The Cabin Home (Part 2)

The Cabin Home (Part 2)
by Denyce Cribbs

In my last post, I wrote about a booklet I found in our library called, Pictorial History of The Cabin Home in Garden of Eden, written by S.P. Dinsmoor.  Dinsmoor built a stone cabin in 1907, along with a sculpture garden, on his property of Lucas, Kansas.  I was curious to find out what happened to the property after he passed away. 

Samuel Perry Dinsmoor (1843 – 1932)

First, I was surprised to find that the booklet is still available on Amazon, in very limited quantities.  Surely, one of the first examples of “self-publishing” during its time, it survives as a self-published paperback in the modern age.

Also, I found that the property does indeed survive today.  In fact, the sculpture gardens are on the National Register of Historic Places. Tours are offered for $6 per person (well over the $1 fee that Dinsmoor called for in his will, and wrote about in his book).  According to the Kansas Sampler Foundation website,  (http://www.kansassampler.org/8wonders/artresults.php) Dinsmoor’s Cabin Home survives as one of the “Top 8 Wonders of Kansas Art.”  The website describes The Cabin Home currently:

The Garden of Eden is a world-renowned grassroots art site with one of the most fascinating (and bizarre) sculpture gardens in the world!

In 1907, at the age of 62, Civil War veteran Samuel Perry Dinsmoor began construction of this unusual site by building a structure of limestone logs, (some up to 21 feet long) for the family home. Then, using 113 tons of cement, Dinsmoor built 40-foot tall trees to hold his larger than life figures for his sculpture garden. He stopped working on the sculpture in 1929 because he went blind.

Tour guides help observers become fully aware that every part of every cryptic sculpture has meaning about Populist politics, modern civilization, and the Bible that connect like a dot-to-dot puzzle. The humor and message that he conveys through the sculptures amazes visitors.

Dinsmoor also built a mausoleum to house his mummified remains! Always a jokester, he claimed he would wink at anyone who paid to tour the garden. His vision was accurate and today the Garden of Eden supports itself through admissions. While Dinsmoor was building and creating locals tried to run him out of town. Decades later, the Garden of Eden became the town's main attraction and today Lucas is known as the Grassroots Art Capital of Kansas.

The Cabin Home Today

The Cabin Home (Lucas, Kansas)

The Cabin Home (Lucas, Kansas)
by Denyce Cribbs

In digging around the surname files in our library, I came across a little booklet in the Dinsmoor file entitled, Pictorial History of The Cabin Home in Garden of Eden.  Written by S.P. Dinsmoor, it’s a journal of sorts about the home and surrounding gardens that the author constructed in Lucas, Kansas. 

Dinsmoor served three years in the Civil War, claiming to see the capture of Robert E. Lee.  Following the war, he taught school in Illinois for five years.  In 1870 he married his first wife and became a farmer.  He eventually moved to Lucas, Kansas in 1891, and built his Cabin Home in 1907, and later the surrounding grounds which he named Garden of Eden.  He married his second wife in 1924.  He was 81 at the time, and she was 20 years old.

The cabin he built was distinctive in that the logs were all made of cement.  Dinsmoor states:

There were eleven rooms besides the bathroom, three halls, two closets with cave and light plant under back porch.  The porches, side walks, fence, strawberry and flower beds, fish pool, grape-arbor, three U.S. flags, Adam and Eve, the devil, coffin, jug, visitors’ dining hall, labor crucified, two bird and animal cages, and was house are all made with cement.

Dinsmoor goes on to describe the Garden of Eden that he created on his grounds, consisting of Adam and Eve cement statues, the Devil, Cain and Abel, and other creatures to complete his rendition of famous Bible stories.  Eccentric to be sure, he also built his own mausoleum and coffin, complete with instructions for their use after he passes away.  He states in his will that no one besides his descendants shall enter his mausoleum for less than one dollar, so that profits from visitors can be used to maintain the place.  He builds his own coffin to have a plate glass lid so he can break out on the final Resurrection Day.  At the foot of the coffin he places a jug so he will be prepared with water on the final day of reckoning.

This little booklet in an interesting legacy of a man’s creativity, complete with photos on every page.  It gets my curiosity going, though, about what comes next.  Does the Cabin Home still exist?  Is Dinsmoor buried there? I’ll try to answer those questions in my next post.

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Our Ancestors have fascinating stories. Are we finding those tales? In this eConference hosted by the Lake Havasu Genealogical Society, we will examine non-traditional records rich with in-depth details about your dearly departed. eConference is open to anyone with an internet connection who is ready to have fun while learning!

