L is for Law - 2017 A to Z Challenge

One of the challenges to understanding the documents left by our ancestors is understanding the law at that particular time and place.

I was privileged to hear Judy G Russell The Legal Genealogist, speak at an all-day seminar in February of this year. To most of us, law seems like a pretty dry and dull subject but Judy makes it lively as she reminds us how pertinent and valuable it is to our genealogy.

In some places and times, women were not permitted to inherit land.

In some places and times, a widow’s children were given to her husband’s family to raise. 

Why wasn’t the eldest son mentioned in the will?  Perhaps the law of primogeniture guaranteed the he automatically inherited the land; and the will merely distributed other property. Don’t assume that he was dead.

Why wasn’t the wife mentioned in the will?  If the law of dower was in place, it may mean only that he intended to leave her only what the law of dower allowed.  Again, don’t assume that she was deceased or divorced.

Did you know?  I certainly didn’t.  Here are a few resources:

The Legal Genealogist

FamilyTreeWebinars – Ms. Russell has done several of these

FamilySearch WIKI

Hathi Trust

And check state archives for information on statutes and legislation.

Sometimes we don’t know what it is that we don’t know.

Who’s Who?

  

I wish I could positively identify everyone in this photo. The best I can do is a semi-educated guess – especially on the children..

Based on comparisons with other photos, I believe that my grandmother, Stella Schipp Ganas, is on the left, and her sister, Mary Schipp Fierstein, on the right.

My best guess is that the photo was taken in 1910 or 11. If was 1911, Stella also had an infant not pictured. The sisters lived next door to one another at 263 and 264 Upper Levee in St. Paul, Minnesota. Their parents, Michael and Elizabeth Schipp brought them from Poland to the US in 1887 and settled on the levee of the Mississippi river.

The levee was where many immigrants from many countries put down their American roots.  The location was less than ideal because of the frequent Spring floods as snowmelt raised the level of the river.  On the other hand, St. Paul was a busy steamship port for both freight and passenger travel. Grain milling, lumber and railroads provided job opportunities. St. Paul was a good place to be.

This link will take you to a page with some pictures of early St. Paul.

October Blog Party – Strange

I feel left out this month.

Elizabeth O’Neal’s October Blog Party asks about the strangest thing we’ve found in our genealogy research.  But my family research has found only typical, everyday kind of folks.  No witches or wizards. Scandals have been minor.  Very unexciting.  Poor me.

So the best I can do to contribute in the spirit of strangeness and Halloween is the image below.  It is a Google Street View image as shown on Your Daily Dish.

Genealogy on Facebook

If you haven’t explored genealogy on Facebook, you may be missing a huge amount of information and collaborative help.  Facebook is so much more than “what I had for lunch” and pictures of grandchildren and cute cats.  

Katherine R. Willson has compiled a list of more than 10,000 Facebook pages and groups related to genealogy and history.  You can download the Genealogy on Facebook List, a PDF file with 288 pages of links to these pages. The table of contents alone takes up more than 8 pages.

My limited experience with genealogy groups on Facebook has been completely positive.  I’ll be scouring this list for helpful pages.

 Here is Katherine's own Facebook page.

Back to School Blog Party

This post is for Elizabeth O’Neal’s Back to School BlogParty. The premise is a genealogy school and what our students need to learn.  Be sure to check into the Blog Party site throughout the month to get some helpful hints.

This topic is timely because I lead a special interest group for beginning genealogists for Indian River Genealogical Society.  We meet September through May so I’m preparing for our new season.

So… What do my group attendees need to know?

Cite Sources

Always document sources – even casual sources.  If you got information from cousin Edna, note that. Information from family interviews may not always be accurate, but we need to know where it came from. If a fact is from your own personal knowledge, note that, too. As research continues, sources get more verifiable and concrete. Sometimes it is important to know where misinformation comes from.

