Using Ancestry’s Card Catalog

Why Use the Card Catalog on Ancestry.com?

To begin go to search and slide down close to the end where you see card catalog. Why?

Because you can find things here that will not come up in other searches. Today I looked for Civil War soldier JR (Rountree) that I believe to be Confederate. The photo is an old tintype that used to be inside a beautiful antique oval gold frame. This type photo dates the photo between 1855 and maybe 1940.

The only clues I see are maybe a wedding band, and a pinkie ring. The two bars on his shoulder, that I have not figured out as of yet. I have been looking for the belt buckle to see if I can find one like it so I will know more. They had issued belts and buckles most of the time so maybe?

J R Rountree

I have only been able to guess at his last name but he was in the Monterey Miller rescued photo album and I have been looking for more information on him. I have been using Rountree because most all of the photos are of the Rountree family.

 

Keywords Help

Next I used Rountree in the the keyword search box and left the other one blank. Awesome! I get one hit, it turns out to be a typed book of some of the descendants of Captain Thomas J Rountree. What a wonderful find. A BOOK full of information. All of it on just this family.

New Items

By the way, this will not come up in the regular search and it will not let you save it to your tree. You will have to copy or take pictures of it so you can use it while working on your tree. It has not been cataloged and there are so many other pieces of information like it just sitting in this area that could be useful to you.

Change your search up

Another thing good is that you can see all of the new items that have been added. You can go look for information that you may not have been able to find at an earlier date.

Click on Military over to the left side and you can get the new military sets that have been added. Also it will show you updated lists. You can filter by country and by dates and this can narrow things down if you came up with a large grouping.

I’m still wanting to search for J R Rountree so this time I put in Civil War to see what would come up.

I’m going to try another search and see what I can get. Next I did the same thing except after the SEARCH button I slid down to public member trees. Maybe someone somewhere knows more than I do about JR.

Public Trees

Here all I could do was go look at the trees that came up and see if anyone had information in their tree about Monterey Miller or a JR Rountree. I also looked at some of the other Rountree (or Roundtree) names to see if any matched what was in the photo album.

Never Give UP

I will continue to look for JR, but I feel like he may have died during the war and I have no other information to confirm if it is him for sure. There are a couple of JR’s listed, but so far I’m having trouble connecting anyone to Monterey Miller and the other people in the photo album. Maybe it will work out. I feel there has to be something I’m missing so the search will continue until I have something.

Good luck with all of your searches and never give up, just find another path! Which is exactly what I’m going to do.

Yeah! Maybe I found something! I have been reading and studying about the uniforms. So maybe he wasn’t a confederate soldier after all. I can go look now and see what I can find under the union soldiers. I found an article that makes me now think it is a union uniform and that the two bars of gold on the shoulder strap and the eight buttons make him a Captain or commander of a company.

Civil War Genealogy: How to Find Union Soldier Uniform Clues

This is awesome. Maybe I have made a breakthrough of some kind! Now to back up and start over looking at everything a little differently. At least I know he was not the other JR Rountree I found that had died a private. There is always hope, either the next day of searching or the next site. Just remember to keep looking! When I complete his story I will be back, see you again when that happens!