• Kreis Elbing,  ManyRoads

    Elbinger Adreßbücher

    We are seeking to complete our collection of all known Elbing Prussia (Kreis Elbing Westpreussen) Address and Telephone Books. Please note we are only interested in obtaining copies of texts which were printed before 1945 prior to the ethnic cleansing and expulsion of the German population after the end of World War 2. A complete inventory of the texts in our possession are freely available and accessible on this site. If you know of additional texts, texts we do not currently list, please let us know and we will make very effort to identify and/or create an electronic copy to make available on ManyRoads. Once we have a completed collection,…

  • Tips & Opinions

    Genetic Genealogy

    All of us have DNA. Even if we do not know the names of our ancestors, we have DNA. Our family has decided to gather and analyze its DNA materials (matrilineal and patrilineal lines) and see what these DNA lines have to say. We have elected to do this through the genographic project, a partnership between the University of Arizona Research Labs Family Tree DNA association, National Geographic Society and IBM rather than to switch to the program offered by Ancestry.com.  Our reasoning is fairly simple; my father-in-law’s DNA is with NatGeo.  Also, the Genographic program is older and more established; and, this seems like the lowest risk approach. Information…

  • Our Families,  Rabideau

    60th

    Not all genealogy is in the past.  Some of it happens before your very eyes. This is one of those events and weeks for us.  This week is my parents (Fred Rabideau & Luise Senger) 60th Wedding Anniversary.  Today we are taking them out for a small dinner celebration. In those 60 years a lot has changed… the family has grown… life has progressed. But as you can see, the love remains.

  • Tips & Opinions

    Zotero and genealogy

    Do you use Zotero in doing your genealogy research work? This is a question I have toyed around with for quite a while now.  I don’t have a good answer for myself although the toolset seems well suited to gathering web-based information, collating, and processing it.  It is also tightly coupled with the browser I use most frequently, Firefox. Still I have been unable to find and good roadmap on how to make this toolset work to my advantage.  I am constantly in search of tools that link tightly with websites (i.e., Ancestry.com, etc.), online documents, image libraries, etc.  Zotero claims to do all that and more.  Sounds good to…

  • Tips & Opinions

    Attribution

    Acknowledge your sources! Today I received a note from a very important genealogy friend. She asked me if I hadn’t perhaps confused two family members who had similar names thereby giving erroneous credit to the ‘wrong’ person rather than the ‘right’ one. A very important question. It is absolutely essential to provide good and clear attribution to those from whom we source our data. It is important to be as correct as possible in any quotations, images, bibliographies and links. Accuracy requires proofing by your readership (proof-readers, if you are lucky enough to have them) and modification by the family genealogist to reflect appropriate corrections, etc. It is also, unfortunately,…

  • Tips & Opinions

    No name, no date… #2

    What do you do when there are no names or dates to work with? Well quite simply, there has to be something or else you are in deep trouble!  Having said that there are many times when the names are and dates are unclear, indefinite or conflicting. I have found a few options that work with regularity, at least for me they do!  In no particular sequence, they include: Census records. Look to see if you can find a cluster of family members that resemble those you seek.  In one of my best examples, I found a Peter & Julie Deyo family.  I was seeking a Joseph and Julia Deo…

  • Marienburg Alte Haüser an der Nogat
    Tips & Opinions

    Publish your information

    Publishing genealogy information seems important to me.  I suppose that ought to be obvious enough just by the size of ManyRoads. But why go to the trouble?  What is the value? I can only answer those questions from my perspective.  Perhaps some of our readers might be willing to chime in via comments on this page.  But for me the value lies in these areas (in no particular order): Much of the information I have found was difficult to locate, I’d like others to find things more readily. It seems every time I find information, a few years late it has vanished.  Often the very sites where the original information…

  • Tips & Opinions

    No name, no date… #1

    Ever have a person without a clear name or birth/ death dates? I seem to regularly encounter family members for whom the names have become vague and the dates muddled. Because this situation is fairly common, there need to be simple methods for getting around these situations. I have found the following approaches to be useful. Phonetics. Remember the days when teachers attempted to beat phonetics into your head; well, here’s a place they can become useful. However it is worth noting that the phonetics ‘of genealogy’ almost always involve two or more persons: the person saying or giving a name -and- the person(s) hearing the name spoken This is…

  • Tools

    Protect your stuff…

    There are genealogy thieves out there! Because of certain circumstances as well as the nature of our information, we have taken the drastic action of providing copy protection for all data and images on the WordPress side of ManyRoads.  Believe me, we do enjoy sharing our information, we truly do. We just want to know where it goes and who is using it. If you’d like any of our information, please use our contact form to request it.  We are happy to be generous. For those of you who use WordPress (and I recommend you do if you have need for a web-based version of your genealogy materials), I am…

  • Popular

    Top 10 on ManyRoads

    Over the past approximately 70,000 page reads on ManyRoads, the following pages have been most viewed by our readers: Adreßbücher Flucht und Vertreibung Gallerie Kriegs- und Nachkriegserinnerungen Prussia (Germany) Frieda Senger -Suchdienst & Soviet Records Galleries Les Filles Du Roi- “Daughters of the King” Quebec Elbing Damals French Canadian Emigration to the United States, 1840-1930

  • Tips & Opinions,  Tools

    What Genealogy Tool is best?

    Many search but few find… I think that old quote pretty much sums up what happens when searching for the right genealogical toolset. Too often, people believe that their hardware or operating platform defines their selection choices.  In truth, it rarely does.  Almost any tool can be run on any platform.  Certainly a bit of technical prowess may be required in order to achieve interoperability but it is very doable. No, the reasons for picking a genealogical toolset should be based on your genealogy management needs not operating or hardware systems. What follows, in no particular order, are most of the factors that I personally see as being important (and…

  • Tips & Opinions

    We are… inter-related!

    Never one to leave well enough alone, here are a few additional excerpts of concepts and data I came across while thinking about our collective Royalty or inter-relatedness.  Rather than attempting to re-write these ideas into my own words, I have included excerpts of the original posts with links to the entire reading(s). Enjoy! Conservatively allowing for each generation to span 30 years (which is a little large), going back thirty generations takes us back to about 1100 CE where the population was only about 300 million, and forty generations takes us back to 800 CE where the population was less than 200 million. (If we take each generation as…

  • Tips & Opinions

    We are all royal!

    Over the past few days my email has been clogged with questions about whether or not anyone- everyone was related to royalty.   Well being the geek that I am, I decided to a quick bit of research and here’s what I found out  (these are excerpted for the articles noted at the end of this posting… feel free to read them in their entirety). [A] mathematical study of genealogy indicates that everyone in the world is descended from Nefertiti and Confucius, and everyone of European ancestry is descended from Muhammad and Charlemagne.- Dick Eastman …everyone of European descent has royal ancestry. – Steve Olsen The mathematics of our ancestry is…

  • Tips & Opinions

    Finding “lost” family

    Finding a lost family connection can be daunting, exhilarating and exasperating.  The human need for connection to family and community is strong.  And, the desire to find lost family members can become nearly all consuming. In order to succeed in this search, here are 5 pointers might be helpful (especially if you are new to genealogy). Find as many family member names are you can, even those that are a vague part of your personal or family recollection are useful. Identify places or place names.  It is best if they are ‘close’ to accurate but even inaccurate places names can provide guidance and pointers. Dates, creating a list of dates…