[SandiC.]

I guess to me its pretty obvious that scrapbooking, savings family memories for future generations goes hand in hand with looking back at one's ancestors. Maybe its just that I'm getting older and am interested now, but whatever, I've recently gotten the genealogy bug. I am very fortunate to have my GF's bible and an old photo album from the late 1800s with some labled photos. So I took that information to ancestry.com and in just a month I've found about 400 people in my family tree. I have two friends in the DAR who have encouraged me to see if I could join. Well, today we hit pay dirt, found a patriot on my GGM's line. Now its getting exciting. Now I want to find out more and more and more. I want to know their stories. Well, as scrappers that is what we are here for, for the next 4 or 5 generations to have those memories and connections recorded. I would love to hear your stories of your family research adventures and words of advice to someone just starting down this road.

[KBT]

Sandi- it's like you read my mind! I was just talking about this with my mom this weekend. Knowing who my great grandparents were and my GGgrandparents. I would like to know more as well! Funny too, I was just talking about DAR with my sister- I remember discovering them when I was looking for funding for graduate school What a fun project to take on!

[podiumchick]

My dad's family were all Quakers. When I got started searching my roots, I found them easy to trace--all the way back to Penn's Sylvania in the early 1680's. I could see where they owned land in Chester Co., PA, followed their move to NC, then out here to IN. Very facsinating stuff. More exciting was reading on one of the family websites that Richard M. Nixon descended from the same pair of Quaker ancestors that I did. Makes us something like 7th cousins, twice removed. My mom's family all came to America in the 1870's and 1880's so not so easily traced on this side of the pond.

One of my Quaker ancestors has a Revolutionary War record, which is odd since they were pacifists. Supposedly I could pursue DAR membership, but never have. We do not know if he actually fought of he if just aided the war effort with goods/property.

I did find another GGF of my dad's who had Civil War service. He was born in Point Pleasant, VA--but later was listed as living in Point Pleasant, WV, which came about over the Civil War. He was wounded and received a pension for the rest of his life. There are great places to find out about your veteran ancestors, I just don't remember where they are right now.

I live near Ft. Wayne, IN and they have a HUGE genealogical collection. People come from all over to spend their vacations locked upstairs with microfiche! It is fun, but can be consuming. Maybe I'll return to the search when the kids are all gone. Most of my research was done before kids!

[elibar]

Sandi - you've opened a whole new world! I was so addicted to this - and still am - but it's so time consuming! Well - because once I start - it's all I want to do. It is very exciting. Now if I had nothing else to do - I'd be doing genealogy research and scrapping it all the time!

I'm just not organized enough to have a method that will progress nicely. It's all or nothing.

[podiumchick]

elibar, on Mar 24 2009, 09:28 AM, said:

Sandi - you've opened a whole new world! I was so addicted to this - and still am - but it's so time consuming! Well - because once I start - it's all I want to do. It is very exciting. Now if I had nothing else to do - I'd be doing genealogy research and scrapping it all the time!

I'm just not organized enough to have a method that will progress nicely. It's all or nothing.

This is so true. You spend so much time looking for a warm lead, that when you get it you don't want to leave the trail for fear it will grow cold again! I've spent hours pouring over census records on film. But so satisfying to walk through a cemetery and see that infant grave that proves your theory or handed down story that another child had indeed been born to the family (happened to me--and a part of you mourns for the family because they become real to you--not just ancestors on paper anymore).

[Bobbi Jo]

My mom's people are Czechs who settled in south central South Dakota in the late 1800s. One of my most exciting discoveries was a book about this group of people that included a story about my GG-grandmother, who died in the big midwestern blizzard of 1888. It was very sad - she was in a wagon taking a load of hogs to town to sell when the blizzard hit, got out and wandered in the storm, and was found days later, standing up frozen in a snow drift and still clinging to a barbed wire fence. Knowing her story brought a whole new understanding and appreciation both to my own family history and to that period of American history.

