Pandemic Progress

Before and after genealogy photos? 

Yes! What did my tree look like before March 2020? What does it look like today? Lots of time for research. See how it's grown? 

March 2020

                                                                   September 2020

What did I do?

1. I purchased a month's subscription on Archion, found a needed marriage record which gave birthplaces. Using familysearch, I was on my way to find more family.

2. YDNA pointed me to a German researcher who wrote a 400 page book on that line of the family.

3. I found I'd been misspelling a surname for years. Making that correction located many family records at familysearch.

4. Records are only available in a closed familysearch affiliate? That didn't stop me. I took my laptop to the public library affiliate, sat outside, logged into their wifi internet and then on to their website to use familysearch. (After a few weeks, they realized I was there. When the internet was down for a couple of days, they called me so I didn't make an unnecessary trip. Nice of them!) Not sure what to think about this technique. Dedication? Or a little genea-crazy? Both?

With extra time, I hope you were as lucky to find family and family stories in 2020. We have just a few months to find a vaccine and get to the Covid finish line. Stay healthy and safe! Finish strong!

Pandemic De-Cluttering and a Heirloom Book

How many of you have used this time to de-clutter? I raise my hand. It has been an excellent time to pull everything out of a closet and put half of it back. It can take several days, but who is going to see the mess on the floor? First, out went all my old hobbies, sewing, cross-stitching supplies, my eyes will not allow me to return to. Luckily our town has a sewing club for at-risk girls that was thrilled to have these items.

Next, old papers, letters, and diaries! I saved the best, but let’s just say my family is not going to be reading my diaries during my crazy college days. Or break-up letters from old flames, I barely remember.

And yes, some great discoveries were saved. All our wedding planning notes from over 40 years ago. Costs, our vows, invitations, lists of invitees. A letter I had written to my sister about my husband’s and my first date. While 75% was thrown away, the remaining 25% are treasures to enjoy. Instead of a box, they are filed, easy to identify and locate.

Next was china and silver. Over the years, I’ve been given several sets of each. Thankfully, my daughters eagerly agreed to split my grandmother’s, the most sentimental of the sets. She’d brought with her when she immigrated in 1949. One daughter took the plates, the other took the larger pieces for serving. So thankful. For the other china and silver, I used replacements.com  that gives you a reasonable compensation for older place settings via a contract. All you do is carefully pack and mail.

As we enter week 8 of the Illinois stay-at-home orders, we were pretty cleaned out, but I had one more project in mind. We still have a larger home, with many sentimental items from our parents and grandparents that we enjoy. But what will happen to these when we down-size or are not around to tell the stories. Heirlooms without stories are just stuff. Right? I created a book.

First, I took photos of the most sentimental of items. I labeled them by general descriptions to make photo organization easier: furniture, small items, jewelry. I also grouped small items together in a few photos. Then using Shutterfly, I created a photo book with a simple description in the caption.

Shutterfly is very user friendly, and it did not take long to do. I uploaded the file of photos, which were already in order, at one time. Using the custom book option, I selected the size and style of book (8x8 modern gray) and with a press of one button, all of the photos were added to the book in order. I made a few changes, added the captions and in one night had it almost finished. Looking it over in the morning, I made a few additions and subtractions and it was ready to publish.

 Shutterfly is more for photos than story telling. A few items had a longer story than what I could write using the captions. So I also created a word document, describing the bigger story on some of our more treasured items. I referred to the document in the book, so they know to look for it. The document can be updated as I give things away or add something I didn’t photo. Not everything was photoed. My kids know what my husband’s Lionel train looks like, but I described it in the document.

I plan to give each child a book and one to keep with our will. The bonus is that if we ever do downsize, we’ll have a photobook of our most sentimental items to enjoy. What de-cluttering ideas do you have while we all wait at home? I’d love to hear.

Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Fun: What Genealogy Books are on your shelf?

Which ones are my favorites?

