Tika & Cloud Sharing (from D. Joshua Taylor)

We were on our way to take an evening walk when I snapped this pix. As we walked, I was explaining to Tika and Handy Man what I'd learned from Josh Taylor about Sharing Genealogy in the 21st Century. I attended his presentation at NERGC (New England Regional Genealogical Conference).

"Sharing in this digital age is really collaborating," Josh said as an opening remark. "Sharing, or collaborating, is really the trend nowadays, like it or not." He then went on to give some reasons why it's a good thing to store your data in a cloud server:

• Having a central storage system is a good thing.
• Having universal access to this storage system is a good thing.
• Having a place to post "tons" (his word) of digital images is a good thing.
• Having a cost effective storage system is a good thing (over a home hard drive or box of flashes).
• Having a reliable constant backup and customer support is a good thing.
• Having mobile access to your data is a good thing.
• Having a system that avoids syncing problems is a good thing.
• Having a low cost system is a good thing. 

"When using a cloud server for wikis, blogs, twitters and more," Josh continued," it's good to consider some best practices:"

• Keep up-to-date on your cloud-computing or data provider for any actions needful on your part such as upgrades, authorizations, etc. 
• Try it first; try multiple solutions to ensure that you select a long-term solution for your genealogical data that meets your needs. 
• Ask questions; ask the company where the data is stored, how its backed up, etc.
• Have your own security standards:  Have your own list of key requirements necessary to you.
• Protect yourself and others; change passwords and other login information on a regular basis and create unique passwords for accounts.

Tika was ready for home, her dinner and my chair by this time, so I'll continue the lesson with the next post. 

Tika & Webinars

Tika needs some energy in her life! And sometimes we need some energy in our genealogy life. The answer is webinars. A webinar is a web-based seminar, or an online conference...... or an online meeting.

Another way to describe a webinar is to think of it as an online educational presentation which participating viewers can not only watch and listen but submit questions and comments.

"Why bother with web-what-evers?" yawned Tika. So I patiently explained: It's a way to learn more on a topic; it's much easier to attend than going somewhere; it's much cheaper to attend than going somewhere; and it's more comfortable........... you can even watch webinars upside-down. Bottom line, it's a way to learn more about something you've wanted to know more about.

Who sponsors webinars? Genealogical websites (Ancestry, Fold3, etc);  genealogy software companies (Legacy, RootsMagic); genealogical societies and professional groups (ISGS, APG); and individual professionals (Thomas MacEntee, dearMyrtle, etc.).

How to find a webinar on a topic of your choice? Ask Google........ or click to GeneaWebinars:  http://blog.geneawebinars.com 

"Well, I guess I'll watch one with you...... but there better be animals to bark at," said Tika and that ended the discussion.

Tika & Researching

Sitting on our deck in the sunshine, it's easy to share a lesson on researching with Tika. She's a captive audience.

Following up on researching my ancestor, Stephen Hopkins, a Mayflower passenger, I had made a note to access TAG (The American Genealogist), Volume 73, pages 161-171. Okay, me thinks, we have those books in our EWGS collection so I'll put that on my Library To-Do list.

Then I had an "AHA" moment:  use the Internet! I used Google to quickly find the website for The American Genealogist and found out I could order that 1998 back issue for $10. Okay cool.

Or I could order copies of those pages from the Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center for 20cents a page plus $7.50 ordering fee.

Or I could click to the New England Historic Genealogical Society website, AmericanAncestors.org, and access that article there......... IF I was a member (which luckily I am). So I clicked to back issues, to issue 73, and viola! There it was.

The point of this post is yes, I could have put accessing this article on my Library To-Do list (and only paid 10cents a page) but I wanted it now. And I saw it as a use-modern-technology-to-solve-the-problem learning experience.

Did you know that Stephen Hopkins was in Jamestown, Virginia, about 1610? Some ten years before he sailed on the Mayflower. He was aboard the Sea Venture in 1609 when a hurricane wrecked the ship on what is now know as Bermuda. After about six months, Stephen Hopkins began to challenge the authority of the governor and went so far as to organize a mutiny for which he was sentenced to death. He pleaded his case "full of sorrow and tears" and eventually they pardoned him. The fifty castaways survived for ten months and eventually managed to work together to complete construction of two ships which they used to sail to Jamestown. What a story; what a guy.