[podiumchick]

Bobbi Jo, on Mar 24 2009, 09:34 AM, said:

My mom's people are Czechs who settled in south central South Dakota in the late 1800s. One of my most exciting discoveries was a book about this group of people that included a story about my GG-grandmother, who died in the big midwestern blizzard of 1888. It was very sad - she was in a wagon taking a load of hogs to town to sell when the blizzard hit, got out and wandered in the storm, and was found days later, standing up frozen in a snow drift and still clinging to a barbed wire fence. Knowing her story brought a whole new understanding and appreciation both to my own family history and to that period of American history.

Wow, sounds like a story right out of Laura Ingalls Wilder's books. Living in Indiana, never really saw a blizzard so badly that you'd have to tie a rope to get from house to barn, or learn of people like your GGM. But Laura wrote of situations like that. How sad.

[bjc]

my 18 year old niece has been putting us all on ancestry.com it is interesting but it is hard to find most of our family going back too far since most of them came here from eastern europe in the early 1900's

[Bobbi Jo]

podiumchick, on Mar 24 2009, 08:39 AM, said:

Bobbi Jo, on Mar 24 2009, 09:34 AM, said:

My mom's people are Czechs who settled in south central South Dakota in the late 1800s. One of my most exciting discoveries was a book about this group of people that included a story about my GG-grandmother, who died in the big midwestern blizzard of 1888. It was very sad - she was in a wagon taking a load of hogs to town to sell when the blizzard hit, got out and wandered in the storm, and was found days later, standing up frozen in a snow drift and still clinging to a barbed wire fence. Knowing her story brought a whole new understanding and appreciation both to my own family history and to that period of American history.

Wow, sounds like a story right out of Laura Ingalls Wilder's books. Living in Indiana, never really saw a blizzard so badly that you'd have to tie a rope to get from house to barn, or learn of people like your GGM. But Laura wrote of situations like that. How sad.

Laura Ingalls Wilder's books are among my favorite -- it feels like she's writing about my own ancestors. Willa Cather's books about Nebraska are the same. People endured so much that we can hardly imagine.

[Shelbi]

Wow ladies.
This has been an interesting thread to read.
I hope all goes well with your search Sandi. I have a hard time getting info about even my grandparents who all had died before I was 25.

I read all the little house books when I was young too, loved them.

[bikeneday]

Genealogy is so interesting. My aunt did her side of the family (my dad's), but my mom has never been interested in her side and she has no siblings to take up the search. So if that gets done it will be up to me & my siblings. I think about it, but I think it needs to be a winter project, so maybe next year. Good Luck, Sandi - sounds like you are off to a great beginning.

[PBarnes]

My husband has done quite a bit on his side and some on my side. He has the name of the first ancestor here in the US but doesn't have anything about where he came from. Oral history has that he came over from Scotland as an indentured servant. A cousin of mine did a pretty extensive research on our grandfather's family but we don't have much information back past my GG grandparents name in England. I have the book she put together. A cousin of my mom's did a book on her family name, Thompson, and it's a great resource too.

Genealogy interests me too and I've made a few attempts at finding out more than what we have, but I have been very diligant about it.

Cool story Bobbi!

[Scrapin Pat]

elibar, on Mar 24 2009, 08:28 AM, said:

Sandi - you've opened a whole new world! I was so addicted to this - and still am - but it's so time consuming! Well - because once I start - it's all I want to do. It is very exciting. Now if I had nothing else to do - I'd be doing genealogy research and scrapping it all the time!

I'm just not organized enough to have a method that will progress nicely. It's all or nothing.

I've started this but agree it is hard to figure out how to get organized about it all. I had decided to start by doing a scrapbook of my siblings and I growing up with some historical family tree pages included and some super stories like how my Aunt brought Dad home from a parade during world war II. I worked on it pretty consistently for awhile. I purchased Family Tree Maker and made a small start at putting things in. Mom had collected some info on Dads side of the family and My Aunt had a good start on Moms side of the family and now I have inherited both and given the privilege of all my Aunts scrapbooks and pictures and now Dad would like me to bring all Moms assorted boxes of pictures home. Where do you store it? How do you organize it? and how do you keep from getting distracted to other projects (just keeping up with my today scrapbook - learning new scrap booking techniques creates more scrapping time than I should use.) My siblings would love it if I scanned and made discs of everything. It's like a full time job and I think I have one of those already. But I love it and would like to do more ....

