Trends and Musings – Page 8 – GenealogyAtHeart.com

Another FAN Consideration

Originally published on genealogyatheart.blogspot.com on 13 Jul 2016

I definitely enjoyed the following article, Letter of Recommendation, written by David Rees, that was published in the New York Times Magazine recently. He identified with his grandmother, who he never knew, based on reading excerpts from her diary. I have experienced similar emotions after reading the diary of a 2 x great aunt of my husband. I think the major message here is that the more things change the more they stay the same. Although technology and societal changes continue to occur, people really don’t. Rees’ read a diary written about 100 years ago and I read a diary that was written 130 years ago – both individuals had experiences and reactions that were basic to humanity today.

Rees’ article saddened me as he had no connection with his ancestors before coming across the manuscript. I have a very small family, too, but the connection with my past was strong. In hindsight, I guess I can attribute that to my grandmother, Mary Koss, who as the family matriarch, insured that the extended family kept in touch. After her passing, the family contact ended. I had to stop and calculate the following number, which shows how long it’s been since the family got together – I have 10 maternal cousins and 5 great cousins of which 2 are deceased. Since my grandmother’s death, I have only seen 1 cousin in person and that was 5 years ago when I initiated the visit. I have emailed with one of the great cousins but it ended rather abruptly as our theories of how the family name was changed don’t agree. One simple little letter – an added “s” – at the end of the name created a gulf. Silly? Definitely. It would have made my grandmother distressed.

For the majority of my cousins, though, we had no disagreements. There was no wars, famines or other adverse situations that arose to part us. Rather, we just led our lives in different places and with different circumstances, and along with the passage of time, we became disconnected. I know my family is not alone.

This month, my grandmother would have celebrated her 116th birthday. As I get ready to head out on a research trip combined with a business trip I’m thinking I’ll try to make an attempt at reconnecting when I return. I know it’s time.

Genea Wishes- Wouldn’t it be nice if these genealogy tools were available…

Originally published on genealogyatheart.blogspot.com on 29 June 2016.

Was looking over some hints on Ancestry the other day and thought – wow, wouldn’t it be great if:

You could designate your guesses in some way – perhaps a color like yellow for caution – meaning that I’m not really sure yet and just checking this out so please don’t put it as fact in your tree. I realize that this is most relevant for people like me who make their trees public so that others won’t just grab the guess as true. Those that have their tree private, though, could also benefit as it would allow them to see what areas needed more analysis.

Use color to separate lines – make my Duers’ blue and my Leiningers’ green and my Koss’ purple, for example. Then, when I was looking at a descendant I could easily identify their lineage. I know there is supposed to be the actual connection listed but mine comes and goes:

See, it’s missing. It should say relationship unknown but it says nothing. Kate’s line does not link to my known lines as the connection was somewhere across the pond and hasn’t been rediscovered yet. I don’t know why sometimes it displays and sometimes it doesn’t. I would add that to my wish list, too – get it to work consistently!

A way to copy and paste a line to make a new tree while leaving the line in the original tree. Several years ago I had several trees and it made me crazy! People would contact me about dear so and so and I had to hunt through all the trees to figure out who they were referring to because no one ever said, “I found so and so in your Main tree.” When I asked there where they found it they would say, “online.” So, I entered everything together. Actually, I merged it when the old Family Tree Maker worked. It wasn’t perfect but it was fairly quick. Now I’d like to do the opposite, take my Landfairs, for example, and just work on that line for a bit and then merge it back to the original tree. This would also be nice if a distant relative wanted just their line.

All of this got me thinking of photos. There are some people I would just love to have a picture of and after searching high and low still can’t find one. There needs to be a vehicle to find those wanted photos. I know about DeadFred. That’s nice but I’m thinking more of a posting of a request for the photo and not that I found this picture. In DeadFred, if I enter Harbaugh I get 3 photos of Alburmah Harbaugh which is interesting because I’ve updated all the Harbaughs known to be in the US since Cooprider and Cooprider did it in 1947 and he wasn’t one of them any Harbaugh source has found This validates what I already knew – my tree is incomplete. Since genealogy is always a work in progress that doesn’t phase me. But back to pictures…

I’d like a place where you can post that you want a photo, not just that you found a photo, which is what most of Cyndi’s list links are. It would be even nicer if it had an ap so that lost photos, say from an antique shop, can be plugged in to see if someone is seeking that picture. Granted, most of those photos have no identifying info. My own family was really awful about documenting their photo’s, too. But if there was identifying info, the requester could be emailed or texted of where the photo is and can arrange to make the connection. That’s a win-win for everyone – the store owner makes a sale, the finder feels awesome about doing a good deed and the requester gets the photo he/she wants! Any ideas or suggestions about this please let me know – might be an area I work on once I finally submit that BCG portfolio.