Tika said she'd rather I'd have done downtown to get the article for she loves riding in the car.

Tika & Funny or Odd Names

Tika and I have been working on a humungous Phillips Project. We're entering into a Google Drive spreadsheet all the data I've collected on Phillips families living in the VA-NC-TN-GA area in the 1740-1840 time period. That's humungous. But so far I've not broken the Phillips brick wall  so with Tika at my feet we're trying a new tactic.

BUT in the doing of this I've come across some really unusual (or downright funny) names:

Alley Phillips, b.ca. 1808 in VA, s/o Jehu Phillips'

Blagburn and Wearnon Phillips (brothers), early 1850s in TN, sons of Johnathin Phillips

Ugenious A. Hansard m. Drucilla Phillips abt 1870 in Forsythe Co, Alabama..... OR:

Sarilla Haseltine m. A. Lugenious....... it was listed both ways.

Areminty Cobb mar. 1845 in Franklin Co, TN, to Jesse Phillips

Hicksey Bass mar. ca. 1850 in Wilson Co, TN, to Bethel Phillips

Algernal Bryan mar. ca. 1850 in Wilson Co, TN, to Elizabeth Phillips

Daltoes Phillips, b. ca. 1780 in VA, son of Tobias 

Martha Ann BOOZ m.ca. 1825 in TN to George Whitfield Dale.

Today on the morning news they were giving the five most common baby names for 2012 and believe you me these names were not on that list!! Were these family names? Bible names (doubt)? Spoken-misspelled names? 

The thing I've learned from entering over 1000 names into this database is that our ancestors surely did have interesting names, both first and last names. Just like the above football players (thanks Google images). 

Tika & Tombstones

Is it a good idea or not-so-good idea to craft your own tombstone? Think it depends on how long you want that memorial to last. This marker is for Calvin Chester Potter, 1909-1968, who rests in the Ocean View Cemetery on the west side of Port Angeles, Washington. I spotted this flat marker when walking in this beautiful ocean-side cemetery while visiting family.

The cemetery custodian explained to me that in the 50s to 70s it was common for folks to choose to make their own cement marker and stamps were used to indent the letters. This gravesite is obviously visited by family for somebody painted the letters with blue paint. Otherwise the words would have been pretty much unreadable.

My opinion: I think it's comforting and economical to make your own (or a loved one's) tombstone. But I also think they rarely last as long as commercial ones. This opinion is re-enforced by walking cemeteries and looking at the ones which have weathered unreadable. I recognize that some knowingly chose this option. But I fear that for too many it just happens. 

My point is this: Decide how long you want the marker to be readable and choose accordingly. 

Tika knows that she will rest in the pet resting place on our own property marked with a large black basalt rock. Tiz fitting for her.

Tika & Snowy Passes

This was Snoqualmie Pass, elevation 5420 feet, on Monday, April 29..... and this is springtime in the Rockies???  Wikipedia explains that "The name Snoqualmie is derived from the Lushootseed name s•dukʷalbixʷ, generally interpreted to mean "ferocious people", a name applied by another Coast Salishan tribe in reference to the Snoqualmie tribe.^[5]"

Well, it was a ferocious snowstorm on Monday I can tell you but I put my 4-Runner in 4WD and plugged on through with no problems. The big trucks were all lined up putting on their chains.....

The point Tika and I want to make today is that travel today is so easy. It's 400 miles from Spokane to Port Angeles and I was visiting with grandson after only an 8-hour drive. I reflect that it's so easy to visit family today no matter how far away they are. My friend Joan lives in New Jersey and twice yearly goes to Hawaii to visit her two sons. That is possible in 2013 but surely not never in 1913 and totally unthinkable in 1813.

My great-grandmother Magdalena Regner came to America as a 16 year old girl in 1866. She traveled all that time and all that way by herself. And she knew that she would never, never see her mother again. We say how hard that must have been, but they knew no different. Yes, it was hard but there was no choice.

