For All My Sandusky County Kin Hunter Friends

I wanted to take the opportunity to thank everyone at the Sandusky County Kin Hunters who let me ramble on today about one of my favorite subjects, my Pomeranian roots. You each made it a thoroughly enjoyable experience for me. A special thanks to Dave Golden for inviting me to speak. Here are the links that I promised I would post. Enjoy! 

I. EAST OF THE ODER/NEISSE LINE A. Eastern Europe  1. http://www.kartenmeister.com/preview/databaseUwe.asp Kartenmeister “Database of locations are EAST of the Oder and Neisse rivers and are based on the borders of the eastern provinces in Spring 1918. Included in this database are the following provinces: Eastprussia, including Memel, Westprussia, Brandenburg. Posen, Pomerania, and Silesia.” Gives both German and Polish names of villages and towns.

Website in German, English and Polish 

2. http://feefhs.org/ The Federation of East European Family History Societies Resource for All of Eastern Europe – Maps, Links etc. B. 

Pomeranian Links 

Website in both German and English 

3. http://pom-wpru.kerntopf.com/index.htm Useful information about the counties along the border between former Prussian Provinces Pomerania and West Prussia. Counties include Butow - Pomerania Lauenburg – Pomerania Stolp – Pomerania Karthaus – West Prussia Neustadt – West Prussia Putzig – West Prussia 

Website in German with some English Subtitles 

4. http://www.ruegenwalde.com/pommern/index.htm Pommerninfo – Information and links for All Pommern Counties 

Website in German 

5. http://hinterpommern.de/ Pommern – Das Land am Meer Information and links for Pomerania East of the Oder-Neisse Line 

Website in German and some English 

6. http://pommerndatenbank.de/ Pommerndatenbank Searchable databases including 

A. Contact exchange between Pommern family researchers – Pommernkontakte

B. Search Family Names in various Address books from years 1869 -1938 

C. Search Church Books and Civil Records Database for availability of records and their location

Website in English and German 

7. http://www.bogenschneider.org/pomerania.htm Pomeranian Genealogy Resources - Excellent website for links! 

8. http://pomeranianews.com/welcome.html Die Pommerschen Leute Website for the Quarterly Newsletter devoted to the Duchy of Pomerania Published by The Immigrant Genealogical Society Pomeranian Special Interest Group Maps, Articles, and Links 

Website in English 

 9. http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~mnprgm/PRG.html The Pommern Regional Group of Minnesota Information on Pomeranian Culture and Links 

10. http://www.pommerschervereinfreistadt.org/Home/tabid/68/Default.aspx Pommerscher Verein Freistad Culture and History of Pomerania 

II. Pomeranian County Links

Website English and German 

1. http://www.hinterpommern-info.de/index.html Herzlich Willkommen im Landkreis Stolp i. Pommern Information about specific villages in Stolp Kreis Links to other information 

Website in German 

2. http://www.powiatslupsk.info/ Powiat Slupski Information about towns and villages of Stolp Kreis

Website in German and Polish 

3 http://belgard.org/ Information on Pommern - Kreis Belgard – Schivelbein 

Websites in German 

4. http://www.buetow-pommern.info/ Information on Pommern – Kreis Bütow 

5. http://www.cammin-pommern.de/ Information on Pommern - Kreis Cammin 

6. http://www.deutsch-krone.de/ Information on Pommern – Kreis Deutsch Krone 

7. http://www.lauenburg-pommern.de/ Information on Pommern – Kreis Lauenburg

8. http://www.naugard.de/ Information on Pommern – Kreis Naugard

9. http://www.netzekreis.de/ Information on Pommern – Netzekreis

10. http://www.rummelsburg.de/ Information on Pommern - Kreis Rummelburg

11. http://www.geocities.com/schlochau/index.html Information on Pommern –Kreis Schlochau 