Random Genealogy News

Originally published on genealogyatheart.blogspot.com on 9 June 2016.

Maybe due to the recent passing of Tropical Storm Colin through my area my thoughts are fairly random today! Several days of heavy rain and wind is pushing me to get outside and do some cleanup yard work so this will be brief!

First up – did you know that Family Tree Maker is back. They have a newsletter that will keep you updated as to when they are going to start synching again with Ancestry.com. If you’re a faithful reader you know I gave up on them about two years ago but now I’m thinking that maybe the problem was that I had the 2012 version and when they moved to the 2014 version it interfered with the synch. Neither FTM or Ancestry ever asked me what version I was using when I repeatedly called which says a lot about their customer support. Anyway, the software is now owned by mackiev which used to make really good products, like Kidspics that my own children loved back in the day. For $29.95 they’ll sell you their latest version of FTM at a discount if you had a previous one and I may do that as another backup. To sign up for their newsletter click here.

Update to my last three blogs about frugality in genealogy – Should have definitely mentioned Linkedin and Facebook. I use both and they are free! Did you know that there are over 8,000 genealogy sites on Facebook?! To view the list of them click here.

Two more reason to DO IT NOW! – Had a colleague from my educational job thank me for giving her the “Mean Momma” look when she told me two weeks ago that she had 14 boxes of family documents stored in an unair conditioned shed near a major river that floods. I told her to move them in her house pronto but she insisted that she was going to spend the summer going through the boxes, one a week. She had gone through 3 of the boxes when the flood advisory hit the area and she wasted no time in getting the boxes relocated in her home. With the storm, she had time to go through them and found some wonderful genealogical stories that I’m encouraging her to write about and publish. She’s an awesome writer so in the near future, look for a guest blog from her.

Another colleague asked me about how to go about collecting family history information. I pointed her to my website that houses all of my blogs (www.genealogyatheart.com) and strongly encouraged her to talk with her parents when she went home for Memorial Day weekend. When she returned the following Tuesday she told me that she relaxed all weekend and never got around to talking to her parents about the past. Five days later one of her parents had a stroke and has lost the ability to speak. Understandably, she is devastated on so many levels. If that isn’t a wake up call for all of us, I don’t know what is! Don’t delay – send that email, make that phone call, take the older relative to lunch and get the info today!

Those are my three random thoughts for the day – got to go get on the garden gloves and start picking up Spanish moss.

“Every Genealogy Record You Need is Online” – I Beg to Differ!

Originally published on genealogyatheart.blogspot.com on 25 May 2016.

I want to apologize in advance for this long blog. Possibly, this should be two or three but due to the importance I don’t want to break it up.

Recently, I’ve heard and read in a number of places that there has been so many additions of records online that there is no reason to search elsewhere. I vehemently disagree!

I wasn’t going to blog about this topic because I am so adamant that the statement is wrong I don’t even want it out there as a meme but I changed my mind due to the frequency this belief has been expressed lately. Here’s where that information popped up just in the past two weeks:

A listserv to which I belong
Two emails I received from hobbyists
The 18 May 2016 Legacy Family Tree Webinar by James M. Beidler
A volunteer genealogist at my local Family History Center

My own experience has shown me that there is nowhere near enough online “that many genealogy scenarios could be taken care of from start to finish using just online sources.” I will agree that there is A LOT of records that are of value to genealogists that have been uploaded from a variety of sources since the beginning days of the internet. I will also agree that someone COULD build a tree with just online sources. I know that practice is happening frequently but that doesn’t make it right. In fact, I believe it’s not advisable to do that for many reasons.

