** Creole? Cajun? Know the difference?

** Cool Idea for Baby-Picture-Gift…Find It?

** German Research; new book with editor Leland Meitzler

** Zapotec Mandible Jewelry?

What was a Creole? What was a Cajun?

What was a Creole?  “This initially meant a person of European parentage born in a Spanish or French colony. In Louisiana it generally came to mean the French living there prior to its acquisition by the U.S. in 1803.  Over the years the term extended to slaves owned by the Creoles, to their music, their cooking, their dialect, and so on. Nowadays it means anything derived from that unique medley of French, Spanish and African-American cultures that today makes a visit to Louisiana such a heady experience.” (Book, The Lost German Slave Girl, by John Bailey, 2003)

What was a Cajun? “A Cajun is different from a Creole. Cajuns are also of French origin. The British hounded them out of Nova Scotia in the 1750s because of their unreliable loyalty to the Crown and because they were Catholic to boot. Many eventually settled in Louisiana.” (Book, The Lost German Slave Girl, by John Bailey, 2003)

The Southern slavery laws; tidbits gleaned from the book , The Lost German Slave Girl, by John Bailey, 2003.  “A white person of unmixed blood cannot be a slave but a person apparently white may, nevertheless, have some African taint….. sufficient to doom them to slavery.”  Chief Justice Robinson of Kentucky, 1835.   “The elevation of the white race, and the happiness of the slave, vitally depend upon maintaining the ascendancy of the one and the submission of the other.”  Chief Justice Watkins, Aackomas Superior Court, 1854.” Want an eye-opening read to learn the laws governing slavery? Read the above mentioned book.  It’s the true story of a 3-year-old German immigrant girl who ends up in slavery and the years of legal wrangling to get her set free.  Betting you cannot read this with tears.

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Some dear kind reader sometime back shared this photo/idea with me. Since I’ve had two great-granddaughters born in the last year, this idea really intrigued me. And it’s something “only” a grandma would do, seems to me. It shows a pedigree chart for the new baby then with photos of the parents, grandparents, etc, with some identifying information. But the photos are the main draw. Does anybody know which company offered this project??

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How many of us subscribe to any of these magazines:  Internet Genealogy or Your Genealogy Today? Besides having superlative and informative content, this publishing company offers many specific helps in special magazine edition format. (Click to www.internet-genealogy.com and then to Online Store and then Book Bundles.) Reason I mention this today is that Washington’s own, Leland Meitzler, has had the (dubious?) privilege of being the author/compiler for the newest special edition, that on Researching in Germany.  This magazine/book is sure to be a “must have” for those of us with Germanic research to do but I mention it today because Leland has gone without sleep or going fishing with grandchildren in order to get this project done. Feedback I’m hearing is that this book is a winner.

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Ending today, as I often do, with something funny or most interesting:

We subscribe to Archaeology magazine and in the Sept-Oct 2016 issue was a bit about how the Zapotec people’s of Mexico’s Oaxaca Valley as early as 700 B.C. wore jewelry carved from human mandibles! “The bones likely belonged to venerated ancestors and were worn as adornments during rituals that focused on the importance of hereditary power,” stated the article. If you look closely, you’ll see the hole for the necklace cord….. What is your first thought here??

** Tibetan Dress Customs

** Why You Might Not Find Your Ancestor’s Grave

** Egyptian Genealogy

** Was Your Ancestor a German Redemptioner?

From the book, Seven Years in Tibet, by Heinrich Harrer, who lived in Tibet in the 1940s and 1950s and wrote his famous book in 1982. And was turned into a great movie with Brad Pitt!  I learned so much about the Tibetan people from enjoying this book and could have copied out endless bits for you but will settle on this one….just in case you might have Tibetan ancestor:

“(Now spring had come). The season of sandstorms was over, and the peach trees were in blossom. On the neighboring peaks, the last remnants of the snow shone blindly white in the warm sunshine. One day the summer season was officially declared to have begun, and the summer clothes might be worn. One had no right to leave off one’s furs when one wanted to. Every year, after considerations of the omens, a day was fixed on which the notables and monks put on summer dress. The weather might have been very warm or snowstorms might follow. That did not matter. Summer dress must be work from that date only. The same thing happens in autumn, when winter dress is officially resumed. I continually used to hear complaints that the changeover had come too coon or too late and that people were stifling hot or half frozen.”

Continue reading →

** Civil War Tombstones: A Quick Primer

** What Is A Source? Definition from James Tanner

** Local Little Societies Are A Goldmine!

** MyHeritage: Do Check It Out

Civil War Tombstones: A Quick Primer….. thank you to Dick Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter and Amy Johnson Crow.

