Author Archives: Donna Phillips

Let’s Talk About: Creating A Locality Guide

by Donna Phillips

Remember the old TripTik Travel Planners offered by AAA? When you were planning a trip, you’d contact AAA and ask for a customized TripTik and a little flip-booklet of all the roads, attractions, lodging and eats was furnished to you. It became the “bible” for your trip. 

I propose to you today that a Locality Guide for your genealogy research is parallel to the old TripTik. When you’re “going to” (researching) in a particular place, don’t you want to know the roads and places there?????  And, F.Y.I., creating a Locality Guide is  part of many how-to genealogical study courses. 

So. What to include in a Locality Guide? For imaginary visual impact, picture creating a Locality Guide for  Washington State or even better, a Washington State county. Here might be the chapters to include:

  • Historical Background & Geography
  • Local & County Government Agencies
  • State or Provincial Government
  • Laws
  • Archives, Libraries, Museums, Historical Societies
  • Historical Context Materials
  • Research Guides
  • Genealogy societies & Social Media
  • Census Records
  • Government Vital Records
  • Maps & Gazetteers
  • City Directories
  • Newspapers
  • Cemeteries & Funeral Homes & Onsite Grave Locators
  • Religious Records
  • Probate Records
  • Local Land Records
  • Federal Land Records
  • Tax Records
  • Immigration & Naturalization Records
  • Military Records

Imagine searching out and then compiling all that information for your target research place!  Seems to me, it would just about guarantee success in your search. 


Robyn M. Smith on her website, Reclaiming Kin, describes what a Locality Guide is: “It’s a document you create that contains key snippets of information relevant to genealogical research in a specific locale. The idea is to have one central guide that you can refer to time and time again when you are researching that place.” I agree!

Let’s Talk About: “Going Dutch”

by Donna Phillips


It was once thought that the origins of the term “going Dutch,” used when two or more people share an activity but agree to each pay their own way could be traced back to the 17th-century animosity between England and The Netherlands. The two nations were known to engage in frequent disagreements regarding political boundaries and trade routes, and ‘going Dutch’ was said to be a British slur referring to the Netherlanders’ negative reputation for stinginess.

However, a closer look reveals that this expression was actually a 19th-century American creation. An 1873 edition of the Missouri newspaper The Daily Democrat called on “our temperancefriends”to impose the “Dutch treat,” in which “each man pays his reckoning,” in local saloons as a means of combatting public drunkenness. 

The etymology of this use of the word “Dutch” can be traced to a community of immigrants who were not, in fact, from the Netherlands at all, but Germany….also known as Deutschland, whose phonological similarity to “Dutch” led to the common American misnomer “Pennsylvania Dutch.”


Here are some other Dutch-related idioms that have made their way into the English lexicon:

  • Beat the Dutch:  to exceed expectations
  • Double Dutch: gibberish
  • Dutch agreement: an agreement made while intoxicated
  • Dutch courage: courage brought on by alcohol
  • Dutch nightingales: Frogs
  • Dutchman’s draught: a very large beer

(Thanks to the Viking Daily, Monday, April 15, 2024, aboard the Viking Kvasir.)

Let’s Talk About: Railroad Land Grants Pt 1

by Donna Phillips

 Rail lines have played a crucial role in the development of America. After the Civil War, rail lines accepted huge gifts of land to subsidize railroad construction and operations across the American Plains and Canadian Prairies. Leaders in both countries contended (and rightly so) that whoever controlled access across this region would control the Pacific Coast.

The rail lines across middle America differed from rail lines in the East. These lines fostered towns and communities. Between 1850 and 1871, railroad companies were given an estimated 185 million acres of land from individuals and from governments. The Federal Government offered 20 square miles of land for each mile of track laid in territories and 10 miles of land for each mile laid in states. These land grants were in alternate sections with the government holding every other section. 

Much has been argued about the this land-granting method: who got rich? No question, the rail lines were built. Too many politicians in Washington felt that the land in the west was desolate or frozen and of little worth. By 1900, when James J. Hill took control of the Northern Pacific and greatly expanded the reach of the rail lines and fostered extensive publicity to bring in settlers. The immigrants flooding into Eastern ports came for the exact purpose of buying land and were not disappointed. 

Another, lesser known, factor pushing development of rail lines across the plains and prairies was a sobering realization that America needed to consolidate her land holdings or possibly lose them to Texas or Mexico and maybe even to Britain and France. Washington politicians realized that the East could not afford to be cut off from the West. 

