Saturday, August 23, 2008

Joe Biden is NOT my cousin...

Having been one of the first genea-bloggers to claim that Barack Obama and Mitt Romney ARE my distant cousins, and knowing that John McCain and Hillary Clinton are not my cousins, I thought I'd look for the Joe Biden family tree.

William Addams Reitwiesner's site at http://www.wargs.com/ is always a good place to start for politicians and celebrity family trees, and he has Senator Joe Biden's family tree at http://www.wargs.com/political/biden.html.

Unfortunately, Senator Biden is NOT my cousin, at least as far as I can tell from the limited data at the site. I would have loved to consider voting for a tandem of cousins. He has some Maryland and eastern Pennsylvania ancestry, and some England and Ireland immigrants in the early 19th century, but there is very little information before 1800.

I hope that John McCain picks Mitt Romney for his Vice-Presidential running mate - then I'd have a horse, er, cousin, in both stables, so to speak. If he picks Tim Pawlenty, then I don't think he's my cousin either - the research is pretty thin!

FYI, here are links to the family trees of Obama, Biden and McCain from the www.wargs.com web site:

* Barack Obama
* Joe Biden
* John McCain

Are you listening?

One of the highlights of my week is to listen to one of the weekly podcasts on genealogy subjects produced by these superb hosts and genealogists:

* DearMYRTLE Family History Hour -- DearMYRTLE (Pat Richley) has a weekly hourlong podcast - the last one was on 19 August and featured interviews with Dusty Rhodes, Elizabeth Powel Crowe, Whitney Ransom and Pat's rundown of weekly genealogy news.

* The Genealogy Guys -- George G. Morgan and Drew Smith host this weekly hourlong podcast - the last one was on 22 August and featured a genealogy news summary, email questions and responses from listeners, and Drew's Italian research.

* Genealogy Gems Podcast - Your Family History Show -- Lisa Louise Cooke hosts this monthly hourlong podcast, which just produced its 50th show. The 15 August show featured comments from other genealogy podcasters, an interview with Tim Russell the star of Prairie Home Companion, and more.

* The Genealogy Tech Broadcast -- Bill Puller hosts this occasional podcast about technology applied to genealogy. The last show was on 21 May 2008.

* Anna-Karin's Genealogical Podcast - Anna-Karin Shander's podcast about Swedish and American genealogy research. The last show was on 26 July 2008.

* The Irish Roots Cafe Podcasts -- Mike O'Loughlin has a regular podcast about Irish genealogy research. The site offers free podcasts and videocasts, and members-only podcasts and videos too.

The hosts make it easy to listen to the shows - their web pages have links right to the .MP3 files and all you have to do is turn up your volume to listen. If you are interrupted for osme reason, you can pause the podcast and resume playing it when you return to the computer. You can download the podcasts and put them on your computer hard drive or transfer them to your iPod or other portable device for listening at a more convenient time.

I try to listen to one of the first three podcasts each week in my busy life. Each is different, but all are enjoyable and informative. They are one more way to stay current on the genealogy news of the week.

The beauty of podcasts is that you can listen to them on one browser tab and do something else on another browser tab - like look through web pages or family trees!

Friday, August 22, 2008

MyHeritage upgrades their photo management

I posted previously about the MyHeritage facial recognition software and the mega-search of genealogy databases. MyHeritage also has online family trees for free upload and search on their site.

The MyHeritage blog has a post about improved photograph management. It reads in part (from 11 August 2008):

"Today we're excited to unveil an array of improvements in photo management on MyHeritage, that will enhance your pleasure of viewing and sharing your photos. The new and improved Photos tab of your family website provides several features that have never before been seen on any genealogy or photo sharing website. These new features include:

"* A fully integrated, web-based photo browser
* Photo tagging with automatic face detection technology
* Face Cloud - a fun way to view the people in your photos
* Full access to photo albums from within your family tree
* Enhanced photo search"


If these interest you, please go read the blog post that has many more details, including examples.

The examples look intriguing. I haven't taken the time to crop some of the photographs in my collection to add to my family tree programs. Now here comes MyHeritage to do it for me - all I have to do is upload some pictures, tag the faces, and they'll appear on my family tree on MyHeritage. Now if I could only get them into FamilyTreeMaker and Legacy I would be all set!

Thursday, August 21, 2008

My Genealympics - Days 9 to 12

I'm competing in the Genealympics (well, the Genea-bloggers Group Games) - see the details here. My last update was on Sunday.

I have had little time since Monday to work on these tasks - my daughter and grandsons came on Tuesday and, other than today, I have had little time to pursue the medals. I won't have any time on Friday or Saturday, either, so this is my last report.

My progress over the last four days has been:

3. ORGANIZE YOUR RESEARCH

E. I added 49 persons to my database today, with notes and source citations (such as they are). This completes this task.

5. REACH OUT AND PERFORM GENEALOGICAL ACTS OF KINDNESS

D. I did more research today for my friend Ed in Project M. I found several more generations of his surname line on Rootsweb WorldConnect, and found data on two of his collateral lines also. It was a good day! This task was completed earlier.

E. I indexed G through N in the Spanish-Mexican Families of Early California book on Monday at the library, and posted the third installment on the Chula Vista Genealogy Cafe blog today. This task was completed earlier.
So my status in these two events are:

3. ORGANIZE YOUR RESEARCH

A. Not Started
B. Completed.
C. Completed
D. Completed
E. Completed
F. Not started

5. REACH OUT AND PERFORM GENEALOGICAL ACTS OF KINDNESS

A. Completed
B. Completed
C. Completed
D. Completed
E. Completed
F. Not started

MEDALS EARNED:

3. ORGANIZE YOUR RESEARCH - 4 tasks completed = DIAMOND medal

5. REACH OUT AND PERFORM GENEALOGICAL ACTS OF KINDNESS - 5 tasks completed = PLATINUM medal.

Most Wives married and Children sired?

