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Blog Entries: 1 to 10 of 54
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Where Were They in 1776
Got a bit ahead in the blog and behind in the family history. How does that work?
As I was contemplating what to work on and then write about this week a popup appeared, 250 Years. I wondered which generation that would be for me and where they were. For the most part this would be my 4th and 5th great grandparents (7th and 8th generations). Where were they? In general: Ohio 2, VA 9, PA 2, MD 2, MA 6, NY 3, TN 1, NC 1, a couple possibly in KY and many unknown yet. And many on their way west. There were perhaps one or two from England, or Canada at that time and who knows where else.
It is clear that many of these past members of my family story were in the northeastern US and quite likely involved with the battles of the area. That makes the HQRL event America 250 Patriot Celebration particularly interesting. I’ll bet it is the same for you. See the flyer on the website for more information about what it involves and how to attend.
I also was thinking about what life would have been like for my family members during that time. What were the Faris families doing having just arrived from Northern Ireland and finding themselves in the hills of Virginia? What about the Ostranders who were likely from family roots in The Netherlands (even though my grandmother said they weren’t) and now in New York. And there were all those various families in Massachusetts. What were they thinking and doing?
It all makes me wonder about the strength they must have had and their beliefs. Did they wonder whether they had made the right choices to leave their homelands and come to this wilderness? They certainly weren’t sitting around wondering what reality TV show to watch tonight or whether kibble or natural dog food was best.
I am looking forward to the next class which is about looking beyond our ancestor. I am hoping to get a little inspiration for discovering more about the lives they led. Most of my current research isn’t so much about adding names but about adding “why’s.” I don’t think my history is that much different from so many of yours. Farmers moving for cheaper and better land away from the crowded places they landed when first arriving in America. I wonder if we aren’t a bit more isolated than they were then which seems funny to say, but many seem to have traveled in like groups (countries of origin, language, religion, families) and supported each other through community membership and meetings. What would they think of our current social media community connections, Zoom meetings, and lives that take us several states away from our families? What if we dropped them into New York City or Seattle today? I am wondering if I might be speaking Dutch now?
Heidi Geise, hqrl@education.com
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Generative Learning For Success
I was reading a book that I read every couple of years, The Success Principles by Jack Canfield, one of the editors of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, and I happened upon a reminder. Everything worth doing takes time and to be successful we must take that time one step at a time and always be open to learning.
Family History is worth doing!
We usually have 2 classes per month. Each one addresses a different aspect of doing this work. Sometimes it involves how to do the research in a particular area or for family from a specific area such as our Dutch Roots class or the upcoming one on Ireland. Sometimes it is about family research in general such as our beginning classes or classes on organization or citing sources. Sometimes it is about what kind of information to look for such as our class on Naturalization Records or Looking Beyond our Ancestors. Sometimes it is about the kind of help we can get from various databases or using AI or newspapers or support from groups like WikiTree and the WikiTree community. You get the idea. The classes cover a lot of topics. Hopefully, something for everyone.
The point is part of being successful at anything is continuing to be a learner and applying the learning one step at a time. That is the idea from the Canfield book. Even if you don’t know how you might use the information at the moment or if you have been doing family history for a long time there is usually learning that we can take away from every class if we are open to it. Maybe it is that we are doing things correctly or maybe it is a site or strategy that we forgot about or maybe it is how to help others. Maybe it generates ideas that we can use to do more learning and find more classes.
What are our takeaways from the presentation by the volunteer from WikiTree this week? Well, too many to list them all here. A couple of things that set them apart is that it is totally free. They are not a database so if you find a hint to look at you will end up at MyHeritage or Family Search, etc. You have to sign an Honor Code to change information. Also, it has a 2-step verification system. This means that no one can change your tree unless they ask you first or you give them permission. Maybe the most important learning is that it will not confirm an addition until you site the sources.
They have weekly, monthly and yearly “contests.” There are Friday Night Bingo nights, badges to earn, a ton of ways to help and to learn about doing family history. Best bet, www.wikitree.com to explore and learn more.
It really is a site to explore and play with so go play. You have a week to get ready for “Exploring the Community: Researching Beyond Your Ancestor.” After that we have beginning, Ireland, Social History, Missouri, AI, Norway, Germany, Power of Clues,,,,and June 9th, America 250 Patriot Celebration (see the HQRL website for more information.
Heidi Geise, education@hqrl.com
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Hints Come at Odd Times
Thursday March 26th was Opening Day for Seattle Mariners’ Baseball. We were baseball parents, so baseball was a big part of our lives. A while back I talked about how far back we can trace our family history connections to various hobbies such as sports but short of my own Dad I really didn’t find anything.
