12 Genealogy Lessons I Learned in 2024

 

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Wow! Last blog of 2024 and what a year it’s been.

The best thing about genealogy is that you are constantly learning and growing. No one can know about every record set, historical period, or nuances of language over the years. Today I’m reflecting on some of the A-Ha moments I had this year:

• AI has been the biggest game changer in my life. I use ChatGPT almost daily now and occasionally with Claude and others. It saves time and helps me think outside the box to solve problems.

• Realizing that the Viking Pagans held on to their symbolism after converting to Roman Catholicism was amazing to me. Who would have thought the church would have allowed it? Even more surprising is that the pagan baptismal fonts are still used today by the Lutherans.

• I also didn’t know that grapes don’t grow in Sweden so the Vikings traveled in the summer to the Mediterranean to buy wine. My family had vineyards there so maybe they bought Zinfadel from them. Always been a small world, right?!

• Had no idea when the potato famine hit Ireland it also affected crops in Europe, hence many from the French German Palatine area migrated to the U.S. at that time.

• While researching Ohio River pirates for an upcoming presentation, I learned that one of the most notorious, James Mason, got a Spanish passport because President Benjamin Harrison had given him a recommendation. Dear Ben’s sister had married the honorable brother of James Mason. Just goes to show you how different siblings can be even back in the day.

• Did you know that identity theft occurred in the 1890s? It did and I’m still working on solving that one!

• My husband is constantly kidding me about being a princess (which I’m not) because I’ve now seen the family castles in Croatia, Germany, and Great Britain. People are so worried about being safe today but it’s no different than in the past– we just don’t have a moat around our houses anymore.

• I didn’t realize that there were jobs for lawyers regarding keeping a person’s coat of arms protected. Who would have thought that would still be needed today?!

• Every time I look at my cats I just can’t get over their ethnicity and I wonder which ancestor in my husband and my past was adopted by my cat’s ancestors. Yeah, it’s weird, I know!

• A good reminder that there is someone out there who knows the answer to whatever question you might ask and you just have to be persistent and patient to get the answer. I finally found a knowledgeable person who knew how to read old German script AND understood the cultural heritage. I needed to find someone who had both these skills to understand one little ole word in a 1834 newspaper article written in German in Cincinnati, Ohio. He learned that the custom had been brought over to the US which was also news to him. Collaborating with others helps us get the info we need and in turn, we help them gain insights.

• Loved the easy peesy way to do genealogy in French villages – take a walk and look above the doors of the houses. Back then they engraved the date the house was built and who the owners were. I was able to quickly find my ancestral homes.

• I am reminded almost weekly of how much our life has changed since the pandemic. Zoom seems to have been around forever but I didn’t use it before 2019. Makes me wonder what’s next on the horizon.

That’s one new thought for each month of 2024. Can’t wait to discover more new and exciting ideas next year.

As usual, I’ll be taking off next week and will be back in January with my top ten blog list from 2024. Have a wonderful holiday and I’ll blog with you soon!

Photo Memories

 

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I bet with the approaching holidays you and your loved ones will be taking loads of pictures! Back in the day, it was exciting to get the film developed. Sort of like reliving the same experience over. Now, I take so many photos that I use my cell camera for mundane tasks. What is the name of that weed or is it a native flower? Snap it and check and app. Love that item in a store but aren’t sure the price is right. Click the pic and then look for it elsewhere.

Although these new uses for a camera are wonderful, they aren’t if we are treating the important photos we take carelessly. Do you ever save your phone photos? If so, where?

Here’s what I’ve been doing since Google Photo lost some of my pictures several years ago. I now have my photos saved to a different Cloud. That way, I can remove them from my phone. Why do I do that? Because I’ve had phone accidents where I couldn’t retrieve data, and I don’t want my precious photo memories gone forever.

When my kids were young, I was a scrapbooker and I saved the best of the best by including them with a story of the event. It took a lot of time, but it was fun. I’m not sure it was worth it, though, as I’ve passed them on to my adult kids who have no space for them. One is in boxes in an attic and the other complained about having to move them twice this year while doing renovations. Those, too, ended up in the attic for a while. Sigh.

During the pandemic one of my kids gave me a photo album that can only hold one picture on each page. The idea was to only save a small amount of the very best photos from my overseas travels. I was pining to travel, and this was a way to get me to relive what I had done and plan for what was to come. And oh boy, did travel come! In the past year and a half, I’ve visited Germany twice, Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Sweden, Denmark, Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales, France, and Canada.

The weather outside is frightfully cold so I’ve ordered two more albums and will spend my time indoors reliving those memories by printing from my printer using photo paper and affixing those special pics into the book. They really are genealogical treasures as on my travels I always make time for family research.

The beauty of these albums is that they don’t take up much space and I’ll be passing on to future generations my findings as I write a sentence or two of what the location is about. Next week I’ll be writing about my most memorable learning experiences this year. It will be my last post of the year.

Cooking Up Memories

 

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Do you get out your favorite family recipes during this time of year? Cookie recipes always remind me of my mom who once worked in a bakery. We’d spend the Saturday after Thanksgiving making batches of our favorites to share with family and friends – Mexican Wedding Cookies, Kolaches, Swedish Oatmeal Cookies, Chocolate Chip, Holiday Many Way (peanut butter/nut/sugar), and my favorite to get creative with – cookie cutter sugar cookies. One year I painted them like stained glass with food coloring. Other times I iced them with different color frosting. Mom would make those first so I’d stay out of the way decorating while she zipped through making the rest.

Perhaps your cookie recipes are getting a tad frayed. Batter stains, greasy fingers, and age aren’t kind to those old recipe cards. About 20 years ago, when my kids were starting to cook on their own in the kitchen, I retyped our favorite recipes into size 12 font so that my older eyes could read them easily. Once done, I made a decorative cover from card stock and took it to Office Depot to have it GBC bound. My kids still rely on that book but we’ve accumulated so many new recipes over the years that I decided it was time for an updated version.

I scanned the old book to my computer and have added new favorites. Instead of printing, I just share Google Docs with my kids. I keep a laptop in my kitchen so it’s easy for me to find the desired recipe and bring it up while I prepare the meal. The recipes have been shared so if one system fails there is a backup. No killing trees or clutter from another book. Since I store in the cloud, I can even look up ingredients needed when I'm at the grocery store. No excuses not to cook up some love!

Pet DNA

 

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I honestly never thought I'd be blogging about my pet's DNA. I laughed when Ancestry.com came out with their DNA test kits for dogs. At the time, I thought it was just a dumb idea.

If you've ever attended my lectures you might have heard me say that I'm a mutt. That's a dog with no definable breed or heritage. Um, that would be me. I'm often dog-tired after spending too much time doing genealogy research and no matter what the ethnicity estimates report about my ancestry, they often get updated as my people were everywhere!

I am leery of people who boast that their heritage is purely from one location. Brings to my mind Nazism, the Ku Klux Klan, and Harry Potter. To be clear, I like Harry Potter; I just don't like people who think they are superior because of their pure blood lineage.

While my husband and I were in Great Britain one of my adult kids decided to perform DNA swabs of my two elderly cats as a pre-Christmas gift.

