Saturday, August 30, 2008

How Many of Me?

I know I've seen this on some blogs in the past, but I can't resist posting it here.

Check out http://howmanyofme.com/search/

This site tells you how many people in the US share your name. It is pretty neat. Of ocurse, I put my name in the box - Randall Seaver.

There are 210,458 people in the U.S. with the first name Randall.
Statistically the 305th most popular first name.
More than 99.9 percent of people with the first name Randall are male.

There are 4,179 people in the U.S. with the last name Seaver.
Statistically the 8152nd most popular last name.
Famous people with the last name Seaver:Tom Seaver

There are 3 people in the U.S. named Randall Seaver. And one named Randell Seaver. And 5 named Randy Seaver.

How many are there of you? Have you checked recently? There may be more than you think.

Most Common Last Names

1. Smith
2. Johnson
3. Williams
4. Jones (tie)
4. Brown (tie)
6. Davis
7. Miller
8. Wilson
9. Moore
10. Taylor (tie)
10. Anderson (tie)
10. Thomas (tie)

Most Common Boy Names

1. James
2. John
3. Robert
4. Michael
5. William
6. David
7. Richard
8. Charles
9. Joseph
10. Thomas

Most Common Girl Names

1. Mary
2. Patricia
3. Linda
4. Barbara
5. Elizabeth
6. Jennifer
7. Maria
8. Susan
9. Margaret
10. Dorothy

Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 21: Adding Media II

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 Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Summary of Posts for all of the posts in this series.

In this post, I want to demonstrate how to link pictures to persons in my database using the [Media] menu icon in FamilyTreeMaker 2008. For this post, I'm using my great-grandfather, Frank W. Seaver (1852-1922), in my database as a starting point for these posts. In Post 20, I added a picture of the Frank Seaver and Fred Seaver families to my FTM 2008 database.

Before we try to link the picture to persons in the picture, I want to cover the "Media" menu on the second menu row on the FTM screen. When I click the "Media" menu item, the screen looks like this:



The "Media" menu items include:

* Add New Media - this works just like the "Add" button at the top right of the screen - you can add a new media item.

* Open Media File - this opens the selected media in the associated computer program on your computer. For a photograph, it opened my Windows Picture and Fax Viewer program.

* Delete Media - you get a "do you want to delete ..." and a choice of Yes or No.

* Rename Media File - you can type in another name for your file.

* Link to Person - you can link the media item to a person in your database. The rest of this post will demonstrate this.

* Link to Source - you can link the media item to a source. For example, a census image could be linked to a census source. When you click on this, you get a list of sources to link the media item to.

* Refresh Thumbnail - I'm not sure why this is here...the Help menu says it is to refresh the Media collection. So it is not for just the highlighted thumbnail.

* Thumbnail Size - Lets you change the size of the thumbnails in the Media Collection - you get a Small, Medium or Large selection. The thumbnail in my screen shot above is Large.

I wanted to link persons in my database to the persons in my photograph, so I clicked on the photograph got this screen. In the lower part of the screen is a media menu with "Links" and "Notes" tabs. I clicked on the "Links" tab and then clicked on the "New" button and the "Link to Person" item (I should have just highlighted the picture and clicked on the "Media" menu item "Link to Person" but I didn't the first time around) as shown below:



When you click on the "Link to Person" item, you get a popup "Add Media Link" box that lists all of the persons in your database. You can use the Find search box to identify your person. I wanted to link the picture to Frank Seaver, so I entered "Seaver, Frank" in the Find box, as shown below:


The information for Frank Walton Seaver is shown in the right-hand portion of the box, so that you can ensure you are finding the right person. Note that you can link to a person or to a person's Fact using the buttons at the top of the box. I clicked OK on the "Add Media Link" box and the link was added to the Media "Links" list.

I entered links for all of the persons in the picture one at a time, and the resulting [Media] "Detail" screen looks like this:


You can also add Notes about the picture using the "Notes" tab. I could have put all of the Description information in the Notes section.

I wondered what the "Open Media File" item in the "Media" menu did, so I clicked on it. The screen below shows the picture opened in my Windows Picture and Fax Viewer program on my computer in a separate window.



In the "Collection" tab on the [Media] icon screen, the left-hand column is "Groups" which has "All Media," "Media category," "Source title" and "People" selections. If you click on the "Media category" item, you can obtain a list of media in the Audio, Cemetery, Census, Documents, Other, Photos, Video, vital Records and (Uncategorized) categories.