I mention this because this morning in the early hours I had this thought that connected baseball to family history. You know those hours, before you crawl out of the comfy sheets, before the dog pounces on the bed deciding it is time for someone to get up and feed her. It often happens to me that what I was thinking about or working on the day before but couldn’t figure out suddenly becomes clear. I may not get the full answer, but I may get a thought of where to look. I keep 3 x 5 cards by my bed so that I can write some of this thinking down before they run right through “in one ear and out the other” as they say.
So, the day before I was working on connecting more migration dots for my paternal grandfather’s side. Then I stopped to watch the game until time for bed. Suddenly about 2am, I think, somewhere I have some baseball cards that belonged to my paternal grandparents. Where are they? What team were they from? What year were the players from? What is their story?
I went back to sleep. I am not that obsessed with family history that I am going to get up at 2am to look for baseball cards or feed the dog for that matter. When I did get up, I found the cards and eventually did some quick research. They were team photos that clubs used to sell like cards. They came in an envelop and were about 9” x 7” black and white photos of the team members with a copy of their signature on the photo. They were sets of 25. Mine are of the Chicago Cubs from 1942. I researched the players and coaches that included Dick Spalding and that is the date they all were together.
This finding didn’t tell me that my grandparents were Chicago Cubs fans. They would have been in Oregon by that time. There was a minor league team, Salem Senators, founded in 1940, that was a big deal and eventually became a farm team for the LA Dodgers. The finding did tell me that someone was a fan. My grandfather’s family was from Iowa and Pennsylvania generally and my grandmother’s family was from Wisconsin and New York. I suppose any of them could have been fans. It could have no connection, but my grandmother had very distinct handwriting and she wrote the positions each played on each photograph. I wasn’t planning on selling them anyway.
All this is to say, you never know when you might get a family history hint. It may work out or it may not, but it is worth following the path. Any connection that can be made gets you that much closer to the true story. I think that is what WikiTree tries to do, help connect people and stories. I also think that is what the class on Beyond Your Ancestors will try to do.
In the meantime, while I try to find my Dutch roots, I will continue to look for migration connections. Found one that moved from the farm to a brick factory town in Iowa to one in Oregon. Better jobs may be a theme.
Heidi Geise, education@hqrl.com
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Dutch Roots or Just a Learner
Have you found the Geboorten, Overlijden, and Huwelijken records for your Dutch ancestors?
That was a mouthful and that was only the appetizer. It is great to hear from speakers who have tremendous enthusiasm for their subject. Alex had that and shared his knowledge with us this week. He always starts with some history to give us context for why records might be found in particular places. This presentation started with that as well.
My biggest takeaway was that wherever you are planning to research outside of the United States do the “home” work first. Gee, we have never heard that before! Research from the present to the past. Get all the information you can out of the more recent and more local resources and then look for those records in The Netherlands or whatever location you are going to.
- Do you know the history of the settlers of the American location?
- Are there Dutch settlements or neighborhoods in the area? Some of the neighborhoods took of the names of the Dutch provinces or Dutch cities.
- Do you know their religion? What do you know about the history of that religion? Many of our ancestors were leaving because they were parting ways with a belief system in their homeland, only to find the same beliefs here so they changed religions or churches or started their own. It might be the Dutch Reformed Church in The Netherlands and the Dutch Reformed Church of America in the US.
Eventually you will get to when and where. Can you narrow down when they might have immigrated? That could suggest why they were leaving and where people were landing in America at the time and then working backwards perhaps where they departed from? So much history and geography to learn. I have to get some old maps or go to HQRL and use theirs.
One of the best resources, in my opinion, from all our speakers, is the list of recommended readings and resources they provide. Alex suggested like many others that you connect with genealogy and history societies in the areas you are researching. He also suggested the local libraries, sometimes that is large ones, sometimes small local ones, and sometime University libraries. Examples in this case were Calvin College in Michigan at Hekman Library and Hope University in Holland, Michigan. Both have a Dutch community connection. There were so many options to explore.
If you missed the class, we did record this one and if you go to the HQRL Store on our website, you can purchase that recording and see what you missed. While you are there check out the class on WikiTree which is our next class. Go to www.wikitree.com and see what they are all about. It is too much for me to put in here.
Heidi Geise, education@hqrl.com
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Helping Tell the Story with History
What have you been working on lately? I have been trying to apply, where I can, the information from our classes such as looking at different spellings of names, taking notes and identifying the resources I have used, having a clear objective and not trying to move too fast.
