tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-98247882024-02-08T04:38:40.897-08:00FamilyTrackers BlogDiscussions for genealogists, genealogical societies, professionals, and transcribers.Gene Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05559492702210447045noreply@blogger.comBlogger19125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9824788.post-1159323032458827762006-09-26T18:32:00.000-07:002006-10-07T11:52:04.053-07:00Family Characters - James Daniel Hall<p class="MsoNormal">Do you have someone in your family who is a character? My Uncle Jim (James Daniel Hall 25 Feb 1901 Sumner County, KS - Jun 1978 Anadarko, Caddo County, OK) was truly a one-of-a-kind character who kept the family laughing for as long as I know about. I told someone recently that you could always tell when Jim was teasing - "When his mouth is moving."<br /><br />In 1988 his sister Clara Belle Hall told me this story about an event that happened when they lived on the farm in <st1:place><st1:placename>Caddo</st1:placename> <st1:placetype>County</st1:placetype></st1:place> (before 1912), "<span style="color:black;">Jim had the best sense of humor of anyone I have ever met. He was always that way. One time Jim and one of the Beardsly boys, Rosco, put a hat on the horse while mom and dad were gone. They decided to let the horse see what he looked like. So they took him into the house to look in the mirror. I don't know what happened exactly but I guess the horse looked into the mirror and got excited. He broke something and they got into trouble."<br /><br />Another time, Aunt Clara was supposed to fix some lunch for Jim when he was working at the Vallier's filling station in Anadarko. She decided to take a nap and was asleep when Jim came home. He found a ball of twine and wrapped it around and under the bed so she couldn't get up - then went back to work.<br /><br />Jim was one of the only Halls that seemed to carry part of the Scotch-Irish forward from our immigrant ancestor into our current life. He always insisted on planting potatoes on Saint Patrick's Day. Our friend, Homer Turney, from </span><st1:place><st1:placetype><span style="color:black;">Fort</span></st1:placetype><span style="color:black;"> </span><st1:placename><span style="color:black;">Cobb</span></st1:placename></st1:place><span style="color:black;"> always planted a large garden including potatoes. Jim found out that he had planted potatoes and asked him if he planted them with the eyes up. "They won't grow unless the eyes are facing up. You have to be real careful about that." So Homer went home and dug up the entire potato patch and turned the eyes up.<br /><br />Homer should have known better as Jim got him on another occasion just before Christmas. We asked Jim to bring some straw for a manger scene we were building at the office. Jim took a little left-over straw and put it into a nice bowl on the breakfast table along with a carton of milk. It was supposed to be a new cereal with 'lots of fiber' according to Jim. Homer had a bowl full of straw and milk before someone stopped him.<br /><br />We built a lot fences with John Garland in Anadarko in the early 1970s and that experience provided a wealth of 'Uncle Jim' stories. He and my dad (William Stanley Hall 13 Mar 1912 Caddo County, OK - 4 Jan 2004 Olympia, WA) argued like children over the most trivial details of building fence. Jim's main complaint was that dad always seemed to be somewhere else when the work started, "Every time I look up that boy is either off taking a leak or going to town for more beer." Even in his 60s dad was a 'boy' to Uncle Jim. My dad was a stickler for details and wanted every post tamped in just so and almost insisted that we measure the distance between posts down to the inch. On the other hand, Jim was looking for easier ways to get things done. He pointed out that there was an old well up on the hill and that "we could get that old well, cut it into pieces and then just throw the pieces down from the back of the truck wherever we wanted a posthole." He had a fertile imagination. Just for the record, neither Jim nor Stanley got their way as John and I stepped off the holes and filled them quickly with the edge of our shoe.<br /><br />We had a small tractor with an auger on the back to dig the corners of our fence and some of the rocky areas that were especially difficult. This provided one of the scariest moments of our fence-building time. Jim was driving and my dad was directing - back up, auger in gear, lower the auger, raise the auger, auger out of gear, drive forward. Sometimes it got a little monotonous and one or both of them would do the wrong thing. On this particular occasion Jim drove forward with the auger still in the ground. The front of the tractor reared straight up until the motor died with the tractor almost vertical. Jim was looking straight up into the sky and gasoline was dripping out of the tank right onto his lit cigarette. It was balanced and bouncing just a little bit forward and back and looked like it would go over backwards on the next bounce. As it bobbed forward, dad pushed the clutch just a bit so that it went forward a little further and kept doing that until it was back on the ground again. The argument started almost immediately, "You told me to drive forward." "No, when I do like this it means to raise the auger." John said later that he ". . . thought they were going to come to blows." The laughter this time one of those weird inappropriate raucous laughs driven by adrenaline and relief.<br /><br />Jim loved children and all of the mothers in the family cringed at the things he taught the children. I remember him teaching me to make a corral out of a half slice of bread, "Tear out the middle part and put the crust up against the edge of your place. Then fill the corral with gravy and dip the bread in there." He also taught us how to dunk donuts and other unacceptable habits during that time. There was a nonsense rhyme that he taught some of the kids but, I never knew about it. My 2nd cousin Mark Thompson is perhaps the last person to learn it.<br /><!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br /><!--[endif]--></span></p> Our daughter was born near the end of Jim's life and he loved talking with her. She was so young that it probably just sounded like "blah blah blah" to her. I guess that was the first time as an adult that I saw the gentle way that he loved children. In many ways he still had a little boy inside of him and that allowed him to relate in a very special way to children.<br /><br />Everyone who knew him can tell a funny story about Uncle Jim. He liked to sit around with some friends behind West Hardware during the day. One of those friends came to Jim's funeral and I will never forget this grown man who reached into the casket and touched Jim for a long moment before moving on - a final tribute to Jim's ability to affect people around him.<br /><br />You can review Jim's position in the family at my public site at . . .<br /><br />http://www.familytrackers.com/myfamily.jsp?id=61Gene Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05559492702210447045noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9824788.post-1157330474457726912006-09-03T17:35:00.000-07:002006-09-03T17:42:34.903-07:00Cool Genealogy GearI just discovered that you can get cool t-shirts, coffee cups, and other stuff at zazzle.com. There is not much available for genealogists so I created a store with some FamilyTrackers gear. You can customize the items with your own family name. Check it out below or go straight to the <a href="http://www.zazzle.com/GeneHall">FamilyTrackers store</a>. There are lots of items from other people as well.<br /><br /><embed src="http://www.zazzle.com/assets/swf/zp/zp.swf?zp=" width="450" height="300" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" flashvars="feedId=117791233433090637&path=http://www.zazzle.com/assets/swf/zp/skins" wmode="transparent"></embed>Gene Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05559492702210447045noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9824788.post-1149351200961257492006-06-03T09:12:00.000-07:002006-10-07T11:53:24.216-07:00A Tribute to OklahomansSteinbeck covered the "Okies" who moved to California during the 1930s dust bowl - a great story. I'm clearly not in his league when it comes to stories, but I think he missed a great opportunity when he didn't tell about the people who <strong>stayed </strong>in Oklahoma - the ones who stuck it out and build lives for themselves right there in the middle of the dust and through the economic crisis that was the great depression.<br /><br />Most of the images of that time focus on the move west - lines of vintage automobiles traveling down highway 66 with bags of water tied to the front and lines of people waiting in soup lines. My parents, both grandmothers and most of my aunts and uncles are among those brave souls who got up every morning and swept the dust from the doorway that came in through the keyhole overnight and who planted honey locust trees along the edges of fields to keep the dirt from blowing away.<br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6951/732/1600/p02_336e.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6951/732/320/p02_336e.jpg" border="0" /></a>Before the dust bowl, life was fairly normal for my parents. In early January 1930, my mother got permission to skip the last two periods at Anadarko High School to attend the local track meet with Mary Leight Baird, daughter of local pioneers and a lifetime friend of my parents. She also kept the ticket stub from her third "dance out" held at the armory in Anadarko - an event that she attended with my father before they were married and an event held only a half block from the house where they lived when I was born.<br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6951/732/1600/pi02_336.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6951/732/320/pi02_336.jpg" border="0" /></a>In 1931 when the drought began my parents, William Stanley Hall and Rubey Della Cook (photo at left), were new graduates of Anadarko High School. Both of their fathers (Levi Elmer Hall in 1925 and William Moses Cook in 1916) had died leaving widows and children to cope with an uncertain future. My father was industrious and worked at a variety of jobs after his father died - from selling newspapers to wrapping butter at Whitaker's Creamery. My mother was able to live with her sister, Ruth Naomi Dutcher (nee Cook) in Anadarko during high school and then went to college at the Oklahoma College for Women in Chickasha.<br /><br />It was a time of great change and presented both challenges and opportunities. I was lucky enough to meet a local man late in his life who happened to have some money during the 1930s in Oklahoma. He purchased farms in Caddo and Grady counties that were abandoned by the those migrating west and paid only the amount of back taxes - usually less than $100 for 160 acres of land that later produced a fortune in oil and gas. It’s interesting that some people make money while others are losing everything.<br /><br /><br /><p><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6951/732/320/p01_416a.1.jpg" border="0" /></p><p align="center">All of the children of Levi Elmer Hall and Mary Mahala Longenecker who were living in 1969<br />Front: Barbara Alberta Oelke, Ruth Marie Reiss, Clara Belle Hall, Stella Jane Fisher<br />Back: James Daniel Hall, Lewis Elmer Hall, Carl Edward Hall, William Stanley Hall</p><p align="left">My uncle, James Daniel Hall, moved to Oakland and painted ships during the war and my aunt Barbara Alberta Hall married Samuel Joseph Oelke and moved from the oil fields in Oklahoma to the oil fields of California. My Aunt Stella Jane Hall married Paul Fisher and moved to Yreka California. James Daniel eventually moved back to Oklahoma and died there. I remember trips to California to visit our cousins and reunions in Oklahoma when they came to visit us.<br /><br />On one trip to California (many years after the depression), Aunt Barbara had a particular beach that she wanted us to see and I was anxious to get there. I remember Aunt Barbara pointing straight left and telling my dad to "Turn right" causing a great confusion and providing a good long-term laugh. As it turned out, we drove for a very long time and the sand was so hot that we couldn't stand it. So we returned to Long Beach where the water was only a couple of blocks from Aunt Barbara's house. She had an avocado tree in the front yard that we climbed - the avocados that she picked during the winter and sent to Oklahoma as a special treat at Thanksgiving or Christmas.<br /><br />During that same trip, we drove north to Uncle Jim's house near Chico. He lived in an almond orchard - pronounced "ammon” orchard by Uncle Jim. He was married at that time and I remember his wife whisking my mother away to measure her for a homemade bra. My brother, Kent, and I went fishing in a creek nearby and got our line tangled in a big bush - our first experience with poison sumac. We only knew about poison oak in Oklahoma and it looked nothing like the California version. By the time we got to Aunt Stella's house in Yreka, we were swollen up all over. We saw a doctor there who gave us some shots that provided some relief.<br /><br />From there we drove to my Aunt Ruth Hall's house (who married Carl Reiss) near Connell, Washington. They were farmers who moved west long after the dust bowl - and lots of fun. Uncle Carl was a big joker and loved to tease. The last time that we saw him, he told a really long story while we watched the news on television. I got comfortable and took a little snooze as he talked. When I woke up he was still talking and I woke up just in time for the punch line, “Everybody spoke German at home and on the first day of school I couldn’t speak a word of English. Now my pronounce-ation is real good.” He was always good for a laugh. Aunt Ruth was famous for her work in the kitchen. They had a dairy in Oklahoma and when we visited there, she made fresh butter and sand-plum jelly, butchered chickens, and kept a garden. Her hot rolls were cherished and we always buttered and jellied a batch to eat on the way back to Anadarko. One time, Carl J. (junior) replaced our sack of rolls with a sack of walnuts which we didn’t discover until we were well on our way.<br /><br />All the rest of our family pretty much stayed in the Oklahoma area - 13 children in my father's family and 11 children in my mother's family - so holidays were pretty exciting. It seems like all of these family members never really got over the dust bowl and the depression. They were very cautious with money and hated to be in debt. It was a defining moment in their lives and they never forgot the lessons learned during that time.<br /><br />So I have always admired the people in Oklahoma. They were hardened by circumstance and those who stayed were very special people who found opportunity and built lives for themselves despite the hard times. </p>Gene Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05559492702210447045noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9824788.post-1147728636111863922006-05-15T14:08:00.000-07:002006-05-15T14:30:36.126-07:00Other Sources of Genealogy InformationSometimes I find information in the most unexpected places. We visited the Telephone Pioneer Museum in Albuquerque yesterday just to see some of the history there and perhaps a memorial plaque for my father-in-law. It is a great museum with tons of old telephone equipment like phones, switchboards, and hole diggers. It is located in the original telephone office built in 1906. My father-in-law, Thomas George Hinde, was employed by Mountain Bell from about 1935 until he retired in about 1971 or so. Naturally, we had an interest.<br /><br />What we didn't know was that the museum has gathered data on thousands of people who worked at the phone company over the years including photo albums donated by retired employees, telephone books for the entire state from the early day of telephones, and notebooks from people in the field who were building lines. This information is available to interested genealogists who visit the museum and pay the $1 suggested donation – a bargain price. I encourage you to give more if you can.<br /><br />The museum volunteers are retired phone company employees and their spouses. They have a great deal of information about the items in the museum and general history of the telephone industry. Just like genealogy society volunteers, this museum is staffed with the best people who will do anything to help you get the most from your experience. You may have to ask about the archives area since it is located in a separate area from the main part of the museum.