Saturday, December 31, 2011

New Year's Resolutions (2012)

The countdown to the new year has nearly ended! With that in mind, I've got some thoughts about how we can all make the virtual genealogy experience more pleasant for ourselves and others:

10. I will attend a genealogy society meeting! This may be just a hobby to me, but I can still learn a lot about professional genealogy standards and meet other folks in my area.
9. I will try to publish my family history! It may take me a few years, but I want to be able to share what I've learned with the rest of the family (and those who follow). The product may be a website, a book or even just a short summary of our family's story - and I'll share it with the family and my local library.
8. I will take a Genealogy Vacation! It could be just to the town in the next county where Grandma grew up - or it could be across the Atlantic Ocean - but I want to truly experience the life of my family and understand where they came from.
7. I will not give up when I hit a brick wall! There are other ways around the mountain that blocks my way and I will endeavor to locate a new direction for my search.
6. I will interview at least one relative! I won't put this off any longer - this is the year I will ask Great Aunt Olga about our family. I won't be discouraged by the slow start to the conversation but will instead try to learn all I can before the day comes when she can't tell me.
5. I will work together with fellow genealogy researchers! Sometimes I may be able to help someone who is stuck on their great-grandfather by suggesting a new approach. I will always build goodwill between researchers so the day may come when someone would be willing to help me, too.
4. I will transcribe at least one source record this year! They may not not be records important to my family, but I will attempt to find information from local resources (cemetery, library, church, etc.) to post for others to use.
3. I will not post unsubstantiated data online! For all genealogy "facts," I will always give a source and will consider explaining level of certainty in my notes.
2. I will not re-post GEDCOMs or other third-party family trees! If someone takes the time to send me genealogy data, I will review it and carefully consider the privacy concerns of others before sharing with someone else.
1. I will teach my children about their roots! Even just one family story by the fire during the Holidays could have a lasting impact on the next generation. If they realize how hard our ancestors' lives were, they could learn that all of us can rise above the challenges of life to make a better future!

Happy 2012 and happy hunting!

Saturday, December 24, 2011

Taking a Genealogy Vacation

It's Christmas Eve, and I hope this time of year finds you spending time with your loved ones. Maybe they are people you've known all your life or maybe you are just getting to know them this year. Either way, when we are with people who make up our "family" we have an opportunity to learn about the roots of our traditions, beliefs and the places we're from.

Perhaps you are actually in an ancestral place right now - the house your grandparents "built with their own hands" - or you've established a new residence since you were a child. We are better people, I think, when we can find a place on this earth to call our "home" - it anchors us in our daily lives. If you know what I mean, then I'm sure you can understand why taking a "Genealogy Vacation" can have special meaning.

I'm not trying to suggest that you need to know everything about your family before you can embark on this type of adventure. You may not know anything more than "we come from Cleveland." Still, you could ask yourself: "have I ever been there or visited the places that my family talks about?" If the answer is "no," then you have a destination already. For those whose roots come from another continent, finding the ancestral townland or borough of your family could be difficult. But lack of "proof" in this area shouldn't discourage you - it would still be great to experience the culture of your family's home-country.

One more thing: just because it is called a "Genealogy Vacation" doesn't mean you need to carry your notebooks or other research materials with you. Make it fun! The only thing I recommend is that you do a little preparation so that you can truly experience the important places where your family would have travelled, worked and worshipped. If you do the trip right, you may end up having a personal revelation of sorts (e.g., "these people are like me!" or "it feels like home"). Research at an archives would be like a cherry on top but you'll probably want to make the trip fun for everyone else, too.

Some helpful sites for planning a Genealogy Vacation are listed below:

About.com
Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter
Genealogy.com
LDS Blogs
MakeMyFamilyTree.com

If you are lucky on your trip, the local people will welcome you "home." May you be that fortunate! Enjoy your trip - and happy hunting!

Saturday, December 17, 2011

Paying for Research

This blog entry is an important one - if for no other reason than it could save you money! I've hinted for a few months that you can find a LOT of genealogy information on the web without paying for it. Proper key word searches (coupled with knowledge of how to view cached pages and how to follow basic links into the deepest depths of transcribed-records sites) can keep you going for many years without having to spend a lot of money on this FUN hobby. Eventually, however, you may discover that the data you've found isn't trustworthy or doesn't contain enough to continue.

That's when you need to take a moment to ask yourself some crucial questions about what to do next. I've included a couple of brain teasers for your consideration:

Main versus Collateral?: If you are looking for your direct ancestors and hit a brick wall within the last 100 years, it is probably worth some money to break through to more distant relatives and records. However, if you are trying to learn more about Cousin Frank who disappeared in the 1920s, you may want to put that task on the back burner and move to another person. In either case, just remember that even if pay-for-research services are warranted, you can probably find useful genealogy data at Ancestry.com before you have to pay a professional genealogist.

