If Your Momma Ain’t Intrigued, Ain’t NObody Gonna Be Intrigued!

(From The Princess Bride)

Inigo Montoya: “I do not mean to pry, but you don’t by any chance happen to have six fingers on your right hand?”

Man in Black: “Do you always start conversations this way?”

I love Inigo. He’s focused, passionate, and funny.

Intriguing,too.

Sort of like my new friend, Cathy. In just three meetings with me she has “completed” her 4-generation pedigree and is well on her way to filling in the details of the fifteen family groups.

I always give homework and rarely remember what assignment I gave. I should probably write them down? I’d be a fun teacher. My students would get away with a lot. But we’d also have fun learning, too. Exciting subjects drive themselves. Don’t you think?

Cathy has surprised me two times now by coming into the Family History Center having done hers. She’s amazing. She needs no reminders. We laughed about how tired she was. On Tuesday night we both left the Center and worked on some of her family history puzzles late into the night. She admitted that she had the next day off from work and spent the whole day looking for the link between two great grandparents with the same last name. That was the homework assignment she’d been given that she was so excited to share last night.

“You did?!” I squealed.

“Yup. I found them.” She started talking to herself as she fingered through her files, looking for the one with the goods in it while I peppered her with  distracting questions.

I switched chairs to sit at her right, explaining that I sleep on the left side of the bed, but I’m used to sitting to her right. My friend got a chuckle out of that declaration.

“You mean they were sisters?” I asked.

“That means that their great-grandchildren, one a boy and the other a girl, got married?” I looked at her, waiting.

“”They’re a few logs removed from the wood pile,” she said matter-of-factly, staring straight ahead at the computer screen. Oh, my! She makes me laugh!

 I had to get my cousins chart out to figure out what to call them. From now on it’s going to be hanging in the Center.”Cathy! Your mom and dad are third cousins!” No big deal, but really fun!

It was 8:30 and my ride  had arrived, so we wrapped things up and I went home . While unwinding on the couch, Kyle asked, “What do you DO with people there?” which he followed up with, “I have NO interest in that at all!”

To which I replied, “It’s in the stories, Kyle. You get hooked in the stories. We (Cathy and I) opened up a World War I draft registration record and found out this guy had three fingers on his left hand.”

Kyle just stared at me with a squinched up nose. Guys love blood and guts and action! The kind that Inigo Montoya delivers. I think my son was starting to get it, but he just laughed and shook his head.

But my mind was already off imagining about how it had happened.

‘Cause in the end, that’s what intrigued me the most. And if  Momma ain’t intrigued, ain’t NObody gonna be intrigued!

Ha! What intrigue have you found in your ancestors’ closets?

Family History and the Art of Cloning

Do you have ANY idea how many people are excited to start and/or work on their family history? The answer doesn’t matter unless they all walk through the Family History Center door at the same time with a smile on their face, papers in their hands, and a steady gaze that says, “Help me!” AND they’re all looking at you!

I was sitting with one young woman, shaking hands with four visitors, while saying “Hi! You’re back!” to Cathy (with a C, not a K, I learned)…

And then the phone rang!

It’s quite a challenge to stay composed when you are anything but calm on the inside. I’ve never mastered talking to more than one person at the same time (I’ve practiced for 26 years with 9 children and the only thing I’ve learned is to NEVER make eye contact with anyone but he with whom you are talking. Acknowledge them with a hand wave and a “just a minute” finger, but that’s it or they’ll start talking over everyone else.)

Long story short, I believe in miracles.

I hung up the phone and turned to Cathy who sat patiently waiting for her turn.

“So. What are we doing tonight?” I asked as we pulled up FamilySearch.org  and Ancestry.com. She fidgeted for a minute because she didn’t have an answer.

And then I saw it! “Look at you! You made it!” On her lap sat a perfectly organized accordion folder, full of files that we’d put in piles the week before. Do you know how excited I was? She’d taken my advice and spent a bit of time getting what she had in order.

“How do you like it?”

Cathy was a changed woman. Her confidence had grown so much. She opened the folder and pulled out a file, showing me the label and accompanying pictures for the family that had taken up residence inside. We added a family group sheet to each folder and spent an hour searching for records in one of them, We drew timeline on the front, copied documents and placed them in the folder, updating the family group sheet as we went.