Upon my return, when I was informed about the testing, I had a hard time not rolling my eyes. I would not have spent money on that. Both of my cats were found at schools my husband and I used to work at. The oldest, Charlie, was born to feral parents and I only have him because a cold hearted employee ordered one of the clerical staff to snatch him and his two siblings from their mother so her two kids could play with them over summer break. This mean individual was told that they were too young, not yet weaned, and that their mother would reject them if she changed her mind of keeping the cats. She didn't care and at the end of the day when her husband came to pick up the kids he said he wasn't taking the flea infested kittens home. Well, duh! They had flea because they were born and reared outside. She told the clerical staff to call the county animal shelter. The shelter employee arrived and announced that all three would be euthanized unless we could also provide the mother since they were not weaned. That was impossible since she was feral and he only gave us an hour. The psychologist and I took the kittens home, I took two and she took one. We always thought Charlie was part Maine coon because like his daddy who used to terrorize the children walking to after care through he woods, he was a big boy. We also thought he might have come from Puerto Rico because he only quieted when we played that type of music and he loved hot sauce. In hindsight, I should have realized he was born in a Hispanic neighborhood and his mom must have eaten a lot of Mr. Empanada's food during her pregnancy. Unfortunately, Charlie's sister, Ginger, disappeared when we went to one of our children's college graduations; a neighbor was supposed to be watching them. Ginger slipped out and was never seen again. She was small and orange, like her mom.

Parker was found in the second floor hallway of the school my husband where my husband worked. Likely a middle school kid had brought him in a backpack and he somehow escaped during the day. As a counselor, my husband was called to do something about the cat. That something was get him milk from the cafeteria since he was emaciated and bring him home. He looks a little like a Siamese but we had no idea of where he had originated.

I was good with what we suspected about their heritage. I love them for who they are and not where their ancestors came from.

I really didn't expect any big surprises when we got their DNA results but my family and I had the biggest laugh as the cat's DNA matched regions of the world where our ancestors had once lived. Go figure!

Charlie is mostly Siberian with a touch of Norwegian and Persian. The Siberians are big and poor Charlie was always on a diet as our vets thought he was just too heavy. Nope, he was always in the normal range for his ancestry. (Going to use this during my next annual physical.) Charlie became diabetic earlier this year; that also goes with his majority breed. I was happy to share these results with our current vet.

Parker was primarily Norwegian but also of a California breed and some Egyptian Mau. No Siamese! The Egyptian explains why he had spots in his younger years. The Norwegian explains his quirky personality. If you hold him he drops to dead weight. He also loves to pretend he's afraid of his shadow and runs from it, then looks at you with sad eyes wanting you to pick him up. Yes, he has us humans trained.

The Californian part, though, really made sense. Parker was probably born in Florida where there was an air force base in close proximity to where he was found. I suspect a military family brought one of his parents with them when they relocated to Florida.

My husband is 75% Swedish, I wouldn't doubt that his ancestors once had Norwegian cats in their household. My mtDNA does cross through Persia and I have half that is eastern European. Charlie has always been closest to me. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that those cats we saw in my family's villages in Croatia were very distant cousins of Charlie. Likewise, those Swedish cats we saw in April could also be related distantly to Parker. Very weird in a fun way!

2024 Holiday Gift Guide

 

The season is just about upon us and now is the time to think of a special gift to give to your genealogist-enthused loved one or for yourself:

1. The Flower Letters is an interesting gift I received for Mother's Day - it's a gift that lasts all year. Every two weeks the recipient will receive a snail mail letter about a historical fictional mystery. The letter is written in cursive, quite decorative, and includes additional items about the info contained in the letter, such as postcards, calling cards, maps, etc. For further education, some words are written in red, and for more information, the reader can go to the online website to learn about the topic. Currently, the company is having a fall sale so take advantage of this unique opportunity. This is a wonderful gift, especially if you are tying it in with an ancestral region.

2. Is travel in your loved one's future plans? If so, it might be a surprise to learn that travel isn't quite what it used to be. Lost luggage is happening more frequently so here is a way to find it quick - GPS Trackers. There are many out there so identify first if your loved one has an Android or Apple. I use one of my kid's Apple trackers when we travel and it is peace of mind knowing that my bags can be found anywhere in the world.

3. If you want to avoid lost luggage entirely, do what we do for trips of less than two weeks - simply get a duffel bag to carry on. I highly recommend a duffel bag instead of a rolling smaller bag as lately, airlines are making you check in those roller bags at the gate. Never thought to put a tracker into a bag I was carrying but it was needed. I have since switched to a duffel. They never take those, they can be crammed under the front seat of even the tiniest planes, and your belongings stay with you.

4. BOOKS, BOOKS, BOOKS! Here's a list of my top 6 must haves:

Griffeth, Bill. Strangers No More - This is a sequel to his memoir, A Stranger in My Genes.

Hanson, Anne. Buried Secrets: Looking for Frank and Ida - This family's brick wall was eventually gotten over and could help if you are stumped, too.

Jones, jr. Henry Z. Psychic Roots and More Psychic Roots - These are two books by the same author - You Can read my review here and here. If your genealogist is having strange and unusual finds this might be just what they need to understand them.

Mills, Elizabeth Shown. Evidence Explained. 4th Edition - Revised must have

Shamblin, Rebecca. Building a Legacy - You can read my review here. For those interested in preserving and sharing their researched and sourced family tree.

Shamblin, Rebecca. Leaving a Legacy - You can read my review here. This is a must if you are planning on writing a family history book in the upcoming year.

5. Here's a gift to give to yourself if you are age 65+ - a FREE membership to the National Genealogical Society. See if you qualify for membership through Grouper.

6. Had to laugh at a recent drawing that was held in Indy for the Indiana State Library's Fall Genealogical Conference. The giveaway that got the most Ooohs and Ahhs was a lighted magnifying glass. Older eyes can all use this and not just for genealogy. I absolutely hate the writing on food labels that keep shrinking (or maybe it is my eyes?). More than one is nice - one to keep at home and one for the road trips to archives.

7. You'll probably think this is dumb but it's so important - pencils. Yep, those number twos are still used by especially beginner genealogists who are keeping records as hard copies. A big eraser also goes a long way. Personally, I prefer to digitize but I understand not everyone does that. I also like engineering pencils as I don't have the mess of a pencil sharpener and I can take them into archives that don't allow pens with no issues of trying to find a sharpener.

8. Add to your Walmart cart the 15-Pack Blank Family Tree Charts. It's a deal at only $14.99!

9. If your genealogist is into cemetery visits, create a cemetery to-go kit. Walmart even has an incomplete (IMHO) kit for $35.95. Add a bucket, a spray bottle, and some gardening shears to cut the grass/weeds around the stone. Include garden gloves and bug spray as well. If you want to go all out then also add a kneeler pad.

10. Your Time - seriously, just listen to what your family genealogist has discovered. Who knows, you might even get interested?!

Research Tips and Tricks Part 2

 

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Last week I blogged about how I make connections. No matter where in the world you are researching, you need connections to help you find information that is not readily available.

My recent trip to France and Germany really drove home the point for me that NOT EVERYTHING IS ONLINE!

Today, we'll be finding out how you can find out what is not online.

If you've made connections in the locale where you are researching then all you have to do is contact the person and ask.

I'm serious, it's that simple.

If you have a well sourced public tree, write about your ancestor and stay abreast of tech you will make family connections. Contacting DNA matches is also helpful. You will also want to make professional connections of people that may or may not be related to you, too.

Academia.edu has been a good way to connect with historians that have insight into a place I don't have expertise in. Last week, I mentioned APG and LinkedIn.

Why you need to connect with all of these folks is because there is no one all knowing human who can answer your question, "Where is the land records for someone who lived in Ulmet in the Pfalz in 1701?"

