"Discover Your Family History " Workshop a Success!!

The Chula Vista Genealogical Society, working with the Chula Vista Public Library, hosted a free 90 minute workshop today. The purpose was to introduce genealogy and family history to families with elementary age children (who might have a homework assignment to research family history) and adults (who might be interested in learning, and in joining CVGS).

The workshop was 90 minutes long for the attendees - 30 minutes of very basic introduction and work on a pedigree chart, 30 minutes to try to find data on the computer, and 30 minutes for a visit to the library computers with Ancestry.com installed and to the genealogy book collection in the library, with a pitch for CVGS at the end. A society member was assigned to each attendee to mentor them and help them work through the process. Due to space limitations in the computer lab, we were limited to a maximum of 42 attendees over 7 time periods during the day.

We had publicity out a month ago, with signups in the library, which included a homework package that focussed on finding information for a pedigree chart. As of last Monday, we had only 5 signups. By Thursday we had 18 reservations, and then we had an email from a National University teacher who wanted to bring her sociology class of 10 to the workshop. We anticipated that we would have some walk-ins also.

On Saturday morning, we awoke to the first rain of the season in San Diego. The library had also commandeered 20% of the parking lot for the light-bulb exchange. In the first 10 minutes after the doors opened, all we saw was cars orbiting the lot looking for space. Our mentors arrived on time, ready to go thanks to training done in the last week. 3 of our first 5 appointments were no-shows, but two walk ins made up for it. The class arrived for their 11 AM appointment, and had done their homework, and were excited about the subject. In the end, we had about 24 attendees (some with children) who were introduced to and received a taste of genealogy and family history concepts.

Many of the attendees were excited about their search results and complimented the workshop and the mentors. Some new friends were made. The community was well served. The library staff was happy with the results. Our 16 mentors were ecstatic - they helped strangers find their family history and were able to share their knowledge and expertise. The society officers, all of whom took part in planning and executing the workshop, were very satisfied with the results.

We will have a post-mortem on what went right, what didn't go right (besides the weather and the parking lot), and how could we improve the experience during this next week. We also want to capture the mentors' experiences and learn about the individual success stories of the attendees.

The cooperation by and with the library staff was excellent - they supported us with everything they had and we greatly appreciate their effort and enthusiasm. It was a real win-win for both the library and the society.

For me, the biggest payoff was seeing the excitement and outright glee in the eyes and smiles of our members as they worked hard to make this workshop a success - both the officers and the mentors.

During the last two sessions, the mentors who weren't "working" those sessions stayed in the computer lab and played with our new "toy" - Ancestry Library Edition (CVPL got it in September). They got some real research done and are very enthusiastic to continue using it in the library.

Learning and experiencing genealogy is a gradual step-by-step process - we all know that from our own experiences. Helping community people start that research was a wonderful teaching and team-building experience for our members. We will probably do this again next year - especially if it results in some new members.

I will write up our post-mortem and success stories in another post.

Yep - a success!!

"Discover Your Family History" Day at the Library

Saturday the 14th is "Discover Your Family History Day" at the library. The Chula Vista Genealogical Society and Chula Vista Public Library are holding a 90 minute workshop for individuals and families who want to learn about genealogy and family history.

This has been a major effort for our 80 member society. We have over 20 members actively involved in supporting this workshop. The library has been great, supporting us with meeting space, publicity and taking the reservations.

While each workshop is 90 minutes (work on a pedigree chart, find data on the Internet, visit the library genealogy books), we have 7 sessions scheduled so it is a full day. We had a potential of 40 slots available for the community, and have about 30 reservations now.

My blogging will be light until Saturday night since I will be at the workshop all day on Saturday. I'll blog a bit about the experiences we have - the good, and the bad. Wish us luck!

Nuggets in the Newspaper Archives

There is useful information in many of the newspaper entries on the different Newspaper Archive sites. I used Ancestry.com's database some time ago to find out about my father's or my grandfather's nefarious doings in Leominster MA in the late 1930's (they had the same name, and the articles don't say if it was Senior or Junior), via the Fitchburg Sentinel.