Website in German and some Polish 

12. http://www.kolberg-koerlin.de/ Information on Pommern – Kreis Kolberg-Körlin 

Website in German and English 

13. http://www.schlawe.de/ Information on Pommern – Kreis Schlawe  

Website in English and German

14. http://list.genealogy.net/mailman/listinfo/stolp-l Mailing list for Researchers of the Pomeranian County of Stolp Instructions in German, English, French and Dutch 

III. GERMAN LINKS 

Website German but some on list read and write English 

1. http://www.genealogy.net/genealogy.html German Genealogy Portal

Website in German and some English 

2. http://immigrantgensoc.org/ The Immigrant Genealogical Society Collection of German and American Genealogy – Research Service from Library holdings.

Website in English 

3. http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/about.cfm German History in Documents and Images Collection of Historical documents, images, maps pertaining to German History From 1500 -2006 (Note some sections still under construction) 

Website in German and English 

4 http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/Search/RG/frameset_rg.asp?Dest=G1&Aid=&Gid=&Lid=&Sid=&Did=&Juris1=&Event=&Year=&Gloss=&Sub=&Tab=&Entry=&Guide=Ger_BMD_RefDoc_HandbookGermanResearch.ASP “A Genealogical Handbook of German Research” by Larry O. Jensen This can be downloaded as a PDF file from FamilySearch website.

Website in English

5. http://www.volksbund.de/ Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e.V. Website of the German War Graves Commission with information on German Soldiers who died in World War I and World War II 

Website in German 

6. http://mki.wisc.edu/ Max Kade Institute for German American Studies Documents, Maps, Information, Resources, Links 

Website in English (some links in German) 

7. http://home.att.net/~wee-monster/germanlinks.html Links for Geman Genealogy on the Internet Joe Beine’s very useful German links recently celebrated it’s 10 year anniversary. 

IV. IMMIGRATION 1. 

Website in English 

1.http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.eb1d4c2a3e5b9ac89243c6a7543f6d1a/?vgnextoid=d21f3711ca5ca110VgnVCM1000004718190aRCRD&vgnextchannel=d21f3711ca5ca110VgnVCM1000004718190aRCRD Information on the US Citizenship and Immigration Services Genealogy Program Procedures and fees for requesting Index Search and Record Copy Request (Note you can now make these requests online) 

2. http://www.ellisisland.org/ Ellis Island Search Passenger Manifests for Immigrant Ancestors 1892-1954 

V. ONLINE LANGUAGE TRANSLATORS 

1. http://www.google.com/language_tools?hl=en Google Language Tools Can translate both text and websites into from approximately 30 different languages into English., including Polish. Muy Bueno!

2. http://babelfish.yahoo.com/ Yahoo Babel Fish Can translate both text and website from 12 languages into English. Does not include Polish. 

VI. INTERACTIVE MAPS 

1. http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&cp=44.023938~-99.71&style=h&lvl=4&tilt=-89.875918865193&dir=0&alt=7689462.6842358 Microsoft Virtual Earth Look at Earth in 3D 

2. http://www.google.com/intl/en/ Google Earth 3D view of the world and more.

© 9 November 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder  

Sandusky County Kin Hunters Meeting Reminder

This Sunday, November 9, the Sandusky County Kin Hunters will be holding their monthly meeting at 2:00 PM at the Sandusky Township Hall on Rt 19 North. I will be there chatting about the topic “Researching My Pomeranian Roots.” The meeting is free and open to public with ample parking available. If you have any questions please contact Dave at 419-502-7620. Hope to see you there!

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

Some Final Thoughts on This Election Day

I just read a piece in the New York Times which said that the election with the largest voter turnout happened 100 years ago, on November 3, 1908 when 66% of the registered voters showed up at the polls and elected Ohioan, William Howard Taft, the Republican candidate, as President. Of course, women could not vote in that election. 

Today will be the 23rd time that women of the United States will have voted in a Presidential Election. November 2, 1920 was the first election in which women could exercise their right to vote. This was a mere 72 years after the birth of the women’s suffrage movement took place in Seneca Falls, New York at the first women's rights convention. Most of the women at that convention would not live to see their dreams of women’s suffrage realized.

