AGES-Online

                  AGES-Online

Advanced Genealogical Exploration Service
A family tree building internet site
They currently have 2 packages and are working on a 3rd that says is coming soon.
Their economy package is $39.95 and their standard package is $59.95. 
They do offer a 30 day free trail.  You do not have to give a credit card for the free trial, which is a nice change.  I signed up for the free trial and this is what I have found so far.  You are able to upload GEDCOM files, print family group sheets, print outline decendant reports, print descendant genealogical resiter report, print marriage report, and print a parentage report. 
They have a family statistics button.  When you click on it, it will give you
Total number of individuals
Total number of unquie surnames
The average lifespan
Youngest deceased
Oldest deceased
Earliest birth date
Latest birth date
Total number of marriages
Earliest marriage date
Latest marriage date
You can add and edit family stories
And you can share with family and friends.
I am stil checking out the program.  Is there anyone there that already uses this and what are your opinions?

A 6 Week Break

Classes are done for the term. I really surprised myself with the number of A's I received. I am looking forward to my next term. I will be taking Anthropology, NY state history, and the history of the Civil War. I can't wait to dive right in. It will be really exciting for me.  I have already started reading the book for the Civil War class which is "Battle Cry of Freedom."  I have a feeling there will be a lot of writing among all 5 of my classes.  But I will work my butt off and get it done.  I am also taking biology and American Lit.  Which is one of the reasons I decided to get a head start on my reading.  It will be fun. 

I went pulled out all my files, notebooks, binders and such.  I want to go through them, organize them and hope that will help me work more on this blog since I have seen to have gotten off on a detour.  I want to focus more.  But I would really like to see more input from followers.  I am still new at the blog thing and I am trying my best.

GenealogyFreelancers.com

As I continue to work on this project I do research and come across many different books, websites, and information. Maybe I should have a weekly post dedicated just to the fun things I have come across while researching. 

While researching how to find a professional genealogist I came across and interesting site called GenealogyFreelancers.com  The site is for genealogist looking to help others with their projects and for researchers looking for help. 

Researchers can post projects that they need help with.
Genealogist looking to help others can browse posted projects and bid on them. 

There are 3 different membership levels for seekers
Free- its free to post a project and to find a specialist.
$5.00 - for a refundable $5.00 fee they put an icon in the title of your project to draw attention to your project.
$15.00 - the pull out all the stops to get a specialist for you project.  They notify matching specialist on their site immediatly as well as put your project on the Genealogy Freelancers RSS feed and via twitter to get your project out to hundered of specialist.

There are 3 different membership levels for researchers.
Free - gives you a chance to check out the site, play with the features, browse open projects and even bid on up to 10 a month.  If you bid on a project and get hired they do charge a 6% commision.
Silver - If you find that you are bidding on more than 10 projects a month and getting more jobs you could upgrade to their silver membership for $8 a month.  Your commision paid to the site is then only 3%.  They are limited to bidding on 20 projects a month.
Gold - This membership is $15 a month.  With this membership there are no commision fees, you only pay the $15 a month the money you make is totally yours.  There is not bid limit for gold members bid on all jobs you wish.

So if you get a chance check them out you might like them.  Their site is not flashy but tells you want you need to know.  If you take the time to check them out please leave me a comment telling me your thoughts on the site.

a review of some website

If you Google "Genealogy Professional" you will get 13,200,000 hits in 20 seconds.  That is a lot of hits!!!  Here are the first 10 that pop up……….

#10 - Genealogical.com - a sales website that sells genealogy related items.  They have books, CD's and other items.  You can browse their catalog.  The page says they have access to over 25 million records and over 2,000 genealogy books.  I did not see any where on the site where you could hire a professional genealogist.  They do offer a book called "Professional Genealogy: A Manual for Researchers, Writers, Editors, Lecturers & Librarians."  The book is $59.95 on their site. http://www.genealogical.com

#9 - Mygenealogist.com - a website were you can hire someone to help you with your research.  They are based out of Salt Lake City, Utah.  They say they have traveled to other countries to help their clients solve their genealogical problems.  They charge $50 a half hour and $60 an hour. http://www.mygenealogist.com/

