On Our Way

Tonight we are in Charleston, but our trip started yesterday. We stopped midway last night in Wilson, North Carolina. On the way there we stopped in Petersburg, Virginia.

Important things to remember when you are traveling:

Mother's Day is not a good day to be on the road. Especially if you plan to stop and eat anywhere. Most especially if you plan to stop and eat somewhere, do not have reservations, and do not want to spend a long time waiting to get into a restaurant.

We did not have reservations. We thought we were smart because we had eaten up all of our perishables (= all of our good breakfast foods) before we left. We were not smart.

The good news? Americans love their mothers. Because, as far as I can judge, everyone was busy taking their mothers out to brunch and then again out to dinner on Mother's Day. We did finally manage to get something to eat.

Here are a few scenes from Petersburg. It was not very active. Everyone was out to lunch with Mom.

Granary used as a holding cell for Union prisoners

Train station on the Southside Railroad

Then today we stopped at ...

Things that are important at South of the Border:

Pedro

Fireworks and Bread

Spark plugs

Animals of all types

Pets even have their own toilets

Follow Friday Newsletter: 6 May 2011

This Week in Genea-Blogging

I wanna be the dude with the super-duper computer!

In “Part VI: Profiling Your Ancestors,” Heather Doherty at Good to Know compares the genealogists’ search to the work of investigators featured on well-known TV crime dramas. Some pretty good parallels there....


Blogger connections

are fascinating. Read how Linda Gartz at Family Archaeologist figured out where a picture on the blog 2338 W. Washington Blvd. had been taken and her description of the amusement park in question in “A Tale of Two Photos.”  I remember wild rides like the ones she describes!


Finding the old homestead

Nick Gombash of Nick Gombash’s Genealogy Blog has a useful tip on a really neat website for finding your ancestors’ land in “How to Locate Your Ancestor’s Land.”


Susan Clark puts to rest

an old family myth about where the family’s sympathies lay in the Civil War in “My House Divided” at Nolichucky Roots. Looking forward to reading more of Susan’s journey of discovery about this family.


Another good Civil War story

is at Margel’s 2338 W. Washington Blvd.: “The Youngest Son Runs Away.”


The discussion continues

At Genealogy Leftovers, Judy Webster has some good suggestions on “How to Become a Paid Researcher.”


Let’s Play!

Devil’s Advocate, that is. Jennifer at Rainy Day Genealogy Readings shows us the best way to play this - with our/her own research. Check out “Devil’s Advocate: The Mysterious Ms. Dexter.”


Or we can play doctor ...

No, not that kind of playing doctor ... but a “Primary Care Genealogist” - a concept DearMyrtle learned about in her ProGen Study Group and describes in “Primary Care Genealogists.”


And Joan Miller shares all

in “Confessions of a Genea-Conference Groupie” at Luxegen Genealogy and Family History. Shocking!


A timely and relevant topic

“Genealogy Conferences - The Magic Recipe” at GeneaBloggers.

“Genealogy Conferences - Setting the Space”
“Genealogy Conferences - Delivering the Content”
“Genealogy Conferences - Selling the Goods”

Also on this topic:

From Helen V. Smith’s Keyboard - “GeneaBloggers: Genealogy Conferences - The Magic Recipe” and “Genealogy Conferences - Delivering the Content”

Genealogy Leftovers - “Genealogy Conferences - Delivering the Content” and
“Genealogy Conference Vendors”

Genea-Musings - “Presenting at Seminars and Societies - My View” and “Genealogy Conference Vendors - My Views”

The Chart Chick - “Vendors”

The Armchair Genealogist - “How to Persuade Me to Attend More Genealogy Conferences”

Marian’s Roots and Rambles - “The Life of a Genealogical Speaker”


Why not all of those cards look alike

In “Separate But Equal? WWI Draft Registrations” Renate at Into the Light reveals a difference in the handling of the draft registration cards of blacks and whites and wonders about the inconsistencies in the practice as applied to her ancestors.


These are two of my favorite things...

Language. Genealogy. The intersection of all that is important in the universe. (OK, that’s a slight exaggeration.) “Transliteration vs Translation” at The ProGenealogists Genealogy Blog. And, just gotta add, translation involves converting written language (usually to written language), while interpreting is a similar process for the spoken language.