As much as I am pulling for my candidate to win, I think the most important factor in today's election is the sanctity of the process – that no eligible voter’s vote be denied, nor left uncounted. There are mountains of lawyers ready to pounce in my home state of Ohio with charges of voter fraud already floating like bits of pollen in the air. I have heard that there are legions of lawyers representing both political parties stationed in other swing states ready to do battle. Perhaps it is naïve to believe that the integrity of the process matters more than the outcome of the election. But it is this belief that is at the core of what it means to be an American – one person, one vote. Is it too much to hope that those who would lead and their supporters remember this concept as this election season comes to a close?

© 4 November 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder 

Ouch!

Karma is a ... well, you know. I made a funny ha, ha about not wanting to drive to Michigan this week, and I may have said something along the lines that Michigan drivers were maniacs. I should have known that saying something like that, even in jest, would come back to bite me. Predictably, it did.

No, I didn’t get into any accident, at least not an automobile accident. But owing to the fact that I did not inherit either parent’s physical prowess, I managed to get into another kind of accident.

Yesterday, klutzy me ended up kissing Michigan pavement, hard. I managed to land on one of my hands, and to cut to the chase, I have a couple of swollen fingers that even now are screaming at me to STOP THE DARN TYPING. (One is a handsome shade of purple, thank you.) 

So not being a suck it up kinda girl, I’m just posting and typing enough to tell you, that until the fingers stop complaining, my wrist stops hurting and my shoulder no longer needs the heating pad, you aren’t going to hear a peep out of me.

I also want to say that I have learned my lesson about taking pot shots at the innocent citizens of another state, even in jest, even when technically true. No sir, not me, you won’t catch me saying anything bad about another state. Which probably means I’m going to have to stuff a sock in my mouth the weekend of November 22nd. Ouch!

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

One INTERESTING Week

No, I haven’t died, nor have I fallen off the edge of the earth. (Well, duh, the earth is round and has no edges but I digress.)

I’ve just had an INTERESTING week. First, I have been fighting off some kind of flu bug. I think the drive-in person at McDonald’s who told us she wasn’t feeling well as she handed us our coffee and tea, may have had something to do with that. No, I get you, that’s not especially interesting but I just wanted to point out that you can have an INTERESTING week and still feel sick. 

I also had my hair colored (no more gray) because I have to go to a work conference on Tuesday and Wednesday up into (shudder) Michigan. (No offense to the Michiganders who read this, but you people drive like maniacs!) And no, getting your hair colored isn’t especially interesting either but I wanted to prove what a real trooper I am – I mean feeling sick, getting my hair colored, and STILL managing to have an INTERESTING week. 

The first thing that happened was that I was invited to join a new group called The Association of Graveyard Rabbits. This is a group of individuals “promoting the historical importance of cemeteries, grave markers, and the family history to be learned from a study of burial customs, burying grounds, and tombstones. As a group we pledge to promote the study of cemeteries, promote the preservation of cemeteries, and promote the transcription of genealogical/historical information written in cemeteries”. 

I am honored to have been asked to join, but one of the things required is to start a NEW blog. So as soon as I am done writing this post, that is the next thing on my “to do” list. When the new site is up and running, I will post a link to it. 

The next thing that happened this week was that my German friend, Siegfried, proved what a brilliant man he really is. A few months back I had written a series of posts about the land of my great grandparents, Pomerania. Siegfried found the posts and me, and we began a correspondence. Siegfried decided that he would send me some videos after he had put some English captions on them, so I could “see” the homeland. I was grateful, excited and impatient to see them. I’m still hopeful that one day the postman will put them in my mailbox, but for now, they seem to have taken a rather long detour. 