Before I discuss the reasons to venture offline in your search, I want to identify why there’s this mistaken belief. I’ve come up with the following:

Time – we live in a fast paced world and with all the day to day pressures we face to earn an income it is often not easy for us to visit an archive to check out documents that may or may not be available. (One of the comments on the listserv was that it was a waste of time to look for an unknown record.)
Money – genealogy can get expensive and frugal genealogists don’t always have funds available to fly off in search of a record. (One of the emails I received mentioned a fixed income limiting travel. That is a valid reality so I’ll be blogging soon about ways to maximize your income source so you can pursue genealogy.)
Advertisements – simply perform a search for “genealogy records” and you’ll receive 36,000,000 hits. The first one that appears advertises a company that boasts “6.1 billion records & newspapers. Powerful search technology – Start 2 billion profiles – Over 6.3 Billion records – 31 million family trees.” No, that wasn’t even for Ancestry or Familysearch. Those large figures give the impression that there is everything in one place so you won’t need to look elsewhere. Don’t fall for it!
Ease of Access – why go in search of the unknown if you’ve got a known at your fingertips? Plus, “millions” have already posted your family tree online which you can view and copy.

Putting that all together the thought process becomes that those billions of records are right there in front of you just waiting for your click! You’ve spent quite a bit of cash on membership so you want to get your money’s worth, which is understandable. Why reinvent the wheel, just copy from someone else’s posted family tree and voila, you’re a genealogist. From my experience that is far from reality and I know others have had similar situations that back up my claim.

Please be aware that I value online genealogy sources and highly recommend them as a starting point. Occasionally, if a client limits my time, I may have to just perform an online search. I clearly note, though, in the report that further hours need to be spent performing a boots on the ground search. You can’t be reasonably exhaustive unless you’ve done so.
I do look at unsourced trees online. “Look” is the key word in the previous sentence! Once I look I think about the validity and if it’s plausible, I’ll add it to my research plan to search for records. Records is plural – I don’t rely on just one source.

For my Kinship Determination Project (KDP) portfolio submission for certification through the Board for Certification of Genealogists, I selected a family I am not related to but had much data previously found while researching online. I started out by printing all of the documents and assembled them in folders by generations.

When I began to analyze the info I noticed in the second generation’s wife’s obituary that she had been a member of a particular church for many years. Huh? I had her online baptism record from a different denomination, marriage record (handed down through the family) not specifying a denomination and she was buried (online sources) in the same denomination as where she was baptized. Did I have a mix up in identity? Her maiden name was common but her married name was not. So I got the cemetery record (NOT ONLINE) and then investigated the cemetery; it contained many different denominations and it was where her parents were interred. That made sense. I next decided to contact the church mentioned in the obituary where she had been a long time parishioner for any records. It took me months to get a response. Finally, I was told by the acting minister that a former parishioner might know where the old records were housed. Contacted her and she didn’t but she had saved on CD old church newsletters from the 1990’s which contained transcriptions of a diary (NOT ONLINE) that had been donated to the church about the beginning days of the denomination in that area. It turns out that the diary writer lived across the road from the family I was writing about and was related by marriage. The writer mentions the family numerous times throughout and I was able to locate deeds and estate paperwork (NOT ONLINE) that was somehow omitted in the county’s online index. I also better understood why the family relocated to the area. Making an analysis from simply looking at online sources would have given me the wrong reason for the move. Additionally, all the online sources had a child that died at birth but the diary had recorded specific information as to the cause of the child’s death three months after birth. The cemetery record only listed the year of birth and death so it appears online sources assumed the child had died at birth by just looking at the tombstone picture posted but that wasn’t the case. The numerous online trees are wrong because no one looked for a record that wasn’t digitized.

Nondigitized records enabled me to discover church records in another state that identified previous generations. Those records are NOT ONLINE. I was also able to find pictures of one of the individuals from a church’s commemorative book that was NOT ONLINE. This led me to find more pictures at a local library that also were NOT ONLINE.

The biggest find, though, was for a related line in a prior generation. The author mentioned her sibling. NO ONLINE source ever connected the author (who was not in my tree) to her sister (who was in my tree). The individual who had children died before mandatory state record requirements so there was no death record that named parents or place of birth.. The NOT ONLINE cemetery record had a maiden last name but not place of birth. I obtained the diary writer’s death certificate and the maiden names did match, a place of birth was noted and it was not in a state I had searched for the sister’s record. After I submit my portfolio, I will happily begin researching that line in a different state.