Question Everything

Even “official” documents may contain misinformation. The information on a death certificate, for example, is only as accurate as the knowledge of the person giving it. A young man may have lied about his age when enlisting in the military. A young woman may have fudged her age when applying for a marriage license.   Census records are often filled with misspellings, and erroneous information.

Don’t rely on one single document as absolute proof.  Verify! Verify! Verify!

Make Use of Free Resources

Subscription sites are great but there is a great deal of information available at no charge

Cyndi’s List

Family Search

Family Search Wiki

and so many others

Continuing Education

Webinars

            LegacyFamilyTreeWebinars (free)           

Free weekly webinars.  Each webinar is available to view at no charge for one week following the live presentation.  Buying a subscription gives unlimited access to all previous webinars and the syllabus for each one. (more than 300 webinars)

            FamilySearch Classes and Webinars (free)

            AncestryAcademy (membership required)

            GeneaWebnarsCalendar – a listing of upcoming webinars

            Blogs

Read blogs by professional and amateur bloggers – especially those who are doing research similar to yours.              

Geneabloggers.com – a wealth of blogs and blogging resources

But most of all, they tell me what they need to know so that they can make progress along their genealogy journey.

           

Distracted by a New Toy

Last July, +Dick Eastman wrote in a post about a Kickstarter project he was backing.  I looked into it and decided to become a backer of Remix Mini by Jide Technology.  

Remix Mini.   Yes, it is truly this small.

The Remix Mini was promoted as the first Android based PC.  At that point the only thing I knew about Android was that it is the primary operating system for most smartphones and tablets.

Although we're both techies, my husband and I are waaaaaay behind the curve when it comes to handheld devices.  We use our phones only as phones. I get and respond to an occasional text - less than once a month - from one my kids or my brother. As for tablets, the iPad is not in our budget; nor has been any other tablet that has a screen that we feel is big enough.

Finally, now, prices of 10 inch tablets are coming down to our level. So the question becomes which OS to choose.  We've both been Microsoft users since way before Windows and still are. (We managed to avoid Vista and Windows 8.)  Should we stay in the Windows family with a tablet, or should we look at Android devices?  The Remix Mini looked like a good opportunity to get to know Android, and to consider what our next PCs might be when ours finally bite the dust.

My Minis arrived this past week (I got two of them) and I've been exploring Android. So far, I'm very favorably impressed.  Remember that I'm looking at this device as a possible full PC replacement, not as a small mobile device.

My verdict, thus far, is that it could work - mostly.  The lack of a hard disk is negated with the use of flash drives and mini SanDisk memory cards, a local network drive, and cloud storage. I suppose the lack of a CD/DVD device could be taken care of with an external device. Of course there is still the issue of major software applications like Photoshop, and most genealogy software.  But Android's design for small devices means that it simply is not as robust as operating systems designed for large systems.  Android is easy to navigate and very intuitive.  I am still in the early stages of exploration and learning so I'll reserve judgement on the OS for now.

I am writing this post using Google Docs on my Mini.  I'll get back to genealogy before too long.

#Android #Remix Mini PC #Dick Eastman

Hooray for Google Translate!

It isn’t perfect, but Google Translate is helping me understand my Polish heritage.

My genealogy focus in on heritage rather than merely on lineage. I want to know how and where my ancestors lived.  Google Earth has let me see the locations of my ancestral villages and Street View has let me drive through them as they are today.  That’s the easy part,

The hard part is getting an understanding of these villages as they were in the 19^th century. I’m doing this by reading gazetteers from that time. There are two of them.  This post looks at entries for Grabow nad Prosna, the village of my Schipp ancestors in Poland.

Meyers Gazetteer of the German Empire (commonly called Meyers Orts) includes Prussian Poland where my ancestors lived.  See below for links to online access. It is in two volumes. The fifth edition was published in 1915. The descriptions of small towns and villages are generally brief, but include population broken down by religion, businesses, and facilities such as mail, railroad and telegraph. Here’s the entry for Grabow nad Prosna.  It is a three-pronged challenge

You can see that it is printed in old German Script. Deciphering the script is the first challenge.  Once the script is decoded, the second challenge is the abbreviations.  Fortunately there is an abbreviation table online. See link below. The third challenge is the actual translation. I do not speak German. With the combination of a good German/English dictionary and Google Translate, I get some understanding of this town.