Research Logs and To-Do Lists

This month at the Special Interest Group Meeting for both Roots Magic and Family Tree Maker the discussion started with Research Logs and To-Do Lists.

The difference between To-Do Lists and Research Logs is that a To-Do list is a simple list of things you need to do. Such as find the birth certificate for your grandfather, write a letter, find an obituary or many other things. A research log on the other hand is a record or log of the research you have done. Research logs can be for an individual, a couple, a location or a repository. These two software packages handle the solution in different ways.

At the RootsMagic group meeting, we first watched a video through the Roots Magic’s website at http://rootsmagic.com/webinars/2012-03-29-New-Research-Logs-and-Manager-in-RootsMagic-5.aspx. This video was very informative and even though it was shown using an older version of Roots Magic, you should be able to do everything and probably more with a more current version.

Select List on the Main Toolbar and you will find both the To-Do List and Research Log options. The research logs will let you keep track of the research you have done on a person, family or place. 

Options include Add, Edit, Delete or Print your research log. You will probably not be deleting too many research logs, I could see deleting a log you might have for the wrong person, family or place, or if you accidentally created a duplicate log, otherwise you want to keep your logs. The purpose of a log is to be able to review what you have done to determine what you still need to do.

To find out more about what each field could be used for see http://blog.rootsmagic.com/?p=1363 .

What I like about the Roots Magic research log is that it is basically “fill in the blanks” and you won’t forget to put some important information or fact into your log. Since the log is really easy to use, there should be no excuse not to use this feature. As with anything, you may need to develop a habit of doing a research log.

Now on to Family Tree Maker, under each person, you will find Notes, you have person notes which are by default public, you have research notes which by default are private and then you have tasks which would be a To-Do list. Now the private and public notes are important to remember when you share your database to Ancestry.com or as a Gedcom that it will include public notes but not private notes and facts.

To find out more about how to use research logs within Family Tree Maker please refer to http://ftmuser.blogspot.com/2014/09/ftm2014-research-log-follow-up.html#uds-search-results

Anyway, the Research notes field is an open area where you just type. So take a page from Roots Magic and think about some of the fields they give you that you might want to include in your note. Such as today’s date, your research objective or goal, what source you used, what was found or not found and conclusions you came to or new goals you may need to make.

Even though not as dummy proof as Roots Magic, it is still a very useful feature to have. I have decided to create a template of sorts under my record in my database. Most likely I will not have research notes for my information therefore it will be an easy place to find what I want for my notes.

Family Tree Maker has been handling To-Do Lists for quite a while. They call them “tasks”. You can access them through the person view and then view them all from the Plan view. Even though through the Publish feature you can print out your tasks, you will find the print option via the Plan view much more useful. You can filter out your task based on user defined categories. Categories could be surnames, locations, record types, etc… I love being able to create any category I want. Plus you can assign more than one category per task. For example: Perhaps you need to find a death certificate, you can assign it to the category by surname, by the county it is in and that it is a vital record or death certificate. Finally, you can flag them completed when you do the task. I love printing out To-Do Lists by category. If I will be visiting a cemetery and I want photos, I can assign them to the exact cemetery and then print out a To-Do List. I just check them off as I walk around taking my pictures.

I may like Roots Magic Research Log, but I love Family Tree Maker’s Task list more than Roots Magic To-Do List. One nice feature of Roots Magic To-Do list is the ability to transfer the completed item to the research log. If you are on a person and select the To-Do list, you have the option to create a list for a person, or family (person’s parents). If the person is married you could also choose your person and spouse (family) for the list. You are given the ability to select an address or repository for the location.

However, Roots Magic doesn't give me the sort option like Family Tree Maker does. As for addresses, I created general task for my repositories and if it is a county look-up, I make sure I have a task with the county courthouse information. I have addresses for not only courthouses, but cemeteries, and libraries. I always have my Task list of just my repositories and it is the first thing in my research folder that I take with me on all trips. I don’t haul my laptop with me to all my repositories, I will write notes on my Task lists and when I get back to the hotel or my home, then I update my research logs and task list with my notes.

Therefore, my Tasks (To-Do) Lists and Research Logs work closely together. My To-Do lists are Tasks that I need to get done and my Research Logs are the results of said tasks.  So now go out there and start recording all your research, not just the successes through your source citations!

