How to "Genealogy"

Lots of people have stopped and asked me how did I get started in this fun world of blog writing about my ancestry and historical events in general..... It sort of evolved from the stuff I have collected all of the years,

I have always been interested in history, a trait I probably picked up from my dad, who is an avid war history buff (though he does like history in general as well).  In my research, I have come to find out his dad was an officer in the history club at his high school, so hey, I know it's at least inherited!  But my mom also loved hearing family stories and to this day loves telling me about her own family memories, so I get the trait from both sides.

It helps that I am still very much the type for whom research is fun.  I love the thrill of being immersed in words and documents.  I also love reading, as I grew up immersed in a world of books (thanks to both Mom and Dad).

Anyway, I digress.

I should probably start with my own genealogy journey first.....

My Journey
In May of 1999, my mom's mother, my grandmother Jean Cox Waldspurger, passed away.  I was a senior in high school at the time, so while I didn't fly back for the funeral with my parents, my mom brought me a copy of a small family tree her cousin Pat had created.  Pat also was into history, and loved the family tree stuff, and her family tree sparked something in me.  Since I always loved history, and took every history class at the high school I could take, it was just a natural progression for me to start filling in the blanks on the tree with what information I could find.

That was nearly 21 years ago.....

I made plenty of mistakes in the beginning. I collected a great deal of information, but one huge thing I didn't do was cite my sources.  The researcher in me was even in college at the time, and learning all about MLA and APA and Chicago/Turabian style citations due to the nature of my degree, but I didn't record where I got the information on a death date for my great-grandmother.... or the distant cousin on the tree.  So when others asked me where I found the information, I wasn't able to tell them.  And when my information was challenged in light of new information, I wasn't able to prove anything.  In fact, one whole branch of my original tree has been erased in light of the fact that I had name collected (I just added names and dates without checking first if they were accurate or "mine"), and the name collection information was entirely inaccurate.

I also put blinders on. I would collect names and then birth, marriage and death dates, but really nothing more, which made for a boring read at times.

About 15 years ago, I started to change my thinking about how I do genealogy. I got serious about redoing my entire line, starting at my parents and working my way backwards.  As I did this, I only focused on my own ancestors, not on any of their children or siblings, so I know now I missed a great deal of information, but the information I did collect was useful, and cited properly.

At the end of 2015, the family tree software program I was using on my personal computer, Family Tree Maker, was discontinued by Ancestry.com.  While later the software was picked up by another company, I decided to jump ship with FTM (at this point I also removed my vast trees from their site as well), which I had been using in its various forms since 1999, and go with a new genealogy program (RootsMagic7 for those who are interested).  Making the switch threw all of my sources into disarray, as it converted them into weird formats (which likely meant I didn't format correctly when switching). This actually was a blessing in disguise, which I will get to in a minute.

Also around that time, I decided to get very serious about making sure sources were cited in the "correct" format, meaning the way any professional genealogist would do it (I am not advocating that everyone do it this way though. I tell others that they should "do you" when citing stuff.  This way just works best for the perfectionist in me.) So I started to re-do ALL of my research once more. merging sources from the old program into the newly created and updated (and correct) sources in the new program and going through each of my ancestors, their children and their siblings and redoing EVERYTHING on them as well as adding new information.

I now track just about anything I can about my ancestors... where they lived and worked, how they were described on certain documents, what property they owned, what illnesses they were reported having, etc. etc. etc.  For my Hangman Ropemaking ancestor Jacob Bupp, it means also that EVERY rope he made has its own event, each with the sources I referenced in his series.

It is a great deal of work, but when it comes to families such as my Woods, where there are FOUR Burris Doudney Woods, or my Vautiers, where there are various William Vautiers (among other repeated names), this kind of thing helps me track exactly which Burris Doudney Wood or William Vautier I am looking at when I find a record, because I not only have name and dates of vital information, but also where they were known to live and what occupation they may have done (also likely nicknames for them as well).  The information sheets I send to family members often overwhelms them, but I like to make sure I have documented everything (plus it helps me out when writing these blogs when I have a timeline to follow on my program).  I have uploaded the aforementioned Jacob Bupp's Individual Summary that can be viewed here for those interested in the kind of detail I try to get.

