Genealogy and ACA

[no_hypocrisy]

I've done some serious research into my father's side of the family, going back to the mid-nineteenth century.

My latest takeaway is how young my father's aunts were when they passed away in the Twenties and Thirties: mid-fifties; sixty, tops

Please note the years when they died were BEFORE the New Deal, Social Security. With mortality rates like that, middle age was old age back in the day. (OTOH, the brother of my father's mother lived to his early nineties, partly because he was wealthy and could afford the best medical care.)

I've also been able find online many of their death certificates with the cause of death recorded. Most were heart disease that could have been treated with a doctor.

With the potential repeal of the ACA, do we really want to return to the "Good old days" when you weren't expected to live beyond your mid-fifties?

[No Vested Interest]

1. Heart disease was not treatable in the early 1900's. The growth of useful drugs began mainly

Last edited Fri Jul 21, 2017, 06:53 PM - Edit history (1)

in the late 50's and early 60's, and the growth in older population in general in the last 30-40 years. There were no anti-biotics until after WWII; death from flu, tuberculosis, and other illnesses now controllable were commonplace.

Before the Social Security Act, which only made its first payout in the late 1930s, the average person worked until they died, not much beyond 65, which is why the retirement age was placed at 65 years. Few people had savings enough to live on in retirement; they depended on family to see them through illness and old age.

My grandfather, who had the means to afford doctors and medical care, died in 1947 in his mid-60's of heart disease, having had a heart attack in his early 60's. My father died at age 70 of heart problems.

[GeoWilliam750]

2. Agreed

Anyone who wants to go back to the "good old days" should do some research on the poor farms, aka the county farms.

Mind you, some of the nursing homes today have probably moved in the same direction....

[shraby]

3. I run a genealogy website for the county I live in, in Wisconsin. I was fortunate enough to

get the cemetery printout for all the burials in the largest cemetery. I incorporated it into my tombstone transcriptions, so I have a good record of causes of death from 1860 to 1999.
Plus I've added in over 79,000 obituaries which some also give cause of death.

You'd be surprised at how many young women died in childbirth and how many children died from childhood diseases now preventable with vaccinations.

People died of things you don't even hear about today. Sepsis (blood poisoning) for one. Also the numbers of industrial accidents have been cut today with regulations they didn't have.

Since we live where there are 3 rivers and Lake Michigan drownings were very prevalent.

[no_hypocrisy]

4. Impressive

[shraby]

5. I have some good help..all volunteer. 3 ladies who type up obits for me and comb

the old newspapers to find more, one who helps by maintaining the first 43 cemeteries (I do the 44-90 ones), one who puts on the tidbits we find and 3 who are putting the obituaries on findagrave along with the tombstone photos we've taken as well as any photographs of the people that have been located.
We all have a ball doing it too...I volunteer too and have since I started building the site in 1995.

[csziggy]

6. Which county? My husband had ancestors in Wisconsin

Mostly Trempealeau and Pierce Counties.

PM me with the URL if you don't want to post it in the Ancestry Group.

[shraby]

7. Manitowoc county.

Here is the url http://www.2manitowoc.com

I've been working on it since 1995 and it's still a work in progress. Since I'm 75, I offered it to the local library in order to keep it online and they voted unanimously to take it and pay for the server space. They use a hands off policy and let me run it like I want to which makes me happy.

[csziggy]

8. That's not one of the counties my husband's family was in

Too bad - but I am glad you have someone to take over!

I have to find someone in Bay County to take my mother in law's compilation of Union soldiers who retired there. Apparently she tried to find someone and was unable. I could put it on my website, but then it won't be where anyone would expect to find it so that's kind of useless.

[shraby]

9. Here's a place she can send them.

http://www.usgenweb.org

They have someone for every county in the United States to put stuff online about their county. Have her contact the person and ask about sending it in. I have a list of the Union soldiers on my site that someone sent me, along with where they are buried in the county and stats on them.

[csziggy]

10. She passed away in January - I have all her files

She contacted the USGenWeb for Bay County, Florida, and they never got back to her. I think I will try again - she and some genealogy friends compiled this information over a number of years. It should be available to people doing research!

[shraby]

11. I used to be with usgenweb, but it got top heavy and the top forgot who does the

actual work of the organization. That's when I bailed and set up my own site. They also tend to give the sites to people who don't live in the county or state and also local historical societies take them and are sparing with what they put on because they like to charge people on the side for work they do. Top heavy doesn't mean brain heavy.<G>

Google and maybe you can find someone who has a site similar to mine that you can put the information with. Depositing it with a library in the area would work too. The work could be put on a cd to cut down on the expense of sending it.

[csziggy]

12. Yes, I need to get onto to figuring out what to do with the files

She had them in Word format with lousy formatting. I should probably import them into a database program or simply a text file that I can put into a HTML page.

I do have space on my own site but since I have only a slight connection to Bay County, Florida, that might make it hard to find. Though Google found some files I had put on my site but never indexed so I suspect Google would locate the information soon enough!

My own site was started for my farm but now I am mostly using it to post family photos - not only recent ones but the old ones that got back over the last 150 years or so. My husband and I have become the repository for all the family genealogy, photos, and records. My goal is to get it online before I die and figure out someway to keep it going afterwards.

[shraby]

13. Have you tried making a site at rootsweb.com

The space is hosted by Ancestry but is free as far as I know, and I think stuff just stays on there. That's where we put someone's family tree page she asked us to do because she didn't know how and was in her 80s. Last I heard she is in her 90s now and her pages are still there.

My pages are html pages, but I use the tag <h4><pre> and it saves a lot of coding. the <pre> keeps everything on the page like I put it there, more like a txt page than html, but the title part makes it html.<G>

[csziggy]

14. No, I haven't used rootsweb.com

I'll have to see what I can do with it. Thanks for the suggestions.