<br />It would have been better to spend an entire day, but we only had a few hours to browse the information there. We had a good digital camera which has become a necessary tool for any library visit. Gi Gi who volunteers at the museum showed us the right photo albums to search and we quickly found nice photos of Thomas George Hinde. My daughter found someone there named William Hinde who we knew as 'Uncle Bill' and we had no pictures of him. Then on the very next page was a photo of Uncle Bill and his wife. So that made a great connection for us and we plan to return and spend more time.<br /><br />The museum is located at 110 4th Street NW, Albuquerque, NM in the downtown area. This is a nice area with lots of activity and the parking is surprisingly affordable – I saw available parking for less than $3. Bring your camera and plan to spend the day exploring the area.<br />Overall, it was a great trip and I recommend that you look to this and other non-traditional sources for genealogy information that is bound to be high quality like . . .<br /><br />Masonic lodge, Odd Fellows, and other membership groups like the New Mexico Masons at <a href="http://nmmasons.org/">http://nmmasons.org/</a><br />Employer information like railroad associations, union records, etc. like the New Mexico Steam Locamotive and Historical Society located at <a href="http://www.nmrhs.org/">http://www.nmrhs.org/</a><br />Educational institutions like University of New Mexico located at <a href="http://www.unm.edu/">http://www.unm.edu/</a><br /><br />If you Go . . .<br /><ul><li>Take your camera and tripod. Copy facilities are not available and materials must remain in the museum. </li><li>Plan to eat in one of the excellent restaurants near the museum. If you have never tasted authentic New Mexico food, it's a real treat - nothing like TexMex, California fresh, or anything else. Be prepared to make decisions about chili (red or green), tortillas (corn or flour), color of corn tortillas (blue or yellow) and don't worry about the sopapillas - they will come with your meal automatically. My recommendation - one red <strong>and</strong> one green, corn, and blue respectively.</li><li>Plan on at least an hour to see the museum and all day if you plan to look at their archives. </li><li>Don't forget to thank the volunteers there. There are some wonderful people there who are delighted to help you with questions.</li><li>Make a donation. If you are in a position to help the museum, make a generous donation to help them.</li></ul><p>The Telephone Museum of New Mexico is located on the 4th street pedistrian mall between Copper and Central in downtown Albuquerque. The phone number there is 505-842-2937 and they are open Monday through Friday from 10:00 am until 2:00 pm. Hours have changed in recent years and you should probably check before you go and definitely check if you have a large group who wants to see the museum.</p><p> </p><p> </p>Gene Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05559492702210447045noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9824788.post-1132163623249069362005-11-16T09:32:00.000-08:002006-05-28T16:32:54.383-07:00Genealogy in Northern Ireland - A Hall Family Adventure<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6951/732/1600/img000034.0.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6951/732/320/img000034.0.jpg" border="0" /></a>It was a struggle getting my paternal line back to 1741 Virginia only to hit a brick wall in Northern Ireland. My oldest known Hall relative, William Hall Sr., was born in Ireland in about 1702 or 1704 according to census information here in the United States. The family that I know about traveled with and intermarried with other families who were from County Antrim - now in Northern Ireland. And the earliest location that I know about the family is in an almost exclusively Scotch-Irish settlement called The Borden Grant in Virginia. Their farm was almost surrounded by a large curve in the James River near present-day Lexington, Virginia. Across the river on a small stream known as Whistle Creek was the Presbyterian Church that they attended - called Hall's Meeting House. Everything that I know about them indicates that they are Scotch-Irish Presbyterians who have a history typical of many others of that time.<br /><br /><ul><li>Early Ireland - Governed in small groups</li><li>About 1607 - Northern Ireland "planted" with Protestants from Scotland loyal to England with instructions to clear the land of native Irish Catholics. </li><li>About 1641 - 1651 - Irish rebel against English and about 600,000 Irish die.</li><li>After 1691 - Catholics and Protestants alike are denied religious freedom, ownership rights, voting rights, and access to educational opportunities. Protestants are particularly hard hit with almost a complete reversal of their fortunes in less than 100 years.</li><li>Beginning early 1700s - Situation so bad that both Protestants and Catholics begin emigrating from Northern Ireland.</li></ul><p>Interestingly that history continues to influence Northern Ireland and our understanding of our relatives who were there. We decided to take a trip there and see what we could find out. After a hectic week in England to visit my wife's dead relatives (and some live ones) we took a short flight to Belfast to see where my relatives lived between the early 1600s and the early 1700s. </p><p>Belfast is a nice town with lots of activity around the university and the downtown area. We stayed in a brand new hotel in downtown Belfast near the <a href="http://www.ancestryireland.co.uk/index.php?PHPSESSID=&new_login">Ulster Historical Foundation</a>. I had ordered both a preliminary report and a detailed report from them before we left home and hoped to discover even a small clue about the Hall family there. The town was full of nice people going about their business and we never felt uncomfortable or concerned about safety issues that dominated the news a few years back. </p><p>Since we were a little travel-weary, we settled in at the hotel and decided to have dinner there rather than walking somewhere else. I must say, they fed us like ranch hands with a delicious array of local foods. The following morning we had an Irish breakfast in the restaurant filled with a team of soccer players visiting town for a local match. There we tried to founder ourselves on sausages and other meats served in this heaviest of Irish traditions. Our Irish ancestors know how to put on a good feed. </p><p>After breakfast we took a short walk to the Foundation offices to meet with Brian Trainer and check the status of our search. The offices are in an historic looking building and we were directed to an upstairs area where there was a bookstore and a handful of enthusiastic volunteers. We picked a couple of books that looked interesting and a map - a weakness of mine. I just think you can never have enough maps. </p><p>Then we met with Brian to discuss our search for the Hall family and to go over the results and possible next steps. That meeting turned into a wonderful history lesson as Brian described the general conditions during the time our family resided in County Antrim and the most likely reasons and ways that they could have gotten to the US. Some of the information was enlightening. For example . . .</p><ul><li>The planted Scots were initially privileged and the native Irish discriminated against in the early 1600s. The large land holders didn't want to move to Ireland, so they got other people to do that work and offered land for these others to do the work. These smaller land holders did the same in a pyramid fashion until the people who were finally put on the land ended up with such a small amount that they couldn't make ends meet. </li><li>The shipping companies took advantage of the bad conditions by making sure that emigrants in the early 1700s had little or no money when they got on the ship. It seems like a typical emigrant would leave their going-away party and travel to Belfast, Derry or some other port to meet the ship. Then they had to spend whatever money they had for food and lodging waiting for the ship to arrive. Some ship captains intentionally delayed their departure to make sure that emigrants were broke. This allowed the ship owners to make significantly more money by selling the Irish and Scotch-Irish into indentured servitude upon arrival in North America.<br />This situation also encouraged ship owners to take more emigrants than their ship could hold leading to extremely difficult on-board conditions. </li><li>Tracing Irish ancestors is made more difficult by the number of ships that carried passengers to the United States and Canada illegally. Ships designed for cargo brought grain and other good from North America to Ireland and returned with human cargo - even though the ships were not designed to accommodate passengers. These ships sometimes didn't keep passenger lists at all and the over crowded ships sometimes only listed the number of people that they were designed to carry. This practice left off the names of many passengers that boarded over the limit. </li><li>Since our William Hall was on 160 acre farm by 1743, there is a chance that he had money in Ireland, or that he had been in the US long enough to work off his servitude and save purchase money by that time. That's a nice bit of logic from Brian that helped put our relative in some context.</li></ul><p>Records in Northern Ireland are a bit difficult because of the long history of conflict that has resulted in destroyed archives and a complex maze of things that must be known before starting. For example, it is important to know religion (Protestant or Catholic) and a very specific location within a county in addition to the usual name and date. The preliminary report from the Ulster Historical Foundation helped us discover the locations of records that might possibly help us find our relatives.</p><p>Our search didn't turn up any information that directly applied to our Hall family and we took a short break back at the hotel before deciding to spend the rest of our time getting to know the area and people in the Scotch-Irish area between Ballymoney and Ballymena. That required a change of plans.<br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6951/732/1600/img000008.0.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6951/732/320/img000008.0.jpg" border="0" /></a>We called the tourist office in Belfast to see what we could find out in the country. After a short conversation about possibilities, we called a couple of places before reaching Lily O'Neal who was surprised to get our call so late in the season (October). She informed us that the gate house was available was available for 100 pounds (About $120 in US dollars at that time). It is a three-bedroom house and much larger than we needed, but the price seemed right and it was out in the country where we wanted to be. So Lily gave directions to Stranocum and instructions to "Ask the man at the store how to find Mrs. O'Neal's house." I tried to clarify the name of the store and its location and Lily assured me that we ". . . couldn't miss it."<br />While I fully expected to pay some sort of fee for late cancellation, we checked out of our Belfast hotel and paid for only one night. The hotel people were just fantastic and understanding - something that we found to be true all over Northern Ireland. </p><p><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6951/732/1600/img000032.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6951/732/320/img000032.jpg" border="0" /></a>Then we made our way along an almost deserted highway toward Ballymoney and Stranocum. The Irish countryside is similar to some of the places we saw in England with one striking exception. The thorny hedges around the small fields in England are replaced by rows of red colored fuchsia in Ireland. </p><p>Lily was right about the store. It turned out that the store was the only building in sight after we passed the sign at the edge of town. It is a wonderful store with just about one of everything you might need. The man gave us directions to a driveway about a half mile down the road. The O'Neal house was about another half mile off the road. </p><p>We saw the house from a good distance away - a mansion really. As we learned later, the house was the original house built for one of the large land holders from England during the early 1600s. It housed the people near the top of one of the land pyramids and had fallen into disrepair. The O'Neils bought it and shooed away the birds that were living in the house and restored it to its original condition. We later toured the house and grounds with Billy O'Neal and learned about its history. Among all of the beautiful art and furniture that Billy and Lily had in their house, there was a little sign that I remember, "There are no strangers here - just friends that we have not met." I like to remember them that way as well as the nice people that we met at the restaurant and Keith at the little museum in Ballymoney - all with the lovely lilting accent that has changed very little since William Hall left in the early 1700s. The area is well worth a visit and we were able to drive almost every road in the county in just a few leisurely days. A few places that you should not miss . . .</p><ul><li>The Glens of Antrim - a series of nine glens that extend inland from the sea, each with a unique character. Beautiful trees, more colors of green than you can count, history, peat bogs, and tiny villages where you can linger with locals over a pint of Guinness. </li><li>The Giant's Causeway - a volcanic formation that was created when lava cooled rapidly - kind of like when the mud cracks in the bottom of a pond in summer except that the cracks extends straight down through the rock. The formation extends into the ocean in a series of steps and is a short walk from the top of the hill (where you can buy a map). </li><li><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6951/732/1600/img000028.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6951/732/320/img000028.jpg" border="0" /></a>Bushmills Distillery - A great tour that includes a taste of the finished product afterward. They have been making whiskey at Bushmills since before 1608 when they were issued a license. A lovely woman showed us through the plant and explained the process of making fine single malt Irish whiskey. She also did a short unbiased talk about the differences between Irish whiskey and Scotch whisky ending with, ". . . and Irish whiskey includes an 'e' in the spelling; Scotch whisky does not." When a member of the group asked why the Irish use the 'e' in the spelling of whiskey, she answered simply, "Because it is correct." </li><li>The castle at Carrickfergus - a beautiful building that will give you perspective on this time in history as you walk through a real castle. I liked the dungeon where a great Irish leader named Con O'Neil was held for a while until the owner's daughter brought Con a wheel of cheese that was stuffed with a rope. Con lowered himself out the window directly into a waiting boat below and escaped. This castle built in about 1180 will set you up to see the ruins at Dunluce castle on the bluff overlooking the ocean. </li></ul><p><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6951/732/1600/img000006.