It's been four and a half years since I made the switch, and I am still working on this kind of in-depth research.  Remember when I said the messing up of my sources was a blessing in disguise?  It now helps me figure out what branches of my tree haven't been updated and verified with the newest information.  Some of those branches I may never get to (a number of them are collateral lines.... lines that married into mine or distant cousins that I was merely name collecting in the beginning).  While some are important, others are not as important to me, and will likely remain on the back burner indefinitely.  It's not that I don't ever want to make sure they are "correct," it's just merely the fact that this is a side hobby for me, not my main job (I still have two!), so I don't have all the time in the world, especially in this ever increasing digitization of records, as more information to help genealogy keeps coming online. I am still finding out all I can about the FANs of my own ancestors.

About three years ago, I started to write little stories about each ancestor for my family members. My dear husband suggested I start sharing them with the world, and so this blog was reborn. I like writing about the different journeys my ancestors have taken, and finding out all I can about the places they lived and the social issues of their day.... it helps to breathe life into them in a way I never could have imagined 21 years ago!

How To "Genealogy"
I get told by people they wish they could do what I do.... but they don't know where to start.

Start by writing down what you know, then asking questions of living relatives.  I do a great deal of interviewing of people, via email or phone calls or even face to face conversations.  I write stuff down, or print out emails, and yes, I do use them as sources too. Find a genealogy program you would like to use - there are free ones out there as well as ones to purchase - or just write stuff down on paper.  I still have the early trees my mom and I made for our lines back in 2000.

Then take to the internet.  I do use Ancestry.com a great deal, as I have an ongoing subscription  (note, this is not a plug for their services - I am not receiving compensation from them!) but I also use  FamilySearch (where I recommend people actually start since it is free and there is a great deal of information here) as well as local history societies and library resources for where ever I am researching. West Virginia has a vast collection on their Archives and History site and my own local library has a collection of local history books in their genealogy section that I use heavily while working on my church history.  Other sites that have been useful to me are FindMyPast, Fold3, and Newspapers.com (the latter two being part of my Ancestry subscription)

Also, search engines are great tools to look for other resources. I tend to do that a lot to find the more obscure stuff or when I am moving my research from one location to the next, especially the books that are being digitized on sites like Google Books, Haithi Trust and Internet Archive.  Google is my primary search engine, and I also use it often to define word for me while researching, look up places (I recently wanted to know what county in Kansas a certain city was) so I can fill them in better, and even search "How to use" guides for certain websites.  FamilySearch's Wiki is also very useful for finding just about anything on genealogy.

Like I said before, just because I am VERY precise with my citations doesn't mean that everyone has to be.  Some in the online communities I belong to use simpler sources (finding what works for them), but they do cite where they got information from.  This is a good idea because it can help you keep track of where you got information from already.  There are "how to" guides for this as well (Evidence Explained is the one I use, but there are many different guides out there).  Citing information also helps because if you are challenged about research (I have had cousins argue with me over things in my research) you can then go back and actually find the records that help prove your research to be correct inasmuch as you know it to be.

Don't overlook the old fashioned pen and paper research.  I planned a trip to Philadelphia almost three years ago just to get to THREE different archival repositories since they had records that weren't online (but the indexes were).  After requesting information in person, I paid for copies of that information, and it helped out a great deal.

A tip I tell people is get creative when searching for documents and learn to accept that the way your name is spelled now may not have been the way it always was spelled.  For years I was told my maiden name of Wood NEVER had an "S' on the end of it.  While that is very true in the era of standardized spellings for surnames because of Social Security and birth certificates and the like, it wasn't always the case.  Before the 20th century my ancestors tended to flip flop between Wood and Woods, once even in consecutive documents.

Don't insist a name HAS to be spelled a certain way.  Often, remember that a number of sites use volunteers to index things, so names might not be spelled correctly in the index because the volunteer reads something different.  A number of my Vautier relatives are indexed Vantier because the cursive U looks like a cursive N.  I found my great-great-uncle Jesse Sperry's death record by searching for just his death date, which I had, and discovered he had been indexed as "Jennie Spring" because that was what the volunteer read (I have since submitted a correction), so try date instead of name, or broaden your search by other means.

Each family has a different journey, and finding information to document that journey can be a fun task, if you love to research....

I am more than willing to help others in their journey, if anyone ever needs help. Whether it's offering guidance with how to find materials, being another set of eyes to comb through a resource, or just offering some support or encouragement, I can help.