We have another candidate for the man who has married the most wives and who has fathered the most children.

The BBC (UK) web site has an article online today titled "Nigerian faces death for 86 wives." The articles says that Mohammed Bello Abubakar, age 84, of Nigeria has 86 wives and 170 children. To avoid death according to Sharia law, he has to choose four wives and repent.

I sure hope that someone has written down the names of all of his wives, their birth dates, birth places and parents names, and his children's names, birth dates and birth places for his future posterity. Just think how complex this family tree would be in a genealogy software program. And he might fill up a whole vital records book in his village.

Bello said "A man with 10 wives would collapse and die, but my own power is given by Allah. That is why I have been able to control 86 of them."

As long as they don't complain (there may be a law against it in Nigeria, of course), having 10 wives sounds tiring. Having 86 sounds like a death worse than fate, doesn't it? How would you ever keep the names straight? Maybe he named all the children Mohammed or Sahra with a number?

Checking Out WebTree.com - Post 3

I posted last week (Post 1 and Post 2) about the new www.WebTree.com family tree application, which is part of the FamilyLink.com "empire." By far the most interesting thing I've learned about WebTree is that the GEDCOM entries in the database will be searchable on the www.WorldVitalRecords.com subscription web site.

I didn't find much descriptive information in my first pass by this site, but the second time around I found some interesting "sales" info on through the "Learn more" link in the home page title block. The information includes (the actual page - no link available - contains some pictures):

"Here are some great things about WebTree.com:

"* 100% FREE! WebTree.com aims to build the largest, community-driven family tree site on the Internet - and it starts with being free!


"* Beautiful Presentation! WebTree.com has built an unparalleled family tree browsing experience. Your family tree is presented online in the most modern and feature-filled presentation of any family tree site on the Internet. Viewing your family tree on the Web has never looked so good!

"* Software-Quality Charts! For the first time, you can build heirloom-quality charts on the Internet, with lots of custom options! After building a chart exactly to your liking, you can export it to a file to be printed or print directly to your printer, in full color. The world no longer needs expensive software to build charts you can be proud of!

"* Share with the World. WebTree.com gives you more options than ever to share your family tree. We're building the next-generation family tree community that helps you connect with other members in new and interesting ways - all the while, helping you find your ancestors. WebTree.com even enables you to embed your family tree into your own web site or blog (if you have one).

"If you'll kindly consider contributing your data, know that WebTree.com is committed to respecting your hard work. Here is our commitment to you:

* An absolute truth: You own your data. WebTree.com respects the hard work you've put into your family history and we're not about to take that away from you.

* You can delete your file at any time, no questions asked. Also, WebTree.com will never sell your data or burn it to CD. We're looking to build the most respectful family tree publishing site on the Internet and it starts with respecting our users! At any time, should you change your mind about contributing your data, you can remove it with just a few clicks.


* We hate junk mail too. We will never send you or any of the relatives in your family tree junk mail. We also protect our users' identities fiercely and would never sell your information to a third party.

* Your privacy is paramount. All trees published to WebTree.com never contain information on living individuals. Additionally, there are a number of privacy settings that you always have full control over.

"WebTree.com is here to help. Over the next few months, we'll be releasing a number of revolutionary features designed to help you publish, share and research your genealogy."

I had several comments concerning www.WebTree.com in my earlier posts that I cannot answer - perhaps a FamilyLink/WVR/WebTree person can:

* Ginger asked "...I was also wondering how the embedding your tree into a blog or website worked?"

* Abba-Dad asked: "...I couldn't see any source information for the data, so it doesn't seem like it will be more than another reference."

Need more genealogy blogs to read?

I hate to admit that my Bloglines list is now up to over 300 genealogy blogs... there are more and more of them every day! Maybe I should prune my Bloglines list. I've noticed that my morning list is up in the 50s and 60s these days.

Do you want more genealogy blogs to read? The WorldVitalRecords.com Family History Bulletin (Volume 2, number 47, which I haven't received via email yet) has a Top Ten Genealogy blog list - you can read the bulletin here. I am honored by being on their list.

But you probably read all of those blogs, plus many more. Many more genealogy blogs have started in the last month or two, and I thought my readers might want to check them out (please, don't forsake Genea-Musings for greener pastures, though!). Here are some of the new ones I've found:

* Ancestor.com - no author identified. This is mainly genealogy articles.

* The Educated Genealogist -- Sheri Fenley of Stockton CA discusses her genealogy education and research.

* Elyse's Genealogy Blog -- Elyse Doerflinger of California writes about her research, and has a video blog series on YouTube.

* The Family Curator -- Denise L. of California writes about the Arline Allen Kinsel papers and much more.

* Genealogy, Middle Age and Life -- Debbie Atchley of Tennessee blogs about genealogy and her research.

* Genealogy's Gone By Weblog -- by Genealogysgoneby about his/her 5th great-grandfather's genealogy.

* Granite in My Blood -- by Midge Frazel of Bridgewater, Massachusetts about gravestones and genealogy.

* Gtownma's Genealogy -- by Tina Sansone of Tennessee writing about her research and genealogy.

* I Dream of Genea(ology) -- by Amir Dekel on his genealogy research and family.

