Genealogy Geek

I! Have Made Fire!!

2011-12-13T10:51:00.000-08:00

OK, not really. But I'm very happy about something I just finished.

As of this morning, I now know where all sixteen of my great-great grandparents are buried, city and cemetery.

(Obviously my grandparents and great grandparents, too.)

:)

Hee. "Graves R Us."

2011-12-12T14:30:00.000-08:00

It's funny.

But guess what? I LOVE IT!!! This is the kind of website I've been waiting for, a site with lists of people buried in cemeteries of Montana and northern Wyoming! It's like they had my Smiths and Keithlers and all their kin and my inability to locate all of them in mind!

And it has an awesome name, to boot.

It's been a sweet, sweet day. I decided to mess around with my PAF and see if there were any superfluous families I needed to prune out of my tree, such as the parents of aunts, uncles, or cousins who married into my family. Not that we don't love them or that they're not important, but we can only keep track of so many people.

I was just about to pare down my Vanderpauwert relatives - like, why? How many Vanderpauwerts does anyone ever have, and I'm about to get rid of them? - when I decided to keep Uncle John's first family, the one he had with his first wife before she died and he married my aunt Verne Keithler. I wasn't really going to get rid of them, I was just going to put them in his notes/sources.

But I don't know, they did something to me and I ended up searching their census records and their son Claude's World War I draft card (he died in the influenza epidemic before he ever left Fort Lewis - that was probably a blessing) and pretty soon I was adding his information, which I found at Graves R Us (hee), to Findagrave. And there I found that some nice man had added Aunt Verne and Uncle John to their cemetery, which was awesome, because I didn't even have a death date for Uncle John! Perfect.

So. Thanks, Graves R Us... and way to go with that name. Seriously, I'm going to giggle every time I see it.

Dear Walla Walla Union-Bulletin,

2011-09-03T21:19:00.000-07:00

You suck.

My aunt Genevieve died in July of this year. Unfortunately I didn't think to look up her obituary online (I don't want to bug my mother for a copy, if she even has one) until today.

I looked it up today. Since she died in July and not sometime this week, you want me to pay to subscribe to your dumb newspaper - either online or in real life or both - to view all of her obituary, instead of just the stuff I already knew about her.

I don't live in Walla Walla. I did live in Walla Walla for about three months twenty years ago, and got out of there as soon as I could find my way out. I have no desire to ever live there again (not that it isn't lovely).

I don't want to subscribe to your newspaper, since all I'd be doing it for is to check the obituary section when my other two aunts die. Which is kind of a morbid reason to subscribe to anything.

That, and I'm not interested in Walla Walla news. Sorry.

I just want to look at my aunt's obituary. I don't want to pay to do it.

It would take less than five minutes for me to read it, and probably copy and paste it to my genealogy computer program. That's not worth a subscription.

It would be more cost-efficient to drive to Walla Walla and visit either your public library and view their archives (provided they don't also suck) or your local hoarder population, risking my life and health as I rifle through their dysfunction to locate the newspaper copy in question.

So, you suck.

Thanks for hearing me.

It is my sincere hope that you will suck considerably less in the future -

Millie

Awesome Cousin Sooze

2011-07-18T19:23:00.000-07:00

... found this, cemetery records from Washington county, Nebraska, which contain a record belonging to my great-great grandfather's first wife: SARAH C. "KATE" DOLAN.

I added Kate to Findagrave, then peeked around in Findagrave records for that cemetery and found some Hetricks buried there too. After Kate died in 1883, my great-great grandfather Thomas married Hattie Ellen Duggan. Hattie's mother is a Hetrick.

Sooze has mad research skills. I love it when she throws great records my way! Thanks!! :)

WDYTYA: Kim Cattrall

2011-03-01T09:57:00.000-08:00

Watch it here.

This was an incredibly hard one for me to watch. If I ever meet her grandfather in the hereafter, I will have a hard time not kneeing him somewhere painful.

To quote John Mayer: "Fathers, be good to your daughters..."

"I'm so glad you're here, Related-To-Everyone Man!"

2011-02-17T09:33:00.000-08:00

"... just for a frame of reference," says Captain Obvious.

One of my fellow staff members at the Family History Center is a lovely retired gentleman who has such enthusiasm for family history, teaching, and people in general, that several patrons show up weekly to have him help them with their pursuits. We all enjoy working with him.

When I met him in November, we started comparing notes on our family trees - where our people come from, what famous people we're related to, the kinds of research we like. I discovered that Gene has an uncanny ability to track down living relatives in everyday places, like at church or in his neighborhood. Whenever he finds a new cousin, he tells us the next time we're together. I used to tease him that he's related to everybody.

Last Wednesday I joked, "We should see if you're related to me."

We plugged our jump drives into the same computer's USB ports, started up FamilyInsight (found in all FHCs, and available for purchase for home use), clicked on the command that would review both our databases and find matches, and...

We're related.

We share two sets of common ancestors: Philippe Cazier and Marie Taine (my paternal grandmother's line); and Jacob French and Susan Warren (my maternal grandmother's line).

Amazingly, my grandmothers are (so far) not related.

Yesterday, as we again looked through our respective data and found these ancestors, Gene excitedly scribbled down my information (this was before we both had the brilliant idea of creating GEDCOMS and copying and pasting them to each other's jump drives - he was that excited). He called me last night with his findings.

"We're ninth cousins, three times removed," he said.

I don't have much information on these people; I found them in the IGI, which is a great place to start but shouldn't be depended on for accurate information. Some submitters are meticulous record-keepers who can back up every fact; others, not so much. I'm motivated now to more deeply research these families and see what I can come up with.

Our ancestors come from the 16th and 17th centuries, so there's nothing obvious to distinguish us as relatives, but it's fun to work with him every week and to now have this added bond.

The same thing happened to my grandparents while they worked at their FHC in the Boise area - one of their fellow staff members shared a line with Gran. Then we discovered that this staff member's sister lives here and is in MY congregation. She and I keep saying we need to get together and compare notes, but it hasn't happened yet. I should get cracking.

It's always fun to find a new cousin.

Who Do You Think You Are?

2011-01-26T06:27:00.000-08:00

I'm so excited that this great show was picked up for another season, with a new group of celebrities finding out about their family trees.

Here's a video preview.

The premiere is Friday, February 4! Tune in! I'm strangely excited to see Rosie O'Donnell's episode. :)

Having a Good Time, Wish You Weren't Dead

2010-12-13T21:39:00.000-08:00

These people are so fascinating. If only I could talk to them, and have them answer all my questions and straighten out all their little complicated-seeming problems...

But I imagine that would take a lot of the fun out of looking for them.

Today at the Public Library...

2010-12-11T16:11:00.000-08:00

I found a couple of books I liked that pertain to our favorite topic, and thought I would pass along the titles:

1. The Organized Family Historian by Ann Carter Fleming, which reminded me of an installment in the "For Dummies" series and those like it. I liked it and would recommend it for genealogists of almost any experience level. The chapter about census records covered each census in detail; wills and deeds, visiting courthouses, and preserving documents and photograps were also explored. The book was published in 2004 so most references to Internet use, computer programs, etc., seemed up to date.

2. The Book of the Dead by John Lloyd & John Mitchinson - not a research book, but more of a dead people Who's Who. The first chapter dealt with famous dead peeps whose fathers were absent, neglectful or abusive during their childhood. I was able to get through a few pages each about Leonardo da Vinci, Sigmund Freud and Sir Isaac Newton, and of the three, I'd use my time machine frequent flier miles on Leonardo. Yes I would.

One last thought: The 1940 Census is taking waaaaay too long.

Back at the FHC

2010-12-08T14:28:00.000-08:00

After taking a year off, I am serving again at my local Family History Center.

It was on a whim that I happened to be put back on staff. Things have calmed down for us somewhat (I have two children with interesting medical issues). The hip-deep-in-timelines state of mind I was in propelled me to my FHC for something, I can't remember what - a book or a film, or something? I can't remember.

But I do remember that it was Veteran's Day and one of the FHC directors was serving his regular shift. He eyeballed me and said, "We need you to come back." I asked which shifts were needing help and he mentioned Wednesdays during the day. Before this school year, it would have been an impossibility, but now that my youngest is in school all day, I am free as a bird...

I started the next Wednesday and have been LOVING it. I love my fellow staff members and the opportunity to focus solely on my family history research - I didn't know how much I missed that part of it - and helping the patrons (when we have them). Today I helped a lady get started looking at some microfilms she had ordered from the Family History Library. She found good stuff today.

And SCORE! I also made significant finds. The Familysearch pilot site is so great!

That was my shift today - very, very satisfying. I'm so glad I have this opportunity.

Thanks

2010-12-06T14:30:00.000-08:00

Your comments were appreciated.

Timelines have taken a backseat (just for now) to Geni.com. I have a family tree there I'm enjoying adding information and pictures to.

Geni.com is kind of a genealogy-based Facebook. Along with adding family history information, you can leave messages for family members - of any nature, not just genealogical - and collaborate, share pictures, and that kind of thing. And, like Facebook, it's as private as you make it, requiring an email address and password to sign in.

I would definitely recommend using this website and inviting family members to join (or joining, if you've already been invited).

The Awesomeness of Timelines

2010-11-29T20:15:00.000-08:00

Rather than beat my head on brick walls, trying to find ancestors who refuse to be found (or so it would seem), it's been my habit to gather genealogical information as it comes my way.

This has resulted in lots of information about "fringe" ancestors that I like and everything, but they don't really take me anywhere UP my family tree. I'm trying to move beyond them now.

Creating timelines has been very helpful.

I've made numerous family timelines, but for the last few weeks I've been working on personal timelines for each of my grandparents and their children, my aunts and uncles. It's been a fun research project and a good way to put together all the little bits I've found and stored in the source repositories and their individual "notes" area.

It also helps me pinpoint people on whom I need to spend more time (Alexander Finney, anyone?). I would highly recommend this idea if you haven't implemented it into your work already. I love finding out more about my peeps.

1940 CENSUS: We're under 500 days now! Woot!

Is anyone reading this anymore? Not that I mind, but maybe I'll just make the blog private if no one cares if it's gone.

Hi there, Cousin Arthur...

2010-09-27T11:40:00.000-07:00

So nice to unexpectedly run into you today... a little weird, but nice...

I woke up earlier today with the idea of working on a family timeline for my great-grandparents, Howard Mitchell Keithler and Adina Irene Clark. It was fun and I made some good progress. It'll be even MORE fun when the 1940 census shows up.

I got to work on more Keithler timelines - one for Howard's parents, Ignatius and Jennie, and then Ignatius' parents, Alexander and Caroline.

Alexander's family has been hard to figure out. He was born in 1828 in Ohio, and the earliest record I can find of him is in the 1850 census, when he was 22 and living with another family in another state, working as a farmhand. He married Caroline in 1851, they had three babies, and then she passed away - all before the 1860 census.

Which is a huge "sux donut" because I have no record of this sweet little family ever being together. My husband and babies and I have made it to two censuses so far and I hope it'll be many more.

Their oldest daughter, Martha, was mistakenly listed as having the last name "Mitchell" (Caroline's maiden name) in the 1860 census. She, her little brother Ignatius and her little sister Susan Caroline all went to live with Caroline's parents after Caroline died and Alexander remarried. I finally figured out and fixed that mistake today...

Then moved on to Martha's husband and children, another huge nest of huge mistakes. I've unraveled skeins of knotted yarn that were easier to repair. Yikes!

Martha's son Arthur was born in 1875, and as I found out today from his death certificate, died in 1932.

His death date leapt out at me like it was sitting on a spring.

On TODAY'S date, in 1932. September 27, 1932. What were the odds of that happening? I guess just one in 365, but still...

It was weird. Freaky. Goose-pimply awesome.

"That's a nice nose! Did you pick it?"

2010-09-24T08:41:00.001-07:00

...one of my dad's old corny jokes I still enjoy throwing at my children.

My whole life, everyone has told me I look like my mom. I do look like her - our coloring is very similar, but as I grew older, I noticed our features aren't quite exactly the same... my nose and chin were different, my eyes crinkly-er, my eyebrows arch-ier or something. Our skin is different, too - she tans easily, while I burn and freckle like my father.

This observation led to much mirror-perusing. If I wasn't a carbon copy of my mother, the way everyone seemed to think, then who DID I look like?

And of course, being the genealogy geek that I am, I had to trace the features I saw on my face back to their original source - at least, as far back as the family photograph collection would allow.

I've split my face into four people. I know you were wondering.

From the nose up, I look like Ruby Fox; from the nose down, Jennie Dragoo; my dimples came from my grandfather, Carl Dysart; and my dark haired, dark-eyed coloring (and that of my mother, grandmother, great grandmother, great-great grandfather) came from Lorette Proctor.

And of course, being the genealogy geek that I am, I wonder endlessly about the three ladies and where THEIR features came from. Who does Lorette resemble with her brown eyes? When did this very distinct Dragoo nose and chin first make its appearance, and with whom? Was it a Zane or a Bathrick that Ruby inherited her eyebrows from?

And those pesky dimples! I have exactly one picture of Carl's parents, Carl Sr. and Ruth, smiling. I can't tell for sure but it looks like Carl Sr. is the dimpled grandparent. His son, my grandpa Carl, had them, my mom has them, I have them, and my middle son, who (out of our five children) looks the least like me and the most like his dad, was also somehow born with them.

Adam and Eve's first invention should have been a camera. And film that lasts millennia.

Transition

2010-09-22T11:00:00.000-07:00

So live that when thy summons to join
The innumerable caravan, which moves
To that mysterious realm where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not like the quarry slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one who wraps the draperies of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.

~ William Cullen Bryant

Going through some old papers and pictures today, I found my great grandmother's funeral book. This poem was printed on the first page.

Photo of the Week: John William Smith family

2010-09-06T17:33:00.001-07:00

The poses the photographer had the family assume have always been interesting to me. He was obviously taking artistic license with the ONE PICTURE I have of this family. Dude, really? I can't even tell what half of them look like.

Oh, well, I suppose that in a hundred years our descendants will check out pictures like this one and bust a gut laughing. But at least my family was TRYING to be serious.

From left to right, top row: Maurice or Shelby, Ruby looking very thoughtful and possibly lost, Jennie lovingly brushing lint off John's shoulder (I'm going to assume it was lint)

From left to right, bottom row: Mary Elizabeth, John holding John Jr. (always called Jack), and Maurice or Shelby.

Maurice is my great grandfather and I'm bugged that I can't tell which one of the boys he is. The birth order is Ruby, Maurice, Shelby, Mary Elizabeth and Jack, and if only I could ask the boy sitting on the right to stand up, I could measure their heights and possibly decide. Since I can't, you know, see his face.

But they tried. Bless their hearts.

Yes, I Know.

2010-08-31T08:18:00.001-07:00

It's been almost a year since I last posted. I have nothing to say for myself other than ... life happens.

It had been such a long time since I'd visited my own blog - shameful! - that once here this morning, I took some time to rediscover the BOSS music on my playlist, check out my great grandparents' links, and see how far my 1940 census countdown had progressed. We still have 579 days? (Actually, 578, but April 1, 2012 is on a Sunday, so that's still up in the air.)

Yes. We still have that long to wait. About eighteen more months... but considering how thrilled we all were when 1930 came out (like I even remember that happening, I was hip-deep in four little children) and how long we've already waited, I guess we can go a little longer.

