Genealogy Blog Party - Thankful

The theme for the Genealogy Blog Party this month is thankful. The genealogy resource I'm thankful for today is mailing lists. One of the things I love most about the genealogy community is how much we help each other out, how often random strangers will come upon a request for help, drop what they're doing, and jump in with both feet to help someone find the answers and info they're looking for. I see this all the time in the mailing lists I've been on. Here are some examples.

The DNA-Newbie mailing list is where I turned for help when I first got into genetic genealogy five years ago. I met awesome people like CeCe Moore who answered my questions, pointed me to books and other resources, and helped me understand what I was looking at with all these test results.

The Alsace-Lorraine mailing list helped me find one of the most amazing websites out there, with literally hundreds of years of documents of my German/French ancestors from this part of Europe. Below are some of the ancestors I was able to find with these records.

The German Bohemia mailing list has some of the nicest, most helpful people on the planet. They answered my questions, dug into social and political history to explain obscure words, and helped me decipher the difficult German script, an example of which is below.

 

 

The Quebec genealogy mailing list helped me identify where in Quebec my French-Canadians were from, and helped me learn to navigate the French-Canadian records on Ancestry and other sites. Their help was crucial in solving a DNA problem I had with my French-Canadian ancestors, and finding the info would have taken much, much more time without their help.

 

The German-Volhynia-Poland mailing list helped me find records of my Germans in Russia, which led to one of the biggest brick wall busts in my genealogy career so far. I never would have guessed to look in church records written in Polish, kept by the Russian government, to look for my German ancestors without their expertise.

 

 

I'm sure there are others, but those are the ones that come to mind right away. I am a firm believer in the power of mailing lists, so if you are stuck on a line or an ancestor, find a mailing list that covers your topic. There may be someone with the answers you need just waiting to help! 

Genealogy Blog Party - Preserving My Research



My genealogy shelf is on the left. Protected by giant robots from Cybertron.

For this month's genealogy blog party, Elizabeth O'Neal asks how we as genealogists will preserve our family history research. This topic has been on my mind off and on over the years, as I don't want all the hours and months and years I've spent researching my family's history to be lost. But how do I pass it on in a way that's accessible to someone in the future?

I know for a lot of genealogists, one simple (if not easy) way to pass on the findings is by writing a book. I've thought about doing that since I first got into family history, but a couple things have stopped me:

1. Which lines would I write about? I want to write about all my ancestors, but any book that includes my paternal line would be of little interest to my paternal relatives, and vice versa.

2. A book of any considerable size would likely be put on a shelf and seldom, if ever, remembered. That's the exact opposite of what I'm trying to do - I want to make sure the stories and details of my ancestors' lives are remembered and passed down.

3. There's also the idea of "I'm not done yet, there's more to discover first." That's not really an excuse though, because genealogy is NEVER done, so waiting until you're at a stopping point is a self-defeating proposition.

So the book idea is on the shelf (pun intended) for now at least. I may do a series of mini-books or something down the road, maybe on Lulu publishing or something where people could just order one or two when they wanted. But I haven't even started anything like that, so that's not really an option yet.

Right now, my main method in preserving my research is this blog. I like it because it's free, it's easily accessible, and I can download a copy of it to my computer whenever I want. But that's only as good as Google, and like any other piece of technology, Google could theoretically go kaput at any time. Seems unlikely today, but remember, Yahoo! was the big dog at one point, and now they're lucky to get a seat at the tech table (from my perspective at least). So this is more of a temporary rather than a permanent solution.

I don't have a lot of paper records in my family history, though I do have a number of old photographs and other artifacts I've collected that I want to ensure stay preserved. My hope is that one of my kids or (eventual) grandkids will catch the bug at some point, and I'll just be able to pass them on to someone I can trust to take care of them. My kids are only 11, 8, and 3 at this point, so any deep scholarly inclinations have yet to manifest themselves. So that idea's on the table, but not super likely to be fulfilled anytime soon.

I have a ton of digital files, as almost my entire genealogy research history is digital. That amounts to somewhere around 50GB of data. That could still fit on a flash drive, so I could just make copies onto flash drives and pass them around to family members. I may do that at some point too, that's not a bad idea.

Overall though, my number one way of preserving my research is my Backblaze account. I went with Backblaze on the recommendation of Lisa Louise Cooke, and it's affordable and easily done (though it takes a good amount of time if you're a monster digital hoarder like me). I just need to ensure that someone or someones in my family has access to it in case anything happens to me.

I guess the long and short of it is, I don't have a full-fledged plan yet, just a couple of halfway thought through ideas of plans, and a couple backup plans. Sounds like I have some work to do.