This week’s “choked me up” item

is “Send Up a Flare, Mystery Bride Identified! - Mystery Monday” at Cynthia Shenette’s Heritage Zen. Happy Dance time with potential for more to come.


How death information is reported

to the Social Security Administration - get the facts at Craig Manson’s GeneaBlogie in “Research Note: A Bit of Info About SSDI.”


And finally:

The Carnival is in town! Check out “Carnival of Genealogy, 105th Edition” at Jasia’s Creative Gene.


For more suggested blog reading,

check out “Best of the Genea-Blogs” at Randy Seaver’s Genea-Musings, “Best Bytes for the Week” at Elizabeth O’Neal’s Little Bytes of Life, “Follow Friday: This Week’s Favorite Finds” at Jen’s Climbing My Family Tree, and “Monday Morning Mentions” at Lynn Palermo’s The Armchair Genealogist.


This Week I Started Following These Blogs:

Bluegrass and Buckeye Roots

Genealogy Jack

Remember

The History Man

The Scots in America

Their Hearts Shall Turn

Who’s Your Granddaddy?

Onward to our Past


My Research Week


It was a good one. I am getting ready for the trip to Charleston for the NGS Conference, and my husband is even encouraging me to take all of my South Carolina research materials along! After all, we’ll be stopping in Greenville on the way back.

Brinlee research, as described in the previous post, was interesting.

And I learned something interesting about a fellow Fichtelmann researcher. This was my husband’s comment: “We’re in some sort of incestuous relationship with some couple we haven’t even met.” Um, no, dear. What we know is that you are related to this researcher’s husband - through the Fichtelmanns, of course. And I learned (from checking her research interests on Findagrave and confirming it with her later) that this researcher and I are related through the Skiles line. But that’s not incest.

No Follow Friday newsletter for the next two weeks, but I do hope to post about the trip and the conference.

A special thanks to Kathleen at Misadventures of a Genealogist for the One Lovely Blog Award!

What I Learned Wednesday: 4 May 2011

Today Michael John Neill’s Genealogy Tip of the Day was “Don’t Neglect Online Trees.” Well, I followed that advice in my Brinlee research this weekend. And I admit it. If I’m going to be looking stuff up on Ancestry anyway, I check the trees to see whether the censuses I’ll need are already connected to the people on any of the trees - hey, it can save me some time to start with. Then I go looking for the rest of the stuff, both on Ancestry and elsewhere.

I knew there would be some complications with the Richard Mason Brinlee tree. In particular, looking into his family with his first wife, Anne E. Simmons, has opened up a can of worms.

It started with a good discovery, however: some of the trees had a scan attached containing Richard’s reconstituted Confederate Service record (a much abbreviated one, as I reported in “The Civil War and My Ancestors”). And there was more: both of the marriage records for his marriage to Anne (on 15 July 1858) and to Sarah Ellen Petit (on 15 April 1861) were attached. I also had previous information from a couple of articles in a county book (though these are not totally trustworthy as sources, the ladies who wrote them were much closer to some of the earlier generations in this family, so I do take an interest in what they knew of these families). Those articles indicated that Richard and Anne had a daughter named Mary, born around 1859, and that Anne might have died around the same time of complications from childbirth. OK, fine.

Now some of the online trees list only one daughter for Anne and Richard - Mary Frances “Mollie” Brinlee, who married a Benjamin Tinnin. And others list two - Mary (b. 1859) and “Nancy” (b. 1861). And they give the exact same date of death in 1938 for both.

I don’t think so. On that date a Mary/Mollie Brinlee Tinnin did die. And that Mary Brinlee Tinnin, I am fairly certain, was born around May 1861 as stated on the 1900 census. This is consistent with the ages given for her on the 1910 and 1930 censuses (48 and 68), as well as for the Mary Brinlee, age 9, living with Richard and his second wife Ellen on the 1870 census.

And for my money, that Mary has to be Ellen’s daughter, not Anne’s. Taken together with the date of Richard and Sarah Ellen’s marriage - 15 April 1861 - this would mean that Mary was born about a month after they married.

I’m guessing Anne did have a daughter (maybe the poor, forgotten Nancy, or even another Mary) and perhaps did die in childbirth.

So the trees had some bad information, but they also contained the documentary evidence to correct that information.