Linking pictures, or other media, to persons is very easy to do, although it would be useful to be able to just pick all of the people from a list and then click OK rather than pick them one at a time. I like the ability to Link to a Person's Fact also - for instance, a birth certificate for a specific person.

In the next series of posts, I'm going to explore the Web Search icon capabilities.

Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Summary of Posts

Rather than put a list of all of the Using FamilyTreeMaker2008 posts at the end of each post, I'm going to put a link to each of them in this post, and then update this post when I add a new post. That will save bandwidth and perhaps make the separate posts more readable.

Here are the posts concerning Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 (updated to 3 September 2008):

* 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.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 19: Source Reports. Description and display of the Source Usage reports.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 20: Adding Media I. How to add media (photos, audio, video, etc.), demonstrating adding, captioning and describing photographs.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 21: Adding Media II. How to link pictures to persons and more.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 22: Web Search I. How to use Web Search to obtain Ancestry.com images and data.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 23: Web Search II. How to merge the Web Search results into your family tree database.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 24: Web Search III. How to use Web Search to obtain Rootsweb website data into FTM 2008.

* Using Family Tree Maker 2008 - Post 25: Web Search IV. How to use the Web Clipping feature to add text from a web site to a person's Notes.

Finding Claude and Nadine Dawson

I posted on 27 August about the World War II love letters exchanged between Claude and Nadine Dawson that were saved from the trash compactor here. I wondered if this was a case for the Genealogue readers or the Unclaimed Persons team.

Chris Dunham on The Genealogue posted about the article here, and had one response from fellow genea-blogger Craig Manson. Craig just posted his findings on his own blog, Geneablogie, in An Attempted Act of Genealogical Kindness.

Craig has found death records for Claude and Nadine, 1920 and 1930 census records for Claude, school records for Claude, voter registration records, and tried to identify their children through birth indexes. Read all of Craig's study in his blog post. Craig is pretty close to solving this puzzle, and I hope he gets the recognition he deserves for working hard on it.

Thanks, Craig, for picking up this ball and running with it. Will he get a touchdown? Only time will tell.

Friday, August 29, 2008

Sharon has fun with DNA

Sharon Elliott on the BackTrack blog has a challenging puzzle for her readers to solve. Go read Fun with DNA. It is a good test of logic and knowledge.

Leave a comment to solve the puzzle. I did.

The Severed Arm and Hand Mystery - Video Report

I posted two weeks ago about the Severed Arm and Hand Mystery that my friend, Colleen Fitzpatrick (of Forensic Genealogy fame) was involved in solving, with newspaper links to articles about finding that it belonged to Francis Joseph Van Zandt.

Colleen emailed me today with a link to a video that was on Today at MSNBC. It discusses some of the forensic process, including a picture of the arm and hand. The video runs 2:49 and is here.

However, there is still no information publicly available (that I've seen) about the research process to find relatives for the Y-DNA match.

Traffic statistics for commercial genealogy services

I posted about The Generations Network domain traffic statistics yesterday, and wanted to show the statistics for several other commercial genealogy services.

The web sites I reviewed were:

* http://www.worldvitalrecords.com/ (a general genealogy database site)
* http://www.footnote.com/ (a US government related database site)
* http://www.genealogybank.com/ (a newspaper-oriented database site)
* http://www.findmypast.com/ (a United Kingdom genealogy database site)
* http://www.genealogytoday.com (a general genealogy database site)

http://www.alexa.com/ measures Reach (percentage of all Internet users who visit a web site). Here is the Reach for these five web sites:


And here are the page views (in terms of percent of all users: for the sites:


The www.alexa.com data shows that:

* www.worldvitalrecords.com has a three month average Reach of 0.00275% (about 5% of Ancestry.com's Reach).

* www.footnote.com has a three month average Reach of 0.00446% (about 8% of Ancestry.com)

* www.genealogybank.com has a three month average Reach of 0.00058% (about 1% of Ancestry.com)

* www.findmypast.com has a three month average Reach of 0.00132% (about 2.4% of Ancestry.com)

* www.genealogytoday.com has a three month average Reach of 0.00537% (about 10% of Ancestry.com)

The www.quantcast.com page shows, in terms of United States daily visitors per month, is:


The Quantcast monthly traffic estimate for these sites are:

* www.worldvitalrecords.com - 335K US visits and 404K visits worldwide (addicts and regulars are 23% of audience, 51% of visits)

* www.footnote.com - 579K US visits (addicts and regulars are 19% of audience, and 40% of visits)

* www.genealogybank.com - 87K US visits (addicts and regulars are 22% of audience, 52% of visits)

* www.findmypast.com - 24K US visits (addicts and regulars are 21% of audience, 37% of visits)

* www.genealogytoday.com - 300K US visits ( addicts and regulars are 16% of audience, 33% of visits)

For comparison purposes, www.Ancestry.com had 5.0 million US visits, with addicts and regulars 45% of audience and 89% of visits.