She was thrilled to be able to make some progress where her deceased sister had left off. She was getting closer to her goal of having four generations of her family history documented and ready to share with her sisters when she visits them in August.

Next Tuesday we’ll make an account for her with Legacy Stories. She’ll start with a free one, and we’ll add her sisters so that they can see and share everything she’s working on. We’ll scan and upload the pile of old photos she showed me, and maybe make 5 of the Talking Photos(they come with the free account, too).

We’ll look at The Leave a Legacy program( family tree website) and see if it’s a good fit for her family. If so, we’ll upload her GEDcom file from Ancestry into it.

Everything was falling into place for her. Soon she won’t need me anymore.

And then it dawned on me…

I can be very bold, usually with no warning.

“Cathy? Would you start volunteering here in two weeks?”

You see, there’s no way that two consultants can help everyone. The Center is getting very active. I’m waiting for approval for 4 other consultants, but my gift of impatience got the better of me, and much to the surprise of my friend sitting across the room, I decided to go fishing for the fish sitting right next to me instead of wait for the imaginary ones in the other pond.

“Sure!” she said with a smile. No hesitation. No sign of insecurity.

“The only problem I might have is navigating screens.” she admitted.

“All you have to do is help someone who knows less than you do. Just stay a few steps ahead of them and you’ll learn very quickly.” I assured her.

Done.

It really does make a difference to ask. You know?

With a lot of mini-me’s I can spend more time on MY family history, and researching and writing stories. It’s a win-win! Or a win-win-win-win!!

• I win freedom for other pursuits by training people to do my job
• The Center benefits because when something happens and I can’t show up, the work goes on.
• People are given the opportunity to learn and grow at an accelerated pace, and then give back by serving someone with their knowledge and skills
• The cycle repeats as those new consultants train the next wave!

Easy!!

Now…to apply that concept to housework!

Thursday Night With Betsy

Image website: http://everlastingwanderer.wordpress.com/2011/05/26/obsession-werewolf-aka-mafia-game/

Do you function well after 4pm? I don’t. But not many people know that. My mom is the only other person who admits to that gift.

However…

…it was Thursday night at the Family History Center, and I was furiously finishing the bulletin board in the hallway. I only had to remove 12 staples out of whatever 17×4 adds up to. (I know. It’s not addition. But how else do you say it?) I can do math. But my brain doesn’t function after dark. It’s solar powered.

At 7pm, just as the sun was going down behind my eyes, and I was flipping the switch labeled. “From This Moment On, Watch What You Say and Do Because You Might Regret It,” Kathy walked in.

You know, I have to hand it to fate. I needed Kathy and she needed me.

I almost laughed out loud. Another notebook and pile-of-paper clutcher! But I restrained myself and led her into my office, sat her down, and asked. “Whatcha got?”

After about 10 minutes of searching through her papers to fill in the Betsy-required 4-generation pedigree chart, I started stealing her documents.

People are very possessive of their documents and paperwork, cluttered and disorganized or not. But I had a choice. Either we could both fall into the endless pit of confusion that sucks up time and creates the illusion that you’re working hard, or I could take control and make her relatively stressed out while we got her organized, thus saving us both from a lot of pain and anguish.

Yes. That’s how it feels when you are disorganized. I’ve seen it enough to recognize the signs: forehead rubbing, apologizing, downcast eyes, sometimes even a light sweat as documents and notes are shifted from one pile to the next with hopes that the elusive needle in the haystack magically appears, and a sigh of relief escapes.

I chose the latter and made generation piles where she had to choose which document belonged in which pile and put it there. Then, because I forgot to bring file folders, we paper clipped all of the scanned pictures and documents to the correct cover sheet, labeled with which generation and on whose side of the family (her mom’s or dad’s) the pile belonged.

Then we sat at the computer searching on Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org, for her great grandfather. I worked the mouse and she typed.

You see, she was half brain-dead, too. I laughed when I saw myself in her. She’d stop and ask, “What was I doing?” when in the middle of typing a name. She would sit back and stare blankly at the screen and say, “I’m clueless. I should be in bed!”

