Showing posts with label COG. Show all posts
Showing posts with label COG. Show all posts

Thursday, February 5, 2009

The 65th Edition of the Carnival of Genealogy Has Post

Fifty geneabloggers responded to the topic, “Happy Dancing, The Joy of Genealogy” that Becky Wiseman of Kinexions hosted for the 65th Edition of the COG. That’s a lot of twinkle-toed genealogists! Share in their joy, and maybe take a moment and share a similar experience by commenting on some of their posts.

Just in Time for My Friend Dawn My friend Dawn today was bemoaning the complexities of organizing your genealogy data. Funny that she mentioned this because I am currently writing a post for the first edition of The Monthly Mélange, in which I confess that, “organization is my personal downfall.” Cross my heart, I wrote that exact phrase yesterday. 

Well leave it to Dear Myrtle to have solutions in the shape of a checklist. Myrtle prepared a checklist for January (“2009: All You Can Be”) and one for February (“Finally Getting Organized: February 2009 Checklist”). You can download them free, in a PDF file, but as “Myrt” suggests, viewing them online will enable you to click the hyperlinks. Just so you know, Dawn and I will have to do double time to make up for the month we are behind, and if we can do it, so can you.

© 5 February 2009, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder 

Monday, January 12, 2009

Resolutions and No Resolutions

You may have noticed that I passed on doing a New Year’s Resolution this year. I shamed myself with last year’s resolution (Finding out more information on Jacobus ancestors) so badly that I figured my making a resolution was something akin to Congress requesting accountability on bailouts. A great idea, but without muscle, it’s just words. 

 However, not to worry, the Carnival of Genealogy had in the neighborhood of forty “resolute” geneabloggers who willingly put their own reputations on the line to share with you their personal New Year’s resolutions. They were, to say the least, inspiring. They were, to say the most, practical ideas that may be just the thing you need to start your year out right. You can catch the link at Jasia’s Creative Gene website. 

 I have however, been thinking about my own cranky, go away don’t bother me attitude. If I said, “I hate Christmas!” once, I must have said it - well enough times to have a daughter-in-law tell me, “You always say that.” Ouch! So I’m trying an experiment, which is different from a resolution. (Don’t ask me the difference, just roll with me here.) I’m calling it, “My Year of Positive Thinking” and every Monday, I’ll write a positive quote on an index card and read it first thing in the morning and the last thing before going to bed for an entire week.

 The next week, I’ll do the same thing all over again with another quote. In each Monday’s post, I’ll tell you what my quote for the week is. My boss, Sam, and my co-worker, Teagen, have offered to help me come up with some positive quotes. (As I told them, the only quote that leapt to my mind was, “When you see light at the end of the tunnel, it’s the light of the oncoming train.” You see my problem.) 

 If any of you have a favorite quote that fits in with what I am hoping to accomplish, feel free to send me the quote. I can use all the help I can get. However, I think I found just the ticket for this week’s quote. It comes from Max Ehrmann’s “Desiderata.” You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. 

Until Next Time …

© 12 January 2009, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder 


Thursday, December 18, 2008

The 62nd Edition of the Carnival of Genealogy Has Posted!

You saw what my three wishes were of Dear Genea-Santa. Now read the wishes of the other geneabloggers at Jasia's Creative Gene post, "Carnival of Genealogy, 62nd Edition." Thanks, Jasia, for another well done edition of the COG.

© 18 December 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder 

Thursday, March 6, 2008

A little of this, a little of that

REMINDER - SANDUSKY COUNTY KIN HUNTERS MEETING

Just a quick reminder that Sandusky County Kin Hunters will be meeting at the Sandusky Township Hall, 2700 Oak Harbor Road, this Sunday, March 9 at 2 p.m. John Tate will be the featured speaker, and he will have a question and answer session. Visitors are welcomed. Sandusky County Kin Hunters is a member of the Federation of Genealogical Societies. For more information go the Kin Hunters Website at http://www.kinhunters.org/ or contact the organization at information@kinhunters.org.

CARNIVAL OF GENEALOGY 

The 43rd Carnival of Genealogy has arrived. I've read all 32 posts. They are an interesting bunch, my fellow Geneabloggers. The subject, of course, was technology. More specifically, what hardware, software and Web sites contribute to each of our genealogical quests. Some answers enlightened, some answers surprised but all answers entertained. If you would like to see what other genealogists deemed important, you can read about it here: http://creativegene.blogspot.com/2008/03/carnival-of-genealogy-43rd-edition.html

RETROSPECTIVE OF COG POSTERS 

The footnoteMaven, who has designed many of the posters for the Carnival of Genealogy has, at Jasia's request, posted a gallery of these designs on her blog. FM is very creative and you will want to check these out at http://footnotemaven.blogspot.com/2008/03/cog-posters-retrospective.html. AND FINALLY … Harold Henderson at http://midwesternmicrohistory.blogspot.com/, “Midwestern Microhistory,” keeps his readers informed about research in Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin. To keep abreast of what's going on in the world of Midwestern genealogical research, you need to check in with Harold's blog. Harold has given the Desktop Genealogist its second nod, by mentioning the post “Pension File Stories: Louisa Ish Smathers, Disappearing Woman.” Thanks Harold! 