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6951/732/320/img000006.jpg" border="0" /></a>The highlight of the visit for me was the Ulster-American Folk Park. This park will show you real-life examples of houses, businesses, and life before your ancestor emigrated from Northern Ireland. It even includes exhibits about the boat trip and their lives in North America. An authentic prairie schooner from the United States is included. There is also a great library with a searchable database and rooms of books on emigration - and loads of wonderful volunteers waiting to help you with your search. </p><p>We struck some gold in the museum when we found a familiar name - James Patton. He was a neighbor of William Hall in the Borden Grant in Virginia and there were marriages between the Patton family and the Hall family in the US. It turns out that Patton was the son of a ship's captain from Limivady, a small town just east of Derry (also known as Londonderry) in Derry County. This is all just a short distance from the area in County Antrim where we believe that William Hall may have been born. Patton is important because he met Borden and was involved in transporting Scotch-Irish from County Antrim to populate land in both the Beverly and Borden grants in Virginia. In addition, lots of information is available about Patton's family and history. This helps fill in some of the gaps about William Hall's life and how he might have ended up in Virginia. This Patton connection was fun and unexpected discovery so far from home. I wasn't even prepared with information from home about the Patton family. </p><p>Northern Ireland is a place where the green seems to come out of the ground and float like a fog just above the grass - a green so bright that it merges with the water falling into the Irish sea blurring the margins of sea, land and sky. It is a land of castles, friendly people, empty stretches of road, and mysterious stone circles. Make plans to go - even if you can't find your relatives there. </p><p>Some good resources:<br />Ulster Historical Foundation - <a href="http://www.ancestryireland.co.uk/index.php?PHPSESSID=&new_login">http://www.ancestryireland.co.uk/index.php?PHPSESSID=&new_login</a></p><p>Ulster-American Folk Park - <a href="http://www.folkpark.com/">http://www.folkpark.com/</a></p><p>Ballymoney Museum<br />Ballymoney Borough Council<br />14 Charles Street<br />Ballymoney Co. Antrim BT53 6DZ<br />United Kingdom<br />Telephone: +44 (0) 28 2766 0245<br /><a href="mailto:keith.beattie@ballymoney.gov.uk">keith.beattie@ballymoney.gov.uk</a> </p>Gene Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05559492702210447045noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9824788.post-1130030543195655502005-10-22T18:21:00.000-07:002005-10-22T18:22:23.210-07:00Sherida K. Eddlemon Publishes Smith Facts of MissouriSaturday, October 22, 2005<br />Sherida K. Eddlemon Publishes Smith Facts of Missouri<br /><br />Sherida K. Eddlemon, a genealogist with over 15 years of publishing experience has published Smith Facts of Missouri at FamilyTrackers. This publication is part of Eddlemon’s continuing effort to publish and distribute her private collection of original and rare genealogical documents over the Internet.<br />The publication announced today will allow Smith researchers to easily locate a variety of information about their Smith relatives in Missouri. “This publication includes over 2,500 individuals listed in dictionary style. The information may include death, marriage and birth dates; names of spouses; locations; and children depending on the individual,” according to Eddlemon. These records were gleaned from Eddlemon’s private collection of original genealogical sources collected over a lifetime. According to Gene Hall, CEO of FamilyTrackers, Inc., “This publication is a real time-saver for researchers interested in the Smith family, including alternate spellings like Smyth and Smythe.” The 46-page publication is sold in its entirety on FamilyTrackers in Microsoft Word format and available for downloading immediately.<br />Genealogists can search this and every other publication on FamilyTrackers by entering a free search at familytrackers.com. The FamilyTrackers database will match your search with all current and future publications entered onto the site. Current FamilyTrackers members who entered matching searches in the past have already been notified to review the publication and decide if it will help their research efforts.<br />Hall continued, “We are delighted to work with Sherida on this project as well as the previous 16 publications that she has completed on FamilyTrackers. This is important information presented here for the first time.”<br />Sherida K. Eddlemon is a genealogist located in Tennessee and has published dozens of books including major works on birth, death, and marriage records in Missouri, Kentucky, Mississippi, New York, Arkansas and Tennessee. She has 17 publications to her credit on FamilyTrackers – many of them available for the first time.<br />FamilyTrackers is a California corporation established as a tool to help genealogists find and track information about their families all over the world.<br />Contact Info:<br />Gene Hall, CEO<br />FamilyTrackers, Inc.<br />1075-239 Space Park Way<br />Mountain View, CA 94043<br />650-938-1075<br /><a href="mailto:Gene@FamilyTrackers.com">Gene@FamilyTrackers.com</a><br /><a href="http://www.familytrackers.com/">http://www.familytrackers.com/</a> <br /><br />Sherida K. Eddlemon<br /><a href="mailto:SheridaE@aol.com">SheridaE@aol.com</a>Gene Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05559492702210447045noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9824788.post-1129048669765930762005-10-11T09:14:00.000-07:002005-10-11T11:30:43.466-07:00Genealogy Brick Walls - Professional Help Is Just a Click AwayHave you been stuck on your fourth great grandmother for over 10 years? Did you ever wish you could just go to the courthouse that has the information you need? Don't have the time or money to climb your family tree? Planning a trip to meet long-lost relatives?<br /><br />Consider hiring a professional genealogist.<br /><br />Sometimes we become a little smug about our research - particularly after years of intense experience; some of us don't think we need any help. Regardless, there are times when all of us could use the services of a good professional. When I was researching the Hinde family for a trip to England, we wanted to visit some of the churches and neighborhoods important to our family. There simply was not enough time to get the information that we needed before leaving on our trip. In addition, some of the information we needed was in the <a href="http://www.met.police.uk/history/archives.htm">Metropolitan Police Archives in London</a> - information that was not yet online. We searched the APG - <a href="http://www.apgen.org/directory/index.php">Association of Professional Genealogists</a> for someone in London who could help us.<br /><br />We had a really good experience. The professional we hired was recommended by a distant relative in England <strong>and</strong> they appeared in the APG database of professional members who abide by strict ethical guidelines. Both of these facts made us more comfortable in sending 100 British Pounds to a person we had never met. After spending half a morning trying to get a bank to issue a cashier's check, I finally wired the money via Western Union from Clyde's Liquor Store. My wife still teases me about managing my banking business at the liquor store, but that is another funny story that must wait for another day.<br /><br />The important thing is that we were under a time crunch, didn't have access to the information, and needed someone to go to a source on our behalf. Since we were new to this area of genealogy, we decided to hire the professional to do 10 hours of work for us for $100. That limited our exposure just in case things didn't work out.<br /><br />In our case, there was never anything to worry about. The professional demonstrated qualities that are common among many who provide these services.<br /><br /><strong>Asked questions and provided guidance</strong>: At the professional's request, I provided the information that we had relative to the story that was passed down to us about William Thomas Hinde, a report from <a href="http://www.leisterpro.com/">Reunion </a>that detailed the facts we had at that time, and various documents that proved the information in the report. This information allowed the professional to give us good advice about the best sources of additional information. Perhaps the Police Archives were not the best place to start. We identified several other basic references to include in the research as a result of this early discussion. This activity focused our research and leveraged our <s>dollars</s> - uh pounds - to maximize our chances for success.<br /><br /><strong>Honesty</strong>: It goes without saying that you want to know the truth about your ancestry. Just the act of gathering additional information and giving candid feedback about our best course of action indicated to me that our researcher was honest. That proved to be true when we received results as well. Watch for signs of honesty as you make initial contacts. People who want to do only exactly what they are told are not really giving you the benefit of their expertise - you could hire a clerk to do that sort of work.<br /><br /><strong>Accuracy</strong>: A good professional just has to be accurate. There is really no room for speculation in conclusions about your family. Of course you should get information about potential areas of further research. If conclusions are uncertain, the information you get should clearly line that out for you so that there is no confusion. Discussions about people should include full names, dates, and locations. Usage of words like 'she' or 'him' are sometimes confusing unless the professional is a very careful writer. It is also confusing to switch from a full name to an abbreviation like referring to William Thomas Hinde as Tom; now I wonder if there is a second person, or if the writer is referring to William Thomas Hinde. Ten years from now it will really be confusing.<br /><br /><strong>Documentation</strong>: Your professional should expect to deliver all documentation that they found and used on your project. After just a few short years that will be all that you have to prove the conclusions that you make from this investment. If you only keep a letter from the professional outlining their efforts, you (or someone else) will have to do the research again. All conclusions are subject to your own questioning, "How do we know that is true?" and once you find that for one source, you have to ask again, "How did they know that is true?". Enough said. Get the documentation!<br /><br /><strong>Experience</strong>: Please don't overlook this basic measure of quality. Professionals who have been in business for several years have stood the test of time and they are still in business. If you stick with trained professionals who are members of professional organizations like APG and you will find this one an easy question to answer before spending any money.<br /><br /><strong>Pricing</strong>: I guess that I must include something about pricing. In terms of value, please consider how much it would cost you to travel to the location and get the information yourself. For anything other than across town, a professional is a bargain at almost any price. Also consider all of the other issues mentioned here; it doesn't matter how low the price if you don't get what you want. Most professionals are proud of their work and won't take your project at a price that won't allow them to give you a fair deal. There is tension between your ability to pay and the professional's ability to deliver at a certain price. Negotiate a deal that works for both of you even if you have to reduce the size of the project.<br /><br />Professionals come in a variety of specialties based on geography, surnames, time periods, ethnic groups, events and special services like planning or genetics. There are some interesting new services like genealogy travel planning where the pro will do preliminary research, arrange for meetings with your relatives, and guide your group upon arrival. There are also services that cover wide geographic areas like those who live near the LDS Library in Salt Lake City, Utah. If your search covers a broad geographic area, you should consider <a href="http://www.progenealogists.com/">ProGenealogists</a> Family History Research Group.<br /><br />Do your home work and expect to have a wonderful learning experience when you use a professional genealogist. That has been my experience and hope that yours is the same.Gene Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05559492702210447045noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9824788.post-1128800451275006952005-10-08T12:38:00.000-07:002005-10-08T12:40:51.280-07:00Birth Records - Moisei, Maramures, Romania 1866-1867 PublishedHi,<br /><br />A friend in Romania just published images of the birth records from Moisei, Maramures, Romania for 1866 and 1867. Part of this area is in Ukraine. Surnames included in this publication are . . .<br /><br />Belimer, Deszkal, Einhorm, Erdan, Feige, Freiberg, Fruchler, Genuth, Gluk, Gold, Herstik, Indik, Katz, Kreiner, Malek, Polak, Pollak, Sali, Vakar<br /><br />Enter a search at <a href="">http://www.familytrackers.com/</a> if you have someone there. It will return any current matches to your search as well as continue to search any additional items that are added to FamilyTrackers.<br /><br />Searching and membership are free at FamilyTrackers - but this publication is for sale by the publisher - much lower than the cost to travel there and find the info your self.<br /><br />The publisher is Marcel Mindrescu, <a href="">office@mindrescu.com</a>. He is a professional genealogist with access to most of the records in Romania, parts of Hungary, and Moldovia. Thanks to Janos Kocs, another professional located in Romania, for indexing these images.<br /><br />GeneGene Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05559492702210447045noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9824788.post-1128732303794683002005-10-07T17:19:00.000-07:002005-11-26T21:04:05.186-08:00Cook Family Genealogy - Climbing a Brick Wall<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6951/732/1600/pi16_459.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6951/732/320/pi16_459.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />All I had was a very confusing story passed to my by mother, her sister, and her brother about William "Bill" Cook and Mary Martha Higginbotham, their grandparents. My Uncle Everett Cook's version didn't include Mary Martha's first and middle name, but was the same otherwise. Here is my Aunt Ruth Dutcher's version from a letter she wrote.<br /><br />"My grandparents were William Cook and Mary Martha Higginbotham. Mary Martha was born March 15 1837 and William was born in 1840. My dad was born either in Missouri or Nebraska and was raised in Nebraska. William died in the Civil War and Mary Martha married another man named Cook - no relation to any of us. Got that?"<br /><br />No. I didn't get it either.<br /><br />I was finding most of my relatives in the census records and not much information was online back then. It seems almost impossible to sort through every county in Missouri and Nebraska. I decided to look in counties that were near the corner of Missouri and Nebraska where the two states touched each other. One by one I went through counties looking for William in the 1860 census - just before the Civil War. One by one I marked off the counties and spread the search further and further from the border.<br /><br />Finally I found a William Cook in Atchison county Missouri that was the right age. He was living in a boarding house or hotel - a place with lots of people with different surnames. There was no sign of Mary Martha. I continued to look over the years and spent at least an hour or two each week going over information and checking online bulletin boards for someone who knew about these two.<br /><br />Aunt Ruth died just a few months after she wrote the letter documenting the story she and my mother had told before. Shortly after that I met a distant cousin from my Hall family who lived in Salt Lake City and we exchanged information via email about that family. Since he is Mormon and really a good researcher, I asked for his help. He invited me to come to Salt Lake City to search and he agree to spend a weekend helping me - too good an offer to pass up.<br /><br />So I flew from San Jose to Salt Lake City on that very Friday to solve this years-old mystery. It is an interesting place - small town compared to the Bay area. The people are nice and I have never seen so many young people in slacks and white shirts. It is a town pretty much dominated by the church, news about the church, and doing church work. I was anxious to get started early on Saturday morning.<br /><br />We went straight to the library in downtown. It is the focal point of any genealogy trip there even though there are other records scattered about town in other buildings. The front lobby of the library showcases a large mural that helps explain the church's emphasis on the family. It shows three families reaching across time - one family in the past, one family in the present, and one family in the future. It was a good image to set the mood for the rest of the day.<br /><br />The library is just off the lobby and is filled with volunteers waiting to help. The help is hands on - for as much time as you need to get started. A very friendly and exciting place. There were lots of people with lists of relatives on the back of their shirt - you never know when you might meet a distant cousin and it apparently pays to advertise!