What is the difference between a Union and a Confederate tombstone? Amy Johnson Crow gives the answer in a short, but interesting, article in her blog at http://goo.gl/jGKMhc. (Copy and paste this address to access Amy’s good article.)

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What is a source? One dictionary definition is so vague as to be meaningless: “a place, person, or thing from which something comes or can be obtained.” See Google search for “define source.”

A source is the identity and location concerning where you got the information you are using. 

That isn’t very artfully said but genealogists are talking about sources being reliable or unreliable. A source is a source. If I got my information from a book in the local public library, the citation information about the book and the place where I found it constitute the “source” of my information. Any questions about the accuracy, reliability or whatever of the information have nothing whatsoever to do with the “source.” If I think your information is wrong or unreliable and you provide me with a source, I can go an check to see whether or not you are correct. Absent a source, I have to guess where you might have gotten the information and from my perspective, I have to assume, since you did not tell me where you got your information, that the information is unreliable and quite likely wrong. When people say a “source” is unreliable, what they really mean is that the information obtained from the source is unreliable.

James Tanner    Genealogy’s Star    5 Dec 2015

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I’ve beaten on this drum before but it bears repeating: There is gold in them there little historical societies and museums. Here is a peek through the window of the Coulee City Pioneer Museum………just look at all the potential “good stuff” on those shelves. Maybe you don’t need help in Coulee City……….but what about Waterville? Chelan? Hillyard? Uniontown? Gray’s Harbor? Friday Harbor? Here’s the rule:  If you need local help, go there! Virtually, of course, but in person is great too.

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I’ve been getting plenty of news, updates and information from MyHeritage and I thought I’d share some of it with you all. This website, and what is offered there, is just getting better and better and better.

Way back in February 2016 MyHeritage announced Family Tree Builder 8.0. This new version of their popular FREE software allows you to sync your tree with MyHeritage and use all their wonderful features. Wow.

Back in April 2016 they announced Super Search.  This is a MyHeritage search engine that searches for matches to your family tree within their databases (of about 7,000,000,000 records…..that’s 7 billion!). Wow.

Also in April they announced Book Matching. This automatically finds matches for your people in your family tree on MyHeritage in their vast collection of some 450,000 digitized historical books. Wow.

In May they announced MyHeritage Community. This feature is a Q&A hub on the MyHeritage website created to help their 8,000,000 registered users to collaborate and help each other with any family history related question. Wow.

In June they announced Sun Charts. This is an innovative new family tree chart for visualizing descendants in your family tree.  It is as you would guess, names radiating out in all direction like the sun’s rays. Wow.

Then just a month ago in July, MyHeritage announced Pedigree Map. This is an innovative way to visualize your Family history by plotting events from your family tree (such as birth-marriage-death) along with photos on an interactive world map. Pedigree Map displays photos and events groups by country and location allowing your to easily filter it by person, family group, event and time period. Wow.

You certainly want to sign up for the MyHeritage blog! Click to blog.myheritage.com and (on the right) sign up with your email.  Did I say? It’s free!

MyHeritage offers many more wonderful and helpful things and is worth the subscription price ($160 annually). For more information email sales@myheritage.com, or call 1-877-432-3135.

Tell them my friend, Mark Olsen, sends you and ask for a discount??? My mother taught me that you can ask anything you want as long as you’re polite.

** What Is A Source?

** Mine Is Name Most Unusual

**Library of Congress Digital Newspaper Program

** Images of America: Washington

** Offers From FamilyTree Magazine

What is a source? One dictionary definition is so vague as to be meaningless: “a place, person, or thing from which something comes or can be obtained.” See Google search for “define source.”

A source is the identity and location concerning where you got the information you are using. 

That isn’t very artfully said but genealogists are talking about sources being reliable or unreliable. A source is a source. If I got my information from a book in the local public library, the citation information about the book and the place where I found it constitute the “source” of my information. Any questions about the accuracy, reliability or whatever of the information have nothing whatsoever to do with the “source.” If I think your information is wrong or unreliable and you provide me with a source, I can go an check to see whether or not you are correct. Absent a source, I have to guess where you might have gotten the information and from my perspective, I have to assume, since you did not tell me where you got your information, that the information is unreliable and quite likely wrong. When people say a “source” is unreliable, what they really mean is that the information obtained from the source is unreliable. (From: James Tanner ‘s   Genealogy’s Star blog back on  5 Dec 2015.)