It's unfortunate that the www.FindMyPast.com results from Quantcast is for US visits only.

It sure seems to me that none of these commercial genealogy websites have made a significant dent in Ancestry.com's customer base. The graphs show that traffic is essentially stagnant, except when a site offers a free database set or introduces new databases.

Sarah Palin is my cousin too!

Isn't that amazing? I have a distant cousin running on both tickets in the 2008 Presidential election! See here for my cousinhood with Barack Obama.

Robert Battle has an Ancestry of Sarah Palin at http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~battle/palin.htm. I checked the list of ancestors, and Sarah (Heath) Palin, present Governor of Alaska and Republican vice-presidential nominee, has a significant New England and Mayflower ancestry (Warren, Howland, Brewster, Tilley and Hopkins) and also has several ancestors in common with me:

* 14590 Richard Warren (1578-1628)
* 14591 Elizabeth Walker (????-1673)

* 15894 Thomas Prence (1600-1673)

Sarah (Heath) Palin is the 11th great-granddaughter of these three people, and I am the 10th great-grandson of them. So that makes Sarah my 10th cousin once removed. How cool is that?

The offer still holds for both of my cousins on the tickets - if you want to come visit me in Chula Vista, I have a guest room waiting. We can talk about our common ancestry.... unless you really care about my political opinions.

Thursday, August 28, 2008

FamilyTreeMaker 2009 Improvements

Russell Hannig on the Ancestry.com Blog has just posted about Family Tree Maker 2009 Release with a list of the improvements over FTM 2008.

The list of items added into FTM 2009 includes:

Genealogy Reports

* Register and Ahnentafel simplified reports*
* Data Errors report*

Charts

* Hourglass Chart*
* Horizontal Hourglass Chart*
* Bow Tie Chart*
* 180-Degree Fan Chart*
* Family Tree Chart*


Publishing Functionality

* Ability to show siblings within charts*
* Single-page PDF export from charts*
* Ability to add boxes in charts to a “Marked Box” category and modify box settings for these boxes*


Improved Data Manipulation Tools

* Streamlined data entry from any workspace using a full-featured edit person window*
* Ability to set spouse order (Person menu)*
* Ability to order media items for an individual*
* Find Individual tool (Edit menu)*
* Find Duplicate Individuals tool (Edit menu)*
* Ability to update multiple facts at one time (From Manage Facts or Fact options): change fact types, move description to place or place to description, mark as private*
* Insert foreign language characters into text fields*


Improvements within Research Tools

* Ability to ignore hints*
* Option to delete existing facts in individual and Web merge*
* Inclusion of married names, AKAs, and titles in index*

Improvements to Import

* OLE objects (PDF, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, RTF) from previous FTM versions*
* Import previously ignored hints lists*


Improvements to Places

* Track and print your ancestors’ migration paths on interactive maps*
* Places toolbar that allows for researching place names not currently in the file and pinpointing places such as libraries, churches, and courthouses*


COMING SOON

In addition, we are currently working on new features that will be available as part of Family Tree Maker 2009—as soon as they become available:

* Book Building
* Better Ancestry Member Tree Integration
* Improved Relationship Calculator
* Source templates based on Evidence Explained by source expert, Elizabeth Shown Mills
* And many others…


Those improvements look promising - we'll see if they satisfy all of our wants and needs over time. I'm disappointed that the Book Building and Source Templates won't be in the initial FTM 2009 release.

According to this post on the Ancestry.com blog, registered users of FamilyTreeMaker 2008 will be offered a free upgrade to FTM 2009. That's encouraging. I look forward to my invitation to upgrade to FTM 2009! That should be good for another set of Genea-Musings posts, eh?

My sense is that the FamilyTreeMaker team at TGN are making an effort to be sensitive to customers wants, needs and requests, and are adding capabilities as fast as they can proof them. There is a lot more competition now with Legacy Family Tree and RootsMagic than there was even a year ago. Customer satisfaction should be a primary concern of all software companies!