To keep the next one and a half years from dragging on too slowly, one website (which seems to be supported by Ancestry.com) has already outlined a fun preparatory project:

Since you've got so much time, there may be no urgency to this right now, but don't wait until the night before to start getting ready for one of the biggest genealogical events since, well — since April 2002 when the 1930 Census was released.

Start by listing those direct-line ancestors who you have found in the 1930 census and that you know were still living in 1940. While it's possible that they may still be living in the same city or state, don't rule out the fact that your ancestors may have moved. Once you have listed these individuals, consider looking for anyone in their mid-to-late teens or 20s who may have been living in the household in 1930, but may now be found as a head of their own household. Next, you'll want to repeat this same process for indirect ancestors (aunts & uncles).

Well, I don't know about you, but my list-making hobby will definitely come in handy for this idea.

I still use PAF and will employ the focus filter function to eyeball those ancestors and relatives who were alive for the 1940 census. Should be fun and hopefully enlightening - some of those ancestors were sure pesky about being found.

Happy hunting, and don't be a stranger! (wink)

Findagrave.com - It's not just about finding graves

2009-09-22T13:22:00.000-07:00

... but you knew that, right?

On Findagrave's home page, on the left side of the page under the heading "Find Famous Graves," the link "Search by date" appears. Under this link, you will find the options of searching people who were either born or died on today's date. I hadn't used this feature before today, but I'm glad I tried it.

Born on this date was Hans Scholl, a man who lived but a short time, but who did his best with his lot in life. Click here to read his brief, inspiring life history.

More Ideas

2009-08-10T00:00:00.000-07:00

Sharman Tullis Gill, “Family Story Ideas,” Ensign, Apr. 2008, 75

Does it seem like an overwhelming task to record your personal and family histories? Actually, it may be more doable and enjoyable than you think. I’ve discovered some fun ways to broaden how we might preserve our precious history.

• Ancestral safari. Organize an outing where family members retell old stories at the sites where they occurred. This is a great opportunity for grandchildren to learn about their ancestors. Don’t forget an audio tape recorder and camera to preserve everyone’s recollections. Perhaps make it an annual tradition.

• Family recipe book. Collect favorite family recipes and any memories or stories associated with them. You will probably find that reminiscing about the aromas, textures, and tastes of favorite foods will bring back a flood of memories. You can work solo on the project or make it a cooperative effort.

• Memory books. Compile a book of recollections focusing on a particular person, such as a child. You might include handwriting samples, news clippings, schoolwork, and photos. Be sure to include your own memories or journal entries about the person.

• Heirloom stories. Any heirloom becomes more meaningful if it’s presented with a simple written history about its original owner. You could include how the individual acquired it, how it was used, original cost (if known), and any family stories associated with it.

• Quilts. Create a stitched family history using such materials as favorite pieces of clothing, blankets, or curtains. Perhaps the quilt could be put together over the years as a child grows up. When it is finished, include an heirloom story, sharing the memories associated with the various fabric pieces.

Family History Now

2009-08-03T00:00:00.000-07:00

Yet more wisdom from the Ensign.

Roxanne Freeman, “Family History Now,” Ensign, Jan. 2008, 75

What do taking photographs, scrapbooking, and writing in your journal have in common? They are all relatively simple ways to gather and record your family history. Even during your busiest seasons of life, you can still gather valuable information about immediate and extended family.

1. Take photographs. Develop all your still images and organize them in an album or scrapbook, writing down details as you go. Even if your photos end up in a storage box, at least record pertinent information on the back of each—person’s name, location, and date, if not automatically printed. You can also store this information with your video and digital recordings. Looking back at my 50-year-old photos, I can seldom distinguish my boys from one another in their baby pictures—and neither can anyone else. So make it easy on yourself and record the details as you go. Also, ask family members for copies of old family photos, along with all the information they may have.

2. Scrapbook. Since scrapbooking is a great way to preserve your family’s history, you may want to include full-page descriptions of family events. Short captions are good too, but the more information you can provide, the better. At Mom’s birthday party, for instance, you could list who came and how they are related, where the party was held, what food was served, what gifts she received, and what activities everyone did.

3. Keep a journal. Not only can you express your innermost thoughts in your journal, but you can also keep track of family events. Document births, deaths, marriages, birthdays, graduations, and other important events, including as many details as possible. In writing about Uncle John’s funeral, for instance, tell where it was held, who attended, and their relationship to the deceased. If you don’t already know all the details, tag the journal page so you can verify historical information later.

If you are not able to devote much time to family history work, at least do what you can. Remember that today will soon become yesterday—and eventually history. Don’t let it slip away.

What I'm Currently Working On

2009-07-27T00:00:00.000-07:00

Another fun, family-friendly family history idea from the Ensign.

Kelly Toth, “Our Family Picture Book,” Ensign, July 2009, p. 67

Scrapbooks shouldn’t just sit on a shelf collecting dust. You can use them to stay connected with extended family or learn about your ancestors.

Since the albums are going to be handled a lot, I recommend using a convenient size, such as 6 inches by 8 inches. They should have clear, archival page protectors that are easy to insert and remove as needed. I begin with a table of contents, followed by a pedigree chart that starts with my parents and goes back two generations. Next is a page that explains the meanings and origins of our family names. Then I designate a page for each paternal and maternal great-grandparent, ending with current family members, and I update the pages when new photos are available. I also tuck in a few blank pages for future spouses and children, knowing that I can always insert more as needed.

Each person’s page contains a photo, vital statistics, favorite scripture, and favorite dessert. Before each married child’s picture, I place a pedigree chart of the child’s immediate family. I also share the meanings of maiden names or husbands’ last names.

I enjoy scrapbooking and preserving our family’s heritage. It’s a great way for my children to remember family members who live far away. Though this project may seem daunting at first, you can do it a page or two at a time. Then use it and share it, but don’t shelve it.

I recently finished my first set of pages for my great-grandfather, Maurice Warfield Smith. Finding old pictures and using the autobiography my grandfather wrote have been fun, and have fleshed out details about Maurice that I didn't know before.

Keeping Your Family's History

2009-07-20T14:48:00.000-07:00

Here's a fun idea from the Ensign magazine, published by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Don't you wish your deceased family members had kept some sort of journal? I know I do.

Connie Pope, “Family Stories,” Ensign, Apr. 2009, p. 71

When our children were at home, we made history every week — our own family’s history. It was a tradition my parents started when I was young. We simply set aside 10 minutes together to write on an assigned topic. When finished, we shared what we had written down. Some of the entries included telling about a Fourth of July (or a Christmas, Halloween, or Easter) we remembered, describing a grandparent, telling about an accident or illness, or recalling a vacation or fun birthday tradition.

When we were done, each of us had a binder to store our growing collection of journal entries. We enjoyed sharing each other’s experiences in this way and are grateful that we preserved special memories.

Yeah, Right

2009-05-14T08:58:00.000-07:00

Click to enlarge.

I hear people say they've traced their family tree back to Adam and Eve...

Sorry, I'm still a skeptic.

Prison Inmates Volunteer For Indexing

2009-03-22T12:22:00.001-07:00

A good friend who knows I love genealogy sent me the link to this article. I found it inspiring. When I'm doing anything genealogical, I know how much that spirit of genealogy rewards and fulfills me, and I'm not doing time in jail. Imagine how these men are touched by their service. What an outstanding idea.

Famous Cousins

2009-03-08T03:56:00.000-07:00

Dr. William Williams Keen was United States' first brain surgeon, who once participated in a procedure removing a cancerous tumor from the jawbone of President Grover Cleveland.

His grandson, Dr. Walter Freeman, was famous for his practice of transorbital lobotomies. Thousands of mentally ill Americans, and some not mentally ill, underwent these operations at his hands, not too many decades ago.

Drs. Keen and Freeman are descendants of my Keen ancestors from Pennsylvania.

I'm... not sure how to feel about this. :)

Fun With Death Certificates

2009-02-06T09:33:00.000-08:00

Call me morbid, but I love reading death certificates - probably for the same reason I love my grandmother's huge "Modern Medical Counselor" book from the 1940's. Diseases and causes of death are horrible, but fascinating.

ANYWAY... Ancestry.com has an impressive collection of death certificate images, with the LDS Church hot on its heels as more volunteers index records and collections of records are made available on Familysearch's pilot site.

Lately my favorite genealogical amusement is to narrow down people in my PAF file who died in the state in question and within a certain year range, and start looking people up. For example, the Kentucky collection on Ancestry ranges between the years 1852-1953, so after I've set up my list of people who died in Kentucky between those years, I'll search out those people.

By doing this, I've found women's maiden names I didn't have before, parents' names, children who died young whose existence I was unaware of, places of burial including cemetery names, and quite a few new family members I didn't have in my collection. A death certificate is also a great way to verify old information, so even if you think you know everything about Grandma Gert, it's still worth your time to check out her death certificate.

If you're an Ancestry.com subscriber, the easiest way to find a state's death record collection is to head to the home page, then scroll down to the list and map of the United States, then click on that state to see what it offers.

If you're like me and "free" is your favorite price, you can take your chances at the Familysearch pilot site. As fast as those indexers can type, they're indexing and digitizing thousands and thousands of records. They recently passed their 25,000 indexed record milestone and have reason to be proud. I've had some success with Washington state's death records on that website.

Before too long, you too can be living it up with death certificates. Good luck!

Still Here.

2009-01-03T00:12:00.000-08:00

My genealogy took a major back seat to other things a few months ago, but now that I've combined my PAF records (I created two almost identical files, then added some new names to one, new information to the other... what a mess), I'm back to work and finding new people and information.

If you use Personal Ancestral File to organize your records, you might be happy to know that if you ever make a boneheaded mistake like the one I made - making two different files, then having to combine them back into one again - the Match/Merge feature works well and will even combine exact matches automatically. I didn't know this until after I'd matched and merged about half my people (roughly 7,000) one at a time, and sometimes with the help of PAF Insight while at my local Family History Center. It pays to know what your computer program does, but what a fun surprise, after all that work, to find that I was off the hook for the rest.

Straight to Heaven with That Man

2008-11-09T15:08:00.000-08:00

I saw Schindler's List about ten years ago when it was broadcast on the NBC network, and cried and cried - not only for the horrible circumstances the poor Jews went through during the Holocaust, but also for the goodness of one man.

Today I was nosing around Ancestry and saw that among their new databases, Schindler's lists appear for searching. The names of the Polish Jews he saved are listed here, with a few pertinent facts about each one.

To read more about Oskar Schindler's heroism, click here. It's truly inspiring to read of the risks he took, the "laws" he broke, and the help he received from American and Swiss Jewish associations. In a completely dark time in history, he was a bright little spark, doing what he could to shed some light.

Hi there!

2008-09-23T07:10:00.001-07:00

Yes, it's been a while... summer's over, school has started, and we just found out we'll be able to move to a nicer home, so I don't see my genealogy days becoming any less hectic. Sorry I haven't been around much.

I keep tabs on a couple of genealogy blogs I find interesting, and at Ancestry Insider, I found this post about Familysearch Indexing.

Indexing is a volunteer program that allows anyone to download images of microfilms and type the information found on them - names, dates, places, parents' names, etc. - into a grid, then send it back to Familysearch headquarters. The volunteers are helping to make a list, basically, of all the microfilmed information in the granite vault near Salt Lake - by name, location, date, subject, etc. This will all be made available online one day, free for anyone to see.

It's interesting work, but as the above post points out, sometimes you find situations that are hard to read about. Still, it's inspiring to know that because of a few minutes you spent volunteering, someone someday will be able to find his ancestors that much more easily.

It Never Rains, But It Pours.

2008-07-08T22:39:00.000-07:00

For months we sat there at the FHC, working on our own family history because no patrons came in or needed anything. Tonight, the reprieve was over. Here's what I kept busy doing at the FHC tonight:

1) Helped a fellow staff member do a name on TempleReady

2) Helped a lady named Betty order microfiche (something I've done once in three years), learn how to download PAF to her home computer, and learn how to use it

3) While I was on the phone with the FHC director, making sure I did the microfiche order right, she asked me to make a sign for the door of the FHC saying that our day shift is closed tomorrow

4) Answered a phone call from a lady in my ward who said that the lady who was supposed to meet Otto at our place, showed up somewhere else and was all upset

Then I messed around with more new FamilySearch and match/merged more of my PAF people. I can't believe I forged together two files with over 15,000 people in them but yes, I was stupid.

We also discussed paranoid funeral home directors vs. awesome ones who can't help you enough. At one funeral home, my fellow staff members were accused of everything but digging up the body while trying to get funeral records for one of his relatives. The funeral home guy was convinced that "all they wanted was [the dead guy's] Social Security number."

This is just my opinion, but if you're going to be an identity thief, showing up at a funeral home and claiming to be a genealogist seems like a really hard, jump-through-hoopy, roundabout, stupid way to do it.

The night ended with a run to Wendy's.

"Wow, you really ARE a geek!"

2008-07-06T23:02:00.000-07:00

For the Independence Day weekend and my family reunion, I was in beautiful Eastern Oregon, in a lovely campground just outside Union. Union is a tiny town outside La Grande (off I-84) and is probably best known for its now 20-year-old mayor who won in a write-in election almost two years ago.

As happens with camping, we had to run to town for something we needed. On one of these trips, we took a drive through Union and enjoyed its small-townness ("Can we move here?" "NO"), ending up at the cemetery. Because, as you probably know, all roads lead to the cemetery... eventually.

I had my camera with me, and well, one thing led to another... pretty soon my husband was sighing exasperatedly as I bounced out of the car to grab a few pictures. Clicking away excitedly, I walked through the small cemetery, loving the sunshine and pine trees and atmosphere - they take immaculate care of this cemetery. It's very pretty.

While there, I found this amazing, totally unexpected treasure: the headstone of a man named Nephi Loveless.

The "Nephi," a Book of Mormon name, first caught my eye, but the phrase that really jumped out at me was "Nauvoo Legion." This man was a Nauvoo Mormon, a peer of Joseph Smith. He probably knew Joseph personally. Being in the Nauvoo Legion, he probably served in the Mormon Battalion as well... and now he's here, in Union, Oregon? How interesting. Apparently the Church has quite a little presence in Eastern Oregon from quite a way back, including a sugar beet farm in La Grande.

It was a neat find, but I'm not sure how to feel about having to admit that I spent part of my vacation in the cemetery. Hmmmmm...

Throwing Kisses

2008-07-01T22:05:00.000-07:00

I'm very happy to announce that after many unsuccessful tries (it turns out I had to register as a Family History consultant - again), I registered and obtained a username and password tonight on New FamilySearch.

So kiss me and smile for me, tell me that you'll wait for me... you probably won't be seeing me for a while. I'll be hunkered down with my new pal NFS, having a killer time.

My temple district is in its 90-day rollout period, which means that we consultants have been given the use of it so we can learn it and be ready to teach it when everyone in our district receives access to the website.

Just Found Some New Ancestors...

2008-06-24T18:42:00.001-07:00

... more German emigrants. I'm starting to think I'm more German than anything else. Although I'm still pretty Scottish.

Christopher Heydrich and his two brothers came from Germany on the ship Robert and Alice (or Robert and Oliver, depending on the source) in 1738. Nif-teeeee.

