle you. It's just a nice 'thing', isn't it?

The Hartranft in my CW ancestors shares grgrgrandparents with John F. Yes, it's verified or would not bring it up.
 
On another front, if you do end up being sure of your findings, let it alone. Genealogy also contains folks who appear to waste a great deal of time challenging other's claims- it's just wierd. Certainly there are those ninnies out there who have Queen Nefertitti and George Washington all in the same line erroneously, just to I guess have Big Pants or something. ( As Andy said, Ancestry is riddled with this kind of thing. Maddening because you can inadvertantly stick incorrect information in your tree if you're not extremely vigilent. ) Seems silly but whatever. There are also those who seem to just LOVE nit-picking the bejeesis out of anyone who has a connection which might appear 'important'. We have one we've just always known, like we know who Mom is- just always been there. I'd rather chew off my arm than mention it because BOOM- Scoffers Unite, Inc. collectively begin the Inquisition. Little distant, just apparently no one has ever been related to anyone, ever on the planet. My point being, once you're comfortable with your proof, try not to allow SU, Inc. rattle you. It's just a nice 'thing', isn't it?

The Hartranft in my CW ancestors shares grgrgrandparents with John F. Yes, it's verified or would not bring it up.

One of the reasons I've never researched my ancestry is it's never been that important to me. If I found out I had direct lineage to JFK or Adolf Hitler, I'd probably think, "hmmm - that's interesting," and forget about it. As it is, I'd like to follow through and give my kids a copy of the family tree to save them the trouble. That is, if they're ever interested.
 
Right, I got hooked because over history, it's unbelievably fascinating to just plain watch the ancestor's march through the events we've read about. It's a fabulous history book to hand the children, too, finally had them genuinely interested in the scope of this country. Because I'm a huge sucker ( 20 bucks worth of minnie balls from ebay gathering dust in a desk drawer attest to that ) I had no clue that if you were related to someone as seriously unimportant as some nice immigrant, wandering here from England a few centuries ago there are purists out there ready to say ' Um, excuse me but that's not 'him', you'll have to find another exclusive club of dead people to belong to '. Hysterical.

I'm guessing you're probably safe with Libby Custer, btw. The 'kind' of folks who torque their trees over to famous people tend to be looking for the Big Fish, like presidents or celebs, seem to me the types who get their history and civic lessons from dollar bills and the internet.

Do you have any people in your family from the older generations who might be helpful? They wouldn't know exactly of course, but picking their brains can give you leads frequently.
 
The Hartranft in my CW ancestors shares grgrgrandparents with John F. Yes, it's verified or would not bring it up.

John F. !!! You don't say. John F. Finerty, the Union soldier, correspondent, and Congressman? Wow!! :stomp:
 
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