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.