Creating an Ancestry.com Tree

This week I had the pleasure to help another society member create her first tree on Ancestry.com. She was adopted and wanted to do a tree on her biological mother's family, since she doesn't know the name of her father, yet!

Anyway, I don't use Ancestry as my genealogy software inputting program, I have Family Tree Maker and my tree syncs with Ancestry. However, I do not input new people, facts or anything else via Ancestry. My Tree(s) on Ancestry are cousin bait or what I use to show family members via my laptop or iPad when I am visiting with them.

I discovered that even though, I have heard that Ancestry.com Trees inputting is very similar to doing it via Family Tree Maker, I sort of agree and disagree. Adding a new person is very similar and very simple but attaching documents and such seem cumbersome.

Because the society member is not computer savvy and I wanted this process to be as easy as possible so that she maintains and grows her tree, I helped her with the first three people.

We decided to make the home person her mother and thus we inputted her name, birth date and place and death date and place. Next we added her father and this is where we were allowed to create a tree name and set up privacy settings. Since she wanted to make her tree totally private, I went back into her tree settings, and verified her Privacy Settings were set as Private Tree and then also checked the box next to "Also prevent your tree from being found in searches". At this time, she is not thinking about cousin bait as much as recording her family history.

I also added her grandmother's name and facts we knew. Next I wanted to know how to add a source and or media file. I clicked on 'add media' and it allowed me to either choose from media that is already in my tree or upload media or even create new media such as write a story, record audio or record video. What I wanted to do was add a record transcription found via FamilySearch.org that was saved as a PDF. However after I attached it, you can't just see the attachment, it wants you to download it and then open it. Not exactly what we wanted, so we decided to change the record transcription from PDF to a jpeg image file. Now you can see the attachment, but we still didn't know if this is what we really want to do, because some of the images she has came from Ancestry.com from the Library Edition, since she doesn't have a paid subscription and I felt that it wasn't proper to attach something saved from a "Paid" Ancestry account to your tree for anyone to see (if her privacy settings get changed to public). Even though I haven't read all the way through all the legal stuff on Ancestry's page, I would think this would not be the proper thing to do.

Next we looked at Facts and Sources and I tried to add a source citation. I looked at all the fields and wondered if my society member would be up to keying in all this information? Again, it seemed cumbersome and to me it is so much easier to create a source in Family Tree Maker so we scraped this idea too.

What we really wanted was for her to be on the Overview of the person's page and be able to see the timeline with all the facts and perhaps a title of where she found the information. She has all the sources either printed out or on her flash drive.

I clicked on her mother's birth fact to see what would come up. The fields are Date, Location and Description. I wondered what they meant by description but thought this would be a great place to put the title of her source. For example, we found her birth date as part of her Find a Grave Memorial therefore, the description became Find A Grave Memorial # 99999999, where the 9's are the actual memorial number. If the fact was found via the US Social Security Index on Ancestry.com she would put in the title of the source as found via their Card Catalog such as US Social Security Death Index, 1935-2014 ~ Ancestry.com. This will enable her to find the documentation again if needed.

Here is an example of what it looked like, I modified one of my entries to show you.

As you can see, my sources added through FTM are view-able when you click on the down arrow next to Sources. It might not be the best solution, but at least it is a start for her to record sources for each fact. If she has multiple sources, she could just add another line in the description for the next source. Since this tree is totally private, it is basically for her to view the lineage and the sources she has used. 

I know this is not totally the proper way to do your genealogy, but I didn't want to discourage her and with her advance age, I wanted her to discover this family that she has never known about and get excited about doing it. Also, as she gets more familiar with inputting facts and such, she can always decided to do sources in more detail. So I guess my objective with this training lesson was to get a system she could easily follow and do. Not bog her down with so much learning that she would give up and quit.

Genealogy Websites

If you are like me, you find that you tend to use the same websites for your genealogy research. I received an email from one of our Society members who too, shares my downfall when researching. She stated that she welcomes ideas about different sites or resources that she may not have tired.

She recommends Legacy Family Tree which offers free weekly webinars online on a wide variety of genealogy related subjects presented by many different experts in the field, mostly on Wednesdays but occasionally on Fridays as well. The webcasts last for about an hour to one and a half hours long. Check out the schedule at http://familytreewebinars.com/ for upcoming sessions. I personally have attended these and learn a lot from them. Since I normally volunteer on Wednesdays at my local genealogical library I miss the live presentations, but they offer one week of free viewing afterwards. However, you can purchase a membership and view hundreds of hours of past webinars and print out handouts too.