As Judy Russell often says the answer is, "It depends" and the Palatinate is one of those places that it truly does.

Records are sometimes found in the likely places:

1. The Mayors Office in Mietsheim and Uttenhoffen, France for birth and marriage
2. A Kusel archive for military records

But sometimes they are found in places you would never know to look for them:

1. A 6th cousin's personal photo collection
2. In the home of a descendant of the first mayor after the 30 year war ended in a small German village
3. A tour guide
4. A small local museum with no website
5. The mid 1600s home of an archivist for a small village and a religious denomination

I'm not trying to be coy by excluding specifics of where I found records; I'm trying to explain that records are not always digitized and widely available.

I tried to impress upon the need for people holding private records to digitize their holdings but many were afraid that a larger archive would swoop in and demand their collection. You might think that would be a good thing but the problem is that many archives are making it extremely difficult for folks to access their holdings. From Sweden to Croatia I've heard - "all our records are available online at FamilySearch." No, they aren't.

FamilySearch has yet to get back with me on when those Croatian State Archive records will be available. I re-emailed a contact who requested I do so after a face to face meeting in Boston in September and I've yet to get a response. Since the records aren't available online, I had to do boots on the ground last year to get them.

Sweden insists all are on Arkivdigital, yet the company I hired, Minnesota Swede, was able to find church records that were not available on Arkivdigital. These were in history books held at the local church that contained information about the ancestor we were researching. A renter in a home built by one of the ancestors had done extensive research on who had once lived in the home he summered in and provided us with a wealth of knowledge we would not have found on Arkivdigital.

I was sent back and forth from a library to an archive in Stratford-on-Avon, England in my search for records on my Arden ancestor. Someone has something but what it is I never discovered. If I had made a contact before arriving I would bet that I would have found the answer.

Without the help of two genealogists in Germany I would never have been able to find the following:

1. My Leininger ancestors had a castle but were not nobles. The name was originally spelled Leiningen. The males were not looked on favorably by the neighbors who stormed the castle. The second castle storming ended well because of Eva Leiningen who invited the unhappy folks inside and fed them (does sound like something my grandmothers would have done). Although the museum was closed, actually the whole village closes between noon and 2 daily, my contact had gotten the info when they were open.
2. The Leiningens were associates of the Frankensteins of Mary Shelley fame. The Frankenstein at the time Shelley wrote was an alchemist.
3. In France, Leininger is spelled Linange. So, another hint to look for other records thanks to the Mayor's Clerk sharing this tidbit with me.
4. 1701 land records, wills, 1823-1829 school records, and photos that are kept in a home in a wooden "filing" cabinet made in 1699 by the men of a village who wrote in their town charter that a man from eight different families will always be assigned to go to the descendent of the first mayor's home to retrieve a drawer (2 men per drawer) to safety if needed. Today, that could be a climate change threat as they do have flooding in the area but when the edict was made it was in case the 30 year war came back.
5. A local man who leads tours to South America who happened to know that I was related to a group who settled there in the early 1800s. Those were two lines I had never researched because I couldn't find records. South America would not have been a place I would have thought that two single sisters would have emigrated to during that time period.
6. The archivist provided a behind the scene tour of his community and shared with me church records beginning in 1538 that contained a scam then going around hitting churches. Who knew?!
7. A local genealogist was conducting oral histories on the oldest village residents and upon visiting noticed pictures on the wall that looked vaguely familiar. When he asked he was informed they were from a family reunion held in northeast Indiana. The genealogist knew I was from that area and mentioned my name. This led me to having lunch with a 6th cousin who had even more pictures to share with me.
8. By my online connections and attending various conferences, I met a professional genealogist from the region who knew I was coming for a visit. We arranged to meet for dinner as he just happened to be staying close to where I was to attend a genealogy conference. During dinner I met with other attendees and discovered that we are related. One connection leads to another!

When you travel, make sure you have a list of your ancestors who were from the location, along with the dates that they lived there. This will help you readily share info with those you meet. Keep your tree online so that you can pull it up from anywhere, anytime. This helps in looking for a shared ancestor and then identifying how you are related to your new acquaintance. Putting genealogists heads together is a wonderful way to find those records you didn't even know existed.

Genealogy Research Tips and Tricks Part 1

 

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Since coming back from my travels to France and Germany I've had a number of inquiries as to how I make the connections that I do. Here's the answer and you can do this for yourself! Honestly, today's blog isn't just of value for those researching the Palatinate, it's a tip for researching every area of the world!

First, I make my personal tree public online in a variety of locations (Ancestry.com, MyHeritage.com, Geneanet.com). By public, my personal info is not being shared but my deceased ancestor info is. I believe that it's important to share all of my finds so that there is a record somewhere. Unfortunately, records can be lost or destroyed easily so the more places that my information is available WITH SOURCES OF WHERE I FOUND THE ORIGINAL, the more likely that it will help a future generation in pursuing their own lines.

The sourcing is extremely important because it allows others to go back to that source and validate my information. Many online trees do not provide their sources which leads to the thinking that no one should use online family trees because they aren't accurate. That thinking is incorrect - we should look at all available sources as some may give a hint. That hint can be helpful, meaning it will lead you to verify the info is correct or it will lead you to prove it is wrong. I just completed a client report where the client's great grandfather was reported to have his wife and mother with the identical name and dates. Obviously, this was not correct but more than half of all trees online showed this info. Why? Because they copied from each other without validating sources.

It was not hard to discover how the problem arose - the great grandfather's death certificate info gave his wife's name as her given name and her married name. Under mother, the informant provided the woman's maiden name. The informant was a daughter. She was giving her mother's maiden name but that's not what the form was asking for - it was asking for her father's mother's maiden name. In times of grief, people often give inaccurate info and this was the case. Just because info is provided on a governmental document does not make it correct!

Definitely learn more about how to analyze and the types of sources that can be consulted by reading the Board for Certification of Genealogists, Genealogy Standards, fiftieth-anniversary edition (Nashville, TN: Ancestry, 2014).

When you have a public well sourced tree widely available you will make more connections.

Another way I make connections is through my writing. The more places I have my work published, the more widely I have spread the word about an ancestor. This increased the odds that a family member will find me. Where do I get my writing published? I blog weekly on my website and through blogspot.com, which is free. Since blogspot is a Google product, my topics rise to the top of Google's search engine which leads to even more hits when someone is searching for a surname. I also publish in journals and magazines that focus on the location where my ancestors once lived. I've even published an eBook and sell it at a very low cost because I'm trying to get the word out and make connections.

I also stay abreast of new technology - I use open.ai's ChatGPT and link it to my website. This allows anyone who is using that company's AI to receive current info on the surnames I'm researching. I've blogged in the past about using the Whova conference app to make connections and that, too, has been helpful.

One additional important piece of tech is to make sure that you keep the same email or at least, if you do change it, you forward from your old email to your new address. That way, people will always be able to find you.

I am not a Facebook fan but I have used it to make connections, too. LinkedIn helps with making connections with professionals around the globe, as does the Association of Professional Genealogists (APG). I would not have discovered my serendipity connections without using both LinkedIn and APG.

Obviously, the easier you are to find the more connections you will make. Online tools - technology - writing are all the initial ways I make connections.

Next week, I'll be drilling down on the connections I have made to help you discover where your hard to find documents in the Palatinate might reside.