I've often been asked why I don't do this professionally. I merely state that this is a fun hobby for me, but not something I would want to be paid full time to do. I am happiest doing this when I don't have looming deadlines over me (because I am a bit of a procrastinator when I can be), and I have other pursuits that I enjoy doing as well, so while on occasion I do research on friends' lines for a bit of compensation, I can't ever see myself doing this on a full time basis.

Rediscovering Grandmother

I have been doing online genealogy off and on for the past 18 years.  I started in 1999, when the online genealogy community was just starting out.  Now hundreds, thousands, millions of documents are at the fingertips of people willing to hunt them down with nothing more than an internet connection and something to type on.

Every few years I go over my own ancestors.... I clean up citations, I  re-examine the information i may have had lying around for years, discovering old letters that I cast away intending to read from forgotten relatives and stories that didn't have merit when I started coming to light in a new day and age as being based in fact due to one new piece of information or another.

As I do this renewal of interest into my ancestors' lives, I come across new information that has been posted to the wonderful wide expanse that has become the information highway.

One such piece of new information was my maternal grandmother's high school yearbook from her senior year at North Wales high School in North Wales, Pennsylvania.

My grandmother, Jean C. Cox

I will start off by saying this, I have never been close to my mother's mother.  While my cousins called her Nana, I stuck to the more formal "Grandmother" because she was virtually a stranger to me.  Part of it was due to family dysfunctions and history better left for a family therapist to untangle, but as a result, I always have felt an aloofness when it came to learning about her, as if she was too complex to discover.

She died right before I graduated high school in 1999, and I have no vivid memories of her, as we had only visited her a few times when I was very young.  Mom always called her family for Christmas, and I would say a few words, but she was never as  fond in my memories as my dad's mom, my Gram.

I had some stories, as my mother, my aunts and my mom's cousins all willingly have shared stories, but I didn't hold them close.  I dutifully wrote them down and struck them from memory, focusing more on my more lovable Grandpop, her husband.

My mothers parents - circa 1944 or early 1945.  

So when I stumbled upon her high school yearbook, it was like opening the door in the tree and tumbling into a veritable Wonderland of sorts.

Grandmother's senior year photo, from the 1941 North Wales High School Yearbook

It was through the yearbook that I re-discovered my grandmother's love for singing, as she sang a solo in the senior play and was a member of the Glee Club.  She had aspirations of being a vocalist, according to her write-up in the book, and no one seemed too surprised by that.

Grandmother with her glee club.  

In sharing my finds with my mother over the telephone, I read to her aloud from the yearbook.  She stopped me mid-sentence to remind me of a story I had written down so long ago and forgotten about, a story that was a mere sentence in my file on my grandmother.

 "As a young woman, she entertained troops as a singer with a band, lying about her age (saying she was 21 when in fact she was 18) in order to sing." 

I have so many questions about her life now.  I wonder what it was like for her as a young woman to tour with a band.... to throw off convention and lie about her age to do what she loved.  I wonder what made her give it up.  Was it marriage and the more conventional days as a housewife and mother in the post-WWII era?  Did she miss singing?

late 1955 or early 1956 - with my mom and Uncle Ernie

I will never know the answers to some of these questions, as she has been long gone - it was her death that sparked my interest in this trek into family history, and for that I will be forever grateful.  Perhaps one day I will find answers, and photos to go along with them, but for now, I live with the guess, with the surmised thoughts of "what ifs" and "what nows".... and I will continue to trek to rediscover not only my grandmother, but all of my ancestors.

A new geek for me - colorizing photographs

After reading about how people are colorizing old photographs for fun, I decided I wanted to try it.  But I don't have Photoshop on my computer, which was the program used in the tutorial I discovered on a Genealogy page on Facebook that I follow.  I have always used Gimp, so off to Google I went to find a similar tutorial for Gimp.  This tutorial is what I found that made the most sense to me.  I also have been using this site as another reference for things like skin tone and the like.

I spent about five hours working on a few photographs.  I really shouldn't have been up until the odd hours of the night, but the process had me hooked.  Here is what I did in those five hours.  I also started a third photo, but it wasn't turning out the way I wanted it to.  I had to crop the photo of my Vautier ancestor because some of the background was a little hard to color because it was out of focus.



The colored photos that are posted here are the work of Kelley Wood-Davis.  If you would like to use a copy of them, please ask for permission.

William J. Vautier, my mother's great grandfather.