Family Tree Magazine Launches New Website

Family Tree Magazine has launched their new web site - see www.familytreemagazine.com. My first impression is that they have added a LOT of content on this web site, mostly in the form of articles and genealogy forms.

The major headings on the web page are:

* How To - Records, Tips & Techniques, Online Genealogy, Photos & Heirlooms, Save & Share History, Libraries & Archives, and DNA

* Heritage - African-American, English, French, German, Hispanic, Irish, Italian, Polish, Scandinavian, Scottish and All groups.

* Get Started -- Basic Steps, Genealogy Glossary, Surnames and Interviewing

* Research Toolkit - Free Forms, Cheat Sheets, 101 Best Web Sites, Soundex Generator, Software Guide, Article Index, State Research Guides.

* Blogs - Genealogy Insider, Photo Detective, Now What?

* Community -- Forum, Contribute, Queries

* Audio/Video - Featured Videos, Podcasts

* Shop - Back Issues, CDs, Digital downloads, State Research Guides, FTM Merchandise, Books.

I found many excellent articles, plus some PDFs in the Cheat Sheet section of Research Toolkit - Records Checklist, Timeline of US Immigration Laws, War Service Reference Guide and a Vital Records Chart. I also appreciated the article by Rick Crume on the 50 Genealogy Databases.

At this time, the Software Guide reviews are not available, even though a summary of each program is available here.

This is a great resource for all researchers - it's very easy to use and has a lot of information organized logically and well. Did I mention that most of these resources are FREE? Of course, the Family Tree Magazine itself isn't free, and the State Research Guides are not free.

Traffic statistics for TGN domains

I haven't looked at the traffic statistics for The Generations Network domains (or any others for that matter) for three months. The last check for TGN was on 27 May 2008 here.

Being the curious genea-cat I am, I checked the reach and page views on http://www.alexa.com/ for:

* www.ancestry.com
* www.rootsweb.com
* www.myfamily.com
* www.genealogy.com

Alexa.com measures Reach (percentage of all Internet users who visit a web site).


The daily page views (in terms of percent of all Internet users) were:



The Alexa page for Ancestry.com lists the following statistics:

* 0.057% of all Internet users visited Ancestry.com on 25 August
* 0.055% (average) of all Internet users visited Ancestry.com over the past three months.
* 16.4 page views per user on 25 August
* 15.32 page views per user (average) over the past three months
* Ancestry's rank in the USA is #386 of all web sites

I also checked the daily U.S. visits for the four TGN domains on http://www.quantcast.com/


These are daily visits by U.S. visitors. The Quantcast page for Ancestry.com indicates that the site averages 5.0 million visitors per month (not visits, visitors - in other words, unique users). Other statistics indicate that:

* 4% of the visits are "addicts" that are 48% of the total visits

* 41% of the visits are "regulars" that are 41% of the total visits

* 51% of the visits are "passers-bys" that are 11% of the visits.

The statistics indicate, to me, that:

* Bringing the Rootsweb domain into the Ancestry domain did not appreciably increase the total TGN traffic. For example, in early March, Rootsweb had a reach of 0.04% and Ancestry had 0.03%, and in early August Ancestry had a reach of 0.06% and Rootsweb had a reach of 0.005%.

* The Ancestry traffic is essentially stagnant - it has averaged 700K to 800K visits a day (from Quantcast), and a reach of 0.05% to 0.06% (from Alexa) since April 2008.

* Traffic for www.myfamily.com (about 25% of Ancestry's reach) and www.genealogy.com (about 15% of Ancestry's reach) is essentially constant also.

* The total traffic for all four of TGN's lead domains is about 1.2 million visits daily by U.S. persons.

In a later post, I will determine if other genealogy commercial and free web sites have increased their traffic statistics and market share.

Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 20: Adding Media I

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 demonstrate how to add pictures to my database using the Media menu icon in FamilyTreeMaker 2008. For this post, I'm using my great-grandfather, Frank W. Seaver (1852-1922), in my database as a starting point for these posts. Here is the Family screen in the People menu for this family.




