Genealogisms

I don't know how he does it, but Chris Dunham consistently comes up with funny stuff relating to genealogy at his The Genealogue blog. I read it every day in the evening and often laugh at loud.

Chris has a wealth of material on his site. Click on the "Exclusives" and "A Few Favorites" links at the top of his page to see the goodies.

My all-time favorite remains Genealogisms. I'm a word nut anyway... here's one of the best:

Kleptonamiac - One who steals names from another's genealogy database to add to his own.

You get the idea - change a real word to reflect a genealogy reality. Go see them all.

Get Genealogy news at RSSgenealogy.com

Where do you get your genealogy news?

There is a web site which samples genealogy news daily and puts links all in one place - it is www.rssgenealogy.com.

That page provides links to many genealogy articles on the Internet, including newspapers, web sites, blogs, etc.

If you click on the line at the top of the page for "RssGenealogy.com Daily News Bulletin Blog" you can find a daily summary of news in several categories.

Select one of the numbered "Genealogy News Bulltin #xxx" and you will get a page that has about 100 links every day of news, blogs, software, etc. You will have to scroll down to find these links however, for some reason.

Have fun!

A cure for insomnia

My first foray into genealogy research on the Internet was on the Prodigy internet service in 1992. I soon found a community of fellow researchers with a wealth of information and experience, especially in New England, which was one of my primary research areas.

Over time, I got to know many of the other researchers fairly well, to the extent that we shared family news and did genealogy research for each other. Since I was in San Diego and most of them were in New England, I often did research at my local FHC for them and they did cemetery or other research for me.

Linda T. was one of the people I got to know fairly well, and since she was in Middlesex County MA, she offered to find tombstones in cemeteries in the area for many of us. She went out every weekend with her husband or daughter, and was very successful at finding ancestral stones for me and others, and she took pictures and sent them to us. Then she got the bright idea that she should make a videotape of her rambles around the yards and the stones. Linda T. made a tape with two hours of cemetery ramblings, made copies of the video, and sent one to me.

I was really excited to see the settings of the burial places of my ancestors, and watched the videotape avidly. My wife wandered in one night before bedtime and wondered what I was watching. I said “The cemetery tape that I got from Linda T.” Wanting to be more involved in my genealogy research, she sat on the couch to watch it. Her only comment was “this is sure boring…” Before long, she had fallen asleep on the couch, and slept through the last hour of the tape. Of course, the tape held my interest throughout.

She finally woke up and went right to bed, but now she couldn’t sleep. I told her that I would show the tape again as a cure for her insomnia. She refused and said again “that tape is so boring…” Of course, it took hours for her to get back to sleep, when I knew the tape would have had her snoozing within minutes.

Every since, my wife has complained occasionally of not being able to go to sleep, and my usual response is “I’ll get the cemetery tape out.” She always refuses to watch it – I guess I’ll never understand her logic – surely it would work as a cure for insomnia again.

Who is your 666 Ancestor?

Since this is 6 June 2006 (6-6-6), I thought it would be cool to find out who ancestor #666 in my ahnentafel list is.

Well, he is one of the maternal great-grandfathers of Rebecca Phipps (who married Richard Marshman in 1778 in Wiltshire in England). I have no clue who #666 is. This person is buried pretty deep in one of my "brick walls."

My father's #666 is George Wheeler (born before 18 March 1605/6 in Cranfield, Bedfordshire in England, died 2 May 1687 in Concord, Middlesex County, MA), who married Katherine Penn 8 June 1630 in Cranfield in Bedfordshire, England.

My mother's #666 is a second great-grandfather of Ranslow Smith (born 11 July 1805 in NY, died after 1870 prob. in Taylor county, IA), who married Mary Bell before 1836 in Henderson, Jefferson County, NY. I obviously don't know thie name of this guy either, since Ranslow smith's parentage is another "brick wall" for me.

Oh well, it was an interesting exercise!

Hmm, maybe I shoulda gone for #6606 or 662006. I don't know who they are either.

How about you, do you know who your #666 is?

What's in your Research Notebook?

One of the discussion topics on the APG-L mailing list (it is excellent to read and participate in - with professional genealogists who offer great suggestions and information) was "What do you take to the Library in your Research Notebook?"