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My maternal grandfather’s surname was Gurney. Mother always wondered where her surname originated. And why was the hospital carry-cart called a gurney. Well, I sleuthed and learned that the name originated in France and was DeGournay, meaning of the village of Gournay. A fellow of that name came to England with William the Conqueror (1066) and eventually the name morphed into Gurney. As for the hospital cart? I asked Grandma Google (who knows most everything!) and she said a fellow surnamed Gurney had invented it. Duh.

I have a Gurney ancestor with the first name of Bezaleel. Where did that come from in the early 1700s in Connecticut? Especially when he had siblings Elizabeth, Mary and Thomas. WELL!  It’s a name from the Old Testament, Exodus 35:30:  “I have called by name, Bezaleel…… and have filled him with knowledge in all manner of workmanship.” And Bezaleel was called upon to build the ark for the covenant!

Now why blather you with all of this? Do you have unusual first- or surnames in your family tree? Have you done any sleuthing to learn where that name originated??

Continue reading →

**Save the Date !!

**The Way Things Used To Be

** “This is a V-Home!”

** Genealogy Blogs: A Good Deal

** Quotes from Shipley Munson

The Northwest genealogy Conference for 2016 is history and it was a stupendous conference. You’ll see the several postings on this blog spotlighting various aspects of those four days. And guess what? The Stillaguamish Valley Genealogical Society announced the dates for 2017:  August 16th-19th. And guess what too? You can register NOW at the 2016 prices for the 2017 conference. Click to www.NwGC.org. 

I’d bet at least 30% of the folks attending this conference were from out of state: Canada, Oregon, Nevada and Texas! You and I are among the other 70% who live within fairly easy driving distance (discounting traffic, ugh) and if we start dropping dollar bills into a jar today we’ll be able to attend the NWGC in 2017. Hope you will. A little bird told me that Kenyatta Berry will be one of the main speakers. Know her from Genealogy Roadshow?

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Isn’t this the way it goes? When touring an old historic mansion, and in the kitchen as we looked at all the old gadgets, it went like this:  “I remember using THAT!” To “I remember my mother using THAT!” To “I remember my grandmother using THAT!” To “I haven’t a clue what that is!” What kitchen tools do we use today that our great-grandchildren will not be able to identify???

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World War II was much more real to our parents and/or grandparents than it is to us. We find it quaint to realize some of the problems and customs that war brought to the American people. Take this from the National Office of Civil Defense, 1942:

This is a V-Home!

We in this home are fighting. We know this war will be easy to lose and hard to win. We mean to win it. Therefore, we solemnly pledge all our energies and all our resources to fight for freedom and against fascism.

We serve notice to all that we are personally carrying the fight to the enemy in these ways:

• This home follows the instructions of its air-raid warden.
• This home conserves food, clothing, transportation and health.
• This home salvages essential materials.
• This home refuses to spread rumors.
• This home buys War Savings Stamps and Bonds regularly.

We are doing these things because we know we must to WIN THIS WAR.

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Do you read the daily newspaper? Or watch the local and/or national news daily on TV? Or listen to the news every day on public radio? Great! But where to you get your genealogy news?? There are several genealogy blogs to which you can subscribe FOR FREE to bring you regular news and updates in the exploding world of genealogy. For instance:

Ancestry.com  —  Click to the website, and you don’t have to be a member to scroll clear down to the bottom of the screen to where it says Ancestry Blog. Click that and then about mid-page on the right, under Notifications, click “receive updates from Ancestry blog by email.” Regular blog posts, or updates, will come into your email in box. Simple as that.

MyHeritage.com  —  Almost the same as for Ancestry. Click to the website, scroll down to the bottom, under Community, click on Company Blog. Then on the upper right, click Sign Up. Simple as that.

FamilySearch.org  —  Click to the website, near the bottom is Blog. Then enter your email address into the “subscribe to our newsletter” box on the right. Simple as that.

Dick Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter has been the reigning king of genealogy blogs for a decade or more. Click to EOGN.com, scroll down on the right and sign up/subscribe. The free edition is plenty wonderful!

Now if you do this, you will have subscribed to FOUR regular genealogy newspapers!

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Perhaps you’ve never heard of Shipley Munson. But he is the creator of RootsTech and Chief Marketing Officer and Director of Outreach for FamilySearch. What he says is worth noting.  I scribbled down these quotes from him at RootsTech 2016:

• No living person should be researched later! We should, indeed, document the living.
• Innovation is alive and well in family history!
• What will the great-grandchildren of your great-grandchildren wish you had preserved for them??
• It’s not them vs. us. It’s just us; we are all cousins.