105th COG: My Lean, Mean Genealogy Machine

I was going to write a modest little piece on the modest little set of technology that I use for genealogy. Well, I  am still going to do that. But I am writing this with a little less confidence than I had even the day before I sat down to write this.

As you will see from the post below, there was an “incident” with comments on this blog - apparently one of the blogs that appeared on my blogroll has been found by Google to have some sort of virus. And the fact that a link (now deleted) to it appeared on my blog had made my blog suspect as well.

Last week I was informed by my e-mail service that my e-mail had been hacked and that I would have to go through a process to reset my password and restore my access (not too painful, but it did involve providing a piece of information that I would preferred not to have provided).

This was my primary e-mail address, and together with my blog, it is my main form of communication; I am not super-active on Facebook nor do I tweet. That these two events happened within a week of one another was distressing.

My husband and I attempt in various ways to back up all of the computer stuff that is important to us, but these incidents have left me feeling uneasy.

Still, I love my “technology,” especially my new (well, new from Christmas, anyway) MacBook Pro.

My Baby.
(Apologies for the shady picture - I never remember to take pictures

when there is still daylight.)

Computer: And why do I call my MacBook Pro “My Lean, Mean Genealogy Machine”? Mainly because I consider its main purpose to be doing genealogy. Although I still do most of my e-mail correspondence on this machine, I do not intend to do much else here or to save anything other than genealogy-related documents to it. Exceptions would be iTunes (can’t work without music!) and uploading photos taken on trips, since I do plan to take the laptop with me when I travel (or at least on genealogy-related trips).

That means documents related to anything else I have ever used the computer for - school, Scouts, language-related stuff, and other family “business” - remain on/go to my old Mac Mini desktop setup. Most scans and new photos go to the desktop as well. The desktop is already a bit slow (probably needs a “tuneup” or housecleaning), and I want to avoid this on my laptop.

My desktop (Mac Mini) setup

Of course, there are a lot of genealogy-related things remaining on my old desktop. My husband has set up Time Machine on our household network to overcome this problem, so I can now access all of my archived genealogy documents directly or even duplicate them on the laptop through Time Machine.

Browsers and bookmark organization: That still leaves my browser bookmark system in a bit of chaos. On the desktop I have a super-extensive set of old bookmarks of all types - but especially genealogy bookmarks - on Safari, and there are quite a few on Firefox as well, not to mention the new ones I have managed to accumulate on the laptop. Although I have exported/imported bookmarks before, I don’t think I will do that in this case, because many of these bookmarks are old and need to be cleaned up. I loved the old bookmark organization system on Safari, but am not so fond of the Firefox system or the new Safari system. Therefore, as I clean up the various sets of bookmarks, I will probably copy them to the Genealogy Toolboxes on my blog and on the website I have created at Weebly.

Software: I use Reunion as my genealogy database. I am also working on trees on Ancestry and hope to eventually have a website (Weebly or something else) with trees and other information as well. So far I have not added any transcription or note-taking software or any other research “helper” applications.

For photos I have iPhoto on both computers. I am getting a bit alarmed at how many photos we have in digital form on various computers in our family. My husband and I back them up through Time Machine, but I know that our college daughter also has tons of photos on her very vulnerable laptop.

Although we have Microsoft Office on our computers at home, we also have iWork and I am becoming more and more attached to these applications. In particular, I may use Keynote for some modest digital scrapbooking.

Websites: I have subscriptions to Ancestry, Footnote, and Genealogy Bank. State archive websites (South Carolina, Texas, and Illinois, among others) are big favorites with me. I also love many of the local library websites (Greenville) or library-affiliated websites (GenFriends of Plano Libraries) as well as Findagrave and outstanding individual cemetery sites such as the one for Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn.

Camera: I have a barebones camera - a Nikon Coolpix LI8 - and it seems to be enough for me. I can take a decent picture of a tombstone and, on the macro setting, a decent picture of a document.

Phone: Nothing genea-helpful here. It’s a Plain Jane type of phone probably will remain so for the foreseeable future.

Other hardware: There is my beloved wand scanner pictured below and described in “My New Toy” and “More on the New Toy.” To this I will most likely add a Flip-Pal Scanner; the current plan is to get one next Christmas, but I may give in and get one at the upcoming NGS Conference because I would be able to use it to scan pictures at my in-laws’ house when we visit later in the summer. Perhaps some day I will get my own flatbed scanner, but right now I am using my husband’s HP 8500 All-in-One Wireless. I noticed when I scanned some documents with fuzzy handwriting for some cousins that the digital copies were clearer than the originals, so I’m thinking this is pretty handy for my use.



