Showing posts with label General. Show all posts

A little off topic but still relevant to family historians. I'm sure that when you search for ancestors or living relatives you eventually end up on one of the many Intelius (no link scumbags!) pages out there.

A couple of days ago the Washington State Attorney General slapped this company with a bunch of fines and injunctions for using what's called "post transaction marketing" practices. I won't do the story much justice so go ahead and read the following articles on TechCrunch. Then go get your refunds:

May 29, 2008: Naveen Jain's Latest Scam: Intelius

Aug 9, 2010: Washington Attorney General Settlement Announcement Tomorrow: Let’s Hope It’s Intelius

Aug 10, 2010: Washington Attorney General Hits Intelius With Fine, Injunctions

I know, I know. I have been away for a while. Nothing new is happening in my research as I don't have a lot of time lately. But I did come across this fun post and thought I might share. Spoiler Alert - If you want to try to solve the puzzle, don't read click the link yet.

BestWeekEver is a funny sarcastic blog that I read from time to time (when I have... time). In this post they decided to tackle a common genealogical dilema of trying to reconstruct ages of people in a family from an oral (in this case filmed commercial on YouTube) history. Can you figure out the kids age from the video below:



There's actually a second video with a few more details:



Ok, figure it out yet? Now go read the post on BestWeekEver.

I have been slacking off from my blogging duties lately. Mostly because of vacation and work, but also because of a general malaise I think. Here's what's been going on lately:

I saw the great 2010 Census ad on the SuperBowl last night and that gave me a great idea. First, check out the ad:



So anyway, that got me thinking. I don't really remember filling out a census form or talking to anyone in 2000. I think I got something in the mail, but not confident that I filled it out or mailed it in. I know I will be a lot more prepared this time around in 2010.

So my idea is to save my 2010 Census info in my genealogical database. And maybe even ask all living relatives in the tree to send me a copy of their forms. This way I will be 72 years ahead of the curve. And when I eventually pass this burden on to someone else, they won't have to wait until 2082 to see who we were and what we did. I can do the same thing every decade. Imagine my great-grandson's surprise when he is handed an antique flash drive that includes every census the family has taken in the past 70 years...

If you want to know what the 10 questions that will be asked, you can check out the interactive form guide here.

My question about doing this is - is it legal? From the 2010 Census site I got the following:

Census information is protected by law, and everyone who works for the census must swear that they will never disclose any personal information. Penalties for any employee who might share that information are severe: up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. By law, the Census Bureau can’t share your information with anyone — including other federal agencies and law enforcement. Your information is safe.

I haven't put up a post in a while for several reasons, but mainly because I haven't had much time on my hands lately. My mom came for a visit, my daughter was on winter break and I've been pondering the point of genealogy in general. So I decided to share my thoughts on the subject and see what some of my readers have to say on the subject. I am sure that this has crossed peoples' minds in the past during the course of their own research.

And you're going to have to excuse the messy thought process because I am just writing things down as they pop into my head. So if none of this makes sense to you - sorry :-)

I was thinking of a way to put all these ideas into some kind of structure and eventually decided to take a look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs. I think we can safely skip the physiological and safety needs and take a look at love and belonging or in other words social needs.

I would venture to say that for some people genealogical research is a way to feel a deeper connection to their family, whether it be their immediate or extended family. That is certainly one of the reasons I started researching my family's history. Living so far away and not being in contact with relatives caused me to forget who's who and how we're all related. I don't know if it was an actual "need" but perhaps more of a curiosity and a way to stay connected to my past. I also wanted to be able to tell my daughters about my family at some point in their lives and I knew that without some sort of system I was going to forget a lot of people. By creating and sharing an online tree on Geni I've also managed to bring the rest of the family closer together, but that was not my original intention.

I am sure that most of the geneabloggers are fulfilling some sort of social need as well as getting their research out there for others to enjoy and potentially find a connection. And many have also taken to social networks to expand their reach and interactivity with others. Many researchers enjoy the social aspects of the various genealogical conferences, workshops and cruises as well. I've enjoyed this sort of interaction too, but I don't think this has been a leading driver for me. I would probably categorize it as a fun byproduct. This also brings up specific interests like old photos, ethnic background research or even military history.

I think we have to go higher up Maslow's pyramid. The next level is esteem.

I am certain many serious genealogists have a need to be respected by their peers and enjoy a sense of achievement when breaking down a brick wall. And then bragging about it. But once again, that is not the main reason I enjoy this hobby. So next and final step - Self-actualization.

I think the desire to know and understand our past is probably the main driver for genealogists. Where do I come from? How did I get here? What chain of coincidences and historical events came together to give me this life? These are some of the questions we ask ourselves as human beings from time to time. As genealogists, we try to answer those questions through systematic research.

But I think there's more past Maslow's pyramid. A lot more...

Some people just enjoy the historical aspect of it all and genealogy makes history a little more personal. If you can place one of your ancestors in a significant historical event, then you have a personal connection to it. I especially like this side of genealogy. That's probably why I enjoy reading biographies or general historical non-fiction about people and places.