Among other things Meyers Orts tells me that there was a dairy, a sawmill, and a railroad station that served both passenger and freight customers and had a telegraph. There was one Protestant church and 2 Catholic churches.

Słownik Geograficzny Kólestwa Polskiego i innych krajów słowiańskich

 (Geographical Dictionary) is a gazetteer of Poland “and other Slavic countries” published in 15 volumes.  It is available online as are guides to its use. See links below.  Despite the complexity of the Polish language, this is easier because it is printed in a normal font – I can recognize the alphabet. But this one also has the challenges of abbreviations and a language I don’t speak.  The edition I find online was published beginning in 1880 – it took a few years to complete all 15 volumes.

The advantage of this gazetteer is that there is more information in each entry.

This is just a very small portion of the entry in Slownik Geograficzny for Grabow nad Prosna.

It describes the city of Grabow on the Prosna river as being in a lush fertile valley. It says that the residents were engaged in agriculture, cattle breeding, and smuggling in spite of vigilant border guards.

The smuggling part sparks my imagination. Were my ancestors law abiding farmers or did they make a little extra income on the side???

Grabow had a doctor and a pharmacy. It had once had iron smelters and a Franciscan monastery.

The entry for Grabow nad Prosna is quite extensive and includes some significant points of history going back to the year 1264.

Wow!

There are some words that I’ve not been able to translate either using a Polish/English or Google Translate.  That’s OK because I’m not looking for a verbatim translation, I just want to get a sense of what the village was like in that time.

Google Translate is more than adequate and is so very much easier than looking up every word in a dictionary.  Hooray for Google Translate.

If you know of other sites for gazetteers that may be relevant, please leave a comment with a link.

Links:

Meyers Orts

Family Search

Volume 1: A – K 

Volume 2: L – Z

Step by Step Guide for UsingMeyers Gazetteer Online

Abbreviation Table for MeyersOrts.

Ancestry.com

            Note: this version is searchable.

The Hathi Trust

Volume 1: A – K 

Volume 2: L – Z

Slownik Geograficzny

Polish Roots – this is the easiest site for those of us who don’t speak Polish. There is a link to an excellent guide to using this resource. The “How to Use” document on this site gives detailed instructions for using the dictionary.  The first link to an online version takes you to the University of Warsaw site which is in Polish. If you use the Chrome browser it will give you the option to translate. There is a list of abbreviations beginning on page 13 of Volume 1.  This list is crucial for reading the entries.

WARNING: The pages of the dictionary are in Java Script which is not supported by Chrome. I had to revert to Internet Explorer to see the pages.

Finding Ancestors’ Records in Poland

The key to finding records anywhere is knowing where to look. That can become especially tricky looking in a foreign country where you don’t know the language All of my grandparents were born in Poland.

My mother knew that her father came from the village of Iwno. It didn’t take long for me to home in on Iwno, get LDS microfilms, and find his birth record.

Mom also knew that her mother was born in Grabow.  When I began this project in 1999 there were not as many resources available online.  The best resource for finding a village in Eastern Europe was a site called Shteltseeker – now called TownFinder on JewishGenWeb. I entered the name Grabow and specified that it was in Poland. The search results came back with 12 villages named Grabow – scattered all over the country.  It was sort of like knowing that your relatives came from a town named Springfield somewhere in the United States. I got a road atlas of Poland to help locate all of these Grabows.

I started ordering LDS films from various Grabows but got very frustrated and switched my focus to other searches.

