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.

On to Plan B

Or is it Plan C?  I’ve exhausted my latest strategy for finding more Dachtera ancestors in Poland.  I’m still re-reading films that I read many years ago, but I seem to have gotten whatever there is to get from them. Now I’ll order films from other nearby parishes.  The BaSIA project in Poland tells where families with a given surname are located in the country. Naturally, my focus has been on the areas where my name is the most dense, but if I have no luck, I guess I’ll need to look to other towns.

One idea was to try to identify the age range in order to narrow down the range of years to look for births and marriages.  But that’s pretty loose.  A man probably married between the ages of 20 and 30.  He could have fathered children for 30 years or more.  The range is very broad.  I’ll have to look very carefully at all of the records so as not to miss a clue somewhere.

It will take a couple of weeks for microfilms to arrive so, while waiting, I’ll shift gears and go back to the Rose family – they’ve not had any attention for a while.  Maybe the time away from them will give me a fresh perspective there. 

This Child’s Christmas

When I was little, we didn’t really have many Christmas traditions. We were in a Chicago suburb.  All the rest of the family was in St. Paul, MN. - we moved away in 1946.  There was no Grandma’s house to go to, no cousins to play with.  From age four to ten Christmas was just Mom, Dad and me.

I don’t remember Christmas dinners but I’m sure that Mom served something that was a tradition for her. As a kid, I wasn’t a foodie.

We’d go to Midnight Mass and then to bed; and I’d try to get to sleep quickly so that Christmas morning would arrive  

Before I entered first grade, Mom explained the truth about Santa because she was concerned that other kids would spoil it for me if I still believed.  I was sworn to secrecy so as not to ruin Christmas for a true believer.  Even so, no gifts appeared under the tree before Christmas except those that were received from far away relatives. Knowing about Santa didn’t diminish my anticipation.  There was always something special under the tree on that fantastic morning.

From about second grade on, I asked every year for a Chemistry Set. But Mom was afraid I’d burn down the house so it never arrived.

One year was the electric train – a great Lionel train set. I loved it and Dad let me think it was mine.  It DID have my name on the gift tag.

There were building blocks and an erector set.

There was a record player with an album with the story of Johnny Appleseed narrated and sung by Dennis Day.  I sobbed at the end when Johnny went to his heavenly reward.

There were Nancy Ann Storybook dolls. One year there was a beautiful Alice in Wonderland doll complete with a gorgeous coat with a Persian Lamb collar made by Mom who was an accomplished seamstress.

There was a 26 inch blue and cream Schwinn bike for a 7 year old girl.  I’d grow into it.  It had a headlight and a battery powered horn.  But no training wheels.  Dad taught me to ride.

Dad was a machinist at an International Harvester tractor factory. My folks counted every penny.  They spent a lot of those precious pennies on me at Christmas. 

I was a very lucky little girl.

Tedious but Necessary

My biggest weakness when it comes to genealogy is that I tend to be a “big picture” person.  That’s my rationale for my impatience with the grunt work of dealing with the details.  I want answers NOW.

But the details are crucial and need to be recorded properly – or as well as I can. That last stipulation is because I find some of the handwritten records to be undecipherable.  So I record what I can. 

It helps when there are multiple sources. Here’s a section of the 1832 record of the marriage of Marcin Dachtera and Marianna?????????.  I couldn’t find another example of the first letter of Marianna’s last name so I had no clue at all.

But going to the PoznanProject allowed me to find that marriage record had been transcribed in Poland.  Here’s the search result.

 Exact matches

+ Add comment 
Original record

Catholic parish Parkowo, entry 1 / 1832

·                                 Martinus Dachtera (26 years old)  100%

·                                 Marianna Frąckowiakowna (26 years old) 

I could never have figured out Marianna's last name from the church record.  While I know that transcribers sometimes make mistakes, I'm sure that this is at least very close to correct.

My new plan is to allot a certain amount of time each day to reviewing the details; then go on to something else. I’m hopeful that will contain my impatience and help me make steady progress.  Gotta have a plan.

Tangled Trees

It’s been a while since my last post because I’m not inspired to blog when frustrated.  My double focus lately is trying to make sense of two families.  I alternate from one to the other when I get stuck or overwhelmed. 

 The Polish Genealogy group on Facebook has helped me better understand my dilemma with the Dachtera family.  Church sacramental records from the late 1600s through the 19^th century confused me with several variations of the name.

There was what I was looking for:  Dachtera.  But there were a number of others

Dachterzak

Dachterski

Dachterzakow

Dachterow

The Polish language is very complex.  I didn’t know whether these were likely to be different families or just variant spellings.

The responses to my Facebook query answered some questions but raised a few more. 

I now expect that these are all the same family.

The church records were handwritten in old fashioned European script in either Latin or in Polish.  Penmanship varies widely – some are extremely sloppy while others are picture perfect. The small sample below is more readable than most,

 And the names recorded were apparently at the discretion of the priest who wrote them. He wrote what he heard, or what he thought he heard or what he thought it should be.  (This happened in the US into the 1930’s when the priest at St. Adalbert’s in St. Paul decided that my Schipp relatives should be spelled Szyp.)

So now I have to figure whether out whether “Marcin” is correct, or should be “Martin”.  If Marcin’s wife is shown as Maria in one record and as Marianna in another, are they the same woman? Both were extremely common – a couple may have named one daughter Maria, and another Marianna.

 Trying to follow the Rose family from Maine to New York state to Wisconsin has proven a real challenge.  In New York they lived in counties that were absorbed into other counties.  Without the ability to travel to the courthouses to review the records, I’m dependent on online records and the materials at my library. They have a huge collection of material from New York that I’m sifting through. 

Fortunately, Chicago’s Newberry Library has a wonderful online resource in their Atlas of HistoricalCounty Boundaries.  Its interactive map shows  boundaries for any given year in any given county in the US.

Of course, it is always possible that I’m trying to connect two different Rose families.  Its slow, but I am making some progress.