The colored version of his photo - This photograph was colored by Kelley Wood-Davis March 2014.  PLEASE do NOT copy this without written permission!

Edward C. Waldspurger I, my mom's grandfather

The colored version - This photograph was colored by Kelley Wood-Davis March 2014.  PLEASE do NOT copy this without written permission!

I really enjoyed the process, and I may from time to time do this to other photos.  The fun part is trying to figure out what my ancestors' skin tones or hair color may have looked like.  For example, the photo I colored of Edward Waldspurger I used his World War II draft registration card.  It also helps that a number of family members today in the Waldspurger family have brown hair with auburn highlights, so I chose to make his brown hair slightly red..  It is in doing a project such as this, paying attention to complexion, eye color and skin color on a military form helps greatly.

The Abinah Wood Project is complete.

I feel remiss.  I haven't posted any information in the past month about the book.  It seems that I go from one extreme to another from time to time.  I went from working full bore on the book to working full bore at my summer job and didn't really have a chance to catch up on my blogging.

The Abinah Wood book project is complete for 2013.

For those who are clueless as to what I have been doing, you can get caught up here. (That will open in a new window.)

The book is available for purchase, but you can read it online for free at either of the links below.  There is a glitch that you might see on some of the reports in the book in the online version, but they DO NOT show up in the print edition. 
 
For the purchase of the book, the price set is the printing price.  I have opted out of receiving royalties for this project because I felt the information was not mine alone, but everyone's to share, same as with any of my family books that I have published.

The link to the Hardcover: http://www.bookemon.com/book-profile/the-expanded-history-and-genealogy-of-the-descendants-of-abinah-wood-and-susannah-humphreys/179721

The link to the Softcover: http://www.bookemon.com/book-profile/the-expanded-history-and-genealogy-of-the-descendants-of-abinah-wood-and-susannah-humphreys/295322

Enjoy.  If you have any additions you want to make, let me know.  I can still add them to the family database.

RAOGK - good for the mind, body and soul

I recently walked the small city cemetery here in the town I live in, looking for some graves to take pictures of for Findagrave.com.  You see, some people who can't make it to the cemetery, whether it be because of disability or distance or whatever that keeps them away, request photographs of certain grave markers.  Whenever I can get to one of the cemeteries listed to fulfill their requests, I do. 

One weekend, I logged over 6 miles of walking in two days looking for markers and broke into a sweat both days as I walked back and forth amongst the rows of the cemetery.   I got a good workout as I searched for graves of people I don't even know so that a person too far away to search himself or herself could have a photo of the grave.

It was a random act of genealogical kindness, or in my world, a RAOGK

The world is full of people willing to do random acts of kindness for strangers.  In the genealogical circles, there are people willing to do look-ups of all sorts for others.  Some of these people work anonymously, whereas others seek recognition.  I myself enjoy what I do, and I don't seek accolades for doing it, though I do enjoy a very nice thank you.  I look at doing these acts as a way to  pay forward the help I received.

So I encourage any reader of my blog for whom genealogy is a hobby to find someway to help out, whether it be walking through graveyards snapping pictures, or offering on a forum to find someone's tax or marriage records at the local courthouse, to offering up info from your own family tree to someone who might want it without expecting any re-compensation.  It'll do your mind, body and soul a world of good!

Some links that can help you find a way to help:
Find A Grave
Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness Wiki
US GenWeb Project
FamilySearch Facebook Research Communities

Pets are Family too!

My cat, Twix, has a fascination with my walk-in bedroom closet.  She meows to get inside it just about every time we're changing and has on occasion gotten locked inside the closet because we didn't know she was in there and shut the door.

My great uncle Bill hugging the family dog, early 1900s

In researching family trees, pets are often overlooked.  But talking about them can bring the best memories to light.   My dad has said he's never liked cats, but yet we had a cat when I was a baby, proof below, and another when I was growing up in Southern California.

Tigger, my dad, and baby me

When I was a baby, my parents also owned a Labrador dog named Lucas that guarded me and taught me how to walk.  He was a sweet dog but super protective of "his" baby.  He was killed when he was hit by a car.  A neighbor had let him out.

My maternal grandparents owned a dog by the name of Whiskey.  He was a terrier of some sort and a small dog, but I could remember him being mean, or maybe he was just annoyed by the little kids that bugged him (myself included).  He loved only my grandfather, and I know my parents have a picture of Whiskey sitting on Grandpop's lap.