Wonder if I should pitch the idea of a housekeeper (fat chance ) to my hubby again?

[jeschaff]

Welcome to my other obsession, Sandi! In the last year, I've located one of my dad's cousins still living in Kansas, and she's provided me with dates that had eluded me as well as photos of my great-grandparents and a photo of my g-g-grandfather. What a treasure! I was able to get this G-g-grandfather's civil war records from the National Archives (it helps if you know the unit he belonged to). I've also found another distant cousin on one of the genealogy message boards who has another G-g-grandfather's records and, I hope, some photos. I'm trying to get her to send me copies. This GGGF fought for the north and his brother fought for the south, and they were close enough to have named their first-born sons after each other, so I can't imagine why they would have opposite political views.

Anyway, it's a lot of fun to get into this. If you're planning to go to the Family History Library in SLC, you can go to www.familysearch.org and research call numbers and such before you get there - a real time saver.

[JenniferZ]

Hi Sandi!
Great thread. Genealogy is as addicting, if not more so, than digi-scrapping!

I have been researching my family tree for about the last 10 years (off and on -- more "off" lately since the kiddos came along) and I could work on it another solid decade and not even scratch the surface.

My main advice to you, especially just starting, is to document thoroughly your sources. This will pay off in spades, especially if you apply to DAR because they require solid proof of your connection to your Revolutionary War ancestors. For the first few years, I did not keep good notes or records and I ended up doing a lot of double work and backtracking to get the information I should have jotted down to begin with. A program like Family Tree Maker (there are others) will help you keep all of your information in one spot.

Ancestry.com is a wonderful resource. Also look into http://www.usgenweb.org/, which has a genealogy web for each state with forums and source information that, when you have exhausted your internet research, will give you the next steps in tracing your roots. I was able to connect to a (previously unknown) 6th cousin in VA, who did extensive research on our surname "Bennett." We were able to exchange information, photographs, etc. and have since organized two very well-attended Bennett Family Reunions, which were great fun. (We plan to continue this tradition every two years.)

One of the most interesting finds I have made is the Will and Estate Settlements of one of my 6th great grandfathers, Philip Whipple and his wife Charity/Charlotte (unknown) Whipple. It contained several inches thick of testimony and sworn statements regarding property use, family disputes, who cared for whom in their old age, character assassinations and other juicy tidbits. So, a secondary bit of advice I would give is to try to find out as much as you can about your ancestors as people, not just names and dates. That is where the fun lies! If you can find correspondence, a diary, or court documents where one of your ancestors was a party, that is a goldmine!!

Oh, I could go on and on...I love genealogy. So, if anyone out there has the following surnames in her tree and has connections to PA -- contact me! :-)

Bennett, Drum(m), Focht, Kern, Braster, Whipple, Schanbacher (many spelling variations), Parsons, Jenkins, Matteson (many spelling variations), Roush (many spelling variations), Rieger, Kniss, Yoder, Shell/Schell, Sunderland, Dougherty.

[Bobbi Jo]

Quote

My main advice to you, especially just starting, is to document thoroughly your sources. This will pay off in spades, especially if you apply to DAR because they require solid proof of your connection to your Revolutionary War ancestors. For the first few years, I did not keep good notes or records and I ended up doing a lot of double work and backtracking to get the information I should have jotted down to begin with. A program like Family Tree Maker (there are others) will help you keep all of your information in one spot.

Jennifer's right; you want to be meticulous about documenting your sources. There are so many sources available it can be hard to know where to start, but I have found the book Finding Your Family on the Internet: The Ultimate Guide to Online Family History Research is a really solid, basic guide to online sources, software, notekeeping, beginning your own personal history -- everything. It's a good reference for anyone, beginner or not.

[jenrou]

I really agree with Jennifer and Bobbi Jo. I've been researching for about 30 years, and ignored advice about sources, except written copies. Now I'm having to go back and redo each person's sources in Family Tree Maker. That is no fun, and sooner or later you will need them. I love genealogy!
J

[Sarah in VA]

As Jennifer and Bobbi have just said, Documentation is key! And you really want to try to get more information about your ancestors than just their birth and death dates and places. I would rather have many less actual names and dates but more stories and know more about their lives than thousands of names.