Today we have a choice and all that keeps us from seeing our loved ones is time and money. But at least it is possible.

Had Tika been with me she would have burrowed in her travel sac and not looked out!

Tika & The Symposium

 Tika went with Handy Man to a building-fence-project south into Spokane County where she happily dug for China..... or critters, whichever came first.

I attended our second annual FamilySearch Symposium! It was held in our LDS meetinghouse; we had 280 folks attending; we provided a free lunch AND homemade bread, butter and jam for a morning snack.
The program for the day was a roster of five "tracks", each one having four classes so there was most certainly something for everybody. If you'd like to know more about our Symposium, click to www.rememberinggenerations.com .

The teaching point of today's bit is this: If you are at all able to attend, then go and attend any and all family history or genealogy meetings, workshops, seminars and symposiums. They are planned to teach YOU and me and anybody interested how to do their genealogy, how to understand the records and (most importantly) how to use the records you find.

You just cheat yourself if you stay home and do genealogy in a closet.

The homemade bread was worth the effort! (I did bring home a bit for Tika. She's no dummie; she loves homemade bread.)

Tika & Icelandic Cousins

Tika can read the newspaper you realize. She sits by me in our chair and gazes intently at whatever I'm reading......... and watches out the window for elephants to bark at. I was explaining to her this recent bit I was reading:

"Iceland is a country of 320,000 folks where most everyone is distantly related and inadvertently kissing a cousin is a real risk," stated the article. "A new smartphone app is on hand to help Icelanders avoid accidental incest. The applets users "bump" phones, and it emits a warning alarm if they are closely related."

This is possible because of the Islendiga-App,  "App of Icelanders," an app created by the University of Iceland engineering students. This is an online database of Icelanders and their family trees stretching back 1200 years to the group of 9th century Vikings who were the first settlers.

Tika and I think this is way cool; modern technology to the rescue. Tika reminds me that she is from Idaho and wonders if there is an Idahoan Dachshund database??

Tika & Detroit

Flying from Manchester, New Hampshire, to Detroit, Michigan (on my homeward bounding trip), I got this wonderful picture. Did you know that Detroit gets its name from the French le detroit du Lac Erie which means the strait of Lake Erie and connects Lake Erie with Lake Huron. The strait includes the St.Clair River.

It's one thing to read this information and quite another to see it with your very own eyes. Way cool, don't you think?

Tika says: "Big deal; just hurry on home."

Tika & Puzzles

I spotted this "Tika" puzzle in a Made in New Hampshire shop; isn't it darling? But I have a real life Tika so I did not buy it. But thinking about it and puzzling on my genealogy, I thought of something......

Aren't we all puzzle pieces from the past generations?  And isn't doing genealogy and searching for our family's history putting together a 1000 piece puzzle (that does not have a neatly defined border)???

If we put the puzzle together correctly, the pieces will all fit. Referring to an earlier post about heart rocks, you cannot (or should not!) just make the pieces fit. Several dozen pieces were in this "Tika" puzzle; I'm looking for the thousand dozen pieces of my family history. 

Tika is always a big help; she gives doggie kisses whenever I score a find...... and even when I don't. 

Tika & Mustards?

No, not growing mustard, nor French's mustard, but the Mustard family!  I have a Catherine Mustard who married my William Potter in about 1730 in York Co, Maine (then Massachusetts) and I've never been able to find a durn thing about her family. UNTIL! My friend Maureen and I were talking about Google Books so  last evening I went looking around on Google Books. And I found a book (the first one I ever found) on the Mustard family!

It was published in Canada in 1980 and according to WorldCat there are copies in our Library of Congress and three Toronto libraries. Wonderful. Now how do I get my eyeballs upon said book? Do Canadian libraries inter-library loan to the U.S.? 

But the point of this wonderful story is that I thought I had looked everywhere, and at everything, and into every resource, and obviously I had not. A book I need to look at was published 33 years ago and I never knew....... because I had not checked everything, everywhere and at every resource. Are you in this same situation with a dead-end problem?