* I Find Dead People -- by Andrea Batcho of New Jersey, who writes about her research.

* IN DEEDS -- by Palmsrv about land records and genealogy data found in them.

* Life At The Home20 -- by Laura Womack sharing her Southern genealogy.

* Pennsylvania Wanderings -- Bonnie Jean MacDonald of Shoreline, Washington is sharing her vacation trip.

* Remember Your Roots - by Michelle in Maine, writing about her family and their stories.

* Tracking Thomas, and more -- by Carol of Georgia who writes about her Georgia and Alabama ancestors.

* Twig Talk -- by Sheri Bush of Indiana, who writes about the problems, discoveries, joys and people on her genealogical journey.

* We Tree -- by Amy Coffin in Texas, who thinks she and me and you may be related.

I know that I've listed several that have been around for months, and I know that I've missed many relatively new genealogy blogs. Many of the blogs listed above came to my attention through the Genea-bloggers Group on Facebook.

One observation I have is that the genealogy bloggers group are getting younger, and the blog names are getting very creative. Cool.

If you have added a genealogy blog recently, I would love to hear about it in comments. I will add you to my Bloglines.

What about my Blogroll on the right side of my blog? It is very out of date. It's a pain to update (I'm still on old Blogger - I'm too chicken to update it).

Was this a real obituary?

An obituary for Dolores Aguilar was published on 16 and 17 August 2008 in the Vallejo [California] Times-Herald. It read:

"Dolores Aguilar 1929 - Aug. 7, 2008

"Dolores Aguilar, born in 1929 in New Mexico, left us on August 7, 2008. She will be met in the afterlife by her husband, Raymond, her son, Paul Jr., and daughter, Ruby. She is survived by her daughters Marietta, Mitzi, Stella, Beatrice, Virginia and Ramona, and son Billy; grandchildren, Donnelle, Joe, Mitzie, Maria, Mario, Marty, Tynette, Tania, Leta, Alexandria, Tommy, Billy, Mathew, Raymond, Kenny, Javier, Lisa, Ashlie and Michael; great-grandchildren, Brendan, Joseph, Karissa, Jacob, Delaney, Shawn, Cienna, Bailey, Christian, Andre Jr., Andrea, Keith, Saeed, Nujaymah, Salma, Merissa, Emily, Jayci, Isabella, Samantha and Emily. I apologize if I missed anyone.

"Dolores had no hobbies, made no contribution to society and rarely shared a kind word or deed in her life. I speak for the majority of her family when I say her presence will not be missed by many, very few tears will be shed and there will be no lamenting over her passing. Her family will remember Dolores and amongst ourselves we will remember her in our own way, which were mostly sad and troubling times throughout the years. We may have some fond memories of her and perhaps we will think of those times too. But I truly believe at the end of the day ALL of us will really only miss what we never had, a good and kind mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. I hope she is finally at peace with herself.

"As for the rest of us left behind, I hope this is the beginning of a time of healing and learning to be a family again. There will be no service, no prayers and no closure for the family she spent a lifetime tearing apart. We cannot come together in the end to see to it that her grandchildren and great-grandchildren can say their goodbyes. So I say here for all of us, GOOD BYE, MOM."

Isn't that a sad commentary for a life? Was it a "real" obituary - did her daughter really mean to run something so "down?" Apparently so, according to Snopes - see the commentary here.

Can you imagine a great-great-grandchild doing genealogy research in the year 2050 and finding this gem that lists all of the family members. Unfortunately, it doesn't list the surnames of the daughters, the grandchildren or great-grandchildren. But then the "Mother of all Genealogy Databases" will probably know them already, right? Or not. If there isn't a MOAGD available, it will be an interesting family history project.

My other thought is "will the 'sins' of the parents be visited on the descendants even to the fifth generation?" I sincerely hope not.

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Family Photographs - Post 19: Smith/Carringer Newlyweds

I'm posting old family photographs from my collection on Wednesdays, but they won't be wordless posts like others do - I simply am incapable of having a wordless post.

Here is one of the most precious (to me) images from my Smith/Carringer family collection:




This Cabinet Card is of Henry Austin Carringer (1853-1946) and Abbie Ardell (Della) (Smith) Carringer (1862-1944). It was taken at the Chicago Studio in San Diego )located at the Corner of 7th and H Streets in downtown San Diego - H Street is now Market Street), California in between September 1887 (when they were married in Kansas and arrived in San Diego ) to early 1889 (Della had their first baby in May 1889). My first impression was that this was a wedding picture since they are in very formal clothes. It may well be their formal wedding picture - there may not have been a photographer in Wano, Kansas in 1887.

The clothes are, however, different from those in the pictures put into their marriage certificate - seen here. I think that Austin's hair looks sparser and lighter in the certificate picture, and they both look older in the certificate picture.

This photograph was handed down from Austin and Della (Smith) Carringer to their son Lyle Lawrence Carringer, to their daughter Betty Virginia (Carringer) Seaver (who married Fred Seaver) to me, their son.

Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 19: Source Reports

I installed FamilyTreeMaker 2008 in early July and uploaded a large database to see how it worked. I also started a new database to test other program features. Please see the list at the bottom of this post for the earlier posts.

In this post, I want to display some pages from the Source Reports generated by FamilyTreeMaker 2008.

I'm using my 4th-great-grandfather, Benjamin Seaver (1757-1816), in my database as a starting point for these reports.