In this e-book about the Hetrick family, Christopher's signature can be seen and a little more background is given about his family and the circumstances which may have brought him and his brothers to America.

This search started last week when Michelle and I were cemetery-geeking and we found some Hetricks buried in our cemetery. I looked them up in the census and in the Ancestry family trees - not the most reliable source, but a place to start - and sure enough, the Hetricks in the cemetery are related to me. Probably. I feel good about having just cleaned up their headstones (here's one picture).

Other German names in my family tree:
Arndt
Decker
Haizmann
Reed/Reid
Roller
Sager
Schneeweiss (who took on the Swedish name Kyn, which became Keen)
Steinhilber
Strohle
Strudlin
Thierer

All but Schneeweiss and Heydrick/Hetrick are on my dad's side. It's been fun to find that my mother is part German as well. Here we thought she was all U.K.

Have you ever considered how unique we all are? That if one name changed on your family tree, you'd be a completely different person? It's that exact combination of ancestors and DNA that makes you who you are. The only people you share that with are your siblings, and even they are made of a slightly different combination of those same genes. Without sounding too cheesy - it's mind-blowing to me, how very special we are, how no two people on this earth have ever been or ever will be exactly alike.

Graving: The Next Generation

2008-06-23T18:04:00.000-07:00

For a long time I've thought that all those trips we took to the cemetery when I was a child must have done something to my psyche (either that, or I was just a "dead people geek" waiting to happen). My dear friend Sariah better watch out.

Michelle and I went graving again today and Sariah joined us for the first time. Sariah's two daughters and niece got in on the action. The girls had a fun time using the "big girl" gardening tools, squirting water on the headstones, and using the scrub brushes to remove algae and "bird sign" (I'm not kidding - they really did). A great time was had by all. Check out her cute pictures.

With three adults and two children helping clean and photograph headstones, we took almost 50 pictures, and will probably post around 75 memorials on Findagrave.com this week. It's very rewarding work and hopefully, someone who's looking in our cemetery for their relatives will be helped by what we've been doing.

So Close... and Yet So Far Away

2008-06-19T08:57:00.000-07:00

I am dying here. Major, major frustration.

The Family History Center staff members in my area have been encouraged by our stake FHC directors to try to register for the new Familysearch.org. Other staff members have had success, so it's been exciting. I've been trying for weeks - entering the necessary information, clicking "Send" and hoping - only to be told that "New Familysearch.org is not available in my area." Well, yeah, or I'd be using it by now... *murmur murmur*...

Today, I received an email from support@familysearch.org. You know, the actual people who TELL you when new Familysearch is coming to your area. The people in charge. "In about four months, New Familysearch is coming to an Internet-connected computer near you," they announced. "Here's your material - get learning this stuff so you can teach it to others in your area," they instructed. "You should be able to register immediately upon receipt of this email," they joyfully expounded.

Cruel, cruel, cruel... this has turned out to be a fabrication.

I have emailed. I have called. I have been told to wait 72 hours. ROWRRRRRRR!!! *snarling*

It reminds me of the time I ordered that beautiful Wendy's salad, put it on my dashboard so I could stash something in my purse, and my husband took off uphill at lightning speed and my beautiful salad flew off the dashboard and spilled all over me, my clothes, my socks, my shoes and the floor of the car. I was heartbroken. "We can order you another one," he said.

I don't want another one!!!! I wanted this one! NOW!!!

On a completely different topic, I believe one of my missions here on earth might be... going out on a limb here... to learn patience.

For the uninitiated: New Familysearch is the Church's latest genealogical development - a way to consolidate all our family information in Ancestral File, Pedigree Resource File, the IGI, and myriad other databases that people have sent in over the years. We can squish our ancestors together so they're only in there once. We can do TempleReady FROM HOME (this is huge). We can communicate and solve problems with misinformation. I've been hearing about this for probably over a year. I've been looking forward to using it myself for months. I actually did get to use it at the FHC, using my stake FHC director's username and password (she let me). I'm absolutely beside myself that I still can't get to it. So there you have it - now you know what the big deal is.

Setting Up a Family Blog

2008-06-11T09:53:00.001-07:00

Several of my cousins and I have set up family blogs and enjoy reading about each other's lives, seeing and sharing each other's pictures, and adding to each other's memories of our childhood days together.

Where we cousins once relied on parents or grandparents to keep us caught up on everyone in the family, Candace, Dena, Rachael, Whitney and I have fun communicating with each other on a technological level. Everyone is so busy and lives so far apart now that letter-writing, phone calls, and even individual emails can "take too long." These family relationships are put on the back burner in favor of other, more urgent, but not more important things.

One great benefit of a family blog is sharing family pictures. Those photographs of family reunions, visits, and car trips of long ago - the ones that were scattered around to the different relatives - can be swapped and copied and preserved. Candace and I have enjoyed seeing pictures of ourselves together as children, and of older relatives who have since passed on. While getting together to swap pictures and have copies made isn't a bad thing, she and I are both busy moms and don't live in the same town, so this online picture swap really works for us - and it's my favorite price, FREE.

As a result of our blogs, we cousins have closer ties and have much more to talk about when we do get together in person. I would definitely recommend setting up a family blog, and bugging your family members to do the same.

"We Walk With the Dead"

2008-05-30T08:52:00.001-07:00

I loved this article at Ancestry Insider's blog: Genealogists Are the New Shaman.

I hope you've taken advantage of Familysearch's Pilot website. Even if their specific collection of records has nothing about your family, you can still get involved with the indexing project. Every pair of hands gets that work done faster! And it's easy! I've been indexing Louisiana death certificates from the 1940s, and while the handwriting is hard to read sometimes, the work is interesting and goes by fast.

Enjoy your "dead-walking" day. :)

Happy Memorial Day

2008-05-26T08:37:00.000-07:00

When I was a little girl, we had a tradition of traveling to Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington, to clean and decorate our family members' graves. Everyone's grown older and moved away, but every so often we still get together to fix up the graves. My grandmother says that her mother, Adina Keithler, used to spend a week picking flowers from her yard and making elaborate arrangements to place on the family graves on Memorial Day. I'd love to carry on that tradition.

Willamette National Cemetery, Portland, Oregon. We have several loved ones buried here. It's beautiful and I love visiting any other day but Memorial Day, when it's a zoo.

Our Gran. We all miss him dearly. (We miss everyone else too - but he died more recently and it's still pretty tender.)

Neenaw's parents, Poppy (Howard) and Grandma (Adina)

Aunt Rose and Uncle Kenneth - Aunt Rose is Adina's youngest sister. They're right across the cemetery driveway from each other.

Jennie Keithler, Howard's mother, at Park Hill Cemetery in Vancouver. Her husband Ignatius Keithler died long before she did and is buried in Montana. She was a plucky little widow for almost forty years before she passed away. Neenaw says she refused to live with any of her children - always wanted to keep her independence. I don't blame her.

John Lawrence Keithler, son of Howard and Adina, also at Park Hill. His headstone is always completely overgrown whenever we visit and is also the hardest to find (guilty voice: "Maybe if we visited more often, we'd know where his grave is...."). John was a young man, only 29 when he died, and the family bought two plots and a double headstone for him and his wife Corky. Corky probably always planned on being buried beside him, but being young herself, was married again and died in Wyoming. So we still have this plot and half a headstone... hmmmm. (Not that we're anxious to fill it or anything.)

Howard Ernest, son of Howard and Adina, buried in the children's section at Park Hill Cemetery. He died at age fourteen.

Have a wonderful Memorial Day. I hope you are able to visit some family graves today.

OH BOY!!! Look what I just found!

2008-05-22T21:26:00.001-07:00

Watch out, Ancestry.com... your days of monopolizing records and charging people up the yang for 'em are numbered.

Familysearch.org's Pilot Website is making some of its records available. I just found this German baptism record for some Steinhilber relatives (if you click on it: scroll down to Johannes Steinhilber - Johannes is my great-great-great grandfather).

As this great project keeps rolling right along, helped by thousands of volunteers like my friend and fellow FHC staff member, more and more of these records will become available for searching. Free.

If it's not happening fast enough for you, I'm sure you'd be willing to help out: they can tell you how to get started indexing these records.

*doing the Chris Farley "AWE!SOME!" thing*

Dousing for the Dead

2008-05-20T07:11:00.001-07:00

Yesterday at the cemetery, as we were spending quality time with a few headstones and wondering about the empty spaces between, I told my friend Michelle about this article, describing a process by which burial places are found by "witching." Makes you want to go out and try it, doesn't it? (Thanks to Heather for the link)

Here's a video... pretty weird!

On another topic: A cemetery caretaker in Texas would rather not have you show up and take photographs of headstones with your digital camera. Read more here.

Poem

2008-05-08T11:10:00.000-07:00

I found this on a Findagrave memorial and stole it:

ANCESTORS

If you could see your ancestors
All standing in a row,
Would you be proud of them?
Or don't you really know?
Strange discoveries are sometimes made,
In climbing the family tree
Occasionally one is found in line
Who shocks his progeny.
If you could see your ancestors
All standing in a row,
Perhaps there might be one or two
You wouldn't care to know
Now turn the question right about,
And take another view
When you shall meet your ancestors,
Will they be proud of you?

Author: Unknown

Little Genealogy Joys

2008-04-25T17:08:00.000-07:00

I received my DAR membership certificate in the mail today and will have it framed soon - I was so excited to get it. It's beautiful.

Earlier this week, I finished making memorial pages at Findagrave for the 100+ photos I took of headstones a couple weeks ago. It was a big job - I had to complete it in little bites - and it felt good to finish it. Now I'm ready to head back over to the cemetery and take more pictures. I'll be taking a few photo requests with me when I go.

A relative of Carrie P. Mill, whose headstone was in the last batch of photos, found the page I made for Carrie and emailed to thank me for the picture. She gave me a more detailed biography to add to it. This is the first time I've had this happen and it made me feel happy that already, the work I put into the pages is starting to bear a little fruit.

This work is so rewarding. I'm grateful to be doing it!

The Mormons in My Family

2008-04-20T19:23:00.000-07:00

My parents and uncle joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1973; I consider them my "pioneers." In 1975, my dad and uncle's maternal grandmother Adina Keithler joined; she was followed by my dad and uncle's parents in 1976. For a few years I labored under the delusion that we were the first Church members ever in our family.

This was proven wrong in 1980, by the publication of Steinhilber. From it, we learned that Adina's grandmother, Lena Steinhilber, joined the Church in 1878. Since the author of the book, a distant cousin, wrote rather unfriendly things about the Church, we weren't sure how much of it we could believe. Just a few years ago, I found that Lena's sister, Anna Maria Roller, was also baptized in Germany during her lifetime, which sealed the deal for me.

Last November, I found another family Church member - Almon Bathrick. He and his family were natives of New York state and eventually made their way to Nauvoo, Illinois, the last place we Mormons were kicked out of. On the early records of the Church, he is found as a missionary, called to serve in Illinois. This was particularly exciting to my uncle, who spent two years as a missionary in the Chicago, Illinois mission - again, mistakenly thinking he was the first member of our family ever to do so.

And just now, I found the autobiography of another early family member who belonged to the Church, Franklin Alonzo Robison, a descendant of my Proctor family. Franklin's parents were also natives of New York and eventually came west to Utah; he was the husband of several wives (one named Isabella Eleanor Pratt, daughter of Parley P. Pratt, a prominent figure in LDS history) and the father of 29 children. Wow.

I guess this Mormon stuff must run in my family.

Going "Graving"

2008-04-18T11:58:00.000-07:00

I love that Findagrave has coined a phrase for hanging out in cemeteries, taking pictures, copying information, clearing off headstones... "I'm going graving today." "Oh, are you a graver?" It's great for identifying more of our kind.

Here are some pictures from the last time I went graving, burning myself to a crisp on one of our freak 75° April days. It was beautiful and HOT outside. Good thing I'm not an Arizona graver... how do you guys cope?

Our trees here have been gorgeous and blooming for about a month now. I love that they stagger their bloom times so these sights can last for a while. (Yes, they do it on purpose.)

A species of cute little blue wildflowers has taken over the cemetery, covering unsuspecting headstones with their roots and sinking into the engravings, creating this fun mirror-image effect. I thought it was cool.

Have you "gone graving" lately?

Ordering Stuff From Salt Lake City

2008-04-17T13:27:00.001-07:00

(You knew you could order stuff from SLC, right?)

New Cousin Bob and I were just discussing a book written by cousin Loretta Marvin, Steinhilber, which tells the story of our ancestors, Johannes Steinhilber and Johanna Magdelena "Lena" Roller of Germany. Lena joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS, Mormon) and, with her four daughters, sailed away on a Church ship to America "in the dead of night." She made it as far as Utah, where her fifth daughter was born, but left the area and settled in Nebraska. Johannes and their two sons were left behind in Germany, but later came to the United States themselves and settled in New York state.

I can't imagine what it must have been like for either group - and of course we don't know how things really went down, but the old-timers of their town gave this version as the way it went. The fact that she left under cover of darkness could mean anything. Perhaps Lena and Johannes were divided over the Church issue; perhaps they were divided over MANY issues and that's really why she left.

I have a copy of the book, and New Cousin Julie also has a copy, but Bob has never seen it. Is it online somewhere? was his question. I googled it, and found that some sweet soul donated a copy to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. Which is good - it means I can keep my copy. Not only did they donate the book, they allowed it to be microfilmed, so anyone anywhere near a local Family History Center, like the one I serve in, can order the microfilm and see the book for themselves. I am beyond thrilled to think that something with my name in it is actually at the FHL, but thought, what if you're like Bob and don't know how to order it, or you don't have a wonderful cousin like me to tell you how to do it?

Here's a short synopsis:

1) Before you do anything else, search the Family History Library catalog. There are several criteria you can search under - places, surnames, titles, authors, subjects.

2) After finding something you're interested in, like a book about The Ackleys of New Jersey, find out whether it's a book or on microfilm or microfiche (a thin sheet of plastic on which information has been printed in tiny print - you use a different machine to look at it). If a book has been microfilmed, a gray button that says "View Film Notes" will appear at the top of the page.

3) If it's only in book form, congratulations! You're headed for Salt Lake! Have a great time and make sure you go to a MoTab concert and a Utes game and have lunch at the Pantry while you're there. Sadly, the Library and FHCs don't have an interlibrary loan situation, but if you're in the SLC area, you're welcome to spend dawn till dusk in the library itself. They even have vending machines if you get hungry.

4) If it's on microfilm or -fiche, put away those suitcases, and copy down the film or fiche number instead. You'll need it when you go to order it. In the Ackley book's case, the film number is 1597996, Item 22. Remember that, now.

5) Ordering microfilms and -fiches can only be done at a Family History Center. To find one near you, head here and fill in the country, state, county and city you live in. You'll be directed to the closest FHC, where you can go and order what you need. The staff are oh-so friendly and knowledgeable and LIVE for requests like this. Seriously. We get bored when we don't have patrons - we have to work on our own genealogy... it's such a drag.

6) Take the film number and item number with you, show up, fill out the order form, pay the $6 and wait about two weeks - then the microfilm will show up at your local FHC, you'll be contacted, and at your leisure, you'll be able to head down there and look at what you ordered. Hopefully there will be good, useful stuff in it. If not, you can always order something else, right?

