Author: Shelly

Denis was the brother of my great great grandfather, Walter Basquil. I’ve gotten to know one of his descendants, and we’ve collaborated on researching the family. I think she got this photo of Denis from another cousin in Australia. (Denis’ son, William, immigrated there, while Denis came to the US and Walter stayed in Ireland.)

Denis was quite a character. Reading between the lines, he was likely an alcoholic. His wife, Ellen Carney, died in 1908. In 1910 Denis was living in the Fall River alms house, destitute. He died in 1911.

Every genealogy group I’ve ever participated in gets regular posts from people who are hung up on the idea that names have one correct spelling. They don’t understand that until very recently spelling was an art form. If you look at original documents, you’ll often find the same individual’s name spelled multiple ways. Sometimes you’ll see family members who spell their surname differently.

I’ve been working on a one name study for years, and this is the list of name variants I’ve found in the wild. Some of them are make more sense than others, but none of them are wrong. So I wouldn’t spend too much time worrying about whether or not Runkle and Runkel are the same name. They are.

image 1: screenshot of Indiana marriage certificate index entry at Ancestry
Image 2: Indiana marriage certificate previously downloaded from Ancestry
image 3: Indiana marriage certificate on Ancestry website

Y’all, I have no idea what’s going on at Ancestry.com. Maybe they’re just updating their existing Indiana certificate databases? Or maybe they’re slowly removing certificate images? I tried looking up a 1944 Indiana marriage certificate yesterday. It should have been there, but there were no images showing. All the entries looked like the first image, with the “No Image Text-only Collection” notice.

That can happen. Licensing agreements change, and whole collections can suddenly (and permanently) disappear. Always download images to your local storage when you find them. Don’t rely on the images being available in ten minutes, much less in perpetuity. It could be something benign, like they are extending the year range and adding newer records. I noticed that the index entry for my step-father’s 2016 death is now included. I think the Indiana death certificate database ended with 2013 or 2016 previously? But it could be that their licensing agreement for the images has or will soon expire. Or it could be that they couldn’t reach a new agreement with the state of Indiana. Or it could be that Indiana has decided to be a rat bastard because they could make more money requiring people to obtain certified copies directly from the state. That last one would really hurt, because you have to be close kin to order certified copies, and you don’t need certified copies for genealogy research.

Weirdly, I can still access the certificates I saved links for (thank you, Evernote!). They haven’t removed them. They just aren’t linked to the index entries anymore. But if you look at the last image, there is no information below the database name. There should be a year range and surname range. There’s nothing. Very strange. Personally, I don’t think this will really impact me. Most of the people I needed to research in Indiana were confined to my step-father’s family, and I’m done working on them.

Also weird is that some of the certificates that were not visible yesterday are back today. This gives me hope that the whole thing is just a temporary glitch, and that they’re actually expanding the Indiana certificate image holdings. But as of right now, there are no marriage certificate images accessible from the index entries. Birth and death certificates are a craps shoot.