When you click on the [Publish] icon on the top menu, you see a list of the different Charts and Reports that can be generated in the left-hand panel. I clicked on "Source Reports" and got this screen:

There are three types of Source Reports available:

1) Source Usage Report - this report displays all of the sources you have and lists the individuals and facts associated with each source. The user can select Immediate Family, All Individuals or Selected Individuals. I selected Immediate Family and received a three page report for Benjamin Seaver's family. The first page is shown below:


2) Source Bibliography Report - this report creates a bibliography for your family tree based on the source information you have entered. This report creates a complete bibliography for all sources in your database. The list of sources looks like this (but I don't have "perfect" source citations, - this is GIGO):


3) Documented Facts Report - this report lists all of the Facts in your tree for which you have source information. In this report, you can select Immediate Family, All Individuals or Selected Individuals. I chose Immediate Family and the first page is shown below:


Each of these reports is fairly standard and very useful. You can determine which facts you have source information for. Of course, if you have done a poor job of sourcing all of your information, as I have, you will get poorly written citations and a fairly short list!

Previous posts in this series:

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 1: Loading. Installing the program and uploading an existing database file.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 2: Exploring. Looking around the uploaded database file to see what the different views look like.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 3: The Menus. Most of the menus were itemized and described.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 4: Starting a New Tree. I started a new tree and added some people demonstrating the program options to do this.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 5: Adding a Source. I added sources to the Facts that I previously entered.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 6: Adding Children to a Family. I added children to a family.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 7: The Person Menu. I described the items in the Person menu and attached a spouse to a person.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 8: Finding a Person in the database. I described three ways to Find a person.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 9: Places I. I explored the vagaries of the Places icon.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 10: Places II. The different map types are discussed and displayed.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 11: Places III. The method to Resolve many places with standardized place names is explored.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 12: Charts I. Introduction to Charts and examples of pedigree and descendants charts.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 13: Charts II. Examples of Hourglass, Relationships and Vertical Pedigree Charts.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 14: Charts III. Examples of large wall charts created by FTM 2008.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 15: Genealogy Reports. Description and display of Register (descendant) and Ahnentafel (ancestor) Reports.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 16: Person Reports. Description and display of 5 different reports, including Individual Reports and Custom Reports.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 17: Relationship Reports. Description and display of Family Group Sheet, Kinship Report, Marriage Report, Parentage Report, and Outline Descendant Report.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 18: Place Usage Reports. Description and display of the Place Usage report.

The next post will start a series on Media - the photos, audio, video, and document images that you can add to your database.

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

New FamilySearch web site testers requested

I received this notice in email from Tina, about the LDS New FamilySearch site:
-----------------------------

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is developing a new version of the FamilySearch.org Web site. This new Web site will help individuals identify ancestors and link them to families, and it will help Church members perform temple ordinances for their ancestors.

Can you volunteer an hour of time to help evaluate this new Web site? Do you know someone else who might be interested? We are looking for feedback to help make the Web site as easy and enjoyable to use as possible. We are especially interested in feedback from individuals who are new to family history.
Anyone over age 18 interested in participating in this evaluation is invited to go to the following Internet address to sign-up: http://labs.familysearch.org/temple/static/signup.htm

Thank you for your interest and enthusiasm. We greatly value your time and opinion.

Sincerely,

The FamilySearch User Experience Evaluation Team
Family History Department
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints


---------------------------------------

That certainly looks interesting, doesn't it? I'm tempted to sign up just to get a sneak peek at the site!

Table of Contents for New England Historical and Genealigcal Register - July 2008

The Table of Contents for the July 2008 issue of the New England Historical and Genealogical Register (Volume 162, Number 3, Whole Number 647), published by the New England Historic Genealogical Society, includes:

Page 163 - Editorial

Page 164 -- The English Origins of Elizabeth Dowse, Wife of Governor Samuel Allen of New Hampshire, by Martin E. Hollock.

Page 174 -- Gowen Wilson of Hingham, Exeter and Kittery, by Ken Stevens

Page 181 -- The Mays of Washington, Massachusetts, and the Parents of Nancy (May) Fletcher and Susan (MAy) Seagers, by Christopher Challender Child.

Page 187 -- Richard Godfrey of Taunton, Massachusetts, and His Children and Grandchildren, by Helen Schatvet Ullman.

Page 199 -- A Husband for Abigail Pattee: James Lamb of the 78th Regiment of Foot (Fraser's Highlanders), by Virginia M. Ryan and Marie Lollo Scalisi.

Page 204 -- Richard Scarrit of New London and Branford, Connecticut, by Diane Leblanc Delbridge.

Page 212 -- Identifying Mercy, Wife of Thomas Hinckley of Harwich, Massachusetts, As Mercy (Bangs) (Hinckley) Cole, by Glade Ion Nelson (concluded from 162:112).

Page 222 -- New England Articles in Genealogical Journals in 2006, by Henry B. Hoff.

As always, this peer-reviewed scholarly journal finds interesting and helpful articles for the New England researcher, even if they aren't his families (they almost never are it seems). I do have a probable connection to the Bangs and Cole families through my elusive Elizabeth Dill.

I usually find a research nugget or two when I review the articles. One of the clues in the Abigail Pattee article was a diary entry of her brother, Matthew Patten, which refers to her as "Sister Lamb." In this article, there is also the reminder that colonial women may have married English soldiers.

Piggly Wiggly and more

Lori Thornton started a meme about the Stores of Yesteryear on her Smoky Mountain Family Historian blog. She suggested that genea-bloggers write about their memories of the stores from their past. The meme suggests these questions:

* What stores do you remember from the past that aren't around any more?
* Where were they located? (I know some of you moved around a lot.)
* What did the store sell?
* Do you have any special memories associated with those stores?