If, by some major coincidence, you're also a Steinhilber descendant and you're interested in seeing the Steinhilber book, you can see its call number here and if you click "View Film Notes," you can get the film number and order it at your local FHC. It's worth the trouble.

Any questions? You can always leave me a comment.

The EVILS of CDs

2008-04-15T22:06:00.000-07:00

A lady came into the FHC tonight with her genealogy burned on a compact disc. Her computer had crashed, but someone had fortunately managed to salvage her genealogy information and, not knowing she would want to use it in the future, burned it on this disc. Her thinking was, she could just pop it in one of our computers and start working again on her genealogy.

Every time I see a patron come in with a CD, I cringe. When people bring them in and expect to be able to add new data, correct old stuff, or change it in any way, they are sorely disappointed to find that their CD file is read-only. Burning genealogy on a CD is like taking a picture of it - you can look at it, but you can't undo or change what's already been done. You can't even use it to make a GEDCOM. If you have no other way of preserving your information, then go ahead, but just know that it will remain frozen in time, the way it is.

I tried six ways from Sunday to get that stinky little disc to cough up that information and let me save it somewhere else - the hard drive, the floppy disk, my email account - anywhere but on that CD. It wasn't budging. The poor lady was so sad and angry and frustrated, to think that 800 people on her file were now stuck on that CD. If she wanted to add anything new, they would have to be re-entered on her genealogy program, costing her years of work. My fellow staff member and I were just sick for her.

Knowing it was beyond my abilities, I called the King of All Geeks, my good friend Canadian Dan, and bugged him in the middle of a business trip. He was happy to help. Here's what he told me to do:

1) Put the CD in the drive and click on "My Computer," then click on the CD-rom drive
2) Find the genealogy file, click on it, and drag it to the desktop
3) Once it's on the desktop, it should open with the genealogy program. Open it and save it to your jump drive, hard drive, or floppy disk (I'd do all three, plus email it to about 18 relatives and send a GEDCOM to Rootsweb).
4) Keep messing around with it until it works. I had to tweak it several times before it would do what I wanted it to, but eventually the file was saved on a floppy disk and we all cheered and sighed huge sighs of relief.

I'm saving this information for the next time a patron comes in with one of these naughty CDs. They are NOT the genealogist's friend, unless you're saving pictures or documents or something you won't want to "mess with." They are for saving purposes ONLY. If you're like me and keep finding new stuff or get emails from new cousins all the time, for crying out loud, do NOT save your stuff on a compact disc.

P.S. This is very, very cool.

Staff Meeting Last Night

2008-04-11T07:56:00.000-07:00

A website I was unaware of, for those of us who have early LDS Church members: Early Latter-day Saints

New Familysearch has been put on hold indefinitely.

Apparently, when the website went online in Mesa, Arizona, the thing just crashed. Other areas, in their "90-day rollout period," have longer to wait before the website is available to everyone in their areas, and those of us who were waiting patiently for our rollout period to begin are crying into our pedigree charts.

The purpose of the rollout period is to give Family History Center staff and ward consultants the opportunity to learn the program, so that when the website becomes available to everyone in the area, we can teach our ward members and FHC patrons how to use it. Having had a small taste of this program, I was really looking forward to its release, and I know it'll get here eventually... but I'm disappointed that it's taking even longer now.

New Familysearch will provide a way for us genealogists to look at all of our ancestors' entries that people have submitted over the years to the LDS Church genealogy database, and consolidate all those duplicated names into one name, thus helping to connect all of our work together. We'll all retain jurisdiction over our own work - no one will be able to change information we've submitted - but we'll be able to look over other genealogists' work and connect our people with theirs, forming a giant family tree.

While deceased persons' information will be visible to all, living persons' information will be kept private and only visible to that person. Everyone, not just LDS Church members, will have access to the website via a username and password.

If you have access to the new Familysearch, please use it often, enjoy it, and think of poor Millie when you do. Awwwww.

Another Reason to Post Records Online*

2008-04-05T19:55:00.001-07:00

*safely, of course

My USB drive died today.

I freaked out and cried.

I didn't want to make the same mistake that many Family History Center patrons make - saving some genealogical information on one floppy disk, forgetting it or losing it, starting a new disk, finding the old one, bringing both (sometimes it ends up being seven or eight) to the Family History Center and begging one of us to help them "find their family history," which is sometimes gone forever, depending on the condition of the disk.

So I saved everything, the original file, on my USB drive, and nowhere else - which was also a mistake.

Luckily, I had updated my family tree at Rootsweb.com a few days before... which was wonderful, because even though (by some fluke) I had saved my file to my hard drive and then forgotten it back in February, I had found new information since then. I mean, come on, it's been six weeks. I've made some serious progress on some family lines since then. But with the privacy features I have attached to my file, none of the living family members' information could be retrieved.

I was very happy and surprised to find my forgotten February copy, but oh... the loss of my jump drive file. I was beside myself, to think I had lost all that work.

About twenty minutes ago, it turned itself on - it somehow got tweaked into working - but it's visibly bent and probably not good for more than a day's use after this. Who knows if it will work at the FHC on Tuesday night? I immediately saved my current file to my hard drive and erased the old one I downloaded from Rootsweb (I made it so only I have access to download it).

The moral of the story: Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Save, save, SAVE those records somewhere other than your computer. If you don't feel safe saving it in a repository online, email a copy to some relatives. Many, many relatives, so that if something happens to their computers AND yours, you should still have one copy hanging around somewhere.

I'm so grateful to have my file back... I can always go to the store and buy another jump drive, but there's no way I can replace the hours and weeks and years of work. It was very silly of me to not save the whole thing somewhere else.

Family of Gary and Mary Ann W.! Are you out there?

2008-04-02T08:39:00.001-07:00

Cousin Keith's funeral home record came yesterday. I must say, funeral homes can be very handy places to find information. As we're probably all aware, research is largely a process of elimination. If you can narrow down your relative's city of death, and then just start calling funeral homes till you find the one that handled your relative's funeral (easy to do in a smaller town, or the cemetery should have this information) - you have tapped into a great source of information. Of course, it only works if you have relatives who have died within the last, say, century, but if that's something you can benefit from... there you have it.

Things I learned from Keith's funeral home record:
Place of birth
Place of residence
Mom's full maiden name, and married name (Keith's parents were divorced)
List of survivors: parents, sister, grandparents
Condition on arriving at the hospital, and name of hospital
Date, place, and time of his funeral services
Occupation and place of employment
Organizations the deceased belonged to - in Keith's case, a church and a labor union
Exact age of death
Place of burial

Also included was a receipt for Keith's funeral expenses, full of non-pertinent but somewhat useful and still interesting information.

After adding Keith's new information to my PAF file, I googled his father's name, Everett Keith B., and sister's name, Mary Ann B. W. I knew Mary Ann had passed away recently, but had no other information about her or her family... I tell you, that Google thing is awesome. I found her obituary and a family record on Genforum, quite worth my while. Within minutes, I had two more generations' worth of stuff.

I was telling Joy at the D.A.R. thing Saturday - I blog about genealogy because I have so few people in my life who really "get it" about genealogy: how exciting, joyful, fulfilling, and just plain interesting it is. But another reason for the blog is to have a place out there in Internet-land for distant relatives to find me. Most recently, Julie S. of Massachusetts found me and we've been able to swap family information and update the records we already had, a very valuable thing.

If you Google your family information, nothing will show up from websites like Familysearch or Ancestry or most USGenweb or state archives sites - but this blog, and my family tree at Rootsweb, DO show up in Google. If you've been wondering about starting a blog, or posting your family tree at Rootsweb (Joy, how's that going?), I would say ABSOLUTELY do it. Take every precaution to protect living family members' privacy, but do it and reap the benefits, is my advice.

DAR Workshop

2008-03-29T14:18:00.000-07:00

I went to a "join DAR" workshop today at the local genealogical society, and I'm glad I decided to go. I thought about skipping it, since I'm almost a member already, but I went anyway. It was a four-hour workshop, and the first two hours were instructional. I learned about some new websites and perks of belonging to DAR and offered my favorite two cents about Findagrave.com and Interment.net (good for finding headstones, which can be used for proof of death information).

I met a lady named Joy, who might be related to Bri, and another lady named Becky who will start working at the FHC on Wednesday nights. I mentioned to two of the "head honcho-ettes" that we could meet at the FHC sometime as a group, on a Saturday maybe, and we could take a very short tour and hook up our family history information and see how many of us are related. It's nice to be hooked up with keys and access to the place.

I'm very happy I did this. I may not have enjoyed it and understood the value of being a member when I was younger, but I've discovered that it's basically a genealogy and service group - and I can totally get behind that. The women are nice, they seem to have good hearts and good reasons for being there, and the genealogical hints and helps being thrown around the room were very informative - I enjoyed the feeling of helpfulness and generosity. One lady gave a presentation about Salt Lake City and all the genealogical wonders to be found there, and it was fun to feel the excitement in the air. EVERYONE wants to go to Salt Lake.

I also found out that I'll receive my D.A.R. number on April 17, and I'll have an induction ceremony in September. I'm very excited and I imagine Grandma Dot and Grandma Keen would be too. Genealogy Geek Girl has finally found more of her own kind.

Countdown Clocks at WishAFriend.com

It Just Doesn't Get Any Better Than This

2008-03-28T18:30:00.000-07:00

Here's the awesome day I had today, genealogy-speaking.

1) Aunt Dott's Findagrave picture request - FULFILLED (see "Generous Genealogists")

2) A very distant cousin I've never met, but whose name I've seen in a book called Steinhilber since I was eleven - emailed today, and sent updated family information and two darling pictures

3) The funeral home called me back today about Cousin Keith, who actually IS my cousin Keith (we verified it over the phone), and they're sending me his funeral and burial information in the mail

4) Not to speak ill of the dead, but Grandma Hattie and her second husband Frederick Golden might possibly have fudged their wedding date just a little bit. Cousin Susan found the real McCoy marriage record today, in another state, no less. Susan said "EEEEEE HAWWWWW" in the subject line of her email, and I agree whole-heartedly.

Boy, when it rains, it pours. I'm a big believer in getting family history information in order, and then posting it online (safely and securely), so PEOPLE CAN FIND YOU and offer you wonderful genealogical goodies. Cast your bread upon the waters, folks!

Mmmmmmmm... bakery-fresh.

Generous Genealogists

2008-03-28T08:32:00.000-07:00

I love them. I love them, I love them, I love them. A few examples:

1) Darla, who at least weekly posts a message on my Rootsweb family tree that comes to my email. Usually her messages contain information from a book called Tombstone Hoppin', showing where family members are buried, adding to their birth, death, or relationship information. Darla is no relation, but she has this book, and she goes through my list of people and finds them in her book, and tells me what the book says about each one. Her thoughtfulness and kindness are amazing.

2) The cemetery caretakers, office workers, and funeral home employees who answer my many phone calls. "Is so-and-so buried in your cemetery?" Bless them all for their patience. They are ALWAYS nice. I'm sure they get quite a few of these requests and they must be used to it by now, but I always appreciate their kind manner and willingness to look people up for me - and then make copies and mail me stuff. Not one of them has ever asked a cent. Maybe they hope I'll throw some funeral business their way.

3) Volunteers at Findagrave.com. If you're thinking, "Here she goes with the Findagrave thing again -" too bad, because those people are made of gold. I love the networking factor: if I want a picture of a relative's headstone but don't live anywhere near that area, I can place a photo request. It's so easy. I just click on a button and my request is automatically sent out to people who have signed up to be volunteers in that area. The wonderful volunteers, like Joanne and Tracy and Donna, after accepting these requests, take time out of their busy lives to go to the cemetery, find our relatives' headstones (or lack thereof), take pictures and post them online. How Heaven-sent is that? We can't all get around to all the cemeteries we'd like to go to, but we have this website and great people to connect us with our loved ones in that way.

More than providing a way to see our ancestors' final resting places (and a chance to leave "virtual flowers" for them), the memorial pages at Findagrave very often provide valuable genealogical information - names, dates, places, parents' names, spouses' names, life histories that point us in the right direction. Also, seeing the headstone of someone whose name I've only seen on paper makes that person seem more "real" to me. I feel closer to her, knowing that I am looking on the ground where she was last seen by her dear family.

Just this morning I received another email saying a photo request had been fulfilled, for my very elusive Aunt Dott. What a blessing to finally find her, to know when and where she died and where she was buried.

Bless you all, you wonderful sharers - may I be counted among your ranks.

Famous Dead People

2008-03-24T08:15:00.001-07:00

I've decided we could all experience a few more famous dead people in our lives. I don't see how anyone could NOT come to that conclusion. It's staring us right in the face. Famous dead people are fascinating. Who hasn't sat on the couch with a can of Nestle's Quik and a spoon on a Monday afternoon, and pondered such questions as, "In what interesting places are these famous dead people buried?" "What were their real names?" "What did they die of?" "What do their headstones look like?" "If I wanted to visit Jimi Hendrix' grave, to which major U.S. city would I travel?" and "Am I really related to Elvis?"

Well, we're all in luck. Findagrave.com is not only one of my favorite sites ever because of what I can learn and what I can add, but also because it was started by a guy who had a strange and macabre hobby of visiting celebrities' graves, and suspected he wasn't the only weirdo out there. Any kind of celebrity - good, bad, ugly, drugly, kind of famous or Al Capone - who was famous for anything, like acting, military conquests, scientific discoveries, dying in the 9/11 attacks, music, or for being the Three Stooges' mom (I had no idea they were brothers) - has probably been visited by this website's creator. I bow to his genius for creating such an interesting spot for me to kill some serious time online.

Here's just a sample of famous dead people at Findagrave.com:

Eddie Albert - at rest in his own Green Acres
Louisa May Alcott
Johann Sebastian Bach
Lucille Ball
Bart the Bear, who killed Tristan in Legends of the Fall. It was a good death.
Blackbeard the pirate... did you know he was real? I didn't.
Karen Carpenter
Cuauhtemoc (bless you), last of the Aztec emporers, killed by Cortes
Chief Joseph
Chris Farley - can't forget my Chris!
Marty Feldman, of "EYE-gor" and "Abby Normal" fame
Carlyle Harmon - never heard of him? If you're a mom, you should be thanking him in your prayers.
Martin Harris... I wonder if he ever figured out what he did with those 116 pages.
Jimi Hendrix
Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter
Marie Antoinette
Jaqueline Kennedy Onassis
Pocahontas, who is now painting with all the colors of the wind
Princess Diana
Gilda Radner: "Comedienne, Ballerina"
John Ritter
Sacajawea
Scaramouche: "Scaramouche! Scaramouche! Will you do the fandango?" I didn't know who he was, either. I figured Freddie Mercury made it up.
Anna Nicole Smith
Joseph Smith, Jr.
Laura Ingalls Wilder

And... who would you add to our list?

Important Notice

2008-03-18T12:43:00.000-07:00

I received this in an email today. This affects me and anyone who has uploaded his family tree to Rootsweb.com.

RootsWeb to be Moved to Ancestry.com
The following was written by Tim Sullivan, CEO of The Generations Network, Inc. and is posted here at the RootsWeb blog.

As you know, The Generations Network has hosted and funded the RootsWeb online community since June 2000, thereby maintaining RootsWeb as the world’s oldest and largest free genealogy website. TGN remains committed to this mission and believes that RootsWeb is an absolutely invaluable and complementary resource to Ancestry.com, our flagship commercial family history site. We believe in both services and want to see both communities prosper and grow.

