Tuesday, July 29, 2008

A Little Mojo Confusion

Well, this is my week to apologize. It seems I caused a little confusion with my post, “Oh Mojo, Won’t You Please Come Home.” I received an email from Mojo the dog, as opposed to Mojo the blog, assuring me that he wasn’t lost. He also sent pictures to prove it.

"What you mean I lost? I not lost! I right here!"


After a little embarrassed backtracking on my part, the matter was straightened out, I think to Mojo’s satisfaction. Proving that he truly was man’s (or in this case woman’s) best friend, he also sent the following advice:

 


If you're looking for something and you sniff around long enough, you'll probably find it. 

That’s, um, good advice Mojo. I’ll be sure to remember it. Thanks goes out to Joy, one of Mojo’s people who sent me the pictures and captions. And again, apologies to Mojo for the confusion. 

Until Next Time!

©  29 July 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder


Thud!

Thud – that’s the sound of the other shoe falling from the recent FamilySearch/Ancestry.com agreement, which I posted about here. Dick Eastman has posted a letter on his Genealogy Newsletter written by the folks at Family Search, which says, and I am summarizing here: Indexes will remain free, while images may not. As for images: 

Where possible, FamilySearch will seek to provide free public access to digital images of original records. Due to affiliate obligations, free access to some images may be available only to FamilySearch members (volunteers and indexers who meet basic contribution requirements each quarter, patrons at Family History Centers, and members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who’s contributions support FamilySearch’s operations). FamilySearch members will also enjoy convenient access in their homes or wherever they have Internet access. (FamilySearch is currently developing its ability to verify that users are FamilySearch members for future home access. This expanded access should be enabled in 2009.) For all the details, check out Dick’s online newsletter. Stay Tuned for more developments!

© 29 July 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder 


I Used to be Able to Chew Gum and Walk (Or why I can’t quite get the hang of comments and messages on this new website.)

Okay, let’s just say it. I’m a technology idiot. Ever since we changed blog formats, I have been struggling with the intricacies of this new system. Early on people made comments to my blog that I didn’t see and therefore, did not read until weeks later. Now just so you know, comments are like catnip to bloggers. We ADORE them. We would gladly stand on our hands balancing an open full Pepsi can with our feet in order to get one little ole comment. Oh yes we would. So, I felt particularly bad about not giving the proper “love” to those who commented. I resolved to fix the situation, by changing my settings so that I would have to “approve” each comment, reasoning that I would be electronically notified for approval and I could then take the appropriate steps. 

 Good plan – but something went amiss. Earlier today, I was notified about a comment posting. Excited I went to see and approve the comment only to find that there were TWO COMMENTS sitting there from the first of the month. Yipes! So I quickly approved all three and I have written each person a note apologizing, but I wanted to say publicly how sorry I am that I didn’t respond sooner. I don’t know where the glitch occurred, but as soon as I post this I’m taking off the approval setting, and I promise I will look at least once each day to see if anyone has commented. 

 For those of you who like a post, but feel challenged by the hoops you have to go through to comment, there is a little recommend button that you can click on at the bottom of each post that will let me know that somebody read the post and liked it. There is also a recommend button up at the top of the page that you can click if you like the blog in general. Oh wait, that’s probably shameless to tell you something like that. (I had a picture of the page with a red arrow pointing to the button, but that was actually too brazen even for me, but it sure made a nice graphic.) 

 Just so you know, I’ve cajoled, brow beat and threatened to set on fire family members in order to get them to click on that darn recommend button – talk about shameless! They all swear they clicked on it, but the numbers just don’t add up! So once again, let me apologize to anyone who commented on this blog or any of my other blogs and did not get the appropriate recognition. I am honored that you took the time to comment, and I promise to try Do better in the future. 

 Until Next Time!

© 29 July 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder 


Sunday, July 27, 2008

Stories My Grandmother Told Me

Though my writing and speech tends to be littered with superlatives – the greatest, the most, the best – the truth is, I’m much too wishy-washy to say definitively that I have a favorite of anything. So, when the glorious fM proposed “My Favorite Photograph” as the subject for this edition of “Smile for the Camera,” I admit to a slight, panic-stricken feeling at committing to a favorite photograph so publicly. I mean, won’t the other photographs be hurt? So after careful consideration, I came up with the winner. If it isn’t my favorite photograph, it is certainly one of my favorites.

