FindAGrave.com

Alright Genealogy friends let me tell you what an amazing website Find A Grave is.  Anytime I'm looking for dead ancestors I always hit up this site.  It's a pretty great find and I've decided to help out those on their looking for graves of family members.  The basic concept of the website is that you can search for virtual memorial pages of people that have their death information & possibly pictures.  Here's an example of one I just finished entering today William K Larson.  This is my grandmother's brother Bill.  The great part about this site is it's pretty quick and easy to use.  I'm currently just starting the long overdue process of adding all of the headstone I have pictures of.  The really great thing about this site is that you have the potential to find photos of headstones you might otherwise never get to see.  I've got some distant ancestors that have died in abstract places that I will probably never get to, but from Find A Grave I have their headstones.  The other neat part about the Find A Grave memorial pages is that many times the person who adds the memorial links that deceased person to other memorials of people they are related to, whether it be spouse or parents.  One thing I also recently discovered is that there is literally an army of Genealogy buffs and cemetery lovers and other people out there who are willing to go get a picture for you!  If there is already a memorial page, but no headstone picture you can click the button that says request a picture and it will send out emails to the volunteers in the area and you very well could get a photo in as little as 24 hours.  The other cool thing is if you know when and where the person died, as well as where they are buried you can create your own memorial page and the same thing applies; just click the request picture button.  There are even some people out there who are literally cataloging whole cemeteries!  I have to give major props to the people who came up with this site and all of the volunteers, because this site is seriously awesome.

Grandpa's 80th birthday!

Back on February 11th we celebrated my grandfather's 80th birthday with our immediate family.  Just my grandparents, aunts & uncles and cousins.  I decided that since it's a big birthday for him I really wanted to do something special and unique.  I've been keeping him up to date as much as possible on all the ancestry stuff I've found, but it can be hard to really see how many people you're connected to when it's on tons of pieces of paper.  I came up with the idea of making my grandfather a family tree display.  Something that would have all of the people that he is related to in one place where he could see it.  Little did I realize when I started what a massive undertaking this would be.  In hindsight I wish I would have taken photos along the way, but I've got photos of the end result to share.

I started by pulling out my Meeks binder and getting on to +Ancestry.com  to fill in the blanks.  It had been a while since I intensively sat down and worked on my trees, so I made it my mission to connect as many dot as I possibly could on my grandfather's tree before I made this display.  Well let me tell you, I bit off a lot more than I could chew.  I spent weeks working on the tree and researching every single leaf hint that +Ancestry.com had to show me.  Finally after I did all of that I tried to print out small versions of the trees that I was looking at.  All in all I had 4 last names; Meeks, Tjardes, Keilhack & Riordan.  The trees varied in size based on the information I had available to me.  The Riordan tree for instance was pretty small, while the Tjardes & Meeks trees were pretty extensive.

The next battle came in trying to figure out how to put it all together.  I used 2 of those large tri-fold display boards to get this all together.  I put 2 trees on each board and split them based on which side of my grandfather's family there were on.  Keilhack & Riordan were on one and Meeks & Tjardes were on the other.  I next enlisted the help of my mother, and I'm pretty damn thankful I did.  Word to the wise, if you plan a project like this it is a MUST to have someone who has never done genealogy look over your rough draft.  It may make sense to you, but you look at this all the time.  Having my mom look at what I had laid out was really really helpful.  She took one look at my rough draft & went, "I don't get it".  She gave me the bright idea of staggering the generations to make it easier to see and understand.  After I got all of the little names cut out and glued on to the display board I really wanted to make it more personal.  I titled each tree with the surname and flanked it with the flag of the country of origin if I knew it.  I then went back through all my census records and gathered up any interesting information I could about the people on the trees.  I added occupation, salary, rent/house worth, as well as any military information I had available.

The end result was pretty awesome.  I gave my grandfather a tree that he could get right up to and connect the dots and really be able to visualize the magnitude of the amount of people we're related to.  I also have myself the realization that I've come across a lot of really cool information and I've had a ton of fun doing this research.

