C is also for Courage

When you start out on your great tree-building adventure, consider that you are doing the H.G. Wells thing in your mind.  You are really doing time travel, through what you find in documents, plus your historically informed imagination, and… you really don’t know what you will find.

Everyone goes back to Charlemagne -- right??

Everyone has royalty - right??

Or, heading the other direction … many researchers are hoping to find their own small flock of black sheep -- the witch, the pirate, the thief -- right??

Last Christmas a friend of mine gave her mother membership in a very unique lineage society, "The Descendants of the Illegitimate Sons and Daughters of the Kings of Britain" aka the "Royal Bastards."   Solid research, and totally delightful -- at this remove.

They are still looking for a witch in the lineage.  They have come up with some Salem residents, but so far, no witch connection. 

So far in my own research, no Royal Bastards, but then, I'm still headed toward the pond crossing on most of my lines.

But I have found the names/voices of two stillborn cousins of my mother.  For her entire life, she believed the family had one child; she didn't know about these births.  It's nice to have that entire nuclear family tracked. 

Even tracking names can get interesting.  My mother didn't know the first name of this cousin's grandmother, a woman who was at every joint family celebration for years.   "We called her Grandma."   Her name was Malwina….  Again, lovely to fill in the space on the tree. 

No great amount of courage required here, but family situations get strange and twisty, and the genealogist is called upon to research rigorously and report truthfully.  One does not prune the family tree, for either kindness or timidity on the part of the researcher or the client. 

You want to know your ancestors?

Ancient Chinese proverb: "Be careful what you wish for."

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

2018 begins with an "ABC-darium," a walk through the alphabet expanding into short comments on matters genealogical.  Published on Tuesday and some Fridays, a letter may be visited more than once before moving on. 

© 2018, SE Ross

C is for Census (United States)

 Go Census !!! Go FamilySearch.org!!!  Go Ancestry.com!!!

Digitizing the US Federal Census put Ancestry.com on the map those many years ago. 

Wonder if there should there be a club of people who used microfilms for census research -- MCRers… ?

Ok, basic census facts.  The US Federal Census was taken every 10 years on the even 10 years from 1790 to the latest taken in 2010.  The next will be taken in 2020.  The most recent census that can be examined by genealogists (and anyone else) is the 1940 census.  Each enumeration (again, great word) is held private by the government for 72 years before being released/published. 

72 was an arbitrary number at the time, with the presumption that after 72 years, few people enumerated would still be alive.  Surprise, surprise when in 2012 the 1940 census was released, and a fairly large crowd could go "look, it's me." The 1940 census was also notable because rather than being indexed by a firm with paid folk, it was crowd indexed, and done in months.  Amazing.

For anyone looking for ancestors who lived in the US, it is the second stop.  (First is house documents; natch.)  Questions asked in each census differ, but the basic format is the same -- a heading detailing census year and geographic boundaries of this piece of the whole, and also the name of the person who was the census taker. Rows and columns below include names, ages, assets, occupation, schooling, and on and on. 

If you have an ancestor who ever lived in the US, the basic assumption is that you, the researcher, will work very hard and search very creatively to find every ancestor on every census within their lifespan and residence in the US.  Often comparing different census years tells chapters in a  story.  Gent moves from electrician to manager to owner of business through the course of 30 years. 

And even if an ancestor was only in the US for a short time, friends and relatives could have been in the US longer, and….

The census is such a big topic.  Watch for Census Friday during the next months ….

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

2018 begins with an "ABC-darium," a walk through the alphabet expanding into short comments on matters genealogical.  Published on Tuesday and some Fridays, a letter may be visited more than once before moving on.  

Copyright 2018, SERoss

B is for Begat

"And Mizraim begat Ludim, and Anamim, and Lehabim, and Napthtuhim, {1:12} And Pathrusim, and Casluhim, (of whom came the Philistines,) and Caphthorim. {1:13} And Canaan begat Zidon his firstborn, and Heth, …." (1 Corinthians 1:8)

Straight out of the King James Bible,  this book of "begats" names those born, but the "begat" construct does more.  It records not only who was born, but also who these people were born TO.   The book of Chronicles, often smilingly referred to as "the book of begats," spends many of its pages chronicling  the lines.  BC/BCE genealogy.  

As a 21st century genealogist, I adore the word "begat" and the world view that it carries in its definition.  While the letter 'b' in a genealogical context has a knee-jerk expansion into "birth," that word refers to only one person at a time.  Begat speaks to a family relationship.  Parent, child and grandchild have 3 birth dates, but two begats, which form a tree.  And what is the pedigree tree about?  Building the begats backward.  A totally green genealogist (no pun intended) quickly learns that genealogy is all about family relationships, both vertical (parent/child) and horizontal (sibs).

Current birth certificates do include more than a birth date, thankfully, and include info on connections both vertical and horizontal.  Parents of the new child are named, with various personal identifiers depending on place and time, and most certificates record how many sibs this new child has - living or dead.    Tombstones, in contrast, tell births, and only rarely include begats.  Historically, often more of a challenge.