 
In my family, old pictures are few and far between. The one I’ve chosen was taken in 1899 at a photography studio in Tiffin, Ohio. It is a picture of my grandmother, Katheryne Cecile Lynch and her twin sister, Elizabeth Lucille Lynch. Katheryne and Elizabeth, born October 4, 1898, were the youngest children of Laura Jane Feasel Lynch and John Perry Lynch. Laura Jane and JP appear not to have been sentimental when it came to naming most of their children. The other children – Flossie, Owen, Elbert, Hazel Grace, and Harry Victor, were not named after family members.

 
But perhaps because they had lost little Hazel Grace at age 3 or maybe it was the unexpected delight at the birth of twin daughters eight years later, Laura Jane and JP decided it was time to give their daughters family names. My grandmother, Katie was named for her paternal grandmother, Catherine Good Lynch while Elizabeth was named for her maternal grandmother, Elizabeth Armstrong Feasel. Eighteen ninety-nine appears to be the year that they set out for Greer County, Oklahoma. JP’s parents had settled there more than a decade earlier when Greer County was still considered a part of Texas. According to my grandmother they traveled by covered wagon, and she swore as little as she was she had memories of crossing the Red River.

 
Somewhere, during this time, and it may have been here in Ohio (though I have found no record of it), little Elizabeth contracted measles and died on July 7, 1899. She was nine months old. My grandmother is the one sitting on the left hand side of the picture, with Elizabeth to her right. It is possibly the only picture taken of the two girls.

 
My grandmother passed away on March 25, 1990. She outlived her twin by more than ninety years.

  Information Sources: 
1. Digital Image of PJ Keller Photograph taken Tiffin, Ohio, 1899, supplied by Phyllis Sloan 
2 .Photographic Images of leaves of George Washington Lynch Family Bible supplied by Anna Belle Lynch Mauldin 
3. Information about Greer County supplied by Dee O’Hara AND 
4. Greer County, OK GenWeb, http://www.okgenweb.org/~okgreer/ 
5. Personal conversations with Katheryne Lynch Hoy Runion

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

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Oh Mojo Won’t You Please Come Home

I‘ve lost it, my blogging mojo. Worse, I’ve temporarily lost (at least I hope it’s temporary) my insatiable hunger for all things genealogical. I’m not sure how this happened. Maybe it’s something like the brain freeze you get when you woof down that first big bite of ice cream on a hot summer day. I’ve been woofing down all kinds of family history information and coming up with precious few leads. 

As a result, there are fresh new frustration dents on my desktop where head and desk have met. (Hey, maybe that’s my problem. Maybe I have self-induced brain damage. Nah!) I read where Jessica of Jessica’s Genejournal has a whopping 619 posts in only a year and a half online. Cripes, I’ve been blogging for eleven months and I haven’t even hit 200. Kudos to you Jessica – except you’re depressing the heck out of me. And now, I have absolutely nothing to say. Not one new unique Terry’s oddball brain inspired thing to tell you. Nada, Nothing, Zilch. (See, what I mean.)

So while I am out looking for my blogging mojo and my genealogical zest, here are two links to two carnivals that posted last weekend. Lisa of 100 Years in America hosted this edition of the COG. The subject was “Age.” And my prolific friend Jessica hosted the Carnival of Central and Eastern European Genealogy. The topic was research experiences and tips. Enjoy! 

Well, I’m off to find my mojo. Here mojo. Here zest. Hey, if you see them, just send them on home – PLEASE!

© 24 July 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder 


Monday, July 21, 2008

The Party's Over - Almost

If you don’t read blogs religiously like I do, then you may have missed the hoopla earlier today when Ancestry.com and FamilySearch announced their collaboration on US, English and Welsh Census records.

You can read the full press release with all the juicy details at, FamilySearch and Ancestry.com Team to Publish New Images and Enhanced Indexes to the U.S. Censuses

Let me quote in part from the release: 

The first census exchanged is the 1900 U.S. Census. FamilySearch completed a 1900 index in addition to Ancestry.com’s original. In the new index, FamilySearch added several new fields of searchable data, such as birth month and birth year, so individuals can search for ancestors more easily. The two indexes will be merged into an enhanced index, available on both sites. The new 1900 census images are now available on Ancestry.com. The enhanced 1900 index will be available for free for a limited time at Ancestry.com and ongoing at FamilySearch.org. 

Did you see – the INDEX will be available for free “ongoing” at FamilySearch.org, NOT the images. This was an index worked on by Family Search volunteers – you know, volunteers, as in I’m doing this for free out of the goodness of my heart volunteers. Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings has concerns about issues as well as some interesting observations in his blog post, Ancestry and FamilySearch to work together on Census Records.