As part of this goal, we have decided to “transplant” RootsWeb onto the Ancestry.com domain beginning next week. This move will not change the RootsWeb experience or alter the ease of navigation to or within RootsWeb. RootsWeb will remain a free online experience. What will be different is that the Web address for all RootsWeb pages will change from www.rootsweb.com to www.rootsweb.ancestry.com. Again, the RootsWeb experience is not changing.

The decision to host RootsWeb on Ancestry.com is being made for one primary reason: we believe that the users of each of our two main websites can be better served if they have access to the best services available on both. Simply stated, we want to introduce more Ancestry.com users to RootsWeb and vice versa.

Today, despite the fact that Ancestry.com and RootsWeb.com are the two most frequently visited family history sites on the Web, only 25 percent of visitors to Ancestry.com visited RootsWeb in January 2008, while only 20 percent of visitors to RootsWeb visited Ancestry.com (according to Comscore Media Metrix). We think we will serve our users best by doing a better job of letting them know what is available on both Ancestry.com and RootsWeb. Hosting RootsWeb on Ancestry.com is the first step towards making this happen, but we will absolutely look for more and better ways down the road to advance this goal.

Hosting RootsWeb on Ancestry.com will also make it easier for us to make changes and improvements to the RootsWeb experience in the future.

All old RootsWeb URLs will continue to work, whether they are bookmarks or favorites, links to or from a hosted page or URLs manually typed in your Internet browser. We will have a redirect in place so that all old URLs will automatically end up on the appropriate new RootsWeb URL. You will never need to update your old favorites or links unless you want to. We have worked to make the transition as seamless as possible for our users, and this change should have a minimal impact on your experience with the site.

RootsWeb will remain a free online experience dedicated to providing you with a place where our community can find their roots together. If you have questions regarding this change please email them to feedback@rootsweb.com.

Thanks,

Tim Sullivan
CEO
The Generations Network, Inc.

Went to my Family History Center staff meeting tonight...

2008-03-13T21:24:00.000-07:00

[Originally, I posted a countdown calendar showing how many days were left until the new Familysearch would be available in my area... as of 4/11/08, there were 108 days left.]

And while I'm happy about this, I was a bit impatient to see that the following areas will be getting New FamilySearch before we will:

Tri-Cities, Washington
Seattle, Washington
Spokane, Washington
Medford, Oregon

I have family members who don't even care, and they'll be able to log on to NFS before I will. My husband was mocking me tonight: "How DARE they throw pearls at those swine in Tri-Cities!"

Amen, babe. Amen.

They'll Live Forever As Long As Someone Knows Their Names

2008-03-11T07:59:00.000-07:00

Mom called last night and we chatted about - guess what! - dead people. She loves sharing her memories, and I love writing them down. Here’s a sampling:

~ Even with the hard life Grandma Keen led, she was always kind and sweet. She would tell my mom (her granddaughter), “Kindness is free. It doesn’t cost anything to be kind.” She was an excellent seamstress and sewed wedding dresses for the local girls. With the money she earned, Mom said, Grandma and Grandpa helped put Uncle Ralph, their son-in-law, through medical school. Here are Grandma and Mom with a doll Grandma made for Christmas. Mom looks politely excited - she was a tomboy and didn't play with dolls, but she loved her Grandma.

~ During summers, Mom used to visit Aunt Marguerite and Uncle Ralph in Portland. They were quite "comfortable," and Mom observed Marguerite's shopping habit of calling up local department stores like Nordstrom or Meier & Frank and having clothes delivered to her home. She’d pay for the ones she liked and send the rest back. If Aunt Marguerite found a blouse or dress she liked, she bought one in every color. She had huge drawers full of nylons, etc. She always wore sunglasses and beautiful jewelry and kept her eyebrows immaculately plucked. Mom said Uncle Ralph must have visited China during some part of his World War II service, because their home was decorated like a Chinese restaurant, down to the red-fringed lamps. Here's Aunt Marguerite in 1962.

~ Uncle Ralph could be really funny. My grandparents were fighting one day, and Uncle Ralph (Grandma’s brother-in-law) turned on a tape recorder and set it behind the couch. It recorded their huge argument, and Uncle Ralph played it back for them later. Grandma was ready to kill him, Mom said. He bought Mom a parakeet when she was six, whom she named “Trixie,” and Mom had the bird until she was about sixteen. Here we have Uncle Ralph with his daughters, Patricia and Chickie, and Grandma Dot.

~ Here are Grandma Dot and her sister Kathleen in the 1930s, outside the family home in Walla Walla, getting ready to go somewhere. Kathleen, it turns out, was something of a backseat driver. Mom remembers driving to Wallowa Lake with Aunt Kathleen and Uncle Mel one summer, and it was "Melvin! Melvin! Turn here! Melvin!" all the way there. To her credit, Kathleen did have a Ph.D. and an important job and was pretty darn smart, so I imagine she was someone worth listening to. You can read more about her here.

With these pictures and stories in mind, I hope we're all working on two things:

1) Take time to write down something about your life. Someone will be interested in hearing about you someday - wouldn't it be nice if they could hear it in your own words? (Instead of hearing, "She was a backseat driver" - or worse - from someone else?)

2) If you can, interview older family members who remember a generation or two farther back than you do, and write down what they say about these loved ones who have left us. Though they may be scanty or imperfect, these records are precious.

Photo of the Week: 9 March 2008

2008-03-09T09:10:00.000-07:00

Grandma Keithler (my great grandmother) and me, in the living room of her little house up on 102nd Avenue in Vancouver. I see this little home quite often while we're driving around town, and while I don't have any memories of being there, it makes my heart go pitter-pat to think that people I loved once lived there. Poppy, Grandma's husband, planted a sequoia tree in their front yard - if I'm not mistaken, that's the same tree in the window - which is still there and now huge. My memories of Grandma are still pretty tender - she died when I was twelve, and I still remember her voice and what she smelled like (pretty).

Some things I've heard about Grandma are that when she was young and lived in Montana, her father owned a livery barn in town. When new people moved into town, it was Grandma's job to drive them to their new property in the old Model T her dad owned. She had to drive backward whenever they went uphill, because if she drove forward, all the gasoline would go to the back of the tank and the engine died. Grandma also played the piano for the silent movies at her local theater.

Grandma's mother Lena died in the influenza epidemic, her father John died five years later, and two of her three brothers died at young ages; as a mother, she lost two of her three children within seven years of each other, also relatively young. She was a tough lady, quite used to having to work hard, and didn't put up with much nonsense. Yet she was sweet. When I was a little girl, about seven years old, we all took a trip to the beach and we kids took our shoes off to play in the sand. Afterward, I had sandy feet I had to wipe off before I could put my shoes back on. My aunt's younger sister, Dena, sat me on the car and wiped my feet off for me. Grandma noticed us, smiled big and said to me, "Spoiled!"

She put butter in her tomato soup and only ate "Hollywood" bread. She owned a little pink plastic Ferris wheel for her spools of thread and a green flocked turtle pincushion with tiny black plastic glasses and a knickknack of small, rainbow-colored birds flying above a plastic base and a paperweight of clear plastic with a red rose inside and a green metal stool with a pull-out step. I loved visiting her home and seeing her little "treasures." We watched Lawrence Welk at her home on Saturday nights. Sometimes she would watch us out her little hallway window, when she lived next door.

I miss her.

Life of William Ricketts Smith, Part 11: "I squeezed"

2008-03-07T21:24:00.000-08:00

(Part 10 is here.)

I shipped out on the battleship Colorado a few days before the first of December. We were five days from Honolulu to San Pedro, and I thought I would be in Vancouver [Washington] long before Christmas. They picked us up at San Pedro and took us to Camp Anza, California, in the middle of the Anza Desert, to wait until there was a ship to take us to Camp Stoneman at San Francisco, and Fort Lewis, Washington. I was at Camp Anza a week or ten days, they loaded us on a ship and we docked at San Francisco where we spent the night. We were two or three days to Tacoma and were loaded on trucks and taken to Fort Lewis.

Having come from Oahu, I did not have a dress uniform, so it was necessary to get one before I could be discharged. They had a complete uniform, except for a blouse (coat), but the supply sergeant said he had them on order and should arrive shortly. I checked with him daily, as I had to go by the supply room on my way to the mess hall. It was about a quarter mile from the barracks. The morning of the 17th of December, when I stopped by, he said he still didn't have the blouse, but he said he had a size smaller than I wore and if I could squeeze into it, I could have it. I squeezed.

The 19th day of December 1945, I met with Colonel Taylor and received my discharge papers. There were some other GIs there and they were on their way to Castle Rock, Washington, and said I could ride with them. I figured that was better than waiting for the bus, so I went. I had to wait in Castle Rock till midnight to catch the bus and continue my journey to Vancouver, where my family was. I arrived in Vancouver about 2 AM. Having sent a telegram to my family the day before, I expected them to meet me. I didn't know where they lived, as they had moved, and all I had was a route and box number.

After a few minutes, a cab driver came into the bus depot and asked me where I was going. Meanwhile, no one was there to meet me and I thought they were probably on my way. The cab driver came back after about two hours (4 AM) and insisted on taking me out to find them. I had a general idea of the part of the country they were in, so I finally agreed to go with him. We drove around for some time, he would stop once in a while and knock on somebody's door and ask if they knew where the Keithlers lived. It was almost daylight when we finally located them. By that time I was so disappointed and disgusted that I was about to go back to Fort Lewis and re-enlist. The problem was that the telegram was not delivered until the next day. I have never sent another telegram to this day!

The End

Photo of the Week: March 2, 2008

2008-03-02T16:14:00.000-08:00

(Click on the image for a better view)

A couple of hotties get married in 1942 (you can read more about that here).

My Neenaw is one of the most beautiful brides I've ever seen. I am lucky to look anything like her. Gran's no slouch, either.

Life of William Ricketts Smith, Part 10: Big Trips, Hawaii, and Japanese Surrender

2008-02-29T09:12:00.000-08:00

(Part 9 is here.)

Summers are hot and winters are cold in that area [Fort Knox, Kentucky]. Sometime around the first part of December, we got orders that we were shipping out. Our First Sergeant Boyd was able to get furloughs for most anyone that wanted one, so we packed up our little family and returned by train to Lodge Grass. It was winter. When we left out of Chicago, there were over twenty cars on the train, all full, powered by a steam locomotive. It was below zero as we crossed North Dakota. Our car had a coal stove in one end but it was not well tended. We used an Army blanket and my GI overcoat to stay warm and it was almost impossible to get anything to eat. The steam lines froze in some of the more modern cars and they were without heat. We were happy to get off at Billings, where we changed trains to Lodge Grass.

I returned to Fort Knox a few days later and a week or so later, went by the ranch in Montana in a troop train bound for Fort Lawton in Seattle, where we boarded a ship bound for Honolulu, Pearl Harbor, from there by train to Schofield Barracks. We were housed in Area W which was used for temporary unassigned units, where we lived on C rations. After a couple of weeks, we replaced the 82nd Ordnance Company, which had been there for several years. They were due for rotation back to the States, but because they were not in a combat area any longer, they had to be sent to Okinawa and then returned to the States, not as a company but individually.

Our duties at Schofield was the servicing of the equipment of the combat units passing through on the way to Okinawa, and there was a big build-up of troops taking place there for the ultimate attack on Japan. Our unit consisted of many different sections: tanks, wheeled-vehicle units, gunnery, instruments, machine-shop, welding, parts and supplies, and electrical. We could repair most anything. As the flow of troops increased, we sometimes worked around the clock to get it all done. About July, I was promoted to T3. We continued to work hard. We would go to the beach on the north shore sometimes. The water was very clear and some great breakers. My head got sunburned several times before it got toughened up [Gran lost most of his hair early in life].

It was about August, I think, we got orders to start preparing to ship out. The workload was still heavy, so some of our men were assigned to preparing our tools and equipment to ship. Then President Truman ordered the Atom Bomb dropped and everything was put on hold and sometime later the Japanese signed the surrender. We were all assigned a MOS number, based on time served and number of dependents, etc. Some had numbers a lot higher than me, so I was pleasantly surprised when my number came up just before Thanksgiving.

(To be continued next Friday)

Photo of the Week: 24 February 2008

2008-02-24T09:34:00.000-08:00

(Click on the picture for better detail)

From left to right: Grandma Alice Johnson Keen, her sister-in-law Maude Leah Keen Torvanger, and Maude's husband Bert Martin Torvanger.

I never met Uncle Bert, but we used to visit "Aunt Maudie" sometimes at her apartment in Walla Walla. I LOVED the smell of that place - old, musty, creepy - and the funky old elevators with a window in the door so you could watch yourself move between floors. It was dark and dusty in the hallways, but Maude's apartment was sweet, small and cheerful. She had funny old mauve couches that we kids would smile to each other over, and she would give us money as gifts. Mom said she boiled the coins and washed and ironed the bills before she gave them to us, and we always thought that was funny. Now I think it's absolutely adorable of her. Awww... she wanted our money to be clean.

Aunt Maude never had any children, so Grandma Dot and her sisters were Aunt Maude's heirs. Grandma Dot gave Mom some of Aunt Maude's things, and I remember old nightgowns and pillowcases and sheet sets floating around our home, all marked with the name "Torvanger."

Aunt Maude and Uncle Bert apparently bought some interest in an oil well in Oklahoma. Years later, about 2002, I was contacted about my family tree on Ancestry.com. Someone from the oil well share company was trying to find Aunt Maude's heirs because we were owed some money, and Mom and I got all excited. Wooo hooo, here comes the cash!

Reality sank in when we learned how much Mom and her three siblings would be receiving. So far, with long distance phone calls, gas money, and legal copies of Aunt Maude's and Grandma Dot's wills, it's cost Mom more than she would have earned from the oil well, just to get this thing hooked up. We're not quite as "in the money" as we once hoped - but that 25 cents a month sustains our Bazooka bubble gum habit, and really, that's all we can ask for.

You Know You're Having a Good Genealogy Day When...

2008-02-22T16:13:00.003-08:00

... you have to update your GEDCOM at Rootsweb.com, not once, not twice, but THREE TIMES because you keep finding more good stuff after updating it the last time.

A special thanks to my "cousin-in-law," Susan H., who threw me such a great document this morning that I've been working on it all day, adding more names to Findagrave, and finding even more people to add to my file. AWESOME.

It's so nice when we can work together.

Life History of William Ricketts Smith, Part 9: Gifts from God and Family Life

2008-02-22T09:03:00.000-08:00

(Part 8 is here.)

Several months previous to this time, a detachment from our company had been assigned to service duty on a tank driving range where trainees were taught operation of tanks. There were several areas used and I was assigned to one of them. One evening as I had parked my truck and was walking to our shop, we had a building in an old rock quarry where we met to take a truck back to our barracks, and Sergeant Bass and one of the mechanics was trying to find a problem with the electrical system on one of the trucks. I inquired concerning their problem and the answer came to me immediately from thin air, which I later learned to be the Holy Ghost.

When our company was reorganized, the sergeant that was in charge of the electrical section was relieved because of a minor disability and Sergeant Bass remembered the above incident and I was given the position as Non-Com over that section and promoted to T4 (Sergeant). I know that this was a gift from God!