Then, just a few years ago I learned of a Polish site called The Poznan Project. Volunteers have been, and still are, transcribing all 19^th century marriages in Poznan region  (then called Posen by the Prussians). It has a powerful search engine.  I found my great grandparents’ marriage in 1872 in the town of Grabow nad Prosna which translates to Grabow on the Prosna river.

Grabow nad Prosna

LDS film 1189069 showed my Grandmother’s baptism. Except for deciphering ancient handwriting, these Catholic Church records are pretty easy because they’re written in Latin

This Baptism register shows that Stanislawa Sip was born on October 25,1874 to Michael Sip and Elizabeth Jasczynska (they listed the mother’s maiden name) in Pustkowie Grabow, one of the 16 villages that comprise the town of Grabow nad Prosna. The place of birth is important because a church may have served several different villages in the area. The record also shows her father’s occupation and the names of her Godparents. This was very exciting.

But wait! There’s more!

Prussia began keeping civil records in 1874. I got much more information by reading the civil record of her birth.

Not so easy. The forms are printed in German Script and filled out by hand in German. Thank goodness for Google Translate!

For both the bride and groom the information includes.

• Village of birth
• Date of birth
• Current residence
• Parents’ names
• Residence village of Parents
• Names of witnesses

Just as in our modern times, a wedding generally took place in the bride’s church. These civil records give much better information on where both parties were born.

Using The Poznan Project and other Polish genealogy sites has made my searches much more productive.  Not that I’ve found everyone – there are still plenty of Polish puzzles to solve.

What adds some meat to the bare bones data is that, using Google Earth, I’ve been able to see where my ancestors came from. The villages look much different, of course, but it still gives the perspective of the land. Was it forest or farmland? Hilly, mountainous, or flat?  My experience shows that if there’s a numbered road through the town (Hwy 449 for example) Google Street View has probably traveled it. It has been so much fun to drive through my ancestral villages.

Google Earth view of Grabow nad Prosna

AND!!!   Many towns even have their own websites that include the town’s history.  

Hooray for the internet!

First names – Part I

Everyone searching for European ancestors has encountered first names that are unique to a nation or region.  Many of these are quite common and easily translated into English.  Every country also has some names that do not translate easily or/and are so old fashioned that they’ve been out of use for many years. Here a are a couple that I’ve encountered researching my Polish ancestors.

Kunegunda (Cunegunda)

 St. Kunegunda (1224-1292) Daughter of King Bela IV and niece of St. Elizabeth of Hungary, she married King Boleslaus V of Poland at sixteen. On his death in 1279 she became a Poore Clare at the Convent of Sandeck, which she had founded. She also built churches and hospitals, ransomed Christians captured by the Turks, and served the poor and ill. She is also known as St. Kinga. Her cult was confirmed in 1690. Feast day July 24.

Nepomucene

John of Nepomuk (or John Nepomucene) (Czech: Jan Nepomucký) (c. 1345 – March 20, 1393)^[1] is a national saint of Bohemia, who was drowned in the Vltava river at the behest of Wenceslaus, King of the Romans and King of Bohemia. Later accounts state that he was the confessor of the queen of Bohemia and refused to divulge the secrets of the confessional. On the basis of this account, John of Nepomuk is considered the first martyr of the Seal of the Confessional, a patron againstcalumnies and, because of the manner of his death, a protector from floods and drowning.

I have found only a few instances of this first name.  Since this is the patron saint of Bohemia, it leaves me curious to learn if there is a possible connection to Bohemia in my ancient ancestry.

More information about these two saints is found at CatholicOnline Saints and Angels

Spiraling Down the Double Helix

I feel like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole.  I’m trying to get a handle on using DNA to find more cousins.

First  hurdle is understanding the terminology.  What defines a segment? What’s a Centimorgan; and why are all Centimorgans not the same “length”? SNPs? Phasing?

The good news is that every testing company has basic information about DNA and its use in Genealogy.  They’re very helpful. The user forums on these sites can be even more helpful.

