What Genea-Santa brought me!

This is a follow-up to Randy Seaver's blog on Genea-Musings, "Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -What did Genea-Santa Bring You?  He asked... 1) What gift that you received for Christmas is your favorite for genealogy purposes? Book, magazine, hardware, software, website subscription, research time, DNA test - what was it, and how will it affect your genealogy research?

Randy, this time of year is my favorite because I can find all kinds of deals. I went on a little shopping spree and purchased some reading material and CD's for pennies on the dollar. I purchased one book, one magazine and about 5 CD's about genealogy for less than $20.00 including shipping. WOW! Also, I took advantage of a deal on a DNA test to see what my "heritage" background is because this past year I confirmed that my mother was adopted by her step-father. So, half of her heritage is a little fuzzy. Plus I purchased RootsMagic 6 book and software for the low price of $20.00. I wanted to learn a little more about RootsMagic as a backup software package. I have been using Family Tree Maker since 1997 but I always like expanding my knowledge base. 

However my favorite is similar to yours because I too received a new iPhone, but mine is only a 4s. My son, who is serving in the Navy was nice enough to send me money to buy a new phone My old android phone was always getting full messages, even though I pretty much took everything off the phone I could. The biggest think I like about my new phone is now my life is a little more in sync. I recently switched my email over to a gmail account and now I get notifications on my phone when new email arrives. I am also using the Google calendar to remind of important events and the calendar is great with all the stuff I have going on with my genealogical society. It can mind me of meetings or even Webinars that I have signed up for or maybe want to sign up for.

I have been using an iPAD ever since I won one several years ago and I like it much better for running apps than my phone because of the bigger screen. However, having the iPhone means I always have a scanner in my purse. I have tried several scanning apps and even though I don't have a real steady hand, in a pinch it is great to scan genealogy items if I have no other option available to me at the time. I still like my computers for doing genealogy, but the iPAD is great for reading up on genealogy. I also like viewing recordings when Ic an and the iPAD is so lite weight. I have been using my iPAD and iPhone for reading and replying to emails over my computers.

I would not consider myself a big phone person. I have always preferred to talk to people face to face and never really talked that long on the phone. Therefore my phone was basically for emergency reasons and to stay in touch via text to my teenage daughter. So I used to forget to take it out of my purse and would not realize people were trying to get hold of me. My biggest problem was forgetting to charge my phone. However, a lot of this has changed since getting my iPhone. I carry it with me, love seeing what interesting emails arrive. Yes I do getting annoying game request from Facebook friends, but I get other Facebook notices such as when my son leaves me a message through Facebook. I want that message because he is serving half-way around the world and I miss him and any communication from him is a present.

I look forward to seeing how much my life changes this next year with this one little, fabulous gift that I received. 

Using Facebook to expand your research

A few years ago, I viewed a Webinar that talked about using social media in your genealogy efforts. One thing the presenter talked about was using Facebook to create page for an ancestor. I thought this idea was very interesting so I decided to try with my patriot ancestor, the one I wanted to use to join the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). I didn't have a lot of information on this ancestor but according to the Webinar that was not important.

On August 29, 2012, I created a page for my ancestor, Johannes Spanknable as a public figure. I found a picture of a maker that noted his military service and another on the region where he came from. I added a short bio about what I knew about him and then added his DAR# and his SAR#. Finally his personal information is basically a short family group sheet with him, his spouse and his children according to his various DAR applications. I have a link going to his Find A Grave page, the place I found the picture of his marker or gravestone.

The first post is his family group information again because everyone doesn't always go into the “about” section.  Later I added another post about how twelve DAR members used him as their Patriot Ancestor and a link back to the Ancestor search page found on the DAR site.

It took a while but as the movie says “If you build it, they will come” and slowly a few did come and like my page. These people are descendants of Johannes and thus they are my distant relatives. I added an obituary of one of my ancestors who was Johannes granddaughter and now I hit pay dirt as one of the visitors has been sharing pictures of other obituaries. My family line is expanding all because I took a few moments to create a public Facebook page about my Ancestor.

City Directory helps in finding family in 1940 census

Today I was able to help someone from my Genealogical Society find her husband in the 1940 census as a 3 year old child.

She was telling me how she hasn't been able to find her husband in the 1940 census. I asked if she knew where he was living at the time. She stated San Gabriel, California. So since I had a subscription to Ancestry.com I decided to go directly to the 1940 census and I typed in the location. Well there were a lot of different wards, so I decided I needed to try to approach this problem a little differently.

I decided to do a search on her father-in-law name. I found him in the 1930 census but he moved by 1940. Then I found a bunch of City directories. I scrolled through the list and found one from 1941. Sure enough the address that my fellow society member gave me was correct.

So I decided to look just at the City directories, and typed in the year 1941 and the street name. I then found a person who lived near where her father-in-law lived. I recorded the name of the neighbor.

I proceeded to go back and search the 1940 census in San Gabriel for the name of the neighbor that I had found in the City Directory. I found a good hit that appear to be the neighbor and when I viewed the census record it was the neighbor because I found the street and house number. I looked a few rows up on the page and on the first three lines was her father-in-law, her mother-in-law and her husband. When I hovered my mouse over the name of her father-in-law, his last name was mis-transcribed and the g in the last name was changed to a z and this is why her search attempts were not working.

I had tied to use a wild card search of Mag* but since the g was the mis-transcribed letter the wildcard was not working.

So the lesson learned here is that we sometimes need to approach our challenges with different techniques. Plus being a little lucky to find a city directory the year after the 1940 census didn't hurt either.