Many responders mentioned pedigree charts, family group sheets, ahnentafel lists, etc. Frankly, if I did that, I would need a small truck to carry all of it. Because of my blessed New England ancestry (about 50% of my known ancestors in 12 generations), I am searching about 400 surnames in my kids ancestry (i.e., mine and my wife's).

The 2 inch Research Notebook I take to the library contains records of my ancestral search and the sources I have found to date. My goal when I go to a library is to find records that I haven't found before, and to do that I need to know what I have found before - and I can't remember all of what I have.

Here's my list of what is in my Research Notebook:

1) To-Do lists - books to review, periodicals to review, records to look for in each repository, records to look for in online databases, or records to find for each surname project or "brick wall" ancestor.

2) List of surnames and sources. For each surname: the immigrant ancestor, where they were born, family line residences, books reviewed (surname, anthology, locality), and periodical articles reviewed. This is from a spreadsheet with enough space to write in new entries. I have about 15 surnames per page.

3) Reference data - books and journals reviewed, with source citations. For anthologies with several ancestors, a list of the surnames already reviewed noted on the title page or table of contents.

4) Research summaries of my "brick wall" ancestors. For each one, I have a detailed summary of the data I know and the sources I have reviewed, and a list of records to find.

5) Ahnentafel report of my father's ancestry - 14 generations (48 pages). While this is fairly unwieldy to use, I can find a specific ancestor in a minute or less. This data gives me names, dates and places at a glance. However, it doesn't provide siblings, other spouses, etc. Those are in the database.

6) Ahnentafel report of my mother's ancestry - 14 generations (14 pages).

7) Ahnentafel report of my wife's ancestry - 12 generations (11 pages).

8) Descendant reports of selected ancestors - used to share with new cousins.

9) Names, addresses and phone numbers of cousins and other family researcher correspondents.

I also carry several specific manila folders with my current projects in my carrying case along with the notebook. For instance, if I'm searching the census, I have a census folder with my current research data and lists for further research.

I carry my flash drive with my FTM databases and ancestor books, quarters in film canisters, magnifying glass, membership cards, pencils and pens in the pocket of my carrying case.

The above isn't perfect. A laptop would be nice, but until I get one with all of my databases, text files and photgraphs in it, that's what works for me.

Best Genealogy Cartoons? - Genetoons!

Cyndi's List includes a category for Genealogy Humor here.

The absolute best site for Cartoons is Genetoons. The current cartoon shows in the larger view on the page. By clicking on the thumbnail on the left margin, you can see earlier cartoons.

My favorite one is this:

We have ALL been there, haven't we? Even my wife thought it was funny...but then she faces this issue almost nightly.

Go to Genetoons and browse through the cartoons. It's an enjoyable half hour.

Genealogy heroes in the graveyard

I ran across this article in the Watertown (WI) Daily Times. It tells the story of Larry and Linda Kopet of Oconomowoc have taken over 100,000 pictures of headstones in 903 cemeteries covering 60 of Wisconsin's 72 counties in the last 18 months - for free. They say:

Their process is simple and effective. Larry, 60, visits the cemeteries and snaps the photos, which are then put on a computer disk. Linda then goes through each one and names them. Finally, the photos are sent on to Tina Vickery, the state of Wisconsin coordinator for the USGenWeb project, and they are placed on the USGenWeb Internet site for anyone to view.

Check quickly for the article - it may go into the Archives any time soon.

What a super addition to the USGenWeb sites.

I wonder if they've found my Mary Smith in Dodge County (I'm not kidding - Mary died in the 1860's, the wife of Ranslow Smith who moved to Iowa by 1870 and married again)? I guess I'd better go look.

Who is Abraham Lincoln's father?

I know I'm way behind the times with this, but I wasn't blogging then!

GenealogyToday had an exclusive article in late 2005 here about Abraham Lincoln's purported biological father. The summary on the web site reads:

The cover is off the genesis cover-up of Abraham Lincoln. No longer is it a mystery who was the natural father of our 16th President. For years others were rumored to be his father, yet Thomas Lincoln was never mentioned. That is, until the federal government, at the behest of his son Robert Todd Lincoln, then Secretary of War, ordered that one of a possible sixteen sites in Kentucky and his birth date of 1809 be officially established to preserve his reputation.