23andme

Ancestry

Familytreedna

And there are other great online resources for learning

Beginner’s Guide to Genetic Genealogy

Contexo

Angie Bush administers a Google+ community called DNA Genetic Genealogiy Interest Community.  In August, 2015 she’ll resume doing videos and Google+ Hangouts.

23andme tested my DNA a couple of years ago when they still delivered health information gleaned from their testing. At that time, it was the health info that prompted me to test.

What’s both interesting and frustrating is that the three testing companies all use different algorithms to analyze the raw data, find matches in their database, and also show you the probable ethnic origins in your DNA. (According to 23andme, I’m 3% Neanderthal.)  You may find that a person who is high on the list of matches on one site doesn’t show up as a match on another site even though their DNA raw data is on both.

Then there’s GEDmatch which allows you to upload raw data from any of the three testing companies. You can also upload a gedcom file that will be associated with your data.  Familytreedna.com also permits you to upload your raw data from Ancestry and 23and me.

I’m on a steep learning curve trying to reconcile the analyses from three sites.

My head is spinning! I still have more questions than answers.

Too Many BSOs!!!

Thomas MacEntee warns genealogists, especially those doing the Genealogy Do-Over to avoid being sidetracked by BSOs – Bright Shiny Objects.  We need to keep focused. 

I was doing ok for a couple of weeks.  I worked on my file naming strategy for documents and digitized photos. So far it seems to be working well. I have an Excel spreadsheet as an indexer of the photo files. As I prepare my scanned photos, I’ve been including metadata and a watermark of sorts - the three initials as shown in the lower left of the photo below.  I try to make the watermark fairly unobtrusive but definitely visible.

Then I was besieged with BSOs. On February 7 I attended an all day seminar put on by three Treasure Coast (Florida) genealogy societies.  This is an annual affair hosted by the Indian River Genealogical Society.  They’re always good but this one was GREAT.

Lisa Louise Cooke presented four classes from her book: The Genealogist’s Google Toolbox   I knew that Google had more features than I’ve been using, but I was blown away by her presentation and her demonstrations of the powerful Google tools that can take online research to another dimension.  If you’re not watching her website, podcasts and videos, go take a look at Genealogy Gems

How can you not go home with a treasure trove of BSOs – new tools – and not play with them all?

Then on February 10, at the monthly Indian RiverGenealogical Society meeting, Mark Fearer spoke on the topic of immigration.  He gave me some ideas that may help with my one remaining immigration brick wall.  A couple more BSOs to play with.

I love new toys.  Self discipline has never been my strong point.  There are just too darn many BSOs.

Focus! Focus! Focus.

Learning from the Genealogy Do-Over

The Genealogy Do-Over is a thirteen week project begun on January 1 of this year and  led by Thomas MacEntee.  Information can be found online in several places that will be listed below. I’ve learned so very much from the participants in the Facebook group (more than 3,000 of them) devoted to this project who post and answer questions; and share the files they’ve created or modified to improve their research and recording techniques.

Digital file archiving is one problem I have not resolved to my satisfaction. My “system” has simply evolved from what seemed practical when I first began family research.  In other words, it is a non-system with some inconsistencies that make it a bit of a mess.  A specific problem area is file names for photographs.

At one time I started to design a file naming structure and a Microsoft Access database. Ill health took me away from genealogy for a while and when I got back to it I saw that my photo file naming scheme was entirely too complex to be usable.  I also came to realize that My database would become obsolete as Microsoft Access software changed and priced itself out of my budget. Consequently, I haven’t done any more scanning without having a reasonable naming scheme.

Thanks to the Do-Over folks, I’ve found a few archiving methods that may suit my needs.  I will probably take ideas from more than one suggested method. When I figure it out, I’ll post it.

In the meantime, I continue to follow the Do-Over and absorb the knowledge that these folks are sharing. I’m grateful to them all.