I understand how this happened. Individual 1 had no children so no one ever bothered to obtain her NOT ONLINE death certificate. Individual 2 had children but no death certificate. Lots of trees online for both but no one had ever checked for nondigitized records of Family-Associates-Neighbors.

It is true that the nondigitized information was not quickly accessible. I did invest a lot of time and a little money, about $8.00 for the death certificate, but the effort was well worth it. It enabled me to correct wrong online information, connect branches and gain a better understanding of the family dynamics.

What I overheard at my local Family History Center a few days ago made my blood boil and was the last straw for me regarding this topic! A newbie couple had come in for help as they had found numerous online trees that connected them to a turn of the 20^th century gateway ancestor. Believing the unsourced trees were accurate, they booked a flight and headed off across the pond to visit the ancestral home, a small village in the Mediterranean. Although they do not speak the mother tongue they met a family with the same surname who shared documents that took the family back centuries. The problem was that those documents did not match birth and emigration records they found online when they returned from their trip. I could spend another blog going over all that is wrong here but for time sake, I’m just going to mention the comment made by the volunteer genealogist – something to the effect that the online unsourced birth date must be accurate because it had a day, month and year. Huh?! Finally, another volunteer recommended that the newbies contact the posters and ask where the date came from. Not surprisingly, they had and no one responded. None of the volunteers offered to the newbies that perhaps the same surname people they had met and the online posters were not of their line nor that people post wrong information all the time.

What I wanted to hear was “Take that birth info out of your tree until you can prove it.” Or how about making recommendations to newbies about where they can find additional information, like church records, emigration, naturalization, census, land, probate, etc. and show them how to analyse what they discovered. If that was too overwhelming then refer them to someone who will do the research accurately. Perpetuating the myth that online data is correct is wrong!

Will we ever reach a point where one can comfortably say all you need for research is online? I doubt it. How could one know what remains out their in the future to find? No one knows what is hidden in a box in someone’s attic, has been donated but not cataloged in a repository hundreds of miles away by a descendant who left the area or for sale in an antique store somewhere.

Mining every reasonable location for existing records by following the breadcrumb trail to people and places is critical and always will be necessary. The reward is worth it.

Why Do We Do Genealogy? Your Input Needed!

Originally published on genealogyatheart.blogspot.com on 1 May 2016.

I think it’s important to reflect on why we do this thing called genealogy. Take a moment before reading further and get ideas of what is important to you about our discipline.

I identified five factors that are relevant to me. The first thing that comes to my mind is discovery. Genealogy unlocks events involving real people whose decisions impacted me personally and continue to do so, even today. Think of your Gateway Ancestors. Their choice to uproot and start a new life on a new continent directly influenced who you became. That emigration may have occurred 400+ years ago or much more recently. Why did they come? Oh sure, for a better life, duh! No, I want to discover what was the final event, the straw that broke the camel’s back, that made them say, “Enough already, we’re out of here!”

Discovery leads me to think about another reason why our work is important. Perhaps it was best said by George Santayana, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” [1] Let’s not look at the big historical picture but instead, narrow it down to your own family. If your parents are deceased you most likely know what was the cause of death. If not your parents, think of your grandparents. It may have been due to lifestyle and that knowledge can be important in regards to your own health. You can make a change by simply knowing what had been. Very powerful!

Remembering leads me to honoring those that came before us. I have a much more privileged life due to my ancestors’ resolve and I appreciate their gift to me immensely. Since I can’t personally let them know I write about their impact and record their contributions in my public tree. It’s small, really, considering how much they did.

I am, by nature, an impatient person. I get an idea and run with it. Genealogy is the antithesis of that nature. Patience is critical in this field. Brick walls do come tumbling down and like earthquakes, there’s no way to predict when that will occur.

The last factor for me is that genealogy is empowering. When I learn about events that my ancestor’s lived through I am reminded that the small trials and tribulations that I experience aren’t so awful. I live in Florida and our air conditioner is on it’s last leg. It is very very warm as a I write this, uncomfortably so. Being warm is so unimportant compared to fires, epidemics, and the hot topic of discrimination that my predecessors experienced I’m almost thankful it’s just a bad a/c unit in my life. Knowing that I come from a long line of strong individuals enables me to be more confident in knowing I can stand what life throws at me.
On a different note, I’m looking forward to my upcoming road trip to Ft. Lauderdale to attend the National Genealogical Society’s Conference that begins on Wednesday. If you’re planning on attending look for me and say hello – I’ll be wearing a yellow button that says, “Ask Me” and you’ll find me answering questions and serving as a room monitor. If you aren’t able to make it, many of the lectures will be live streamed so visit the National Genealogical Society’s website for registration so you can view them.
Due to my upcoming travel, I’ll not blog on Thursday as I typically do but hope to resume next Sunday – same time, same place. Happy Hunting!