Until Next Time - Happy Ancestral Digging! Note this post first published online, March 6, 2008, at Desktop Genealogist Blog at The News-Messenger Online http://www.thenews-messenger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=BLOGS02

© 6 March 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder 

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Indispensable Technology for the Family Historian

Okay, before we go any further check it out. THIS IS MY HUNDREDTH BLOG POST! Woo-hoo! Par-tay! 

And now back to our regularly scheduled program. Jasia has posed the following topic for our next Carnival of Genealogy: “The topic for the next edition of the Carnival of Genealogy will be: Technology. What technology do you most rely on for your genealogy and family history research? Select one piece of hardware (besides your computer), one piece of software (besides your internet browser), and one web site/blog (besides your own) that are indispensable to you”

Okay, first let me say that I am an “in the moment” kinda girl. So whatever I give as my answer today might not be the same next month, or next week, or tomorrow. I'm currently working on a genealogy where everybody LIED! I don't know if they didn't know the truth, or had something to hide, or if there is some kind of cultural going-on that I just am not getting. In any case, I am really fascinated with this family. As I try to unweave all the strands and figure out all the relationships, I have been making handy use of some pretty powerful tools and those are the ones I am going to give my big thumbs up to in this post. 

INDISPENSABLE WEBSITE

And the winner is (okay I really wanted to participate in the iGENE awards so humor me here) - ANCESTRY.COM. Groan if you like, but I went without this little gem of a site for almost a year. Now that I have it back, I am giving it all that pent-up love that it deserves. One of these days, I will make a very lengthy list about all the goodies I have found since my love and I have been reunited, but for my current project, it is MUY BIEN. I open up Ancestry.com on part of my screen, familysearchlabs.org on the other half of my screen and I go from census to Ohio Death Records, working my way through the information and then adding it to my database software, which I have minimized and opened on my laptop. It's efficient and methodical — my logical brain is very impressed. Granted, I am only up to the 1850 census but we are talking a lot of related families here. 

INDISPENSABLE HARDWARE

I vote modem, my wonderful cable speed modem. Did I mention I have a wireless router to go with that modem? Downloading all those census files and death record files would be O - H - S - O - S - L - O - W! And with the wireless router, I can sit there with my feet up, and nod companionably at my husband as he works on his own project on his laptop. We are oh so 2008.

INDISPENSABLE SOFTWARE

OK, this one is a little tricky. I have always used Family Tree Maker. I am currently using version 16. Family Tree Maker is familiar, it's comfortable and I have basically been happy with it. However, for this project The Master Genealogist is working extremely well. I've opened up a separate project on TMG and as I work my way through the census and the death records, I add the sources into the database as I add the individuals. Now my one criticism of TMG is that the learning curve on it is definitely steeper than on FTM. However, I am adding basically just two sources of info, and once I have each source set up in my own persnickety fashion, it isn't that hard to enter. And that's what I like about TMG, its extreme flexibility when it comes to adding sources and citations. I can do it MY WAY, and the control freak in me is very pleased. 

So there you have it — the technology that makes my research hum.

Until Next Time — Happy Ancestral Digging!

Note this post first published online, February 27, 2008 at Desktop Genealogist Blog at The News-Messenger Online http://www.thenews-messenger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=BLOGS02

© 27 February 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder 

Monday, February 25, 2008

The Carnival Came to Town and Other Rants

Terry Thornton posted Friday the round up for his little poetry challenge, which you can read here: http://hillcountryofmonroecountry.blogspot.com/2008/02/anthology-of-blogger-poems-2008.html.

Thanks, guys, for letting me a take a black eye for Northwest Ohio in the poetry category!

Also, the Carnival of Genealogy came to town last week. For this edition of the carnival, the topic was IGENE AWARDS 2007. Each blogger was asked to pick their own favorite post in each of five categories.

Those categories were:

Best Picture
Best Screen Play
Best Documentary
Best Biography
Best Comedy (always my favorite category)

You can read some funny, interesting, touching posts chosen by the bloggers themselves at http://creativegene.blogspot.com/2008/02/carnival-of-genealogy-42nd-edition.html.