History researcher R. Vincent Enlow, a New Jersey resident, uncovered not only an overwhelming evidence favoring one Abraham Enloe, a North Carolinian, as Lincoln's sire, but a wealth of assumptions and loopholes in the Kentucky "Sunday-school" versions of Lincoln's early life published after his assassination in 1865.

Click on the link where it says "Download" or you can read the article online or download it to your hard drive (use the "Save File" icon on Adobe Reader, not your Windows [File] [Save As] buttons.

The article is fairly persuasive, but it tells only one side of the story, while debunking the "official" version. This article relies on affidavits and testimony by relatives and acquaintances of Abraham Enloe and Nancy Hanks taken back around 1900. We all love mysteries and controversies, eh?

Unfortunately, no Y-DNA test can be done to solve this case, since Abraham Lincoln has no living male descendants to match against a living descendant of Abraham Enloe. I think I heard last year that someone was looking for hair samples from Abraham or his son Robert Todd Lincoln to find enough DNA to perform a test. Do I recall correctly?

Can anyone provide further information on this article or the paternity of Abraham Lincoln?

Post #100 on genea-blogging

It's been only 6 weeks, but this is Post #100 for this Musing Genea-blogger. Hmmm, maybe it should be Blogging Genea-Muser.

Other than self-congratulations (since my arms are too short to pat myself on the back), I do have some thoughts about blogging on genealogy matters.

1) There is a wealth of genealogy information out there, and it is easy to write about it all. But most of what is available is not new or different. The challenge is to find new and useful information.

2) I've tried to post two or three items each day, based on absolute whim, on items that flash on my screen, or on something I read. What I post is usually a first draft and sometimes is not too coherent or timely. My criteria has evolved to be what might be interesting to a beginning genealogist or to the people in my local society. I can't replace Eastman, Smith, Morgan, Aitken, Meitzler or Dunham, among others, and am not trying to.

3) The major benefit I see to blogging is that it gets me to write almost every day. I have created more content in these six weeks than I had in the last year. I will use it in my genealogy talks and in our society newsletter.

3) Blogger is pretty easy to use, once you figure out how to add links and pictures and quotes.

4) Blogging is great for off-the-top-of-the-head shallow thoughts or string-of-consciousness diaries. As an archive of memorable prose or a reservoir of articles, it sucks pretty bad.

5) Even with 20 posts visible, most visitors to the blog don't read much, some nothing at all (probably the click-throughs hitting "Next Blog" looking for whatever turns them on). And when the posts age off into the monthly Archives, I would hazard a guess that nobody even looks there.

6) My conclusion is that this isn't the best platform for memorable prose or "how-to" genealogy articles. It can be useful for "web site of the day" type of posts. At some point, I will put up some web pages for my articles and genealogy data.

7) Lastly, the geneablogging audience is limited. The problem is exposure - when I posted to a mailing list or someone touted my blog, I got a spike in visitor hits, but they rapidly decreased afterwards. People just aren't "trained" yet to visit genealogy blogs (with some exceptions, I think) every day, or even every week.

To my regular readers (I think the count is 3 or 4) - thank you! I will continue to provide timely and hopefully amusing genealogy research tips and the occasional personal note. Visit often, and please tell your friends! And comment - I get lonesome!

Genealogy research in Mexico

Here in southern California, doing genealogy research in Mexico records has been of growing interest since a signifcant part of our population has Mexican heritage. Our Chula Vista Genealogical Society (the most southerly California society!) has had several inquiries in recent months about research in Mexican records. We have referred most of the requests to a local Hispanic Genealogy Group that meets in a local Family History Center on a regular basis.

The lead article in Kimberly Powell's About.com web site/blog is about Mexican research - you can find the article hereSShe introduces the article with:

Due to hundreds of years of meticulous record-keeping, Mexico offers a wealth of church and civil records for the genealogical and historical researcher. It is also the homeland of one in every 10 Americans. Learn more about your Mexican heritage, with these steps for tracing your family tree in Mexico.