[1] George Santayana. The Life of Reason: Reason in Common Sense. Scribner’s, 1905: 284.

Three Thoughts About Genealogists’ Recent Comments

Originally published on genealogyatheart.blogspot.com on 24 Apr 2016.

Over the last 6 weeks I’ve spoken with several other professional genealogists and three conversations are continuing to resonate in my mind. This is a matter of opinion and as I highly value these individuals knowledge, experience and practice, I want to share their views because I see the world a little differently.

“No tree containing over 2000 individuals can be accurate.” Hmm, accuracy in identity of the folks we include in our tree is paramount. If we don’t have the evidence to support that the “John Doe” we have is the father of our “Adam Doe” than we are barking up the wrong tree. The repercussions are serious – wasted time, the error keeps being repeated ad nauseam by others who don’t check sources and we’re not adhering to the standards. That being said, I don’t believe there is a finite number that insures accuracy and when the number is reached, it’s over. Genealogy is not a game to win; it’s not “I got more peeps than you do!” Genealogy is quality. As genealogists we need to be open and accepting that our work can radically change direction at any time. As one of my relatives likes to kid me, “So, you really can guarantee that gggggrandma’s children were biologically ggggggrandpas?” No, but that’s where dna can help. We need to use all the tools available and dna is definitely one where I need more training and experience. Learning and growing are important in every field. Setting a threshold is not.
“I stopped working on my own tree 10 years ago because there was nothing else to be found.” I totally understand that when one begins to take paying clients time is limited on personal tree research. I feel that pain! My New Jersey to Ohio Coles keep popping up but I put them aside for everybody else. I don’t believe, though, there is ever a time when one can say there is no more information to be found. We don’t know if there’s a record or photo in someone’s attic, basement, garage, antique store, historical museum or even misfiled in the National Archives. If you don’t look I can guarantee you won’t find anything! I’m still hopeful that someday the misfiled Pennsylvania probate records I’m searching for will be discovered. That newly found document could alter the line so I keep open the fact that my tree is never done and there is always something out there waiting to be discovered.
“I make my online tree private so only serious genealogists will contact me for specific information.” Perhaps my background in the education field and my early experiences in genealogy influence me to share openly. My view is that serious genealogists most likely already have what you have. If they don’t, they will have no qualms about reaching out to you to collaborate, irregardless of whether your tree is public or private. For those that aren’t “serious,” everyone must start somewhere and if your work is well documented then I’d rather have a newbie take off and run with my work than not. Making a contact can be intimidating to some; I don’t want anyone to have to reinvent the wheel. I understand that much time, effort and possibly cost was involved in accumulating your research. If you want to recoup some of your investment then publish your work. Creating an e-book is easy and inexpensive.

Happy Hunting and now I’m back to Spring Cleaning!

Family Reunion Episode on Finding Your Roots – A Must See!

Originally published on genealogyatheart.blogspot.com on 21 Feb 2016.

Had an interesting week! Attended two days of an awesome presentation at my schools called Challenge Day which challenges youth and adults to “be the change” in their communities. It was physically and emotionally exhausting but in a good way. Instead of watching this week’s episode of Finding Your Roots on PBS, I took a webinar offered by the Board of Certified Genealogists which was really interesting and I thought, more beneficial to me as I work in completing my portfolio for submission.

I caught up viewing the Finding Your Roots episode yesterday and want to encourage you to view it if you haven’t already done so.

First, I must admit, I wasn’t wild about the artists portrayed. I’m not a rapper fan so LL Cool J and Sean Puffy Combs don’t interest me. Wow, was I surprised! I seriously think this episode was THE BEST of all of the genealogical shows ever done.

No spoilers here – just watch it if you haven’t seen it. I loved the use of dna, I loved the wrong initial lines they followed, I just absolutely adored the twists and turns with both artists. Kudos to how they maturely handled sensitive topics that were uncovered. These two men have the right attitude! If you’d like to view it click here and enjoy! Do it soon as the next episode will be available beginning Wednesday so you may not be able to access this.