<br /><br />We got started with a handy index that circumvented the county by county search that had consumed so many years of effort. Within an hour we had located a promising couple named James P. Cook and Nancy Matilda Cook in Macon County, Missouri. They appeared to be living with James' parents William Cook and Elizabeth next door to a family of Higgenbothams. A little more research turned up a marriage between James P. Cook and Nancy Matilda *Higgenbotham*. The birth dates for both matched the birth dates given by Aunt Ruth. I had a hard time reconciling the names however and made every excuse to not belive that these were my great grandparents. It was just hard to believe that my mother didn't know the name of her own grandparents. So I continued to search the next day for perhaps twins - could James and Nancy have twins who also married each other - stranger things have happened.<br /><br />On Sunday we found a great article about Frank Cook in Gage County Nebraska who married Nancy Matilda Higgenbotham - another match to the story. I returned to California with a lot of copies of information to study and try to figure out what was true.<br /><br />I remained a skeptic until about six months later when I decided to go back to the last place where I knew my grandfather was in Oklahoma. I though it might be good to get some more information about him and perhaps put the pieces together. I discovered a new publication that included most of the cemeteries in Payne County where they first settled. To my amazement there was Nancy Matilda Cook buried in the same plot as my grandfather's first wife from Gage County Nebraska.<br /><br />I had a great laugh with my brother who thought I was crazy for continuing this search way past when I had sufficient proof. I am still not sure why I couldn't accept the difference in names - but finding Nancy was convincing and I put this mystery away and started looking for another one. Don't you just love Genealogy?Gene Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05559492702210447045noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9824788.post-1127939706290161272005-09-28T12:56:00.000-07:002005-11-26T21:12:09.613-08:00Genealogy Mistakes and Faux Pas for Beginners- Laugh and Learn From Mine<span style="font-family:arial;">Nobody told me how to do genealogical research; I learned from trial and error - with a big emphasis on the <strong>error</strong>. Perhaps you can learn from my mistakes. My wife first suggested a topic called <em>Ten Genealogy Mistakes to Avoid</em> and I thought it would be difficult to come up with ten. In less than five minutes we came up with ten embarrassing things that I have done personally and it looks like this could turn into a Time Life series. So I limited this list to "beginner mistakes" just to keep my ego intact and give you some good ideas to help your search.<br /><br /><strong><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6951/732/1600/pic0451.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6951/732/320/pic0451.jpg" border="0" /></a>Pay Attention to Details:</strong> Margaret and I were so lucky to take a trip to her grandmother's home town in the village of Riseley in England. It was so nice to be able to involve her in the genealogy part of my life and I was excited to see her reaction when we finally got there. We toured the church, walked through the graveyard, and visited with the vicar. I insisted that she pose in front of the sign on the outskirts of town for a photo - the outskirts of the wrong town. It turns out that there are two villages named Riseley - one on the map that I purchased before we left California and one in the materials handed down through our family that emphasized Riseley, <strong>Bedfordshire</strong>, England as grandma's birth place. Sigh . . . I still think it is a nice photo and a really nice town to visit.<br /><br /><strong>Back Up Your Data:</strong> This is a lesson that seems to go into short-term memory. It seems that everyone has a story about losing a document and losing a day's work; How about losing a genealogy file with 25 years of effort invested? It is a disaster compared to other similar computer losses. Still not likely to change your ways? In order to mitigate your losses you should share. Share with relatives by trading gedcom files and share with the world by publishing your info online. These two things effectively back up your information on other computers so that a loss at home can be recovered.<br /><br /><strong><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6951/732/1600/012_9.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6951/732/320/012_9.jpg" border="0" /></a>Get Permission to Visit:</strong> We tried to get permission to visit our distant relatives in Switzerland earlier this year and couldn't get contact information. Your relatives may not be prepared for a reunion when you just show up on their doorstep. Our last-minute visit was cordial and fun considering that they hadn't received so much as a Christmas card from us in over 250 years. An additional issue that I hadn't considered is that the people living in the original homestead may have received more visits before we got there since the original line of this family has expanded to over 100,000 people in the US alone. Thinking about the possible implications of that number makes me think that our relatives are saints - or at least something more than just really nice people like we originally thought.<br /><br /><strong>Precise Descriptions:</strong> Many genealogists start with newsgroups, email groups, and online discussions because they are good places to get in touch with distant relatives. It's a great idea to find out if someone has already done the work before you invest 25 years. When you get involved in those types of places, you find that many beginners make the mistake of using general language in titles and subject lines - like "My Family" or "Grandparents." These are the short blurbs listed on the web site or in the email that people scan to see if they want to read your message or not. The problem with general language is that the people who scan the list don't know if they should read your post or not. You want people to read your post, but your really want the <strong>right people</strong> to read your post. A good subject line tells me who the post is about; name, location and date range. You can also include an event if you have that like birth, death, or marriage. One good example is "<em>Langenegger, Ulrich b 1664 in Langnau, Bern, Switzerland</em>." You can't really identify a person with less information than name, date and place. No matter how unique your relative's name, there are bound to be others when you consider all locations and all time.<br /><br /><strong>Publishing Data on Living People:</strong> There are bad people out there who try to get information about others so that they can use their name and reputation to cheat people. Many security systems have used Social Security numbers and your mother's maiden name as identification. The better systems do much more these days. Still you shouldn't publish anything on the Internet that includes unique identifiers like Social Security or driver's license numbers. My genealogy software includes a filter that allows me to publish my file and replaces living people's information with "Still Living" or "Not Available." People in your file who are less than 120 years old and who don't have a death date should be assumed living for this purpose.<br /><br /><strong>Prove Relationships:</strong> You should satisfy yourself that a person is really related to your family before you include them in published information. Proof is a bit of an issue sometimes and it means something different to every genealogist - sometimes different things to the same genealogist in different situations. I made a three hour trip one time to meet a distant relative who turned out to be not related at all. We have sent each other emails and joked about this meeting many times - just like family and still a great experience.<br /><br />I have on occasion accepted a simple interview with a person who <strong>knew</strong> the person in question personally as proof, especially if I can confirm the information from two or three additional people. Generally, I require two bits of public information to prove a person. That kind of proof is not always available and sometimes I am content with just putting a person in my tree as a place holder (and marking it clearly as "Unproven").<br /><br /><strong>Don't Believe Everything You Hear:</strong> I had a detailed family story about Mary Martha Higginbotham that came from my mother and her sister that included dates, names, and places. My uncle wrote about this person in somewhat less detail. When I finally got to the LDS Library in Salt Lake, I was determined to unravel this mystery - really aiming to routinely prove the family story. I found some great data for Nancy Matilda Higginbotham born on the same date as the family story in Macon County, Missouri and who lived in Gage County, Nebraska. I refused to believe the public record because the names were different from the family story even though all of the other details fit. "It must be her twin sister" I thought. My brothers were mystified that I would continue to search when faced with so much proof. I can't really defend myself, but I was just curious about how this story could have been wrong. I finally accepted the public record after I found Nancy Matilda's grave in Oklahoma on the same plot as my grandfather's first wife. Turns out that my uncle's recollection with less information was a more accurate story than my mother's. The lesson is this: Don't believe everything that your family tells you - or that anyone else tells you; Prove everything to your own satisfaction.<br /><br /><strong>Proper Caution Notices:</strong> When you first started, someone helped you. After you have some experience, you will help someone else. Genealogists are some of the nicest people in the world and your generosity will pay dividends when you need help yourself - even without any dividends, you are just paying the people who helped you. One caution about sharing: be careful to quote sources and to give proper cautions to people who read your information. If you are not sure about a relationship, person, or date, make sure that you clearly say that and include it in your written information. It is amazing how many times I have gotten a hot lead on my current brick wall with someone who quotes another researcher and when I contact the other researcher, they quote <strong>me</strong> as the source. Those events have slowed for me since I started giving proper precautions along with the data that I share. I also stopped publishing data online that is not proven to my satisfaction because it was not clear enough to the reader no matter how many cautions I included.<br /><br />Please keep in mind that we look back on these experiences as fun learning experiences - not the embarrassments they seemed to be at first. Have fun with genealogy; even the gaffs turn out to be fun.<br /><br />Gene Hall is a genealogist with 30 years of research experience and the CEO of FamilyTrackers, Inc., a world-wide genealogy exchange dedicated to serving the needs of genealogists, genealogical societies, professional genealogists, and transcribers all over the world. FamilyTrackers is located at </span></span><a href="http://www.familytrackers.com/"><span style="font-family:arial;">http://www.familytrackers.com/</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;"> .</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">This article comes with reprint rights. You are free to reprint and distribute it as you like. All that I ask is that you reprint it in its entirety without any changes including this text and the link above.</span>Gene Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05559492702210447045noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9824788.post-1127338220868450572005-09-21T13:12:00.000-07:002005-09-21T14:30:20.916-07:00Sherida K. Eddlemon to Publish on FamilyTrackersSherida K. Eddlemon, a genealogist with over 15 years of publishing experience has selected FamilyTrackers to publish and distribute her private collection of original and rare genealogical documents over the Internet. <br /><br />A joint effort announced today by Sherida K. Eddlemon and FamilyTrackers, Inc. will allow Internet users to search a host of genealogical records that have never been available to the public before now. According to Eddlemon, “I have collected these records all of my adult life because I wanted them to be preserved – saved for relatives who may be searching for this information.” The records include extensive collections of information in Illinois, Virginia, Tennessee, Missouri, Pennsylvania, and New York in the United States.<br /><br />Many of the items are non-traditional resources like Masonic records and work histories that include information about the activities of the people mentioned in the documents. Eddlemon says that, “Many traditional sources include just names and dates without much more information about the person. “<br /><br />The first publication in this series will include images of the pages from the 1925 Masonic Directory from Springfield, Illinois.<br /><br />“We are delighted to work with Sherida on this important project and happy that she recognizes the unique benefits of publishing on FamilyTrackers. Our system will match these new records with existing FamilyTrackers searches and with new searches entered later. Searches entered now will be compared with Sherida’s additional publications as they are added,” according to Gene Hall, CEO of FamilyTrackers. Membership and searching activities are free on FamilyTrackers. Individual items are priced by publishers according to the rarity and difficulty in extracting the information.<br /><br />Sherida K. Eddlemon is a genealogist located in Tennessee and has published dozens of books including major works on birth, death, and marriage records in Missouri, Kentucky, Mississippi, New York, Arkansas and Tennessee.<br /><br />FamilyTrackers is a California corporation established as a tool to help genealogists find and track information about their families all over the world.<br />Contact Info:<br />Gene Hall, CEO<br />FamilyTrackers, Inc.<br />1075-239 Space Park Way<br />Mountain View, CA 94043<br />650-938-1075<br /><a href="mailto:Gene@FamilyTrackers.com">Gene@FamilyTrackers.com</a><br /><a href="http://www.familytrackers.com/">http://www.familytrackers.com/</a> <br /><br />Sherida K. Eddlemon<br /><a href="mailto:SheridaE@aol.com">SheridaE@aol.com</a>Gene Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05559492702210447045noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9824788.post-1127163004354313832005-09-19T13:28:00.000-07:002005-11-26T21:25:06.326-08:00Genealogy in England – A Hinde Family Adventure“Dad was a bobby in London in about 1905 and he met a guy in a pub– a scoundrel really – named Arthur Mamby who was murdered in <img style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6951/732/320/pic073.jpg" border="0" />Taos a few years later. This Mamby character said that Taos was a paradise in New Mexico where everyone was settling. I guess dad was ready for a change or something. He packed all their things and came directly to Taos along with mom and Doris. When they got here, there was nothing but the pueblo and a handful of people living in town. There was no blacksmith in town and dad opened a shop - the first in Taos.” This story from Thomas George Hinde about his parents’ trip from England was just the beginning of our search for our Hinde Family’s English roots.<br /><br />The English have been migrating to the United States since 1607 when the first colony was established at Jamestown, Virginia. Additional colonies were established in subsequent years in Plymouth, Massachusetts; Salem, Massachusetts; Hartford, Connecticut; Maryland; and Pennsylvania. This relative trickle of migration increased until the period between 1820 and 1920 when 2.5 million people moved from England to the United States – among them William <a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6951/732/1600/img000029.jpg"></a>Thomas Hinde, our “Grandpa Hinde.” After generations in the US, these immigrants have turned into millions of people with roots extending back to England and other UK countries.