Appalachia Project December 2023 Challenge: Make Appalachia Shine

Question

This month, Make Appalachia Shine on WikiTree!

For the month of December 2023: You get to choose what you want to work on.  

• Pick any Profile, in our Maintenance Categories, to improve them.
• Maybe you have an OPS or an ONS in Appalachia that you want to invest some time in.
• Give our Appalachian Notables some love.  Have you ever heard of David Schnaufer?  Many have not because he only has a CC7 of 119.
• Pick any of our Challenges from this year that still need profiles added to WT. Frontier Nurses, School Professors, Moonshiners & Bootleggers, Veterans and more!
• Are you great at transcription?  We have a member with diminished eyesight that needs a lengthy murder court case, of an ancestor, transcribed onto a space page.
• We need a lot of profiles added to our sub project: West Virginia Coal Wars.

Have another idea?  Leave a comment and let us know!

Visit our Appalachia Challenges Space Page for Details.
 

1. Click the "Answer this Post" link and let us know who you picked.
2. Click the green Challenge Tracker button & select "Appalachia Challenge" 
3. Come back here to your post and let us know of any interesting finds 

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You do not need to be a member of the Appalachia Project to participate.  All WikiTree'ers are welcome to Make Appalachia Shine.  Want to join the Appalachia Project? Click here

Join us in our Discord Channel to get research help, chat, explore Appalachian topics, or share your love of biscuits. 

Answer 1

Too many good choices!!! I think I will do biobuilding on App notables that I am PM on and some other thing that I haven't decided yet.

Frances R (Estill) Beauchamp Bio updated though I am not sure if I put her in the right Temperance category. She was part of W. C. T. U. but that category seems to be associated with Australia.... so if I am wrong someone please change it. 

Comments

I always love the BioBuilding and I really appreciate your help with our Notables.

Answer 2

I can work on Sourcing some profiles in the Appalachia Project Needs Sources.

Thanks,

St (Hadsell-2)

Comments

Awesome! I love having you in our Project with your sourcing skills.

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I shifted gears and am working on Category: Appalachia, Unsourced Profiles.  My goal is to clear it out.

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Thanks for all of your help!

Answer 3

I would love to help out.  I have a question.....is there anything I can do with cemeteries?  I mainly work on creating cemeteries in Alabama.  Does the Appalachia Project need any help with this????

Thanks,

Sheila

Comments

Sure! Many of our members have been going through the Cemetery Category Report and adding the Cemetery Category (that already exists on WikiTree) to Profiles.

Others are adding photos of tombstones to existing profiles.

If it's in Appalachia and needs something... This is a great month for it.

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I can work on putting the cemetery category on profiles!

What about creating cemetery categories?  If I create one in a Appalachia county would that be helpful?

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Anything that is in Appalachia helps.  

We have a lot Cemetery teammates in our Project that create Cemetery Categories, Adds the Cemetery Categories, Tombstone Photos, surveys Cemeteries with GPS, etc. 

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Me, too.  I'm not in the project, but I work on some of the Alabama cemeteries.  Mostly Lawrence County, now, then Cullman County and Morgan County.  I'm trying to get the Partial ones as complete as possible, and then adding the Missing ones.  Lots of family names on all of them.

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Perfect, Willodene.  I am trying to get all the missing categories created.  We work well together!

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@Willodene

Thanks so much for helping!

Answer 4

I think I'm going to work on sourcing profiles from the Maintenance Categories in December.

Comments

Dawn -

What a way to jump on in. I love it!  Thanks so much for helping with our needed sources.

Answer 5

I will do as much as I can in the needs sources category as well as putting appropriate Appalachian categories on the profiles I find that are not categorized. I will also be working on one of our two RAWKers for the month. So that will probably help with this challenge.

Comments

That is awesome, Audrey!

I think most of our "needs sources" are fairly easy and just need more detailed sources.

Answer 6

I will work on transcribing the court case for Janine. If someone could proof it for me, that would be helpful.

Blessings, Cindy

Comments

I would love to proof for you.

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Thank you Lisa.

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Cindy and Lisa!!!!

Thank you both so much for helping with this.  It's very dear to Janine to have this transcribed and I know she will appreciate your help. 

Answer 7

I would love to help proof for the transcript as I mentioned in the other response.

I also would love to take on David Schnaufer's profile and those of his connections. I plan to improve on the existing ones and then begin branching out.

Comments

Lisa - Both of these warm my heart so much.  Helping proof the transcript is a wonderful gift to our member who has diminished eyesight. 

.... And I'm learning to play the Appalachian Dulcimer and thrilled to see someone work on David's Profile. 

