Derbyshire Ward Records

The next step of my journey was to search the  LDS Derbyshire Ward Records for Martha Ann Riste.  I searched the LDS church records for Derby, Derbyshire, England, and found Martha Ann Riste in the index.

Look what I found:

 

Martha Ann Riste and her sister, Lovinah.  Martha Ann and 

Lovinah Riste were baptized into the LDS church on 14 Feb 1852.

Also on the same page, I found their brother, Hyrum Frederick Riste:

But the real clincher was what I found on the page before these baptisms.

Who do you think I found there?

Martha Ann Riste's parents-- James and Mary Riste!  They were baptized on 8 Sep 1850.  Furthermore, there is a note on James Riste's record stating that he emigrated on 23 Mar 1853.  Clearly, Martha Ann Riste was not an orphan.  Family story debunked!  (I feel like I could start my own Genealogy Mythbusters show!)

I now knew for certain that the story about Martha Ann Riste being an orphan was not true.  I still wanted to learn a lot more about her, though.  My next quest: find out more about her emigration to America.

Stay tuned for my next post to find out about Martha Ann Riste's journey to America!

Restored photo of Martha Ann Riste

 

Announcement

We interrupt this story to bring you a brief announcement:

I am pleased to announce the opening of my new family history website: Kim's Kin.
Kim's Kin is another of my attempts to reach out to the family history community via the web.  It contains information regarding my ancestors and the research I have done on them.

At this point, Kim's Kin solely focuses on the Riste family, but I hope to eventually expand it to include other ancestors as well.

Feel free to check out Kim's Kin and share your feedback with me!

(And stay tuned for the rest of the Martha Ann Riste story coming soon!)

Martha Ann Riste: The Rest of the Story

In my last post, I mentioned that I began searching for Martha Ann Riste after hearing a fantastic story about her determination to join the leaders of the church and head west.

This story inspired me. I was fascinated with the idea of a courageous orphan who forsook everything for the gospel. So, when I had my first British Family History class, I began researching her family.

My first stop was the Ancestral File, to see what information had been submitted about Martha Ann Riste. I found that she was born in Derby, Derbyshire, England, on 23 September 1839.

With a birthdate and place, I set off to find Martha in England.  Since I knew she had joined the LDS church in England, I began by searching for LDS Church Records in the Family History Library Catalog (FHLC).  The FHLC had one listing for membership records of the Derby branch of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

What was in the LDS membership records?  Watch for my next post . . . and find out!

Martha Ann Riste

A young orphaned English girl.  A wealthy older woman who took  her in.  A beautiful singing voice-- one that would send the girl to sing for the queen.

The fairy-tale elements of this story captured my attention and drew me to Martha Ann Riste.  In fact, the oral storytelling spoke to me more strongly than a written story would have.  Which is why I'm going to let you hear the story now.

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This story inspired me!  I wanted to be like Martha Ann Riste and I wanted to learn about her, too.

Little did I know I was in for a big surprise . . .

and so are you if you check my next post to find out what really happened to Martha Ann Riste!

Archive.org

One of the perks of working at the BYU Library is that I have the chance to learn about all sorts of interesting places to search for information, both in print and on the web.  One cool discovery I have made recently is www.archive.org.

Archive.org is a free website that is available to anyone who has internet access. Archive.org publishes copies of books, photographs, and other works that have no copyright, or whose copyright has expired.  It's a pretty neat site.  It has tons of information available for free.  That includes the actual images of the books they put online.  It's easy, quick, and great!

I searched archive.org for East Leake and I actually found A History of East Leake by Sidney Pell Potter.  It was published in 1903, which is useful because the Ristes left Nottingham around 1836.  Therefore, Potter was writing the history at a time when he was much closer to the events he described than more recent historians.  The downside to Potter's book is that he was a parish priest, and his work does not mention nonconformist churches at all (except for one text by the Church of England against Anabaptists).  This is unfortunate because the Ristes were Baptists.  In spite of Potter's obvious bias, I still think A History of East Leake has a lot of useful information about the village.  It even includes photos and maps of the parish!

I'm looking forward to seeing what other gems are waiting for me on the Internet Archive!

FamilySearch Maps

I just found out about a cool new website for English research.

It's www.maps.familysearch.org

If you go into the website, you can click on any county and find out all sorts of information for that county.  This includes:

1. List all parishes in the county. List all surrounding counties
2. Search the Family History Library Catalog

3. Search the FamilySearch wiki


If you choose a particular parish to look at, you can find:

1. Ecclesiastical parish boundaries
2. Civil parish boundaries
3. Chapelries near by
4. Date that parish registers begin for that parish
5. Names of adjacent parishes
6. Map showing all parishes within a five-mile radius
7. Poor law union the parish belonged to
8. Diocese
9. Hundred (another civil/court division)
10. Probate Court
11. Rural Deanery
12. Type of parish

This site is a gold mine!  I searched for East Leake, Nottinghamshire, where the Ristes lived, and discovered that although East Leake is in the ecclesiastical parish of Nottinghamshire, it is in the civil parish of Loughborough.  This may explain why I didn't find Levinah's birth record, or any probate records for the Ristes in Nottinghamshire.  I still didn't find Levinah's birth in Loughborough on www.FreeBMD.org, but at least I have some new leads to follow!

If you are doing any English research, be sure to check out maps.familysearch.org.  It's amazing!!!

Publishing Issues

Thanks to everyone for your supportive comments about sourcing.  I now have some good ideas that I am planning to try out.  And, since you were so helpful last time, I have a new question for you.

Recently I discovered that this blog is not coming up on a Google search.  When I created the blog, I set it to be available through search engines and blogger lists.  However, I have tried various keyword searches on Google, and nothing is coming up.  Conversely, my private blog is set to not be searchable through search engines and blogger lists, but it came right up when I searched the blog title on Google.  That's a little scary.  I spent a long time trying to figure out how to make this blog come up on Google, but to no avail.

Has anyone else had a similar problem?  Were you able to fix it?

I know I could make my personal blog private, but I like having it open so that friends browsing my facebook site can see my personal blog without having to be invited.  So, if any of you have any thoughts, I would be interested to hear them.

By the way, I apologize that my most recent posts have been technical, rather than informative.  I'm still trying to work out the bugs on this new blog and I find reader comments to be very useful.  Nevertheless, I will be posting an informational post about the Ristes again.  Stay tuned!