The article describes the history, Spanish rule, Spanish society, Mexican Civil Records and church records.

If you want even more information, another very helpful guide to doing genealogical research in Mexican records can be found in the LDS Research Outline for Mexico - you can start to read it here. That link takes you to the list of Research Outlines available at the www.FamilySearch.org web site.

To access the Mexico outline, click on the "M" to go to the list of Guides starting with "M", then scroll down to "Mexico" and "Mexico Research Outline" and click on "PDF". Click on OK, and the 68 page outline should appear. You can read it, print it out or save it to your hard drive (use the icon in Adobe Reader, not your [File] [Save As] buttons).

Linkpendium has many genealogy links

Have you searched for your surname(s) or ancestral localities on Linkpendium yet? You might want to...

For a US locality search, click on the State and then the County of interest. I wondered what I could find for Windham County, connecticut, so I ended up here. There are 417 links for the County on this page! I decided to look for maps to try to find my Oatley and White ancestral homes in the late 1800's. There are 46 map links, including some for 1845, 1855, 1945, etc. I found J. Oatley's home location in 1855.

But Linkpendium localities have more than maps - they have categories of Biographies, Cemeteries, Census, Church, Directories, Estates, History, Immigration, Libraries, Mailing Lists, Maps, Military, Miscellaneous, Newspaper, Obituaries, Photographs, Projects, Societies, Surnames and Vital Records. Some counties will have more of one than the other, but the total Locality section has an amazing number of links.

When you were back on the Linkpendium main page, you could have clicked on the Surnames link, which has over 4 million links in the database. On the Surname page, you can select one of the letters of the alphabet (I chose "O" for Oatley) - note that they include several European "special character" letters also. Then in the "O" list, I chose the link to surnames starting with "Oat" and found 16 links for the Oatley surname. Clicking on these links takes you to web pages (some are commercial sites like Ancestry) that have data on the Oatley surname.

Someone has put a lot of effort into this web site, and continues to do so, with additions weekly.

I have Linkpendium on my Favorites list, do you?

Internet Genealogy magazine FREE

Internet Genealogy Magazine has announced that they are making their second issue available for FREE on the web here. This is a 64 page beauty chock full of interesting articles and helpful research suggestions (Hat tip to Chris Dunham at The Genealogue for the scoop in the geneablogosphere).

The editor's message includes:

This issue features a lineup of completely new articles, many by the same authors as in the regular magazine, and we’re making this available to everyone! For those who already subscribe, consider this as a “thank-you”. For those of you who have heard about Internet Genealogy, but don’t want to subscribe until you’ve had a look at an issue, this is your chance. We hope that existing subscribers will tell their friends about this Extra Issue so that they can see what Internet Genealogy has to offer.

It looks like a winner to me! You can download the PDF file and print it out (although 64 color pages gets expensive on an inkjet printer...hmmm, could subscribe for a year for about the same cost!). Enjoy...

Where have all the Bloggers gone?

I hesitate to bring this up, but I thought I'd point out that not many genealogy bloggers on my list are doing much blogging. I can understand being tired out...and frustrated that nobody reads them...and that blogging interferes with the honey-do's...but it makes my evenings so boring when most of my faves aren't blogging. Did I hear someone murmur "get a life, Randy?"

The "heroes" today are Chris Dunham at The Genealogue, Joe Beine at GenRootsBlog and Juliana Smith at the 24/7 Family Circle. They all posted one or several new and interesting posts since Friday.

Eastman? Meitzler? Random? Neill? Morgan? Smolenyak? Zamora? Aitken? All missing in action. To be fair, Eastman, Meitzler and Morgan blogged on Friday. Perhaps they are getting an early start on the weekend, or an early start to the NGS Conference in Chicago. I wish I was there, and hope they have a great time!

SDGS Library visit today

Almost every Saturday is a Genealogy day for me. Two local societies (SDGS and CGSSD) have programs on the 2nd and 3rd Saturdays of each month, and another (CVGS) has a Saturday program once a quarter. When there is not a society event, I usually go to the Family History Center in San Diego to do research.