Tika says, "Don't you ever smear that yellow stuff on my nose again!! Yuk!!"

Tika & the Trees

Maine forest are beautiful, no question. I'm here in April which means spring has not yet arrived and the hardwood trees are leafless (thank you Google Images for this pix) so I'm not seeing a lovely green forest but a lovely leafless tree-trunk forest. That's good and bad. Yes, I miss the leaves and flowers but without the leaves we can see into the distance, near and far, to see more of Maine. We're seeing more of the old very distinguishable New England style of homes. Does that make sense?

Sometimes we focus too much on name gathering in our genealogy. I know I did that with my Potter line twenty years ago. I collected all sorts of lifeless and leafless trees in the hopes that one would leaf out and be "my" Potter line. Yes, sometimes it can and maybe does happen that way. But a far better way of doing family history is to concentrate on the surnames growing in one area, one town, one county. Had I done that twenty years ago I'll bet I'd have made surer and faster progress with my genealogy. Live and learn.

Tika says: "Trees are for running in, rooting around and chasing critters in." Figures.

Tika & Heart Rocks

My daughter and I have looked for heart shaped rocks on any beach we're on. Whether it's coral rock hearts on Hawaii beaches or slate rock hearts on Maine beaches we're always looking for obvious heart shaped rocks. And they have to be good ones....... no maybees, wannabees, leave-er-rites, or perhaps-ites. 

So it is with our genealogy. When we go researching to find the ancestor at the dead end beach, we must be careful to pick up only those ancestors who truly are of our family..... no maybees, wannabees or we'll just make the pieces fit-ites. 

Sounds pretty simple but having just spent hours sifting, sorting and paging through eight books on early Temple families in New England, it was so tempting to just make something fit (and there were plenty of likely candidates). But they were just not heart-shaped-rock ancestors. 

Tika says "Whaaaatt?" Rocky beaches are for running on, period. 

Tika & History: Lowell Mill Girls

I'm taking notes for Tika; today I toured the Lowell Mills National Park in Lowell, Massacusetts. In the period 1820 to the Civil War, some 10,000 "white Yankee" girls (no immigrants and no black ladies until after that war) were employed in the nation's largest textile mills in America.

Theire lives were strictly regimented; theyhad to be approved and accepted into a mill boarding house and then they could have a mill factory job. They worked 14 hour days (beginning at 4:30am) and onlhy a haf day of 8hours on Saturday all for under $3.00 per week. Their contract said they must attend church on Sunday.

But I also learned that these girls were eager to come...... to leave the farm life for the big city with things to do and their own money to make and spend. Seems to me it was the beginning of a sort of emancipation for women. Even if they were mostly always under the watchful eye of the boarding house mistress or factory boss.

Tika will be interested to hear all about this...... if she stays awake long enough.

Tika & Mayflower Ancestry

Tika's missing me but I am in Plymouth, Massachusetts, trying to see and feel the life and times of my ancestors who came from England for religious freedom and a new life. William Bradford and seven others of the group are my direct ancestors.

A first stop is to see THE rock which sits on the beach in a Greek style "display case." From my studies I know that while folks here might swear that this is THE rock, nobody knows for sure. But who cares? Standing at the rail, gazing down onto this relatively little engraved beach boulder, I cared not for "the truth" about this rock but enjoyed the feeling of gazing at history.

Being and seeing here proves again to me that there is so much more to learn about every single ancestor than I have spent time learning. My good governor is well documented and all I have to do is dig out all those references. But many of my ancestors (and yours) lived quiet lives with never leaving much of a mark except paying their taxes, having their marriages solemnized and babies baptized in churches, being enumerated on censuses, enlisting for military service......... and my point is that even our small, quiet ancestors left a paper trail and it only takes our diligence to find the stories.

Tika will happily snooze at my feet while I computer research, looking for these stories. Bet your dogger (or your kittypuss) will do the same for you.

