Author Archives: Donna Phillips

Let’s Talk About….FamilySearch WIKI!

by Donna Phillips


Have you accessed the wonderful, fantastic, FREE resource that is the FamilySearch WIKI? When you click to www.familysearch.org/WIKI this is the page that opens up to you. From this menu, you can “order” among over 106,000 articles……… articles about places all over the world, records of all types, and what records can be found where. When my Puerto Rican friend, Leticia, wanted help with her family tree, the first thing I did was to go to the WIKI and print out all the pages of tips, helps and websites. 

Danielle Batson at the 2023 RootsTech, gave these tips in her talk:

  • “The WIKI is your online genealogy guide linking you to all known records of the entire world!”  How can you top that??
  • WIKI is constantly adding newly found links/sites.
  • WIKI offer strategy papers.
  • Search by locality, she said. “That’s where things happen!”
  • Search top-down…. ie, start with Denmark or Virginia and then work your way down through the menu.
  • Realize that some countries (“Bulgaria for instance”) hasn’t as many records.
  • Don’t over look the sidebar with links to other related records.
  • You can also join a community group for your target area and ask locality-specific questions.
  • Wiki offers Guided Research….. Wiki offers guides to where you might look next.
  • You can book your free Virtual Genealogy consultation, a 20-minute time one-on-one with a FamilySearch specialist for that area or type of record. 
  • And this, the best words she said were these:

“The FamilySearch WII is your researchers’ Golden Ticket!”

Let’s Talk About…Southern Research

by Donna Phillips

Right off the bat, I’ll bet you’re surprised to see the number of states included under the umbrella of “southern,” as in Southern Genealogy Research. Surprise, indeed!

I attended the 2023 RootsTech and listened to a speaker (whose name I didn’t scribble down) speak about Southern Research and giving some tips for same:

  • Learn as much history on/from your family as you can! 
  • Reason out the facts……… was it indeed a southern state?
  • Brush up on your U.S. history from 1763 to 1775 for starters.
  • Then progress to the Civil War time period. 
  • Know that Georgia was only 1/2 British and was 1/2 Native American.
  • Yes, while many courthouses were burned and records lost, not everything was lost. The documentation of the county’s wealth and income was all important (how to levy taxes if you didn’t know who owned what land?) and were reconstructed.
  • Search the land records and deeds of target states.
  • Attempt a time line for each family in your target location.
  • Plot the family’s migration into and then through the Southern states. 
  • Check newspapers for that time and place.
  • Correlate info from all available records: land, census, probate, court, military
  • BE AWARE OF COUNTY BOUNDARY CHANGES!
  • Use period maps.
  • Watch for name changes or just misspellings.
  • Southern “speech” often use “brother/cousin” when there was no relationship
  • Each southern state has historical societies and archives as do many of the counties in those states. Many of these societies had many much of their holdings available online. 

Example: My hubby’s great-grandfather, Seaborn Phillips, born 1844 in Georgia and died in 1906 in Texas. Why Texas? He was a Confederate soldier (was at the Battle of Gettysburg, he said) and after the war, Georgia was devastated and had no resources to pay pensions to veterans, so he moved his family west to Texas where pensions were to be had (Texas was not heavily impacted by the war). 

Let’s Talk About…Filles du Roi

by Donna Phillips

Was your ancestral mother a filles du roi? If so, be proud. These women are known as the founding mothers of Canada.

Here’s the history:

To secure his colonial claims in North America, King Louis XIV of France had to strengthen his settlements in New France (Nova Scotia). French officials recruited girls and women to migrate to New France to increase the population. They became known as the filles du roi, or King’s Daughters.

From 1663 to 1673, nearly 1000 women came to New France. In exchange, the women received money, clothes and household items. Almost all of these women married and had children, doubling the population. 

From the perspective of the French Crown, the program was a success. However, little has been recorded of how these women viewed their experiences. 

The women were to be of child-bearing age and especially so, in good health. The women picked for this “adventure” were chosen by their age, health and physical strength, not necessarily for their looks. They had to be “in good health and strong enough for field work and have strong skills when it comes to domestic tasks…”

There are many Canada-based societies dedicated to preserving the memory, experiences and descendancy of these so-called King’s Daughter. Also, YouTube offers several video-stories. 