A Little German Synchronicity

 

Lori and Cousin Alesandra-Brigitte

I’m back from my travels to France and Germany where I spent a week researching my husband and my ancestry in the Alsace-Lorraine region. I’m going to conclude my October series on synchronicity with another weird encounter that happened to me in a castle.

A little back story is needed to fully appreciate this odd encounter…

I’ve always known I was part German. My maiden name was Leininger so it was a no brainer figuring the ethnicity out. However, names alone don’t tell the whole story and the region from where my German ancestors once lived was fraught with turmoil for generations. I recently learned that some of it was from within the community – noble vs. peasants, but it also occurred with outsiders invading, such as during the 30 year war and Napoleon.

My paternal side never spoke about their heritage. Perhaps because it was too painful to recall or because they just weren’t great communicators. When my first child was born I asked my dad for genealogical info to put in the baby book and got the response, “When I’m dead, you’ll get the book.” My response, “Book, what book? Why do I have to wait ‘til your dead?”

He then informed me that he had two books that had been written by a family member about the Leiningers, which were also once known as Leiningen, and didn’t want to give me the books as he still referred to them occasionally. Like I wrote earlier, not great communicators!

Unfortunately, I didn’t get the books when he died as my stepmother refused to give them to me. I offered to pay for her time packing them and shipping but she said she didn’t have the time to do it. I turned to the internet and did receive an electronic copy of the first book from the author who was stationed in Germany at the time. Five years after my father’s death, when I stopped at my stepmother’s home after burying my mother, she produced the books and several photo albums.

The genealogies were not sourced and had a lot of errors. In fact, the second book was basically a fix it for the first as so many relatives had written to correct the wrong info. I used the book to do a surname study through “My Main Tree” on Ancestry.com as there were several lines mentioned that didn’t connect. This was before DNA.

I was not in contact with any close family members as it wasn’t a family that maintained ties. I don’t read or write German and with work, family, and other commitments, put the German research aside. Someday, I thought, I’d go back to it.

Someday became a year ago in June when I made a post on Whova, a conference app, asking if anyone had any info about the following surnames:  Bollenbacher, Harbaugh, Kable, Kettering, Kuhn, Leininger, Mahler. One man from Germany responded and I’ve blogged about his help previously here and here.

Gerhard was the first family member I ever met on any of those surnames outside of my dad, grandfather, two aunts and three first cousins who were Leiningers. There are pictures of me with a great aunt but I don’t recall much as I was just 3 when the visit occurred.

Gerhard introduced me to two other conference attendees that were Kettingers. None of us were close (7^th cousins). While doing research last spring in Germany, Gerhard happened to meet a 96 year old woman named Irma who was providing Gerhard with an oral history of her town, Bedesbach. Gerhard noticed a photo on the wall in her living room and inquired about it. She told Gerhard it was taken in the 1980s when she had attended a Bollenbacher family reunion in northeastern Indiana. Gerhard told her about me as he had looked at my tree and knew I was descended from the Bollenbachers. She asked him to get in touch with me and check on people she had visited in Indiana. I blogged about that meeting here.

Something told me it was time to visit the Palatinate and see what I could find about my ancestors' lives there. With Gerhard’s help after reviewing the little info I had found about them, my husband and I traveled to Frankfurt and then by car to the region of interest.

Lori atop the Neu Leiningen Castle

Within an hour and a half of landing, I was taken to what had once been a castle of a noble Leiningen. That’s me at the top and I do have a story to share but am saving that for another time. Rita, a friend of Gerhard’s what was accompanying us, told me that the next castle from the Leiningens were the Frankensteins, of Mary Shelley fame. One of them had been an alchemist. Perfect family info to learn on a fall October day!

Gerhard had a surprise for me every day and I’ll be blogging about the hints and tricks that I learned in researching this area beginning next week.

The creepy part of the story, however, occurred on a Saturday night. Gerhard took us to a castle that supposedly was not associated with my family. We were going to have dinner with a group of attendees at a genealogical conference that was being held there that weekend. Another genealogist that I have worked with, Roland Geiger, was putting the conference on and thought it would be a good idea if we stopped by.

Remember, I don’t read, speak or UNDERSTAND much German but I wanted to see Roland so I was game. There were six chairs at each table in the dining room. Gerhard, Rita, my husband, Roland, and I took five of the seats. An attendee decided to join us. We had a nice dinner and then moved up to the bar area where more mingling was to occur. The tables there only sat four so Gerhard, Rita, my husband and I filled up a table. The woman that had joined us at dinner had some questions for me about genealogy practices so we pulled up another chair. On her iPad she brought up her Wiki Tree. I told her I don’t use that because my tree is too large to upload to them and I don’t have time to do it piecemeal. She explained that she prefers Wiki Tree to other companies because of the sources that are found on the trees. I can’t disagree with her but I wanted to show her how well sourced my Ancestry.com tree was. She brought it up on her iPad. I showed her my dad and grandfather’s info, then decided to show her the pedigree view. That’s when it got creepy.

Alesandra-Brigitte became very quiet and just stared at the tree. I encouraged her to click on any of the names to see the details. She blinked, looked at me seriously and said, “I’m a Bollenbacher, too.”

In seconds, we discovered we are 6^th cousins. I told her I would be meeting another 6^th cousin who was 96 the next day for lunch. She had no knowledge of the other woman who lived close to her.

Irma and Lori, 6th Bollenbacher cousins

So, by just dropping by for dinner at a castle in the middle of nowhere I connected with a distant family member who I was able to help connect with another family member that lived close to her. Simply amazing!

I only regret that I didn’t have more time to talk to other attendees as I suspect I was related to most of them.

Genealogy is both weird and wonderful! On this Halloween, I hope the spirits enable you to make some meaningful family connections.

October Coincidence

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In June I had the pleasure of meeting two of my Bollenbacher cousins, we are fifth cousins once removed. I had never met any family on this paternal line and how the meeting came about is rather strange.

I’ve previously blogged and lectured about the benefits of using the Whova Conference app to meet a cousin from Germany, Gerhard Hoh. In the spring, Gerhard visited a small town near his home in Germany to interview a 96 year old resident who happened to be a Bollenbacher. He knew, from looking at my public online tree, that I had Bollenbacher lineage.

When Gerhard entered the woman’s home he noticed several photos on the wall and he inquired about them. They had been taken in the 1970s at a family reunion in Northeastern Indiana. Gerhard informed his hostess that he had met a cousin in that area last June who was also a Bollenbacher. The woman kindly provided Gerhard with the addresses of two cousins she had met when she attended the reunion and requested that I connect with them.

I was heading for Sweden the following day so I put off the letter writing until I returned in May. I provided information on how I had received their address and my email address. I received a snail mail response with their email address and a desire for us to meet in person. After several back and forth to find a convenient date, my husband and I made the one hour drive to my “new” cousin’s home.

We spent a lovely afternoon sharing genealogical finds but we were stymied on how we were related. I didn’t have them in my tree nor did they know anything about me, other than an odd coincidence. One of my cousins had brought her husband and he happened to be a farmer. I mentioned some of my other paternal lines and he asked for more information about my Leininger family. I told him the story of my immigrant three times great grandparents Jean “John” and Marie Marguerithe Gass Leininger who had built a home across Ohio-Indiana state lines in the 1840s. I also mentioned that Johnny Appleseed (John Chapman) had farmed the adjoining farm. The farmer was surprised as most people don’t know who owned the land 175+ years ago. Turns out, the farmer has been working those fields for most of his adult life.

