Family History Now

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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!

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.