To ease her up a bit I told her that we sometimes do Dairy Queen runs (my friend does), but she said she got enough sweets working at her nursing home down the street and she was staying away from sweets.

When all else fails, break out the food. People get happy and relaxed.

“What do you do there?” I asked.

“I work with Alzheimer patients.”

“Is it contagious you think?” I stared her in the eyes and waited the millisecond it took to register the question. I was just having fun with her, but she doesn’t know me. It could have gone either way.

“Yes! I do!” she roared.

It was obvious that I’d found a kindred spirit when math became an issue.

(I even laughed that statement out loud to my friend who was getting free entertainment from us two computers down.)

Kathy and I both looked at each other and shook our heads in shame and amazement that we could each do the same calculations, agree that we were right, and find out we were both 20 years off!!  I was so amused. “Oh, my! It’s so nice to meet someone else who is number-challenged when night falls!”

We found Great Grand Daddy in the 1910 census right where he was supposed to be with his wife and children. He was farming land in Pennsylvania and his wife was “keeping house.” Note to self: do better with that one.

It was time to go home and I gave her some homework . She was so excited and is coming back on Tuesday night.

I left my wonderful friend to lock up and made my way to the parking lot where I learned that my son had been driving the car. No big deal except he has no permit or license, yet. He’s only 15 and often takes my keys. Note to self: keep keys on your person.

He doesn’t like math either.

Just Make Them Swim or Paddle a Canoe Already!

Claire came in tentatively, clutching her notebook. Kathleen, her sister, was obviously by her side for moral support. We’d played phone tag all day and I was so thrilled to see them walk through the door of my home away from home- the Family History Center.

They talked about Thomas Walsh whose ship’s record and naturalization records were the soup du jour. After an hour of searching I looked at Claire and asked, “What’s the big deal? You know the year he arrived. That’s documented. Why are you stuck on more paperwork to prove it?”

“I just want those pieces of his story,” Claire shrugged.

You have to understand that my body still hasn’t adjusted to staying awake past 7:30 pm in the 6+ months I’ve been doing other things at night, and a telltale sign is how punchy I can get. We had had a blast searching and visiting,  opening documents where a few facts matched, but not enough to throw a party.

So we tried different avenues and approaches and I shared how impressed I was with how their minds had shifted into a detective mode. I’d seen it happen. They were excited to be feeling more independent.

Finally I let them in on a secret of mine. My Piles. I like my piles. They are convenient places to put recalcitrant and invisible people who know where they are but don’t want you to find them. I like to leave them there to let them think. They have to come to terms with their responsibility to help people get their story straight.

I suggested to Claire that she put this little family in a “Floating on a Raft in the Middle of the Atlantic Ocean” pile for a while. They had to get here somehow. Canoe?  There must be a better, more concise  name for it. Perhaps you’ll think of it for me and I’ll pass it on. How ’bout the “Life Preserver” pile? I’ll offer both and let them choose.

We reluctantly packed things up and promised to get together on Thursday night to put together a file system for their documents and notes. We chatted about Family Tree Maker and my reluctance to buy more genealogy software. To be honest, I pondered my resistance to it all night and wondered if I was just being stubborn?

Yes. I was. When it comes to stuff that doesn’t do what I want it to do I stand firm against letting it take up space on my computer and calendar. It’s not that I don’t love what it does for you as far as collecting, filing, and creating documents, as well as charts, maps, and books from all of your hard work. They offer beautiful, functional, important  things for genealogists and family historians.

I’m on another path. I’ve made the transition to Legacy Stories where you can have a personal family tree website. create and share photo albums, stories and videos, AND link them to FamilySearch all while staying in as much control of it as you want while sharing with family and friends. And at less than $10/mo. the value can’t be matched. Just upload a GEDcom (GEnealogical Data COMmunication) file and you’re up and running!

I’ll tell you more about it another time. It’s really cool and is the newest rage. You at least need to know how fast technology is advancing the genealogy/family history experience!