So be proud if your great-x-time-grandmother was a Kings’ Daughter!

Let’s Talk About….Are You A Francophone?

by Donna Phillips

A francophone, simply put, is one who speaks French primarily as a first language. We might guess that there are many French speaking people in Canada and Louisiana but I never would have guess that there are so many francophones in the rest of the world, especially Africa. 

According to an article in American Ancestors, Fall 2010, by Felix Lafrance:

Between 1840 and 1930, more than 900,000 French-Canadians left Canada for the U.S. This massive exodus was the result of many complex factors. In 19th century French Canada faced significant economic and socio-cultural changes as it transformed from a rural society to an industrial economy. …… as economic development exploded, the lives of the working people became worse…. pricing, lack of farmland, poor quality of arable land, debt.. left many French Canadians without a home or a job.

So they came to the United States. But where? By 1900 there was a sizable French-speaking population in Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Smaller groups were in New Hampshire, and Maine. And they did well in their new home. 

What attracted them to the U.S.? If lack of jobs, debts and poverty were the primary reasons why French-Canadians left their native land, the pull exerted by America was a factor.  By the end of the Civil War, American industry found itself with a shortage of workers in all sectors….. housing, construction, dam and canal building, installing and maintaining roads, sewage and aqueduct systems, farming, timber and especially industrial manufacturing. These industries experienced unprecedented growth due to the influx of French-Canadians eager to work.  

American life itself was a powerful attraction. American cities promised a new way of life and escape from agricultural work. “City delights” attracted the young. 

Bottom line, the “fever of departure” caused almost one million French-Canadians to immigrate to the U.S. between 1840 and 1930. Perhaps your ancestor was among them??

Do you still speak some French?? 

Let’s Talk About…Are You Your Own Brickwall?

by Donna Phillips

In genealogy, the term “brick wall” is often used to refer to tough research problems, apparent dead-ends that after many hours of searching still yield no answers. 

We all think we know about brick walls because most of us have them….. or have had them in our family history research. Am I right? Ever considered that you might be your own brickwall??

A handout from FamilySearch identifies some common genealogical mistakes and offers strategies for overcoming them:

  • GETTING STARTED
    • Talk to family!! Do not skip this step.
    • Realize that there is information beyond the Internet.
    • Realize that while online family trees are great CLUES, unless they are well documented, they are not to be taken as  gospel.
    • Get over the “if it’s not free, I don’t/can’t/want it.” (There is a cost associated with creating and maintaining websites, obtaining and organizing records, etc)
  • THE RESEARCH PROCESS
    • Plan your research; don’t succumb to SOS (Shiny Object Syndrome)
    • Don’t start at the wrong end…. meaning start with today, document your ancestry from today on back …. and you’ll likely find clues to that end-of-line ancestor.
    • Focus on one family at a time… NOT an individual. Not one man or woman was totally alone but was surrounded by family, friends and neighbors. (In those olden times of the 1800s, where did an ailing old widow go? To live with her children or grandchildren! There was no Social Security.)
    • Be aware of spelling variations: Phillips, Philips, Phillipss, Filips, Flips, etc. are all the same surname (most likely, spoken by one who could not spell). 
  • WORKING WITH RECORDS
    • Aim to access the “real” or bottom-line source, not a derivative source. Ask: where did she get that information as shown on her online tree????? SHE is not a source for you! 
    • Do you collect names and bits and pieces of likely-looking information in hopes of fitting the puzzle pieces together? Doesn’t work well, does it, and soon you have desk overflowing with papers! Take the time….. make the time… to analyze your findings. Take time to spread it out on a table and think how it might or does fit. 
    • It is most worthwhile to write up your idea, your analyzing, your thoughts. Just because you’ve gathered a bunch of facts about an individual or a family, do you have the right family and/or all the information? A school notebook is great; you’re not writing a novel but just jotting ideas. 😐

There are dozens of websites offering “Overcoming Brickwalls” and many YouTube videos of the same. Instead of giving up, or quitting when all the low-hanging fruit is picked, or succumbing to SOS, give yourself a shake and learn how to NOT be your own brick wall!