For instance, one of them had his car stolen, one of them hit a person on a bicycle, and one was arrested for drunk driving (my aunt says it was Senior). I know it was my father in the semi-pro baseball box scores and basketball scores. I've been collecting these and will share them with the family in the Christmas family newsletter.

I went looking today at the FHC for articles about the earlier generations in Leominster. For instance:

1) In the 28 August 1890 issue of the Fitchburg Daily Sentinel, there was a great article about the 50th wedding anniversary of Mr. and Mrs. James Hildreth of Leominster (James was brother to my great-great-grandfather, Edward Hildreth). It lists their children and grandchildren, their siblings, their nieces and nephews, plus a list of gifts they received. It ends with a beautiful poem about 50 years of marriage.

2) The 28 December 1925 issue of the Fitchburg Sentinel has an obituary for Edwin Butler Bryant, widower of Juliette G. (Seaver) Bryant. Juliette was a daughter of my 3rd-great-grandfather, Isaac Seaver by his first wife. I never knew her death date. The obituary lists it as 1 September 1925. In addition, it tells about Edwin Butler Bryant - he was born Edwin Butler, but changed his name before his marriage in 1889. He was known as "Yankee Notions" for many years in Fitchburg, and was a junk dealer. I looked for an obituary for Juliette, but found none - I think they only did the males in those days.

Ancestry.com uses the Newspaper Archive collection for these old newspapers. With the image on the screen, you can print the page (at 8-1/2 by 11, they come out real small - you will need a magnifyer), save the page to your hard drive or thumb drive, or send it to your email address, from whence you can print it or save it. When you send the page to your email address, you get a link to the Ancestry image, and you have a limited time in which to access it on Ancestry.com.

The problem I have with this newspaper collection is that they have indexed every word, so when you use a search string like "juliette seaver bryant leominster" you get a number of hits for pages with those words on them - either the words together or all the words separately (e.g., Juliette Smith, Hiram Bryant, Leominster mills, Fred Seaver). It works well for uncommon names, but you will get a lot of hits for common names (e.g., "edward hildreth sophia leominster" gave me about 30 hits between 1890 and 1910). On the other hand, the current system sure beats searching the newspapers page by page on film.

By the way, the Fitchburg Sentinel was 12 pages on 28 December 1925 and cost two cents. It has interesting ads, also.

Have you investigated the old newspapers in the Ancestry collection, or in collections held by your public library or genealogy society? You may find some interesting nuggets to add family history flesh to the bones of your ancestors.

Newspaper resources articles

One of the best articles describing the use of newspapers for genealogy research is by Kimberly Powell at the About.com web site. The link to the article "How to Find & Research Newspapers for Genealogy Research" is here.

Another is Ruby Coleman's article at GenealogyToday.com with lots of links - the article is "Finding Newspaper Records" here.

There are also a number of articles about Newspaper research at the Ancestry Library site here.

It is difficult to keep up to date with what newspaper records are available online. There are several companies (ProQuest, Newsbank, NewspaperArchive, Ancestry, Accessible Archives, etc.) that have extensive online databases with historical and current newspaper records, including search capabilities. I blogged about the GenealogyBank newspaper archive recently.

CyndisList.com has a good list of free and for-fee newspaper records that are online or in repositories. There are web sites like NewspaperAbstracts.com.

Ancestry.com has a list of their newspaper archives here. I usually start with Ancestry, then look in my local library databases.

Your local library may have some of the newspaper archives available for home access using a library card. In San Diego, the San Diego, Chula Vista and Carlsbad libraries have a variety of resources, especially for current issues of selected newspapers. The SDPL has the ProQuest newspaper archives for hundres of US newspapers, all of them fairly recent. They also have the NYTimes Archive 1851-2003.Chula Vista and Carlsbad have access to ProQuest newspapers for current major papers -NY, LA, SD, WSJ.

Is there an up-to-date list of the newspaper archives available online - either free or for a fee? If not, that would be a great resource for someone to create.

Google News Archive Searching

A recent post on the soc.genealogy.computing newsgroup by James W. Anderson highlighted the ArchiveSearch ability at Google - the ArchiveSearch link is here.