Now let me explain. Siegfried and I are not related, but his family and my family came from the same area in Stolp all those many years ago. For him to have gone this extra mile for an UNRELATED stranger, well what superlatives would be appropriate to describe such a wonderful selfless gesture? As it turns out, there is another person in Ohio that Siegfried has helped. Her name is Shirley. (Hi Shirley! I hope the chicken soup helped.) Siegfried, Shirley and I are convinced that Shirley and I are very distant cousins. 

Siegfried, who is no quitter, found another way to get the videos to both Shirley and I. He found a storage website that can be viewed in both German and English. He broke up the videos and uploaded them to the website, where Shirley and I could access them and download them. Each chunk of video took about three hours to download. For some reason while the download process was ongoing, it didn’t like me doing ANYTHING else with my computer. There were four videos, some with as few as two parts, some with as many as six parts. You do the math.

So, for the entire week, I have been computerless as I downloaded each portion. While there were some snafu’s – I still can’t view the very last video, and I had to get online to help figure out how to put the various pieces back together, I have to say it was pretty exciting being involved with such a project. I also have to say that Siegfried has been an amazing captain of the project, and Shirley has been a great deal of help – especially since I consider myself a technological imbecile in many respects. I could never find a better team to undertake something as all consuming as this turned out to be.

So a public thank you to my friend Siegfried. I’ve used the adjectives brilliant and amazing, but they pale in comparison to what you have done for me. Thank you very much for your persistence and kindness, and yes brilliance

As for Shirley, I couldn’t have found a better partner to share in our mutual excitement of what we experienced this week. It was time consuming, sometimes frustrating, but it was a major BLAST. We did it! 

The final interesting thing that happened was a message board query that I had done about four years ago, finally paid dividends. I had been looking for information about my great grandfather’s cousin, Abram Perry Baker and one of his sons Dudley Vernon Baker. Well, a descendent of Dudley’s found me. (This is the very reason I hesitate to change any of my email addresses – you just never know!)

While I have been supplying them with parts of their family history and some cool documentation, they in turn have solved a couple of mysteries that have been plaguing me for about four years. I now know why Dudley went to Honduras, and why his uncle Rufus went there. I even know now that Dudley’s cousins Edward and Albert were also there. It feels a lot like an itch in the center of my back that I could never quite reach has finally been scratched. Relief! Euphoria! Hot Darn!

So you can see, this has indeed been one interesting week. None of this would have happened without the Internet. I know that I am preaching to the choir, but if you know any holdouts to the idea of using the Internet to further their genealogical interests, then tell them this – You know a lady, who at 55 is a technological imbecile, but still reaches out willingly to embrace the Internet and all its mysteries. You can also tell them she is loving every minute of it. Today is a day for happy dancing!

Until Next Time – Happy Ancestral Digging!

© 26 October 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder 

Terry Accidentally Learns How to Make a Movie with Her Camera, Hah!

Have I mentioned before that I have some kind of brain defect that causes my eyes to roll back in my head as I am reading an owner’s manual? I mean it’s all yadda, yadda to me.

So, the other night as I am taking pictures for my ‘autumn’s here” post, I was screwing around, uh, experimenting with my digital camera’s settings, and I accidentally made the movie you see below.

I want to mention that this is the very camera, that I asked Santa for last Christmas in the Carnival of Genealogy’s “Dear Santa” edition. Jasia of Creative Gene expressed real concern for someone who was taking pictures on an old camera that still used floppy disks. So Jasia, if you are reading this, I wanted you to know that Santa was good to me, possibly because I pointed out your concern to Santa’s helper, who just happens to be my husband Al. I pointed to your words and said, “See, people PITY me.”

So it’s been what, almost 10 months now, and I can honestly say I haven’t read one word of the manual. Now this is something that drives my husband completely insane. He LOVES owner’s manual. He reads them, keeps them all nice and neat, and frowns and grouses around if for some reason he can’t find them where he is sure he left them. He will say things like, “Someone moved my blah, blah, blah manual.”

Okay, since we are the only two people living in the house, we all know who SOMEONE really is, don’t we?