Future plans: An iPad would be nice some day; it might be the ideal “take along to the library” item for me when the time comes. Some day I might get a fancier camera and the dedicated scanner that I mentioned. I’m not too keen to update my phone, yet. I see a digital scrapbooking class in my future. Maybe something on website design as well if I do not find a simple (=simple-minded) way for me to set up a family genealogy website.

Slowly, surely, by asking around and reading what my fellow genealogy bloggers have to say on the subject, I am getting a good idea of what kind of technology will work for me. It will never be terribly elaborate with all of the latest gizmos, but I think it will be pretty decent.

I Think It's Safe to Post Comments Here Now...

Many thanks to Jenny Lanctot at Are My Roots Showing? for pointing out a problem with my blog that may have caused people who tried to post comments to get a virus warning from Blogger. I have deleted the problem blog from my blogroll, so I hope that has fixed it.

I am dismayed to see how many blogs and e-mail accounts are getting hacked and hope that I do not have to remove the blogroll altogether. I try to keep the "margin goodies" that Jenny mentioned to a minimum, but still!

So, hoping that someone will be brave and try to post a comment and let me know whether the attempt was successful or not...

Follow Friday Newsletter: 29 April 2011

This Week in Genea-Blogging

Casting a nervous eye

on the reliability of various types of data storage/backup - James Tanner explains why he is never completely confident about this in “Reliability of the Cloud? Family Search Forums Still Down” at Genealogy’s Star. I love his “questions to self” at the end. Also from James Tanner this week: “Don’t rely on icons and stereotypes in historical research,” inspired by John Philip Colletta’s recent article in Family Tree Magazine.


Take this advice to heart

Paula Stuart-Warren provides some good suggestions for “Getting others involved in your genealogical society” at Paula’s Genealogical Eclectica.


Fun with Google Docs

The Minnesota Family Historian shows us another neat feature of Google Docs - making charts from spreadsheets - in “Fancy Chart How-To: Ethnicity in America.”


This day in history...

For a nice list of websites that do this, check out “Skillbuilder: Placing Your Ancestors Within Their Time” at the Leafseeker.


More neat map stuff

At Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter: “The Easy Way to Add Maps to Your Family History Projects.”


When the records changed

Daniel Hubbard at Personal Past Meditations examines what records were created as a result of the Civil War and Reconstruction, what you can find in Reconstruction-era records, and what unique information those records may provide in “Reconstructing the Post-War World.”


An unusual research aid

is examined by Kathleen Brandt at a3 Genealogy in “African American Research - Pre and Post WWI: The Green Book Travel Guide.”


More on preparing for the 1940 census

Jenny Lanctot at Are My Roots Showing? points us to some useful links and downloadable forms at her Research Toolbox website, Jenny-ology in “Preparing for the Release of the 1940 Federal Census” (there is also a comment from a representative of the Morse One Step website on the fact that there are actually 5 conversion tools on that site).


She did what I still wanna do...

Amy Coffin at We Tree found her 16th great-great-grandparent: “The Search for Number 16, part 1” and “The Search for Number 16, part 2.” Congratulations! I’m still hoping, waiting, thinking, planning, plotting....


Funniest post of the week

“Breaking News: Scientists Pinpoint the Origins of Piles of Genea-Crap” at Kerry Scott’s Clue Wagon. Not that any of us is guilty of any of this in any way....


Glad to see a couple of faves posting again: Consanguinity and Rainy Day Genealogy Readings.


This Week I Started Following These Blogs:

The Leafseeker

Climbing the Family Rosebush

From Helen V. Smith’s Keyboard

Generations Past

Janis’ Genealogy

Murmuring Trees

Who Does She Think She Is?

Heritage Paper Dolls


My Research Week

was not too bad. The main focus were two of my husband’s families, the Fichtelmanns and the Koehls.