To me it’s all about using the Internet to share and to connect in meaningful ways. The last thing I need is another site that seems like a coffee table book that has had so much love put into it and has to sit and wait for people to be invited to open it. I like an open-door policy. It’s more fun. And if I can have a quality one-stop-shopping experience I’m happy, too! (No matter what, I always have a paper copy, and a GEDCOM file saved in in my computer and on a CD case of emergency.)

So, until Friday (if good stuff happens Thursday night!), take care and Happy Hunting!

P.S. I’m not on the Internet much anymore except for family history work. But I’m easy to contact by email, and if you need my phone number I’ll give it to you there. See ya!

I Ain’t No Mind Reader!

Thursday night was painful. At least it started out that way. You know that feeling of being brain-dead and tongue-tied while someone has just professed their undying confusion and their eyes are pleading with you to fix their problem, but all you want to say is, “You lost me at ‘Hello'”?

What do YOU do?

I smile and silently pray my guts out that we both don’t go careening over the embankment into the “She Has No Idea What She’s Doing” ditch. It works every time, as long as I keep asking questions. But not too many. That could be annoying. It’s a slippery slope.

Here’s what I learned. You are confused. Family history/genealogy can seem overwhelming, especially for us older folks who resisted technology until we couldn’t any more, and are in the process of rewiring the circuits in our brains- the ones that come with the newer models like my 10-year-old daughter who can see the same Facebook game that I see for the first time and knows immediately how to play it, whereas I feel like all of my clicking is going to make something REALLY bad happen.

Second thing I found out about myself? As good a listener and smiler as I might profess to be, I ain’t no mind reader! And I’m not on speaking terms with Alexander who “knows all”, or Zoltar , his brother, which I established in a previous post.

And neither is your computer. If you are going to enjoy genealogy and family history you have to know what you can find to help you on the Internet and what you can’t.

Not everything about a person’s life will be searchable on the WorldWideWeb (unless you blogged about it or added it to LegacyStories.org). I might be able to find out when someone came to America, but not when the tooth fairy collected her first installment of baby teeth from my 4th great grandfather. And that’s important to know!

It took about 10 minutes with each patron to get an idea of what they were seeing when they thought of genealogy so that I could give them a new picture, one that made sense and would never confuse them. Honestly, I felt like I was cutting new paths in the Amazon Rain Forest.

One had gaps in his ancestor’s lives that he wanted to fill with facts. Facts from documents. Facts from documents that may or may not be digitized or put on the Internet, yet. He had to figure out not only what his question was, like, “How can I find my great grandparents?”, or, “Did they own land in the 1800’s?”, but he also had to have a basic understanding of how to map a life and know what type of document would have the answers he was looking for.

I’ve said it before, but here goes again. Timelines. You can read and return. I’ll wait. Once he understood, his searching was a piece of cake. (Exaggeration!)

The other man was dealing with overwhelm. Well-meaning people had given him software that was taking too much of his time to figure out and was leaving him too tired to focus on what mattered to him.

While sitting and talking with him I felt a quiet desperation. When he walked in the door at the beginning of his session I heard him say, “I’m confused, overwhelmed, and disorganized.” Most of us, when faced with those feelings get in our figurative car and drive in the other direction. But he also said ,”I need help. I want to leave something for my children when I’m gone.”

THAT was the motivator. That was the goal. THAT was what I kept bringing him back to when I knew his brain was on overload. We agreed that he needed to simplify and focus on writing his ancestors’ stories sooner than later. And he had to remember to share his works-in-progress, whether it be a family tree or a story.

I showed him LegacyStories.org where he could create his own family tree website to share with family and friends NOW. He would have to learn how to upload a Gedcom file and I promised to help. I showed him my dad’s talking photo and explained how all of his could be scanned and shared, too.  He agreed and was quite relieved to recommit to his main objective of being able to leave something behind that would matter to his family.

I was so happy for him. He’d reached out for some help and had actually helped me! It’s easy for me to get overwhelmed by people’s confusion and to forget that I’m pretty simple-minded…in a good way.

I’m so thrilled that I can’t read your mind, and I’m more than happy to declutter and refocus yours if you want!