Randy’s suggestion for tonight was to take a photo of my genealogy books and post. I just cleaned out a bunch of books, and realize taking these photos, that I still have quite a few favorites. Mostly you can see the titles in the photos but here’s a few to mention:

General genealogy books. On the left is Overland in 1846 by Morgan detailing the wagon trains to Oregon. One of my family, Rice Dunbar captained a train. The orange one is The Genealogist's Google Toolbox by Lisa Louise Cooke - so helpful. Several books by Emily Croom. To the right of them are two books for writing (what else?) books: Publish Your Family History by Dina C. Carson and Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. This was super helpful, it's a way to document sources with parenthesis instead of little numbers. So much easier. 

I love any books by W. Daniel Quillen are good resources. Of German Ways by Rippley is a very old book my husband bought about German traditions. (In the background are posters of my presentations.)

Lots of resources about countries Germany, France (the blue book French Genealogy From Afar by Anne Morddel) and Poland. The green book with the tiny wording is the book I wrote about my husband's family, The Ambellans from New York including Warren Spahn. The purplish book next to it is about Oberhoffen-sur-Moder, the town my husband's family came from. The horizontal books to the right are a recent French/English dictionary, a very old French dictionary (helps with archaic words) and a Dutch/English dictionary. You can see the orange German-English Genealogical Dictionary and another Ernest Thode book in the middle. 

This is when I get into the details of my Luxembourg and Belgian histories. They are written in French. The book on the left is a children's story book in French.

Okay, if you want to know anything that was indexed by the Henry County, IL Genealogical Society, I have it! Eighteen books on births, marriages, deaths, cemeteries, wills, and naturalizations. I was fortunate that a cousin who co-researched our Hiram R. Dunbar with me in the 1990's, sent them, for which I am extremely grateful. 

This was a very fun exercise! Hmmm...exercise, time to take my daily walk which is one of the few pleasures we are allowed to do in Illinois. (I am in agreement.) Stay safe everyone!

Randy Seaver's Saturday Fun Night

Rootech!

Have you gone to Rootstech? If so which years? I’ve only been once, 2018. 

Describe your experience. Amazing time. Huge!

Who was your favorite speaker? Henry Louis Gates. I wanted to see him for a very long time. Arrived an hour early thinking I’d be the first one there, but there were hundreds of people who came even earlier. I got a great seat and he gave an inspiring speech.

Did you talk with any genealogy "rock stars"? No, but I snuck a photo of Randy Seaver in the blogger area!

What was something you learned that you use over and over? I went to my third choice presentation when the two others were filled, but it was the best. U.S. Church records by Sunny Morton. She’s written a book about it since then. I use these records often. Did you know that one study showed you have a 65% chance of finding the town of origin in US church records? (Many times the immigrant is asked "Where were you baptized?")

Describe something you enjoyed in the vendor area. I loved seeing so many wonderful companies. I was pleasantly surprised by the scanning project that binds papers into books. And the antique experts who evaluate items.

Do you watch the streamed classes live? I tried this year, but missed the classes I wanted to see (wrong time.) But I watch most of the recorded programs. They are already available for 2020.

Did you visit the library? Yes!

Describe your experience. Spent hours and hours there. Friendly volunteers. Found a lot.

What was your favorite Salt Lake City experience not genealogical related? (A restaurant, a landmark etc.) We saw the Mormon Tabernacle choir practice in front of the large pipe organ. Wow!

What was a pleasant surprise about your visit that you did not expect?

1)The light train between the airport and hotel was cheap, clean, and easy. 2) Men in suits and ties and women in dresses. 3) How older people seem to mentor younger people. More connections between generations.

Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Fun - Surnames

Randy asked us to look into our data base and generate a report of our top 20 surnames. In Familytreemaker it's a pretty easy report. I was surprised that "None" came in third. But I looked at other genealogists who did this exercise, and while the name changes (LNU=Last Name Unknown) we typically have a variation of this when we don't know the name. My names are mostly in my direct or secondary lines. I'm surprised by the Louis name, while in my direct line, it is very far back so I'm surprised I dug up that many people. Another surprise is that my maiden name and my husband's surname did not make the cut.

