Fun with Footnote

Previously, we explored online city directories from Ancestry.com and HeritageQuest. Ancestry requires a paid subscription. Although it may be available for free at your local library. HeritageQuest can be accessed from home using a library card.

The site FootNote.com is a subscription service that may be available at one of your local Family History Centers that we discussed in "Oh Pioneers". FootNote has many records worth exploring. They have a large number of city directories that are searchable. If we wanted to, we could go to the Baltimore directories and track the movements of Babe Ruth's father all the way up to 1909.

We will show how this can be done for free with just a little bit of work.

On the main page of Footnote.com, click on the small link to the right that says "See all titles". Then click on Browse". We then select "News and Town Records" from the left column. Then select "City Directories" followed by "Maryland" and "Baltimore City". At this point we can type a search name or address and all Baltimore City Directories will be searched at once. For this exercise we go to the rightmost column and tab over until we select 1905.

We first type "Ruth Geo" in the search field with the quotes included. If we did not have the quotes, then every page with either Ruth or Geo would be shown. We press the GO button and we are shown two pages. The first page is titled "1905 >> Ruth, Edwrd F H (p 1460)". If we try to view the image, it gives us a message requesting a membership. Close the membership window.

Instead we click on the Quick Look link. It brings up the image that appears to the right of this paragraph. Click on it to enlarge. The image is too small to read. However there are several yellow shaded boxes. If we highlight one of the yellow boxes we see an enlargement of that area. Click on the image that appears to the right.

We notice that it only shows "Ruth Geo H". It does not show his occupation or address. Let us play around with the search terms.

We went back to the search page and enter "Ruth Geo" H (The H is outside of the quotes). When we do a "Quick Look" many yellow boxes have appeared in addition to the original ones. Click on the image to the right.

Looking back to the original yellow boxes we see some H's are highlight on the line for George Ruth and one above his name. Click on the image to the right. We can make out the line below the "H" for George Ruth that says "barkpr, 527 e".

Using the lines above and below George's entry we can select enough text to search that gives the image to the right. Using all the images we come up with the entry "Ruth Geo, barkpr 527 e Clement". That was a bit of work but it was free.


LINKS

Ancestry.com
Footnote.com

Copyright 2008,2009 BabeRuthGenealogy

Update: 04 March 2010
Footnote.com no longer allows multiple search terms for the free "Quick Look". If you want to view old city directories, go to a library that has Footnote.com installed and do a full search. Another good alternative is Archive.org. It has many city directories and may be searched from a home computer.

The High Seas

Passenger lists are another source of information. They fill in information about events in a person's life and they provide birth dates and birthplaces. Passenger lists from the mid-1800s and earlier usually provided name, age and nativity. Click on the images on the right to enlarge. In some cases you may click again to further enlarge.

Using the Ancestry.com once again we find three lists that have George. The first image is from Feb. 20, 1935. George, Claire and Julia are arriving in New York. They had sailed from Southampton, England on the SS Manhattan.

They are numbered 27-29. George's birthday is listed as Feb. 6, 1894. The month and day reflects his actual birth certificate date but the year is off by one. On a lot of other documents George's birthday is Feb.7. George was born in Baltimore, Claire was born in Jefferson, Georgia and Julia was born in Athens Georgia.

The second image is from the SS Monarch of Bermuda arriving in New York on Feb. 26, 1937. George and Claire are listed as number 9 and 10. On this document their home address is listed as 173 Riverside Drive, New York.


The third image is also from the SS Monarch of Bermuda arriving in New York on March 4, 1938. George and Claire are listed as number 16 and 17.

LINKS

Ancestry.com

Copyright 2008, 2009 BabeRuthGenealogy

Havana Nights

After the conclusion of the 1920 season, the Yankees went to Cuba to play exhibition games. George needed a passport.

Passports are rich with information. Birth dates, residing address, nativity, nativity of the father, names of companions, testimony from someone that knows you, plus a photograph.

Once again we use the Ancestry.com service to find George in the passport records. Click on the image to the right to enlarge. In some cases you may have to click again to make it larger.

George is residing at 674 west 161st Street in New York. However the instruction at the bottom of the second page says for it to be sent to the Ansonia Hotel. His father was native-born residing in Baltimore from 1871 to 1917.

There are two affidavits of identification. The second affidavit is from Brother Paul at St. Mary's Industrial School. He states that George was born May 18, 1894. Who knows what the source is of his error?

The document also states that his wife Helen would be travelling with him. There is a good photo of George. Half of Helen's face is obscured. However, there is another nice autograph of the Babe at the bottom of the first page.