To finish this off in a Biblical fashion,  my dad said (in regard to sermons) that one often did not need to learn new things as much as one needed to be reminded. 

Hence, "Go forth, and build your begats!"

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

2018 begins with an "ABC-darium," a walk through the alphabet expanding into short comments on matters genealogical.  Published on Tuesday and some Fridays, a letter may be visited more than once before moving on.  

Copyright 2018, SERoss

A is also for Ancestors - Living

We are genealogists.  We collect ancestors -- and hopefully we collect them responsibly.

We start with ourselves and our parents, grandparents, sibs, spouses, cousins and children of all.

Most of these people are living, which, in today's world means that they, and their information, require special attention and consideration.  For me, and those I speak with, the translation is that in the current climate of identity theft, and all else, that you, the conscientious genealogist, must take great care that you do not open the door and roll out the red carpet of private information. 

Have a quick look at the Ancestry online trees.  The "good ones" do not specify gender on the un-named silhouettes.  The "better ones" do not even indicate how many offspring there are in the generations which could be living.

I certainly do recommend collecting as much information as possible from and about the people who are living.  They will have the documents that otherwise you may have to wait 50-100 years to get from public sources. They will have the pictures of themselves and family growing, celebrating.  They know "the really good stories."  … and you take all this lovely information and put it away --

Enjoy the week --

It's a wonderful new year.

?? Questions ??? Give a write.
...2018...ABC-darium
(apologies for the Wednesday post of Tuesday blog... technology & MY COMPUTER still offering "learning opportunities")

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

2018 begins with an "ABC-darium," a walk through the alphabet expanding into short comments on matters genealogical.  Published on Tuesday and some Fridays, a letter may be visited more than once before moving on.  

Copyright 2018, SERoss

A is for Assumptions

Fish don't realize they are in water.  We walk around in our own water, prisoners, if you will, of electricity, indoor plumbing, cars, computers, synthetic fibers in clothing, progressive lenses,  frozen food, etc., etc.    A favorite science-fiction book of mine postulates that if you could break all the threads that hold you to the 20th century, you could literally walk around the corner and enter a different time. 

Time to encourage the childlike, not childish, but childlike.  Time to dream, time to wonder, time to consider ala the world of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, who had her house built upside down so the ceiling fixtures could be campfires.  Very strange to her neighbors, but not to the children who came to visit her.  Or consider the world of "Imogene's Antlers" (where a young girl wakes with antlers, and she spends the day figuring out how they could be useful!).  Time to consider that a pencil is also an eraser with a handle.  I know, I've used that one before, but so much of genealogy is turning off our contemporary surround to 1) see the information as coming from a world with different basic construct, and 2) to rotate the specifics of the information around to see it in a different way and sometimes, at 'just that angle' it connects and joins pieces that have been floating for years. 

So ….

Consider… as genealogists, whether we realize it or not, we are time travelers.  We do much of our work in the 19th century and before.  Where we travel, names are not stable in their spelling, adults may be illiterate, information is kept orally, people do move, and on and on.  We enter a world where most is done by natural light, where labor is cheap and goods expensive, where walking long distances is normal, and most telling of all, where the parameters that surround how life is conducted are different…  not better or worse, but different.

Not possible in January, but for the spring/summer, think of taking a trip to a historical reenactment - visit the civil war or farm harvesting  -- or going somewhere where you can walk through a gate into another time -- Plymouth Plantation, Mass, and Conner Prairie, Indiana are two that I have visited.  The residents (aka staff) are well schooled in their time and their attitudes.  In Plymouth, one wife was sure that the rose infused oil rubbed into her husband's temples cured his headaches;  when questioned she was quite sure it was the oil and not the rubbing.  In Conner Prairie, a traveler was thankful that she had paid extra for a private room because otherwise she would have had to share a room with the traveling players, "and we all know what kind of people they are." 

This is longer than the ones following…. Neither of us has this much time.. !!!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

2018 begins with an "ABC-darium," a walk through the alphabet expanding into short comments on matters genealogical.  Published on Tuesday and some Fridays, a letter may be visited more than once before moving on.  

Copyright 2018, SERoss

ABC-darium -- Happy New Year --

Ok friends and neighbors.  It's January 2nd, and everyone has made resolutions -

The genealogical world is in on this also.  Head out of your cave into the gen world to see Amy Crowe Johnson, 52 Ancestors in 52 weeks; Thomas McEntee - Genealogy do-over -- and Liz Ross - ABC-darium.

I do recommend looking at both of these (and perhaps there are others out there), and/but I also very much hope that you have a read of my offerings through these next months.

My take on this … new adventures for the new year… is using the alphabet to loosely walk through items "good to pay attention to" when doing genealogy, a bit about various databases, and a bit about organization and a lot about thinking and assembling a picture from the many pieces.

May all your genealogy puzzles be solved (or substantially advanced) in 2018.  I'm pumped.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

2018 begins with an "ABC-darium," a walk through the alphabet expanding into short comments on matters genealogical.  Published on Tuesday and some Fridays, a letter may be visited more than once before moving on.  

Copyright 2018, SERoss