Saturday Night 2019 Positive Geneameme

Randy Seaver’s Saturday Night blog had some great questions. At first glance, I thought, “I don’t have anything ‘new’ to add.” But then I got to thinking and realized that 2019 was a great year for genealogy.

1.     An elusive ancestor I found – Ancestry’s Thru-lines located two more generations (early 1700’s) of several lines of my Luxembourg family. They moved to another town, and another researcher found the records in an unexpected town.

2.     A great newspaper article I found – I found the Dutch newspaper, the Delpher, online for free. I traced obits from 1920’s to current to track down a living relative of the one brother (there were 15 siblings) of my 2^nd gr-grandmother Emilie Verbeke, who did not come to the United States.

3.     A geneajourney I took – I spent three wonderful days in Washington DC. Two days at the archives and one morning at the DAR. Lots of Civil and Revolutionary War records.

4.     I located an important record – My 3^rd-gr-grandfather, Hiram R Dunbar and his son John went to the California gold rush and came back wealthy. I thought because Hiram owned a dry-goods store in Illinois, maybe he made his money that way. But in John’s Civil War papers, he stated that he and his father mined for gold. Now I know!

5.     A new found family member shared - I found the only living descendent of my husband’s grandmother’s only brother, Herman. She had one photo of Herman. I’ve been looking for a photo since 1979.

6.     A genea-surprise I received – I actually finished my book “The Ambellan Family of Buffalo, New York including Warren Spahn.” Took three years (not counting the 30 years of research.) It’s selling well on Amazon.

7.     Social media post I was proud of – I got the most hits on my post about How to Read Difficult Writing (https://seedstotree.blogspot.com/2019/03/tip-for-reading-difficult-writing.html) but this is the post I’m also very proud of -https://seedstotree.blogspot.com/2019/10/my-genealogy-book-is-published-yippee.html

8.     A new genea-mate - I “met” many relatives, some of them “shirt-tale” by writing my book. I included contact information, and I’ve received phone calls, emails, and ancestry’s message. Made some great connections and learned new stories.

9.     A new genea-skill I learned – I am proud to say I know how to edit, index, create a cover and pretty much everything else need to turn a manuscript into a published book.  Took three and ½ solid months.

90.  I joined - ??

11.  A genealogy session I learned something from – I attended the DuPage Genealogical Society’s conference. Thomas MacEntee spoke on book publishing. I hung around and asked questions after the amazing presentation..and you can guess what happened next.

12.  Blog post that I learned something new – I read many of the Best posts listed on Sunday in Randy’s blog. There is so much I’ve learned – too many to pick out one in particular.

13.  A DNA discovery – A DNA match to my Buffalo Schattners, and the Schatners from Grand Rapids, Michigan.

14.  I taught a genea-mate how to – I teach a beginning genealogy class nearly monthly. Afterwards I’m willing to set up meetings to help the attendees. I love volunteering at my local genealogy library to inspire people to find family.

15.  I demolished a brick wall – (Does this count?) My brick wall was finishing my research into the form of a book. I had the manuscript for several years.

16.  Great website I visited – I spent a lot of time using newspapers.com this year. I can use it free from home through my public library card.

17.  A new book I enjoyed – Before and After by Lisa Wingate about an adoption scandal, How to Find Your Family in U.S. Church Records by Sunny Morton. Not new, but new to me Publish Your Family History by Dina C. Carson.

18.  I was excited to meet – Michael LaCopo. He gave a hilarious speech, at a dinner, about what he’s learned in 30 years of family research, that only we genealogy people would understand. I drove over an hour to see it and it was a 2019 highlight. We spoke after.

19.  I’m excited for 2020 because – I’m going to t-r-y to finish a second book and I’m teaching in New York. I created four new presentations and I look forward to rolling them out.

20.  Another positive I’d like to share – Even after 30 years, there’s always something new to learn and you never know where your research will lead.

   Happy New Year!