Here are some links to Do-Over information

http://www.geneabloggers.com/tag/genealogy-do-over/

https://www.facebook.com/groups/genealogydoover/

Join the group and take a look at the files that have been uploaded as well as reading the posts.

http://www.bagtheweb.com/u/genealogydo-over

There’s a link here to blog posts made by participants and links to resources.

http://www.pinterest.com/geneabloggers/genealogy-do-overtm/

Visit your Ancestral Village Online

For those of us who are not able to visit our ancestral towns in person, virtual touring can be the next best thing.  Using Wikipedia and Google Earth, you can often get much information about a town and probably its history, too.

Just as in the US, a village or city name may not be unique. When I first searched for my Grandmother’s birthplace, Grabowo, in Poland, I found twelve villages or towns with that name.  Over time I was able to pinpoint Grabow nad Prosna as the right one.  So if you know the correct village or town, you are ready for a virtual visit.

Wikipedia

When you do a normal Wikipedia search you end up at en.wikipedia.org.

Searching for your town will get you to an English language entry giving basic information including location on a map, map coordinates, county, population, etc.  But every country has its own Wikipedia entries aimed at its own citizens in its own language and much more information.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkowo shows this for one of my towns. This is a village of 1,040 people – pretty small. If it had a website, the link would be shown, too.  But look at the Polish entry for Parkowo.

Simply putting the two letter internet code for the country in the URL gets you to that country’s Wilipedia.  Here’s a link to a listing of all Internet country codes http://goes.gsfc.nasa.gov/text/web_country_codes.html

Entering pl.wikipedia.org brings up Poland’s Wiki. The bad news is that it will be in Polish, but the good news is that Google Translate does a pretty good job of translation – usable if imperfect.  If you use Google Chrome, you will automatically have the option to translate.  If you use a different browser, you can go to https://translate.google.com/ for translation.

http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkowo_(powiat_obornicki) has a lot of great information about the area including history and some photos.

Even better is the information from Grabow nad Prosna. http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grab%C3%B3w_nad_Prosn%C4%85

This town of more than 8,000 people does have its own website

http://www.grabownadprosna.com.pl/asp/pl_start.asp?typ=14&menu=52&strona=1

There are current photos and even some old photos. I felt that I hit the jackpot when I got to this site.

Google Earth

If you don’t now have Google Earth, get it.  It is FREE and it is wonderful.

Finding your ancestral town on Google Earth gives you first a bird’s eye view.  You see the town and its setting, its geography.  You can zoom in and out and look around for an idea of your ancestors’ environment. Was it urban or just a crossroads?  Forest? Agriculture? Mountains? Rivers?

You can look at photos of the area that others have posted.  If there’s a church or river or lake or a palace, someone will probably have put a photo on Google Earth.

Here’s a screenshot of another of my ancestral towns, Iwno.

But best of all is Street View.

Google Street View cameras have been almost everywhere.  If a numbered highway goes through your town, Street View cars probably will have driven it. Except in larger cities, they won’t have traveled the neighborhoods, but you can at least get a glimpse of what the town looks like today.

Here’s a screenshot from Grabow nad Prosna

There’s nothing like a personal visit to see and feel for yourself what it is like, But even virtual visits are fun,

A new site to help add context to your ancestors’ lives.

Wouldn’t it be great to have quick access to an historical timeline and a summary of the time in which your ancestor lived?  You can have both at History Lines.

History Lines is still in beta test, but you can sign up to be a beta tester. Because it’s still in beta, there are a few glitches but that’s what beta tests are for. There is a feedback button so that you can offer any suggestions you may have for improving the product.

Enter your ancestors name and birth and death dates and you get both a timeline and a short narrative account of what daily life was like and the impact of significant events.  Here’s a screenshot of one person that I entered.

The areas covered in the summary are:

•           Childbirth

•           Childhood

•           Clothing

•           Communication

•           Diet

•           Education

•           Entertainment

•           Household

•           Hygiene

•           Marriage

•           Medicine

•           Military

•           Politics

•           Religion

•           Transportation

Stories are currently available in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, United States, 1600 to 1950

They’re currently working on Germany and they need user input to prioritize which countries to add next. I sure hope their German information will include Prussia.