Even casual readers of Genea-Musings know that I grew up in the city of San Diego, on the block bounded by 30th Street (on the west), Hawthorn Street (on the south), Fern Street (on the east) and Ivy Street (on the north). Our apartment was at 2119 30th Street.


View Larger Map

Before my grandparents moved to Point Loma in 1951, my mother and grandmother would go to the stores at the corner of Fern Street and Juniper Street - one block north and one block east from our house. 30th Street jogs at Juniper, so that going north on Fern, you go smoothly onto 30th north of Juniper. After my grandparents moved, my mother continued shopping there until a new store was built nearby.

I couldn't remember the names of all of the stores, but I sure remember going to the Piggly wiggly grocery store. Amazingly, there is still a chain of these stores - see http://www.shopthepig.com/. I checked the 1950 and 1955 city directories for San diego to determine the names and addresses of the stores of yesteryear in my neighborhood. Here they are:

* 3004 Juniper Street (northeast corner of 30th and Juniper) - Burlingame Sundries - this was a typical "drug store" that had a fountain, a pharmacy and sold odds and ends

* 3014 Juniper Street - Piggly Wiggly grocery store - I was in this store many times (!) but can't recall specifics. I'm pretty sure my mother bought fruit, vegetables, cereal, eggs, dairy, and household supplies here. I'm not sure about meat.

* 3020 Juniper Street - Burlingame Barber Shop - every month my brother and I got butch haircuts from Mr. Haynes and later Mr. Roy.

* 3022 Juniper Street - Burlingame Shoe Service - my mother occasionally took shoes here for repair and re-soling.

* 3015 Juniper Street (southeast corner of Fern and Juniper) - Zoellner's Meat Market and Juniper Food's grocery - my mother bought meat here, but not much food as I recall. I do recall that the store had a great selection of candy and gum...

* 3019 Juniper Street - The Juniper Cafe - a hole-in-the-wall restaurant - I don't recall ever going there.

* 3021 Juniper - Grier's Bottle Shop - a liquor store. My grandmother (who had an alcoholic father) would never have even walked past this store!

* 3023 Juniper Street - Metro Cleaners - a dry cleaning store.

* 2201 Fern Street (northeast corner of Fern and Ivy) - E. W. Wrede & Sons - a furniture upholstery store.

* 2205 Fern Street - Cottage Bakery - bread, donuts and more.

* 2207 Fern Street - Rich's Dressmaking - a women's clothing store.

* 2209 Fern Street - Fern Street Beauty Shop - a hairdresser

* 2204 Fern Street (northwest corner of Fern and Ivy) - Gay's Place Cafe - a bar - my mother and grandmother would walk on the other side of the street.

* 2236 Fern Street - the Bonnie Bell Cafe - a bar and cafe.

* 2234 30th Street - San Diego Public Library branch.

* 2238 30th Street - Sunset Cleaners - my mother went here for dry cleaning.

* 2248 30th Street - Burlingame Hardware and Paint

* 2302 30th Street (northwest corner of 30th and Juniper) - Scotty's Television Service - a TV store in 1955.

* 2308 30th Street - Boydston's Dry Goods - a store selling cloth and sewing essentials

* 2312 30th Street - Burlingame Meat Market - I don't remember going here either!

Visiting many of these stores was almost a daily occurrence. As I recall, we had ice boxes in the 1950's and not refrigerators. We had milk delivered every day, and my mother bought fresh produce and meat every day at the stores.

For real "shopping" trips to a department store, my mother would take the #2 bus north on 30th Street to University Avenue (the sign over the intersection said North Park) and the J.C. Penney's store there. Or she would take the #2 bus south on 30th and then west on Broadway to downtown San Diego and go to Marston's Department Store, Woolworth's and Walker's Department Store.

My grandfather worked at Marston's at 6th and C Streets in downtown San Diego from 1905 (a cash boys) to 1961 (head accountant), and my grandmother worked there as a cashier for many years. Our family had an emotional attachment to Marston's!

My elementary school was south on 30th eight blocks at 30th and Ash Streets. On the way home, we often stopped at Krueger's (a five-and-dime store) at the corner of 30th and Beech, and at a small store on the corner of 30th and Grape Streets.

I wish that I had pictures of these places to show what they look like. I drove through the neighborhood several weeks ago, and most of the buildings are still there. The Piggly Wiggly store was replaced by a DD Williams Paint store in the later 1950s, the Meat market at 3015 Juniper became a five-and-dime store, etc.
About the time that the Piggly Wiggly store left the 30th and Juniper location, a Safeway store was built on the east side of Fern Street between Hawthorn and Grape Streets (one block east and south of our house). My mother walked there every day to shop, and since they had a larger store with more commodities, she rarely went up to the 30th and Juniper stores, except for the barber shop, the cobbler and the beauty shop.

Ah - the memories of my childhood. I wish I could remember more of them. I've posted about some of them in 30th Street Memories - Part 1 and Part 2.

Monday, August 18, 2008

Genealogy classes at San Diego OASIS

I talked to SDGS/CGSSD member Pam Journey at the CGSSD meeting on Saturday, and she told me about two Genealogy oriented classes that will be held this fall as part of the OASIS adult education program in San Diego.