Treasure Chest Thursday - A Fire in the Coals

Four years ago, I began my journey into genetic genealogy and DNA testing. Right away, from my first round of tests, I found some unexpected results, and set about trying to solve them - my grandmother's biological father,  the question of whether Ernest Craddock was my ancestor (and fortunately he is!), etc. Since those questions have been answered, I've felt like I kind of plateaued in my DNA research. Not that I haven't made big strides in some areas, because I have. But I haven't had a specific goal in mind, a question to resolve. I'm sitting on mountains of data, and I don't quite know what to do with it all. I feel kind of like a coal that's been taken out of the fire and left on its own.

So this year, I'm doing something about it. I'm now at the Marriott hotel in Burbank, California, eagerly awaiting the start of DNA Day at the SCGS Genealogy Jamboree! It's going to be a day packed with talks and presentations all about DNA and genetic genealogy. I'm hoping I'll hear something (or lots of somethings!) to get me inspired and motivated to take my genetic genealogy research and skills to the next level. I'm ready to jump back into the fire with both feet, and come out ready to hit the research running again.

Speaking of DNA testing, I'm still waiting on the results from my Wagner relative's Y-DNA test. It's been delayed four times now at FTDNA (who has, I've noticed, added an additional disclaimer to the projected completion dates saying "this is just an estimate, subject to quality controls, etc"). I was really hoping the results would be in before now so I could take what I learn and use it as I hear it. But maybe it's a good thing the results aren't in just yet. Maybe I need to have that test to look forward to when I get home, to work on after Jamboree is over, and put all that new knowledge and fire to work for me. Silver lining, blessing in disguise, that kind of thing.

At any rate, I am so stoked for this weekend. Here's to continuing education and jumping back into the fire!

Sale price on Evidentia software - but only from me!

I tend to think of myself as a pretty tech-savvy genealogist. I'm no Dick Eastman or Thomas MacEntee by any means, but I love doing genealogy on my iPhone and iPad, and I keep all my findings on my laptop, and make at least monthly backups to an external hard drive that I keep safe at a location away from my house. I try to keep up on at least some of the apps and websites out there.

I recently heard about Evidentia software, and decided to check it out. This is a different sort of genealogy program, in that it doesn't track your ancestors and print pedigree charts or family group sheets. Rather, it collects sources, records the claims those sources make about people, and helps you draw conclusions about the evidence and information presented. I have a couple of ancestors I'd really like to try this on, because I'm not entirely sure how I know what I know, and that it's been sufficiently proven. This would be a good way to review the evidence and see how it lays out, what conflicts and what doesn't. This is what it looks like:

Now here's the cool part - I just signed up as an affiliate of Evidentia, so I can offer you a discount price on Evidentia starting next week! From May 1-10, you can get Evidentia for 16% off, or $25 instead of the normal $29.99, as well as free shipping. To get this great discount, click on this link here. The discount code is "rantings". If you do get the software, leave me a comment and tell me how you like it. I'm still getting familiar with it myself, and would love to hear your thoughts on it.

Ireland bound! Well, eventually

Ireland, I am coming home
I can see your rolling fields of green
And fences made of stone
I am reaching out, won't you take my hand?
I'm coming home, Ireland

"Ireland" by Garth Brooks
 

I've made a lot of discoveries in the last 16 years of genealogy research, but few as important to me as the one I made last week.

When I finally confirmed that Henry and Ann Gibson were John Gibson's parents, I went back to the County Fermanagh mailing list and asked for help in finding info on them in their (allegedly) native town of Pettigo. One of the suggestions that came back was to search the archives of the mailing list, as someone may have written about them already. So I did, and here's what I found:

Baptism records for two children of Henry - son William from wife Jane born in 1844, and another child with wife Ann born in 1845. This was hugely exciting for several reasons:
1. My Henry and Ann had a son named William, born in Ireland in 1844, listed with them on the 1851 New Brunswick census.
2. Henry and Ann had a daughter named Ann Jane listed with them in that same 1851 census.
3. The baptism records list the townland of residence for Henry and Ann - Gortnagullion in County Fermanagh, just a few miles east of Pettigo.

The confluence of names, ages, residences, and birthplaces all fits. I am convinced that these baptism records are my family! I have been searching and searching for this information for 16 years, and now that I finally have it, I can only think of one thing...

I'm going to Ireland!!!

Well, eventually. Probably not until sometime in 2017, giving me time to plot, plan, and most importantly, afford the trip. I've said for years that I wanted to postpone a vacation to Ireland until I knew where my people were from, so I could visit the place. But for now, even just knowing the name of village where they last lived before leaving Ireland, and the possibility that I'll be the first of their descendants to visit it since they left in 1846, is staggering and exciting. As Garth Brooks memorably sang, Ireland, I'm coming home!