I’m excited about this site because it will help me add flesh and context to family history.  The summaries will point me to areas I want to research further.

Great start History Lines!

Genealigy Do-Over or Go-Over?

On January 1 of this year, Thomas MacEntee has launched a 13 week Genealogy Do-Over project.  The idea is to set aside all of your previous work and begin a new family tree from scratch.  Information can be found at

http://www.geneabloggers.com/

http://www.bagtheweb.com/u/genealogydo-over

And Facebook has a Genealogy Do-Over group at

https://www.facebook.com/groups/genealogydoover/

Thomas has created a plan for each of the 13 weeks. This, the first week calls for setting aside old research, preparing to do research and establishing base practices and guidelines.

Participants include both professional and amateur genealogists many of whom have begun by analyzing and modifying their organizational methods.  They’re coming up with new ideas and strategies for organizing files – both digital and paper. They’ll review, add and correct source citations as they build a fresh tree. They are creating a wonderful educational opportunity for the whole genealogy community.

I’ve opted for the Go-Over approach.  I simply don’t have the desire or patience for a complete Do-Over.  Using the methods and ideas of the active participants, my plan is to improve my existing trees and do better research and citation going forward.

Thomas MacEntee posted a great article about slowing down and not frantically chasing after what he calls BSOs (Bright Shiny Objects).  So I’m slowing down.

My first step is to review what I have and identify gaping holes; and there are a couple of big ones. Although I started in 2000 my research has not been continuous. There was a 6 year gap when we retired and went cruising, and then a 9 month gap for cancer treatment. It is very difficult to figure out where to begin again after being away for a length of time.

My search for Dachtera ancestors has centered around Oborniki, Poland; but I just now realized that I’d not looked at microfilms from at least 5 towns very near there.  Maybe that brick wall isn’t so solid after all.

I am very grateful for the help and insights I’m getting from the active participants in this project but I must admit to feeling guilty about taking advantage of their hard work. I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to add a contribution to it before it’s over.

The Future of Digital Images and Records?

This article from Today.com is a reminder that we need to make sure that our digital records, photos, family trees, etc. don’t become unusable or obsolete.

Today’s state of the art storage medium could become tomorrow’s floppy disk.

Exercise those external disc drives and store multiple copies of everything in case one device becomes corrupted.  And keep those shoeboxes full of stuff in a safe place.

Connecting the Unconnected - I hope

How can I find the connections among numerous people with the same surname who lived in the same area at the same time? Complicating things is the fact that some of them also share common first names.

How can I find the connection between families that I KNOW are related but I don’t have evidence of the connection?

I’m hoping that Clooz software can help me make those connections.

Most genealogy software is lineage based. You enter the people you know are related and use documents to supply evidence of the relationships. Clooz is document based.  You enter documents and the people in those documents. You can then analyze the collection of documents for possible kinships among those people.

My evidence from Polish ancestors comes from Roman Catholic church records that have been microfilmed by the Mormon church.  These records can give clues to relationships that are not obvious.  A Baptismal record is hard evidence of parentage, but it also lists the infant’s godparents.  Who are these people?  They are clearly important people in the lives of the baby’s parents.  Are they siblings?  Cousins?  In-laws?  Neighbors?  The same holds for the witnesses shown in marriage records. They are undoubtedly close to the bride and groom – but how? I want to find the connections.

Problem is that it’s almost like starting from scratch because I must manually enter the documents. And I find the Clooz documentation to be only minimally helpful. The good news is that there are only a few families for which I need to do that.

I still don’t know for absolutely certain where my grandfather, Stanley Dachtera was born.  When I began my research I found many people with the Dachtera surname in a relatively small geographic area. There were also a lot with variations on that name.  How are they all connected?  ARE they connected?

