The Best of the Golden Age of Genealogy: Top Posts of April

 In case you missed it, here are the top three viewed posts of my blog in April.

Wait! What?!! What To Do When An Unexpected DNA Match Happens

Have you submitted DNA and found a close match of a relative you know nothing about?  It happens!  Take a look at this blog entry and share your story in the comments.


When You're Adopted, Which Ancestors Do You Choose?

I often hear from friends that they are uncertain as to which family line they should research.  When you are adopted, this is a question you might ask yourself.  I have shared my story here and would love to hear how you have dealt with adoption in your research.


BillionGraves Takes The Anxiety Out Of Searching For Loved Ones

A recent trip to Quantico National Cemetery gave me the opportunity to share the magic of BillionGraves.  When we visit our loved ones who have passed on, we want to spend time at their burial site and not wandering around aimlessly.  Has BillionGraves helped you locate ancestors?


If you are enjoying The Golden Age of Genealogy, please like and share with your friends on Facebook, Twitter and GooglePlus.  To avoid missing future blog posts, remember to follow me by entering your email on this blogsite! 

The 21 Day Genealogy Challenge - Day 14: Giving Back to the Genealogy Community

“If you get, give.  If you learn, teach.” – Maya Angelou

Congratulations! You have made it to day 14 of the 21 Day Genealogy Challenge!  The past two weeks have been filled with researching and gathering information.  Some of that information may have been in the form of digitized and indexed documents that other researchers took the time to photograph or index.  Today is a great day to take a break from our own research and give back to the genealogy world.  Let’s look at a few options.

·       BillionGraves.  This free site is dedicated to preserving headstone and memorial information in cemeteries throughout the world.  The site has wonderful tutorials to guide you through the process of finding cemeteries in need of digitization, as well as the best way to take a photograph of a gravesite.  All you need is some time and a device such as a smart phone or iPad.

If you don’t have time to photograph an entire cemetery, but would still like to try your hand at taking pictures, there is a request board on the site (pictured below).  There may be a request for a cemetery near you.  Fulfilling requests on BillionGraves is a great way to learn about the site while helping other members add a source to their family history.

BillionGraves also has the option to volunteer from home.  Sometimes volunteers will upload images from a recent cemetery visit, but don’t have the time to transcribe those images.  If you sign on to the site from your home computer, you can select a set of pictures to transcribe.  Each image has a form you complete with the information provide on the gravestone.  Once you have completed the form, simply save the information and proceed to the next picture.  Once a headstone is transcribed, researchers will be able to access their ancestor’s information on the database.  Not only will they see the transcription, but BillionGraves will provide them with GPS coordinates for the headstone.  What a wonderful way to give back to the Genealogy community!

 

·       Consider joining a genealogy group on Facebook.  Whether it is a genealogy group dedicated to the state or country your ancestors are from, or a research assistance group like Random Acts of Genealogy Kindness, you will find that there will be many opportunities where your personal experience in family history research will be of help to someone else. You will also learn a great deal from others on the site.  It is a wonderful win-win opportunity.

·       Take time to volunteer to help someone you know start a family tree.  Walk your friend or relative through the steps you found useful in doing your own research.  Share the tips that made your experience enjoyable.  Remember to ask them questions about their family.  As they share their stories, show them how they can incorporate the information they have in their own family tree.

·       Teach local youth how to read and transcribe old documents that are in script.  Many schools no longer teach cursive writing, so you will be providing them with a skill that is becoming lost to the younger generation.  You can find documents to transcribe on the free site FamilySearch.org.  (See image of their website below.)  Once on the site, click on the Indexing link and you will be guided from there.  You have the option of choosing not only the level of difficulty, but the language and country the documents are from.  So, if you can read Italian, you can choose to transcribe available documents from Italy.  

Whether we realize it or not, we have all been the recipients of the previous work of others. The ideas mentioned in this blog are just a few opportunities we can choose from to give back to the genealogy community.  Perhaps reading this blog today triggered some of your own ideas.  However you donate your time, know that it is greatly appreciated by your fellow family history researchers.


Congratulations! You have completed day 14 of the 21 Day Genealogy Challenge!  If you have any questions or comments, feel free to post them in the Blog Comment section below.  Invite your friends to join this challenge by sharing this blog with them on Google+, Twitter and Facebook.  The share icons are just below this blog entry.

Also, join me on Twitter and Periscope!  You can find me under the name GraveFinder2. 

Thank you for joining this challenge and remember…..

History not shared is History forgotten!

Genealogy: My Addiction

I will admit that I have an addiction, and that addiction is genealogy.  Understand that I have been a part of my family's dedication to family history research since I was 7 years old.  My parents took me with them to cemeteries to find the graves of ancestors (in Great Britain and the United States), as well as to the basements of courthouses and genealogical libraries.  That was all back in the days of no computers much less internet and we had to actually find books and documents the old fashioned way -- travel.

You would think that as a child and as a youth, I would hate spending my summer  holidays traipsing around two countries looking for dead people, but not so.  I loved it.  There was more to it than that.  I saw a lot of places I had never been, and toured a lot of fascinating museums and houses.  History came to life for me, and it was not lost on me that I was literally walking in the steps of my ancestors.

So, why now, when so much is at our fingertips has genealogy become an obsession?  I sit down at the computer at 2 o'clock in the afternoon and look up to see it is suddenly 10 pm.  I've lost the day, as well as dinner.  I look up again and it is 1:30 in the morning.  I have been hyper focused and nothing around me has deterred me from my mission (except the occasional mandatory bathroom break).  The near 12 hours online researching has yielded a lot of useful information, but it has depleted my energy.  What's more, I want to keep going, but I force myself to stop and go to bed where I lie there processing the information I've obtained.

I have a son.  Since he was 7 years old he has been interested in video games.  I set limits for him because I knew that too much time focused on one thing is not healthy.  He threw fits and would sneak in the night to continue to play with his Gameboy under the covers the way we used to read books with a flashlight after lights out when we were kids.  Take away the electronic and we have a melt down.  The similarity between my son and his gaming addiction and me with my genealogy addiction is not lost on me.  I put myself in a time-out. You read that right.  Time-out.  It occasionally has to be done.  If anything, so I can do laundry, vacuum the house and feed my family.  They appreciate it. 

Now, I could go into a long analysis of the affects of electronics on the brain, and about ADD and various stimulation and addictions, but I won't.  We've read the studies.  What I will say is this.  I think having so much at our fingertips does lead us to wanting more and wanting it now.  There is a lot to be said for turning off the programs and getting out to do research.   Yes, I am aware it costs money to travel.  But not all research has to be done via flight to another state or country.  We can visit local genealogical libraries, plan trips and vacations to ancestral destinations, and take the time to visit local cemeteries.  Perhaps it isn't our family cemetery, but donating an afternoon digitizing a few graves not only gets us out of the house and into the fresh air and sunlight, but provides a resource for others doing their family research.

What is the longest timeout I've ever imposed on myself?  A year.  It had to be done.  But, when I returned to my (now outdated) laptop, I was thrilled to see that while I was resting and recharging myself, other fellow genealogists were out there continuing the work.  Waiting for me was a plethora of information that allowed me to break down a few walls and move forward with fresh eyes and fresh energy.

I understand now that what I have is a life long addiction that isn't going anywhere.  I can, however, take control of the situation by going back to my own roots and slowing down and taking the time to research the old fashioned way of getting out and about.  My ancestors will still be there.  If anything, they are more available to me now than ever and they would want me to enjoy the journey of finding them.