My aunt, uncle, dad and PeeWee at Christmas in the 60s

My dad's family had a dog named PeeWee.  He was featured prominently in family pictures as another one of the kids and was well loved by my dad and his siblings. 

And again at Easter

My great-grandparents had a cocker-spaniel named Rusty that they loved to walk.  The dog was rusty colored and mean to some of the grandchildren that were almost always at the house, and actually snapped at one of my mother's cousins when she was a child.  He was stopped by a command from my great-grandfather.  That stories sparked a conversation that opened up a flood of memories about a generation that has been gone for over 50 years. 

A cousin's dogs in 1951

Pets are a large part of our lives in the present.  Why can't they also be a part of our past as well?  So often converations about pets are limited when interviewing people about their family history.  Sometimes a mentioned pet will bring a smile to someone's face and start an entire conversation of happy moments in a family members life.  Even thinking backon my own life, I find myself smiling over pets I have had:

Besides Lucas and Tigger the cat, there was Woo-Woo the white labrador that was a bit of a pet.  There was Grouchy, our lab-cocker mix that we had from the time I was five until well into high school who loved to eat crayons and tinsel and was anything but grouchy.  There was Charlie, the loveable mutt and the only dog to ever bite me, though he didn't mean to. (My brother, on the other hand, seems to have been a dog-bite magnet, having been bitten by at least three dogs in his childhood). There was Boo-Boo Kitty, the ferocious tom-cat who loved pick fights with possums and other cats as well as curl up in a lap and sleep.  There was Moses, the stray we had for a month before he passed away.  There was Tigger the orange tabby that my husband and I owned for a year before we had to give him away.  There was also the countless numbers of fish and bugs and other small creatures that my siblings and I owned growing up, including a salamander and a crawdad.

My two cats, Barbossa and Twix

There are also the present day animal family members.  There is Moose, my parents' lovable and old labrador-mastiff mix that enjoys a warm spot and getting all the attention he can and has been with my parents since I was a senior in high school.  And of course, there are my wonderful cats Twix and Barbossa who live with me now.  My sister also owns two crazy and loveable terrier dogs.  They are all members of my family, and offer as much love and affection as the human members do.

Sometimes a little variety is needed

Don't get me wrong, I like Ancestry.com and their hundreds of databases.  I really do.

What I don't like is how easy it is to get the wrong information.  With just a few clicks of the mouse, you can have a full family tree.  And half of it can be wrong.

So what?

Having a name wrong in your tree could be a brick wall.  For years I was convinced my great-great-great grandfather's name was Franz, so when I found a François as the brother of another person, I overlooked it.  It wasn't until a common descendant confirmed that my Franz was indeed François and showed me her research that I then went back and not only found him, but his father, grandfather and maternal family as well.  A brick wall that was literally 10 years old was finally overcome because I thought to think out of the box.

Another more recent example is the mother of my Abinah Wood, Reumah (or Ruehama, if you follow the spelling on her will - Personally I think she went by both).  Her surname, as far as we can tell, is unknown.  Every document I have seen with her name lists her as Reumah Wood, as every document was issued after her marriage to Jonathan Wood.  The family book from 1903 speculated that Reumah was probably a wealthy French woman from New Orleans, Louisiana, and that is taken as near fact in my research circle.  Imagine my surprise when I discovered on Ancestry.com that someone in the Public Member Trees had given her the last name of Wealth.  Even more to my chagrin were the number of other people who copied that information onto their own tree.   A wrong name got copied and taken as fact several times over.

For a perfectionist such as myself, having incorrect names is bothersome.  That's why I truly enjoy it when someone corrects my data, and then shows me why they are correcting it.

It's a copy and paste job

Public member trees from Ancestry.com, Pedigree Resource File and Ancestral File from FamilySearch, and the WorldConnect Project on Rootsweb.com, among others, are all prone to grave mistakes from this kind of wrong data.

Don't misunderstand me, these sources are awesome resources, but they should be researched with a grain of caution, for they are not always going to be correct.  Anyone can find names and stick them together in research.  A genealogist who wants to be correct will actually back up said names with sources and research.  It is easy to plug names into a tree, what's hard is making sure the info you have is correct.