When you click on the [Media] icon on the top menu, you get the "Collection" tab on the Media page. There is an index list in the left panel (empty for now). As you can see in the screen below, I have already added two photographs to my media collection. Now I want to add another photograph to the media Collection. I am going to click on the "Add" button in the upper right-hand corner to add another media item (Note that I could have clicked on the "Media" menu item in the second menu row down also):


After clicking on the "Add" button, a "Select media item" box opens and I find the photo that I want to add to my media collection. I highlight it, as shown below:


After clicking on the "Open" button, the photograph is added to my Media Collection. In the right-hand screen panel, I added a Caption, a Date, and a Description of the photograph. Here is the screen shot after I have added that information:

Note that the photograph File Name and File Folder location on my computer are included at the bottom of the right-hand panel. The photographs are stored in a separate Media folder rather than within the FamilyTreeMaker 2008 database.

I haven't added any photographs to my FTM 16 databases, so this was a new experience for me. The process of adding a photograph, adding a caption, date and description are very straight-forward and intuitive. I like the fact that the photographs are in a separate folder.

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.

* Using FamilyTreeMaker 2008 - Post 19: Source Reports. Description and display of the Source Usage reports.

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

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

It pays to post...

Now that I have some time to catch up after my bout with Genealogicus Interruptus, I have been burning down my email list a bit. When they came in over the past two weeks, I've read them and ignored them and hoped to answer them when I found time.

Having a genealogy web site that Google and other search engines can find is great. Mine is presently at www.genealogy.com/users/s/e/a/Randy-Seaver/. The genealogy reports there are essentially unsourced, but they are great finding aids for anybody searching for their ancestors in my genealogy databases. Although I haven't updated these reports in three years, the information is still "good" - well, except for the branches of my family tree that I've lopped off since then and the branches that I've grafted onto my family tree since then. I guess I had better go update them soon! Actually, I had hoped to have my own web site by now, but I haven't gotten a round tuit...

Anyway, the information on my web site and my blogs has generated some email traffic over the past month, to wit:

1) A distant cousin of Linda's saw my web site genealogy report and wrote asking about my McKnew research - she was able to connect her ancestor Martha McKnew to the McKnew information in my database.

2) A distant cousin (?) of mine saw my blog post and inquired about the maiden name of Jerusha, the wife of Burgess Metcalf, a Revolutionary War soldier. We don't know Jerusha's maiden name, unfortunately. I sent her what I knew about the Metcalf line in hopes she can add or correct my information.

3) A distant cousin of mine in England saw my Private Member Tree database on Ancestry.com, and sent a message through Ancestry.com about the Hanny family, whose mother was Maria Richman, a granddaughter of John and Ann (Marshman) Richman of Hilperton, Wiltshire. Maybe he has more information about the Richmans!

4) A Seaver researcher saw my Private Member Tree on Ancestry.com and sent a message through Ancestry.com asking about John Wesley Seaver (1828-????). She apparently can connect this man to the immigrant Robert Seaver (1608-1683) of Roxbury MA, which I have been unable to do.

5) A Buchanan researcher saw my Private Member Tree on Ancestry.com and sent a message through Ancestry.com asking about Sophia Newton (1799-????) who married James Buchanan. I offered to send her a genealogy report about the Newton family in hopes that she can add to it.

This last query sent me off to look again for information about Nathan Newton, Sophia's father. I found that he had married, first, to Anna Brigham, in Marlborough MA, they had three known children, and the family moved to Andover, Oxford County, Maine, where Anna died and Nathan married (2) Dollie Wood and had several more children, including a Lambert Newton. Now my Thomas J. Newton, for whom I do not know the parents, married Sophia (Buck) Brigham, the widow of Lambert Brigham, of Southborough, MA. Notice the names that keep repeating here? That's a clue! The challenge is to connect Lambert Brigham to Anna Brigham, and perhaps that is a family connection for how my Thomas J. Newton "found" my Sophia (Buck) Brigham in about 1833 and married her. I've considered it probable that Thomas J. Newton was the son of either Jacob Newton of Dixfield, Maine or Nathan Newton of Andover, Maine, but I have absolutely no evidence for either consideration.

So - it was a pretty good night - I burned down my email list, I did a little research and thinking about the Newton/Brigham problem, and I helped some other researchers with their research too. I had fun doing it, too! It's great to be back in the research "saddle" again. I'm genea-cited... (as in excited, not source cited, I'm still very imperfect in sourcing).

World War II letters found in the trash

My colleague Susi passed this to me from the RAOGK Chat forum...

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

I saw this on CNN's Robin Meade this morning. I did a bit of a search on found the article on google http://cbs2chicago.com/watercooler/world.war.love.2.803209.html . There is a video on the site.