I worked for about an hour in this archive today and found it fairly useful, especially for obituaries before about 1980. Many public libraries permit home access to ProQuest newspapers or Newsbank newspapers of recent vintage, but few have access to earlier articles. Ancestry recently included access to ProQuest Historical newspapers to their home subscription clients, but not in Ancestry Library Edition. Some genealogy societies (e.g., New England HistGen) allows access to the ProQuest Historical newspapers and other news sources.

At the Google Archive Search site, you get a mixed bag. Some articles that come up on a surname search provide an abstract of the article, and some provide only a few lines of the article, and some provide a small picture of the page and an OCR transcription. In each case, there is a link to a newspaper database that will charge you a per-article fee or a monthly or yearly fee for complete access.

All in all, this is a pretty good search site, especially if you use the advanced search capabilities to limit your search to certain years or publications.

Isn't she beautiful?

One of the pictures in the family collection is of Ada Woodward, age 13, taken in November 1898 - according to the handwriting on the back of the picture.

Look at the long hair. Look at the eyes. Look at the face - absolutely beautiful. Stunning in fact.

The writing on the back of the picture says:

"Ada Woodward, 13 years old, Nov 1898.

"Nellie Woodward's girl, her father Charlie Woodward played organ at our wedding in Wano Kan 1887, Sep. 11th. Her brother Gene was a little older, after they went away from there he died of Dyptheria."

In 1900, she was age 15, and resided in Belleville, Republic County, Kansas with her grandparents, Frank and Celia Munger, along with her sister Nellie.

I don't know what happened to beautiful Ada Woodward. I hope that she had a wonderful life and passed on the genetic makeup that her Redfield and Vaux ancestors passed to her.

UPDATED: 8 February 2008 to reflect the words on the back of the picture.

Did you solve the Forensic Genealogy puzzle #79?

About a week ago, I posted the note about Colleen Fitzpatrick's Forensic Genealogy quizzes and puzzles - my post is here.

The picture and the answers to the quiz questions, plus a lot more information, are posted on the contest #79 page here.

This was typical of the puzzles that Colleen has posted. I try to visit her site and solve the puzzle on a weekly basis. I had the right answers this time, but time got away from me before I remembered to submit the answers.

Rather be Lucky than Good?

Sometimes you find the gold mine of family information without expecting it. Such was the case when I was gathering the land records for my Ranslow Smith in Henderson, Jefferson County, NY. He was in the Grantor index as "Ranslow Smith et ux":

In an 1839 deed, I found (as abstracted):

On 3 December 1839, six heirs-at-law of James Bell sold 65.68 acres of land in Henderson to Jedediah McCumber for $1,046.86. The six heirs-at-law included Harvey Smith (and wife Sarah), Ranslow Smith (and wife Polly), John Clark (and wife Nancy), David Bell (and wife Emeline), Cornelia Bell, and James G. Bell (and wife Nancy). The property in Henderson was part of subdivision 1 of great lot 13, bounded by stakes and stones. Another heir, Orin Bell, owned a seventh part of the lot, which was not included in the purchase (Jefferson County, New York Land Records, Deed Book I3, page 534, accessed on FHL Microfilm 0,886,700).

Further research indicated that the persons named were sons and daughters (and sons-in-law) of James Bell, the deceased, plus his wife, Cornelia.

This is the only record I have that indicates that Ranslow's wife, Polly, was a daughter of James and Cornelia (--?--) Bell. Now I'm wondering if Harvey Smith was Ranslow's brother or cousin.

This experience emphasized to me (again!) that I need to track down every bit of information available for each of my ancestors, especially the ones hiding behind brick walls.

My next problem is, of course, to find out where James Bell and Cornelia --?-- were from, the parents, residence, etc. That will be a difficult task, but no more difficult than finding who the parents of Ranslow Smith are and where they resided.

I found this elusive female ancestor (Mary/Polly (Bell) Smith) by searching land records for her husband. There are many case studies printed in the genealogy journals (NGSQ, NEHGR, TAG, TG, etc) that demonstrate this point over and over again.

Have you had a success finding your female ancestors name in a land record? If so, tell me about it.