But sometimes there are some flaws in this reasoning. Let me explain my thought process.

There are several levels to understanding your past. There's oral history that you hear from your parents, grand-parents and maybe great-grands. That will probably bring you back about 100 years. That's also where most of us will end up with old photos unless you have some rare items dating back to the 18th century, but those are few and far between. Then there are a few other research milestones.

My Jewish genealogy is probably going to end somewhere in the middle of the 18th century anyway. There aren't many records kept or left and most of my ancestors and their relatives perished in the Holocaust. Looking for descendants is a bit of an interest, but while finding a 4th cousin somewhere is great, it's not like we're going to be really close. I barely keep up with my 2nd cousins as it is.

On my wife's side there are a lot of long American lines that date back to colonial times, but eventually the all end up in Europe somewhere and that's where the research will end unless there is some noble or royalty and that's pretty much genealogical vanity. So we all know the origins of our ancestors after a short amount of research and that's that.

So is it the process that we like? Is it digging through archives and finding a clue that leads us to a "new" discovery? Well then we could do that sort of research for pretty much anyone, right? Because my 8th great-grands are so far removed from me personally that they might as well be strangers. Why don't we research strangers? Why don't we just randomly open up an old city directory, pick a name and research that person? Well, some of us do. But most won't want to invest time and money on complete strangers.

Some people love cemeteries. Some people love archives and old libraries. Some people love to travel to ancestral homelands or figure out an old plat from a recorded land deed. Some people want to find parallels in their past to their own lives.

Anyway, I've been rambling long enough. I think that for me personally, I have accomplished several things through genealogy:

1. I can now easily name pretty much all my living relatives out to my 2nd cousins.
2. I managed to get the family a little closer together.
3. I've been able to build a family tree for my daughters to enjoy later in life.
4. I've enjoyed the research process and connecting ancestors to historical events.
5. I virtually-met many interesting people who share my hobby.

I'm sure there's a lot more that I'm forgetting to add at the moment, but I think this post is long enough, don't you?

What's the point to your genealogy research? Let me know in the comments. I hope I gave you some food for thought.

I got this in an email today. I think it is good advice so wanted to pass it along to my readers:

One of the many things on my Tivo is a show on the History Channel called 'Cities of the Underworld' which takes the host all over the world, or rather under the world, exploring lost cultures and amazing out-of-this-world places.

I just watched an amazing episode about the 'Secret Holy Land' in Ethiopia. Basically the idea is that early isolation of Christianity there caused some astonishing things to happen. I'm talking about Templar crosses on tombs of the Axumite kings 7 centuries before the crusades. Or churches dug into the ground and completely carved out of rock. It's pretty amazing to see.

Anyway, I just wanted to point you to this amazing show. You can go to the show's website and watch full episodes. I really recommend it. It's history lite for sure, but the production quality and unique locations are captivating.

Warning: This has nothing to do with family history except for the fact I propose an interesting way to use Twitter for the next scanfest.

Since I still think that Twitter is just a big single-channel chat room, I thought it might be a great way to run scanfest. For those who don't know, scanfest is the once-a-month multi-user chat event that brings genealogists together as they go through the mundane task of scanning old photos and documents. It's on the last Sunday of every month and usually hosted by @kidmiff (Miriam Robins Midkiff of the Ancestories blog).

In the past scanfest has been run on several platforms with varying success. And here's why I think Twitter will be very successful:

1. Anyone can join.
2. No limitation on number of particpants.
3. Get genealogists more involved in Twitter.
4. Twitter is searchable and might lead to new relative connections somewhere down the road.
5. Immediately archived, so if someone is late and want to catch up they can.
6. People can get updates on their mobile devices even if they can't participate.
   

1. Twitterfall - This site really turns twitter into a chat client. The beauty is in the filtering capabilities. If you just add #scanfest to your filter n the left you will only see tweets about scanfest! You can control how quickly the tweets fall down the screen by setting the speed on the right as well as animation effect, theme and other settings. You can retweet, reply, favorite, direct message and follow new users!
2. Twitpic - A simple photo sharing site for Twitter users. If you want to share one of your recently scanned images, just twitpic it and add the #scanfest tag and everyone can see it!
3. TweetDeck - Tweetdeck is an Adobe Air Twitter desktop application that lets you monitor several columns of info and apply filters and setting to each one. You can open up a @relpies column to see if someone was replying to you specifically. You can also submit an image to Twitpic right out of TweetDeck as well.

