Saturday, August 26, 2006

New Developments

1) I met a "new" cousin this week. Charlene's actually older than I am, but she found my family tree entry at Rootsweb and sent an email. It was fun to hear from her. She's going to help me update some things about her family. Our common ancestors are Frederick Hetrick and Elizabeth Doverspike. LOVE this online genealogy thing.

2) As a result of Charlene's letter, I finally figured out how to edit my Rootsweb family tree information. I can now add new people as I find them. I was able to ditch the idea of a separate blog for each great grandparent, which was not a fun or easy task. I also wrote to find my old username and password for my old defunct email address, so I can delete the other family tree I'm no longer proud of.

3) I'm going to try and make a website sometime soon - maybe tomorrow. I signed up for the free web page account at Rootsweb as well.

4) I linked my Rootsweb family tree and my genealogy blog together. SCARY. I also uploaded my husband's family tree and linked it here.

Pretty good work for one day.

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Yowza, What a Night

I serve every Tuesday night at a local Family History Center with other staff members. I go early every week so my husband can have the car for soccer practice, and this provides lots of great research time.

I had such great success last night that I commented to one couple that there's a reason why I was called to work at the FHC - all the great books I now have unlimited access to. "You get called to work here and you start finding stuff you wish you would have found 20 years ago," the husband agreed. It's so awesome. There are three different sets of volumes about colonial families, just at my little FHC, that have provided a ton of information.

PAF has been messing around with me... it stopped reusing deleted records, and pretty soon, adding new people, I noticed the RINs were creeping up in the 13000s. I knew there was no way I had that many people, so I made a new file. Sure enough - I'm right around 12,100. That's a tad more manageable.

A few years ago, I found Lorette Proctor's family tree in Familysearch and downloaded it, and the colonial families information has come in handy for verification. Good stuff. Last night I found lots of Dimmock information, some Byam, and a ton of Kendalls. For the Dysart side, I found some Tillinghasts.

Other great finds were this Dimmock website, another Proctor website starting with my earliest known ancestor, Evan Proctor, and directions to the Fiske Library in Seattle. Mary Fisk married Abraham Byam Jr.; they had Mary Byam; Mary married Moses Proctor. It would be a fun day trip, running up to Seattle and finding the book about Evan Proctor I found on their website.

And that was my night - Yay!!!

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

The Bigwigs

I'm fascinated with the family trees of famous people. Abraham Lincoln... Laura Ingalls Wilder... Louisa May Alcott. Louisa's is particularly interesting because of her famous family members. She is related to John Quincy Adams and Oliver Wendell Holmes - all through the Quincy line.

Who were these Quincys anyway, that so many of their offspring should leave such an indelible mark on our history? Pretty nifty.

As yet I can't find any way I'm related to them (not that I'm looking, but it would be cool), but just looking at Louisa's family tree last night and thinking it would be fun to figure out how she and John Quincy Adams were related, I found this website. It threw in OWH for good measure. Pretty exciting!

I also found the Hildreth website last night and between it and the others and the huge stack of papers I copied from books at my FHC, I have plenty to keep me busy. Where to start???

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Una & Candace

I just finished a mega phone call with my brother Ernie (nicknamed "Una" by my sister Melanie). He called and asked me about our Scottish ancestors a few weeks ago and I told him about PAF and downloading it free from the Church. Today he downloaded it, and I sent him a GEDCOM of our stuff. He's going to Ireland and Scotland later this year and wants to have some background so that he can enjoy his trip even more.

He told me about his experience with googling Ninian Beall, one of our Scottish ancestors, and had me do the same. I found the wonderful page about Ninian that I put in the links. It's fun having a sib that's ALMOST as interested in family history as I am.

Close on his heels is Cousin Candace, Uncle Doug's oldest daughter and my closest cousin on Mom's side of the family. She's awesome.

Good stuff, man. I love family history. I should get paid to do it, I love it so much. Which reminds me, I need to call Marcie.