Living off the post was a new experience for me. West Point is about seven miles from Fort Knox and about 25 miles from Louisville. Durwood Sheets lived in Louisville and James Nunnallee lived in West Point. Durwood had a 1936 Ford 2-door and James and I would meet him each morning in front of the store in West Point and drive to Fort Knox and return to West Point each duty day, except some days when we had to stay on the post for some special duty. It was pretty much of a hassle trying to be a soldier and a family man at the same time, but I was able to spend some time with my little family.

Our house was small, there was a kerosene cookstove and an oil burning heater. Trudy had to walk downtown to buy groceries and do their laundry and carry oil for the heater and kerosene for the cookstove. A couple with a boy about our son's age lived in the other half of our house, so the two wives and boys became friends, which helped to pass the time.

(To be continued next Friday)

Photo of the Week: 17 February 2008

2008-02-17T09:22:00.000-08:00

(Click on the picture for more detail)

This picture is from Neenaw's house. Years ago, Gran wrote down on the back of the frame who everyone is. Last time I was at Neenaw's house, I scanned this picture and sent it home to myself - but I must have taken "neglectful genealogist" pills that day, because I didn't copy their names down. Next time I'm at Neenaw's, I'll do that.

I do know that the man sitting in the middle of the front row - the "thorn among the roses" - is my 3rd-great grandfather Thomas William Zane, and the woman with the dark hair standing behind him is his wife, Susan Virginia "Jennie" Cummings Zane - both of them beautiful, of course. "Not an ugly one among us!" Thomas and Jennie are my great grandmother Ruby's grandparents, so this might be the farthest-back picture I have of any of my ancestors. They are pictured with other members of Thomas' family. His father, Jonathan J. Zane, died when he was very young, and his mother remarried Mr. Wright and had more children, so I imagine these are his siblings and their spouses.

Thomas is in another picture at Neenaw's, with his band in Sundance, Wyoming. The nifty thing is, we had that picture of the Sundance Band and knew he was in the picture, but didn't know which band member he was... until we saw this picture above. Those whiskers don't lie.

UPDATE: While I was cleaning out my email inbox this weekend - all 47 pages' worth - I found this note I emailed to myself from Neenaw's, with the NAMES on the back of this picture. So here you go:

Standing, left to right: Adelia Ermine Wright, Jonathan Haines, Arthur Haines, Susan Virginia "Jennie" Cummings Zane, Silas Wright, Frank Bryson Murray

Sitting, left to right: Della Haines, Mary V. Wright Haines, Thomas William Zane, Clara S. Mason Wright, Nellie Margaret Wright Murray

Gran wrote: "This picture was apparently made after 1890 in Michigan as Elizabeth Ann Zane moved to Wyoming in 1890. Jesse Zane would be over 20 years old in this picture. T.W. Zane would be between 45-50 years old."

Mystery solved.

Life History of William Ricketts Smith, Part 8: New Son, Tank Training, Fort Knox

2008-02-15T20:55:00.000-08:00

(Part 7 is here.)

Shortly afterward, we left for Washington state where we visited some of Trudy's relatives and where I later became employed at the Bremerton Navy Yard as an electrician and was later called into the Army in September. I was sent to Fort Knox, Kentucky, where I was in basic training in the Armored Force. After five weeks of basic training, I was sent to Armored Force School for Tank mechanics and graduated with a T5 (corporal) rating. Shortly thereafter our son was born.

I applied for an emergency furlough, which was refused because the Red Cross reported that the mother and child were doing fine. The company clerk made out a request for furlough and told me to carry it to the battalion commander's office and see if it would be approved... and it was. I arrived at the hospital in Vancouver [Washington] just as Trudy and the baby were being released. I spent several days there before returning to Fort Knox. I continued working at the motor pool tank shop.

Meanwhile, they had expanded the training center to three groups and we had received several shipments of new tanks. However, men were getting transferred and shipped out continuously and life was quite uncertain from day to day. In the spring of 1944, we were organized into an Ordnance Company and became the 698th Ordnance Heavy Maintenance Company. All men with limited service classifications due to age or minor disabilities were transferred out or discharged, and new men, mostly trained at Aberdeen, were brought in. We finally became a line outfit and life became a little more certain.

A short time later, Trudy decided to come to Kentucky so we could be together. Through a friend in the outfit, I found a small house in West Point, Kentucky and rented it. Trudy and the baby arrived in Louisville on the train and we got settled in our little house in West Point.

(To be continued next Friday)

If You're Going to Die, Do It Out West

2008-02-14T10:37:00.000-08:00

Please.

My genealogy time this week has mostly been spent organizing my records at Findagrave.com. Any way and anywhere I can build my family tree online, I'm all for it - plus Findagrave is unique, in that you can add, edit, upload pictures, "leave flowers," find other family members, organize people into "virtual cemeteries," and more, SO easily. It's about the easiest and funnest way to preserve family history records online that I've seen (aside from Ancestry "The Brat" .com's famous people family tree feature).

Adding your people to Findagrave.com's records necessitates knowing what happened to their bodies. Were they cremated? If so, what happened to the ashes? Were they buried? In what cemetery? If you don't know, Findagrave.com has a spot for that too - but since I know most of my ancestors were buried, and I don't feel like putting "unknown" on all their records, I've been calling around to cemeteries, city hall offices, funeral homes, you name it, this week. If nothing else, I work hard at living up to my blog's name.

Mom's family is mostly in Walla Walla - at the same cemetery, bless them - but Dad's is scattered between Montana, Wyoming, Washington, Oregon, and Kentucky - and I've had more luck with the Western states. Small-town Kentucky has sweet adorable people, like in every other state, but the older records there don't seem to be in very great shape, availability-wise. Part of the problem is the age of my family's graves - they're all older, because most of my family emigrated West before 1900. Back in the time I'm looking in, my family members were probably born at home, died at home, and buried at home or in the churchyard. Elkton only has one city cemetery and if your ancestor's not buried there, the city office can't help you. You'd be better off heading to Kentucky and spending a week cemetery-ing.

This is true of a lot of places, even some out West, but I find that since Western states are slightly newer, records are much more accessible (and in my case, better organized), the cemeteries are kept up by city programs, and the poor city employees don't have to don a dust mask before finding your ancestor's burial record.

Lady in Elkton, my apologies.

DAR Update

2008-02-13T14:24:00.000-08:00

The check I gave DAR Lady with my application, cleared about two weeks ago. I've been told there will be a lineage workshop next month at our local genealogical society. I invited Mom, Aunt Nancy, Candace and Mandi to come, since they're kind of local. Sounds interesante.

Photo of the Week: 10 February 2008

2008-02-10T09:14:00.000-08:00

(Click on the picture for more detail)

The Dysarts, playing in the snow - driving through the Blues, maybe? Or in the Mt. Hood area?

This is from one of those funky old cameras that put two images on the same photograph. On the left we have my grandfather, Carl Byron Dysart Jr., with some really tall snow, and on the right, his parents, Carl and Ruth (Ackley) Dysart, looking more animated than I'd ever seen them (click on the picture to see their big smiles).

You know how those old pictures are - no one could smile and everyone was all dressed up and they always looked so... sedate. You would never know that a half hour later, they'd be changed out of their Sunday best and out slopping the hogs or something.

This is from the late 1930s-early 1940s era.

Findagrave.com Memorials

2008-02-09T13:23:00.000-08:00

Creating memorials for people in my PAF file, at Findagrave.com, is the project of the moment. (It changes as I get distracted by something else - good thing I have this blog to keep track of what I used to be doing.)

In my PAF file, I looked for people for whom I had burial information. Along with the memorials for my eight great-grandparents (links are in the sidebar, under their names), here's a list of people I've created memorial pages for. Women are listed by their maiden name, with married name in parentheses.

Ackley, Alfred "Denton"
Ackley, Henry Tillinghast
Adams (Dysart), Mary Ann
Austin, Ernest Stewart
Bachelor (Hickmott), Alvira
Bachelor, William Dallas
Barnes, William Franklin
Bathrick, Mrs. Abigail Kettle
Bathrick, Lysander
Clark (Craig, Austin), Rozilla Margaret
Cummings (Zane), Susan Virginia "Jennie"
Daggett, Diane Lynn
Dragoo (Keithler), Jennie Lee
Duggan (Johnson, Golden), Hattie Ellen
Dysart, Carl Byron, Jr.
Dysart (Baker), Letha "Irene"
Dysart, William M.
Fox, Harold Germaine
Fox, William Raymond
Isaac (Bucholz), Chickie
Johnson (Biersner), Hattie Quintilla
Keen (Dysart), Alice "Dorothea"
Keen (Isaac), Elsie "Marguerite"
Keen (Zolber), Dr. Esther "Kathleen"
Keithler, Howard Ernest
Keithler, John Lawrence
Newberry, Jason
Newberry, Mrs. Lucinda
Newberry (Ackley), Mary Lucinda
Newberry, Mrs. Polly
Newberry, Samuel
Proctor (Barnes), Daphne
Smith, John Jason
Smith, Raymond Maurice
Smith, William Ricketts
Zane (Fox), Elizabeth Ann
Zane, Jesse Thomas
Zane, Thomas William

I also found memorials already done for these people:
Austin, Dr. Kenneth P.
Bachelor (Bathrick), Katharine
Balch, Adm. George Beall
Barnhouse (Dragoo), Jane M.
Bathrick, Stephen
Bathrick, Tillabee (Tilly)
Daggett, John Birney Jr.
Dragoo, Emery J.
Dragoo, Ewell
Dragoo (Faught), Isabell G.
Dragoo, Jacob
Dragoo, John Irving
Dragoo, Liberty Ulysses
Dragoo (Evens), Mary Grace
Dragoo (Simmons, Cole), Sophia Anna
Dragoo, Tucker Steele
Jones (Dragoo), Isabella
Keen, Lester Orlan

This list is a work in progress. If you knew any of these people, I'd love to "flesh out" their memorial pages with whatever memories, stories, etc. you could add - just email me at brinatty at comcast dot net.

Life History of William Ricketts Smith, Part 7: New Job, New Car, New Wife

2008-02-08T20:44:00.000-08:00

(Part 6 is here.)

Early in the summer of 1940, I was offered the job of operating the power plant for the town of Lodge Grass. It was one of the highest paid jobs in the area, $142.50 per month. It was a 12 hour, seven day week job. I was responsible for operating the generating plant and maintaining the distribution system, reading meters, billing customers, as well as purchasing needed supplies and fuel for the engines. After a few months I had saved enough money to buy a used 1938 Chevrolet coupe, so I gave my 1929 Ford roadster to my brother.

During the summer of 1938, I had worked on a wheat farm a few miles southwest of Lodge Grass, operated by Bill Formanack of Miles City. His son Bob was working there while his dad ran a tire shop in Miles City. Bob played the piano and we organized a band, playing for local dances. A couple of years after that Bob married Ileta Stovall.

After acquiring my "new" car, I decided to drive up to Formanacks' farm to show Bob my car. There were a mother and daughter visiting there that afternoon from Sheridan, Wyoming, the daughter having gone to school in Sheridan with Ileta earlier. This daughter later became the love of my life and the mother of our two boys.

A few months later she accepted my gift of an engagement ring. Then on the seventh of December 1941, war was declared against Japan. It was quite apparent that I would soon be involved, being physically fit and 23 years old. We agonized over whether or not we should marry, her father thought not but let us make our own minds up. Meanwhile I went to Los Angeles to complete schooling that I had previously started. Upon my return, we set the date of 14 April 1942 and were married.

(To be continued next Friday)

Kentucky Death Records at Ancestry.com

2008-02-07T08:34:00.000-08:00

As much as I loathe Ancestry.com for acting like a big genealogy-hoarding spoiled brat (she said kindly), I appreciate the state of Kentucky for being so generous with their records. If you have a subscription to Ancestry.com and lots of folks in Kentucky, like I do, you're in luck, ma'am. Or sir.

I've been trying to restrict my research to looking up grandparents, aunts, uncles and first cousins, who tend to be neglected in the wake of finding new family members, and "firming up" their information - finding death dates and places, forgotten children in censuses, etc. Kentucky's vital records have been most helpful on my Smith, Mobley, and other Kentucky families.

The actual death certificate images are available from 1852-1952 and most of the years between; there are a few years missing. I've made a few sad discoveries - an uncle died at the state asylum, a cousin died of pneumonia after her tooth was extracted (no antibiotics yet), and another cousin died of cancer of the tongue, yikes! - but the death certificates have also been very valuable in terms of getting more complete and accurate information on some family members, and discovering new people in the process.

When the Church is finished digitizing its millions of microfilms and makes them available FREE online in a few years, I'll be the first in line to see them... in the meantime, Ancestry.com is a somewhat necessary evil.

Well, guess what.

2008-02-05T06:53:00.000-08:00

A dear friend (and possible cousin, we just haven't figured out how yet), Compulsive Writer, has asked me to write guest posts during the month of February at an LDS women's blog, Segullah. I'll be there every Tuesday. Here's my first post.

Photo of the Week: 3 February 2008

2008-02-03T09:09:00.000-08:00

(Click on the picture to make it bigger)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!

My dad is celebrating his 65th birthday tomorrow and for a special surprise, I'm posting his favorite picture of himself (NOT). You're welcome!

What a cutie. I really do love the Alfalfa hair.

Life History of William Ricketts Smith, Part 6: College, Barley, and "Valuable Lessons"

2008-02-01T20:32:00.000-08:00

(Part 5 is here.)

In the finals of my senior year, I purposely flunked some of the tests because I didn't want to be the valedictorian and have to make a speech, but I ended up being salutatorian and had to make a speech anyway. I know this was a disappointment to my parents (I never told them the truth). I earned a scholarship from the Montana University System and decided to use it at Montana School of Mines because they did not require ROTC training, however I really preferred to attend Montana State College. These decisions were made because I was unable or unwilling to face the responsibilities that were inherent to the talents that I was blessed with. Fortunately God gives us time to learn some of these valuable lessons.

During my High School years I had the opportunity to be a relief operator at the city light plant and became familiar with the operation of the machinery there. In 1940 a Rural Electrification project was organized in our county.

Meantime my dad and I had moved to the ranch that was owned by my mother's father. We spent the first summer trying to get the place into production and were living in a sheepwagon. It was a hard summer as we worked about 15 hours a day. That fall we bought an old log house, which we tore down and moved to the ranch, and by the latter part of November 1939, I had assembled a one-room cabin from the usable parts of the old log house.

We moved some of our furniture from the house in town and my mother and brother, Raymond, joined us in our "new" home on the ranch. We celebrated Thanksgiving together. It was in the fall of that year that my dad was able to go with Uncle Jack and Aunt Dorothy to Kentucky to visit his mother, whom he hadn't seen since he and my mother were there in 1913 on their honeymoon.

He was reluctant to leave, as the barley was ready to harvest, but we all insisted that he go and assured him that we could get the crop harvested. Our neighbor, Jack Williams, had an old binder that had not been used for years. He consented to let us borrow it and we pulled it home behind the pickup. I worked on it for several days and finally got it in running condition. My brother was 18 years old and in High School, and had experience with horses, so it became his job to drive the team while I shocked the bundles and made emergency repairs on the binder. We had the grain all in the shock by the time Dad got home.