<br /><br />Our initial effort was to begin to understand the family tree in a factual way. So we completed interviews with relatives who knew Grandpa Hinde and his wife, Mary Elizabeth Steer – our “Grandma Hinde.” We also made some trips to Taos during vacations to see grandpa’s blacksmith shop, the house he built, the old jail on the square, and numerous other examples of his blacksmithing talents around town. We suspect that he was commissioned to build the iron fence around Kit Carson’s grave – just across the street from the Hinde home. On our last trip there we discovered Hinde Street named in honor of this early day Taos pioneer family. This effort produced some colorful stories about the trip from England and their life in Taos along with some important documentation showing that the Grandpa Hinde was born Kempston, Bedfordshire in 1873 and Grandma Hinde was born in Risely, Bedfordshire in 1872.<br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6951/732/1600/img000023.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6951/732/320/img000023.jpg" border="0" /></a>Months turned into years as we gathered additional information about the Hinde family that stretched back to 1824 Olney in Buckinghamshire where the family was a stable member of the community for several generations. We found that the family lived for 2 years in Northampton where the Hinde family lived one generation back. Then they spent the next six years or so in the Pimlico area of London where grandpa was a farrier. The BMD project was particularly helpful in tracing members of the family back a couple of generations.<br /><br />We found a distant relative through an Internet discussion group that tied directly to our oldest known relative in Olney – one of those happy occasions that we genealogists live for. We also spent $100 US to hire a professional genealogist in England to research William Thomas’ history as a bobby in London. As it turns out, he was not a bobby at all – but his brother, Ernest, was. This is a good example of how stories can get mixed up over time.<br /><br />Grandpa died before my wife was born and grandma when she was very young. So, neither of us knew them very well except through family stories and the factual information that we had been able to find. At some time during our process we began to discuss a trip to England to see the places they had seen, to be in the places they had been, and to walk the places they had walked. We decided on a combined tourist and genealogy trip that would include highlights of London along with a few days of tromping through old church cemeteries – my favorite part of any trip. My wife decided that we would take the tube from the airport into London - something of an adventure for me. As we came up out of the station at our stop into a somewhat misty day in London, a kind local came up to us, "You two look like you are lost. How can I help you?" He gave us some precise directions to our hotel and a valuable tip on a pub along the way where we could lift a pint of bitter. That turned out to be typical of our experience; The British are friendly, witty and fun - something we will never forget.<br /><br />After our time in <a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6951/732/1600/img000016.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6951/732/320/img000016.jpg" border="0" /></a>London we took a train south to Maidstone where we picked up a car and toured Leeds Castle, a beautiful and relaxing spot not yet covered with tourists. Finally the genealogy portion of our trip was beginning! We continued to Dover where we took a wrong turn and very nearly entered the Chunnel under the strait to France. Thankfully, the tourist-friendly folks in England left a last-minute turn-around for us. We enjoyed a dock-side pub within walking distance from our hotel where I feasted on a fresh seafood platter in cream sauce. Margaret discovered her English roots with a plate of bangers and mash that were simply delicious. So much for the negative stories about English food; we found it different but quite nice everywhere we went. We slept with the window open to the channel where we peered through the fog watching the flickering lights in France – yet another world away.<br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6951/732/1600/pic071.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6951/732/320/pic071.jpg" border="0" /></a>Our schedule was much too tight as we could have stayed the week in Dover; it was just lovely with lots of interesting and historical things to see. We traveled along the south coast on our way to meet our distant cousin who had agreed to meet us for tea. We passed castles along the way that just begged us to pull off the road and linger for a few hours. Alas, we needed to move on and were content with seeing the beautiful beaches and countryside from the car. Somewhere along the way, our radio came on in the car with a warning about traffic conditions just ahead including detailed information about the motorway we were traveling and our direction – quite a fun surprise since we had never heard of anything like that before.<br /><br />We reached cousin Rick and Linda’s house near Titchfield about mid-afternoon as they were finishing up a yard sale event at their house. It was fun to meet them and hear about their lives over tea. Since tea is not really a special event where we grew up in the US, it was especially meaningful to share it with these new relatives and friends. As you might expect, the conversation turned to family and genealogy as they told stories about some of the places we were planning to see. It just notched up the excitement level as we heard about the charming small towns and churches where grandma and grandpa lived as children.<br /><br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6951/732/1600/Teutonic.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6951/732/320/Teutonic.jpg" border="0" /></a>We spent the night in a hotel on the harbor in Southampton, the port where the Hinde family boarded the Teutonic for New York in 1906 to begin the adventure of their lives. The next day we took a slight detour to the little town of Risely and looked through the graveyard without finding any familiar names. We went to the vicar’s house and got permission to go into the church to look around. We learned so much about England from that stop. There was an elevated section just off the sanctuary that had been built for the upper classes with a separate entrance; they did not go onto the main floor with the regular people. That section of the church now includes a stairway and is used as a classroom. There was a rope hanging near the back for ringing the church bell and the vicar said that training sessions were underway for bell ringers in preparation for an important anniversary celebration. The church was decorated for a fall harvest celebration from the previous week.<br /><br />We also learned about conkers. Two people in two days had cautioned us to “Mind the conkers.” So we asked the vicar to explain. "Conkers are chestnuts – horse chestnuts to be more precise. They look a lot like a buckeye – but larger. In the fall, they are on the ground and could cause quite a nasty fall if you step on them in a certain way." Children – historically little boys - in England search for the largest and strongest conkers to use in a game called . . . conkers. "You tie the best conker you can find on a string by drilling a tiny hole in the conker and threading the string through the hole. Then you spin your conker on the string while your opponent spins his in the opposite direction until you conk them together. The objective is to break your opponent’s conker." I confirmed this story with British friends here in the states who just raved about the childhood memories that flooded back when thinking about playing conkers with their friends in England.<br /><br />We wondered about how grandpa and grandma Hinde could have met since Risely was so far from Kempston and speculated as we made our way north to Buckinghamshire just an hour or so north of London. A few days later we discovered that there are two Risely’s in England – the one we visited and one within walking distance from the town where grandpa lived. Sigh . . . so much for planning. That’s why the original documents we had made such a big deal out of Riseley *Bedfordshire* England!<br /><br />One of our first stops was the city graveyard in Kempston just to see if we could find any Hinde grave markers. The office at the cemetery was closed so we could not ask about records or locations – so we carefully stepped through the conkers and covered the entire cemetery in about an hour. We made our way to Turvey where great grandfather Hinde was supposed to be buried and found one distant cousin buried there next to a beautiful church. <a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6951/732/1600/Riseley.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6951/732/320/Riseley.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />We finally got to the correct Riseley church where grandma and grandpa were married in 1898. A member of the church met us in the street and directed us to the vicar’s house and he was very friendly and helpful. The church is quite old and the vicar explained that the main section was built first and then a side portion built later. The iron door was built by a famous metal worker from London and is still working and being used every day. The vicar apologized that they only have records back to the 1600s in the church – a pretty foreign concept to us since churches in the US are generally only 100 or 200 years old. We were able to get some good information about the Tabron family (Grandma's mother was named Tabron) from the ledger kept there. I took a few pictures inside including one with my wife standing on the step where her grandparents stood a hundred years ago and pledged their love for each other. It was a poignant moment for both of us as we soaked in the feeling of that place and imagined the beginning of their lives as a married couple.<br /><br /><strong><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6951/732/1600/pic119.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6951/732/320/pic119.jpg" border="0" /></a>Doing some research in this area?</strong> England is a place where you can still see little villages with thatched roofs, prehistoric stone circles, and Roman ruins. Well worth the trip and a relatively exotic trip where you can understand the language with a little practice. The records in England are wonderful - they include lots of information about parents and usually occupations - very helpful when you have two people with the same name. While record-keeping on the US frontier was not a priority, English records were being kept in good order. Here are some resources that helped us.<br />Bedford Library<br />Harpur Street<br />Bedford MK40 1PG<br />Tel: 01234 350931<br />Fax: 01234 342163<br />A great set of microfiche with both church and public records from Bedfordshire – many not online yet.<br /><br />Taos County Historical Society<br /><a href="http://www.taos-history.org/">http://www.taos-history.org/</a><br /><br />Buckinghamshire Family History Society<br /><a href="http://www.bucksfhs.org.uk/">http://www.bucksfhs.org.uk/</a><br /><br />Bedfordshire Family History Socieety<br /><a href="http://www.bfhs.org.uk/">http://www.bfhs.org.uk/</a><br /><br />Other neat links:<br /><a href="http://www.allsaintsriseley.org.uk/">http://www.allsaintsriseley.org.uk/</a><br /><a href="http://www.roll-of-honour.com/Bedfordshire/RiseleyRollofHonour.html">http://www.roll-of-honour.com/Bedfordshire/RiseleyRollofHonour.html</a><br /><br />Gene Hall is a genealogist with 30 years of research experience and the CEO of FamilyTrackers, Inc., a world-wide genealogy exchange dedicated to serving the needs of genealogists, genealogical societies, professional genealogists, and transcribers all over the world. FamilyTrackers is located at <a href="http://www.familytrackers.com/">http://www.familytrackers.com/</a> .<br /><br />This article comes with reprint rights. You are free to reprint and distribute it as you like. All that I ask is that you reprint it in its entirety without any changes including this text and the link above.Gene Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05559492702210447045noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9824788.post-1126715702094154502005-09-14T09:27:00.000-07:002005-09-14T09:42:35.116-07:00Genealogy in Romania - It's Tough but Possible<a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6951/732/1600/IM001501.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6951/732/320/IM001501.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">Romania is located on a major migration route between Europe, Asia and Africa. This position along with political and other factors has produced a country of unusual diversity. While the majority of its people identify themselves ethnically as Romanian, there are at least 20 other ethnic groups in the country including: Hungarians, Gypsies, Germans, Jews, Ukrainians, Serbs, and Croats. Parts of present-day Romania have been included at various times in the USSR, Moldavia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Austro-Hungarian Empire, Wallachia, and Transylvania. Emigration from Romania has created demand for genealogy research in Romania, particularly from groups located in the United States, Canada, and Germany who are looking for family connections. Demand for information about Jewish people just before, during and after World War II is particularly high.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;"><br /><strong>Genealogy Research Issues:</strong> The diversity of ethnicities in Romania is reflected in the public records available for genealogy research. Records are variously stored locally and nationally written in Romanian, Hungarian, Hebrew, German and other languages depending on the location and time of the events described. Very little of the information is available electronically. Most of the information is not indexed even if you are able to go to the archive in person. In addition, place names are different depending on the time period you are researching and many place names are used for multiple places. For example, Brasov is the name of a county in Romania, a town in the county of Brasov, and a town in the county of Transylvania. <a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6951/732/1600/IM001504.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6951/732/320/IM001504.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><strong>Research Suggestions:</strong> How do you break through this multi-dimensional maze of changing borders, politics, and time?<br />Get the best information possible about your ancestor’s name, location, and time when they were there. Depending on their ethnicity you may be okay searching for the normal alternative spellings of that name. If you don’t know the ethnicity or if you are not sure, you may want to search for spellings in other languages as well. Search the most specific location possible right down to the village level if you know that.<br />· If you travel to Romania, consider hiring a local to help you with the different languages and locations. Many areas of Romania are distressed economically and people there are willing to provide services at a lower cost than in other European countries. Of course, you should check references and make sure that you can get quality and fairly priced help with your search. If you want to meet relatives while you are there, you should ask your local provider to do some research in advance and help you with introductions when you get there. Major collections of genealogy data are held at various district archives in Romania including . . .