This week I also finally set up a website at Weebly. Right now it is still Weebly-sponsored (= free; it may remain so until I see how much I will be using it). Does anyone else out there using Weebly or anything like it have any thoughts on sponsored versus own domain websites? Also, is this particular setup conducive to posting the kind of linked genealogical information in formats such as those provided by The Next Generation in Genealogy Site Building as demonstrated by Valerie Craft of Begin with Craft on her new website, BeginWithCraft.com (which I really like the look of, by the way)? I can generate web cards from my Reunion program, but I’m not sure whether the pages and linking system will be “clunky” or not. (Wow, those sentence certainly reveal my overwhelming ignorance in matters of web design.)


A Few More:

Since I post Follow Friday Newsletter on Thursday evening, I missed later “Great Discussion” posts. Here are a few:

Genealogy Leftovers - “Making Money from Genealogy”

Minnesota Family Historian - “Money Changes Everything - or Does It?”

JLog - “Genealogy, Computers & Money”

We Tree - “Money Changes Everything - Or Does It?”

GeneaBloggers - “Money Changes Everything - Or Does It?”

Genealogy’s Star - “More on money and genealogy? How can that happen?”

Genealogy Frame of Mind - “Yep Its That Free Genealogy Thing AGAIN!”


For more suggested blog reading

check out “Follow Friday: This Week’s Favs” at Jen’s Climbing My Family Tree, “Best of the Genea-Blogs” at Randy Seaver’s Genea-Musings, “Follow Friday: Around the Blogosphere” at Susan Petersen’s Long Lost Relatives.net, “Best Bytes for the Week” at Elizabeth O’Neal’s Little Bytes of Life, and “Monday Morning Mentions” at Lynn Palermo’s The Armchair Genealogist.

What I Learned Wednesday: 27 April 2011

This week I am learning more about research in New York. I received a couple of scans of Fichtelmann family death certificates from another Fichtelmann researcher, and I took that as a sign that I need to get on the ball with getting documentation for some of my husband’s families. I e-mailed Evergreen Cemetery in Brooklyn for burial information on Katharina Scherer Fichtelmann but have not received a reply, yet. I also mailed out request forms for death certificates for Julius Koehl and Josephine Lochner Koehl. My next task is to get in touch with Green-Wood Cemetery to find out how to get burial information for all the family members listed in the Koehl family plot.

Most of this involves straightforward research procedures, but it is still a bit of a change of pace from researching my own family, most of whom lived in the southern states. Initially, my main goal in researching my husband’s family was not very ambitious: I wanted to at least document each line back to the original immigrant - and since the earliest immigrants seem to have come over around 1850, with the majority arriving between 1890 and 1910, that’s not terribly far back to go. I also hoped to get some clue as to where in Italy/Germany/Romania the various families originated, but I knew that I could not count on this.

Surprisingly, thanks to my fellow Fichtelmann researchers Mary Lou Benjamin and J. E. Felbinger and to my in-laws’ fortuitous discovery of my husband’s grandmother’s birth certificate (which led to my discovery of the ship manifest giving her home town in Italy), I now have at least two new points of origin in Europe; a third location, Moinesti, Romania for the Greenbergs, is already known.

However, I am still interested in documenting the families here in the United States. For instance, it is intriguing that my husband’s great-grandmother and her sister were going to meet a Vincenzo D’Arco in New Jersey; his great-grandmother married a Nicholas D’Arco, so this may be a brother.

In the coming weeks I am hoping to build up a decent section in my Genealogy Toolbox for New York and New Jersey research.

Pet Post Roundup

The theme for Week 17 of Amy Coffin’s “52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy and History,” sponsored by GeneaBloggers, is: Pets. Did you have any pets as a child? If so, what types and what were their names. Do you have pets now? Describe them as well. If you did not have pets, you can discuss those of neighbors or other family members.

Well, as a matter of fact, I have posted on this subjects before. Lots of times. Lots and lots of times. So - here is a list of previous posts:

Memory Monday: Pets, Part 1

Memory Monday: Pets, Part 2

The Language of Cats: An Illustrated Glossary (my favorite pet post)

Wordy Wednesday: More from the Language of Cats - An Illustrated Glossary

Featured Feline Friday: R.B. Koehl

Wordless Wednesday: The Language of Cats, Continued

Silly Saturday: New Year’s Eve Nip Party

Wordy Wednesday: Our Office Assistants

Wordless Wednesday: Pipsqueak and a Friend

Memory Monday: We Were the Brady Bunch of Cat Families