Getting the Most Out of Online Genealogy Classes

Do you have Zoom fatigue? Does the thought of watching one more online class make you want to throw something at your computer screen? If so, this blog is for you! I keep a record of the courses I take on my website for several reasons. As a member of the Association of Professional Genealogists, I need to complete 12 hours of professional development yearly to renew. I participate in way over that requirement because I believe in keeping current and strongly support continuing education. Even in the most basic courses, I usually learn at least one new trick or I'm reminded of something I heard before but didn't try myself. By keeping a list of the courses I've viewed, I can avoid re-watching those I've taken. I can look at what I've taken when I am approaching a new work task and refer back to the syllabus of the course that may help me with the task at hand. I can also determine if I'm lacking in an area so I can then actively seek out those areas to beef up on. Personally, I'm loving the Zoom/Go To Meetings/Teams conferences and am actively advocating the organizations to which I belong to continue with at least a hybrid model when the pandemic is over. Don't get me wrong, I love to travel and to meet with other passionate family historians in person. I just don't think that old thinking model is right anymore. Watching from your home is helping the carbon footprint. I'm saving lots of money by not having to pay for the travel expense, hotel accommodations and food. I'm also winning big on saving time by staying home. I can afford to attend more conferences than I would have before covid so I'm definitely ahead there. People from all over the world can attend, although the time differences are problematic and largely unfair to those not living on the eastern US coast. I've recommended that presentation times vary as this is just not fair to everyone. The online format is a win-win for both those who would have had difficulty traveling because of a disability or childcare and for the organization who now has more participants. The voices of those who couldn't attend before can now be heard. For the conferences that offer breakout rooms, I have the extra advantage of still meeting up in a group and discussing the topic that we just viewed. If you are shy, no worries! It's a great place to be a fly on the wall.You can turn your video off and just observe. I will bet there are many mouthy people like me that will be actively engaged and you'll hear discussions and gain new insights by just listening. For the conferences that don't off that feature, I definitely use the chat function. Click to have the chat up and place it off to the side of the screen so you can follow along with the side conversations while the presenter is giving the information. This make me think of another plus for online classes. Remember attending a lecture in the past and the folks behind you that wouldn't stop talking? You'd shift in your seat. Then you'd turn and give them the teacher look. They didn't care and continued. Finally, you asked them nicely to be quiet. "Sorry," they'd say but a few minutes later they were back to their sidebar discussion. None of that any longer! The chat is that conversation and if it distracts you, then just ignore it. At the end of the lecture, before you sign off, you can read it and take note of any web addresses that were posted. You can also copy and paste it. If your Zoom conference doesn't have that option with the click of a button here's another option - just hit the control + C to copy the info and then, in an open Word document, click and paste (control + P). Here's another chat hint - you can message the group or just an individual. A few weekends ago I took a class on the Chicago fire given by the Chicago Genealogical Society. Several of my husband's cousins were in attendance. I sent them private messages in the chat. It was kind of like sitting with friends. If you know another attendee is watching this works well. If you don't know if one of your friends is on, simply click in the chat box from All to Private and you'll see a list of those who are attending. Scroll down the list to identify the folks you know and send them a personal Hello! If there is a syllabus, I keep it electronically in Dropbox under a folder called Syllabuses (duh!). Inside the folder I have more folders for the offering organization, such as APG, NGS, etc. No more wasted paper or killing my printer ink. It's much easier to find what I'm looking for quickly and using the control + F (find) helps me zero in to discover the exact item I'm looking for on the syllabus. That list I keep on my website is a time saver here as if I can't quite remember which organization offered the class, I can look on the website for the topic and then find where I've filed it in the online folder. While I'm watching the lecture on one screen, I have my second computer screen up and waiting to try out what the presenter is talking about. For example, this past week I watched the National Genealogical Society sponsored Ancestry course on the new update to their Freedmen Bureau records. I had Ancestry open on my second screen so as the two presenters were discussing how best to search, I was trying it out myself. I do that because I can still ask the presenters questions, either through the Chat or the Q and A feature before the class ends if I'm having difficulty in following what they suggest. This sure beats trying to check it out on my cell which is what I used to do with on site classes. I'm also getting practice which increases the likelihood that I'll use the tool in the future. Also in Dropbox, I keep an Excel spreadsheet called Help Ideas. It has only 3 columns - Topic, (web) address, comment. When I'm attending a lecture and the presenter recommends a specific website or archive to locate a record, I record the information on my Help Ideas spreadsheet. For topic, I might record "Blog", record the web address and under comment, record the presenter's name and date of the lecture. This has helped me with brick walls as no one can possibly remember everywhere to look. Sure the Familysearch.org Wiki is wonderful but it is not complete. Remember, I'm only recording info that is new to me or that I want to gain more information about later. When I need to research in an area I haven't done in awhile, it's simple to filter for that topic and instantly I have a great list of where I can research. Make sure you keep the list up so you can add to it while you're watching. Last but not least, if you are watching a pre-recorded lecture, definitely use the speed up button if available and if the presenter speaks slowly. This is my magic trick for how I get through so many lectures in a rainy afternoon. Trust me, you get used to the funny sounding speech after only a lecture or two. I always use this for classes that are more than 50 minutes and for those that might be on a topic I have a good knowledge base already. If the presenter does get to a part that is new to me, I can always return the speed to normal to make sure I understand the information. It's simple to back up and listen again if you missed something. Now go pop some popcorn, get in a comfy chair and watch those lectures you have on your to-do list.