<br /><br />Bucuresti District<br />State Archives<br />Arhivelor Statul<br />Bdul Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej 29<br />Sector 5 R-70602<br />Bukarest România<br /><br />Alba District<br />Primaria Municipiului Alba Iulia<br />Plata Iuliu Maniu 1 R-2500<br />Alba Iulie România<br />Tel = 058-813 380<br /><br />Arad District<br />Primaria Municipiului Arad<br />Bd. Revolutiei 75 R-2900<br />Arad România<br />Tel = 057-219 652<br />Fax = 057 253 842<br />Bihor District<br />Primaria Municipiului Oradea<br />Plata Victoriei 1 R-3700<br />Oradea România<br />Tel = 059-137 000, 130 753<br />Bistrita-Nasaud District<br />Primaria Municipiului Bistrita<br />Piata Petru Rares 1 R-4400<br />Bistrita România<br />Tel = 063-223 923, 224 706<br /><br />Brasov District<br />Primaria Municipiului Brasov<br />Bd. Eroilor 8 R-2200<br />Brasov România<br />Tel = 068-116 550, 114 369<br />Fax = 068 152 628<br /><br />Cluj District<br />Primaria Municipiului Cluj-Napoca<br />Bd. Eroilor 2 R-3400<br />Cluj-Napoca România<br />Tel = 064-111 743, 112 551<br /><br />Harghita District<br />Primaria Municipiului Miercurea-Cluc<br />Bd. Timisoarei 11 R-4100<br />Miercurea Ciuc România<br />Tel = 066-111 819, 111 464<br /><br />Maramures District<br />Primaria Municipiului Baia Mare<br />Str. Gheorghe Sincai 37 R-4800<br />Baia Mare RomâniaTel = 062-417 034<br /><br />Mures District<br />Primaria Municipiului Tg. Mures<br />Piata Primariei 3 R-4300<br />Targu-Mures România<br />Tel = 065-132 463, 133 211<br /><br />Satu-Mare District<br />Primaria Municipiului Satu Mare<br />Str. 1 Decembrie 1918 Nr. 13 R-3900<br />Satu Mare România<br />Tel = 061 713 550, 713 551<br /><br />Sibiu District<br />Primaria Municipiului Sibiu<br />Bd. Victoriei 1-3 R-2400<br />Sibiu România<br />Tel = 069-210 449, 217 711<br />Fax = 069 216 033<br /><br />Timis District<br />Primaria Municipiului Timisoara<br />Bd. C-Tin Diaconovici Loga 1-3 R-1900<br />Timisoara România<br />Tel = 056-190363, 193623<br />Fax = 056-190 635<br /><br />If you are not able to travel to Romania, you may want to hire a professional genealogist to speed up the process. Prices are reasonable compared to other places in the world and well worth the cost. There are some excellent online resources where you can search for professionals who specialize in the type of research that you want. One of the best is the Association of Professional Genealogists that you can search from </span><a href="http://www.apgen.org/directory/index.php"><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">http://www.apgen.org/directory/index.php</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">. </span><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;"><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6951/732/1600/oradea_04_0005.jpg"></a><br />There are a few Internet sites that have good information about unraveling the genealogy of Romania including JewishGen.org which has a searchable database of people in Romania and Moldova located at </span><a href="http://www.jewishgen.org/databases/Romania/"><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">http://www.jewishgen.org/databases/Romania/</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">. The authors of this article are working on several projects located in Romania including the recently announced publication of records from Jewish cemetery at Oradea, Bihor, Romania. All persons included in the cemetery index are compared to all searches entered into FamilyTrackers.com. There is also a good list of Romanian Web sites located at </span><a href="http://www.genealogylinks.net/europe/romania/"><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">http://www.genealogylinks.net/europe/romania/</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;">. </span><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:85%;"><br />Gene Hall is a genealogist with almost 30 years of experience and the CEO of FamilyTrackers, Inc., a world-wide genealogy exchange dedicated to serving the needs of genealogists, genealogical societies, professional genealogists, and transcribers all over the world.<br /><br />Marcel Mindrescu is a professional genealogist located in Romania and has access to all available records in Romania, Hungary, the Ukraine and Moldova. Marcel is a professional genealogist with years of experience researching records in these countries. Lookups and large projects are being published on FamilyTrackers. <a href="mailto:office@mindrescu.com">office@mindrescu.com</a>.<br /><br />This article comes with reprint rights. You are free to reprint and distribute it as you like. All that I ask is that you reprint it in its entirety without any changes including this text and the link above.<br /><br /><br /></span><br /></span>Gene Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05559492702210447045noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9824788.post-1126370524639980112005-09-10T09:42:00.000-07:002006-02-08T15:48:53.010-08:00Make a difference – Join a Genealogical or Historical Society<span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">Since family information has become so available on the Internet, many people don’t realize the vital role still played by local genealogical societies. While all of the press and excitement has been focused online, these organizations have quietly gone about their business of preserving history and making it available to the world. </span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">Societies come in many different flavors but mainly are . . . </span><br /><ul><li><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">Geographically based like Chrystal Lake Historical Society located at </span><a href="http://www.cl-hs.org/">http://www.cl-hs.org/</a><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;"> </span></li><li><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">Surname focused like the Musick Family Association located at </span><a href="http://www.musick.com/">http://www.musick.com/</a><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;"> </span></li><li><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">Event focused like the Bolzano 'World War I Historical Society' located at </span><a href="http://www.provinz.bz.it/museenfuehrer/english/detail.asp?ORGA_ID=822">http://www.provinz.bz.it/museenfuehrer/english/detail.asp?ORGA_ID=822</a></li><li><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">Ethnicity focused like the Australian Jewish Genealogy Society at </span><a href="http://www.cl-hs.org/">http://www.cl-hs.org/</a><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;"> </span></li></ul><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;"><em>They almost all have one thing in common – they are managed and run by volunteers.</em> </span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">These organizations are experts at “making do” with the resources at hand, leveraging facilities, information, and personnel into viable organizations that preserve our heritage for future generations. Generally these societies are organized as non-profit corporations and those without such legal designation are still just trying to break even. No matter where you live, there is likely such an organization near you. Continued support from current and future members and friends will keep them viable. </span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;"><em>Here are a few good reasons why you should join these people and make a difference.</em> </span><br /><strong><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;"></span></strong><br /><strong><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">Meet People: </span></strong><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">A local organization is a great place to meet people who truly care about history and families; people who can teach you wonderful lessons about research, history, and life. </span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">We have all used the services of a society that houses the archives and genealogical library for a local town or county. Just think back on that experience – helpful people providing accurate and timely information for the cost of copies, shipping, or a small donation. You can work directly with these people, learn from them, and help each other as you search for your family. </span><br /><strong><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;"></span></strong><br /><strong><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">It’s fun: </span></strong><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">Do you remember the first time you stared at the record in front of you before breaking into whoops of joy at finding your long-lost ancestor? Do you remember the days of excitement while you told your family about the discovery? We only get a few of those moments usually scattered over the years of searching. You can gather a few more of these moments vicariously through your local genealogy society. When you find an ancestor for someone else, it is almost as much fun as finding your own. Society offices, museums, and libraries are filled with excitement and stories of these wonderful moments shared together. </span><br /><strong><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;"></span></strong><br /><strong><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">One good deed deserves another: </span></strong><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">I joined the Greene County Genealogy Society in Tennessee several years ago when they helped me climb over one of the brick walls that occasionally block our research path. Their diligence and knowledge of the local archives produced the Last Will and Testament of my ancestor, James H. Hall, Sr. and named his entire family and a flood of new information for me. The cost: $3.00 for copies and mailing. Woo Hoo! – by far the biggest bargain I have ever received. I sent a check for a lifetime membership in lieu of the $3.00 charge. </span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">I don’t even live near Greene County, but the membership has continued to produce information about my family there including a diary that mentions James along with members of the family and details about their lives. </span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">You might choose to join a local society where you can participate on a daily or weekly basis. </span><br /><strong><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;"></span></strong><br /><strong><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">Donate your talents: </span></strong><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">Don’t have money available to join? Donate your time and talent. Societies are always looking for people with all kinds of talents – or people with time to do all kinds of tasks. Can you organize, answer phones, research data? Are you interested in transcribing documents, indexing, raising money, promoting the group? Whatever your talents and interests, the local society can use them and you will reap the rewards of helping other people – sometimes people you have never met. </span><br /><strong><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;"></span></strong><br /><strong><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">Donate money: </span></strong><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">Don’t have time to join and play an active part? Societies can always use donations to improve their displays, repair the plumbing, or pay the light bills. Money is always appreciated in a non-profit organization. You never know what the needs are until you ask. My suggestion is that you allow the local group to decide how to best spend your donation; don’t attach any strings to the donation. Those who are active on committees and boards are in the best position to spend the money in the best possible way. </span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><em><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">You can make a difference – don’t delay. Join a society today!</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;"></span></em><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">Gene Hall is a genealogist with almost 30 years of experience and the CEO of FamilyTrackers, Inc., a world-wide genealogy exchange dedicated to serving the needs of genealogists, genealogical societies, professional genealogists, and transcribers all over the world. FamilyTrackers is located at <a href="http://www.familytrackers.com/">http://www.familytrackers.com/</a>. </span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;">This article comes with reprint rights. You are free to reprint and distribute it as you like. All that I ask is that you reprint it in its entirety without any changes including this text and the link above. Non-profit genealogy societies may reprint without this paragraph and may add your contact information to the bottom of the article right after "Join a society today!" and change one of the bullets after the first paragraph to include your society's name and web site location. </span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;"></span>Gene Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05559492702210447045noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9824788.post-1125844781115951542005-09-04T07:35:00.000-07:002005-09-04T07:39:41.120-07:00Genealogy - Make Your FamilyTree Come AliveBack about 1970 there was a popular song by Bobby Sherman on the radio that included the lyric, “I gotta be more than just two lines in the Oklahoma City Times.” While the tune is catchy and the words poke fun of the obituary section of a great newspaper, it carries a serious message to those us interested in genealogy.<br />Anyone who studies family history knows how difficult it is to visualize the lives of our parents when they were young, our grandparents before they moved west in a covered wagon, or great grandparents that we never knew. Beyond two generations we can usually only pick up hints of what their lives were like through birth certificates, marriage licenses, obituaries, and other tracks that they left while alive.<br />These are wonderful bits of information that fill in dates, locations, and some of the cold facts of their lives but tell very little about what made them human. What were they passionate about? Were they funny? What makes them special? Did they love small children and dogs? Did they make a difference in other people’s lives?<br />The answer to these and other questions is usually within our grasp. Here are some good places to start. While you may not remember your grandparents, older members of your family might remember and their memories are yours for the asking. If you don’t have anyone older in your immediate family, expand your thinking to include cousins, aunts and uncles, second cousins until you find someone at least a few years older than you. Arrange to meet with them in person or by telephone to talk about your family.<br />It helps to prepare for the discussion with a few props and discussion ideas. There are some good discussion guides online that will help you get started with the most basic information like names, dates, locations, and relationships. You should also ask more open-ended questions like, “What do you remember about [grandma] when she was young? What was her personality like? Is their a particular event or occasion that stands out in your mind that demonstrates her personality? What are the things that she loved to do? What do you remember about daily life at [grandma’s] house? What do you remember about going there? Were there any things that she did as a tradition during the holidays or at special times of the year? It also helps to take along any photos or documents that you have to help guide the conversation and stimulate the memories. Who is this person in the picture? What do you remember about them?<br />Include your children, grandchildren, nieces, and nephews in the conversation. Older people love to tell stories to children. My wife once gave an assignment to her fourth-grade class to interview people at the retirement home about their lives. They came up with some amazing stories that were written down and presented to the person’s relatives as a keepsake.<br />You should also check for any media items that might help you understand. Do you have any photographs, movies, or recordings of [grandma] that might help me get to know her better? Is it okay if I copy these?<br />Most people have a few events that stand out in their minds and you should let the conversation go where they want it to go. Record the conversation and take notes just in case the recorder doesn’t work. Take some pictures yourself just to document the occasion.<br />Finally, get a good software program that tracks not only cold facts but allows you to organize and show off your media – recordings, photos, movies. Share your information with family members and the world by posting it on a web site where relatives will find you and give you even more information.<br />Your family can be more than just two lines in the Oklahoma City Times. Through your effort their lives can continue to make a positive difference in the world.