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His profile still needs work but is better than it was. Also, I have got his total CC7 up to over 170 and there are a few that need connected by other profile owners. Will continue to add.

Answer 8

I'll be using Appalachian profiles to finish up my 30 for 15 (and maybe 45 for 15?) challenges this month. I also will be RAWKing, and sprucing up Appalachian Notables.

Comments

Erin, I always always love your work with our Notables!

Answer 9

I'll be working on North Carolina Appalachians, Ancestors and Cousins. Working on Bio, cleaning up Gedcoms and adding working source links.  I will start with Ruth (Baker) Poovey. I just added two Moonshiners categories to Grandparents, and a photo ! This is my first Challenge to be involved in.

Comments

Linda-

That is fantastic!  What great work and location you are focusing on.  Thank you for choosing Appalachia's challenge.

Answer 10

Why do I keep joining monthly challenges? Because, I don't know how to say no to them. I will work on the maintenance categories.

Comments

We are twins 

Thanks for working on our Maintenance Cats! 

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I know we are. We drag each other into things.

Answer 11

I will continue to work on the West Virginia National Cemetery.

Comments

Great idea Nancy!  I think I will join you.

Answer 12

I LOVE this Project Group, although I am not a member of it.  My Paternal GGrandparents and those before them are from the Appalachian areas.  It is one place that my heart longs to visit.

Comments

Tammie, thanks for the sweet comment.   And, feel free to add this sticker to your profile because your roots are solidly in Appalachia.  
{{Appalachian Roots}}

...and, you don't have to live in Appalachia to be a member of our Project. 

Answer 13

I’ll work on the maintenance categories.

Comments

Thanks Donna for helping clear out our Maintenance Cats!   Lots to chose from. 

Answer 14

I've connected The First Lady of Appalachian Literature, Wilma Dykeman, both through her father and through her husband. She now has a CC7 of 585 and will show as connected after the next update.

Comments

That is awesome!

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Fantastic!  Thanks David!

For those that do not know, Wilma married into the Stokeman family.... the canned food Stokemans.

Answer 15

I will continue to work on November's Challenge. as I didn't get as far along on the letter "T" as I would have liked. I will probably do some other Appalachia-related profiles as well, in the normal course of adding people to WT.: 

  WV National Cemetery, Pruntytown, West Virginia.

Comments

Great Margaret, these guys deserve to be remembered.

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I was hoping that some of us would continue to work on this National Cemetery.  It would be fantastic to work on all of them in Appalachia.  Maybe a two year goal to get them entered.

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Love this  idea! Our. Veterans deserve to be remembered.

 Today I am most working for living Veterans by cooking for our Holiday Gala tomorrow night. I am also  working on my Andersonville Prison Cemetery assignment as I am able today. I have documented several Appalachians in the process. Happy Monday!

Answer 16

I'll work on sourcing some of the WV profiles.

Comments

Awesome Mitchell. I always appreciate your help with Wild Wonderful West Virginia.

Answer 17

Will stick to my ORP - One Regiment Project ☺️❗️

Comments

I can't think of a better Project this month and so thrilled you show us your finds.

Answer 18

Working on the Biography for [[Alvis-839|Grover Newton Alvis]].

Comments

Alice, that is lovely to work on the biography for this West Virginian.  Thanks so much!

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Sandy, you are so welcome. It was fun. I have him on my watchlist too so I can go back and recheck to see if anything new to add.

Merry Christmas

Answer 19

So much to choose from! I guess I'll stick to Anderson County, TN for now. Can work on the Wilson Cemetery, and possibly Leach. This ties into the Fraterville mine disaster (I'm already a member of the Disasters Project) but don't want to cast the net too wide as yet.

Trying to create miners' profiles yesterday, I was struck by the paucity of primary records in F/S, especially for common names like Adkins.

Comments

D -

I am glad to see I am not the only one with difficulty on finding sources for some of these coal miners. So surprising!

I work on coal mine disasters for both Projects too. Hmm, maybe I will add one of them to my January Thon list.

Thanks for working on these!!

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Right...you'd think there'd at least be a census record. Too far flung up in them thar hills? Now I just need to find the notebook where I jotted down the rest of the Red Jacket Shaft casualties. MI was apparently better at recordkeeping.

When I first visited Wilson, I didn't realize that so many of the folks buried there were children...infants. So sad. Life was hard.

Answer 20

I realized I forgot to respond on this.  I'm working on the West Virginia Coal wars profiles, specifically Battle of Matewan.

Comments

This is probably my favorite category of all WikiTree. Thanks so much for working on these coal miners.