The Chula Vista Genealogical Society has research trips every two months or so to a local library - Carlsbad, San Diego, the FHC or the SDGS library in El Cajon.

Today we had a research trip to the San Diego Genealogical Society library in El Cajon. Their holdings include a good surname and locality book collection, an excellent periodical collection, and vertical files of donated material. Also, today was the monthly FamilyTreeMaker study group meeting there. We had 8 in our car pool from Chula Vista, and got there before 10 AM. The library staff greeted us warmly, and had coffee and donuts set up for us - a wonderful surprise and treat! They also gave us a brief tour of the library, and were very helpful to our group.

I attended the FTM group and learned a few things and got a question answered. Then it was off to the stacks and after browsing maybe 2 minutes, I found a book that I had been wanting to review - "Rhode Island Land Evidences, 1646-1699". I knew that there were several wills and many deed records in these records for my 40 RI surnames, but I thought I would have to decipher the originals from microfilm at some time. The book has transcriptions of the records - hooray! I copied 45 pages...now I have to get them into the database.

So, it was a good genealogy day with some new friends made at the library, and some new genealogy data to feed the database and flesh out my ancestral notes.

Friends, our genealogy libraries need our support. Too many of us research in our pajamas (i.e., use the Internet) at the expense of going to a library and finding books or microfilm to do our research. Both are important...and finding original works in repositories or libraries, in either book or microfilm form, is critical to proving ancestral relationships. The Internet does not have everything we need to do good research - at least not yet!

Thanks to the SDGS staff for their hospitality on an enjoyable and interesting genealogy day!

Have you Googled Yourself?

No, I'm not that vain...

I Google myself every so often just to see what links come up and to see if there is data on the Web that I would prefer to not be posted. As if I could do something about it, but it is good to know what others could find out. My given name, surname, location and some email addresses have been on the web for a long time by my choice - I share a lot of information and appreciate information shared with me.

The most intriguing part of Googling my name is how many other "Randy Seaver" people there are. I always "knew" that my name was unique, until the Internet search engines came along. I have corresponded a bit with Randy Seaver in Maine, who was a journalist in Biddeford, and now is a blogger here.

The 104 Google results provide a Randy Seaver in the Pittsburgh area formerly in Clearwater FL, a wild boar bow hunter in Florida, a lot of my genealogy posts on the Web, many of Randy in Maine's articles, some of my Radio Club activites from a previous life, and some diary entries from 1981 by someone with a friend named Randy Seaver. There are 5 hits for "Randall Seaver", including me and a lawyer in Minnesota. Using a middle initial wild card "Randall * Seaver" shows another 16 hits, and "Randy * Seaver shows another 26, but many are of the "Randy Johnson, Tom Seaver" type.

If you go to Switchboard.com, you find Randy in Maine (above), a Randall in Tennessee, a Randall in Florida (the bow hunter?), a Randall in Michigan, a Randy in Illinois, a Randy in the Pittsburgh area, and a Randell in North Carolina, and me in California. Looking at other telephone book directories likely will provide a few more.

How about you - Googled yourself lately? Found anything on the web about yourself that surprises you?

Online Newspaper Abstracts - Free.

One of my friends passed this web site to me - it is Newspaper Abstracts from a variety of newspapers published since 1704. These abstracts are all user-submitted, so they are not comprehensive in nature, nor do they cover every newspaper or every year of every newspaper. The site states:

Newspaper Abstracts goal is to become your complete resource for family history research using newspapers. Our site continues to grow with an average of over 600 new items added each month and currently contains over 26131 abstracts and extracts from historical newspapers. These articles range in size from a single entry to an entire newspaper issue, all provided by site visitors and made available to you free of charge.

If you click on the "United States" link on the web page, you can then search all of the US newspaper abstracts available.

There is a Search box on the left hand side of the page. Enter a surname in the box and click on [Search]. A list of newspaper abstracts will show on a new web page. Click on the newspaper title for a given entry and you will see the abstract of the item. The quickest way to search for your surname in the abstract is to do an [Edit] [Find] and insert the surname in the [Find] box that shows.

While this is not complete (but what newspaper archive is?) it is FREE and it can be useful. I found several new pieces of information in the 144 hits for my Seaver surname study.