So land grants acted as a form on non-cash subsidy, making the construction of extremely expensive rail lines across 1000 miles of unsettled land financially feasible for private companies. Ultimately this newly settled land would allow the creation of many thousands of new farms, ranches, mines and towns.

Let’s Talk About: German Webinars & Databases

by Donna Phillips


I’ve belonged to the German Genealogy Group for several years and have ALWAYS gleaned information from their monthly 14-page newsletter (comes via email). They specialize in “things German” and offer nearly 24,000,000 imaged records on their website. If you have German roots, you better check this out: www.GermanGenealogyGroup.com. Membership is $15 annually.

Legacy Family Tree Webinars will present German History For Genealogists on Wednesday, October 16th at 2:00ET. “Knowing the most important dates in German history can be helpful to your research.”  This webinar is free on the day it’s presented; thereafter it goes into their vast library which you can access for a $49 annual membership fee.  They have handouts too! To register, go to https://famlytreewebinars.com/webinar/luther-napoleon-and-the-kaiser-german-history-for-genealogists. 

The Kentucky Genealogical Society will present Finding a German Parish Record on Tuesday, October 15th at 7:00ET. To register go to: https://kygs.org/event/finding-a-german-parish-and-online-parish-records.

The Sept-Oct 2024 issue of Family Tree Magazine features an article discussing the history of German civil registration, civil record formats, how to locate German civil records plus other tips. Many libraries carry this magazine or you can order a copy (or subscribe??) by clicking to Family Tree Magazine. 

My maternal grandmother was 100% German. I remember visiting her and being treated to smerkase (probably got that wrong) but it was a toasted piece of dark bread, spread with cottage cheese and topped with jam.  Mighty darn good, too, I do recall. 

And did you know that the U.S. Census Bureau confirms that as a people, we are fully 1/4 of German ancestry. Interesting. I am, are you???

Let’s Talk About: Genealogy TV & Movies

by Donna Phillips


I’ve discovered that there are more genealogy-related movies available to me on my iPad that I’d have guessed!  I just watched (for free on YouTube!!) Yesterday’s Children, where Jane Seymour in today’s time is driven to learn about a family 80 years ago in Ireland and reunite that family. It was SO good. 

And certainly Finding Your Roots is THE NUMBER ONE genealogy show on public TV. Did you realize you can watch PBS shows on your phone, Kindle or iPad for free????

And of course there are more history-museums-archaeology type videos posted on YouTube than you’d have time to enjoy. There is the History Channel, Archaeology Channel, etc. All free!

So no need to watch dreary, depressing, or silly TV shows unless that’s your thing. There are genealogy shows to enjoy!!!

Let’s Talk About: Roosevelt’s Dutch Roots

by Donna Phillips


Did you know that FDR had Dutch roots? I did not but I learned that factoid on my spring 2024 trip to Holland. 
The forefather of the Roosevelt family of New York was a man named Claes Martenszen van Rosevelt. Five of his children were baptized in the Reformed Dutch Church in Amsterdam, although the family probably lived in what we’d today call a suburb, Oud-Vossemeer.  In 1655, Claes had moved his family to Manhattan and bought a farm. 
The website for the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library & Museum lists the complete ancestral pedigree of FDR as well as listing his descendants. 
The little town of Oud-Vossemeer is very proud of its connection to the American Roosevelt presidential family. They have established a website (www.rooseveltoudvosemeer.nl) and here’s what I learned: 

The Roosevelt Foundation of Oud-Vossemeer was established on September 17, 2015.

Its goal is to set up and maintain an information centre that allows visitors to discover more about the place of origin of the American presidential family Roosevelt. Exchanging and spreading information on this subject to organizations and persons is also part of our objective. Amongst other things, the foundation organizes exhibitions in order to realize this goal.

A continuing big question is were FDR and “Teddy” related? Well, distantly.