The address on the envelopes is

Mrs Nadine H. Dawson
107 Delores Street
San Francisco Calif.

They are from her husband Claude stationed in the South Pacific during WWII.

Love Letters From World War II Found In Waste Bin

GRASS VALLEY, Calif. (CBS) ― Dozens of love letters from a World War II sailor were found in a thrift store trash can, and now a local historian is
trying to locate the couple who exchanged the messages decades ago.

A worker at the thrift shop run by AnimalSave, an animal rescue charity, pulled a shoebox full of letters from a waste bin.

"I'm always going through the trash because we throw away good stuff," Vicki
Landucci said. "I saw this box of letters there."

At one point, more than six decades ago, they were the most important thing in the world to two people. The letters are all from Claude Dawson to his wife, Nadine, about his experiences in the South Pacific, and of course, about how much he missed her.

"They were so vivid, it was like being there," said Susan Raub. Raud gave the letters to a local historian, but he has not yet been able to track down Claud or Nadine, or their family members.

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

That's a fascinating story, isn't it? Just think of how many boxes of letters and photographs have gone into the dumpster and not been saved over the years!

I wonder who the local historian is? There is a Claude Dawson in Oakland CA in the 1920 and 1930 census, unmarried. There is also one in San Diego in the 1930 census, unmarried. Is this a case for The Genealogue? Or the Unclaimed Persons team?

Corona (CA) "Stones, Bones and Ancient Tomes" Event on 25 October

I received the following information from Jean Wilcox Hibben about a genealogy event on Saturday, 25 October in Corona (CA) in Riverside County:

"The Corona Genealogical Society (CGS) is proud to announce their "2nd Annual Stones, Bones, and Ancient Tomes" Genealogy Event. This event is FREE and open to the public. A combination of presentations and displays, it will be held at the Corona Public Library, 650 S. Main St., Corona, California, on Saturday October 25, 2008.

"From 10 am until 4 pm, our knowledgeable members will have display booths to assist anyone with beginning genealogy, organizing materials, related software, writing family history, restoring/preserving documents and photos, one-on-one help with Internet Searches, Family Tree Maker, Hispanic Genealogical Research, DNA, DAR and much, much more!

"Members of CGS and invited guest speakers will conduct jam-packed mini seminars on various subjects including "Why to do Family History," "Writing Your Life Story," "How-To use Family Tree Maker software," "Beginning Family History," "Cemetery Walks," "The Corona Family History Center," "Using available Corona Public Library Resources," and more.

"For more information, please go to our website: www.CoronaGenSoc.org."

This sounds like an interesting and rewarding set of mini-seminars. I will be interested in hearing how successful this event is in reaching into the community to promote interest in genealogy and family history research.

Family Photographs - Post 20: Austin and Della circa 1940

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:




Last week I posted the wedding picture of Henry Austin Carringer (1853-1946) and Della (Smith) Carringer (1862-1944). This week's photograph is of Austin and Della taken in about 1940, probably in the garden of their home at 2115 30th Street.

It's interesting to me that Austin is still ramrod straight with a nearly full head of white hair and the ever-present mustache. Della is prim and proper, as always, and wears glasses. They are dressed formally - I wonder if the occasion was their own birthdays or anniversary, their son's birthday or anniversary, or the wedding of their granddaughter, Betty Carringer to Fred Seaver? Is Della's blouse buttoned wrongly? It sure looks like it, doesn't it?

This is how my mother remembers Austin and Della - he was "tall and very demanding" in his old age. Della is remembered as "being small and wrinkled." She knew them intimately throughout her early life - they lived next door to her family and she saw them often. I wish that I had been able to meet them and speak to them about their lives. These two were the migrators - the ones who came across the country as children and young adults, settling in San Diego as newlyweds in 1887. 121 years later, the fourth and fifth generations of their descendants are still here (and scattered across California too)!

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.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Jean Wilcox Hibben, Ph.D.

I received an email from Jean Wilcox Hibben, one of the very best conference and society presenters, who lives in Riverside County. Jean has received her Doctor of Philosophy Degree in Folklore. Here is some of Jean's email to her friends and supporters:

"The dissertation itself was on family folklore and its value to future generations. The PhD is complete, dissertation bound and submitted, and diploma already received and framed. All the hard work has been followed with the efforts to put away many, many books (some purchased for the project so bookcase space needed to be located) and to post the dissertation to the web.