Note: Yours truly did not participate in this blog because - well, I don't really have archives to go back and access. The three options I wish my blog had that the other genea-bloggers enjoy are (and in no particular order):

1. ARCHIVES - I mean real honest to goodness archives that could be accessed all year long.

2. AN RSS FEED - Now that's a right purty “Add Feed” button that sits beneath my posts that would make you think you could subscribe to my blog, but alas it's just another pretty button.

3. DIRECT CONTROL OF MY BLOG - Do you know how many times I see my post in actual print and I groan out loud? I wonder why I used that verb, or wow, could I have said that in a MORE awkward manner. Then there is the occasional punctuation error (have I mentioned that I am punctuationally and grammatically challenged?). When those little errors creep into my post I have to send an exclamation marked e-mail to the editor or just suck it up and leave it as it is. Neither appeals to me. I just want to be able to go in and FIX IT!

All righty then - now that I've gotten that off my chest, you all have yourselves a nice day. (Oh, and you just know that I'm definitely going to want to go in and change that last sentence!)

Until Next Time - Happy Ancestral Digging!

Note this post first published online, February 25, 2008, at Desktop Genealogist Blog at The News-Messenger Online http://www.thenews-messenger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=BLOGS02

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Carnival of Genealogy has arrived

The Carnival of Genealogy is in town! There are 32 entries for this edition of Carnival. I haven’t had a chance to read all of them yet (there were 32, after all), but you will find a variety of responses to the question: If you could have dinner with four of your ancestors who would they be and why? Some are guaranteed to make you laugh, some will make your mouth water, and some will make you think. Jasia, as usual, has played the gracious hostess, and gave a brief synopsis of each of the entries.

You can find the links to each at Jasia's Creative Gene: http://creativegene.blogspot.com/2008/02/carnival-of-genealogy-41st-edition.html So which four of YOUR ancestors would you have to dinner and why? Until Next Time – Happy Ancestral Digging! 

 Note this post first published online, February 5, 2008, at Desktop Genealogist Blog at The News-Messenger Online http://www.thenews-messenger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=BLOGS02

© 5 February 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged,  Teresa L. Snyder 


Thursday, January 31, 2008

Of Mothers and Daughters and Dinner Parties — Part II

The 41st edition of the Carnival of Genealogy asks the question: If you could have dinner with four of your ancestors who would they be and why? 

When my great-grandmother, Emma Gleffe Schröder, first set sail for the United States in 1906, she knew that she would probably never see her father, brother and sister again. It's not known if Emma's mother, Pauline Gleffe, was alive at the time of Emma's departure, but in the German letters that were saved, Pauline is not mentioned. 

Emma arrived at Ellis Island with her husband, Leo, and their two sons, Wilhelm (Willy) and Max, on April 1, 1906. Speaking no English and being sponsored by Leo's brother-in-law, Karl Kollat, Emma and Leo settled on the outskirts of Clyde, Ohio. There they found other German-speaking families, and just as important to Emma, a Lutheran Church that she could walk to each week, to listen to the German service.

For my second dinner party, I would choose Emma and her mother, Pauline, as the last two ancestors to share a meal with me. Though I would love to see the land where Emma grew up and where Pauline lived her life, I know exactly when and where this dinner party would take place. There are very few things my grandmother told me about her mother, Emma. But the one thing she did say was that her mother was a good cook. My dad has also told me the same thing of the grandmother that he called, “his buddy.” 

So I am inviting myself to Sunday dinner at the Schröder house in Clyde, and Emma and her mother are doing the cooking. Once they get used to the idea of being together again, I can imagine the two of them clucking and speaking in German, with my great-grandmother translating for me. I would be madly scribbling down recipes and notes and helping with whatever menial chores the two women would assign me. 

 I WOULD ASK PAULINE (with Emma translating) 

What date were you born?

What are the names of your parents? 

What date were they born? 

What is your husband's full name and date of birth? 

What are the names of his parents?

When and where were you married? 

Do you remember your grandparents? 

What were there names? 

Tell me a story about your grandparents. 

Tell me a story about Emma when she was a little girl.


 I WOULD ASK EMMA 

Who were your paternal grandparents? 

What do you remember of them? 

What do you miss about your homeland? 

Who was Albert Tuschy and how are the Tuschys related to the Schröder family? 

Tell me about your in-laws, Wilhelm and Karoline Quetschke Schröder.

What was the trip to America like? 

What is a favorite memory you have of your mother? 

What is a favorite memory you have of your father? 

Tell me a story about your daughter Anna as a child. 

What is your recipe for your Christmas log roll? 

 I would give them some private time to talk, to cry and to laugh. Then later, sometime in the afternoon, Emma's daughter Anna would stop and drop off her 7-year-old son. For I have chosen to have my dinner party the exact summer that my father stayed with his grandparents during the week.