This was the first for me – meeting a person that was connected today to the old family homestead. I have gone to visit old city and country homes of my ancestors around the world to meet the current inhabitants but I’ve never met someone who just happened to be accompanying someone else that had a tie to my ancestral past.

I was able to hear that the wheat crop he had just sold, earliest in his whole career, had turned out well. My grandfather and father also grew wheat. I then shared that one of my adult kids had farmed wheat for the first time and on Father’s Day, threshed and milled it, then made a mug cake of it for my husband. That farming gene runs deep in my lines! Social media did the trick for me in connecting with my family’s past.

Daniel Hollingshead and a Connection to My Eastern European Relatives

 

Chester City Hall, Photo by Lori Samuelson

Last week I blogged about how I had first discovered my 7th great grandfather, Daniel Hollingshead and the strange migration that both he and one of my adult children had followed. The story continues...

Daniel was born in 1686 in Saxelby, Leicestershire, England. On my recent visit to Great Britain I made a stop in Chester. Daniel's grandfather Francis was born in Chester in 1622 but emigrated to Saxelby by age 18. Court records show that he returned to farm in Chester but after a contagion, returned to live in Saxelby. There he became a collector of hearthmoney. Unfortunately, Francis became ill and sub contracted his hearthmoney collection job to two other men. Those men absconded with the money. Francis died at age 53 in 1675.

Francis's wife, Marie, was left with four children to support, a large debt to the crown, and not a lot of options. Court records show that she provided her dowry as partial repayment and one Frances's brothers, Ralph Hollingshead, provided the remainder of the funds as he was receiver of securities for Chester.

From court records it appears that whoever in the treasury accepted the money also absconded with it. Ralph then joined the military and shipped out to Barbados. Marie's son, Francis Jr., at age 25, was able to convince the courts that the money had been repaid to the crown but stolen internally. He was then given the job as collector of hearthmoney.

Francis Jr. was Daniel's father. Although these troubling events occurred before Daniel was born it no doubt had an effect on him. Daniel was the third surviving son in the family and knew his fortunes lay outside of Saxelby. Likely that is why he joined the military like his great uncle Ralph. Daniel, following in Ralph's footsteps, ended up in Barbados.

While in Chester I stopped at the public library to see if I could find anything on the Hollingshead. The collection is small and the only finds were about a distant relative, Raphael Hollingshead who was famous for writing a history of England. Disappointed, I traveled onward.

Perhaps my interest stirred the spirit world or perhaps what followed was a simple synchronocity. I don't know - you be the judge.

When I returned home I received an Ancestry.com message from a Hollingshead relative. I have NEVER before had anyone from this line write to me so I was delighted, especially since I had just visited the old family stomping ground.

I was surprised to learn that this "new" cousin lived in the next county from me when I lived in Florida for 50 years. We often visited the beach where he lives a mere 4 miles from. But it gets weirder...

In our typing back and forth he mentioned that his ethnicity is also part Austria-Hungarian. I share that on my maternal line as he does. Then things got really strange.

I asked if he was Croatian but his response stunned me. No, he was Magyar. Unbeknownst to him, I was going to present at the 36th International Congress of Genealogical and Heraldic Sciences in Boston the following week on the plementi ljudi (pl) nobility. The original pls were of Magyar ethnicity. After King Louis II of Hungary died, the area was acquired by the Austrian Hapsburgs who increased the number of pls in defense of cities since this was the time of the Ottoman War. My Croatian Kos and Grdenic family became pls during this time. What a weird connection to my new distant cousin - a Great Britain ancestor and a nobility title from Eastern Europe!

Typically in October I blog about the wonderfully odd happenings I experience throughout the year. This week, I will be heading to Germany and France to walk in my husband and my ancestral steps. No blog next week due to my travels. One more synchronicity will be published the last weekend in October.

Creepy October - Past Hollingshead Connection to the Present

 

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It's October when I typically blog about the creepy coincidences that happen to me over the past year when I am doing genealogy.

I started a bit early, mentioning how I met some Irish and Scotts relatives through my recent travels to Great Britain.

I have another story to share but there's a back story to it so this will be a two part blog.

I've blogged and researched extensively on my Hollingshead family originally from Saxelby, England. Some of the findings were just down right strange! You can read about past blogs I've written about Daniel here, here, and here.

I've never before shared a personal story about why I am so interested in the Hollingshead family but I think it's time to do so.

In 2006, after spending time with a college friend who had transferred from the U.S. to Cambridge University in England, one of my adult kids informed my husband and I that they were going to apply to medical school out of the U.S. We questioned the decision but they were adamant with no reasons other than they felt they had to do that. After several acceptances, the decision was to accept the offer to St. George's Medical School in Grenada, West Indies. To be honest, I wasn't wild about this decision but once I visited I felt at home. After two years of study there, students transfer to either Great Britain, Canada, or various locations in the U.S. Our adult child decided to move to New Jersey.

I am not trying to be rude New Jerseyans but I just couldn't understand why someone would relocate from a beautiful tropical island to a snowy cold location. Really, I told my kid, no one does that. Child was insistent that this was the right place but couldn't explain why.

The adult child finished up their degree by living in Morristown, New Jersey. We visited several times and enjoyed the small town atmosphere. On one of our visits I happened to park next to a church cemetery. I looked up and was faced with a stone for the Byrd family. I had a brick wall Byrd family from somewhere in New Jersey. I decided I would contact the church but I always found it closed and got no response to emails. If you had asked me then, I would have told you we had no connection to Morristown; I thought the Byrd family was from Trenton.

Our last trip to Morristown was in the spring as our child was graduating and would soon leave for internship in another state. We drove one of our vehicles from Florida to New Jersey so that we could have two vehicles (ours and theirs) packed with belonging while my husband drove a small U-Haul to the new location.

On the way, we experienced a major traffic jam in Tampa which delayed us. Bored, I checked my email. There was a new email from someone I didn't know, Edgar Duer Whitley. The gentleman had found my online public tree on Ancestry.com and was excited that I was providing him info on my Duer line that he had been unable to research. I was spelling Duer as Dure - the original family spelling, so had not connected to his research. He attached his genealogical research which connected to Daniel Hollingshead. I had never heard of Daniel.

I responded I would look at the information when we returned from our trip and would get back with. It was three weeks later when I downloaded the information and I was astounded.

Our child had been residing on land that had once been owned by their 8th great grandfather. Even more astounding was that Daniel Hollingshead had relocated to New Jersey from the West Indies. So I stood corrected, others in our family beside my kid have relocated from the West Indies to New Jersey.

But there's more...when I shared this with my child I got a laugh. Our kid had traveled around the area of Cambridge and had visited Saxelby, where Daniel Hollingshead migrated from. It was there that they got the idea to go to a medical school that was international. Was this a channeling of a long dead ancestor?

One of Daniel's sons had become a noted physician in New Jersey. The location where our child had attended undergrad, Boston, was the same area where one of Daniel's grandson had migrated to, Boston. My line went on to Ohio via a stop in the wilds of Virginia, now known as West Virginia. Our adult child was leaving New Jersey for West Virginia. Creepy!

We joked with our child that they would probably end up in Ohio one day since they seemed to keep following that family line's migration route. That hasn't happened yet, however, they live about 10 miles from the Ohio border and work as a physician in Ohio. It's just two counties away from where the Duers, who married the Hollingshead, settled.