Too many times someone who is new to genealogy will take a tree and ecstatically plug it into their own without looking over the research.  I have been guilty of that myself.  However, when one then goes back over sources, it is harder to find the info one needs because the tree could be changed or deleted.  It is frustrating to be asked by another researcher about info and have no idea where it came from.

Okay, so what do I do?

So how does one make sure info is correct?  By checking sources.  I will rarely consult a tree in one of the aforementioned databases if it doesn't have sources.  I will also check the sources that are listed if it is possible to get a better look at what and where and when.   If I have to add the name of someone that is not documented by other sources (because sometimes, it can and does happen), I will document the source as coming from one of those databases AND I will try my best to make sure I also have the name of the submitter who submitted the data in the first place.  That way, if I find new information that either corrects or supports the data in my tree, I know who I can contact to ask if they have the info as well.  Also, I try to record what date I found info whenever possible, so that if the data does disappear, I still have some way of knowing who gave it to me and when.

Of course, even my own tree is not perfect.  Too many times in my early days I was one who just copied stuff willy-nilly, and now I am regretting making that mistake.  It may seem like a daunting task to sift over the info, but it is well worth it in the end.

Variety

One of my favorite  things to do is search more then one database, on more then one site.  I find that if I stick to one site, such as Ancestry.com, I miss the great databases some of the other sites have to offer.  I also miss getting a complete picture of who my ancestors and family members were and what they did.  While Ancestry has a vast amount of holdings, some other sites have great stuff as well.  A good jumping off point for searching some of these other databases is Cyndi's List, which has an extensive array of links designed to help everyone from the beginning genealogist to the most professional.

With odd names, such as my favorite of Waldspurger, I sometimes will just Google the name, or search the Google News Archive Search, which has old newspapers from around the world (This link is great for finding death notices too, particularly in the Pittsburgh area and for just having fun reading old time newspapers.)  I have found everything from old wedding announcements to my uncle's breaststroke record from the 70s by searching through Google.

There's also the old fashioned look-ups.  Yes, the world is becoming more and more digitized, but not always are the digital records correct.  Keep in mind some of those records on Ancestry and the like are transcribed by someone, and those transcriptions have a margin for human error.   Not to mention there are literally MILLIONS of records that aren't in digital format as of yet.  Sometimes it takes ordering them directly from the source in the form of old-fashioned photocopies or visiting the site and taking digital photographs to get information that is correct and pure.  If you are looking for information from Allegheny, Montgomery or Philadelphia Counties in Pennsylvania, I can get you contact information for places that can help!  Keep in mind, these look-ups can range from free (if you can find a person willing to do it for you) to 50 dollars an hour or even more.  But the amount of info you can glean from the original records can be worth the money spent.

A little variety is great for researching!  Don't limit your sources!

Take the time to ask the questions

Yeah, that's a question!

The last known World War One veteran has died.  She was 110.

From a genealogist and history buff's standpoint, that statement brings sort of a sadness to my heart.  What stories she must have had!  Yes, the last veteran was a woman, who served with the Woman's Royal Air Force in England.  She didn't see combat, but she still worked alongside men who did. 

I hope her stories were written down, for they had to have been awesome!  From the article I read, most of them were told to family members, but how many were preserved, not only for her future generations, but for millions of history buffs?
(for her story - see Last Known WWI Veteran Florence Green dies at 110)

Take time to ask the questions.

We're losing what is known as "The Greatest Generation" quickly.  Out of ten children born to my mother's paternal grandparents, only one survives. All of her mother's siblings are gone, as are my paternal grandfather and his brothers and sisters.

My grandmother, who is about to turn ninety years old, still lives, and is a wealth of knowledge for me to uncover.  I enjoy asking her questions, from the mundane to the personal.  Her responses are fascinating, and prompt me to ask even more questions.  Yes, some have to pertain to family history, but more often then not the questions I ask are offering me a window into a world of the past.  It is a world that she makes come alive far greater then any history book.

Hey look, the study of memory

The best resource a genealogist has is the memory of an older generation.  Learn to ask questions.  If they don't want to answer personal natured questions, start with something as simple as "What street did you grow up on?" or "What was your favorite toy?"  Sometimes the answers will unlock a memory or a world that you can explore. 

And your older relatives don't have to be "the Greatest Generation" - they could be the remnants of the WWI generation or Baby Boomers.   They could be your own parents, or cousins, aunts, uncles, even friends can have stories to tell.

So get out there and ask!