Life's Connection with the Past

There was an article titled "Searching for Life's Connection With the Past" written by Riva Richmond and published on Page B6 of the Tuesday, October 10, 2006 edition of The Wall Street Journal. Unfortunately, it is behind the WSJ firewall (Dick Eastman has a link for those with a subscription - I found it in the end bathroom stall at work today). The subheading is "Aided by Online Records, More Hobbyists Turn Genealogy Into a Business."

The writer tells about Laura Prescott, including:

Ten years ago, Laura Prescott immersed herself in her family's history and its tales of Westward-bound pioneers, New England farmers, Revolutionary Soldiers and Mayflower passengers.

Following the trail of ancestors who lived in New Hampshire and Massachusetts in the 17th century, Ms. Prescott saw "how much my family was tied into the nation's history, just on a common level" as farmers, tradespeople and Minutemen, she says.

Now Ms. Prescott, 48, a college history major who worked in banking and marketing, is turning her love of a good puzzle, a gripping story and an era gone by into a full-time profession. Last year, she joined the growing ranks of self-employed professional genealogists who make a living tracing and chronicling the lives of ordinary families.

"You can be a professional genealogist if you can get as interested in someone else's family as you are in your own," she says. "My big passion in genealogy is not just the names and the dates and the facts. It's tying it into history and putting flesh on the bones of the data you gather."

The article goes on with more information about Laura Prescott and additional quotes by Kathleen W. Hinckley, Loretta Dennis Szucs, Megan Smolenyak and D. Joshua Taylor. The article says that professional genealogists charge an average of about $50 an hour, depending on location and special expertise. Megan's paragraphs include:

"It's all history mysteries," and its all about the individual's own life, says Megan Smolenyak, the genealogist and author who recently corrected history by uncovering the identity of the real Annie Moore, an Irish girl documented as the first immigrant to enter Ellis Island who was later confused with another woman of the same name. "That's why so many people get addicted to it."

Ms. Smolenyak, ..., who was a management consultant for 15 years until she changed careers, has made a living mainly as a consultant on television programs, and by helping the U.S. Army track down the family members of unaccounted soldiers from past wars. She says she does 90% of her work on the Internet, and has her own web site, honoringourancestors.com, but she is also quick to pick up the phone and call distant family members or anyone else who might speed her research. "The two most helpful populations for me are librarians and funeral home directors," she says.

All in all, a very nice article about genealogy research, professionals and turning a hobby into a small business, plus a short biography of Megan, one of my favorite genea-bloggers.

Lyle Lawrence Carringer (1891-1976) -- A Wondrous Life

I often ponder what life was like in olden times - when New England was settled, the glorious cause of the Revolution, the horrors of the Civil War, settling the midwest and the west, growing up in San Diego, surviving the Depression, etc.

It struck me that my grandfather, Lyle Carringer, saw so much in his lifetime of 85 years, and enjoyed almost every minute of it, often expressing awe and wonder at nature, engineering feats and science. I believe that he had a wondrous life.

Lyle was born in 1891 in San Diego, and was over-protected as a boy because his parents had lost a baby boy in 1889. His parents built a house on 30th Street in San Diego and owned most of the block. He learned from the school books of his parents - the McGuffey's readers and almanacs - and attended school, graduating from San Diego High in about 1912. Lyle was curious and inquisitive, and as a boy and teen he explored San Diego and environs on foot or on his bicycle, and on the trolley that ran down 30th Street to downtown. He started working at age 15 as an errand boy at Marston's a downtown department store, and learned how business worked.

As a young man, he stood 5 foot 7 inches and weighed 123 pounds dripping wet. So, he enlisted in the Marines in 1917, but never got out of San Diego, serving at the PX in Balboa Park. He had met, and then married in 1918, Emily Kemp Auble and they soon had a baby - my mother, Betty, who was an only child. Soon, they built a house on the same block as his parents and settled in, with Emily's mother, a widow. The book case in the home was full of popular novels, travel stories, popular magazines and the encyclopedia. Lyle progressed at Marston's and eventually became the accountant and the paymaster for the store.