**Tidbits from Coroners’ Records

**Is Your Desk A Mess?

**Finding Online Newspapers

**Death Records for U.S. Citizens Dying Overseas

**Why Does Our Hair Turn Gray?

A dear friend who lives in Lake Co, Ohio, and is very active in her genealogical society, has completed a project to index the Coroner’s Records for Lake County. She’s not sure when these will be publicly available but she’s proud (and rightly so) to have completed this monumental task. She shared some of the tongue-in-cheek things she learned from these records….that might apply to any county?

• Bathrooms, and especially toilets, are dangerous to your health.  An amazing number of people are found dead sitting on the throne.
• The worst place to be for longevity is the bed.  More people die in, on, or near their beds than anywhere else.  Sleep in the car.
• Marriage is the best thing for longevity.  The majority of coroner cases are of people who are divorced or never married.
• A huge percentage of people who die in Lake County are born in Cleveland.  I suggest Clevelanders stay in Cuyahoga County.
• Fracturing a hip will make your death an accident if you die within a year of the fracture, no matter what you really die of.  It must be a law.
• Exercise is not all it’s cracked up to be.  People die after mowing the lawn, jogging, hiking, and in locker rooms at the gym.
• Low fat diets are for the birds.  Most people die of sludge in the cardiovascular system no matter what they ate.

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Continue reading →

** DNA: Summer Reading

** Ancestry: Summer Learning

** Welsh Newspapers

**eBay…for Genealogy?

**Red Clover Miracle Tonic

Realizing that my understanding of DNA, et al, was at the level of first grade, I have added two books to my summer reading pile. Genetics for Dummies (2005) and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Decoding Your Genes (1999). Bought them both from Amazon.com for under $10.00 (because they are ancient). I have the books; I’ll have the time; I have a desire. Now will I study these books and learn?

What about YOU? Is this a subject about which you want to know more? What are YOU doing about that lack of knowledge?

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If you don’t want to delve into your genes, then perhaps learning more about Ancestry.com would be your summer thing? Do you want to better understand:

• Ancestry Academy?
• Difference between public and private trees?
• Inviting family or friends to view and/or collaborate?
• Watching Ancestry YouTube videos? (There are over 95,000 to view!)

Here is a starter list of websites where you can learn these answers:

• ancestry.com/learn
• ancestryinsider.org
• ancestry.com/academy
• YouTube.com/ancestry
• ancestry.com/privacycenter
• ancestry.com/guestregistration

One cannot camp, boat, swim, hike or roast marshmallows only all summer long!

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Good news for those of us having Welsh ancestry. Quoting from Your Family Tree magazine, September 2015:  “The National Library of Wales’ Welsh Newspapers Online website (http://newspapers.library.wales) has a new look and now boasts more than 120 newspaper titles published in Wales between 1804 and 1919. First launched in 2013, the free website has recently been updated with an extra 400,000 pages, including many new titles.”

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This same magazine mentioned above, had a good read titled “Get Started: The Salvation Army.” This beneficial organization was founded in London’s East End in 1867 by one-time Methodist Reform Church minister William Booth and his wife Catherine. Originally, Booth named the organization the East London Christian Mission. Much of the same information appears on this website:  www.salvationarmyuse.org/usn/history-of-the-salvation-army.

My purpose here today is to share the research resources that Doreen Hopwood listed in her article. “Step-by-step: Trace an Officer: lists (1) Salvation Army Yearbook;  (2) 1911 Census;  (3) Ship Passenger Lists. The Top Three sources for “Finding a Salvationist” would be (1) Salvation Army Periodicals; (2) International Heritage Centre; and (3) Newspapers.

Hopwood’s article was aimed at records in England; to trace your Salvation Army ancestor, U.S. sources will vary but they are out there!

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“You wouldn’t think this online auction site would be the place to go for genealogy, but the truth is you can find family trees, books, photo albums, old postcards, family Bibles and much more. Some genealogists even scour eBay to rescue orphan heirlooms they can return to family members. Typically, items are listed in the Everything Else-Genealogy category. But check other categories such as books, collectibles, antiques and jewelry. In your eBay profile, you can follow Favorite Searches and get email alerts and updates in your eBay feed. For example, I follow Duquesne, Pennsylvania high school yearbooks.  Create searches like Smithson family Bible or Riser genealogy.”

This blurb was penned by Liza Also in the Mar-Apr 2016 issue of FamilyTree Magazine. What good advice! Like I said in an earlier Serendipity, I am looking for a Potter family Bible….I must set up an auto-search-notification on eBay for that! What about you? Think eBay might have benefit for you?