Growing up Southern, surrounded by generations of Southern women, I was raised on genealogy. It was my mother's life work and she collected literally tons of information. And she did it the hard way - without computers and the Internet! When she was in her 70's we bought her first computer, a copy of AppleWorks (anyone remember that?) and a DOS based genealogy program I've mentioned before, Roots. She was in her element!

By that time, I'd become her assistant, and eventual heir to all the family genealogical records. I've always felt very close to my ancestors because my mother, grandmother, aunts, all the greats, etc, talked about these people as if they were alive and well and living down the street. And they had stories. When my mother got the computer and writing became easier for her, she compiled all of these stories and throughout the years, we've written even more.

In the years since her death, I have to admit I haven't been able to tear down any of the few brick walls she encountered. Some things are just hidden forever, I guess; but I have made some progress in other areas, mainly due in part to the Internet and ancestry.com. I've found lots of people working on the same families and we've been able to share stores and photos, etc. This has been tremendously rewarding. I will never forget the feeling I had as I watched a graphic slowly download on my computer screen before my eyes of a very old photo of my father as a toddler, along with an older brother and his mother, who died before I was born. It came from some people I'd met on US GenWeb who were working on one of my grandmother's cousin's family and had a box of photos of people she didn't know!

Another thing I've been able to do is to properly document much of the information my mother gathered, when documentation wasn't thought to be all that necessary. Since then, all of the lineage societies have really strengthened their requirements in this area. Recently I heard from a cousin who was trying to get her sister admited to the DAR using the same documentation we both used years ago, and they were being picky about it.

Our original ancestor arrived at Jamestown, Virginia with the second sailing of Capt John Smith in 1608. He was a "perfumer" from England. The family stayed in Virginia for about 100 years and then began the Great Migration through NC, TN, SC, GA, AL, MS, LA and eventually, my branch ended up in the area of what is now Central Texas in the early 1830s. There are a lot of places to look for records along that trail!

My project now is to take the information we know for sure, document it properly and take just one family and make a combined family record/scrapbook for that family's living relatives. Several years ago I did my mother's parents and all of their descendants. It's time to get back to work on my father's side of the family now. Maybe next fall and winter!

Sorry for rambling on for so long...

[patsyt]

Sandi, genealogy was an addiction for me long before I found digital scrapping. But they go so well together!

My best piece of advice is to make sure you don't ignore siblings as you do your research. Sometimes a brother or sister of your ancestor might have more records than your ancestor and since their parents are your ancestor's parents you can garner some great information. Also in the earlier US census records only heads of household were lised and it's extremely helpful to know as much about the children in the family as possible.

Another site that's quite interesting is Footnote.com. It is a fee for service site but I love it. Also try googling some names or locations in the book area of Google.

I love history and love finding out more about the places my ancestors lived and the times they lived in.

Researching: Fuller, Mitchell, Tabbert, Schmalz, Robinson, Blakely, Bloomfield, Bone, Busswitz, Carman, Evans (Wales), Welch, Harkrider, Hill, McCartney, McClard, Ochiltree, Kester, Rich, Rodgers, Spielman, Stafford, Sutton, Stout, Thornton, Throckmorton, Wilson, Welch (and for my sisters and sil - Siratt, Mountain, Mertesdorf, Heitland, Ruocco, Schwan) among many, many others!

Enjoy the hunt!

[jeschaff]

I just got an email from GenealogyBank.com, a resource I'd forgotton about. They have copies of newspaper clippings, mostly from the 20th Century, and I was able to find a g-grandfather's obituary, along with a picture of him. The only photo I'd had of him before that was so shadowy and grainy that I had no idea what he really looked like.

[patsyt]

That's really cool JoEllen!

[elibar]

I actually found a transcript of my great grandmother's bible (the family tree pages) on usgenweb. That was neat. I never saw it, and I have no idea who has it. Someone found it, looked at the bible, described it and transcribed it, then put the info on the web. I was never able to get a response from the poster. but the information helped me immensely.

[LisaL]

My mother is doing a lot of this stuff right now. I guess it will all come to me someday....but for now I will let her do all the work!