As for Edgar, as soon as I reviewed the information he had sent and realized the migration path I wrote to him. I never got a response. Evidently, Edgar had died in the few short weeks after he sent me his life's work. I can't explain how this all happened. It's wonderfully weird and unbelievable. I may have eventually broke through my brick wall without Edgar's research but the timing was perfect as we had a family member in the areas that I could stay with while confirming the information. I guess a side moral of this story is contact those folks you find online and share your research widely.

Next time, I'll tell you another strange connection regarding Daniel and I that occurred while I was in Great Britain.

Dispensations in Days of Old

 

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My blog is a day late due to my return from attending the 36th International Congress of Genealogical and Heraldic Sciences in Boston. It was the first time the over 100 year old conference was held in the U.S. and I was delighted to be able to present on Tracing Noble Roots: Validating the plementi ljudi (pl) Lineage in Former Austria-Hungary. My talk was on how you, too, can identify your noble Croatian ancestors. It was held in South Church, a beautiful building where Benjamin Franklin had been baptized and where I had a family member that used to play tone bells there. Nothing like following in the footsteps of others!

I'd be the first to admit that I don't have much knowledge or experience with heraldry so I did learn a lot by attending the conference. One of the most interesting lectures involved Roman Catholic dispensation records between 1250-1558 in Great Britain. I didn't know they existed and they may be important to your family if you are researching that time period.

From the earliest time until Henry VIII cut his ties with the Roman Catholic church, dispensations were required to legitimize a marriage. For a fee, the amount of which is unknown, couples who wanted to marry were required to complete paperwork with their local parish which would then research if the couple was closely related. If couples did not pay for this "service," and it was later determined that they were closely related (1st-2nd cousin) their marriage was considered void and any children of the marriage would not be eligible to inherit from the estate. Meaning, the Roman Catholic Church obtained the estate since their was no "legitimate" heirs at the time of the parents death.

You can find the 1000+ dispensations in the Calendar of Papal Registers, Britain, and Ireland series under Paper Regesta through 1534. You may also look at the Apostolic Penitentiary to England and Wales through 1503 that were indexed and published by the Canterbury and York Society. Unfortunately, I don't know how to access the publication.

During the Q&A, a discussion ensued on whether other countries dispensations were available. I did a quick internet search and discovered that was the case for Austria-Hungary. Apparently, if you were a noble you couldn't wed unless you were 3rd cousins or further related whereas peasants could wed at 2nd cousin status or back.

Further discussion led to the use of church banns used prior to a couple's wedding. This would be an interesting research topic to determine if those banns were added after Henry VII to continue the validation that a couple were not closely related. "Speak now or forever hold your peace" could then be considered the final measure used to legitimize the marriage in the absence of the church researching the couple's genealogy.

Great Britain Connections

 

In August and September I traveled throughout Great Britain. This was a heritage trip and not designed as a genealogy trip. What's the difference? A heritage trip is a visit to an area in which your family once resided but while there you aren't looking for the old homestead or farm. Rather, you are just getting a feel for what the area is like. A genealogy trip is when you are actively researching records for an ancestor.

To be honest, I couldn't help but combine the two. I did stop at libraries and genealogical societies in a few places to see if I could find anything that wasn't already online. No luck! I also just showed up at several locations where I knew that my husband or my ancestors had once lived to ask about various surnames.

The picture above is of Bains Sweet Shop in Edinburgh, Scotland. Our hotel happened to be next door. While exploring the city I was stunned to see the sign - yes, I have a sweet tooth but it was the owner's name that struck me. I am a Bains/Baines/Baynes and my distant cousin Vickie had asked me before I left to see if I could get any information on that wonderful Quaker line.

The Bains are often in my thoughts as I put in a fireplace in my home two years ago. Unknowingly, I was drawn to a type of rock to use and when it arrived at my home to be installed, I was surprised to discover I had selected rock quarried from Bucks County, Pennsylvania. That's where my 7th great grandmother, Elinor "Ellin" had emigrated to. Her parents, Mathew and Margaret Hatton Baines/Bean had died at sea. I've wondered if Ellin had a stone fireplace similar to mine.

I didn't expect to actually meet a Bains on my travels but I did. Mr. Bain was not into genealogy and had no idea how we could be connected but he did know that his family had been in Scotland for hundreds of years. He jokingly told me to research his line and let him know if I find we are related. Kindly, he gave my husband and I free samples of his delicious candy that he makes himself.

My husband was also in for a surprise. We had decided to visit a site that was once a monastery in Ireland. The tour guide mentioned Brian Boru, of who I am descended. The guide gave some incorrect information about the University of Notre Dame so after the tour ended, I approached him to let him know privately that the school is not known as the Fighting Irish because they come from Irish fighters but because they had once taken on the Ku Klux Klan when that white supremacist organization tried to instill their racist views on South Bend, Indiana.

The tour guide said he did know the real reason but his story was much more entertaining (Sigh). He then mentioned he had noticed I was very interested in what he had to say about Brian Boru. I told him I was a descendant and he asked me if I was an O'Brien. I told him no, but that my husband's third great grandmother was Mary "Molly" O'Brien from Limerick. In sharing our genealogies, turns out he was my husband's third cousin. He also claimed to be a descendant of Brian Boru meaning, my husband is likely, also. This isn't the first time that my husband and I have shared an ancestor but it was the strangest way I've ever gotten a hint that we might have. Definitely, more research is needed. What struck me as odd, though, was that in May I had sought out the location of Molly's grave in Chicago and discovered there was no stone. Since then, I submitted an article for publication in an Irish American newsletter about Mary and her unusual agreement with her husband. Mary was Roman Catholic, her husband was Protestant. Back in the 1850s they agree to maintain both faiths in their household. I've blogged about their decision previously but thought it should be published somewhere for future generations. I had just emailed the article off the day before we left for the trip and wasn't thinking much more about Molly until this strange connection occurred.

Makes you wonder, doesn't it?!

Next week I'll be heading off to the 36th International Congress of Genealogical and Heraldic Sciences in Boston so I won't be blogging next weekend. See you the following week.

Association of Professional Genealogists Management Conference

 

Book Review - Building a Legacy by Rebecca Shamblin

 Disclosure: I received a free copy of this book for review purposes.

We all love research, but sometimes we forget to keep our family trees safe from simple errors or unexpected disasters. Rebecca Shamblin to the rescue! Her latest book, Building a Legacy: A Guide to Combining Ancestry.com and Family Tree Maker, is a step-by-step guide to preserving your hard work.

Not sure why you should sync your Ancestry tree? The explanations are clear and concise. Rebecca provides excellent ideas on how to make the most of both tools. Connecting with distant cousins is crucial for gaining valuable information about ancestors. Remember, not everything is available in record sets! A photo, oral history, or a Bible entry might help you overcome a brick wall in your research. The best way to obtain these family-held items is to make connections via your tree. For those needing to keep their information confidential, Rebecca explains how to ensure complete privacy in Figure 59.

Rebecca noted that Ancestry.com once owned Family Tree Maker (FTM). Although it had a checkered past with several owners (Banner Blue Software, Broderbund, The Learning Company, SoftKey, Mattel, and Ancestry), FTM has improved through Software MacKiev. I had frustrations with the older versions, but repurchasing the updated software was a good decision, and Rebecca's book is an excellent resource I wish I had last year.

Whether you prefer Ancestry.com or FTM, Rebecca's instructions are easy to follow, with examples for both programs. Your view might differ slightly from the examples in the book. For instance, when I sync Ancestry to FTM as shown in Figure 12, I don’t need to sign in to Ancestry again. If yours is set up like mine, just skip that step.