My current research has been more about history. I have been trying to use history to help me figure out what the potential story of my ancestors might be. Start with what you know, right? So, I know my ancestor and his father were both born in Ireland. The younger one, John William Faris was born in 1759 and married and died in Elm Grove, Ohio County, Virginia. By-the-way, they were both in the Revolutionary War.
I wanted to find where he was born in Ireland but all I had was the possibility that it was County Down, Northen Ireland. If I start with what I know, he died in 1838 in Elm Grove, Virginia and his father in 1818 in the same place. To learn more about their history I decided to narrow down when they might have come to America. John’s brother, the next one in line, was born in 1763 in Virginia. That puts the family moving to America between 1760 and 1762.
Again, starting with the known I turned to history. What can I learn about Elm Grove, Ohio County, Virginia? Since this was in the mid -1700s, I looked at when Elm Grove was established, (first known settlers in 1769 and county established in 1776). I figured by looking at that I might be able to learn who the early settlers were and where they came from.
Elm Grove is part of Wheeling in Ohio County, West Virginia which was Virginia at the time. To give you a bit of my work, I found that many of the people in this area during its early years were from England, Germany, and Northern Ireland. They also didn’t get off the ship in Wheeling. They could have landed in New Brunswick, Canada, Philadelphia, PA, New Castle, Delaware or several other communities on the river systems in the area and then down the Ohio River to Wheeling or through the Allegheny Mountains.
This is really a shortened version of my findings, but the point is that by looking into this I can start to find locations that I can research further during the time periods most likely for them to have been traveling. I also learned that they are buried in the Old Stone Cemetery in Elm Grove. That told me they were probably Presbyterian as this was a historic Presbyterian Church. Northern Ireland was/is largely Presbyterian. It is this history and critical thinking that circles me around to next steps. I may not find original documents, but I am hoping that I can make logical sense out of what might have happened.
I have gathered general history books as well as genealogy books for England, Scotland, Canada, Germany, and Ireland to help me with my research. Now it is time to read.
Oh, by-the-way, happy St. Patrick’s Day! That is a happy coincidence! See you for the next classes on Dutch Records, WikiTree, Researching Beyond Your Ancestors, and Ireland.
Heidi Geise, education@hqrl.com
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Names!
We had a great class on Thursday by Virginia Majewski about naming patterns. Some of the patterns I knew from past learning such as prefixes and suffixes that are son and daughter specific and that first sons were given the father’s name and first daughters the mother’s name in some cultures and down the line. There were similar patterns is other cultures. Anyone who has done much family history has run into the same name issue. How many Samuel Vance’s are there? Names honoring grandparents, uncles, previously born children who passed away, etc.
All of this reminded me that first we must slow down! We have had this discussion before. It is not about collecting names but about collecting stories so we need to slow down and look carefully at the people behind those names and make sure we have the right ones and all the information we can find about them. That includes looking at all the various ways a name may be spelled.
When we go back a few years, spelling may not have been as important, ancestors may not have known how to spell their own name if they even had a surname. So much history just in that piece alone and then add the given name patterns and how they were selected.
All of this is to say my family surname may have been Hartzell (which is my maiden name) but just in my little bit of family history I have seen Hertzell, Hartsel, Hirsel, etc. As our speaker said, just because it is spelled the same doesn’t mean they are related and just because they are spelled differently doesn’t mean they are not related. This means we need to research all the options. Then we have to figure out how it might be spelled that we haven’t seen yet or what the spelling could mean.
She gave us 4 research concepts to consider. 1) What was the history where and when they lived that might have affected the name they used or how it was spelled? 2) How might the name have sounded in their language and to the people they were speaking it to? 3) Don’t make assumptions, instead do the research and 4) Embrace diversity – learn how to use advanced genealogy to search using a variety of spellings and symbols.
So much here and I didn’t give you many details. The simple take-away: slow down, think about all the possible names (spelling, pronunciation, meanings), learn about the history of the time and the location and research it all! Isn’t family history FUN! I hope you like history!!
Just as we start to understand names, we head to “Dutch Records.” I bet that naming pattern issue shows up again. Then a couple of new and interesting topics, “WikiTree” and “Exploring the Community: Researching Beyond Your Ancestor.” Look on the website for all the upcoming classes. Don’t miss any of them.
Heidi Geise, education@hqrl.com
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What are Your Research Routines
What are your research habits? When you sit down to work on your family history, what are the routines that you follow to get you started?