My Grandfather & I

Keilhack & Riordan tree display

Meeks & Tjardes tree display

Keeping it all straight

I've been sticking to one of my resolutions this year and have actually been attempting to keep up with my genealogy research better this year.  I've spent a lot of time in the last few days combing the massive amount of hints I've got waiting for me at Ancestry.com.  It's unbelievable how quickly those things can add up.  One minute you're looking at information about your great-great grandparents and the next you have information popping up about their parents, their brothers and sisters and all the people that descended from those brothers and sisters.  Here in lies the problem; how do you keep it all straight?  How do you make sure you're adding the right hints to the right people and that those people are in face the people who you are related to?

It's no secret that a lot of people in the US are descendants of people who came here from European countries.  Unfortunately back in the day, surnames weren't always so creative.  Even if you thought it sounded original to you, once you start looking up documents online you realize "holy s**t! there's 4 other people named William Meek who were born around 1835 in Ohio!".  That my friends is the moment panic sets in.  Oh my gosh, how am I going to figure out which one is mine?!  I can tell you from experience it's all about the note taking.  I personally think that to be a successful genealogist you have to be super organized.

This is my shelf of goodness.  I have 1 big colored binder per surname of my 4 grandparents; Panfil, Moseley, Larson, & Meeks.  The pink binder is full of empty pages and some documents and odds and ends that my grandmother (Moseley) had collected on her family.  The smaller light blue Ohio University (GO BOBCATS!) is for a sub-surname of the Panfil binder, the Opalinski family.  The white binder contains lists of documents that I still need to find from family members, some really helpful documents from Ancestry.com about the 1940s census, newspaper/magazine clippings on genealogy as well as notes I have taken during some of the video seminars Ancestry.com conducts.

In each of these binders I have dividers and I many times split each surname into sub-surnames of their respective parents.  I also have 1 large family tree with the main ancestors in each line, as well as smaller family trees for those split off surnames.  I find that the more OCD you are about keeping all your records organized, the easier it is for you to verify facts and eliminate accidental issues like adding hints to the wrong people.  I also find that the more information you have readily available about a person you are researching, the less likely you are to get people confused.

Take for instance the problem I've just come across.  While researching the Keilhack branch of my Meeks family tree I am looking into the family of my great-great grandparents Jacob Keilhack & Catherine (Riordan) Keilhack.  Last night during my research I discovered that his parents; Joseph & Theresa (Gamel) Keilhack had to boys right before Jacob.  Their names; Joseph C & John C Keilhack.  What makes matters even worse is that BOTH of those boys also married women names K/Catherine!  So I know have Joseph & Catherine, John & Katherine, and Jacob & Catherine.  Talk about utter confusion!!

I'm hoping that my work tonight will lead me to some more information to differentiate all 3 of these brothers and their respective K/Catherines.  Wish me luck!!

How far do you go?

So now that the holidays are over and life has calmed down a bit I have finally found some time to work on my genealogy research again.  This has brought up it's own set of problems and questions.  How far do you go?  I'm currently working on the Meeks family tree, my maternal grandfather.  Of course you always want to trace your ancestry as far back as possible, but how far sideways & forward do you go?  For example, my family tree on Ancestry has exploded with hints for the descendants of my great-great grandfather's sister.  My great-great grandfather only had 2 siblings, a younger brother and a younger sister, only one of whom had children.  But it still begs the question, how far do you go?  Do you trace her lineage down as far as you can, or do you just include her, her children, and her grandchildren?

Part of me wants to stop at her children, so I don't add any more to my already full genealogical plate.  The other part of me, the part that needs to join Genealogists Anonymous, just wants to know everything out there that I can possibly get my fingers on.  I feel like the further down I trace her lineage the better chance I have of going back.  Tracing her life down to her grand-kids might actually give me the ability to find out some really cool stuff.  Or at the very least maybe uncover some family photos.

So that my friends, is the question of the night on my genealogical quest.  How far do you go?  How far have you all taken your family trees?  Do you think you shouldn't have gone as far as you did, or do you wish you had gone further?