Randy asks several good questions about the fate of other census indexes and images that FamilySearch has been working on. Randy also links to a post by Diane Haddad at the Genealogy Insider who says, 

The census indexes on Ancestry.com and FamilySearch will link to record images on Ancestry.com. If someone without an Ancestry.com subscription clicks the image link, he’ll be prompted to join. Subscriptions cost $155.40 per year or $19.95 for a month.

Well, the other shoe finally fell. My question is what will happen to the other images currently available for view at the Family Search website. Images like the Ohio Death Certificates, Texas Death Records, West Virginia Marriages – well you get the idea. Maybe I’m just a confirmed cynic, but I’ve always suspected having these free images available online was a temporary aberration. Of course, I could be wrong. We'll just have to wait and see how this plays out. I think, however, if FamilySearch is planning on turning over all or part of their image and index collection to Ancestry, they should inform their volunteers, so they can decide if they want to continue with the indexing project. 

Hey, wonder what happened to Ancestry’s own volunteer indexing program? 

Until Next Time!

© 21 July 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teressa L. Snyder 


Wednesday, July 16, 2008

The Kindness of Stangers

“I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” What was true for Blanche Dubois is doubly true for me as a researcher of my German roots. For one thing, I don’t speak a word of German, (Verstehen?). For another, many of the records were lost during World War II. And finally, even if the first two issues could be overcome, there is a loss of collective identity for the place my family once called home. That home no longer exists and the inhabitants and their descendents have been scattered to the winds. (For a better idea of what I’m talking about you can read two previous posts – Pomerania - An Introduction and Part II: Pomerania - War and Consequences.) I was lucky to have started my research on this part of my family in the Age of the Internet. If I had attempted this twenty years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to make much headway. I was also very fortunate that my great grandparents had kept documents and letters that pointed the way to begin my search.

 A website, called Kartenmeister, lets you search for the names of German villages. My great grandmother Emma, for example, was born in the village of Klein Gansen. Here’s what my search told me about the village:

 
From this, I learned the province and county where she was born. A website dedicated to preserving the history of the county, Stolp, was extremely helpful. They also had a mailing list, which of course is in German, and I joined. With the mailing list, I use Google to do a quick and dirty translation, and while I am occasionally lost during some discussions, the members of this mailing list have helped me find a couple of key pieces of information. They found the baptismal record for my great grandmother and the marriage date for one set of great great grandparents. I won’t tell you how long I labored writing my query in German, but the point is I can communicate with other German researchers, and they can communicate with me. As long I get over the fear of looking stupid in another language, I am all set. 

 Google also helped me find an American family historian who was researching one of my family names. Even in Germany, the last name of Quetschke is not that common, so when I found Shirley Pawlowski’s home page I was ecstatic. Shirley had actually come across my family and she was kind enough to share what she had found with me. We still haven’t figured out the exact connection between our two families but because they came from the same area of Stolp, we are certain they are connected in some manner. 

 One of my other great finds was a German researcher who was researching the surnames, Gliewe and Gleffe. Jörg and I communicated via the Google translator, which created some, um, interesting conversations. He translated into German a number of letters that were done in Plattdeutsch (Low German), so I could get a rough translation from Google. He also was able to find out what happened to some of Emma’s family, and sent me family trees on them. There are people living in Germany today, who descend from Emma’s siblings. All that survived, had lived in East Germany. Jörg interviewed their descendents, and sent me some of the information. I know for example that young Karl who had missed his little nephew, Willi, in a letter that I included in my post, Pomerania - An Introduction, had lost three sons in World War II. His wife, hearing that a third son had died, was so grief stricken that she ran from the house. They found her the next day dead and lying atop the grave of one of her sons. A database search on Volksbund der Deutschekriegsgraberfursorge, the website of the German War Graves Commison, confirmed this information and added more details. 

 Another website, Pommerdatenbank, run by Gunther Stubs, inputs data from local directories into a database so that you can locate family living in the area prior to 1945. This is ongoing project, but has already yielded results for me. Though the information on my German ancestors tends to trickle in drip by drip, it is a wonderful time to be involved in this type of research. With persistence, a good search engine, some translating tools and a lot of help from friends, I continue to make progress – a little at a time. 

 Until Next Time – Happy Ancestral Digging!  

This was written for the Carnival of Central and Eastern European Genealogy

© 16 July 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder 




Terry

Terry

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