I know I am assuming that you have routines, but I am guessing that you do. Just like you have morning routines for the morning prep. Alarm goes off, hit snooze, goes off again, get up, shower, brush your teeth, get that morning coffee. But what about research time?
I think it depends doesn’t it? How much time you have or when you researched last or….whether you are researching before or after 1850.
For those ancestors born after 1850 I would guess we all go very quickly to one of our favorite databases and look for census records. I asked AI, “What are the steps for researching ancestors from before 1850?” It gave me a pretty good list but maybe more importantly, it gave me the resources it took the steps from. Here are the general resources it used: MyHeritage, FamilySearch, Family Tree and St. Louis County Library in MO. I checked each item and sure enough came up with the AI steps.
So, what do you do? Here are the steps I found from the above resources:
- Study the region – geography and history of the people, (my add on – weather history such as draughts, huge storms, etc)
- Research historical records – Redbook, probate, vital records, county court records, land, military records, etc.
- Use early census data
- Bureau of Land Management General Land Office – BLMGLO
- Trace Relationships
- Expand search – church, tax. FAN (family, associates, neighbors) Club, Town records, cemeteries, etc
A few items left off the AI list: get organized including clearing your desk, identifying your focus question, start with what you know, and set up your note page in preparation for all you will find and maybe look for but not find.
I am sure that you all have go-to sites where you look for all the above. Do you also have some sites that might not be places you typically go but that might be great for this research session? Do you use Cyndi’s List?
I asked an HQRL librarian what she used and here are some of her go-to sites: American Ancestors, county genealogical and/or historical societies, Midwest Genealogical Center, NARA, Allen County Library, larger libraries in larger cities, Chronicling America (newspapers), and county or city histories. Googling can give some suggestions as well. Family Tree Magazine each year comes up with a list of top sites, free and subscription. This is just to name a few.
Whew! So Step 1A – get those pencils sharpened and that cup of coffee and get to work. Oh yes, go to HQRL and also, sign-up for classes at HQ (What is your name? and Dutch records in March).
Heidi Geise, education@hqrl.com
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From MGC Tour to What's Your Name
Talk about a dream family history center! We had a great virtual tour this week of the Midwest Genealogy Center which is the largest public genealogy library in the US. It is a fantastic resource for those people who travel to Missouri or who live in the area where they can get a public library card as it is part of the Mid-Continent Public Library System. But what about for us in Washington State. It can benefit us, too.
Here is my suggestion. Go to Midwest Genealogy Center | Mid-Continent Public Library at www.mymcpl.org/genealogy and explore. There are services that you can take part in that are free on a guest pass from your home. Including classes, webinars and consultations. They have programs for kids, free forms you can download, and oral history projects/memory lab just to name a few. They also are part of the interlibrary exchange program so you can check things out from your local library that may be located in Missouri. There is way too much for me to describe and you would be better off looking at their own information. They also have programs on YouTube. Watch for the name Iveta who has many programs that she hosts including special interest groups for German and several others. She did our tour and was great.
Oh, and by the by, the resources they have are for the entire US, not just Missouri.
Our next class is “What is Your Name?” and will discuss naming patterns. I am looking forward to seeing what light it sheds on my family names. As you are quite aware, as we go further back in generations, we have more and more surnames to contend with. So, I am just focusing my thinking on the big four, for the most part – Hartzell, Ostrander, Vance, and Kingsley. I may throw in a few others that I have found something about such as Reneau (Reno), Brandenburg, and Faris or that I have found little about such as Pennybaker, Arnold, or Beck. I know, far too many to really say I am focusing. Shake your fingers at me and tell me to read my own blog!
That is my biggest problem I believe. The difference between what I should do and what I want to do. I am hoping that with greater knowledge from this class I can determine the next step. As we have discussed in this blog before, for me it is about going deeper rather than collecting more names. The other side to that concept is that I have always been curious about where the family came from as far as from where across the ocean. I have the DNA done which points me in a general direction, but my family has been in America for the most part, since before the US became the US. I think this is why I keep resisting the deeper rather than wider concept. I just want that one or two proven pieces that say we came from Germany or from France, etc. Boats, Immigration records, Naturalization, etc!
I have started a To Do list and a different list of questions that come up as I research so that I can stay on topic with the research but not forget the thinking that is generated. Then I take a day to just go through the lists and try to answer or complete some. At least that is the plan! We will see how that works.
See you on Thursday March 5th for “What is Your Name?”
