Calling all Genea-Musing Fans:
It’s Saturday Night again
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Time for some more Genealogy Fun!!
Our assignment from Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings is:
1) Ellen Thompson-Jennings wrote Who Has Helped You the Most with Your Family History? On her Hound on the Hunt blog this week. That is a great prompt for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun. Thank you, Ellen!
Here is mine:
I started thinking about genealogy after my first daughter was born in 1988. I started the tree by recording what my mother had written in my baby book of my grandparents and great-grandparents’ names (at least what she knew).
For my mother’s side of the family, I asked my maternal grandmother for names and dates to fill in the paper pedigree chart and family group sheets. These days, I just recorded information without noting the source. The best one could say about the source of this information is “personal knowledge” as my grandmother knew these people.
For my father’s side, I asked my dad’s three sisters. My paternal grandmother died in 1979 and I wished I had started research much earlier (don’t we all?). Each of my aunts gave me information to help tell the stories of our paternal line. Through them, I received a Gleeson family photo album, that helped me take the line back even further because the images were identified.
On my husband’s side, my father-in-law helped with his ancestry and my mother-in-law’s sister helped me with the mother’s line. She was the keeper of all things Nilsen and Lundquist. When working on the Nilsen book, I spent a day scanning lots of documents that had been sent to her.
Besides family, I had help from friends. Susan, who babysat my children through their childhood, is an avid genealogist, who traveled every winter to the Family History Library (now called FamilySearch Library) in Salt Lake City for a week of research, I could not imagine what one did for a week from 8 am to 9 pm every day. She took me to Sutro Library in San Francisco one day to show me how to research using microfilms of the 1920 census. When I found my grandfather with his family, I was hooked. On the way home, I said I was going to Salt Lake City next year.
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| My grandfather, Cyril |
Other people who have helped me have been professional genealogists who have written books or lectured at seminars and later, webinars. Much of my early learning was through books authored by Lou Szoucs, Elizabeth Shown Mills, John Colletta, Christine Rose, Tom Jones, and more. On the Internet, I discovered authors John Michael Neill, Kimberly Powell, and George Morgan. Later, I began attending genealogy institutes and learned more from Warren Bittner, Judy G. Russell, Tom Jones, and Rick Sayre.
When I became serious about being certified, a group of friends invited me to join their peer certification discussion group and the weekly meetings were very helpful in having a place to express frustrations and ask questions. Finally, Jill Morelli and the Seattle Genealogical Society’s Certification Discussion Group course on submitting a BCG portfolio gave me the confidence to finally complete and submit my portfolio.
I wrote about the process here.
How lucky you were to have so many family members to contribute to the effort. My family is small on both maternal and paternal sides, so I was fortunate to have the help and encouragement I did.
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