#8 - Cyndislist.com - a wonderful genealogy website all on its own, has a section dedicated to genealogy professionals.  They have links to becoming a professional, accreditation, general resources, hiring a professional and so on.  http://www.cyndislist.com/Professionals/

#7 - Progenealogist.com - Owned and operated by Ancestry.com they have people whose job it is to help you with your research.  Some of the services they offer are ancestry research, international ancestry research, family history book creation & publication, probate and missing heir research, Salt Lake trip consultation, & records search.  Depending on the service you request the price ranges from $75 to $90 plus additional fees for phone calls, photocopies, postage, etc.  Ancestry.com is well known for their access to millions of historical records and if you are looking to go with a well known company this would probably be the one.  http://www.progenealogists.com/

#6 - Expertgenealogy.com - The site lists independent companies & individuals who are willing to help you with your genealogy research and genealogy products.  This site is full of directories for many different companies.  They are listings for free resources.  I do feel that the site is full of links upon links.  It seems to be slightly difficult to navigate.  Feel free to check it out and decide for yourself.  http://expertgenealogy.com/

#5 - apgen.org - The Association of Professional Genealogist.  On this site you can find specialist in all sorts of areas.  Such areas as adoption, genetics, heirs, and American Indians.  They also have specialist that help professional genealogist create a business.   If you are interested in becoming a professional genealogist they can help with that as well.  http://www.apgen.org/index.html

#4 - Genealogypro.com - They offer services in finding professional genealogist, adoption & missing person specialist, translators, military researcher, historical researcher, heir & estate specialists, and general genealogy services.  This is again a directory of companies and services.  This site is again links that lead you to links of more sites.  Not my personal favorite type of site. http://genealogypro.com/

#3 - Legacy-tree.com - Another company located near Salt Lake City, Utah.  They state that they genealogist that can help you with U.S. research, the British Isles, Germany, Canada, Italy and more.  They say that their genealogist all have university degrees in genealogy and family research.   Knowing that there is an extremely limited number of schools that offer such a degree means more than likely they have all gone to BYU.  There rates include original research, documents, full report and records list, family genealogy charts, presentation binder, & private family web page.  20 hours of research is $1250 for 1-2 surname lines.  40 hours of research is $2500 with 1-4 surname lines, & 80 hours of research is $5000 for 2-6 surname lines.  Pretty price but it depends on how serious you are and if you are willing to spend it. http://www.legacy-tree.com/index.html

#2 - Heirlines.com - This company's site says they have been around for over 40 years.  This company is also located in Salt Lake City, Utah.  Founded by a James W. Petty, who states he is a lifetime career genealogist.  They have their services packaged and their packages have names like gold ($2800), silver ($1500), platinum ($7800), and bronze($800).   http://www.heirlines.com/

#1 - Ancestry.com - A well known genealogy research site.  They have a link at the top of their page that says hire an expert.  This will take you to #7 Progenealogist.com.  This site is great for anyone who wishes to research on their own.  For either a monthly or yearly fee you can access over 7 billion records from so many different countries.  You can up load your tree or build along the way adding the records to the person as a source.  Other users also share their trees and you can find long lost relatives.  A great site.  A monthly subscription to U.S. records is $22.95 and a monthly subscription World records is $34.95.  If you want to try and do some of the research on your own this is probably your cheapest option. http://www.ancestry.com/

Happy Thanksgiving

Wow it's been 3 months since I posted on here.  I guess going back to school got the best of me.  I am happy to be back in school.  I am doing well and getting great grades.  Next term I am taking 3 history classes next term and I am so excited.  I am hoping to take what I learn and share it with others.  I also hope it helps me in my genealogy adventures. 

I hope everyone had a wonderful Turkey day.  I hope you got to spend time with family, friends and loved ones.  I hope you got to take pictures and share stories.  Journal your day and keep it forever.