With my large Ancestry tree, I sometimes have to re-sign into Ancestry during a sync. FTM's 24/7 tech support helped me find a workaround for this issue. Rebecca recommended checking the box for Ancestry Citation Media when downloading. For large trees with heavy media, this might not work well. Instead, download the tree without citation media (Figure 19). You can easily obtain citation media later by clicking on any thumbnail under the Media tab and pressing Ctrl + F5. Choose to add all citations, then repeat the process to add only the missing ones for extra security.

Tree Vault is mentioned as a valuable add-on for data safety. However, be cautious. I accidentally deleted files from OneDrive that Tree Vault used, causing issues. FTM flagged the problem, and I had to resync the trees. Lesson learned!

Rebecca mentioned that some Ancestry features are available to free account users. For those on a budget, here's a link to get a free Ancestry membership: Free Registered Guest Accounts. Note that with a free account, you can’t search all records. Keep in mind if you use Ancestry at your local library, you can’t view or create your own tree.

One of Rebecca's most helpful tips is how to set up FTM on more than one computer. This is great if you use a desktop at home and a laptop in archives. Follow her directions, and you’re good to go.

I’d like to add a tip for dealing with Newspapers.com’s OCR. If you’re unsure about confusing words, try using AI to make corrections. However, always verify with the original source to ensure accuracy. Your local library might offer free access to Newspapers.com so check that out.

Rebecca shared issues she encountered when backing up and compacting her tree, which I’ve also faced. Her book is a must have if you are using FTM to avoid those problems!

Building a Legacy is a valuable resource for researchers at all levels. I highly recommend purchasing this book . It's offered in a variety of ways - digital pdf, black and white paperback, spiral bound color or a hardcover color edition. 

RootsMagic10 Frustration Update

 I am happy to say that RootsMagic did agree to refund my $20.00 for version 10 that would not sync with Ancestry.com. Unfortunately, the email that they sent me stated the refund would occur on August 19 but as of today, still has not shown on my credit card statement. So, I've reached out again to RootsMagic asking when this will occur. Sigh.

I will be travelling for the next two weeks so I won't be blogging for a bit. In the interim, Happy Hunting!

Making the Most of Maps

 

Photo taken at Indiana Historical Society by Lori Samuelson

I came upon this map when I visited the Indiana Historical Society in Indianapolis in July with the Society of Indiana Pioneers (SIP). The map was devised by SIP in 1932 to assist potential members with locating their ancestor's county's founding between 1790 and 1844. Indiana became a state in 1816 but had become part of the U.S.'s Northwest Territory in 1787. After statehood, as the population rose and scattered, larger counties were made into smaller ones. The pioneer settlement period in Indiana ended in 1849 so this map noted most of those changes.

Here's a recommendation if you find a unique map either in person or online - look for another. I realize my photo is a tad hard to read but under each county there is a code of "S, O, C, L." What does that mean?

I searched online and found the identical map with notations that explained it: S was the date of the first white settler, O was the Date of Organization, C means the first Count Occurred, and L is the first Land Entry. The codes and a blow up of the map is available online here.

Maps are an important part of genealogy. Checking to see if the resource is widely available can help you get the most out of your research.

RootsMagic10 Frustration

 

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Did you receive an offer in June to upgrade your RootsMagic for $20.00 to the new version 10? I did but it took me a bit to decide if it was worth it to do or not. Here’s why…

I’m a long time RootsMagic user and was using version 7 because version 8 never worked for me. It couldn’t handle syncing my large Ancestry.com family tree. Last December I had to purchase version 9 since Ancestry.com changed to two-factor identification. The tree still didn’t sync correctly, however, I was able to transfer my working version 7 to it.

Enter Mid Summer’s Day when I receive another email from RootsMagic with the limited offer to upload to their supposedly latest and greatest version. It hadn’t even been six months since I bought the last one!

I did decide to purchase it but I’m getting a tad tired of forking over $20 every six months, especially when I wasn’t sure if it would even synch with Ancestry.

I have made radical changes to the last tree that I synced with RootsMagic7 so I deleted the tree and decided to start fresh with version 10. They have already updated to a version 10.1 or something in July so I updated again as I tried to get my files transferred.

I made 10 attempts to sync in July. Each time the program timed out at some point - anywhere from a few minutes to 10 hours. You read that right - 10 hours as I let it go overnight. Once it times out RootsMagic is supposed to retry connecting with Ancestry.com, however, it won't reconnect whether you click "reconnect" or let it try to do it on its own.

I reached out to RootsMagic's IT Department on 29 July as I did when I had a problem with RootsMagic8. Thirteen messages back and forth and the final verdict:

..."I am sorry I do not know why it times out and will no longer sign back onto Ancestry.  I can see where it did many times, disconnect to Ancestry, but signed back on, after so long it just did not sign on anymore."...

I have followed their process to get a refund. It's a software company that doesn't allow you to do that process online. Sigh. Snail mail only. Their chat is also hidden so I had to rely on email to get help. The IT worker wrote that they would try to sync on their home computer as they didn't have space on their work computer. Although I greatly appreciate someone going to that extent to help a customer, I do question why a software company doesn't have enough RAM on their work computers to test their product. How can the sell it if it hasn't been tested on large trees? Why haven't they tried to fix the problem that I made them aware of 21 months ago?

The response now was not much better than on 8 December 2022 when they responded:

..."I too could not download your Ancestry tree, I do not know if it is because it is so large.  The number of individual is okay, but you have so many citations.  It might be how they are linked to different sources and some may not be linked to any source.  
 
Downloading your file would take many many hours since you also have lots of photos.
 
If I find out what might be the problem, I will let you know. 

Make sure your find is not being downloaded to oneDrive, iCloud or Dropbox
When downloading make sure you have lots of Ram.  I download to an external drive which had more than enough room."

That response never made sense to me - IT tried to save to an external drive that had enough room and it still didn't work but I should try that?! I also didn't understand the reasoning about the citations possibly being linked to different sources or none at all.

I am able to sync my tree with Family Tree Maker. The issue is not with storage on my end or the amount of media and sources.

The issue is that RootsMagic10, like RootsMagic8 & 9 software, cannot handle large trees if you have media for the individuals. The problem is on their end and perhaps they don't have many customers with large fully cited trees so they don't care to fix their problem.

Next month, I'll share how Family Tree Maker's software works as I have an upcoming blog book review about that product.

In the meantime, if you decided not to upgrade with RootsMagic because you've experienced what I have, you might want to take advantage of Legacy Family Tree’s latest version 10  which is FREE! Here is how to obtain that software. Although you can not sync with Ancestry.com, you can save your .gedcom so you can still work on your tree without being on Ancestry. The difference between sync and download/upload is that your media (photos and documents) does not transfer with download/upload. So you don't see the picture but the data is still transferable.

Farewell, RootsMagic, I will miss using it. Like you wrote 21 months ago, let me know when you fix your software.

Thank you, Software MacKiev for fixing FamilyTreeMaker as years ago the former owners wouldn't do that and LegacyFamilyTree for offering your product free. It's good to know we still have a back up for our online tree.

Genealogy Field Trip

Indiana Historical Society Archives, Indianapolis. Photo by Lori Samuelson

In June I had the pleasure of taking a behind the scene archive tour at the Indiana Historical Society in Indianapolis. This was a field trip sponsored by the Society of Indiana Pioneers. It is a lovely archive with interesting and informative exhibits. Different than most archives I’ve visited, I was permitted to touch the items in their collection. That included a 2500 year old Akkadian cuneiform tablet, an original copy of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, and one of only three Book of Enoch circa 1450-1500 written an ancient South Semitic language known to be in existence. We also saw the box in the archives that held President William Harrison’s quilt, several busts of Abe Lincoln, and loads of photos and postcards.