Tika & War of 1812 Pension Records

War of 1812 Project to Digitize Pension Records

Recently the Federation of Genealogical Societies announced the donation of $135,000 to the “Preserve the Pensions” War of 1812 Pension Project. The donation is a generous gift from the estate of the late Jon Stedman in memory of his mother, Ardath Stedman. It will be used to help preserve and digitize the War of 1812 Pension records for all services (Army, Marine, and Navy).

In conjunction with the National Archives & Records Administration, fold3, and Ancestry.com, FGS is helping to digitize 180,000 extremely fragile pension applications representing an estimated 7.2 million pages of War of 1812 Pension and Bounty Land Warrant Application Files. This year marks the 200^th anniversary of the start of the War of 1812, a war many consider our country’s second Revolutionary War, which gave the nation a sense of complete independence from Great Britain.

http://www.navyhistory.org/2012/07/war-of-1812-project-to-digitize-pension-records/

Tika burped as we settled into our chair after her dinner to learn about the War of 1812 and especially the project to digitize these records and so make them available to us. I had already done some Google searching and found this bit from the Naval Historical Foundation's website. I did not realize that there were 7.2 million pages of papers in these files.

Getting these records digitized and searchable to us is certainly a huge and exciting project and I'm proud to say I have contributed, my society has made a donation and I, personally, "ring the bell" for this project whenever I have the opportunity. 

Whether or not you had an ancestor who was involved in the War of 1812, I hope you will choose to donate to the fund to get these records digitized.  Did you know that Ancestry.com will match your society's donation???

By now, Tika was snoring. She's from Idaho, remember, and has no War of 1812 ancestry. 

Tika & Genealogy Food

Mixing up a big bowl of "genealogy food" for supper..... and what is "genealogy food," you ask? Simple. It's something you can eat out of a bowl with a spoon that won't slop in the keyboard as you continue to work at your computer while you eat!

And what does Tika think about this? She gets to lick the bowl so she's a happy dogger.  Think I'll do some FamilySearch Indexing while I enjoy my bowl of "genealogy food."  What is your favorite genealogy food?

Tika & RootsTech & Conference Tags

Tika told me these lanyards and tags and buttons could not be hung in her house but they were okay for my office!  I really enjoy coming home from a conference and hanging up my conference "jewelry" (you wear it around your neck, right?) from the ceiling. Every time I look at them, I'm reliving the experience. And seeing the little stick-on flags helps me remember to learn more about that topic. My very favorite little sticky strip is an orange one reading DESCENDANT..... see it near the bottom on the left? Yep, that's me.

What do YOU do with your conference jewelry??

Tika & Story Telling

Tika was in the car to welcome me with doggy kisses when hubby came to the airport to fetch me home from RootsTech.  Over the next few days, she was more eager to just sit in my lap or beside me than she was to listen to my reports about the conference.

But when I was explaining that nearly one-third of the emphasis of this year's RootsTech was on getting our family stories preserved, she listened and agreed. One speaker told how 1/3 of the people living on Earth today have no documentation that they lived..... and that percentage would surely increase when thinking of all the ancestors who lived in Earth. The only way to make these people, these ancestors, "real" is to document their stories. And a great many of the vendors offered products to do just that.

Tika whispered in my ear (during a doggy kiss) that all you really, really need to get started is a spiral notebook and a pencil. Or the simple WORD on your computer.

I hope you will be inspired to get your story, and the stories of your family, preserved for your great-grandchildren to read, enjoy and perhaps learn from. At least they will know you lived on Earth.

Tika & The Civil War

Tika listened intently as I read her the story from our paper:  On March 8th, and more than 150 years after the USS Monitor sank off the coast of North Carolina during the Civil War, two unknown crewmen found in the ironclad's turret when it was raised a decade ago were buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

The newspaper story continued:  Researchers were unable to positively identify the remains, though they tried to reconstructing the sailors' faces from their skulls and comparing DNA from the skeletons with living relatives of the ship's crew and their families. Medical and Navy records narrowed the possibilities to six people. Relatives of some of the men who died attended the ceremony.

A marker with the names of all 16 men who died on board the Monitor will be placed at the gravesite. 

Tika and I agreed that this was a totally warm-fuzzy, heart-warming story. Stories like this are the only reason she and I read the paper every morning.