Heidi Geise, education@hqrl.org
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From One Gen to the Next
Have you been watching the Olympics? I love the Olympics! I am not sure where my love for them came from but we always watched them when I was young, sometimes it was assigned as homework for PE class. My Dad was an athlete, football and track. My Mother, not so much.
So why do I bring this up? As I have been watching, it struck me as to how many athletes have parents and even grandparents that were Olympians as well. If not Olympians, they excelled in the same sports. This should not be a surprise. As a parent, I took my son to activities when I was coaching or participating or just enjoying the event. They grow up around it and then start to participate as well. It did, however, make me wonder how far this connection can go back and is it only because they grew up around it or is there more, you know the old nurture or nature question. And is it more than athletics, I would think so?
What connections have you found in your history? Did your parents follow in the footsteps of their parents or grandparents? Was it a family business or a hobby that the family enjoyed? I mentioned in the last post that my grandmother was a gardener and that her grandfather was as well. Did he learn that trade or love of the hobby from his parents or grandparents?
All of this is part of the story our family history can tell. How do we research that part of the story? Where I have found my stories has been through the occupations people had as listed in census reports. I have also found them in newspaper articles, especially on society pages or in ads or in obituaries. I am always on the lookout for those that might have been educators or connected to education in some way. I haven’t found any confirmed connections that way yet. I must also suppose that some of the hobbies that I have were slightly different for earlier generations. For example, maybe it wasn’t photography but art that they were interested in. Maybe they were musicians and I just enjoy music. Lots of possibilities I suppose.
There is another side as well. Why did I become an athlete like my father but not a cook and home maker like my mother, much to her dismay? Did she have some interests that she was not able to participate in when she grew up? I know she was artistic and loved music. I know that her parents had a player piano that we inherited. My Dad’s family had a baby grand that we also inherited and that his mom played. She taught piano and played for dances and silent movies. Music was clearly in both families.
This part of our stories is not necessarily easy to find. Sometimes it seems we just happen upon it by accident. Some of you have shared that you have found old letters or books with notes inside them. What a treasure! Whatever it is you have found and wherever you found it, it can be full of family culture. I love this part of the family history story.
Maybe this can be your next focus question. What occupation did my 3x great grandfather have and why? Was there anything passed down that might indicate a hobby or vocation? Maybe something at the Midwest Genealogy Library (our next class) will help. Actually, the next 3 classes, Dutch Records, WikiTree, and Exploring the Community might help.
Heidi Geise, education@hqrl.com
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Learning and Genealogy
Bummer! Our speaker was ill this week and had to cancel. We will try to reschedule it soon. In the meantime, I started to re-read her book, The Occasional Genealogist, and started to wonder how I could apply the last speaker’s info and the info from Jennifer’s book.
Both of these speakers are professional genealogists who have other things going on in their lives. I am not a professional genealogist but an educator by trade. I look at their work and compare it to my work as an educator. Here is my take on it:
- The more parts of our brain we can involve in the learning process, the better chance it will be that we will learn and remember what we are learning. Don’t be a passive learner but rather an active one. Write what you are learning and thinking. Manipulate the thinking moving it around on a chart for example in order to find the best fit for the facts and the new questions that you find.
- Focusing on one thing at a time is key to successful learning. One problem at a time. As much as they want me to watch a split screen for the Olympics, I can only focus on one of them at a time rather than switching my focus back and forth.
- It is hard sometimes to quit digging the whole deeper when it needs to be wider if you know what I mean. (My grandmother was a gardener and so was her grandfather). That means I need to look closely at one generation before I move into the next. I may not have all the information I need in order to find the basic facts in the next generation. Don’t shortchange your closest ancestors in order to put more branches on the tree.
- Find an organizational tool (graphic organizer) that works best for you and the way your mind works so that you can use that part of your brain. Writing is so important for moving things into your long-term memory. If I am not working on family history every day, I need a way to make sure I remember what I have done, where I have looked, what I have found and what I haven’t found so that I don’t waste time repeating my research. It also focuses my critical thinking so that I can remember what I thought I should look into next or what I learned from the research I did.
Looking at that last piece, it could be a narrative, spreadsheet, web, or what we used to call a KWL Chart (Know, What I want to know, What I Learned). I would modify the last to What I Found, What I Didn’t Find, What I Need to Do Next. I would head each of these organizers with a) Date of the research, b) The Research Question, and c) Resource I am Using.
I hope all of that makes sense. Again, I will try to reschedule our last speaker. Watch for that as it may take a while to get it scheduled. In the meantime, lets take a look at what we can find in the Midwest Continent Library which is our next class.
Heidi Geise, education@hqrl.com
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