Family History Sunday Series 1:8 Military Records

“The nation which forgets its defenders will be itself forgotten.”
   – Calvin Coolidge

When I find out that someone that I’ve been searching for served in the military, I wake up. When I learn that they died while serving, my heart drops every time. Knowing that someone was probably far from home and friends and loved ones makes the loss harder. Imagining the news of the death as reported to next of kin brings me to that place where those who have grieved always arrive unprepared, sometimes kicking and screaming, and never leave of their own free will.

Searching military records is hard for me, but it’s also exciting and extremely rewarding.

You might not think so, but military records can be full of information that can fill gaps in some people’s history, making a more complete (not perfect or finished!) submission of a family tree to FamilySearch.org easier.

Remember to focus on your living relatives who served or are serving now, too. Recording their memories now will add depth of understanding to their life for future generations. Add their military photos, documents, and stories to your account at LegacyStories.org for family and friends to enjoy.

Links to some of my military related posts:

Tears in Heaven: He Could Have Been My Boy

Father and Son Stories

FYI: I’ve ordered records online (for my father), and I’ve found quite few on Ancestry.com. So as not to overwhelm you, I’ve only included National Archive links in this post.

From the National Archives Website:

1. The National Archives holds Federal military service records from the Revolutionary War to 1912 in the National Archives Building in Washington, D.C. See details of holdings.
2. Military records from WWI – present are held in the National Military Personnel Records Center (NPRC), in St. Louis, Missouri, See details of holdings
3. The National Archives does not hold state militia records. For these records, you will need to contact the appropriate State Archives.

Links from the National Archives 

Request Military Records

• Request records online with eVetRecs
• Other ways to obtain service records
• Learn about military service records (e.g. DD Form 214)
• Special notice regarding requests for copies of military records

Research Using Military Records

• What’s available online?
• Locate older (pre-WW I) military service records
• Using military records for genealogical research
• Other military and veterans records

Replace Lost Medals and Awards

Browse WWII Photos

Memorial Day: A Flag at Half-Staff

 

“The things that the flag stands for were created by the experiences of a great people. Everything that it stands for was written by their lives. The flag is the embodiment not of sentiment, but of history.” Woodrow Wilson

“On Memorial Day the flag is raised briskly to the top of the staff and then solemnly lowered to the half-staff position, where it remains only until noon. It is then raised to full-staff for the remainder of the day.” (WP)

A flag at half mast. Hmm. So symbolic to me. Most things are.

A life lived with ups and downs, a life cut short in death or altered by physical and/or emotional wounds, a life honored and mourned, lives blessed because of another’s sacrifice.

So many memories. So many stories.

I’ll visit my father this weekend, as I do most weekends. His military service is on my mind right now because Memorial Day is coming next Monday. Memorial Day, sad to say, has never been more to me than a day of parades  and cookouts. This year is different. I want to ask my father about his military stories. I want to sit by his bedside at the nursing home that he never leaves and ask him if he’ll tell me some stories. I want to record his voice as he tells me about the one photo I have of him at that time.

I saw it for the first time on my grandparents’ bedside table at their home on St. Thomas,VI. I remember the cool marble floor under my little girl feet, and the sounds of laughter coming from the  sunken marble bathtub just around the corner to the right of that little table. He was so handsome in his uniform. I felt humbled for a moment as I stared at him, and he stared back at me from 1955-  four years before he was married, six years before I was born.

He was 19.

How did he feel about his service? What were some of his experiences? He’s such a character! I’ll bet he has some fun memories.

When I record his story, I’ll upload it and the scanned picture into my account with Legacy Stories as a “Talking Photo”. Any family member or friend who creates a free account and becomes my friend can then hear the story as my father tells it in his own voice. Isn’t that amazing? And when he dies, and he will someday, I will permanently link that “Talking Photo” to him on my family tree on FamilySearch.org, as I will do for all of my stories and photos of my ancestors. Then anyone who finds him on FamilySearch.org will see that there’s a link to him over at Legacy Stories where there are stories, videos, and photos of him waiting to be enjoyed, learned from, and shared.

When I see the flags at half-mast next Monday, I won’t just think about  my ancestors who served and how important it is to find them, get to know them, and honor them. I’ll think of my father and how he’s still alive to tell me about his life and how grateful I am to have him around to share those memories with him. Those memories are priceless. They are part of the fabric of who he is.