Back fifteen years ago I was able to print the pages from the microfilms but had to take them as they were – no enhancement was possible. Many of them are almost impossible to read.  They’re smudged, or faded or very dark.  And, of course they’re written in Polish or Latin in ancient handwriting.

So I’m going back to those microfilms again.  This time with technology that lets me make electronic copies and even try to clear up and enhance the images before I copy them. Then I can use Photoshop to clean them up even more.

It is a bit daunting. Rereading the films. Learning new software. Entering the data.  I sure hope it solves some mysteries.

Welcome to the 21st Century

There’s a new genealogy website that seems to be causing much weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth in the genealogy community – especially, it seems, among traditional genealogists who’ve been doing this long before online genealogy exploded into what it is today.

The new site is FamilyTreeNow.com and the controversy is over its inclusion of Living People.  Privacy concerns have always limited publicly available family history and family trees to include only the deceased. This makes perfect sense – especially since the breadth of our tree may include individuals that we don’t know and who may not even know that we exist.   Mine does.  Birth records are available online, as are marriage and divorce records. It is easy to find the name of a distant cousin’s spouse. But those records are from the past and are usually restricted to exclude the most current data.

Now comes FamilyTreeNow that not only has the usual collection of census, birth, marriage, death, etc. records but also searches for living people.  Horrors!!!

But the fact is that there have always been online people locators.  If you enter a name into Google search, your results are very likely to include one or more search services that will give you address information, phone number and even more. Some are free of charge but some have a fee and include more information.  FamilyTreeNow apparently has simply aggregated these people finders.

Why are people shocked??

Even though genealogists do painstaking searches of old public records, some people are upset to see the trail they, themselves, have left.  Many times we don’t realize just how visible is our trip through life – especially these days.  We pore through old city directories looking for relatives without thinking of just how many public phone directories, church and school directories have registered our whereabouts over the years; and just how many traces we’ve left behind in public documents.

Unless you’ve lived completely off the grid for a few years, any sufficiently motivated person can find you and members of your family.  I’ve read that even the Witness Protection Program has holes.  If you do a web search for a recipe and then go to the site, you may find that in addition to the recipe a sidebar will have ads for grocery stores near you.  They know where you live.  It’s life in the 21^st century.

Genealogy??? Family History???

Are Genealogy and Family History the same thing?  Mostly but not always.

Tony Proctor addressed this in a recent blog post titled The Lineage Trap on his Parallax View blog.  He points out that for most people family history is as important as mere lineage. 

 There are dozens of brands of genealogy software available. After doing a brief survey of what’s out there, it appears that only Family Historian  - developed in the UK - permits non-familial connections between individuals. 

I started searching my roots to try to answer the question: Who am I, and why am I here? That means finding my ancestors as far back as I can. More than that, It means trying to learn just who these people were. Where and how did they live?  What were the current events of their lives?  How did history and culture shape them  - and me and my descendants?

Members of the LDS church have specific goals in tracing their lineage. There are probably still a few folks who trace their families in hopes of finding royalty or at least someone famous. Most of us, I believe, are really looking for more than a chart showing who begat whom. We want to know the stories of our families.

These stories include more than bloodlines. The people who were the official witnesses of baptisms and marriages and other legal documents were important in our ancestors’ lives. How do we record these connections?  In my own database there are several families with the same surname who are little islands because I haven’t found a direct connection to my family, but have found indirect connections.  In a few cases, my research has discovered connections between previously unconnected families.

Clooz is a different kind of genealogy software.  It is document based rather than people based and looks like it could do the things I want to do.  Problem is that I use Family Tree Maker and Clooz cannot import from that because Anecstry.com (owner of Family Tree Maker)  will not make available the specs that would allow Clooz’ developers to create import capability.

So I’m in a quandary. Switch to other software?  Which other software? I like the ability to synchronize my FTM and Ancestry.com databases. Run two local programs and maintain changes in them both? 

I’ll be grateful for comments and suggestions from anyone who has solved this dilemma.