Visiting my dad

Once a year I TRY to take my kids down to visit my dad, and the rest of my family.  They live about 5 hours from us.  Which isn't far, but we don't have a lot of money coming in and so it isn't the easiest trip in the world.  But I got to go down this past week.  My kids and I went camping, visited family and as always visited the cemeteries.  I always visit my grand parents and great grand parents when I am down.  There are 3 cemeteries that I usually go to.  This year I made it to 2.  My paternal grand parents Charles William Thomas and Ruth Ester Calovi.  Along with Ruth's parents Ettore Calovi & Violetta "Cash" Calovi are buried in the Amenia Union Cemetery on Leedsville Rd in Amenia, NY/Sharon, CT.  I visited them, brought them some flowers.  We found an injured butterfly in the parking lot of the store where we got the flowers, we left it at the cemetery as well. 

 

The next time I go back I would like to try and clean the stones a little.  They are getting hard to read with the moss growing on them.  Notice my family did not know the proper spelling of Calovi.  Sometimes that happens.

I did not make it to see my paternal great grand parents this time.  They are buried in Kent Congressional Cemetery

Family Group Sheet Friday

I am really eager to encourage more participation from my followers.  So I have decided to make Friday's Family Group Sheet Fridays.  A day where we should share a family group sheet from our collections.  Pick just one.  Tell us why you picked it and how you have found the information contained in it.  Maybe its one your having a bit of a problem with.  Sharing it with others could very possibly help it right along. 

I will get the ball rolling by sharing one of mine.
My great grand parents Ettore Calovi & Violetta Cash.  This has been one of my favorite research projects.  My great grand father Ettore is from Italy.  Knowing only his name, his wife's name and that he came from Italy I figured that this might be a difficult branch to tackle.  I did find out that he came here in 1909.  I did find them on a few census.  With conflicting birth information.  Sometimes it said he was born in Italy.  I came to learn that the area of Italy he was born in, Mezzocorona, was originally part of Austria before World War I. 

Then I managed to become a part of an Italian surname Newsgroup.  I post his name and what little information on had.  I got a response from someone who did look some information up and then gave me the mailing address to the church in Mezzocorona and a link to white pages.  Then I typed in his last name and the town.  I sent a letter to each one of the names that came up.  I ended finding some very close cousins and one of his nephews that were still living.  Then sent me pictures, and documents.  It was truly amazing.  We still keep in touch.  The church also sent me records of Ettore's father's marriages.  Plus births, deaths, and baptisms of the family.  Very truly amazing.

Unfortunately I still have no records for my great grand mother Violetta.  That is a port in progress.

Ettore Enrico Calovi
DOB Dec. 16, 1809 Mezzocorona, Trento, Italy (Austria)
DOD Jan. 1967 Manchester, Hartford, CT
Father is Guiseppe Calovi  Mother is Maria Berghem
Wife was Violetta Cash
DOB July 19, 1895 Amenia, Dutchess, NY
DOD 1947 Possibly Amenia, NY or Sharon, CT
Children were
Violetta Calovi DOB 1915
Mary Calovi DOB 1918
Hazel Calovi DOB Nov. 18 1920 DOD Feb. 25, 1988
Ruth Calovi DOB Nov. 25 1926  DOD Sept. 3, 1996

Day 7

Good Morning Everyone!!!  How is your writing project coming?  I bet you have a small novel by now.  How is the information collecting going?  Have you hit any brick walls??  Do you need some help?  Talk to each other about your process so far, and share tips and tricks.  Maybe you can help each other with your research.  You will often come across others with different resources.
Now is probably a good time to tell you about another favorite web site of mine.  ANCESTRY.COM - Unfortunately this is a pay site but they do have access to some free records.  They also have huge online community of users always willing to share, help, and collaborate.  It is truly awesome.  They have access to millions of records, census, birth, marriage, death, land, probate, and more.  Again many they are only accessable to paying members, but there are some records that are free and becoming part of the community is free.  They almost always have some kind of free trial and every now and they have access to records for a weekend.  For example they allowed access to records for free for the 4th of July weekend.  So got check it out I know you will love it.

Now back to writing.  How is that going?  So far we have written about ourselves, our parents & our grandparents.  That is essentially 7 people.  If you have created folders or a binder you should have 7 tab.  What about your journal, do you have at least a page for each person?  Are you writing about what you are doing to find this information, and how you feel when you find something new.

Are you married?  Do you have children?  Grand children?  Add a file for your other half's side.  This will be a whole new branch in your tree.