Let’s Talk About….. Dinner Time!

by Donna Phillips


Today dinner time often means sharing a pizza……. at the table or in front of the TV or computer. But it was NOT like that in the olden days.

An old Miss Manners newspaper column gives the courses, and the order of these courses, for a 19th century dinner……. all served with different and appropriate dishes, silverware and wine:

  • Raw oysters
  • Soup, often a cream soup
  • Hors d’oeuvres
  • Fish
  • Entree… not what we think today but vegetables like asparagus, artichoke, corn
  • Sorbet
  • Hot roast
  • Cold roast
  • Game
  • Salad
  • Pudding
  • Ice Cream
  • Fruit
  • Cheese

“Never fear, “Miss Manners touted “these were times when thinness was considered not chic, but pitiful. But even then, guests were not supposed to et everything. It was like an entire (menu) from which to pick and choose.”Keep in mind, that at these L-O-N-G dinners, you’re wearing heavy, formal attire (corsets, full skirts, sleeves) and there was no AC in summer and it was considered bad manners to absent yourself from the table. If invited, would you attend???

Let’s Talk About:Plants on the Oregon Trail,Part 2

by Donna Phillips


This is Part 2, continued from Part 1 in the previous post.

Leaving time for the wagon trail was keyed to practicality: grass. Horses could bite short grass; cows and oxen could not. Horses eat by wrapping their tongues around longer grass. Journal entries spoke often of plants and grasses, which are remarkable considering they were seeing many new plants daily. The “tall grass prairies” had more feed than the “short grass prairies.” Many wagon trains began with a high number of wagons but this number was reduced enroute simply due to the available grass factor for the animals. 

Pat Packard said she’d never found mention of their finding, picking and then cooking any kind of greens along the route. She did find mention of fruit (in late summer) such as chockcherries and currants. While the adults avoided unknown berries when they saw the red-berry smears on the faces and fingers of their children, they realized that berries weren’t poisonous. Packard did mention the finding of wild onions, at least on the plains, but not in the far west. Fear of “death camas” was real and the pioneers hadn’t the knowledge to see the difference between wild onion and death camas. Cactus was mentioned as bein new and so pretty but not to eat….and stepping on them was rarely mentioned. 

On they they learned to make was “mincemeat” most likely of berries and chopped buffalo meat. This was a pemmican-like product that they learned about from the Indians. 

By the time they reached the Rocky Mountains, they were hungry for fresh greens but none was to be had. They were still somewhat fearful of unknown berries and then they encountered the huckleberry! Again, their unafraid children showed them the way. By the time they reached the Rocky Mountains signs of scurvy were really showing up. The “bloom” of the trip had definitely worn off and also by this point “pretty plants” were seldom mentioned in the journals.

Also by this time the grain was gone as was the wild-grass-seed-grass so the horses were really in a bad way. This ongoing problem of feeding the animals dictated every decision made along the trail. Sometimes this led to making river crossings at dangerous fords (like the second crossing of the Snake in southern Idaho). They also had found that in the deserts of the West, everything “sticks, stings or stinks.” Ms. Packard got a big laugh at that one. 

In 1852, some 72,000 people crossed the plains in more than 20,000 wagons. Imagine: 20,000 times four oxen or horses is a huge animal population needing feeding and leaving dung everywhere. No wonder the trail spread out with all those animals…and dust…. ahead of you. And remember that likely the children walked barefoot. 

Ms. Packard also explained the physiology of why plants affected horses and oxen differently. Horses take the food straight down into their stomach, where any in-plant poisons could immediately affect the animal. Oxen would take the food down into their “holding tank” stomach where the poisons could be neutralized before the food passed into the digestive stomach. 

TO BE CONTINUED…………………

Let’s Talk About…. Cajun & Creole

by Donna Phillips

 (The above was snipped from The Historic New Orleans Collection; used with thanks. The map below was snipped from the website of the Laura Plantation; again with thanks. The bottom information was snipped from the website Explore Houma, Louisiana’s Bayou Country; with thanks.)