My favorite family history documents

I recently saw a Tweet from FamilySearch asking people what their favorite family history document was. That was a really interesting question to think about, and the more I thought about it, the more favorites I came up with. It was impossible to narrow down to just one document, so here are my top five favorites, in no particular order.

1. The marriage certificate for Christ Hoffman and Mary Sitzman (Maria Zitzmann)
When I got started in family history, I was dismayed to find out my great-great-grandmother Mary Sitzman had left this world with sealed lips as to where she and her family came from. Her daughter Rosie said nothing, and her granddaughter, my grandma Blossom, knew nothing. Years of searching based on the few clues I did have yielded nothing. This marriage record proved the key to blowing that brick wall to smithereens. Mary gave her birth town as Rosshaupt, a tiny village in western Bohemia (now called Rozvadov and part of the Czech Republic), and that one clue led to many, many, many discoveries. I've now got information on Mary's ancestors going back to 1700s and even 1600s on some lines. All from one little marriage record! It taught me that seemingly insurmountable brick walls can be overcome, even with one simple document.

2. 1910 US-Canadian border crossing of Samuel and Helena Joseph
For years, all we knew about my great-grandmother Augusta (Joseph) Gibson's family was that they came from "Germany". They were Germans, spoke German, and came to Canada before moving to Montana. Records pointed to Berlin and "Toran", Germany, but those leads proved to be dead ends. Then a few years ago, at a Family History Fair up in Bellevue, I was going over my recent discovery of this border crossing Augusta's father Samuel Joseph and sister Helena made in 1910 (Sam and Helena are listed on lines 17-18). It lists a lot of great information - relatives in the country they are leaving, name of person and address they are going to, when they first came to Canada, name of the ship, and (best of all) birthplace. Sam's birthplace was listed as "Gitomar, Russia", and Helena's as "Ulanowka, Russia". I went to the display table for the SGGEE and asked their representative to help me figure out what these places were. She figured out Gitomar was actually Zhitomir, a pretty big city in the Volhynia region of what's now Ukraine. Ulanowka is a smaller village a few miles west of Zhitomir. Boy was I excited! That piece of info led me to other discoveries, allowing me to trace Sam's family back to his grandparents in Poland. This was the first time I'd ever traced a line of my family back to their point of origin in the old world, and it felt great! This was my first real breakthrough, and I still feel the deepest genealogical connection to my Joseph ancestors, largely in part to this discovery.

 

3. Bergstad family Bible page
Several years ago, I got a phone call from someone who said they were related to me. They'd gotten my cell number from an old genealogy website I'd put up, and wanted to send me some info on my/our Bergstad ancestors. I was really excited, but didn't want to get my hopes up too much, because she wouldn't say exactly what she was sending. The package arrived, and the contents knocked my socks off! Picture after picture after picture of my ancestors and their families, with people identified clearly; typewritten histories of various people; and this - a scan of a page from the Bergstad family Bible! This was the first time I'd ever heard of there being a family Bible on any of my ancestral lines. This page covers one generation, and I don't know whose handwriting it is, but it's all in Norwegian, and doesn't even mention the Bergstad name (which first appears as their surname in 1880). It was fascinating to see them listed in the old Norwegian patronymic style. It just drove it home in my mind that these were new Americans, still living their old culture in their new home.

 

 4. Harris family photos
When I was 19, I was serving a mission for my church in Japan, when I got a letter from my Grandma Sally Crawford. In it, she sent me a pedigree chart she put together of her ancestors, the first of any genealogy-related document I'd ever seen for my family. Attached to the unfamiliar names were actual photos, including the two above (Thomas W. Harris on the left, Frank and Charlotte (Scribner) Harris on the right). I'd never heard of these people or seen these pictures, and I had a sudden, intense desire to know more about them. I had to wait a couple years until my mission was finished, but when I got home, I delved right into researching my family tree, even making a presentation on the subject in college just a couple months later. It was fascinating stuff, and I'm even more captivated by it 17 years later.

5. John Gibson family - 1881 New Brunswick census
If I absolutely had to pick one favorite document, this would be it. This was my very first discovery in family history research. My mom told me my paternal great-great-grandparents, John and Catherine (Cain) Gibson came from Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada, and that my great-grandfather John Frederick Gibson was born there about 1884. I somehow found there were records for the area for the 1881 census. I pulled out the microfilm for Saint John, sat down at a microfilm reader and started cranking. Within just a few minutes, I found them! I thought to myself "this genealogy stuff is easy!" If I only knew... I am glad that first discovery came so readily, because it encouraged me to start really researching my family history.

So there you have it, my top five favorite family history documents. Let me know what your favorites are and why.