Genealogy #70: Genealogy 2.0

Here's my experiment with the Look-alike Meter on MyHeritage.com. It's a nice, safe answer, but actually one that I agree with.

MyHeritage.com had some interesting and fun things to try, but I found it pretty poorly organized and not very easy to use. I would opt for a more serious site when I get ready to do online family history.

http://www.myheritage.com/collage

The celebrity look-alike collage is a little stranger. I like the #1 match with Susan B. Anthony, although she looks a little fierce. However, the other matches are guys!! They are handsome, but what's that about??

Footnote is a place where people can post local genealogy sources, tagged photos, etc. It seems pretty "hit or miss" as to finding anything useful there. I got excited when I found Herman Halleen, one of my mother's ancestors, was found in dozens of entries. Checking them out, however, led to many, many old Detroit city directories.

Genealogy #69: Database Researching

Searching in the 1920 census via Heritage Quest led me to this entry for my grandfather, Walter Edmunds, age 32, who lived in Blue Island, Illinois, at that time. Part of the chart I found is copied below. The record shows that he was a railroad engineer, and that his father was from England and his mother was from Wales.

Also shown under his name is my grandmother, Cecil, age 33, whose father was born in Scotland and whose mother was born in Illinois. Then my father, Robert Edmunds, is listed. He was only 10 months old at the time.

A bonus that I had not expected is that my grandmother's parents are also shown on this sheet, just below my grandparents. They must have shared a home or lived next door at that time. Thomas Roberston was 58, and Dora his wife was 56. Thomas was a section foreman for the railroad. His parents were from Scotland, and Dora's parents were both from Germany.


This record also shows my grandmother's 28-year-old sister, Mary Robertson. She worked as a stenographer for a paint company.

It is wonderful how records such as these can be accessed so easily through the Internet now. When I started my family history research in 1978, I had to travel to a large library and spend hours searching through census records on microfilm reels.

Genealogy # 68: Detective Work

Harris County owns some oral history CDs that can be checked out. One is "Texas Wisewomen Speak." In this collection of interviews conducted by author PJ Pierce, twenty-five Texas women ranging in age from 53 to 93 share the wisdom they've acquired through living unconventional lives in the Lonestar state.

In my family, I have become the matriarch as these things naturally happen over the years. That means I need to be making my own oral history audio or video. It would be interesting to get together with my brother and sister and do a joint tape of reminiscences, although I suppose we all would remember things very differently.

I found all three of the cemeteries I searched for in "Find-A-Grave": Evergreen Cemetery in Detroit, Michigan; Cedar Park Cemetery in Calumet Park, Illinois; and First Evangelical Lutheran Cemetery in Alsip, Illinois. However, none of them had the data recorded for the ancestors I know are buried there. They do permit you to register and add names for free so others can find them. You can also post pictures of the cemetery and particular monuments and head stones. I have lots of these, and when I have more time I will come back and add this information.

First Lutheran Cemetery is the graveyard for First Lutheran Church, an old German Lutheran Congregation in Blue island, Illinois. The oldest grave I see listed is 1886. Many of my ancestors on my mother's side are buried here. I own a plot, too, so someday I will join them. Walking through that cemetery is like walking through the aisle at the old church and seeing many folks you know.

Genealogy #67: Genealogy Genesis

I started researching my family history in 1978 after my son was born. I had the twin motivations of wanting to pass on this information to him and future generations, and also needing some intellectual stimulation to pass the time. Becoming a full-time stay-at-home mom after having been in the university teaching and research life was culture shock.

Tracking down the clues to compile a family history brought tremendous pleasure, although I prefer the "Colombo" analogy rather than "Sherlock Holmes" to make it a little more contemporary. I began by reading how-to books (of course), writing lots of letters to relatives, and talking to the older members of the family. If I have one piece of advice for those starting out, I think that is the one I would emphasize most. DON'T WAIT to talk to the elders. Once they pass away or become infirm, a tremendous amount of information is lost. Especially the kind that gives flesh to the skeleton of names and dates that genealogy can become without them.

A second bit of advice is: let everyone in the family know that you are compiling information. They will be glad that you are doing the work for them, and they will bury you with photos and letters so that YOU can store them! Be prepared to put in more shelves or buy more cabinets if you get really serious.

The photo to the right is of my Dad and his brother and sister in the late 1920's.

The third piece of advice would be to investigate carefully what software you want to use to manage your data. Entering everything is very time-consuming, and you don't want to have to work twice. "Free" is fine and readily available, but make sure the program has everything you need before you start: ease of entry, standardized formats to encourage sharing with others, flexibility to create charts, ability to incorporate photos and narratives, etc.

When I started my work, home computers weren't around yet. I had lots of notebooks full of photocopies and handwritten datasheets. A retirement project for me will be transferring lots of this original data online. That is a great (and cheap) way to share information with lots of relatives, and to keep it from being lost in the future.

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