Day 6

On day 4 I had you work on your maternal grand parents.  Now it's time to  move on to your paternal grand parents.   Your father's parents.  What do you know about them off the top of your head?  Start a new page in your journal for each grand parent.  Write down everything you can think of.  Then of course talk to your grand parents if they are still alive.  If now than talk to your parents. 

Are you make this journey fun for yourself?  Are you enjoying the search, the hunt?  How is the writing part coming along.  Most of genealogy is just documenting facts and sources.  Sometimes we forget to listen and write down the stories that may have come along with the facts.  Especially if you are getting information from a family member they may say that little John was born on a certain day but they tell you what happened that day.

I used to live in Orlando, FL.  The day my second son was born my mother was visiting from NY and we had plans to take her to Disney's Animal Kingdom.  I was already over due and we went and walked around the park.  My back hurt most of the day (I was nine month pregnant after all).  My family decided to go on the safari ride and I decided to sit it out.  There was a wait time of 20 minutes and the ride is probably 10-15 minutes, no big deal.  I went and got some ice cream and sat down.  And that is when I noticed a contraction.  So I decided to time it figuring it was really nothing.  5 minutes later another one and 5 minutes after that another.  So I was a little nervous, I had not experienced this before, my first son was induced. 

So when my family returned from the attraction I advised them that we should probably head home.  On the ride home I as able to watch the clock and noticed that my contractions seemed to be getting closer together.  They were not painful.  I ask my mom to sit with my older son and told my husband that I was having contractions and we might want to head to the hospital.  I was very calm and wasn't in a rush.  I figured I would get sent home.  I had always expected there to be a lot of pain from contractions that close. 

By the time we arrived at the hospital I knew they were fairly close but I had never said anything to my husband.  They brought me in to the little room where they decide if you will stay or if you will go.  My contraction were 2 minutes apart by then.  The nurse turned to me and said "you are definitely in labor, your contractions are 2 minutes apart."  My husband almost lost his mind.  Freaking out because I never told him they were so close.  I still laugh about it to this day.  While we still lived in Orlando, every year on my son's birthday we always went to Animal Kingdom and reminded him and us how he was almost born there.

 Just one of the fun stories that I have written down in the hopes that my son will tell his children and that it will passed on through the family for a long time to come.

I hope you all are find fun and interesting stories as well.  Any you want to share??  Please feel free.

Also the book included with this post appears to be a very nice book for journaling and charting your journey.  I am adding to my wish list.

My apologies

My laptop has broken and it is going to take me sometime to get it fixed, even though it is still under warranty.  The company wants me to send them money so the can send me a "prepaid" shipping box.  I am a little annoyed.  But needless to say all my work is on that computer.  So I had to take some time to move it over to my older lap top.  I will try to keep up daily.

Thanks

Day 5

So what did you learn yesterday? Anything new? Did you find out where your grand parents were born? Did you find any documents supporting the information. Are there any old birth certificates, marriage certificates, or Social Security card lying around? There are valuable supporting documents. There are also rich with history and should be cherished.

If your grand parents are deceased, you can try and look up some information on them on the Social Security Death Index. (http://ssdi.rootsweb.ancestry.com/) You do not need to know their social security number. You really just need their name but sometimes it helps to add more information you have. The Social Security Death Index will list their name, date of birth, date & place of death, social security number, and state where the number issued. Until about the last 15 - 20 years social security numbers were only issued when you applied for one and you only needed one if you wanted to work. The next issues is that the death had to be reported to social security. Yes, unfortunately deaths do not always get reported to social security or to anyone.

What about old photos, did you come across any? Again ask family members if they have any that you can at least borrow to again scan or photo copy. If you have a scanner and can scan the photos, offer to make copies for other family members. They also make great gifts. This is again a great way to keep the photos. I have many CD's with old photos on them. I try to group pictures by year and label the CD with the year or years. I also have an understanding with my family members that if they have lots of photos they want to get rid of that I will gladly take them. After I have scanned them and have them saved on disks and such, I scrapbook them. I don't like them just laying in a box. They belong in a book. Even if there are not other embellishments on the page they are at least in a book for others to enjoy.