Another site this member suggested was Familyrootspublishing.com that has an extensive offering of books and guides about all phases of genealogy, research and history. They offer a free Genealogy newsline email newsletter. I too found this website and subscribe to the newsletter and enjoy reading it weekly.

She finally asked, aside from some of the standbys like Ancestry, Find a Grave Fold 3 and other well-used sites, what are some resources that have helped you?

Before I answer her question, I would like to say that after volunteering in the Library and teaching some beginning classes, the only website that most people know about is Ancestry.com. Many don’t know about Find A Grave, Fold 3, FamilySearch.org and others. 

I personally seem to use Ancestry.com, FamilySearch.org and Find-A-Grave. I have a subscription to Ancestry and FamilySearch.org is mostly free until it directs you to other sites for the images. One of the sites it directs you to is Ancestry and thus I am cover but the other is Fold 3 which I don’t have. However, our Society offers Ancestry, Fold 3 and Newspapers.com on their three computers from October through May. All I have to do is bring a flash drive and save whatever I find.  

After receiving this email, I decided to look at and revamp the links on our society webpage at http://lhgs.weebly.com/web-links.html . I made sure all the links still work, I group our local links on top and some tools way at the bottom.

I find a lot of new links to try from my subscription to Family Tree Magazine plus on their website at http://familytreemagazine.com/article/101-best-websites-2014. Just change the year in the link to 2013 or 2012 and you will find past years links back to 2010. A lot are duplicates, and older list might have broken links to websites that don’t exist or if they changed their address, but are still fun to look at.

So what are some resources that have helped you?

Social Media Advice

I just read a blog as part of LinkedIn that is titled “7 Worst Advices We Ever Heard About Social Media” and it struck a chord with me.

First of all, I agree that Social media accounts can be a wonderful thing because this is a way your society can stay connected with their members and supporters. However, our genealogical societies cannot afford to have a negative impact with our online presences.

The first advice I have heard is “Create accounts on all social media websites”. When I first heard this I thought YEAH. But being the person who must maintain these presences I thought “UM, wait a minute, do I have time for all of this.” This is exactly the point the Blog made too. The more accounts you have, the more time you will need to manage and be active on each one.

Therefore I thought, I would post the same update on each social media site. However, they warned me that the same people may follow you on multiple sites and your followers don’t want to see the same thing everywhere. Plus different sites expect different types of content. Their example: on Twitter users mostly want text based updates, while Facebook users want image posts.

So let’s say you decide to have only one online presence, they also warn about posting too much or too many posts each day. We all want to be active but let’s face it; none of us want to appear desperate either.  Too many posts can turn our followers off and in turn they may turn you off or unsubscribe and stop following you.

The articles fourth point is one not to overlook: Social media can replace email marketing. Luckily I knew this was not true. I personally know many society members who have no social media accounts. I find that email is still the best way to contact our members, we even have a few members with no email and we still connect with them the old fashion way via snail mail. It is important to keep all your members actively involved in your society. I use social media as a way to inform those followers who are not members of our activities. If the followers are members too, a lot of them know to check their email for more detail.

Points five and six I didn’t know really how to do. Point five was about using a robot to post updates automatically and six about using popular hash tags to gain more views. I know how to write blogs and schedule them to post at certain times and days but not how to have automatic updates done by an outside system. Even though I know about hash tags and some social media platforms automatically add them, I don’t know how to change those automatic ones. Of course I have seen those Tweets with tons of hash tags which are a little overkill. I understand their point that using popular tags does not promote your organization, but use popular, general ones sparingly.

Finally, the last advice that if your Industry doesn’t use social media, neither should you. Well, on this note, you might find your society doesn’t want to use social media, but I would advise against that option. How are people going to find your society? Many societies have “static” webpages and when I mean static, they don’t change regularly. Some I have noticed don’t even change for years, a big mistake. But that is for another Blog, social media sites such as Facebook allows you to post current events or activities for the world to see. If your society is an active society perhaps people want to come and join. Social Media is a great place to post your meetings, your programs, your speakers, your classes, your trips, your projects, and any other information. Your website might tell this information but social media is like a press release and gets the information out around the time of the event and is like a reminder for your followers.

Their final advice: target one or two major social media accounts to use all the time. Post real updates when you have to, with valuable information. I totally agree, so know I need to revisit my societies social media presences and see which ones are really used and should keep.