"This has been accomplished and, in case you have any interest in looking at it, you can do so by going to my website: www.circlemending.org. Click on "Dissertation" and follow the directions there (which explains how it is all organized) and click on the link. That link takes you to another "store and share" site from which you can download the file to your computer and read and/or print it (I strongly advise against the latter unless you really want it - it's 221 pages long). If you have any questions (they can't be harder than my dissertation defense, though), please feel free to contact me."

You can read about Jean's dissertation project and download it using the link at http://www.circlemending.org/dissertationproject.html. I look forward to reading Jean's dissertation and learning more about Family Folklore and its impact on future generations.

Congratulations to Jean for her well-earned degree. I look forward to meeting Jean at the Chula Vista Genealogical Society seminar on 18 October when she will make three presentations to our members and community.

Help me out with Genealogy Words

Our Chula Vista Genealogical Society annual picnic is on Wednesday 27 August - the announcement is here on the Chula Vista Genealogy Cafe blog.

For the past few years, I've been the ringmaster for the genealogy-oriented games that we play at the picnic. In the past two years, we've played Genealogy Jeopardy and Wheel of Genealogy Fortune. The group loves the challenge and participation. People almost fought to be Vanna White.

This year, we're playing "Genealogy Password." Remember the game "Password" on TV from the 1960's with Allen Ludden? It has come back several times, and a Million-Dollar Password is in current production with Regis Philbin. The rules are on Wikipedia here.



The CVGS "Genealogy Password" game is going to be fairly simple in order not to confuse or tax the brain of "Allen Ludden" - moi! I need your help. I figure that I need about 100 words in order to play a one hour game with several teams, and playoffs, and a lightning round at the end.

Tell me your favorite one-word genealogy terms. I'll try to work them into my list of words. Be creative! I already have ahnentafel, indenture, grantor and pedigree. Oh - I need them by 8 a.m. PDT on Wednesday!!! Thanks.

Who's the Genealogy Hottie?

Jimmy Kavanagh at Genealogy Gifts has come up with the ultimate T-shirt for those genealogy hot shots you know...

Now who's going to have the um, well, you know, to wear this at the next conference, cruise or society meeting? He has it in male and female shirts, plus other stuff too. Hmmm, where's the Speedo and Bikini versions?

Name your candidates, folks! Who is your favorite Genealogy Hottie? Will s/he wear the shirt?

Check out the Genealogy Gifts store too - there may be another "gotta-have" genea-shirt there just for you! I have three shirts myself ... and I've worn them all to a meeting. And will do so again and again.

Monday, August 25, 2008

Genealogicus Interruptus

What is this? Another genealogy related disease? There are several:

* Virus Genealogicus -- the obsession to endlessly perform genealogical research - for an example, see here.

* Genealogicus Terminus -- the insatiable craving when you know it will be several weeks, possibly months, before you get back to the hunt. For an example, see here.

* Genealogicus Interruptus -- when the virus has been temporarily quelled, usually due to family matters, but the virus will soon return stronger than ever!

As daily readers of my The Geneaholic blog know, I have had genealogicus interruptus for a week now, due to all four grandchildren and their mothers visiting us. Lucas (age 4.9) and Logan (age 2.5) came last Tuesday and left on Saturday. Lauren (age 3.5) and Audrey (age 0.3) came on Friday and leave on Wednesday. These are the major reasons for my Genealogicus Interruptus, and lack of Genea-Musings posts, except when I can slip one in while little ones are napping or out for the day (like on last Thursday).

What other genealogy "diseases" are out there? I'm sure you can find more than these!

I'm not complaining here - I love making family history, and the grandkids are precious and fun, but they are a lot of work too, especially if my daughters are away (like since last Friday!). But I wanted my faithful readers to know why Genea-Musings has not been up to my usual quantity and quality of material for your reading pleasure. And I invented a new term in the process!

Meredith Vieira discovers her roots

I was feeding the baby this morning, and watching the Today show on NBC, and was surprised to see a segment about the family history of Meredith Vieira, one of the hosts on the show.

You can see the 11 minute video on http://www.msnbc.com/ - Meredith discovers her roots

This was very well done - with stories and pictures about Meredith's family in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, and her ancestral families in the Azore Islands, part of Portugal. The video takes you to the Azores, and Meredith meets distant family members and finds some of the ancestral homes. In the process, she discovers that she has not been pronouncing her surname correctly over the years, and she has a difficult time saying it like the Azoreans do.