Day 4

New day, new generation.  What do you know about your maternal grandparents?  Your mother's parents.  Do you know their full names?  Do you know your grandmothers maiden name?  Do you know where & when they born? Do you know the full names and dates & places of birth of their children, your aunts & uncles.   These questions are usually not easy answer just of the top of your head.  They may take some digging.  Don't be surprised if your mom don't know all the answers either.  If you are lucky enough to still have your grandparents around, interview them.  Make sure you tape it.  It will be a wonderful thing to have to look back on.  When loved ones are gone, it's amazing how much we wish we had taken the time to get to know them, photograph them, just to share with our own children.  Beside the best information is from the source itself.  Start a new page for each grand parent in your journal.

Also, now is a good time to starting looking at the different types of charts that you can use to map our your journey through time. 

A pedigree chart is  a type of chart where you track your ancestors.  You use it to track usually 5 generations, their names, dates & places of birth, marriage, & death.  You will number each chart as a page, then when you get to the last person on the line you should write the page number of the chart where the line continues.

Then there are family group sheets.  A family group sheet is where you keep track of a family and their basic information.  You have the mother & father and children.  It will ask for dates & places of birth, marriage, deaths.  It will usually ask for the names of the children's grandparents.  Depending on the type of family group sheet it may ask baptism information,

One of my favorite and free internet sites to use is https://www.familysearch.org/  It is run by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.  It's a good source of information to find others working on the same trees.  Their collection in mostly user based.  Example I send them all the group sheets & pedigree charts I have put together on my tree and they publish them.  But they do offer information from free sources such as the 1880 census.  They greatly improved their site over the years.  They have indexing projects, free mini classes, links to other websites and software.

Please feel free to share what you have learned and found.  Introduce yourself to each other. 

A Huge Thank You

I have updated this blog in a few days because I did not realize I had any followers and I was working on my material.  I am totally shocked and surprised to find that I had 11 followers when I logged in this morning.  I am new at blogging and just really wanted to write about what I love.  I am thankful that you are too.  I will now continue to update this daily.  I am really looking forward to interacting with all of you.

Thank you again, and please feel free to pass this blog along to your friends and family.

It's a new day, are we ready to write again??  I know I am.

How did the writing about your parents go?  Did you learn anything new??  You must have.

Was this assignment more difficult than the last?  Since you had two people to write about.  Two people to learn about.  Each generation will get harder.  Not only will the number of people double each generation back but records confirming or denying the information you have.

Since we are really getting into the genealogy part it will be important for you obtain copies of records.  I would suggest getting a three ring binder or a file folder bin.  You can create a new tab for each name. 

Starting with yourself, create a folder.  Then make a copy of your birth certificate, social security card, marriage license and other important documents.  Place them in this folder or in the binder.  If you want take the time to type up some of the information that you wrote down about yourself and add that to this file about yourself.  Add pictures from through out your life.  Chapter 1 in you family book.

Then do the same for your parents.  You can choose to either make one folder for the both of them, or if you think you have a lot of information on each parent create a tab for each of them.  Again make copies of any document you can get your hands on.  Don't forget the photos, the more the better, and the older the better.  If you have access to a computer scanner, then scan them in.  This keeps the photos much safer for future use.  Especially if you burn then to a CD or DVD and put that away.ave

For your writing assignment for today, document your experience of collecting and storing your information.  Write about all that you have learned and how you feel about what you have learned.

Day 2

So how did the first assignment go?

Was it harder than you thought??  Easier than you thought?

Did you talk to your family?  Did you find anything new and interesting about who you are?

Did you enjoy taking the time to learn about yourself?

Today's assignment

Write about your parents.  What do you know about them?  You probably know when they were born, possibly even where they were born.  Is that all you know??  If you are fortunate to still have your parents living talk to them.  Ask them all kinds of questions.

Where were you born?

Where did you live as a child?

What were some of your favorite things?

What did you want to be?

The more questions the better.  While you are doing the interview record it, either with an audio tape or with a video tape.  There are 2 good reasons for this.  One, you will have this cherished item now forever.  Not just some notes written down on paper, but them giving their answers and opinions.  Two, then you don't have to write it all down.  You can look back over it.  Write down what you feel you need to and see what you missed.

This is an assignment that should make you feel really good when you are done with it.