Unlike facebook, LinkedIn has been moving in positive and useful directions. To be honest, I have had enough success with LinkedIn that I have begun to expand my efforts on that social networking platform. By way of a quick overview, to-date I have attempted the following activities with good success on LinkedIn. I have: added LinkedIn friends and now have more than 500. As I have increased my associates so has the ManyRoads traffic increased. created a Genealogy Group (Genealogy Guild) which now has more than 100 participants. There is limited activity in the group and some amount of traffic from the group to ManyRoads has yielded additional, albeit limited,…

Genealogical research is an uncovering of truths as they apply to your life, others’ lives, the past and the future. There never truly is a single answer to what happened, how it came to be, and what was best or worst. The options and answers are often many, complex and perhaps even indeterminate. Inter-dependencies, inter-relationships abound. However, applying the rule of six can be a useful tool in helping you attain insights into the past you might otherwise miss. What follows is a brief description of the Rule of Six by Paula Underwood Spencer: One of the attitudes taught in my [Oneida] tradition is the Rule of Six. The Rule…

As I have mentioned before, it never ceases to surprise me how much Winnie the Pooh knows about life, genealogy included. I searched and found the following quotes and they just seemed to be very insightful. I hope you find them so as well. “Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming down-stairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it.” — Winnie the Pooh “Well,” said Pooh, “what I like best…

It surprises me how much Winnie the Pooh knows about genealogy. I came across the following quotes and they just seemed to be very insightful. I hope you find them so as well. Before beginning a Hunt, it is wise to ask someone what you are looking for before you begin looking for it. Winnie the Pooh Pooh’s Little Instruction Book It’s always useful to know where a friend-and-relation is, whether you want him or whether you don’t. Winnie the Pooh Rabbit, Pooh’s Little Instruction Book A little Consideration, a little Thought for Others, makes all the difference. Winnie the Pooh Eeyore, Winnie the Pooh Some people care too much,…

Ah, the advantages of hindsight.  Looking back in time and regretting the decisions that were made, the options that were chosen, and the events that occurred is very easy trap to fall in.  Fruitless, but easy.  In fact, spending a lot of time trying to rewrite the past, excuse events or bemoaning their occurrence is, from a family history and genealogical perspective, often counter-productive. The past is gone and not likely to be wished away. The past impacts our current actions, options and choices.  If past actions are not well understood they risk being repeated, and often are. Rather, it is my opinion that the following is much more productive:…

Unfortunately when people are expelled from areas, civility is not always, or perhaps even generally, the rule. Such was the case in Poland.  The Polish Communist government was eager to lay claim to its newly obtained German lands and expel all Germans not simply from the lands but also from memory and history. Over time however even this changes, as is noted in my earlier posting about the Zeyer Cemetery. However as the following story from Fred Rump relates, it was not always that way. “I actually found some cemeteries hidden in a forest and all overgrown out in the rural parts of East Prussia and there are some WW1…

It seems many people believe that genealogy, or family history, is some sort of competition or contest. Their ancestors were better, were more important, traveled further, worked harder, suffered more, were more regal… Genealogy and family history is conceptually straightforward, it simply involves accurately identifying our ancestors, family and history. Every family has had its successes, failures, highlights, lowlights. People have lived for long times or short times, in good places and bad. They have been ruled by good people and evil. There has been war and peace. Children have been healthy and sick. Such is the nature of life. As genealogists, we seek simply to understand their stories, their…

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…

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…

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,…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Using GRAMPS as a primary management, storage and presentation tool for our genealogical data came about slowly. As many of you may recall, I tried and still use numerous family databases such as TNG, RootsMagic etc.  However, moving genealogical data back and forth across three or four tools before placing it in a single secure location took a lot of extra time.  As luck would have it, I have need to create both hard copy and on-line versions of a branch of our family tree this week.  All weekend I was moving data around, sourcing new information, merging old files and images.  Doing all this in one place is a…