So when I showed him my proud masterpiece and admitted that I had no clue how I did it, predictably, he said, “You really ought to read the manual.” Hah!

As for the masterpiece itself, you can hear me clicking the “picture taking whatjamajig button,” which of course it wouldn’t do because the camera was all like, I’m making a movie, obviously. I am so proud that I didn’t utter any swear words. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to show you my accidental baby.

Of course, in order for you to see it, I had to load it on to YouTube. I entitled it, “Terry Accidentally Learns How to Make a Movie with Her Camera, Hah!” which is longer than the movie itself, and is, in fact, infinitely more interesting than the movie. It’s probably going to become an overnight sensation. CNN will want to interview me. David Letterman will ask me to read the top 10 list. And my husband will look at me and say, “Oh, Terry, I see now that I have been so wrong to smirk with an annoying air of superiority because I actually read owner’s manuals and you alas, do not.” (What! You think the “alas” was too much?)

Okay, now you see why I blog. I have a ridiculously rich imagination. Sigh . . .

Until Next Time!

Geneablogger Tag

I’m working on an ongoing project that is tying up my computer, so I am a little behind the times in posting my response to a meme that has been making the rounds. Randy Seaver started it, and on it’s second pass to him he passed it along to me. Denise Olson of Moultrie Creek, also tagged my sister blog, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged. It would be rude not to respond, right? 

10 Years Ago I... 

1. Was preparing to move into a new house. 

2. Had started a new job which I took after leaving a place I had worked for almost sixteen years. Turned out this was just the “rebound” job and I would leave it after a tough six months. 

3. Was recovering from a trip I had taken with my sisters down to Florida to see our folks. As I have told my youngest nephew, no matter how much they beg and plead, NEVER take a trip with your aunt and your mom – that’s how much I love the kid! 

4. Was missing my only daughter, who had moved to San Francisco. 

5. Had given up figuring how I could manage to go to school AND work full time to get my Bachelor’s Degree. (A few years later, I revisited the idea and found a way to make it work.)

5 Things on Today's To-Do List

1. Catch up my “Desktop Genealogist Unplugged” website – the News-Messenger site is SO much easier to work with than blogger. So, I’ve slacked off a bit. 

2. Go shopping at the farm market – hope they have red peppers. 

3. Do laundry 

4. Download information from my German friend, Siegfried 

5. Get started on next’s months Kin Hunters presentation.   

5 Snacks I Enjoy 

1. Ballreich Potato Chips and Tofts Chip Dip (or Sterlings) with a tall glass of Pepsi 

2. Brownies with my mother’s “special” icing (Hint! Hint!) 

3. Dove Dark Chocolate – my sister says a little is good for the heart –yeah! 

4. Tortilla Chips with Salsa or even better, homemade 7 layer taco dip 

5. Homemade soft chocolate chip cookies, or Cookie Lady’s chocolate chip and walnut cookies if I’m feeling lazy.

4 Places I Have Lived - (It’s suppose to be 5 but unless you count the hospital where I was born, I’ve only lived in four different localities and that was stretching it.) 

1. Clyde, Ohio 

2. Fremont, Ohio 

3. Shepherdstown, West Va. 

4. Green Creek Township (between Clyde and Fremont) 

5 Jobs I Have Had... (I could have filled up the whole page, but stuck to just 5) 

1. Carhop at A & W (which is why I can no longer stand the smell of root beer) 

2. Bank – Checking Departments and Investments 

3. Tax Preparation Instructor 

4. Loan Operations Supervisor 

5. Customer Service Positions – in Financial, Industrial and Construction industries. No matter where I start, I gravitate to communicating with the public. 

I’m suppose to tag 5 additional bloggers, but I think after reading Randy Seaver’s recap, it would be tough to find 5, so if you haven’t been tagged, consider yourself tagged by me.

© 20 October 2008, Desktop Genealogist Unplugged, Teresa L. Snyder