Later that fall, I took the truck, a 1934 Ford 1 1/2 ton, and went to Shaws mine in the Wolf Mountains, about 25 miles away, for a load of coal. We used the coal for both cooking and heating. By the time I got home the temperature was 20 degrees below zero.

(To be continued next Friday)

Uncle John Had Seven Wives

2008-01-30T14:43:00.000-08:00

What's that nursery rhyme about "When I was going to St. Ives"?

My husband is a fifth-generation Latter-day Saint on every single line of his family tree (more than five on some lines). All of his 2nd-great grandparents were born in places like Tennessee, New York, Denmark, England, Missouri - and ended up in Utah. In his Rowley line, an uncle named John Rowley was the husband of seven wives, including a widowed mother and two of her daughters - and he had children with all three women, along with the other wives. (The mom and daughters are Emma James, Emma Ozella Johnson and Orissa Jane Johnson - wives 3, 4, and 5.)

This is fascinating to me, coming from my LDS-convert background. The most exciting thing going on in my family tree is first cousins marrying each other (and yes, some of them were my grandparents - I know that was your next question).

On a completely unrelated topic: I hope we're all good about sharing our stuff and helping each other, when it comes to our family history records.

A friend I sometimes help with her genealogy has had her hands tied because of one rather bratty cousin who at one point, told my friend to just "forget" about one line because SHE was doing all the research. Now that it's done, instead of sharing it with my friend (making copies, emailing a GEDCOM, etc.), she tells her, "Oh, it's all online now - go look for it there," without any further instruction or help. My friend isn't too computer-literate and has a hard time knowing where to go or what to do. Everytime I talk to her, I can feel her frustration and sadness caused by her cousin's behavior, and I feel like calling up this woman myself and giving her an earful. Who acts like that? It's like having Ancestry.com for a cousin.

I can't imagine what would possess people to act this way. It's like people who won't share recipes. What exactly is the point of that? So no one else can take credit for making a certain dessert? Who cares? If we're all trying to find out more about our families, why on earth would anyone try to impede another's progress?

The best genealogists are the ones who share.

THAT'S IT

2008-01-28T15:31:00.000-08:00

I think I'll start collecting Ackleys.

My ancestor, Alfred W. Ackley, fought in the War of 1812. He married Perthena Tillinghast and had four children, one being my 3rd-great grandfather Henry Tillinghast Ackley. Henry was a Union soldier in the Civil War and died en route home, on the train, in 1863. Awwww.

I am sick - SICK! - of not finding anything about Alfred. He died in 1841, so he didn't survive to see any censuses listing him with his wife and children... that's a huge mental roadblock for me. Yes, there are historical sketches and military records and wills and family Bibles, etc., but so much of that information is still on paper or microfilm, instead of online, and well, I guess I'm just lazy. Also, I don't have the cash to pay researchers to head to the library, look stuff up, make copies, and mail them to me. (That's why I love people like Carl, who do such great work for free - of course with Carl, I had all the information and he just had to find it.)

The thing is, other family members have tried to research him and have come up empty too, so my laziness is not the only problem here. The problem is that he seemed to have followed the advice of ecology-minded forest service rangers: "Leave No Trace."

So I'm thinking it's time to just round up every Ackley I can find (past a certain date), and maybe I can make a connection somewhere. With all the other clean-up projects I've undertaken, this will be a nice change of pace... I guess.

Photo of the Week: 27 January 2008

2008-01-27T08:58:00.000-08:00

(Click on the picture to make it bigger)

Happy Birthday to me! (Friday the 25th)

And I'm just as stunning, all these years later.

Life History of William Ricketts Smith, Part 5: The Bicycle, the Saxophone and the Orchestra

2008-01-25T06:30:00.000-08:00

Sorry I haven't posted anything all week... hubby broke his ankle, kids home from school on MLK day...busy, busy, busy!

(Part 4 is here.)

The next summer my dad bought his only competitor and was doing quite well. My friend Claude Abel was the paper boy for the Billings Gazette and we were getting the paper. I guess that was my introduction to the "funny papers." One day there was an insert in the paper from Mead Cycle Co. of Chicago for a Ranger bicycle for $32.00. It had a headlight and even a tool box. I asked my dad if I could get it. He said that if I could get a job he would help me to get the bicycle. He got me a job leading the stacker-horse in the hay field of his friend Howard Johnson. Even though their farm was only about 3 miles from town, I stayed with them during the harvest of the first cutting. I earned about $14.00 and was very anxious to order the bicycle so my dad said he would give enough money to place the order. I didn't try very hard to find another job after that. Some time later the bicycle came on the local freight train and as it was my dad's business to meet all the trains, he hurried right home with my bicycle. He was a wonderful dad!

My best friend Wendell Forman, of a progressive and fairly well-to-do family, decided to take cornet lessons from a local barber and musician. I had had the desire to learn to play the saxophone for some time and this was my opportunity to prevail upon my mother concerning my desire. My mother had a cousin living in Casper, Wyoming who was a musician, so she wrote to him requesting that he might find a used horn that we could afford. His return letter listed quite a few and his recommendation of the best buy. The price was $35.00. This would amount to about four months' worth of groceries for our family in 1933. Somehow my mother, probably with my dad's help, came up with the money and I got my saxophone.

The manager of the hardware store had previously played the saxophone but said he would not attempt to teach me, but would loan me a book. I began to learn on my own and finding that I was unable to play like Jimmy Dorsey within a few days, became quite discouraged; however, my friend Wendell was progressing quite well and not wanting to let him get too far ahead of me, I got back to it.

A local music teacher, Mrs. Cornwell, became aware of the fact that there were several of us in town struggling with our musical education and decided to organize a sort of orchestra. She was an accomplished musician and played the harp and piano professionally and was learning the xylophone. She had quite a library of music, some of which was well-known semi-classical music that beginners could eventually learn. In a town of 500 people, it didn't take long for the public to become aware of our presence and we were called upon to provide entertainment for various occasions. The local School Board decided to set aside a few dollars for the program and we became the School Orchestra, with the school providing the music and even paying Mrs. Cornwell a small salary to be our teacher and conductor.

In my senior year in High School we had a band instructor, Mr. McNeil, who was also coach of the athletic program. Real progress for our little school.

(To be continued next Friday)

Susan Virginia "Jennie V." Cummings Zane

2008-01-24T14:06:00.000-08:00

And.... that's a really long name.

I have to say, the guy in Wyoming (whose name is Carl, not Steve) will have a nice soft bed in Heaven if he treats all of his patrons as well as he treated me. Color me IMPRESSED.

Today I received Jennie's death certificate from his office, exactly seven days after I called him, and the best part was, Carl also threw in a copy of her obituary from the Sundance newspaper. Color me THRILLED.

And, even after writing about it, I completely forgot that I ordered it, and was very happily surprised when my husband came in with the mail last Thursday. Color me AIRHEADED.

At any rate, Carl at the Wyoming State Archives Office (307-777-7826) is a sweet, sweet man and I would send him flowers and chocolates if he wouldn't think I was stalking him, or something. Color me GRATEFUL.

As for the death certificate itself, it was very well-filled in, including her parents' names and birthplaces, birth date and place, husband's name, cause of death (cerebral apoplexy - stroke)... and her obituary went like this:

Mrs. Jennie Zane Passed Away Here On April 4th
Had Been Resident of Community For Thirty Years

Mrs. Jennie V. Zane, for more than thirty years a resident of this community, passed away at her home in this city on Thursday, April 4th, following an illness which extended over a long period of time. Funeral services were conducted on Sunday, Rev. Calvin officiating and interment was made in the local cemetery.

Jennie V. Cummings was born in Loudan County, Virginia January 17, 1849 and died April 4, 1929 at the age of 80 years 2 months and 17 days.

She was married to Thomas W. Zane at Lawton, Michigan January 27, 1867, her husband died 25 years ago.

From this union two children were born, Jesse T. Zane, who preceded her in death several years ago; and Mrs. W.R. Fox of Gillette, Wyoming.

She came to Wyoming in 1890 and has been a continuous resident of Crook county up to the time of her death.

Photo of the Week - January 20, 2008

2008-01-20T08:47:00.000-08:00

(Click on the picture to make it bigger - I love all the details.)

The Johnsons and the Keithlers, having a killer time.

From left to right: Cora Clark Johnson, Howard Keithler, Aaron Johnson, Adina Clark Keithler. Cora and Adina are sisters, and Adina and Howard are my great grandparents. Howard and Adina seem to be looking at something - was Lawrence Welk on TV yet?

I love seeing my ancestors in their "natural habitat."

Today is D-Day

2008-01-19T09:03:00.000-08:00

The "D" standing for "DAR," of course.

In precisely 57 minutes, I have an appointment with my local DAR chapter's registrar. Right now the priority is a shower, something suitable to wear, and making a decision about what to order at Starbucks when I meet her there. I'm thinking definitely hot chocolate (even though it's death in a cup) and possibly a piece of buttermilk coffee cake (ditto).

Cute Bri had it in his head that the meeting today would be interview-ish. How they would interview someone about joining DAR, I don't know. "Are you sure you have a patriot ancestor? Are you sure? ARE YOU SURE?" I told him, it says right on their website that any woman who is 18 or older and can prove her lineage to a patriot ancestor can join DAR, so even if it's Trailer Trash Trixie with eight missing teeth, an off-center pony tail, Daisy Dukes and 75 illegitimate kids... she's still in like Flynn.

Although... the fact that this is a genealogical society might put someone like TTT off. This is more or less a geeky endeavor - an OLD LADY endeavor, even. So not only will I fit right in, being a geeky old lady of almost 38, but I imagine people like Trixie would run screaming the other way from the idea of demurely sipping tea (in my case, hot chocolate) while wearing white gloves.

Which is pretty much what I'll be doing from now till the age of 90, now that I'm joining DAR.

Have a fantastic Saturday, and think of me as I'm signing my young life away this morning. I hope we can still be friends after this.

Life History of William Ricketts Smith, Part 4: Bill's dad Maurice and Baptism

2008-01-18T08:04:00.000-08:00

(Part 3 is here.)

In 1930 my dad bought a dray business which he operated until 1939. The business provided us a pretty good living. It was hard work as most of the hauling was done with horses and wagon and all the loading and unloading was done by hand. The work consisted of hauling coal, gravel, ashes, lumber and whatever freight came on the daily passenger and freight trains including mail, parcel post and express as well as merchandise for the local stores. Ice cream came in big five-gallon insulated packers on the passenger train as did most perishables. My Dad seldom asked me to help him but was always happy to have me do so. I helped mostly when he had carloads to unload consisting mostly of lumber, coal or cement and handled the mail often on and off the passenger trains and hauling it with our model "T" truck. My dad was an honest hardworking man.

The property in town was three lots wide, a two-story house, barn, chicken house, coal and ice house, garage and a large vegetable garden. There was no inside plumbing so we also had an outhouse. My high school years were spent there. We had a milk cow and chickens and my dad had a green thumb so we always had a productive garden and we always had enough to eat.

Lodge Grass was my first experience of living in a town and I gradually became less intimidated by other people. When I was 15, I was baptized into the Baptist Church. My mother had been baptized in the Episcopal Church when young and she believed that you should be baptized by immersion instead of sprinkling, so she had been baptized in the Little Big Horn River a year or two before. Our preacher was a young man from Chicago, recently out of seminary, and wanted to have a baptism service at Easter time.

At Easter time in Montana the Little Big Horn is usually frozen over. Rev. Engle had acquired a large metal tank and placed it by the heating stove in the church. There was a well with a hand pump behind the church and some of the men spent several evenings pumping and carrying water in buckets to fill the tank. By the time Easter evening arrived the water may have warmed up to about 50° or so. There were about four or so of us being baptized. My friend Adrian Crosby was first and I was next. As soon as I was baptized I ran home, about two blocks, it was freezing outside, to change into some dry clothes.

(To be continued next Friday)

DUUUUUUUUUUUUUDE.

2008-01-17T15:53:00.000-08:00

Sometimes it pays to just pick up the phone.

I wanted a copy of a death certificate for an ancestor who died in Wyoming. And I wasn't trying to mooch or anything - I was ready to cough up between $6-20, type up a letter, send it off and wait six weeks, because usually, death certificates are valuable pieces of information - the exception being that of my great-great-grandmother Mary Lucinda Newberry Ackley, where almost every field was filled in "unknown."

I Googled "Wyoming Death Records," was taken to their official page, read the instructions, and saw their phone number. After I dialed it and pressed 1 and 2 and 1 a few times, I was directed to another phone number, for the Wyoming State Archives. Any death that occurred more than 50 years ago is filed with the Wyoming State Archives, not at the Vital Records department (good to know if you have peeps in Wyoming).

After dialing up the State Archives office, I was privileged to speak with a real live human being of the male persuasion, who asked me what I needed. I told him I wanted a death record for Susan Virginia "Jennie" Zane, gave him the death date and county, and he said "OK" and took down my name, address and phone number. I'll probably have it within the week. And that was that. I asked what the charge was and he said, "No charge for one record."

What - no paperwork? No fee? No pleading, "Please, I'm begging you, it's just for genealogy, I really am her granddaughter, I promise to not use her information for identity fraud" letter to the Archives Office? Sweet! And all this time, I've been a tad bugged at Wyoming (and all the other states) who so far haven't bothered to create an online death index. "Come on, Wyoming... all the other states are doing it..."

But if it's as easy as calling up Steve at the Archives Office and just plain asking... I guess I can live with that.

Your Chance To Tour the Rexburg Temple

2008-01-17T07:37:00.000-08:00

... is almost gone!

The open house for the new Rexburg Temple ends January 26, so if you're anywhere in the vicinity (Rexburg is on the eastern side of Idaho, next to Montana and north of Yellowstone National Park), head on over.

(My original post is linked to the press release.)

Also: What a blessing it is that the Holocaust records are finally being opened to the public. After all they've been through, at least now Holocaust survivors can find out what ultimately happened to their family members. Read more here.

You Don't Have To Do It All

2008-01-15T13:31:00.000-08:00

"...In the work of redeeming the dead there are many tasks to be performed...all members should participate by prayerfully selecting those ways that fit their personal circumstances at a particular time...Members of this church have many individual circumstances — age, health, education, place of residence, family responsibilities, financial circumstances, accessibility to sources for individual or library research, and many others. If we encourage members in this work without taking these individual circumstances into account, we may do more to impose guilt than to further the work...Our effort is not to compel everyone to do everything, but to encourage everyone to do something."

-- Elder Dallin H. Oaks

(Read the rest of the article here.)

One Reason Why I Do This

2008-01-14T07:12:00.000-08:00

Not only did my grandfather, "Gran" (William Ricketts Smith), lead an interesting life, he was someone I felt very close to and still hold dear. I'm so grateful he left behind a record of his life, even a relatively short one, in his own words. What a treasure it is. Because he took the time to write it, the great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren and so on will all have a chance to get to know him.

The same with Grandma Keen (Alice Muriel Johnson) - just that one brief sketch of her family history and her childhood, really helped me get a handle not only on her family's comings and goings, but on her spirit and personality. I know from talking to older cousins that her life, and her parents' lives, were very hard, and full of heartbreak. To read her take on it - "What an adventure!" - points out the sweetness and optimism inherent in her nature.

By contrast, here's what I know about Gran's grandfather, William Raymond Fox:

1) He was an undertaker.
2) Every morning at 9:00, he had an appointment... with his outhouse.