If you remember a few weeks ago I mentioned the amazing story of Straight No Chaser an a-capella group of 10 guys from Indiana University who were discovered by the president of Atlantic Records after seeing them on YouTube. Well, their album is number 1 for all music on Amazon and iTunes:



They sang at the White House, at a Green Bay Packers game and a bunch of TV shows. And they were on the Today Show this morning:

I am embarrassed to say that I made one of the dumbest mistakes in my research so far. I guess I can blame my inexperience but that's really no excuse. What did I do? I didn't try enough spelling variations for Selena Bishop. I have seen her named spelled Selena, Selina, Celina, Alina and Salena. But only when I looked at the photo I took of the 1932 Atlanta City Directory did I decide to actually run some searches on Salena Brannon (her married name). And guess what I found? Her death certificate. Doh! So I ordered the death certificate through VitalChek and it should be here soon. I really hope it has her parents' names on it. That would crack open my biggest brick wall to date.

I really need to devise a research checklist and get organized. Does anyone have a good list? I know everyone has different tactics but I would love to hear some suggestions.

And now for a feel good story for the holiday season. Has anyone heard of Cliff Young? Well if you have or haven't, go read about this amazing athlete, who at the age of 61 ran his first ultra-marathon (543.7-mile (875-kilometer) endurance race from Sydney to Melbourne) and won! Here's the full story.

Randy Seaver has some fun things to do on a Saturday night. This week he asks us to answer these questions:

1) What day of the week were you born? Tell us how you found out.

2) What has happened in recorded history on your birth date (day and month)? Tell us how you found out, and list five events.

• 193 - Septimius Severus is proclaimed Roman Emperor by the army in Illyricum (in the Balkans).
• 1865 - American Civil War: Robert E. Lee surrenders the Army of Northern Virginia (26,765 troops) to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia, effectively ending the war.
  
• 1867 - Alaska purchase: Passing by a single vote, the United States Senate ratifies a treaty with Russia for the purchase of Alaska.
• 1945 - The United States Atomic Energy Commission is formed.
• 2003 - 2003 invasion of Iraq: Baghdad falls to American forces.

• 1926 - Hugh Hefner, American editor and publisher, founder of Playboy
• 1932 - Cheeta, chimpanzee actor
• 1954 - Dennis Quaid, American actor
• 1957 - Seve Ballesteros, Spanish golfer
• 1965 - Paulina Porizkova, Czechoslovakian-born actress and supermodel

• 491 - Zeno, Byzantine Emperor
• 715 - Pope Constantine
• 1024 - Pope Benedict VIII
• 1483 - King Edward IV of England (b. 1442)
• 1959 - Frank Lloyd Wright, American architect (b. 1867)

This one goes out to both my family reading the blog as well as seasoned genea-bloggers. What should I do about sensitive material that I uncover in my research? I will list a few scenarios (some real and some not) and hope to see what you think I should do:

1) Children out of wedlock / Marriage while pregnant.
2) Previously unknown spouses.
3) Canceled engagements.
4) Missing people.

If it were up to me I would write about everything I find. But I am aware of the fact that some people are more private than me and would not want sensitive subject out on display for the whole world (and future descendants) to see. I see several possibilities:

1) Living vs. Deceased.
2) Direct Ancestors vs. Indirect Relatives.
3) Contacted Relatives vs. Unknown Relatives.

For now I will sit on most of my information until I can figure this out. But I think everyone would agree that deceased direct ancestors are fine, right?

How do you treat touchy subjects?

Well, yes. But this one is a little different. This one is about my past.

On my last trip to Israel, while showing my daughter some old photo albums, I ran into my sister's Dari family roots project that she did for her bnei-mitzvah year at grade school. I was fascinated by all the details and photos in it that I had forgotten about over the years and then all of a sudden I got all nostalgic about my family and my ancestry. I had heard about genealogy before but had never really looked into it and so, this seemed like a good time to try my hand at it.

There are several reasons why I decided to start on this quest:

1) My family had been almost completely wiped off the face of the earth by the holocaust. On my maternal grandfather's side there were only a handful of living relatives. I feel like this is one way for generations to follow to be able to remember and try to comprehend what happened.

2) My wife's ancestry is so different from mine and there are so many resources to go through and put the pieces of the puzzle together. Her mother started a genealogy project for her on her 30th birthday and that was a great source of information for me to start with.

3) I want my daughter (and any future children) to be able to have a source to understand their heritage and history.

4) I want all our family members to have a chance to learn from my experiences.

What I intend to write about is my quest to uncover the past and try to reach every piece of available data out there to get the most complete picture possible. I will post my thoughts, my discoveries, my roadblocks, interesting stories, anecdotes and tidbits.

I am a true beginner and I am sure I have a lot to learn about the field of genealogy, but I have definitely been bitten by the bug and I am truly enjoying trying to solve this historical puzzle step by step. I will also sometimes ask for help and see if the answers come back from the ether.

I hope you enjoy this blog, whether you are a family member, friend, fellow genealogist or just a random reader. You can always leave a comment or send me an e-mail to adekel@bellsouth.net if you have a private message. I do intend to list people's names on this blog, but I will omit first names of living relatives to protect their privacy.

I called this blog 'I Dream of Genea(logy)' because once you immerse yourself in your own history, it will probably invade your dreams.