LINKS

Ansonia Hotel

Ancestry.com

Copyright 2008, 2009 BabeRuthGenealogy

Go To War! - Part Two

At the start of World War II the selective service was already in place. The fourth round of registrations took place on April 27, 1942. It was called the "old man's registration" in that it registered men born between April 28, 1877 and February 16, 1897 (ages 45 - 64).

The registrations have to be searched through a subscription service such as Ancestry.com. Some libraries have this service available for free at their local branches. Be sure to call to see if it is available.

We revisited Ancestry.com. After signing in, there is a SEARCH dialog box. There appear four tabs above the box - Historical Records, Family Trees, Stories and Publications, Photos and Maps. Make sure that the Historical Records tab is selected. In the Name boxes we typed George Ruth and clicked on Search.

This takes us to a page with every historical record for anyone named George Ruth. There are censuses, marriages, births deaths, etc. Scroll down to military and click on World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1942. There are 23 of them.

George Herman Ruth is the eighth one listed. We selected the View Image button and the following image appears to the right. Click on it to enlarge. It is the front side of the draft card.

George Herman Ruth is living at 173 Riverside Drive. His phone number is SC4 9118 He is 47 years old born Feb. 6, 1895 in Baltimore, MD. His wife is Claire Ruth and he is self-employed. At the bottom he has given us another autograph.

The back of the card is a physical description. George is 6' 2" and is 240 pounds. He has brown eyes, brown hair and a ruddy complexion. Click on the image to the right to enlarge.

If you are tracing a male family member born between 1877 through 1897, this resource is a good census substitute. The 1940 US Census will not be made available until after 2011.


LINKS

Ancestry.com

Copyright 2008 BabeRuthGenealogy

Go To War! - Part One

Draft registrations for World War I and II have recently come on-line. These documents not only contain the name and birth information of the registrant, they also may list his employer, address of his home and employer, nearest kin, telephone number and physical description, and signature.

The registrations have to be searched through a subscription service such as Ancestry.com. Some libraries have this service available for free at their local branches. Be sure to call to see if it is available.

We got on the Internet and visited Ancestry.com. After signing in, there is a SEARCH dialog box. There appear four tabs above the box - Historical Records, Family Trees, Stories and Publications, Photos and Maps. Make sure that the Historical Records tab is selected. In the Name boxes we typed George Ruth and clicked on Search.

This takes us to a page with every historical record for anyone named George Ruth. There are censuses, marriages, births deaths, etc. Scroll down to military and click on World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918. There are 77 of them.

We need to narrow our search. Fortunately there is a dialog box at the bottom of the list. We can select state / county / city of residence, birthplace and birth day / month / year. We are unsure where he is presently residing. We do know he was born February 1895. But there is some uncertainty if it was the 6th or 7th day. So we filled in the first and last name and the month and year and selected +/- 1 year.

The search returns 3 names Two of the three are George Herman Ruth. It appears that it is the same person but it is listed twice. Sometimes that happens. We selected the View Image button and the following image appears to the right. Click on it to enlarge.

It is not a good copy and is rather blurry. We can work at deciphering what it says or we can view a better image. Since George Ruth is a famous person, let us try a search with YAHOO for the following words "babe ruth wwi draft record". The first item returned has the title World War I Draft Cards: Babe Ruth.

The U.S. Archives sponsor this. Click on the following link: http://www.archives.gov/atlanta/wwi-draft/ruth.html

If we then click on the Larger View button everything is much clearer. George Herman Ruth is residing at 680 Commonwealth Ave., Boston Massachusetts. Date of birth: Feb. 7, 1894.Note that the year is off by one. This is not uncommon. He might have been confused or he wanted to appear older. The card further states that he was a natural born citizen in Baltimore, MD.His occupation is Baseball. His employer is Boston American League at Fenway Park. He is married and has a wife dependent on him. Her name is not listed.

His signature is at the bottom of the card. On the back of the card it lists that he is 6 foot 2 inches and of stout build. He has brown eyes and dark hair. The card is dated June 5, 1917

All males in the United States, born between the years 1872 and 1900, were required by law to register for the draft throughout 1917 and 1918. If you need to find a male ancestor born about this time and you cannot find them with census data, you may have better luck with this resource.

Next Posting: Part Two

LINKS

US Archive WWI Draft Card Image

Ancestry.com
Copyright 2008 BabeRuthGenealogy

Baltimore: Who What Where

Major cities have directories that go back to the 1700s. They provide important information such as full name, address, employment and individuals living at the same address. There was a need to locate residents of a community for delivery of mail and other goods, and governments kept track of residents for taxation. Genealogy societies, Archives and libraries have these available on microfilm. You have to go to the city or State in question to gain access. A good place to learn even more about directories is at the following link: AboutCityDirectories.