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“WE ALL KNOW that water never runs up hill; that kisses taste better than they look, and are better after dark; that it is better to be right than to be left; that those who take Dr. Jones’ Red Clover Tonic never have dyspepsia, costiveness (constipation), bad breath, piles, pimples, ague and malaria diseases, poor appetite, low spirits, headache or diseases of Kidneys and Bladder. Price 50 cents of E. Johnson.”  This “miracle drug” ad ran on May 17, 1883, in the Ohio newspaper the Piqua Miami Helmet. Too bad (hahaha) we don’t have cures like that today!

** Did you help with the FamilySearch Indexing Marathon?

** Black Dutch; Somehow A Slur

** Finding Family Bibles

** Heaven Is (for Genealogists)

In mid-July, all of us genealogists had a great opportunity to help “Pay It Forward.” FamilySearch organized an Indexing Marathon and know what? The outcome was 10,447,887 records were indexed during those three days with 116,475 new people/names added to the searchable database. I did one batch; how about YOU?? Stay tuned for there will be a next time and we both might-could-should-will do better.

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In GenealogyMagazine.com, 1997, Vol. 12, No 1, Page 17, was an explanatory article titled “Black Dutch As 19^th Century Slur.” This term has been around since the late 19^th century and it has always meant something negative. “The guileless and unphilological,”  often classed with the “ignorant Irish,” and “they are like a drove of bullocks..where one leads the rest follow.”

“The term originally meant all speakers of German in the broadest sense. Specifically, the Schwarze Deutsche, or Black Germans, were found along the Danube River in Austria and Germany, in the Black Forest….have dark hair and eyes, unlike the fairer people north and south of them.”

This last comes from the website, www.blackdutch1.webs.com (for real, no @).  Managed by Mike Nassau, this site is a good read but has not been updated for ten years.

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*** YouTube: A Great Bet for YOU!

*** Reform School: Did Your Ancestor “Attend?”

*** Naps Restaurant, Hamilton, Montana

*** Is There Doukhobor In Your Ancestry?

*** Red Plush: Story of the Moorhouse Family

“Are you taking advantage of all the videos posted on YouTube related to genealogy and family history research?” This question was asked in the UpFront with NGS blog back on June 8^th.  Did you realize that just like TV channels (NBC, ABC, CBS, etc) you have genealogy channels on YouTube…… you have LOC (Library of Congress), NARA (National Archives), LVA (Library of Virginia), FamilySearch and Ancestry, just for some examples. The NGS posting-person continued:  “Something I like about videos is that I can listen to them in the background as I am doing other work. Then, if something catches my ear, I can pull up the viewer, rewind and then actually “watch” a segment of interest.”   Something new for us to consider.

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Did you have an ancestor who was sent to Reform School?  According to Wikipedia, “In the U. S., a reform school was a penal institution, generally for teenagers.”  In the United Kingdom such places were termed Industrial Schools. “Social reformers in America in the late 19^th and early 20^th century found fault with the ten-usual practice of treating juvenile offenders the same as adult criminals.” And so a system of Reform Schools was instituted and lasted well into mid-century. Bottom line, states the Wikipedia article, “for the most part, these institutions were custodial.”  Meaning, there was no effort at “reforming” a young person.  Did you have an ancestor who was sent to Reform School? We’d love to hear your story!

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** Free Online Webinars

** Do you suffer from MyTreeitis?

**Prologue, Publication of NARA

** Red-Haired People

**Guide to British Census Records

We all like learning, right? And we all like free, right? How about FREE WEBINARS ONLINE? Such wonders are offered several places:

• FamilySearch Learning Center
• Legacy Family Tree
• Southern California Genealogical Society
• Illinois State Genealogical Society
• Wisconsin State Genealogical Society
• Utah Genealogical Association

For more information on these and other free online webinars, check out Gena Philibert-Ortega’s website:  http://blog.geneawebinars.com (GeneaWebinars).

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Do you suffer from the malady known to genealogists as MyTreeitis?  Ron Tanner came up with this term and Ben Baker provided the definition:  “Mytreeitis is an inflammation common to many genealogists. Symptoms include extreme anxiety over others modifying their extensive genealogical research, possessiveness of ancestors, unwillingness to work in collaborative family trees and disregard for others when removing erroneous persons from their family. This condition usually occurs in more mature adults and is rarely seen in those under 40.”

Tanner and Baker conclude that “learning to effectively use FamilySearch Family Tree has been shown to be an effective treatment for this affliction.”

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