Like most people of the time, he had his own account book to tally his income and his expenses. Four of these books still exist - from about 1920 to about 1945. In them, he counted the eggs collected from the henhouse and sold, the daily expenses at the grocery store, his income and bank deposits, the trials, tribulations and expenses of driving and maintaining the car (tires were very fragile, the roads were terrible), and details of where they drove and with whom they visited. The details are fascinating - to me, at least.

On the home block, there was always plenty to do. More houses were built for rental, and his parents house was moved from the corner to the center of the block. Repairs to the homes and rentals were endless, furniture was bought, sold or scrapped, gardens were put in and tended. I have rental agreements, rent receipts, home repairs and appliance purchases for the years 1940 to 1975.

Excursions to Balboa Park, La Jolla, the beach, Tijuana, or the mountains were weekly occurrences. There were cousins in Whittier and Long Beach and they often visited them, stopping at Knotts Berry Farm in Garden Grove for dinner. The family took several long road trip vacations - going all the way to Victoria BC one year - and the journal tells all about it (where they stopped, who they visited, how much things cost, etc.) - fascinating!

My mother married in 1942, and I was born in 1943, my first brother in 1946, and my second brother in 1955. My father went into the Navy in 1944 and my mother and I moved back in with her parents. My grandparents doted on me, told me stories, took me places, and let me explore my little world. My grandfather had a movie camera, and I have many 8 mm films of my early childhood. I believe I got my love of history, geography and family from my grandparents - nurtured in my early life by time spent with them.

After his parents died in 1945, Lyle inherited the whole set of properties. They moved into his parents home and sold the second home and the vacant lots on the south end of the block (which was my ball field playground). With these proceeds, they bought a small parcel of land on Point Loma with a postcard view of San Diego Bay. They built a home on the lot and moved into it in 1951. This home became our Christmas haven - since it had a fireplace, and we spent many happy Christmas Eves snug in our makeshift beds waiting for Santa to visit us. Gramp took us fishing down on the Bay, or out to the end of the Point to explore the tidepools, or we climbed the hills and explored the canyons near their house.

He had always collected stamps and had many overseas correspondents. He went monthly to the Post Office to buy sheets of new stamps, and often gave plate blocks and single stamps to my brothers and I for our collections.

Lyle finally retired in 1961 after 55 years at Marstons, and settled into his retirement. He still came over to the 30th Street property to collect rents, inspect the properties, worked on the buildings and the gardens. Also to see his daughter's family and to talk to his grandsons - to hear about their education and exploits and dreams. He was so proud that his daughter and grandson had attended and graduated from college.

He succumbed in 1976 to colon cancer, and his dear Emily joined him soon after in 1977. Their deaths pained me, but became the catalyst that made me examine my own life and beliefs, and firmed up my life's goals.

My grandfather was the most moral, upright, responsible and intelligent man I've ever known. He spoke quietly, listened well, even to his loudmouth grandsons, and enjoyed good humor. He never lost his sense of awe and wonder.

During his life, he witnessed and experienced - either in person or via newspapers and TV - the development of the automobile, the movie camera, running water and toilets in the home, the washing machine, dishwasher, and refrigerator, dirt streets to interstate highways, telegraph to radio and television, barren scrub land to Balboa Park, the San Diego Zoo and Palomar Observatory, gliders to airplanes to blimps and rocket ships, Sputnik to the moon landing, war (Spanish-American, WW I, WW II, Korean, Vietnam), peace, boom times, recession and depression times, 16 Presidents, a 58 year marriage, the birth and growth of a daughter and three grandsons.

It was a wondrous life. And the best thing he ever did, perhaps intentionally or perhaps subconsciously, was to spend endless time with his family - wife, daughter, grandsons and friends - telling them stories, listening to their stories, hopes and dreams, playing board or card games, and encouraging everyone he met to be a good person - to be the best they could be.

I miss him greatly. I wish that I could have him back for just a month or so - to ask him questions, to hear more about his family, his life and experiences, to thank him for loving me and molding me and providing a wonderful stash of family history material.

Who do you miss most? Who had a wondrous life in your family? Who loved you and molded you? Tell me about them - please?