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CAJUN & CREOLE

The term Creole can have many meanings, but during the early days of Louisiana, it meant that a person was born in the colony and was the descendant of French or Spanish parents. The term is a derivative of the word “criollo,” which means native or local, and was intended as a class distinction. In present Louisiana, Creole generally means a person or people of mixed colonial French, African American and Native American ancestry. The term Black Creole refers to freed slaves from Haiti and their descendants.

Still another class of Creole originates with the placage system in which white and creole men took on mixed-race mistresses in a lifelong arrangement, even if the men were married or married later. In this arrangement, the women had property, their children were educated and entitled to part of the man’s estate upon his death. In New Orleans, these people made up the artisan class and became wealthy and very influential.

“Cajun” is derived from “Acadian” which are the people the modern day Cajuns descend from. These were the French immigrants who were expelled from Nova Scotia, and eventually landed in Louisiana after decades of hardship and exile. Hearty folks from many backgrounds married into the culture, including Germans, Italians, Free People of Color, Cubans, Native Americans and Anglo-Americans. French or patois, a rural dialect, was always spoken. Due to the isolation of the group in the southern locations of Louisiana, they have retained a strong culture to this day.

ANY QUESTIONS? Ask Google!

Let’s Talk About: Plants of the Oregon Trail,Part 1

by Donna Phillips


In preparation for our EWGS May meeting, I thought I’d share something I submitted to our BULLETIN back in March 2009:

These are notes that I took in August 200-8, when I attended the Oregon California Trails Association (OCTA) Conference in Nampa, Idaho. Pat Packard was one of the featured speakers. She spoke on the plants of the Oregon Trail and how the folks perceived the plants and used them as they went along. I thought our EWGS readers might enjoy “hearing” her too. 

Plants fueled the trip for both men and animals. Plants dictated the route, the leaving times, the stopping times and points for the entire trip. They could not pack and carry with them enough food for their animals as they went along; horses and oxen had to eat along the way. 

Most of these families had already moved an average of five times. They thought of themselves as “movers.” Because of that, they had experience with new plants in new places. Also because of that, they had developed a theory that if they didn’t know what the plant was, and could not name it, they it was to be considered poisonous and not to be eaten. 

Most think they did glean and eat along the way. Not so, according to Pat Packard, for these reasons: 

(1) they were often in desert country where there was nothing to eat

(2) they travelled in summer when food-plants were less abundant

(3) they constantly encountered unknown plants and were fearful

Their basic diet was beans, bacon and biscuits. This is a diet high in carbs and protein. There was very little Vitamin C, and scurvy was the third highest cause of death on the Oregon Trail. English sailors had long ago discovered that limes helped and could be carried on long voyages. They got the idea that acid/sour substances were the cure for scurvy. The immigrants didn’t have limes, but they did have vinegar. In her research, Ms. Packard found little mention of the pioneers searching to find vinegar or pickles to pack and take with them. This seems obvious to us now but not to them then. They really needed fresh fruit and greens. They had some dried fruit but unfortunately drying the fruit destroys the Vitamin C. They kept in mind the old advice about beware of poisonous plants and even as they saw various fruits and greens, they were fearful to use them. On the Mormon trains it was better because in many cases folks had been over the same trail before and their advice was passed along to new immigrants. Nearly 100% of the Mormon pioneers utilized the wild plants they found. 

TO BE CONTINUED

Let’s Talk About…. Musems: Great Learning Places

by Donna Phillips


Bet you had no clue that there was a museum in Spokane having over 19,000 articles from the fire fighting industry?? I did not! But I do want to go!

There are plenty of museums in the Eastern Washington area as well as scattered all over our wonderful, historically-minded, state!

Below is a copied bit from the Washington State Genealogical Society (www.wasgs.org) where you’ll find a pages-long list of museums spread all around our Evergreen State! (The list was mostly compiled by EWGS member, Duane Beck.)

As that list on the state society webpage covers the entire state, even in your travels you might/could/should/ought to visit a museum and get some extra “larnin into your noggin.”  (Speaker George Schweitzer used to say that.) 


There were these many listed for the Spokane area…..the entire list was PAGES long…… so there are plenty of museums in your area to learn from and visit!


P.S. The list was compiled some time ago. If you wish to visit a particular museum, I’d strongly advise you to check out their website and/or their Facebook page.