The two classes are:

* 32 Beginning Computer Genealogy
Registration opens 8/25/2008

Have you always wondered what information is available on the Internet about your family? How much do you really know about your family? Now is the time to find the answers to questions about your ancestors: where they lived, how they lived, how they came to the U.S. and lots more. Using the computer, you will learn how to find information on your family, organize that information, and share it with your current family. Knowing your ancestors is knowing yourself. The class will cover how to begin (always with yourself); how to use census records to connect the family today to earlier generations; and how to input the information you find into computer genealogy programs. You will want to bring birth, marriage, and death information regarding yourself and at least the next two previous generations to the class. If you don’t know all of these facts, we will work to fill in the blanks and move on. One warning should be given to prospective class members: This is a very addictive hobby—once started, the need to know more grows and grows. Come have fun, finding how you came to be you.
Instructor: Pam Journey
Monday 10/6/08 - 10/27/08 10:15 - 12:15
$42 4 Sessions Location:
OASIS Comp Lab

----------------------------------

155 Beginning Genealogy—Family History
Registration opens 8/25/2008

Genealogy is the study of yourself. Beginning with you, you track the family members who created your life as it is today. Where did each of them come from; where did they marry; where did they die? Why did they move—or did they? These lessons will include methods for recording all the exciting facts about your ancestors. If you always wanted to write a book about your family, come to this class to learn how to gather, organize and create books on your family story. Bring to class any birth, marriage, and death information regarding yourself and at least the next two previous generations. Don’t worry if you don’t know or don’t have all these facts, we’ll help you find the pieces to the puzzle.
Instructor: Pam Journey
Thursday 12/4/08 - 12/18/08 1:15 - 2:45
$18 3 Sessions Location:
OASIS 1
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You need to be a member of OASIS to sign up for these classes. You can sign up for free at https://www.oasisnet.org/secure/signup.asp. The MyOASIS for San Diego site is at http://www.oasisnet.org/sandiego/index.htm.

OASIS has a list of cities that it has classes - check http://www.oasisnet.org/cities/index.htm.

What is OASIS? The San Diego site says:

"OASIS is a unique educational program for mature adults who want to continue to learn and be productive during the best years of their lives. Membership is free and open to anyone 50 or older. Members receive a catalog of opportunities three times a year. You can join OASIS online.

"OASIS offers a broad range of stimulating educational classes - from the arts and humanities to wellness, fitness and travel. Pursue an old or new interest, learn how you can stay healthy and active, and make new friends. To find out about upcoming classes, browse our online catalog. "

This is a great opportunity for beginning genealogists to learn useful information to get them started doing genealogy the right way!

Do the adult education schools offer genealogy classes that you, or your society colleagues, might benefit from?

Some Geni.com feedback

I posted my summary of Keith McCarty's presentation at the CGSSD meeting on Saturday about Geni.com in my post Geni.com - Everyone's Related.

There were several comments to my post, and the speaker, Keith McCarty, responded today with the following:

"I would like to thank everyone for the feedback. As you know, Geni has only been around for a year and a half. We have come a very long way since our inception but we are still heavily developing the product. It was great to hear the reaffirmation of the direction that we are going. Everything that was brought up, in terms of features, is already on our road map.

"Although Geni may not be a replacement for your current genealogy program, right now. It definitely makes a good supplement. Engagement amongst family members is something that Geni is trying to accomplish. For a genealogist, this means more content to further their research as well as a medium to share their genealogical research. We hear the same story over and over from genealogists which is, "my family just isn't interested." The interest level of the content amongst the family is not the problem. The problem is the medium in which the content is shared. When genealogical content is shared through a medium that is easy to interpret, fun to use, and offers features that even non-genealogists are interested in, then the response and engagement will be much greater. That is what Geni can offer.

"To answer John's question, Geni currently offers MM-DD-Year eg August 18, 2008. In the near future, when we start to Localize Geni, we will offer different ways to enter and display the dates.

"Once again, I would like to thank CGSSD and all of the attendees for enabling me present Geni to them. It was a pleasure.

"Thank you,
Keith McCarty
www.geni.com "

My thanks to Keith for taking the time to respond to my post and the comments. I was wondering if he would "see" what I wrote about his program. He did - the next day he was back to work. I'll bet he has a permanent Google search for key words like Geni.com.

As I stated in my post, I really like the concept that Geni.com is driving towards - getting family members involved in finding and preserving family history and memories. Although I had signed up some time ago to try it out, I had not uploaded a significant amount of family material. I'm going to do that in the near future and invite all of my cousins and brothers and daughters to see how many of them will come aboard. If they do, that's great. If they don't, I will be disappointed.

54th Carnival of Genealogy posted - on Family Language

Donna Pointkouski has posted the 54th Edition of the Carnival of Genealogy on her blog, What's Past Is Prologue. The topic for this edition was The Family Language - and what a wonderful variety of languages we all have.

29 bloggers contributed to this tower of Babel - I encourage you to go read every one of them. Some are funny, all are informative. My own contribution was San Diego Slanguage - I picked the local -isms because I didn't have many memories of unique family language curiosities.

The topic for the next Carnival of Genealogy will be Show and Tell! Remember that fun little exercise you used to do in your grade school days? Here’s your chance to do it again Show us and tell us about an heirloom, a special photo, a valuable document, or a significant person that is a very special part of your family history. Don’t be shy now, show us what you’ve got! This is all about bragging rights so don’t hesitate to make the rest of us green with envy! This is your chance to brag, brag, brag, without seeming like a braggart (you can’t be a braggart when you’re merely following directions ;-)… so show and tell!

This next edition will be hosted by Jasia on the Creative Gene blog. The deadline for submissions will be September 1st. Submit your blog article to the next edition of the Carnival of Genealogy using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page. See ya next time!

Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 18:Place Usage Reports

I installed FamilyTreeMaker 2008 in early July and uploaded a large database to see how it worked. I also started a new database to test other program features. Please see the list at the bottom of this post for the earlier posts.

In this post, I want to display some pages from the Place Usage Report generated by FamilyTreeMaker 2008.

I'm using my 4th-great-grandfather, Benjamin Seaver (1757-1816), in my database as a starting point for these reports.

When you click on the [Publish] icon on the top menu, you see a list of the different Charts and Reports that can be generated in the left-hand panel. I clicked on "Place Usage Report" and got this screen:



The Place Usage Report lists all of the places associated with every person in your family tree. Each entry includes the place name, the names of persons associated with the place name, and each of the person's events that occurred in that place.

I double-clicked on the Place Usage Report icon, and waited ... and waited ... and waited two minutes (I thought I'd broken the program) for a report to appear. A 1,394 page report of all of the place names came up. The first time you click on this icon, you get a report for All Individuals. Only after getting the default report do you have the opportunity to click on Selected Individuals or Immediate Family. Of course, I got 1,394 pages because I have a 20,000 person database and lots of duplicate places. The time to generate the report depends on then umber of persons being analyzed.

You can Cancel the report generation during the process, which I tried. The report generation stopped, but when I clicked on the Immediate Family button and then clicked on Generate Report it still took two minutes to generate a 5 page report.

Later, when I came back to this screen with Immediate Family already selected, it took only about 10 seconds to generate the 5 page report. The first page of the Place Usage Report for the Benjamin Seaver family is shown below:


This report can be very useful to a researcher to determine the records found in specific locations. However, my database has all of those "notes" and "sources" in it, so I get many items for one location, as you can see in the screen above. This should work better for me after I resolve all of my Place Names and add my source citations properly.

I did not find any way to create a Place Usage Report for a specific country, a specific state, a specific county, or a specific township or city. I think that those reports would be very useful. I can't manage a 500 page report easily ... but I could really use a 10 page report for, e.g., Worcester County, Massachusetts.

To save user time and frustration, it would be helpful to be able to choose the scope of the Place report that the user desires - there should be a way to select Immediate Family, Selected Individuals or All Individuals before the user clicks on the icon to generate the report.

Previous posts in this series:

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 1: Loading. Installing the program and uploading an existing database file.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 2: Exploring. Looking around the uploaded database file to see what the different views look like.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 3: The Menus. Most of the menus were itemized and described.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 4: Starting a New Tree. I started a new tree and added some people demonstrating the program options to do this.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 5: Adding a Source. I added sources to the Facts that I previously entered.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 6: Adding Children to a Family. I added children to a family.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 7: The Person Menu. I described the items in the Person menu and attached a spouse to a person.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 8: Finding a Person in the database. I described three ways to Find a person.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 9: Places I. I explored the vagaries of the Places icon.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 10: Places II. The different map types are discussed and displayed.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 11: Places III. The method to Resolve many places with standardized place names is explored.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 12: Charts I. Introduction to Charts and examples of pedigree and descendants charts.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 13: Charts II. Examples of Hourglass, Relationships and Vertical Pedigree Charts.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 14: Charts III. Examples of large wall charts created by FTM 2008.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 15: Genealogy Reports. Description and display of Register (descendant) and Ahnentafel (ancestor) Reports.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 16: Person Reports. Description and display of 5 different reports, including Individual Reports and Custom Reports.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 17: Relationship Reports. Description and display of Family Group Sheet, Kinship Report, Marriage Report, Parentage Report, and Outline Descendant Report.

The next post will cover the Source Reports available in the [Publish] menu.

Sunday, August 17, 2008

Music in my Mind

It seems like I'm always "breathing" the last song I heard - it's stuck in my mind. Like right now, it's a hymn we sang in church - Amen! When the grandkids are here, it's usually a Wiggles song. This goes on for hours, it seems, without me being too aware of it, except when my mouth gets dry from breathing in and out. Sometimes other people even hear my monotone non-whistling breathing. Maybe they talk about it behind my back? I dunno.

Why am I telling you this? Well, Tim Abbott over at Walking the Berkshires posted about the "The Sound Tracks of my Salad Days" and listed his favorite albums from his earlier years. A meme started to post the music of your "days" on your blog, so this is my contribution to "what is your favorite music?"

My favorite music is '50s and '60s pop and rock music, plus a little country. I still like high energy pop, dreamy ballads, love stories, etc. Back when I started this blog in April 2006, I posted about my favorites from this time period. You can see my Top 4 favorites list for each year in:

* 1955-1959

* 1960-1964

Unfortunately, I stopped there. I never had any albums or many 45-rpm records for these songs - they played on the radio on the pop/rock stations in San Diego and Los Angeles (KDEO-910, KCBQ-1170, KGB-1360 in San Diego, KFWB-980, KRLA-1110 in LA). We listen to an oldies station occasionally and have a great time.

I stopped really listening to a lot of pop music when I got married - I had other ways to occupy my time. I've never liked the rock music from the late 1960's onward - the drug-caused, anti-authority and wild guitar stuff. That wasn't me - the traditional, responsible, orderly family guy. When the babies came in the mid-70's, my radio time was limited to going to work and back, and was mainly the pop and news stations. When I retired, I got an iPod and downloaded a bunch of these songs from the 1950s and 1960s but I haven't listened to them for over a year now.

If you see me with my lips open and a semblance of a tune coming out, please ask me what's playing in the music in my mind. You may be surprised!

Best of the Genea-Blogs - Week of August 10-16, 2008

Several hundred genealogy and family history bloggers write thousands of posts every week about their research, their families, and their interests. I appreciate each one of them and their efforts.