Dumping Your Tree – A Radical Way To Correct Mistakes

Originally published on genealogyatheart.blogspot.com on 11 Feb 2016.

Have you heard about the movement to abandon your family tree and start over again? I first read about this trend last month as some genealogists decided to make this their New Year’s resolution.

My first thought was, “Are you kidding me!?! All these years of work abandoned to start over! No, thanks.”

The reasoning behind the idea is that many of us, when newbies, were happy clickers and not really evidence investigators. By happy clickers I mean whenever I found info on someone’s tree I would trust its accuracy and include it in my tree without ever analyzing it. Thus, wrongly added info perpetuated errors as others copied it.

I know for fact this happened as recently I was investigating a collateral line for my Kinship Determination Project and uncovered an error that I’ve now found to have been copied by many others. Oops! Although the error was innocent it really drives home the point that genealogists need to be careful and not rush.

I had found the name “Catherine” with a family in the 1860 census and assumed that was a child of the couple. There were two genealogies written into book form from 1947 and 1959 but neither listed the child. I figured they had just overlooked her as they had other children missing who had died in between census years that I had found via Find-A-Grave and Baptism records.

Little Miss Catharine grew up and I found her in the 1870 census not living with the family but attending a boarding school in the state the family had just relocated from. That made sense to me, she was studying to become a teacher like her siblings.

In the 1880 census I found her married and living in the same town as “her parents.” In fact, Miss Catharine had married the widower of her sister who had died in 1879.

I found that couple in the 1900 census living in the same county and included in the household was who I thought was Catharine’s father. That was good enough for me. Except, none of it was right!

Now that more records are available I found the marriage certificate for Miss Catharine and discovered her maiden name was not the family’s surname. So I looked for another marriage certificate, in several states, to see if Miss Catharine was also a widow and was using her married name and not her maiden name on the document. Couldn’t find one. The certificate did say it was her first marriage and the husband’s second. I had the husband’s first marriage certificate so that confirmed his number of marriages. I figured that recording it was her first marriage was an error but it was not.

The error was made in the 1860 census. Upon closer examination I discovered that the enumerator had written Catharine but should have written Laura. Catharine’s year of birth is off by 5 years from the family’s real child, Laura. No, the names aren’t close at all. The mother’s name was Catharine so I believe now that the record lists the mom twice and omits the daughter’s name. The Catharine in 1870 was a cousin of the family but not their child. The cousin remained in the other state and married there. Have the marriage certificate to prove that and she is listed in the two genealogy books. The Catharine that was married to the widower was just another woman who happened to have the same name; she was not related in anyway to the original couple. Now the 1900 census is very interesting in that the father of Laura is living with his ex-son-in-law and the new wife, Catharine, next door to his daughter. The son-in-law was quite prosperous for the area, the couple had only 2 children and a servant living with them so they had plenty of room for the elderly man that his own children, with their large families living near by, did not. So, I’ve corrected my error; I removed Catharine as their child. Interestingly, one of Catharine’s children married into the kinship family so there is a connection, just not where I had it.

I do understand that as we improve our work that we will find errors, most likely many errors, that were made earlier in our career. I’m still not sure that dumping your work is the solution. I’m more apt to leave what I have and then go back and investigate closer line by line to make needed corrections.

As more direct evidence becomes available, past analysis may prove to be in error. I’m okay with that! I’d rather spend the time analyzing what I’ve already found then having to accumulate documents all over again. Now I’m working out a method to make sure I am able to go over my existing lines. I wish I could color code or date stamp when I’ve touched a family so I know they’ve passed my review. Since that doesn’t exist, I’ve created an Excel document that has the family name, for example, Joseph Kos, a column for the date I began to check and a column for the date I’ve finished reviewing his line to where they connect to a living relative as I know that with my more recent family members, the information I’ve recorded is correct. I’ve also created a spreadsheet called, Interesting Folks, and I’m listing the ancestors’ name, year of birth and death, the fact that’s interesting, and the area that’s interesting. For example, Joseph Kos’ fact would be that he died young due to the Spanish Influenza epidemic. The area would be medical. This way I can quickly find some of the interesting family stories that get lost in the tree. This method is basically creating an index to the tree and I just wish I had thought of it when I first began! Happy Hunting!