What's Actually Online?: Some records just aren't available anywhere but the place where they were created. The Web has grown exponentially during the last few years but there are still pockets of records from Third World Countries, US States with privacy laws (etc.) that you can't find on the Internet even if you pay for a membership at Ancestry. That's crucial, too, since you could end up paying for a lot of data you already have. Instead, I recommend you consider putting your money to good use on a trip to your ancestral home-town (with pre-arranged meetings with the Parish Priest or Archivist).

Source Document versus Transcribed Index: Do you want a copy of a certificate? You will probably have to pay someone for it (online, library or genealogist). But are you about to pay for an online membership so you can see the family tree posted by "joe.smith (at) worldnet.com"? I would advise strongly against that, since the family tree may be full of errors that simply steer you in the wrong direction. Most likely, anyway, the person who posted the tree got the information from a source document you can access somewhere else.

The bottom line is: Be very careful not to get lured into memberships when the return is minimal. Don't get me wrong - there are lots of valuable resources on pay sites. You may find that your family research is at a point where you have exhausted all other avenues to continue. Great! That makes spending the money on a membership or professional genealogist well worth the effort. For the rest of us, though, there are plenty of interviews, libraries, cemeteries, microfilms (etc.) to review before we take the leap. Happy hunting!

Saturday, December 10, 2011

Finding a Military Hero in Your Tree

We should be proud of the sacrifices of the military servicemembers who defend the everyday freedoms we enjoy - including the ability to pursue happiness in the form of a genealogy hobby! Have you ever wanted to learn more about those heroes? Perhaps you are even aware of one in your own family and want to honor their service with a meaningful tribute in the family history. So, where to begin?

You can locate conflict-specific records at several sites - with records like draft registrations, enlistment documents and casualty reports. One of the best online resources for this kind of information is Fold3, so named after the "tri-fold" American Flag presented to the grieving family at a military funeral. You can search a variety of indexes there - and even access the original source data (at certain times of the year for free!). Additional index records at Ancestry and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) can also direct you to a good starting point for locating a military relative.

A good search for military information should also include a Google search for fraternal veterans organizations (or even war specific groups) that often post and/or store basic servicemember information online. Some of these sites may also allow for a form of social networking for you to find some of Grandpa's old Army buddies. You would probably be surprised at the number of people who want to trace the service history of their loved-one - even when they don't have genealogy research interests.

Here are some good examples of military genealogy sites I've found in web searches:

B-29.org
Great War Society
American Merchant Marine at War
Navy Memorial

If you discover your veteran in one of the indexes above, you may be able to view a copy of their service record. Visits to the National Archives site in downtown Washington, DC, often yield results but if you can't travel, you should explore the new options provided by the NARA at their site: Veterans' Service Records. Happy hunting!

Saturday, December 3, 2011

Famous - or Notorious?

If you have ever searched for yourself on the web, you may not actually find anything (not even about the prize pig you entered in the Lauderdale County Fair last year). Maybe you can find your name listed with participants in the recent Turkey Trot - but, unless you won the race there probably wasn't an interview published in the paper ("Yes, I am the greatest - but I owe it all to genetics!"). Joking aside, did you notice what DOES appear on the web? It is usually the most famous or infamous person with your name (AKA "the squeaky wheel", the "black sheep" or "show-off"). It has been that way for years, too. We obviously know about Julius Caesar because he was a great showman and soldier - but we probably couldn't find the name of his next door neighbor.

What does any of this have to with genealogy? Well, it is a basic fact of human nature that most people live their lives in relative obscurity. Unless their existence intersected with a census or mass immigration, you may be disappointed to learn that the only "proof" of their existence is a barely-legible name on a vital record or (if you are REALLY lucky) fading words on a tombstone.

Of course, you could have had famous or notorious ancestors - you should hope you did, actually! Count your blessings if you know that Aunt Martha ran a brothel on Bourbon Street (shocking!): you'll probably find more than you ever dreamed about her - stories about how she smuggled bootleg liquor during Prohibition or was arrested for lewd behavior (but then released on the word of the Mayor). Aunt Martha became "famous" (at least for genealogy purposes) because she was interesting. Even today, do the newspapers care about the 95% of us who get up in the morning and work all day, settling into our Lazy-Boys at night? Of course not.

One thing that does happen, luckily, is that the relatives of notorious people are sometimes listed in scandalous stories or obituaries (much to their horror, I'm sure). Maybe you'll even get a break and find that someone in your family was an eyewitness to an important event. Perhaps when Billy the Kid was killed some of your folks came out of the woodwork to report "they knew him back when." With all of the published articles in the last 300 years, you are bound to find information about your family in the margins of history. And then you can tell the rest of your family about how Aunt Martha's ill-gotten gains actually paid for the family home on Canal Street... Happy hunting!