My criteria for "Best of ..." are pretty simple - I pick posts that advance knowledge about genealogy and family history, address current genealogy issues, provide personal family history, are funny or are poignant. I don't list posts destined for the Carnival of Genealogy, or other meme submissions (but I do include summaries of them), or my own posts.

Here are my picks for great reads from the genealogy blogs for this past week:

* Why Genealogists Make Mistakes by Craig Manson on the Geneablogie blog. Craig discusses how and why we make mistakes in our research endeavors, just like medical doctors do.

* Tuesday Tales from the Road - Pennsylvania by Kathryn M. Doyle on the California Genealogical Society and Library blog. This is report number three from Mary Mettler as she researches across America. This week, she's in Pennsylvania and sends back stories with pictures.

* MyHeritage introduces a whole new way to work with photos - Part 1, 2, 3 and 4 by Saar Kagan on the MyHeritage blog. This series of posts describes how to put photographs on the MyHeritage site, photo tag them with automatic face detection technology, create a face cloud, and adding, viewing and searching for photos on the site.

* On the road again: To Chicago by Schelly Talalay Dardahti on the Tracing the Tribe: The Jewish Genealogy Blog. Schelly is a busy lady, and still on her long road trip around the USA. Read about her trip to Chicago, and also the excellent advice for genealogy societies about outreach.

* But is it real? Online publishing, writing and reading, that is ... by Terry Thornton on the Hill Country of Monroe County, Mississippi blog. Terry hits this out of the park - of course, it's real! We bloggers try hard to be real, don't we? And discovered, and accepted, too.

* Arkansas Road Trip, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4 and Call Me Ahab by Amy on the We Tree blog. Amy went on her road trip to Arkansas and had some interesting experiences and successes. I can relate to this!

* Almost no oaks in my forest by Abba-Dad on the I Dream of Genea(logy) blog. This is a wonderful and very sad story about Amir's grandfather during World War II, how he migrated to Israel, and found someone who he thought was his sister. Interesting descendants chart, too, that conveys the Holocaust in one picture when words cannot suffice.

* Making of America - A Resource You Shouldn't Miss by Carolyn L. Barkley posted by Erica on the GenealogyandFamilyHistory.com blog. Sage advice about a great historical book resource.

* August 15 - Friday from the Collectors: I Do Collect Photos! by Maureen Taylor on footnoteMaven's Shades of the Departed blog. Maureen describes her special photo collection of wedding portraits. She is, of course, the author of the Photo Detective blog and web site.

* Homeland Security and Your Genealogy by Arlene Eakle on the Arlene H. Eakle's Genealogy Blog. Arlene has excellent advice on how to protect and preserve your genealogy work from the chaos and randomness of daily life.

* ProGen Study Group #4 by Mark Tucker on the ThinkGenealogy blog. Mark discusses the Professional Genealogy chapter work and the group conference that he (and I) participated in recently. He also talks about using Skype for phone conversations.

Thank you to all genealogy bloggers for an interesting and informative week. Did you notice some new blogs on this list? I hope so!

I encourage you to go to the blogs listed above and read their articles, and add their blog to your Favorites, Bloglines, reader, feed or email if you like what you read. Please make a comment to them also - we all appreciate feedback on what we write.

Did I miss a great genealogy blog post? Tell me!

My Genealympics - Days 6 to 8

I'm competing in the Genealympics (well, the Genea-bloggers Group Games) - see the details here. My last update was on Thursday.

My progress over the last three days has been:

3. ORGANIZE YOUR RESEARCH

B. I transferred about 40 digital files of vital records and census records into my reorganized filing system on Friday, 8/14. I added descriptive information to the file names. This item is complete.

C. I added 50 family photos, including about 30 from my parent's family, into a Facebook photo album. I added 4 more Audrey photos and about 20 more Lolo photos to their Facebook albums. I tagged most of the faces and wrote captions for them. This item is complete.

D. I added 30 photos from the digital camera into the August 2008 folder in My Pictures on my computer. I renamed them to describe the subjects. This item is complete.

5. REACH OUT AND PERFORM GENEALOGICAL ACTS OF KINDNESS

D. I did additional research for my friend Ed (Project M) who is looking for information about his father. So far, I've found an SSDI entry, a Georgia death record, 1930, 1920 and 1910 census records for his father, and I've searched many online databases for him. I then summarized all of this in an email to Ed. In addition, I've searched Footnote for the grandfather of one of my colleagues. Lastly, I've searched for census and other records for an email correspondent in an effort to break down his research brick wall. This task is complete!

E. I am not part of a formal indexing project, so I decided to start one of my own. Since I've complained so much about the lack of useful online indexes for information in repositories, I picked out three books on the shelf at the Chula Vista Public Library and decided to index the head-of-household of the families listed in those books. My first effort, for surnames A and B of Volume 1 of Spanish-Mexican Families of Early California, 1769-1850 is posted here. This project is nowhere near complete, but this task for the Genealympics is complete.

So my status in these two events are:

3. ORGANIZE YOUR RESEARCH

A. Not Started
B. Completed.
C. Completed
D. Completed
E. Not started
F. Not started

5. REACH OUT AND PERFORM GENEALOGICAL ACTS OF KINDNESS

A. Completed
B. Completed
C. Completed
D. Completed
E. Completed
F. Not started

I hope to complete two more tasks in Organize Your Research before Tuesday, when my daughter and her sons come to visit until Saturday. I anticipate that I will be making family history, rather than organizing it, during this next week!