It's a wonderful segment, and was a great start to my day. Maureen A. Taylor, the Photo Detective, was the consulting genealogist on this project, but she wasn't in the video. They used Ancestry.com for some of the genealogy work also. I imagine that there will be a news release at some time from Ancestry about their contribution.

The Today show is going to have similar segments for Al Roker and Matt Lauer in the coming days.

Genealympics Medal Ceremony

The Genealympics (the official name is the Genea-Bloggers Group Games of 2008) are officially over, and the closing ceremony has been posted by Thomas MacEntee on his blog Destination: Austin Family in the post Genea-Blogger Games: Closing Ceremony.

Here is the flag I waved at the Opening Ceremony and the Closing Ceremony:



I was awarded two medals in the two events that I participated in. A Diamond Medal for competing in the Organize Your Research! event:


And a platinum medal for participating in the Genealogical Acts of Kindness event.


You can see a summary of my Genealympics activities here.

Thank you to Thomas MacEntee, Miriam Midkiff, Kathryn M. Doyle and footnoteMaven for organizing the Games. They were great fun, and are one of the very best examples of genealogy bloggers working together to advance the genealogy research skills of each genea-athlete.

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Best of the Genea-Blogs - Week of August 17-23, 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:

* The Mystery of Baby Samuel by Elizabeth O'Neal on the Little Bytes of Life blog. You have to read Elizabeth's tale about a special baby - what a great piece of work tying family to research. This story really touched me.

* Baby Samuel: Some Answers, More Questions by Kathryn M. Doyle on the California Genealogical Society and Library blog. Kathryn reports what three researchers at CGS found out about Baby Samuel's family. Another labor of love. Wouldn't it be great if a relative of baby Samuel found these posts and learned more about his/her family as a result?

* The 1918 Flu Epidemic by Gena Philibert Ortega on Gena's Genealogy blog. Gena tells about the flu epidemic in 1918 and how it affected families and society in general.

* The Problem With Pauline - Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4 by Sheri Fenley on The Educated Genealogist blog. Sheri tells the story of her search for what happened to Mary Pauline Sheern... and it's a complicated story! One we should all think about in our own research for elusive ancestors. Excellent detective work and writing. [Yes, I know two of these posts are dated earlier than last week - but they weren't published that week, they were finished this week.]

* Database review: Ancestry.com's Map Collection, 1513-1990 by the male person who writes The Ancestry Insider blog. Mr. AI writes about Ancestry.com sourcing and image resolution for their map collection. Interesting comments, too.

* Edmund Bacon Frees an Enslaved Woman by J.L. Bell on the Boston 1775 blog. Mr. Bell has been analyzing the Jefferson-Hemings situation based on documents in the Monticello collection. This particular one is about Harriet Hemings, who married a white man and "passed" in Washington DC society. I wonder if anyone knows who she was? For a fascinating take on the Jefferson-Hemings situation and Monticello, read Mr. Bell's series of excellent and well-researched posts.

* It is Well With My Soul: A Family History in Song and Images by Thomas MacEntee on the Destination: Austin Family blog. Thomas describes the background for the Christian song, has a video of the song, and tells how it has touched his life. Read the Terry Thornton post that inspired Thomas' post too - it has the lyrics to It Is Well With My Soul. A two-fer here!

* Stores of Yesteryear Roundup by Lori Thornton on the Smoky Mountain Family Historian blog. Lori provides the roundup of her meme about the stores we remember from our childhood.

* Road Trip Pt1, Road Trip Pt2 and Yoder's Farm by Bill West on the West in New England blog. Bill goes travelling west (where else?) with his sister Cheryl to Pennsylvania and Ohio and tells us about the trip in these posts. Something tells me that this series has just started! I love genealogy road trip stories!

* DearMYRTLE's Study Group: Update 19 August 2008 by Pat Richley on the Teach Genealogy Blog. I love reading about Pat's study group escapades - they often give me new ideas for our monthly Research Group effort.

* August 22 - Friday from the Collectors: A Thousand Words Lost by guest blogger Bob Franks on footnoteMaven's Shades of the Departed blog. Bob, who writes the Itawamba (MS) History Review blog and several others, tells a sad story about an old portrait, and encourages readers and researchers to go looking in historical society archives for old pictures, photographs and the like.

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? I'm sure I did, because I didn't have much time to read this week. Tell me!


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