Genealogical Resolutions

Originally published on genealogyatheart.blogspot.com on 3 Jan 2016.

Exercise, eat healthier, lose weight – nope, not for me! The time has come to resolve for 2016, that I will

diligently work on completing my Board of Certification of Genealogy portfolio and submit it before my deadline of October 24th.
in my free time (yeah, right) start downloading all of the scans I have placed on Ancestry.com so when I can no longer afford a subscription I won’t have lost anything. I foolishly saved everything to Ancestry without downloading a copy to my overworked laptop.
continue blogging twice a week.
plan my upcoming midwest research trip and find things that will interest hubby while I’m researching.
really, truly set up an office that is functional. I’ll be reclaiming the dining room table in the interim now that the holidays are over.
reread the genealogical bibles – the Genealogy Standards, Evidence Explained, BCG Skillbuilders, etc, to refresh the unfreshed mind.
fix my old citations in my family tree as they really were poorly done back in the day.
work on completing my e-book, Thanks to the Yanks. (Since part of this is included in my certification portfolio I’ll be unable to publish until after the process is completed but I can continue to work on it since I’ve changed directions from when I started)
continue taking webinars to refine my craft and
looking forward to attending conferences, especially the National Genealogy Conference in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in May! Email me through my website if you plan on attending, too! (www.genealogyatheart.com)

HAPPY NEW YEARS!

Being Thankful for Genealogy Goodness

Originally published on genealogyatheart.blogspot.com on 15 Nov 2015.

Last Sunday I wrote about genealogy bullies and record thieves. I reflected this week, and with Thanksgiving around the corner and the heinous events in Paris, I wanted to take a moment to think about all the kindhearted genealogists out there that far outweigh the small number of bullies. So with here’s what I’m thankful for…

Maggie Landfair who responded to a Rootsweb bulletin board posting I did in 1999 and provided me with so much info she had collected on her husband’s side and put me in touch with the author of two Leininger books so I could learn about my dad’s side of the family.
Bob Leininger who shared his electronic files with me while he was half way around the world. I’ve referred to those documents (and his books) time and time again. Just wish he would update them! Hint, Hint
Edgar Duer Whitley who somehow figured out that my DURE family should be DUER and shared his lifelong work with me just weeks before he passed away. I never found out how he got my email address but I was sure thankful he did.
Librarians across the country who have done lookups, gave advice and went above and beyond to help me solve so many family mysteries. Come to think of it, I don’t think I ever met a librarian that didn’t help me.
Countless distant relatives who have contacted me via online sources willing to share what they’ve discovered and nicely correcting wrong info I may have put out there.
Jenny Mig who I’ve never met but is the complete opposite of the bullies I mentioned last week. Here’s an email from her: “Hello, I just purchased a family bible from ebay that belonged to John Travis Harbaugh. I know it’s weird that I bought a family bible that has nothing to do with my family, it was just heartbreaking for me to see someones family history being auctioned off like that. Most of them are hundreds of dollars, but I was able to get this one cheap. I will be scanning all of the hand written pages as soon as it arrives, then I am donating it to the Perry County Chapter of the Ohio Genealogical Society. Please let me know if you would like copies of the records that are written in the bible.” Jenny did just what she said she would. How inspirational that she cares so much about history and record preservation to reach out to a perfect stranger.
All my ancestors who took a stand for what was just. It took great courage and I let them serve as a role model for me.
My ancestors who didn’t make the right choice. That may seem odd to be thankful for but it reinforces our humanism and allows me to learn from their mistakes.
My emigrating ancestors who circled the globe to seek a better life. Their acceptance and acclamation of different cultures amazes me. Tolerance and acceptance, we could all use the reminder.
and I’m most thankful for my husband, daughter and son who put up with my incessant talking about dead people they never knew and dragging them to countless cemeteries, libraries, museums, courthouses, and old homes around the country for years. They still talk about how I got them lost in the Dismal Swamp on a road trip back from Washington, DC on December 30, 1999. No GPS, the AAA triptics were wrong, we were running out of gas, it was getting dark AND we were all concerned that maybe Y2K really would be a problem. We made it home safely and I continue the family search.

Please take a moment to reflect on the good in the world and make it a goal to tell someone today you appreciate them.