Theodore, 1858-1919, s/o            FDR, 1882-1945, s/o

Theodore, 1831-1876, s/o            James, 1828-1900, s/o

Cornelius, 1794-1817, s/o            Isaac, 1790-1863, s/o

James, 1759-1840                        James, 1760-1847

Why the discrepancy with dates for James???? Well, that’s what Google found for me………….. you check it out. 🙂 

Let’s Talk About: Cause of Irish Potato Blight

by Donna Phillips


How did the Irish Potato Famine of the mid-1800s originate? I came upon one possible answer in an unlikely book: The Conquest of Nature: Water, Landscapes and the Making of Modern Germany, by David Blackbourn, 2006. He wrote:

 “One result of the greatly increased traffic across the world’s oceans was that we would now call ‘biological invasions.’ It was not just people, cotton and tobacco that crossed the Atlantic but other, less desireable  species also made these journeys as stowaways in cargo holds, ballast tanks or attached to the ship. The invasive species that created the most alarm in the newly unified Germany were two arrivals from North America… the vine disease phylloxera and the Colorado Beetle, both of which attacked potatoes.”

Wanting to know more, I turned to Google. Wikipedia stated: “it is assumed that winds spread the spores (of phytophthora infestans) that caused the widespread devastation of potato crops in Ireland and northern Europe beginning in 1845, leading to the Irish Potato Famine.” Also, ” The potato blight was found across the Eastern part of the U.S. and Canada and crossed the Atlantic in 1845, probably with a shipment of seed potatoes for Belgian farmers which ultimately spread to all the potato-growing countries in Europe.  

If you’d want to read more, Google to The History Place: Irish Potato Famine, the Blight Begins or Milestones in History: The Great Hunger, article by Eugene Finerman, 2009. 

This last article was subtitled: “Ireland’s potato famine was caused as much by a government’s gross negligence as by a devastation of crops.”    

Let’s Talk About: Kinship of the World

by Donna Phillips

This image comes from an article in a 1977 issue of The Ensign, publication of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Even asking Grandma Google 🙂 I could not find a better image for this post…………..

QUESTION: What really is world history? Isn’t it the story of cousins who could just not get along? (That made you smile, didn’t it?) Yes, we living today are cousins of a sort because populations have expanded and contracted as wars, fires, floods, plagues and other disasters impacted them. 

It is estimated that the Black Death plague in England in 1348-1377 carried off 40% of the population. That same plague alone in Europe in 1720-1721 claimed 20 million people. 

Many families were completely wiped out; many surnames died out; many families were left with no descendants. You and I survived because somehow, miraculously, our ancestral line survived. Or at least one or two of them did. 

Quote from this article: “For example, in the U.S. in 1960 there was about an 80% chance that a man would have no descendants with his last name 13 generations later. The chance of a kinship line dying out depends on the death rate of the society and the number of children in each family. Even in a society were couples have many children, there is a 20-30% chance that a family line will die out after ten generations or so.”

What does this mean to us as we search out our family history? It means we must realize that many of the family lines existing in the year 1700 have no male descendants bearing that family name living today. 

THOUGHT: A typical extended pedigree chart can comprise 100 or more surnames and if each person’s tree was totally unique to him/her, in 30 generations (about 1000 years) every person would have two billion ancestors….. for more people than there were in the world in A.D. 1000. Could that really be so? No way.

Somewhere along the line our ancestors were already related to each other, marrying 5th, 6th or 7th cousins without realizing that. So instead of having MORE ancestors the further back we trace, eventually we will have fewer and fewer. 

And if our ancestors wee related, albeit distantly, the same must be true of all of us. Again quoting from the article, “As we research our genealogies we find our pedigrees mingling with those of hundreds of thousands of others until we are all traveling on the same broad road of ancestry back to the fathers of the human race.” 

The diamond pedigree reminds us most surely of the brotherhood of all mankind. 

Let’s Talk About: English Census Records

by Donna Phillips


For what years can we access census records in England?  There are nine  censuses available: 1841, 1851, 1861, 1871, 1881, 1891, 1901, 1911 and 1921. Sadly, the 1931 census was totally destroyed by fire and no census was taken in 1941 due to World War II. (In 1939 there was taken a National Registry and ID cards issued.)

Found it interesting that the English censuses included the name for each person in the house whereas U.S. censuses didn’t begin doing that until 1850. 

If you cannot read the info in that last paragraph, just Google that title. Tips to realize and remember:

  • English counties are also known as shires (Worcestershire, Somersetshire, etc.) comparable to our U.S. states.
  • Ind. independent or having own means; also may be reported as gent/gentleman.
  • Pensioner usually referred to someone retired from the Army
  • Scholar meant the child or person was attending school
  • Ag Lab mean agricultural laborer
  • F.S./ M.S. meant female/male servant

Just for fun, using www.freecen.org.uk I looked by my mother’s maiden name, GURNEY, in the 1841 census. Viola! There were 104 hits!!  And I’ve never explored them!!!