Gran once told me (I don't know why on earth this was our topic for discussion, but there you go) that Grandpa Fox was so regular, you could set your watch by him. If anyone asked him to meet somewhere at 9:00 AM, he would even tell them, "I can't." I'm pretty sure Gran also said that Grandpa Fox would tell the person why.

Unfortunately Grandpa Fox left no other record of his life, and everyone who knew him is gone also. Well, maybe Neenaw (my grandmother) knew him, but obviously not as well as Gran did. Consequently, those two facts - aside from his birth, marriage, and death information - are all I can pass on to future generations, and all I'll ever know about Grandpa Fox until I see him when I die. I would really like to have more to say to him than, "So what was it like, being an undertaker?" and "Wow, so... 9:00 every morning, huh?"

That's why I do this: I want some say over how people remember me. I'm interested in preserving not only my family history, but also the life stories of the people I knew and loved, whom future generations will not have the chance to know in this lifetime. It's important to me that my descendants know a little more about me and my ancestors than our occupations and (ahem) personal habits.

Otherwise, Heaven is going to be kind of awkward.

Photo of the Week: 13 January 2008

2008-01-13T12:44:00.000-08:00

(Click on the picture to make it bigger)

My grandmother Alice "Dorothea" Keen Dysart and me, shortly after my birth. After I was born, she came to our apartment in Seattle and visited us (notice my parents' fun cement-block bookcase behind us). I was born two days after her birthday.

"Grandma Dot" always had a beautiful yard and garden. My brother B.C. and I visited her and Grandpa for a week one summer, and since we lived on the Oregon coast and were used to milder weather, their town (Walla Walla, Washington) seemed incredibly hot. The sun would heat up their boxwood hedge by the front porch and make it smell so wonderful - the scent still reminds me of Grandma's house.

She was a funny, feisty, peppery little lady. She loved chocolates, and would buy herself a box, eat a few chocolates, hide the box, forget where she hid it, and buy herself a new box. After she died, almost-full boxes of chocolates were discovered here and there all over the house. Other than that, her house was immaculate. She played the organ and kept a notebook of the songs she practiced or played. Sometimes we'd go to her house and her organ would be turned up so loud, she couldn't hear the doorbell, but we could hear her outside. Judging from her 8-track tape collection, she loved Elvis Presley and Tom Jones. One funny discovery was a tape called "Music to Strip By."

Grandma loved keeping up with the local law enforcement, fire department, and ambulance activity, and always had at least one police scanner turned on and making noise on her hutch. She liked keeping track of the numbered codes of each department and would type up lists of the codes to post near her scanner, so she could see who was doing what. When she died, I inherited her manual typewriter and one of her half-finished scanner code lists was still in the typewriter case.

Her memorial is here.

Life History of William Ricketts Smith, Part 3: Showers, Indians, and Electricity

2008-01-11T08:00:00.000-08:00

(Part 2 is here.)

We lived in our oilfield shack at Parkman Camp from about January 1927 until March 1928. We had free natural gas and the water tank was right by our house. There was a "company" bath house and if you had a membership you could bathe there. The first shower bath I ever saw. My dad worked for one of the oil companies and we bought our groceries at the commisary in Midwest. Times were pretty good for us.

By the spring of 1928, my dad had saved up a little money and he couldn't stand being away from the farm any longer so we made a trip to Lodge Grass, Montana where my dad rented a farm from an Indian named Martinez. By the time we got started moving, the spring thaw was beginning and the roads were solid mud or rather sloppy mud. The engine went out of the truck and my dad bought another one and with all the other expenses, we were nearly broke when we finally reached the farm.

Our neighbor was an old Indian, Chester Otter Chief, and he painted his face. I had never seen an Indian before and he used to peer at us through the bushes along the creek. My mother was afraid of him, so was I. The fields were foul but my dad was able to grow a fair crop of barely but it was worth about 20 cents a bushel I guess. So he decided to buy some pigs and feed them the barley and maybe make better money that way so he moved us into town and we didn't have to ride the bus anymore. The bus was a horse-drawn covered wagon. It had a small coal-burning stove and would have been comfortable except it was so rough riding.

In the early part of 1929 I became ill with typhoid fever and came very near to dying. I missed almost two months of school and was a long time after that recovering my strength. The evening of the fourth of April brought a telegram saying that my Great Grandmother Zane had passed away. The same year the town of Lodge Grass incorporated and installed a light plant bringing us the first electric lights we ever had in our home. Also in 1929 my Grandfather Fox bought a farm on Owl Creek southeast of Lodge Grass and a house in town in which we lived for ten years.

(To be continued next Friday)

DAR Lady Meeting

2008-01-10T14:29:00.000-08:00

DAR Lady and I are meeting next Saturday morning at a super-secrety Starbucks location, so I can sign my application and fork over my fee. I can hardly wait! She says that at the next board meeting, all the little DAR ladies in my chapter will sign my application and they'll send it off to Washington, D.C., and I'll be a full-fledged member of DAR after it's... whatever they do to it.

I don't know why but I feel super-compelled to do this. It might be repentance for not using Grandma Dot's money to join DAR when she sent it to me. We were in college and broke, so (naughty us) we used the money for groceries. The fee has almost tripled in amount since then. That's what I get. That can't be the reason why I feel so eager, though. Usually my overwhelming guilt is what does it to me, but for some reason I think it'll be fun (fun?) and I'll have some kind of ... something happening.

DAR Geek Happiness

2008-01-09T14:29:00.000-08:00

I just read that my friend Emma Sometimes is also joining DAR! And she lives in my town, so we'll be in the same chapter! I sense some serious geek-bonding coming up soon.

DAR Paperwork Update

2008-01-07T14:30:00.000-08:00

DAR lady emailed me to say she received my paperwork and it looks to be in order. We will meet sometime next week so I can sign my life way to DAR.

DAR... I am your servant....

Family History Library and Vicinity

2008-01-07T08:10:00.000-08:00

Last August, I took a trip and met some bloggy friends in Colorado. It was a great trip, and part of the fun was visiting Salt Lake City, aka "Genealogy Mecca." While there, I captured some of my favorite genealogy sights. Click on the images to get a better viewpoint.

Inside the Joseph Smith Memorial Building in downtown Salt Lake, there's a small Family History Center, much like others found around the country (minus the books, microfilms, and other resources, since the big Library is nearby), staffed by full-time sister missionaries who switch shifts every half hour throughout Temple Square. They come from all over the world and speak a variety of languages from every continent, to be able to guide visitors from any country through the area. My friend Angela served her mission here. Luck-eeeee.

This picture, found on the wall in the Family History Center at the JS Memorial Building, is fun and a little earth-shattering: a chart outlining some of the Howland family's descendants. From three sons of Henry Howland - one came to America on the Mayflower - come these individuals: the Presidents Bush, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, President Gerald Ford, President Richard Nixon, the prophet Joseph Smith, his wife Emma Hale Smith, and Sir Winston Churchill, along with Mr. Joseph Ira Earl, a Utah native - kind of a "If this guy is related to all these people, who might you be related to?" thing. Imagine that family reunion.

In the Family History Library itself, located across the street from the west side of Temple Square and next to the Church History Museum (also a must-visit), this portrait faces the front entrance of the building. It features Christ in the center, a modern-day family discussing their family history, Joseph Smith and the Old Testament prophet Elijah in the lower left corner, spirits of the deceased working on family history in their sphere, and ancestors from different eras in history dressed in period clothing (my favorite). The painting communicates to me the emphasis of all of us being one big family, the importance of "finding" each other (and doing it NOW rather than waiting for a better time), and the family ties that exist throughout eternity.

Also in the Family History Library, on the back (south) wall of the first floor, behind all the tables: a chart similar to the Howland family's, depicting the descendants of Joseph and Emma Smith, some of whom are only now being found. For the founder of a Church so connected to family history, it's sad and kind of amazing that Joseph's family flew to the winds the way it did, but they are being found and documented, and gathered onto this HUGE chart. I had to try several different angles to get the whole thing in the picture and probably looked pretty goofy to the other patrons who watched, but who cares. My dear friend No Cool Story and I have long had the motto, "Anything for the blog."

If you've never been to Salt Lake City to research your ancestors, I would definitely recommend it (beg you to book a trip at your earliest convenience is actually what I'd do). It's absolutely worth the time and money spent, and you can even search the Family History Library Catalog before you go, to get the most from your time there. I'm counting the days till my next visit!

Photo of the Week - January 6, 2008

2008-01-06T08:53:00.000-08:00

(Click on the picture to make it bigger)

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS WOMAN?

Don't you love the ripped edges? Many of the photos I inherited from this side of the family (the Johnsons) are ripped like this - apparently it was "the thing" back then, as was gluing the pictures to the black scrapbook pages, rendering whatever was written on the back impossible to read. Other than that, it's kind of a cute idea.

It's my hunch that this beautiful lady is my great grandma Alice Johnson Keen's youngest sister, Hattie Quintilla Johnson Biersner. Sadly, Hattie died of pneumonia in the influenza epidemic, and family rumor says that she was expecting her first baby when she passed away. How heartbreaking this must have been for her husband.

Of course, they're all together now. I love happy endings.

Life History of William Ricketts Smith, Part 2: Measles, School, and Oilfield Life

2008-01-04T21:14:00.000-08:00

(Part 1 is here).

There were four of us, my brother Raymond having been born in June 1921, and six of them [Uncle Harold Fox, Aunt Ella, four cousins] in an unfinished house with two bedrooms. To make matters worse, all us kids came down with measles. We pooled our efforts in the spring of 1926 but as fall came we were no better off than we were in the spring, just tireder. My dad got a job in the Midwest oil field and began work about September. We sold all our belongings except our car and clothes and household goods as well as my dad's share of the homestead for a total of about $300.00.

We moved to our oilfield shack at Parkman Camp about three miles south of Midwest, Wyoming. That was the first school I attended where there were more than six students. The school was about 1 1/2 miles west and was also attended by kids from Consolidated Camp. I was accustomed to walking to school about that distance as I had always done so. The first school I attended had barely room for the teacher's desk, the stove and four pupils' desks and the teacher's chair which was used to prop the door shut on windy days. There were three Eastwood kids, Ralph, Earl and Ina and me for a total of four. The teacher (Miss Reynolds) stayed at our house and my dad used to take us in the bobsled sometimes.

I don't remember very much about my life on the homestead, just sketches. We got our drinking water from a spring at our neighbors' place about 1 1/2 miles west. I guess our places joined. Their name was Speilman and we hauled water on a stone-boat in a barrel. There was a place where we dug our coal at Harry's place and Aron Speilman and my family used to get coal together so we had plenty of coal to keep us warm in those Wyoming winters.

I remember one time when a big threshing machine came to our place and threshed our grain. I remember a terrible hail storm and my mother went out to save her little chicks and a hailstone hit her in the back and made a big black and blue mark. I remember a winter day, a bright sunny day, my dad and I went horseback to look after the cattle and we found some of them dead. When I got back to the house, I was standing by the window looking out across the snow and I came to the realization that I was an individual and that someday I would have to die as those cattle had to do and I have never forgotten that day.

(To be continued next Friday)

DAR: Will the Cousins Be Joining??

2008-01-04T14:31:00.000-08:00

After Bri brought home the copies Tuesday night, I got everything ready and put it in the mail yesterday morning. Today I received an email from cousin Mandi, excitedly thanking me for sending the paperwork. We live in the same town but I still didn't expect next-day service! Pretty sweet! The registrar lives in Camas so we'll see if I hear from her tomorrow.

Press Release about the New Rexburg, Idaho Temple

2008-01-03T05:26:00.000-08:00

New Temple Reflects Biblical Parallels

DAR: Grandma Keen's Application

2008-01-02T14:32:00.000-08:00

I received Grandma Keen's DAR application in the mail on 12/29 and sent it with Bri to work today, so he can make copies of it - it's on 8 1/2 x 14" paper and my little copier at home only does regular-size paper. It was exciting to receive it. I called my chapter registrar and she's all excited too. So far Aunt Nancy and Becky have expressed an interest in getting copies of Grandma's application for their use.

After the copies are ready (of Grandma's stuff and all my birth, marriage and death certificates), I'll mail them to the chapter registrar and she'll fill out my application for me. Sometime after 1/15 (payday), I'll meet with her, sign my application and pay the fee. She'll get more signatures and mail everything to DC, and sometime after that I'll be a member. I'm excited to see what it will bring!

Happy New Year!

2008-01-01T10:31:00.001-08:00

May your genealogy endeavors bear much fruit and be really, really fun and exciting.

P.S. FindaGrave.com is my new favorite toy.

DAR, Here I Come

2007-12-30T11:02:00.000-08:00

Alice's application for membership in National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution arrived yesterday! That was so fast! It only took two or three weeks. I called my local chapter registrar this morning and she's all excited to fill out my application for me. I have to make copies of all my paperwork and send it to her, then when my application is finished, we'll meet and I'll sign my application and pay the fee. My family members who are thinking of joining it with me, can also use Alice's paperwork.

I notice there's also a Huguenot Society affiliated with DAR. The Dragoos were Huguenots, so I could probably join that too, if I wanted to take the time to prove my relationship to Pierre Dragaud. (Jennie Lee Dragoo is my great grandfather Howard Mitchell Keithler's mother.) It definitely wouldn't be as simple as proving my relationship to my great grandmother. A Mayflower Descendant group is also available to join, but I haven't decided if I'm one of those or not yet. I should probably not go nuts on joining groups I won't have time for or want to pay yearly dues for. But it's still fun.

Verna Browning, World Traveler

2007-12-29T13:13:00.000-08:00

I'm having a lot of fun with Verna. I found her just today, a descendant of the Mitchell family - her father was William L. Browning, and her grandmother was Susan Franklin Mitchell Browning, the Brownings Kathy and I had discussed in our emails.

I didn't have any children for Susan and her husband, W.W. Browning, so I looked until I found some. They are:
Charles L., born about 1865 (all born in Kentucky)
William L., born April 1866
Julia, born about 1868
Annie, born March 1870

William married Etta (I also found her as Ettie), a Missouri native, and they had one daughter, Verna, born 16 August 1905 in Beaumont, Texas. Sometimes it's easier to find a family by one of the children's names, so I searched for Verna at Ancestry to see what I could see.

A few fun links revealed that Verna had taken several trips by ship to other countries - first to Europe with her mother Ettie, boarding the S.S. Lapland at Antwerp, Belgium and arriving home in New York in 1927; then alone, once coming home from Queenstown, Ireland, on the S.S. Adriatic in 1930, and then on the S.S. Uruguay, coming home from Rio de Janeiro in 1939.

It's fun to imagine Verna and her mother taking these trips, what they must have seen, their clothing and hair styles, and how they spent their time on these ships, but what I'm dying to know now is, what was Verna doing with all this traveling? Was it part of her job to travel, or was she simply taking advantage of the family finances (her father William was a bank president)? If it was part of her job, what did she do for a living?

I found a Verna Browning in a University of California, Berkeley, 1927 yearbook here. I wish there was some way to magnify it - it looks like each student's hometown is printed with their name, and I think I see "Alvin," which is where she was from.

It appears that Verna never married. In the Social Security Death Index, I found her under her maiden name. She died in February 1983, probably in Texas.