Autumn Genealogy Project Idea

This past week, I began to identify all my Gateway Ancestors - those are the folks who were the first to come to the U.S. In some cases, they don't go back very far. For example, my maternal grandmother came with her mother and brother in 1912 to join her husband who had come earlier. Others came in the 1800's, like my Leiningers and Kuhns, or the 1700's, like my Landfairs and Hollingsheads, and some in the 1600's, my Duers. I decided to make a quick write up for each Gateway from their emigration to my parents. I wanted to tackle the Duers first because, well, I'm just enamored with them for one and two, they've been here for a long time so I figure if I start with the longest descents the rest will go quicker. I came up with this idea after watching a National Genealogical Society (NGS) video from the May conference. I always intended to write about these ancestors but perhaps like you, never made the time or the effort to get that project done. I think the way that I'm proceeding makes it easier to get going on it. Here's my plan: 1. Identify who you'd like to write about. In my case, it was my Gateways. 2. Go to wherever you keep your records for that individual and review them. I keep everything in several places - my personal tree on my desktop, on Ancestry.com and at MyHeritage.com. I also backup periodically to Dropbox and an external hard drive. Putting them in several places means I can gain access easily wherever I am, such as my home office, or out and about on my laptop or cell. 3. Open up a Word doc. Give your work a title and add your name as the author. In the footer, add page numbers. I always use "Page 1 of 10" or whatever number where I've ended because families tend to pass around documents and not always copy all of the pages. This way, the receiver will know they obtained the complete work. I also included an asterisk in the title with an explanation in the footer noting the descendancy will be a direct line to my parents. I did this because most of them had large numbers of children and I really want to only focus on my line for this project. That's not to say it isn't important to research the siblings because it definitely is a must do but for this project, not so much. I also include my email address in the footer so people that discover this can contact me. I plan on posting it on my Gateway’s Gallery on Ancestry and under Biography on MyHeritage. I'm doing that so other researchers can find it easily as it will show up in the Search function on both sites. 4. I selected using the NGS Quarterly style to write. I have no intention of ever submitting it to that organization for publication but I chose that style for several reasons. It's formulaic (and boring, yes, but I'm not writing fiction nor am I trying to paint a picture of the ancestor's life). Formulaic is good because it will be redundant writing, a sort of fill-in-the-blanks of the person's life. I want that so I can analyze the information that I have acquired and identify any holes that I might have. I discovered immediately about Thomas that I had a "birth" date of 29 Sep 1663. It wasn't a birthdate; it was the christening date. Does that matter? Yes, because I don't know if he was christened on the day he was born, shortly after or as an adult. Given his death date, I can determine he was christened in his youth but not necessarily on his birthday. I also realized I never looked at his original christening record that is available on FindMyPast.org. Instead, I had relied on Ancestry's Family Data Collection - Births. That's a database of transcriptions first published in 2001. I needed to go back and find the original film to verify the information recorded was correct. It would be lovely to be able to go to Great Britain and view the original document but that's not going to be happening anytime soon so I'll have to do the best I can with the image. Another plus of the Quarterly style is that it will allow me to quickly determine how many people are in the line. With other styles, that information is not readily available. This style also provides more information about all of the couple’s children. 5. I highly recommend using Numbering Your Genealogy by Curran, Crane, and Wray if you'd like to explore more methods. It's available through NGS and can be downloaded or printed so there is no delay in your getting started. 6. Make sure you use the footnote or endnote feature on Word (under References) so you can cite where you got the fact. If you don't have a source for the fact you have, then use the highlight function on Word (Home-Font-the pencil icon with a color under it) to highlight that you must search for the source. I used that feature to remember I must go to FindMyPast.org to find the christening record. Once found, you can go back to the Font-highlight and click "No Color" to get rid of it. This way, you can quickly continue writing and citing for what you have and then research what needs clarification or is missing later. 7. Typically, the original source only is noted and I know I drive my colleagues nuts by listing ALL sources where I found the fact. I do this because I don't know if the original document will be lost. If that occurs, then I've added where I found transcriptions or films of the image, etc., and that I verified the other documents I listed confirmed what the original document recorded. You do whatever the spirit tells you lol! 8. Your writing will not be very long; probably not more than a page or two unless, like my Daniel Hollingshead who loved to flip real estate, you have lots of records. Thomas Duer’s summary would be one page without citations. Remember, you aren't recording a detailed story here, just the facts. If you decide you have the time and want to elaborate, then you have an outline already done to help you on your way. The clip at the top of this blog is for three of the five paragraphs I wrote on Thomas. Of his known children, I placed a + sign before son Thomas, (not shown) as I will be writing about him next. I will not be writing about the couple’s other seven children. 9. You may want to add a timeline to your Word doc. I haven't done that but may if I get to a situation where documents I have acquired are conflicting. The timeline can help sort out if there was a transcription error, a confusion of identity, or some other situation. For example, I discovered last week a conflict regarding a family I was writing about for a journal article. The female gateway came to the U.S. in 1925 but on her naturalization records, she stated she came in 1939. Both are true. She first arrived in 1925, got married, had four children, and then took them back to her native country for a six month visit. When she returned, she used the second coming as her date of arrival. It was the most recent to her naturalization paperwork and the law required that at the time. So, fraud may not be involved in record discrepancies. Instead, she was following the law of the land at that time. A timeline helped me quickly identify the two emigration dates and that I needed to explore further. 10. When you're done writing it’s time to upload and share. You want others to see your work so they can correct or add to your findings. Since it's autumn, now that you accomplished your task, make yourself a nice cup of tea and enjoy. You deserve it!