Pauline and I would fade into the shadows, as Emma, all smiles would go outside to greet her daughter and grandson. We would stand there, the two of us, peeking out the screen door, listening to the casual tones of conversation. Pauline would be watching intently the granddaughter and great-grandson she had never seen, and I would be watching just as intently a father and grandmother I have known so well. We would look up, she and I, our eyes meeting, and both smile in a way that would need no translation.


© 31 January 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder 

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Of Mothers and Daughters and Dinner Parties — Part I

The 41st edition of the Carnival of Genealogy asks the question: If you could have dinner with four of your ancestors who would they be and why?

I have been blessed in my life to be surrounded by wonderful people. I would like to tell you that it's because I am such a terrific human being that my karma attracts all these great individuals. But what is it they say? Better to be lucky than good. That pretty much sums it up. 

Part of my good luck happens to be that I sit in the generational middle ground of two extremely remarkable, gifted and capable women, my mother and my daughter. My mother I have known for 55 years and my daughter for almost 35. (Sorry kiddo, I hope that wasn't any kind of state secret.) Those are a lot of good years, a lot of shared joys, sorrow and laughter, and I am at least wise enough to realize what a rare blessing I have been bestowed. 

It is for this reason that my dinners would be with two sets of mother/daughter ancestors. I chose each set precisely because they were denied the blessing I have lived. Fanny Thacker Cope died at the age of 22 of consumption. Her eldest child, Elizabeth Cope Smathers, would die of the same disease when she was 30, leaving four children under the age of 7. Lizzie, as Elizabeth was called, must have been heartsick when the coughing, and the night sweats signaled to her that she would not be there to raise her children. If anyone would know how difficult the loss of a mother was, it was Lizzie. Lizzie was all of 5 when Fanny died. 

The years between her mother's death and 1900 are blank. And I wonder, after her mother's death did she live with her father or did she live with grandparents? Did they give the little girl the love and support that she lost with the death of her mother? When her father remarried, did she and her stepmother get along? Or did she feel like the extra cog in the hub of her father's new family? There would come a day when Lizzie's fear over leaving her children would seem too large a grief to bear and that is the day I would choose to whisk her away to my little dinner party.

Fanny, who was so young herself, must have also wondered what would happen to her children, Elizabeth and John. There would be a day when she felt that life had played a cruel joke on her, and that would be the day I would bring her to join Lizzie and me for dinner.

The first question I would ask would be what they would wish to eat. I'm confident whatever magic wand allowed me to arrange this meeting would also allow me to fill the dinner table with any foods that would delight the two of them. Being wives of coal miners, in the late 1880s and the early part of the 20th century, there would be novelty in being pampered guests of a dinner party.

 After they had accustomed themselves to the oddness of the meeting, and after Fanny and Lizzie had a few private moments to speak, I would ask them my questions.

 FOR FANNY: 
Can you tell me a story you remember about Lizzie as a little girl? 

Tell me about your mother, Clarinda.

What do you remember about your grandparents? 

Was your grandfather Nicholas Nimrod Thacker or Nimrod Nicholas Thacker?

What was your grandmother's name? 

Tell me a story about your grandparents.

Do you know the names of the parents of your grandmother and grandfather? 

Where did they come from in Louisa County, Virginia? 

FOR LIZZY: 

When and why did your branch of the family add an extra “e” to the name Cope?

Would you tell me how you met your husband, Elmer Smathers?

Would you tell me a story about your mother? 

Can you tell me what you remember about your mother's parents?

Can you tell me the names of your father's parents?

What do you remember about your paternal grandparents?

Can you tell me a story about your son, Walter? 


I would like to ask Fanny if she knows who her father is because I believe Fanny was born on the wrong side of the blanket. But as much as I would like to ask, I won't. It would seem rude and ungracious.

Then during dessert, I would sneak in another guest. I would bring in Lucille, Lizzie's eldest daughter. Lucille was not quite 7 when Lizzie died. She would later tell of being given a locket of her mother's red hair at the funeral. This would be the only memento she would have of her mother's. And many years later when she and her sister had finally been reunited, they would decide to look for their younger brother, Walter. 

Instead of finding their brother, they would find his eldest son. Lucille would recount the story of the locket of hair to her nephew and his wife. We would talk about what became of each of their children. I would offer pictures, and tell them they had not been forgotten. I would let the three women have their private moments, and then our time would be over.

Tomorrow, I will post about my second dinner party.

Until Next Time! - Happy Ancestral Digging! 

Note this post first published online, January 30, 2008, at Desktop Genealogist Blog at The News-Messenger Online http://www.thenews-messenger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=BLOGS02

© 30 January 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder 

Terry

Terry

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