Nice Catch!

My family genealogy day was VERY nice! It was wonderful to share information – even if it was only with two people. Mom mom had assured me that my aunt would not be interested, but my aunt surprised us both. She was very interested in reading what I brought and looking at old family photos and started telling several stories from when she was young – something she had never done before! In talking about it later, Mom said she thought it was probably because we were such a small group. (And as a side note – we decided on a spur of the moment week-long trip to Florida before school starts, so I’m hoping to hear many more stories from my Mom and aunt next week!)

My cousin was amazed at what I had printed out for her. I think it was probably a little overwhelming, as we never did start at the beginning and work our way through it. Instead, she’d ask a question about a person and I’d jump to that portion of the print out and we’d talk about that – which would bring a new question and another jump! And every time she asked me about a specific person in the tree I loved that I could walk to my computer and print a set of notes for that person as well! Her youngest son is getting ready to go to college to study HISTORY, so she said that he will really enjoy reading what I sent home with her and once he gets settled, would probably love to work together with me to fill out our applications for Daughter/Son of the American Revolution – so that’s something to look forward to!

The visit didn’t “net” (pun intended!) me any new information, but I do feel like I’ve stirred some interest that wasn’t there before! At one point, my mom pulled out the Christmas Poem book that I wrote for her 2 years ago and that stirred even more memories from my aunt and even a tear or two from my Mom. I’m sure we’ll be planning additional time to get together and share more information and I’m thrilled with that! If I’ve inspired a small part of my family to begin thinking about family history, I think that’s a greater thing than collecting more newspaper clippings or documents. (But I sure wouldn’t turn those down!!)

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Gone Fishin!

For the first time ever, a few people in my Mom’s family have asked that we organize a time to get together to take a look at my family history information! So I’ve spent a couple of days trying to get my stuff into a more entertaining format that might “hook” me some more information. I will be giving them a Word print out of a 3 generation timeline/narrative format of my notes with as many maps, photographs and certificate images as I could reasonably put in there. I have information from my great-great grandparents births to my grandparents deaths. I also included a lot of pictures of my mom and her siblings growing up hoping to jog some memories out of my aunts and uncles.

It’s a 30 page, color coded, sources cited wonder to behold! (Well, at least to me!) We’re getting together tomorrow and it will be interesting to see the reaction and to see if they are interested in seeing more details or more generations. A warm-up for the DVD project to come!

Wish me luck!!

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Using PowerPoint

This past week-end, I was surfing though Ancestry hints in my family tree while my husband and kids enjoyed some time in a hotel pool.  I was quite surprised to find a family tree that was obviously put up by one of my cousin’s sons! I didn’t think anyone else in my family did family research, so I emailed her to make sure it was him and it was! I remember that last year, my cousin had emailed me to get some family tree information for a graduate level class she was taking and I have to wonder if her son caught the “genealogy bug” after seeing some of that information.

So I’m thinking ahead to Christmas. I think I’m going to create an interactive Family History program using PowerPoint. My goal will be to put the program onto DVDs to give to my aunts/uncles/cousins/cousins-once-removed – or anyone who may be interested in the information. This will be my “bait” to see if I can get family members interested enough in our genealogy that they might begin telling me stories that they remember or realizing that they may have some documents or mementos that I might be interested in seeing. This type of interactive program would be much more appealing that the binders that I bring to family get-togethers. And copying a DVD is MUCH cheaper than copying pages and pages of documents!

I’m beginning to formulate a plan to put my genealogy research into an interactive PowerPoint program that will allow the user to jump from a person in the family tree to the section of the program that deals with that person. Each person will have a timeline page (user can click on a timeline entry to jump to that document page) and a Group Sheet page (user can click on any name or date to jump to that page).  The DVD format will allow me to put all kinds of documents into the program, but a family history “newbie” wouldn’t be overwhelmed by stacks and stacks of papers. I’ll make the program “clickable” so that a person will only see what they want to see. I’ll make the documents “educational” with information boxes so a person will see the kind of information we can discover with these documents. Maybe they will understand why I care about “boring” things like census records and tax records.  I want to include as many old photos as possible as well to make everything “come alive” and to perhaps job some memories as to what they might have that I don’t.

I’m thinking this might become a “How To” series on the blog. I’d like to say I’ll make this a weekly thing, but if I’ve learned anything this past year, it’s not to assume that you’ll have the time you think you’ll have!

So if this is something that might be interesting to you, but sure to bookmark the blog and check back often! Or follow me on Twitter and you’ll receive a Tweet every time a new post is created.

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Not the Year I Thought This Would Be

Well, here I am, looking at this blog and thinking how sad it is that I haven’t posted in so long. Not only that, how long since I’ve done any real research! This year of new job responsibilities plus quite a battle with health issues have made this a VERY different year than I thought it would be!

So last week, while my mother was visiting for the 4th, I decided to FINALLY take a look at the 1940 census to see if I could find her family – although she wasn’t born for a couple of years yet. I used the links that Ancestry has on the home page to use the Stephen Morse and Joel Weintraub work and I pretty quickly found my mother’s grandfather in Franklin, Indiana, by entering the E.D. from their 1930 census but I could not found her family using the same method.

She tried to think of all the places that she had heard about her family living before she was born and I used that information along with my aunt’s birth certificate (she was born in 1939) to discover that the family probably lived in Shelby County. From there, I used the 1940 census Enumeration District map available at the Online Public Access site found at Archives.com.  (Find instructions for using this site under Number 3 at http://www.archives.gov/research/census/1940/start-research.html)

Luckily, Shelby County was not a booming metropolis like Chicago or even Indianapolis! I used the Ancestry option of selecting a district within a county to begin a page by page browsing to look for Mom’s family. They weren’t in the same district as the address on my Aunt’s birth certificate, so I began searching districts between that location and the Franklin location where my grandfather lived. As I moved across the county looking for the family, I began to think they would never be found this way. After about 2 hours of searching (and a tiny bit of a census reader’s headache!) I found them! And while I didn’t discover any earth shattering information, we all know that it’s all about collecting all the information we can and I’m happy to have it!

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