Lost photos are gems to find

Jesse Meyer and Jennie Hager Cox with sons c. 1942

Recently I found some old photos I thought I had lost. Most of them were in digital form made of scans I had done of photos various older family members had.  I lost them when my computer crashed over two years ago and was lamenting the fact that I might not be able to get them back, for I had foolishly not made hard copies of said photos NOR had I saved that particular set to a disk.  So it was nice to discover that I still had them.

These were photographs from my maternal grandmother's side, a side in which I do not have many contacts willing to share information, because many who had said information have passed on.

Where were the missing photographs?  They were still saved to my old email account's mail.

Dorothy and Jean Cox 1947

You see, I rarely delete emails if they have any family tree connection.  I will keep them for posterity in the account, and just happened to be looking through that account for something else when I discovered that the photos were still there. For those who were wondering - an initial search through the account after my computer crashed did not yield these photos, which makes me wonder if I was using the correct search terms the first time.

The pictures in question were among some that my mother's first cousin's ex-wife had sent me back in 2005 to add to my collection.  This is a family member that I sadly lost track of, so I couldn't ask for them back, nor could I find any of my family members that had these photos, so I was stuck with the fact that I'd never see them again.

It just goes to show you that you'll never know where you'll find photographs!

The Big Project: The Abinah Wood Descendant Project

For about a year now, I have been working on what I have come to call "The BIG Project."

I have an UPDATE HERE!!!

The book was finally finished and info about purchasing the book can be found here!


What I am doing is this:

There is a book called History and Genealogy of the descendants of Abinah Wood and Susannah Humphreys. It was written by a few of their descendants after a family reunion in 1903 - that's right, I said the book was written in 1903. I have a nice photocopy of it in my genealogical collection. There is an online copy of it at Archive.org as well.

Image of the actual cover

Anyway, to get back on subject - the book listed all of the known descendants of Abinah Belford Wood and Susannah Humphreys in 1903....of which my great-grandfather was listed as well. I am taking that info and updating it, adding 110 years worth of info and trying my best to get as many descendants as I can before January of 2013. 

Why January of 2013?  That's when I hope to have a new book made with the findings of my research.  I still don't know if I am going to publish that as a real book, or just as a PDF book that Abinah and Susannah's descendants can print on their own.  But I am hoping to have as many descendants in it, as well as biographies of the children and maybe even some of the grandchildren!

EDIT HERE:  The book was finally published in July of 2013.

John Devender Wood and family, c. 1880s

It is a frustrating job!

First of all, I have to comb through pages and pages of database info online just to find the right families - sometimes finding one branch with just four generations takes all day. Second Abinah and Susannah had FOURTEEN children, of which only three died as children, and over ONE HUNDRED grandchildren alone so that means I have to find several families. It's a tedious job, and has taken me many months to do, and I've only scratched the surface.

Add on to that the family squabbles, the nitpicking of data, the general stubbornness to share info and the headache of having to be diplomatic with people (which is a trait my mother takes credit for giving me!)and you have my day. I should mention also that I am not getting paid for this and must schedule this around my normal job as a substitute teacher AND around my day-to-day chores and family life. Not to mention keeping up with info that I find on my other branches, since I still have "oooooh shiny!" moments and find stuff that pertains to my mother's branch or my husband's several branches.

And still, I trek on, with the help of countless others, some who offer up their entire research, others who give me what they can and help me find new info, and then others who give me moral support and the much needed pats on the back (I love my husband!)

William Clifford Wood and family c. 1930s

Shameless promotion plug here:

If you are wondering what surnames I am looking for in this project, here are just a few in the tree:

AREHART, AINSWORTH, BOZIC, BYERS, CABLE, ESPLEN, FOWKES, GILMORE, GREENE, HUNTER, JORDAN, LOCKE, LYNCH, MARMEE, MILLER, MCDAVID, MCGINNISS (and its various variants), SCHAFFER, STRICKLER, TATEM, VANDEN BOSCHE, and of course WOOD.

If you think you might be a part of this family, there is a group that was started years ago on Yahoo! Groups called The Abinah Wood Descendants.  The purpose of the group is the promotion of any and all discussion regarding the couple and any of their descendants.  This group has been a big help to me and to those who have joined it.

And as always, if anyone has info they would love to share with me, contact me!

And so people know off the bat - Charles Wesley Chapman Wood, who is listed in the book, was my great-grandfather.