Just like our country’s flag.

And I want to get to know him better.

P.S. I’ll post the picture and a link to the “Talking Photo” as soon as I get it so that you can see and hear it. Hopefully it’ll be attached to my Sunday Series!!

Family History Sunday Series 1:5 The Student Teacher

So. I have good news and bad news. Good news- I got Internet access for a minute! Yippee! So the Sunday Series continues. Bad news? My head has been completely muddled and I haven’t been able to focus on anything but my pillow. We will get back to learning something new in the near future…hopefully next Sunday! Cross your fingers. Please.

She Slipped Through My Fingers

 

“If I cannot understand my friend’s silence,

I will never get to understand his words.”

One minute I was on top of the world. I’d found her. The next I was in despair. She died too  soon.

I wonder how William took it? He was married for the first time at the age of 38, and lost his wife 10 months later to uterine cancer. Judith was only 37.

I have searched for Judith for a long time. When I finally got a hold of her, and felt like I was making progress getting to know her, she slipped through my fingers. She was my third great-grandmother on my mother’s side, and her silence is deafening.

Silence is a strange thing. Joanna, a childhood friend, never spoke. Her parents said she would talk at home, but never to anyone outside of the family. It was a personal challenge to me to see if I could get her to open up because we had become playmates and I sensed an inner joy that had gone underground for some reason. I was thrilled the day that she started giggling and then chatting away with abandon. We’d been playing and I was talking to her as if she and I were carrying on a normal conversation, and to my surprise she started holding up her end of it.

I learned something profound that day: people usually act the way that you treat them. Sometimes they’re secure enough in who they are to stay strong through whatever life hands them. But ofttimes they learn to cope. And sometimes they just get quiet and stop shining.

That’s how I feel when I think about Judith Carter.

Her conflicting records make me wonder what was going on, and how she was learning to cope. With every record I found of her I felt less and less of “her” present. That’s not something I usually feel when I’m getting to know one of my ancestors.

There is such a huge discrepancy between some of her records that I have to wonder what the real story was? When she marries Stephen Moody apparently she’s 21, born in 1823. But years later, after Stephen is gone she marries William Cassell and declares that she was born in 1829, making her 15 when she married Stephen. Huh? Could have happened.

When her son, Henry dies in 1864, she’s either 41 or 35. I don’t know. Maybe this doesn’t add up to anything more than making an under-aged bride legit. Or….maybe she’s the only one who really knew the truth. Maybe she hid her age from Stephen, too. But by the time William, her second husband comes along, she’s owning her real age. 37. Good for her!

I don’t know if her first marriage ended in divorce or abandonment. I’m pretty sure I found Stephen living and working in California. And as far as I know he’s roaming the Earth still. Maybe he and the marriage fell apart when Henry died? I can’t find a divorce record either.

I felt so rejuvenated when I found Judith’s second marriage record. I even clapped my hands and said,”Yay! She’s married! I found her!” But when I went to find her death record, one I’d been searching for with no luck because I had the wrong last name, I was quickly deflated.

Ten months. That’s all that they got. Most of it was probably full of pain. Her daughter Estella Moody, was only 18-years-old. I can’t imagine the anguish, thinking of leaving her daughter without parents, and probably with a virtual stranger as the inevitable sunk in. I have yet to find her between her mother’s death and her marriage to my 2nd great-grandfather, Thomas H. Kelley.

I’m moved by Judith. It’s so easy to let life silence you. It’s sad that we give our joy away and stop shining. I really want to shake her and make her tell me who she was and how she felt. Was she angry or afraid? Depressed? Sad and alone? Or was she just tired? Perhaps she was one of those rare few whose quiet world is full of joy and gratitude unexpressed.

She’s not talking today. But I suppose she doesn’t trust me yet. Maybe we’ll have to play a little longer!

Family History Sunday Series 1:4 Don’t Do Your Family History Like My Six-Year-Old Mows the Lawn!

Image website: nrgspot.com

 

[The quality of the audio is getting worse! Sorry and thanks for listening!]