The directories were published to sell advertising space. Inside, outside and all around the margins are the sponsors. The image on the right shows an example of the 1906 Baltimore City Directory. This is two years after the great Baltimore Fire that destroyed much of downtown. The Hotel Rennert stresses that it is a fireproof building.

We will explore pre 1920 directories for the whereabouts of Babe Ruth's father. The directory for the year 1906, the directory is divided in two parts. The front part has all of the citizens alphabetized by last name. The back matter is alphabetized by types of business. The image at the right shows page 1730. George H. Ruth is listed about 10 names down from the second column. It simply states "Ruth Geo H, saloon, 406 w Conway". Further down is his brother " Ruth John A, propr Baltimore City Lightning Rod Works, 341 s Woodyear".

Some city directories are online and are free to access from a home computer. Once again we can use Heritage Quest that is accessible from Http://BCPLONLINE.org. A library card number is needed to proceed. We selected Research databases and then Genealogy. We clicked on Heritage Quest and entered our card number. We then selected Books followed by Publications. In the dialogue box we entered "Baltimore". The second and third items list Baltimore City directories for 1912 and 1913.

Select 1912 and go to page 1751 that appears to the right. George and John are living in the same locations respectively. John's occupation is Coppersmith.




Select 1913 and go to page 1769 that appears to the right. The following entry is shown"Ruth Geo H, (Columbia Harness Co) h 552 w Conway". The entry for his brother is on the next page that also appears to the right. It appears as "Ruth John A R, electrn, h 341 s Woodyear". Doing a Google search for "Columbia Harness" AND Ruth did not provide anything.





At this time the R L Polk Company published the directories. If we entered "R L Polk" in the dialogue box, 1277 books appear. Advance to the next page of results and the fourth result is the 1899 directory. Select that book and proceed to page 1244 that appears to the right. The entry for this time is "Ruth Geo H, (J A Ruth & Bro) 339 s Woodyear". Further down, the entry for his brother is "Ruth J A & Bro (John A jr & Geo H Ruth), lightning rod mnfrs, 341 s Woodyear". The houses are next to each other.



Historical Societies and Archives may also have old Telephone directories. Back then phones were still a premium item and not everyone is listed. The image to the left is the 1917 C & P Telephone Company book for Baltimore and Vicinity. On page 250 we find "St Paul 8335 Ruth Geo H, café 36 38 s Eutaw". Two entries down may or may not be his brother "St Paul 5632 Ruth John A, contr sand & gravel 213 Courtland". In the business section, George is listed under Restaurants.



LINKS

About City Directories

Baltimore County Public Library



Copyright 2008 BabeRuthGenealogy

1930

Last time, we found Ruth in the 1910 census using the on-line service HeritageQuest. It was easy because that census was indexed by name. The 1930 census is not fully indexed by that site. This time we will use the Ancestry.com Web site, which has a fully indexed 1930 census. Ancestry is a service that charges a yearly subscription fee. However, many libraries have it freely available for their patrons.

From the Ancestry.com home page we click on "Search" and then select "US Federal Census" on the right hand side. The searchable censuses range from 1790 to 1930.

After selecting 1930 we type in George's name. There are 192 results. We trim that down by entering a birth year of 1895 +/- 2 years. This time we get 15 results. The eighth result down is George H Ruth living in Manhattan, NY. Clicking on the icon to the right brings up the actual image.

George is living at 345 W. 88th Street. The head of household is Carrie Merritt, age 59. Her sons are Eugene (38) and Hubert (34). George is then listed as the son-in-law to Carrie. He is 36 years old born in Maryland and his occupation is Baseball. Listed below Ruth is his wife, Clara (30) who was 17 when she was first married. Also listed are Clara's daughter's Julia (13) and Dorothy (9). Click on the image to the right to view it.

George Ruth cannot be found in the 1920 Census. Perhaps, we can find out more information about his wife's family for that year. The 1930 Census indicates that George's wife and mother-in-law were born in Georgia. We searched to 1920 Census using the name Carrie Merritt and entering Georgia for her place of birth. We get 6 results. The last one listed is in Manhattan.

Carrie (47) is living at 219 W. 80th Street. She is widowed and born in Georgia. Her daughter is listed as Clara Hodgson (22). Clara has a daughter, Julia (3 6/12). Also listed is Carrie's son Eugene (27). Click on the image to the right to view it.

This is as far as we can go for finding George Ruth in Census data. There is a restriction of over 70 years before a census is made available to the public. 1940 should be available in 2012. We could use census data to map out George's parent's families prior to 1900. For now, we will keep this project simple.

Next time we will take a look at some city directories.


LINKS

Ancestry.com

NEXT POSTING: City Directories

Copyright 2008 BabeRuthGenealogy