Rethinking Your Family Stories

Photo courtesy of Global Citizen Yesterday I attended a lecture about researching in burned county Cook, Illinois. We don't think about Chicago being located in a burned county but of course, like many areas, had a devastating fire that destroyed a large part of the downtown are 150 years ago. Of course, the burned area was where records were kept. The point of the lecture was there are still records left to examine and provided where those sources are now housed. But that wasn't the taken away I got from the session...At the very end, a participant asked if Mrs. O'Leary's cow was the cause of the tragedy. There was an extensive investigation after and both the cow and Mrs. O'Leary were cleared. There had even been a fire the evening before due to the extremely dry conditions. Shoddy building practices and older wooden structures permitted the fire to spread rapidly. A fire department that wasn't well funded made the situation worse. When I was a child I lived in the Chicagoland area. Although I don't recall how I first heard about the fire, I do remember asking my mom about it. She said it was started by Mrs. O'Leary's cow. My mom was not alive when the fire occurred. Neither were my grandparents or my great grandparents who eventually lived for a short time in the city. In hindsight, I suppose my mom heard about the fire over 50 years after it had happened. Whoever told her had some knowledge of the original sources blaming the cow but didn't follow the story long enough to discover what really happened. Often our family stories are like that; passed from one to another over an extended period of time without fully investigating the information that has become a "fact." This week, plan on recalling one of your family stories and do some investigating. Who knows what awesome discovery awaits you! Please share, I'd love to know.

Genealogical Coincidences, Or Not? It's a Small World After All!