Using Perplexity.AI To Find Archives & Record Sets

 

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Last month I blogged about my latest genealogy trip to Chicago in May and my disappointment at visiting many archives and not finding the information I sought. I wish I had read about Perplexity.AI BEFORE my visit.

Typically when I plan a research trip, I consult FamilySearch.org’s Wiki for the area. There, I find the libraries, museums, societies, and other archives that may hold the information I seek. Going to each website, I look at the card catalog and note any record sets that seem promising. I list the address, note closures, add hours of operation, any fees, and where to park. If an appointment is needed I request via email a day and time. Then, I arrive early and am ready to research.

My experience in Chicago, however, was rather bleak. I’d arrive and ask to see a record set. A librarian would then tell me it wasn’t going to hold the answer and I should go to another archive. Or, they’d give me the record but had no knowledge about how it was acquired, what the cryptic notes written on a page meant, etc. I would then get in my car and drive to the next location and go through the same process. Consequently, I came home with finding some information but not everything I had hoped to.

A week after I returned I read an article in American Ancestors about Perpexity.AI and I decided to give it a try. I entered my research question regarding where to find records for a possible 1890s scam of a Civil War Union veteran in Indiana. I wanted to know what record in Indiana could help me uncover who was the individual impersonating a deceased soldier. I received a list of archives and what their record collection held. I haven't gone to those archives yet but it does look promising. Having a free AI tool to use to not only identify an archive but a record set in it based on information you uploaded for analysis is a gamechanger!

German Genealogy Hints

 

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Last week I wrote about solving a genealogical newspaper translation mystery with the help of my extremely knowledgeable cousin Gerhard. Gerhard gave me more useful information when doing German genealogy that I’d love to share with you.

First, he provided me with a resource that would help me transcribe older German alphabet letters. This resource is online here but I never used it. Old handwriting is difficult to read even in English so when I came upon a German document, I simply found someone else to transcribe and translate for me. Gerhard encouraged me to give it a try using the resource which I plan to do.

My family was from the Palatinate region which today encompasses Bavaria. Because that region was torn apart by war for years, the records were sometimes written in Old German, French, and Latin. It even belonged to Austria at one point in time. That’s a lot of customs from lots of regions! What I never understood was the meaning of the word Pfalz. I thought that was a county in Germany. Gerhard explained that Pfalz simply means Palatinate. Duh!

I had used FamilySearch for my German family church records but I wasn’t aware that FamilySearch also contained civil records from the region to the 1880s. Since my folks were here long before that time period, I will be exploring civil records to add to their vital info that I have already discovered.

Tracing Roots: An Afternoon with a Distant Cousin Exploring German Genealogy

 

Gerhard and I 23 May 2024

Last year I blogged about meeting a distant cousin through Whova, a conference ap. I also mentioned it in the lecture I presented for the National Genealogical Society in May. Social media is a wonderful way to connect with your disconnected relatives. We are 7th cousins. Definitely not close but we have been able to connect through a share German great grandfather Kettering.

On May 22, Gerhard and his girlfriend, Rita, visited my home. It was a wonderful visit! In the morning we visited our local farmer’s market, toured my town, went for brunch, and then returned to my home where we spent hours doing genealogy together.

Gerhard looked over my online family tree and corrected the many German name misspellings I had, particularly regarding locations. I have terrible trouble with diacritical marks!

He brought me updated tree info with sources found in German archives that are not accessible online. I agreed to create a tree for his colleague who found an old genealogy that claimed that some of his family emigrated to Indiana in the 1800s. I confirmed that indeed, they did, after stopping first in Kentucky. I was able to find living descendants for the colleague to contact.

The best part of our genealogical afternoon, besides spending time with a new cousin, was his explanation of a mystery newspaper article that I have written about previously. I had a dickens of a time initially getting native speaker consensus on the word “birthshaus." I used a German teacher who was born and raised in Germany, some of my family members, a Facebook posting, and a posting to a genealogical group I belong to and received the translation as tavern or coliseum. I have even tried AI and gotten the same results. Clearly, there was no coliseum in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1834. I did find a tavern so I selected that word to use in the lineage society application I was submitting.

Gerhard laughed when he saw the word. He explained a better word usage would have been “beer house.” I was confused so he explained German culture from that time period. After church on Sundays, the ladies would congregate together and spend the day chatting. Their husbands would retire to the house next door to the church that served beer. There, they would drink the day away until their wives came to get them to go home for dinner. Gerhard did not know that the culture had been brought with the immigrants to the U.S. Apparently, it had to Ohio, all because of the newspaper article I found and Gerhard’s knowledge of the customs of people from the home region.

In the United Kingdom, a public house where beer was sold and consumed was known as a beerhouse (Beerhouse act 1830 (11 Geo. 4 & 1 Will. 4 c. 64). That would have been the best term to use in the translation.

Having someone who was knowledgeable about the language, customs, and culture was what I needed to solve my genealogical mystery.

Next week, more helpful hints from Gerhard!

Disappearing Genealogy Books

 

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Are books disappearing from your local library or archive? I've heard concerns locally from several patrons and I do share their concerns. The books are showing up at library book sales and even Goodwill.

I asked a local librarian why this was occurring and was told that the books weren't being used. I asked how would they know if the books were being used or not since they were all reference books not available for check out. Didn't get an answer.

Last month I spent the day at the Indiana Historical Society. I asked Suzanne Hahn, VP of Archives and Library and Bethany Hrachovec, Director, Education and Engagement if there was a trend towards purging genealogical tomes. There is for the following reasons:

1. They are a duplicate copy
2. They have been digitized (though not necessarily by the library who is purging it)
3. There is a copy at a larger library. In northeastern Indiana that would be Allen County Public Library, Indiana State Library, Indiana Historical Society, or a university library.

Many libraries are now moving to a theme - only railroad books, for example, or only books for their particular county. Could be but I'm seeing books meeting the purported theme also removed. I'm also not seeing communication between libraries so one removes a book that would be a great addition for another library's theme. Instead of contacting the library it goes to the resale bin.

Which gets me to the current situation I see in my local library. Too many books for resale and not enough storage so they are giving the books to Goodwill. If they don't sell they are then disposed of. So very sad!!!

There are people who cannot read digitized books. Perhaps they don't have the tech or their eyes will not handle it. I see no sense in removing a book that has been digitized, especially not by the entity that was purging it. How do they know that book will stay available to the public? Think about the recent law suit with Internet Archives! The case is back in court again but that doesn't mean that Internet Archive will survive their appeal. What a loss that will be for all of us.

Maintaining only one regional copy is also problematic. When it starts snowing here people stop driving, especially older folks. Having to travel up to two and a half hours to look at a book that used to be available five minutes from your home is a ridiculous waste of time and money.

If shelf space was at a premium I could understand thinning the ranks but in most cases, it's not. If the library had funds to purchase new materials I could understand it but that's not happening, either.

If this situation is occurring in your region speak up. Complete library surveys to voice your concerns. If you have the funds and space, purchase the volumes. Perhaps a genealogy club or society can scoop up the works and create their own check out system. Genealogy books need to be treasured and available to future generations. Help make that happen.