[podiumchick]

With all the talk of documenting, I thought I'd throw out some info I used to teach in 4-H Genealogy. Primary sources are always preferred documentation. These are the sources that tell WHO the individual is and are recorded at the time of the event. Birth, Death, and Marriage Certificates fit this bill. Secondary sources are those that tell the person's story--baptism, census, diplomas, etc. In the absence of primary sources, the 4-H manual suggested 3 secondary sources to back up info would suffice. MY DH's GF did not have a birth certificate as he was born at home in 1911. He had to get a certificate of some sort made in order to enroll in Social Security. He's still living and swears he does not have such a paper. Since he is still living we cannot go to the courthouse to check ourselves. This caused a gap in my kids' books for 4-H.

I learned a lot from the genealogy judges that came to our fair. Here's a nugget on the subject of family Bibles...if all the entries are written in one hand and the entries span several years, it is likely that someone sat down and 'caught up' the entries. This is liable to have errors. However, if all the entries are in different hand or the ink is different, etc., then it is more likely that the info was entered at the time of the event and possibly more accurate. Family Bibles are considered secondary sources.

I've found other researcher's trees that include part of my family and there are errors on either their tree or mine. Having the documentation to back up your info is the way to go.

[fit2walk]

I did genealogy research long before I started scrapbooking. When I started SBing, I saw it as a way to document my genealogy research in a way that might interest other family members. Then my daughters started giving me grandbabies and somehow that took priority. Imagine that! It's a very addictive hobby and can be extremely time-consuming, especially in the beginning, but you've gotten some good advice, i.e., source all of your information and don't ignore siblings. These are two great hobbies and eventually will benefit generations to come.

[patsyt]

As you're looking at death records, remember that they are primary sources for death date and place but secondary sources for birth or marriage data. Death certificates and obituaries often contain errors because the information is provided by a person who was not a witness to either event. For example, in my aunt's obituary she is listed as being survived by her husband but he actually died several years earlier (I am a witness to both events so I know my data is accurate). Also, use all information you find online as a starting point but make sure you find your own sources for the information as a lot of the information online has never been documented. This is especially true if you are trying to join a group such as the DAR - sources, sources, sources!

[podiumchick]

patsyt, on Mar 25 2009, 09:44 AM, said:

As you're looking at death records, remember that they are primary sources for death date and place but secondary sources for birth or marriage data. Death certificates and obituaries often contain errors because the information is provided by a person who was not a witness to either event. For example, in my aunt's obituary she is listed as being survived by her husband but he actually died several years earlier (I am a witness to both events so I know my data is accurate). Also, use all information you find online as a starting point but make sure you find your own sources for the information as a lot of the information online has never been documented. This is especially true if you are trying to join a group such as the DAR - sources, sources, sources!

Exactly. Primary sources only speak to the event that it documents, not the other information it contains. But they can be secondary sources for birth, marriage, etc. Good point!

[fit2walk]

podiumchick, on Mar 25 2009, 09:41 AM, said:

patsyt, on Mar 25 2009, 09:44 AM, said:

As you're looking at death records, remember that they are primary sources for death date and place but secondary sources for birth or marriage data. Death certificates and obituaries often contain errors because the information is provided by a person who was not a witness to either event. For example, in my aunt's obituary she is listed as being survived by her husband but he actually died several years earlier (I am a witness to both events so I know my data is accurate). Also, use all information you find online as a starting point but make sure you find your own sources for the information as a lot of the information online has never been documented. This is especially true if you are trying to join a group such as the DAR - sources, sources, sources!

Exactly. Primary sources only speak to the event that it documents, not the other information it contains. But they can be secondary sources for birth, marriage, etc. Good point!

Very good points. When I got my mother's death certificate, I saw that her husband had a couple of errors on it, including her birth date! I printed the correct information and scanned it in along with the death certificate so that when someone pulled up her death certificate through my genealogy program, they would see my corrections. Those kinds of documents are only as good as the person providing the information.

[patsyt]

Good idea Grace! And, even though, there are errors on some of this information they usually provide some good clues!

[KBT]

WOW! This is such amazing advice. I don't think I can take on another full time hobby right now but I will pass this info to my dad! He is just starting to get into genealogy!