Genealogy brings out the nerd in me

I am such a nerd in many areas of my life. The littlest of things can excite me or make me happy.

For instance, genealogy and starting this blog. I started it with the good intention of posting something genealogy related everyday. However, sometimes the shiny things in life draw my attention away and I get sidetracked, which means I probably won't post something everyday. LOL.

In recent months, I have watched several webinars hosted by Legacy and MyHeritage. For most part, they are informative and I most always walk away with a little more insight into researching my ancestors than I had before. I highly recommend signing up for them if you have the time and can. They offer both free and members only webinars. At the end of each webinar, they most usually give away some door prizes and then give you a discount code for purchases on the Legacy website. I used the discount to buy my membership. Although, the cost for a year of webinars is roughly fifty dollars, but I know sometimes fifty dollars can be hard to come by. And with this membership, you have access to their whole webinar library, webinar syllabi, if there is one (which sometimes there isn't) and the ability to view them at your leisure.

I also do a little happy dance when the light bulb comes on and I have an "ah-ha" moment that helps me break through a brick wall. I get so excited. I want to share the news with everyone. I know not everyone is as enthusiastic as I am about genealogy, and some people don't care at all, but I still want to share my victory with them just the same.

I like it when I stumble upon the key to unlock the mystery that is keeping me from finding needed information. For instance, I have been trying for several months to find the death date of an aunt, as well as the death date of a cousin, to no avail. I knew the year they died, and in my aunt's case, I even knew the month, but I could not find any further information. While my cousin did have a memorial on the Find a Grave website, her graver marker just gave the years of her birth and death, nothing more. Just on a whim, I decided to search for my cousin's obituary. Lo and behold, I found it online on an archived newspaper website. Thinking if I could find hers, maybe I could find my aunt's, too, and I did. I broke through two break walls in a matter of a few minutes. These are the moments that make it all worthwhile.

Till next time...peace, love and happiness...Namaste!!

Another day, another family member

Previously, I mentioned using FamilySearch to look for my ancestors. There are more layers to FamilySearch than just searching for your ancestors by name. Searches can be done by record, family trees, genealogies, catalogs, books and wiki.

I only mention all the ways to search records to let you know they are available to you. While I have searched by record, family tree and genealogies, I don't know a whole lot about how to use catalogs since I am still learning about that one. And I don't know anything on how to use wiki because I haven't used that one at all. But I am excited about the books feature. I actually found a genealogy book from my mother's side of the family, called "Brumback-Hotsinpiller Genealogy," which was published in limited edition in 1961. Being I was only one at the time of the publication, I obviously didn't buy one and neither did my mother. My uncle (my mother's brother) had a copy, but upon his passing, it went to a cousin. Fortunately for me, I had copied the book several years ago. However, I didn't copy the photos from the book but scanned them to my computer. Long story short, I lost the pictures at some point in the past. I searched for this book and found a copy available online that I could view. I was able to download the photos, so, in essence, I now have a complete book. I thought I would never have a copy of the pictures again. The littlest things can make me happy. LOL.

If you are a descendant of the Brumback's of the Hutsinpiller's, you might like to view the book yourself. It can be found at Babel Hathitrust. They allow you to download the pages but you are limited to the number you can do at one time. You have to wait three minutes after you have reached the limit. In order to download the whole book at one time, you have to be a member, and you can't just join. However, you can still get a digital copy of this book. I sent them an email stating I was a descendant of the Hutsenpiller's and would like to have a copy. I received an email back with a link for downloading it to my computer. They were very nice about it and it didn't cost me anything other than my time. So, if you are related to the Brumback-Hutsepiller clan and didn't know about the book or your family didn't get a copy, here is your chance now. However, they did leave one, possibly two, pictures out when they were scanning the book.  

I get so excited every time I go to MyHeritage and find new information I didn't already have on a relative in my tree, or a new relative I didn't have in my tree at all. It is like meeting them for the first time.

I found a cousin from my father's side through MyHeritage DNA and contacted him recently. He told me that my great-great-great-grandmother (at least I think she is that many greats) Bowyer's family was traced back to Sweden, which I had no clue about their ethnicity.

What can I say...genealogy gets me excited. LOL

Until next time...peace, love and happiness. Namaste!

Photo by Janko Ferlič on Unsplash

Don't leave them in the past

My name is Kathie Bennett and I am a genealogist. I might be considered an amateur by some, but I have been doing this since my early-20s. I have always loved history and have loved hearing stories of my family. As I have gotten older and more and more of my family has passed away, it makes me realize how important it is to listen to the stories of our elders. We should write them down so we can pass them on to our children and grandchildren. I wish I would have had the forethought to have written those stories down when I was young. But like most young people, I didn't give any thought to wanting those stories when I got older or wanting to pass them along. Even if I did consider it, I always thought "oh, I'll do it later, there's plenty of time." But time passed, as did the storytellers. Even though I do remember bits and pieces of the stories, I don't remember enough to make sense of them now. Sadly, those stories will die with my last two living elderly relatives when they pass.

As I stated before, I have been doing genealogy since my early-20s. It has been an ongoing endeavor, as I have stopped and started several times, oftentimes changing software, which sometimes meant starting fresh because I had lost my previous tree. My genealogy software of choice is Legacy's Family Tree. It is a free software, but the caveat with the free version is you have some limitations. The upgraded deluxe edition is around forty dollars, however, if you have a previous version, then it is around thirty. I would highly suggest upgrading to the deluxe edition if at all possible, but if not, then the standard edition works nicely. Of course, there are oodles of other genealogy software out there, and I think I've tried them all. LOL. I settled on Legacy and have been using it for several years now. I like the fact they offer free webinars on a plethora of subjects. Sometimes they only offer one a week, and other times there are two.

Back when I first started researching my family tree, I didn't have the advantage of using a computer and the Internet to do my search. I had to do it the old fashion way...I had to talk to relatives and look at family Bibles to get the family information, which is a great way to get firsthand information. Of course, there was also the courthouse and the local newspaper office. But if I wanted to know more about relatives from, say Virginia, I was basically S.O.L. unless I wanted to drive to Virginia. That would have been okay since I lived in West Virginia at the time, so the drive wouldn't have been so bad. Now, I no longer in West Virginia, so I have to rely on other ways of ascertaining information.  I use many different family search websites to locate family I couldn't find in the past or that my family didn't know about or couldn't remember. My favorite is the Latter Day Saints' website, FamilySearch.org. I love that it is a totally free website, and they have over one billion records in their repository and more are added daily.

Well, that is all for today. Hope you come back again soon.

Peace, love and happiness...Namaste!