<br />Gene Hall is a genealogist with over 25 years of experience and thousands of relatives. He is the CEO of FamilyTrackers, Inc. a world-wide genealogy exchange with web site at <a href="http://www.familytrackers.com/" target="_new">http://www.familytrackers.com/</a><br />This article comes with reprint rights. You are free to reprint and distribute it as you like. All that I ask is that you reprint it in its entirety without any changes including this text and the link above.Gene Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05559492702210447045noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9824788.post-1125806110106595522005-09-03T20:36:00.000-07:002006-02-26T08:04:46.366-08:00Genealogy in Switzerland - A Longenecker Family Search<div align="left"><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6951/732/1600/005_2A.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6951/732/320/005_2A.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br />Langenegger Family Still Strong in Langnau – Gene Cook Hall 10 Jul 2005<br />I recently visited Langnau and spent two days immersed in all things Langenegger. My wife and I arrived at the Langnau rail station on June 25, 2004, exhausted from a long flight from San Francisco. As we left the train station we were immediately struck by the unique character of this area. </div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">Outside the train station are the remnants of a cobblestone street, now patched by asphalt. Everywhere we looked were beautiful Swiss houses and buildings – many of them hundreds of years old – and all colorfully decorated with pink and red begonias placed in flower boxes below each window. As we found later, the Emmental is also a wonderland of covered bridges, friendly people, church spires with Swiss clocks and chimes, tinkling cow bells – everything you expect Switzerland to be. </div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">As we walked toward our hotel in Bareau we noticed how friendly and courteous the locals are – stopping to allow us to cross the street and smiling as we passed with a friendly “Hallo” or “Guten Morgen.” The town is dotted with long stone tanks with well water splashing in at one end and draining out the other. They look something like a stone horse tank. These are available to anyone who wants a cool drink of well water. </div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">After we settled into our room at the Landgasthof Hotel Adler, the owner kindly invited us to a short ride into the countryside where we saw more beautiful houses and pastures. After we returned we asked a few locals in the hotel restaurant about the Langenegger farm and they had a good laugh. Turns out that there are a lot of Langeneggers there and we didn’t know the name of the people who lived in the original house that we came to see. </div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">The hills are about 1200 feet above the valley floor and incredibly green with grass and forested areas visible from anywhere in town. Langnau is small – perhaps three or four long blocks across and the hills seem very close. Black and white cows break up the greenery and produce and wonderful tinkling sound as they graze around ringing the bells around their necks. Higher pitched bells worn by sheep and goats blend with the clunk-clunk bong-bong of the cow bells making a delicious backdrop to the scenery. This is the last sound we heard as we drifted off to sleep covered with a feather quilt on our first night in Langnau. </div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">The birds woke us up to wonderfully green world that is Langnau in the summer. We enjoyed a wonderful breakfast of homemade bread and jelly provided by our host, Stephen. We hoped to attend church, but found that our information was incorrect and arrived too early. Instead we started our walking tour of Langnau early. Langnau is a small town and we walked all of the main streets by about noon when we took a break for lunch to share a small cheese tart and an apple pastry from a small shop near the center of town. By that time, the local museum had opened. It is housed in one of the oldest houses in Langnau and is a great opportunity to look around inside one of these magnificent buildings and see all of the fancy joinery done by the builders. It is also a great museum with a number of permanent and rotating exhibits that depict the history of Langnau and its residents.<br />Langnau Museum <a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6951/732/1600/004_1A.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6951/732/320/004_1A.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />The museum’s docent has lived in Langnau for 70 years and knows the Langenegger name very well. She quickly found a book that contains the Langenegger family crests – one for those in the valley (Langenegg Ey) and one for those up higher in the hills (Langenegg Unter). She also loosely parsed the name into Lange (Long in English – pronounced ‘Long’ in German too) and negg (hill in English – pronounced ‘neck’ in German). I haven’t been able to confirm the word ‘negg’ anywhere – but that is what she said. The book also included a statement, “Ulrich, von Langnau, wanderte 1748 nach Pennsylvanien [USA] Aus (Faust 61)” <a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=9824788#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1">[1]</a> which roughly translates that Ulrich Langenegger immigrated to Pennsylvania in the United States in 1748. This is our ancestor Ulrich Langenegger Sr. The book doesn’t give a further source for this information. On the map, the Langenegg Unter is just about a 30 minute hike up the hill from the museum and Langenegg Ey is about a mile down river from Langnau. Since the Unter had been owned by someone other than a Langenegger for many years, we decided to take a closer look at the Ey property in the valley to see if we could at least get a picture of the house and perhaps, if we were really lucky, meet a distant relative. </div><div align="left"></div><div align="left">Margaret and I walked along the river where many of the local people were taking a break from regular life to cool off. We were pleasantly surprised at the number of covered bridges in and around Langnau – all still being used. We even drove over one just outside of Langnau.<br /></div><p align="center"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6951/732/320/024_21.jpg" border="0" />A Covered Walk Bridge in Langnau </p><p>Just as we approached the long driveway to the Langenegger house, two women came up from the river and one of them spoke English. She told us that we were in the right place and that the Langenegger family did live here. She offered to escort us to the right house among a group of several houses and buildings located on the property. With a cheery German “Woo hoo” she called out to the people inside and introduced us to my 9th cousin who lives in the house where Ulrich Langenegger Senior was born in 1664 (the same one mentioned in the book that immigrated to Pennsylvania). </p><p>The residents of the house were gracious and greeted us warmly even though we just showed up on their doorstep after over 250 years without a Christmas card! We had a short conversation about the family and viewed some of the information that they had there. Coincidentally, their sister-in-law was in Pennsylvania to attend a Longenecker reunion while we were in Langnau. We exchanged contact information so that we can follow up with them with information we find that might be useful to them. Finally we were offered a cool drink from their well before we took a short walk around the farm to get some photos. The cows were in the barn as it was unseasonably hot that day. Milk from their cows is sold into a coop of local farmers that makes it into cheese. If you are looking for some authentic Langenegger cheese, look for the Emmentaler type as that is what they make there. It is sold in the US as simply Swiss cheese – the type with holes in it. I must admit that it tasted much better in Langnau than in California.<br /><br /></p><p align="center"><img style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6951/732/320/017_14.jpg" border="0" />Langenegger Cows in the Barn to Stay Cool </p><p>The house is located an easy hike along the river from Langnau and consists of the original house plus some additional houses and outbuildings. I found the house a challenge to photograph by itself. It is a typical Swiss farm house arranged with living quarters and barn under one roof. On one side is an earthen ramp going directly into the attic over the barn that is used to move hay into that area for storage and use during the winter. </p><p>The roof is steep by US standards but not as steep as I expected in an area that gets lots of snow. Most roofs in the area are tile and include a series of brackets about six inches high that hold the snow in the winter so that it doesn’t all fall down at one time. Some buildings had a simpler system with only one set of brackets near the bottom of the roof that held a four inch pipe running the entire length of the house – apparently for the same purpose as the brackets on other buildings. In addition, this system probably uses the snow to insulate the roof from the cold. Another interesting thing about some roofs and houses – the builders sometimes put their initials and the date of construction on the roof by using different colored tiles. Others painted this information under the eaves or on the face of the building under the eaves. </p><p>The Langenegger house is not as fancy as some in town but is large and includes some fancy joinery work that we saw repeated inside the museum, on the covered bridges, and elsewhere in the area. The main structure appears to be large beams carefully joined together at the proper angles so that they get stronger as more weight is put on them – and held together with wooden pegs. On one bridge near town we saw metal strapping that seems to have been added later.<br /><a href="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6951/732/1600/013_10.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6951/732/320/013_10.jpg" border="0" /></a>Original Langenegger House in the Foreground and Other Buildings Around<br />The business of the farm centers around the milk cows. There was a large field of corn planted near the house along with a well-kept garden that seems to grace every house we saw in Switzerland. Along the driveway approach to the farm there were some cherry trees with mostly green fruit just beginning to turn pink in places. The rest of the farm appeared to be in grass. My friend John Garland in Oklahoma would call the fencing “psychological fencing” – not much of a barrier to an animal that wants out. We noticed that a lot of fences appeared to be temporary and electrified so that the cows can be easily moved to fresh grass as needed. We even saw one electric fence hooked up to a solar panel up high in the mountains a long train-ride away from Langnau. </p><p>Out of respect for the current occupants’ time and space, we only stayed briefly.<br />We returned to our hotel via a path the goes along the river and stopped for a rest in the shade of an old covered bridge. We were exhausted again and happy at getting to meet our distant relatives and to view the old house. </p><p>Research: If you are researching this area, no genealogy information is readily available in Langnau. The records office has information from 1886, but doesn’t release it without permission of the persons mentioned in the records and the charges to do so are very high. You will have much better luck in Bern where most of the Swiss records are held. There is almost always someone around that speaks English and the records offices are no exception. The records are neither computerized nor indexed – but they are very neatly categorized by location and time frames. You will need to tell them exactly who, where, and when you want to look in order to get the right microfilm. Then it is an old-fashioned search browsing through records written a long time ago using unfamiliar styles and letters. Lockers are located outside the office in the hallway and you will have to leave your backpack, purse, etc. there. It’s free and secure.<br />The Archives de I’Etat de Berne is located at Falkenplatz 4, CH-3012 Berne near the main railroad station. It was easy to find the third time I tried. The rail station is large and busy and on several levels. Locate the elevators on one end of the station and take them all the way to the top. If you have trouble, follow the students and the signs to the university in order to find the elevators. Once you are at the top, go toward the campus – the only way you can go really – and pass between two large university-looking buildings. Falkenplatz 4 is the first building on the right after you pass through the campus area. There is a small street stand just across the grassy park where the students congregate for a cheap and good sandwich – get there early as they run out of sandwiches quickly after noon. The office is open from 8:00 to 12:00 and 1:00 to 5:00 every weekday except Friday when it closes at 4:30. If you want to confirm before going, their phone numbers are 031/633 51 01, fax 031/633 51 02. Copies are one Swiss Frank per page – so take along plenty of cash so that you can get everything you want. You can easily spend 50 franks in one afternoon depending on the records you want. I didn’t have time, but you may also want to check out these sources provided by the museum in Langnau . . .<br /><br />Zivilstands-und Burgerrechtsdienst<br />Des Kantons Bern<br />Eigerstrasse 73<br />3011 Bern<br />031/633 47 85<br />Fax: 031/633 47 39<br /><br />Nieisen Paul-Anthon<br />Biochstrasse 7<br />3753 Oberhofen am Thunersee<br />033/243 24 52<br /><a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=9824788#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1">[1]</a> Emmentetaler Geschlechter – Und Wappenbuch by Hans Rudolf Christen, P 327, ISBN 3-85681-405-1, 1998, Publisher Fischer Media Verlag, Munsingen-Bern </p>Gene Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05559492702210447045noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9824788.post-1125804621058510042005-09-03T20:21:00.000-07:002005-09-03T20:30:21.070-07:00Genealogy Essentials - How to Get Started on Your Family Tree<p><span style="font-family:arial;">Since genealogy is my hobby, my profession, and my passion, many people ask me how to get started. What are the essentials to doing a family search? Here are some tips that should help you discover your family under the best possible conditions. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>Get organized:</strong> I started working on my family tree almost 30 years ago by writing down names on a brown paper bag. Now there are 20,000 people in my tree – about 3,000 proven to my satisfaction. Your tree may not grow that large, but organizing is important regardless. </span></p><ul><li><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>Papers:</strong> I suggest that you get a 3-ring binder with tabbed dividers to hold documents that you find. It doesn’t have to be fancy, but you can add binders when one is no longer adequate. If you are like me, you may have to graduate to file cabinets later.</span></li><li><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>Software:</strong> You really must have some sort of electronic filing system as well. There are a number of good software packages out there at very competitive prices and some for free. There are good choices for both Macintosh and PC type computers. Just be sure that the software you pick includes these features . . .</span></li><li><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>Ability to import gedcom files:</strong> Gedcom is a standard format used by all genealogy programs and you can tell one of these files by the .ged extension associated with the file. If you get lucky and find a relative who has already done the work, you will want to import their data into your computer. For that reason, your software must be able to handle it. </span></li><li><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>Footnoting:</strong> Even if you are only moderately successful, there will be a few hundred people in your family. Each of them will have multiple events that happened during their lifetime – birth, marriage, graduation, death, burial, etc. As a result, you will gather thousands of bits of information and it is impossible to remember where you got the information without the ability to add footnotes. These will tell you where you got the information, when you got it, and how reliable it is. </span></li><li><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>Media features:</strong> While names, dates and places can be plenty satisfying, there is nothing like a photograph, recording, or movie to make your relatives come alive. Your software should allow you to save that type of information right along with the other information. This seems like an optional feature, but you will be glad that you have it later.