I've had a strange week. Last Friday I got approval to write a journal article on a unique family heirloom. I tried to make contact with the family who are the current caretakers of the object but the Facebook message link is broken and they didn't answer their phone. I spent the rest of the day and most of last Saturday researching the heirloom's purported history and how the family acquired the religious object. Mid afternoon my husband asked if I could come outside and see something. My first thought was what broke now. I followed him outside and around the side of our home. Under the bushes was the rock pictured above. "Did you put that there?" he asked. I had no knowledge of it and immediately got goose bumps. I know that people have been placing decorated rocks around neighborhoods and in parks to boost people's spirits during the pandemic but this was just odd. Who placed it there? Why? There was no note or sticker on the bottom. Our adult kids had no idea how it got there, either. I decided to go back to researching. Later in the afternoon, my husband saw our next door neighbor in her front yard. He asked her if she had any idea where the rock came from. "Oh, yes, I was babysitting and thought it would be a good craft project." Umm, sure. My husband explained that we were all confused as to how it came to be placed under the bushes. The neighbor said she was watching two little girls. One made a bumble bee design on a rock and the other, the cross. Our neighbor said, "I don't know why but I thought of your family getting the cross and [another neighbor] getting the bee." The other neighbor is a sweetheart - the most kind person you could ever meet. She really doesn't do gardening. I don't know, the bee better fits my personality lol! I love gardening and I can definitely give out a stinger. So, this was all a coincidence that a religious symbol shows up in my yard within 24 hours of me researching religious symbols until two days later when the following happened... I was volunteering at my local hospital when one of the employees related a story that had occurred the previous evening. In checking a visitor in through the lobby, she had forgotten to return the person's driver's license. A security guard said he would take it to the patient's room where the visitor was headed. She had had a hectic day and a short time later forgot the guard was taking the license. She panicked when she didn't see it on her desk. A student volunteer reminded her that the guard had taken it. She was embarrased by her forgetfullness and still feeling tired, decided she would stand for a bit. Looking over in front of the computer I usually use when I volunteer, she noticed the object shown below:

The employee, not recognizing who it portrays, thought it had something to do with demons. She was partly correct; St. Michael was known for fighting demons. He was also prayed to during the first Black Plague after Pope Gregory the Great had a vision of Michael standing over Hadrian's tomb in Rome slaying evil. When the plague subsided shortly after his experience, Gregory had a shrine built to St. Michael over Hadrian's tomb which is still visitable today. Well, it would be if we didn't have a pandemic and could easily go visit. Just sayin'. Since the heirloom I was investigating for the article just happened to be about St. Michael I was able to tell the employee a little bit about him. Personally, I told her, I don't think it's a bad idea he just "materialized" (her words) in a hospital during a pandemic. If one believes in miracles, that would be a fantastic sign. If one didn't, it was just a coincidence. I suspect that this was part of a key ring and somehow broke off when a visitor searched for their license. Miracle or not, it should go to the lost and found box. I did take a picture for this blog since that was the 2nd weird happening since I began my research. As I continued to research the family I noticed that the gateway ancestor who was responsible for securing the heirloom happened to get his social security card in Indiana. My husband and I are from Indiana so I said to my husband, "Wouldn't it be weird if he happened to have gotten it in Gary?" Neither of us recognized the last name as someone we would have known growing up. As I further researched, I discovered that the man's daughter had lived for a short time in Gary, but it was long after we had left the area. What a coincidence, I thought. I still hadn't heard back from the family and I did have a few questions and needed clarification regarding conflicting info I had found. I mentioned this when I was volunteering at my local historical society and one of the employees told me that a family member was her neighbor. She texted her and asked her to give me a call. A week to the day that I left the voice message she called me and was absolutely delightful. After discussing the project and getting some of the information straightened out I asked her if she knew where her grandfather had gotten his social security card in Indiana. She said she wasn't sure but suspected it was Gary, "...since he and my grandmother spent summers up there." I mentioned that my husband and I grew up there and I spent nearly every Sunday in the summer at the Croatian picnic grounds. The Greek picnic grounds was close, as was the Spanish, Italian and Polish. Beginning in middle school, we would take shortcuts through the woods to visit classmates who were attending their ethnic groups' picnic. I can't tell you how many times I went to the Greek picnic ground but it was often. I will never be able to prove it but I must have been in the same place at the same time as the couple. Another coincidence - 50+ years later I happen to get the idea to write about their family heirloom. Geez, wouldn't it have been wonderful if I knew that then and could have interviewed them before they died. Yesterday I continued to do additional research and discovered another coincidence. Evidently, there is a ritual of praying for 33 consecutive days to St. Michael for the protection of the Church and it's Supreme Pontiff (the Pope). I got approval to write the article and began my research on August 27th. Umm, the time period for the ritual is 27 August through 29 September. For believers, clearly this is another miracle. For the skeptics, I'm just good at identifying coincidences. Miracles or not, you have to admit it's a small world after all.