</span></li><li><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>Internet Publishing:</strong> Not everyone wants to put their information on the Internet, but this is a really good way to share your family with the world and find relatives that you never would have found otherwise. Nearly all software programs include the ability to filter out living people so that you can publish with no worries of identity theft or other security issues. </span></li></ul><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Write down everything you know about your family or enter that information into your new software. Start with yourself; then your parents, siblings, spouse, and children. Initially, you want to record names, places, and dates of births, marriages, deaths and other events that you know about each person. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Talk to your family members to confirm and correct your information. Find out if they have documentation of the events that you have recorded like birth certificates, marriage licenses, church records, photographs or an old family Bible. Ask if they know someone in your family who keeps the historical documents or who has done a family history. Find out the basic information about their family – names, dates, and locations of events. If there are photos without names, dates and locations written on them – take some time to do this now. Buy an acid-free pen from just about any local store for this task. This is also a great time to record interesting stories about your family – either with a tape recorder or movie recorder. Notes are fine too if that is all you have available. Update the information in your software and footnote everything you enter – even if the source is ‘Interview with aunt Agnes Boudreau 25 Aug 2005’ – you must know later who told you that so that you can evaluate the value of the information you have. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>Search the Internet:</strong> Initially you will want to try to find someone who has already done the work. One of the best places to get started is a site owned by the Mormon Church. Don’t be put off if you are not a member of that church. Family history is an important part of their belief system and the data that they collect is available to anyone. Point your browser to </span><a href="http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/Search/frameset_search.asp"><span style="font-family:arial;">http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/Search/frameset_search.asp</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;"> and enter the information that you know about your family; click search to see if they have any information about your family. Some of this information is public record information which is usually true and some of it is provided by members of the church which may or may not be true. Use this information as a guide so that you will know the names, places, and dates to do more research.<br />If you have solid information about a relative in the US, you should try </span><a href="http://www.usgenweb.org/"><span style="font-family:arial;">http://www.usgenweb.org</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;"> – a group that provides free information through a network of web sites that goes all the way down to the county level. I like their state search located at </span><a href="http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/newsearch.htm"><span style="font-family:arial;">http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/newsearch.htm</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;"> better than the rest of the site. They have a lot of census records which are great places to take your tree back one more generation. The most recent census counts are grouped by families so that you can see a person’s parents and where they were born. One shortcoming of this usGenWeb is that you can’t do a very specific search and the site doesn’t know the difference between Smith and blacksmith. As a result, you will get a lot of hits that don’t even apply to your family – tedious work that sometimes pays off. This is an issue with most web sites out there, not just usGenWeb. Just to compound the issue, most sites don’t save your search criteria so that when check back to see if they have more information in a year or two, you have to go through the same long list again. Sigh.</span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">One of the brighter spots on the Internet is at EllisIsland.org – a great site to search if your ancestors immigrated to the US via Ellis Island. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">There are a lot of networking and bulletin board sites available where people leave information about who they are looking for. The best ones will allow you to search specifically for name, date and location; others only allow you to search by keyword which usually gives you too many results to read. If the site you find is one of the latter, compose a short message about the person you are searching for and include the exact name, the exact location, and the exact time frame when you know they were there. Make the subject information very specific with name, date, and location so that people who are browsing will know if they should read it or not. Subjects like ‘My family’ or ‘grandma’ are just not very useful and almost nobody will read it. If the site you find allows you to search specifically enough, search it and read some of the posts there to see if you can contact a distant relative who can help you. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>Join your local genealogical or historical society:</strong> Even if you are not really looking for relatives in your immediate area, the local society is a great place to learn, to network, and to give back to society. You will meet wonderful people with vast amounts of experience who can mentor you and make you a better genealogist – and a better person. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>Publish you work:</strong> Nothing is more satisfying than helping someone else find their roots and one of the best ways to do that is to publish your findings. If you selected the right software, publishing your tree should be relatively easy – still a learning process for many of us. Make sure that you don’t publish information on the Internet about people who are still living. If you are not sure if a person is still living, you can assume they are still living if they were born less than 100 years ago and don’t have a death date in your software. The best programs will do this for you automatically once you set your preferences. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">Another good thing to do is to publish your sources – the backup paperwork from your ring binder. This consists of birth certificates, deeds, census records, etc. Sites like usGenWeb and your local society are good places to consider when publishing records like these. Again, you should avoid publishing information about living people for security reasons. If you are interested in reaching a world-wide audience or in donating to your society, you should consider </span><a href="http://www.familytrackers.com/"><span style="font-family:arial;">http://www.familytrackers.com</span></a><span style="font-family:arial;">. You can charge for your information, distribute it for free, or donate proceeds to your favorite society. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;">As you work through your family, go back in time one generation at a time documenting everything as you go. Once you have followed a branch as far as you can, start searching forward in time from the oldest person you know about. </span></p><p><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong>Brick walls:</strong> When you can’t find any more information about a person to determine their parents or other relatives, it’s called a “brick wall.” When this happens to you – and it will – don’t give up. It is just a matter of patience, skill and luck. The best advice I can give you about a brick wall is to go back to the basics; look at the last place and time where you know this person was and start from there. Also, try to find genealogists who link to this person from a different line – your cousins. Even though you may not be able to prove a direct father/son relationship to your ancestor, you might be able to prove father/son/brother through one of your cousins. </span></p>Gene Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05559492702210447045noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9824788.post-1125803973906597602005-09-03T20:16:00.000-07:002005-09-03T22:54:55.996-07:00Genealogy - Why You Should Get Involved in Your Family History<span style="font-family:arial;">A few years ago I read a statistic that said that genealogy was the second largest hobby in the United States – second only to gardening. It was no surprise to me as I have been finding and documenting my family tree for almost 30 years. Over that time a lot of people have asked me, “Why genealogy? What do you get out of it?” There are a lot of reasons to find out about your family and I’ll cover just a few hoping that one of them will get you started.<br /><strong>Curiosity:</strong> A lot of people are just plain curious about where they came from, what their ancestors did, how they got here – to this time and this place. Lots of people find themselves in this category when they are told that they are adopted. While they have adoptive parents, traditions, and history, they also have another history that calls out to them. Other people have lost touch and are curious about where people are, how they turned out, who they married.<br /><strong>It’s a Great Puzzle:</strong> This applies to me in several areas of my life besides genealogy. I have worked with numbers a lot – particularly with market research. I just love understanding what motivates people to buy certain products, where they shop, how much they want to pay, and where they want to hear about those products. It is a very complex issue, but one that is satisfying when you finally understand something that nobody else in your company understands – perhaps nobody in the world.<br />When my wife and I go camping I spend hours working crypto quotes in the sun – fun and challenging puzzles that help me relax.<br />When it comes to puzzles, I don’t think anything can match the complexity and fun of genealogy. Just think about a jigsaw puzzle that has an almost infinite number of pieces – some of them that don’t fit and some of them missing. Nothing can match the satisfaction I get from finding one of those lost pieces of the puzzle and putting it into place. These are puzzle pieces that lead to long-lost cousins and far-off places.<br /><strong>Hobby:</strong> I did a lot of market research before organizing FamilyTrackers, Inc. The company was started out of my belief that Internet searches could be much more accurate than those usually conducted on the Internet. Interestingly, there is a group of genealogists who resist a more accurate way to find information. They are not interested in any tools that make the job faster. “That is the reason I do my family tree – to fill up my time. Looking into page after page of results is the part I like about genealogy. It’s my hobby,” they said. Fortunately for me and for FamilyTrackers those who like the things I find most tedious are not a large portion of the market.<br /><strong>Leave a Legacy:</strong> Some people approach middle age or have a traumatic event at any age that prompts them to think about their mortality. “If I never meet my grandchildren, what will they know about me? What will they know about my parents? How will we be remembered?” Those of us who are fortunate enough to have ancestors in this category are indeed lucky. My grandmother wrote a short story about her trip as a young girl in a covered wagon from Illinois to Kansas. Thinking about it now, it must have been a dusty, hot, and miserable trip. The events that she wrote about were ordinary, daily occurrences that were taken for granted in her time – something that she wrote about because the trip was out of the ordinary. Read the same story today and discover something that is unique to our experience – herding cattle, rustlers, camping out every night. If you do nothing else with your family history, you should write down or record your life experiences in your own words in any way that you see fit.<br /><strong>Emotional Satisfaction:</strong> This is a huge reason for being involved in genealogy and one that I hear repeated by other people as they talk excitedly about their latest discovery. There are moments that happen during a search that are touching and immensely satisfying. This is the moment that you look at your great grandfather’s signature on your grandparent’s marriage license; put your hand on the baptismal font where your oldest known ancestor was baptized; stand on the ground where your great grandfather from the old country is buried – knowing that your grandmother stood on this spot in front of an open grave grieving her loss. These moments are thrilling, goose-bump producing moments of a life time when you can almost reach across time and touch a person who you finally understand and know. This is a moment you must not miss!<br /><strong>Give Something Back:</strong> Lots of people get involved when they volunteer at their local genealogical or historical society. What a wonderful place to meet nice people who are willing to help you discover your roots. These groups are responsible for saving crumbling records all over the world and for making the information available to everybody. People who work in these places are almost always unpaid and give their time and effort on behalf of people like you and me every single day – people they have never even met. This is important work and you can get the satisfaction of helping other people by volunteering yourself. It is easy. Pick up the phone and call.<br />Whatever your reasons, give genealogy a try. It is a stimulating hobby that will put you in touch with yourself and with a lot of nice people who are ready and willing to help.</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><br />Gene Hall is a genealogist with almost 30 years of experience and the CEO of FamilyTrackers, Inc., a world-wide genealogy exchange dedicated to serving the needs of genealogists, genealogical societies, professional genealogists, and transcribers all over the world. FamilyTrackers is located at <a href="http://www.familytrackers.com/">http://www.familytrackers.com/</a><br /><br />This article comes with reprint rights. You are free to reprint and distribute it as you like. All that I ask is that you reprint it in its entirety without any changes including this text and the link above. </span><br /></span>Gene Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05559492702210447045noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9824788.post-1121429340298093812005-07-15T05:08:00.000-07:002005-07-15T05:18:42.800-07:00Genealogy SearchesAfter looking for family on the Internet for several years, it seems like their must be an easier way. Just a few issues . . .<br /><br />- I have to know the exact place to look. The Internet is like there are hundreds of thousands of genealogy libraries each with a different arrangement of shelves and each with a different arrangement of books on shelves.<br />- Inaccurate searches. Even if I know the exact location, a search usually brings me thousands of hits that don't mean a thing. e.g. three of my grandparents are names that have other meanings - Read, Cook, and Hall. A search for Hall returns every building on every campus in the world - seems like it anyway.<br />- Searches are gone as soon as I close the browser. Once I go through the extensive list of bad hits and leave the site, new records are added to the site. When I return, I must go through the same bad hits again just to get to the new stuff because the site doesn't remember me, my search, or the stuff I have already looked through.<br /><br />What can be done about this?Gene Hallhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05559492702210447045noreply@blogger.com0