It's Back!

A great show that I love is coming back to televison -- Who Do You Think You Are? This show traces the genealogy of a wide variety of celebrities. This season's celebrities will include Kelly Clarkson, Christina Applegate, Zooey Deschanel and others. However, the show has been moved to TLC. It will premiere Tuesday, July 23 at 9/8c. Will you be watching?

Summer Genealogy Plans

Summer seems to be a great time to look back into your family history. I know that summer is usually the time when it is best to visit genealogy centers, historical societies and grave sites. Some people even work these side trips into their summer vacations.

What are you planning to do this summer to work on your family history project?

Copyrights, Permissions and Other Fun Stuff

Because I'm a writer, I've been wondering about the legalities of my genealogy work. Can I publish some type of work based on research? Are family photographs fair use? These questions have actually kept me from being much more public about my research into my family history. However, I have found some great resources that can help sort all these issues out, and here are a couple:

Family History Etiquette, Ethics, Legalities (from Ancestry.com Wiki)

Copyright Fundamentals for Genealogy by Mike Goad

The Legal Genealogist

Venturing into the Wild West

Our ancestors came from anywhere and everywhere. Whether they came from Asia, Europe or the east coast, chances are someone took that leap and headed westward in search of something greater. If you have ancestors who traveled west, the SFGate has an interesting article on resources you can use to find those wild western adventures.

5 places: explore ancestry, genealogy

Are there any other resources that are great for finding these westward ancestors? 

The Price of Family History

This article caught my attention recently:

Genealogy Hot Hobby Worth $1.6B, Not Just For Mormons - ABC News

While the article discusses the industry as a whole and how Ancestry.com is worth a ton of money right now, it got me thinking more about the individual cost of genealogy to those who are interested in finding out more about their family's past. How much does it really cost to get all the information?

Personally, I have not spent much money on the pursuit of genealogy. The only things I purchased were Family Tree Maker and access to an online archive for a single obituary. Other than that, I have managed to get what information I have for free. The reason I try not to pay for the access to information is because most of what you pay for is the convenience to not have to go to every county across the United States to gather vital records and other documents. I know that it may take the rest of my life to get the information I need, but if there is a free way to get it, I would rather do that. I do realized that some costs will be incurred, especially when it comes to processing or copying fees, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

How much money do you spend per year on your pursuit of family knowledge? Do you drop big bucks to attend conferences, or do you try to get as much free information as you can?

What Will You Do with Your Genealogy?

Family history is an exciting thing to explore. You are learning so much about where you and your family came from. You spend countless hours gathering names, dates, locations and stories passed down through generations. Now that you have all of that, what will you do with it?

There are a variety if things you can do with your genealogy research. Many people like to put together information into books for other family members. If the story is compelling enough, it may even make for a good book to publish. You can also put together projects to help teach and inspire others to dig into their own family history.

What are you planing to do with you genealogy?

Technology in Genealogy

Have you have ran into a technological wall when doing family research? The Internet is full of information, but you have to know how to access it. The same goes with genealogy programs. Learning how to embrace technology can help to get further in your research. Genealogy conferences are now tackling this issue to help genealogists get the most from technology.

Genealogy Conference to Tackle Technology

What's in a Name?

I found this interesting article at Newsday: Baby Names on Genealogy Website. While I don't have personal experience on choosing baby names, I do use various baby name resources as research for the character names in my stories and novels. This is actually a great resource for my stories that are set smack in the middle of the 20th century.

Have you found any interesting names in the 1940 census, whether it was a person in your family or not? Knowing that many spelling mistakes can happen due to accents and literacy levels, have there been any names in the 1940 census that you just couldn't make out?

You Never Know Where History Will Take You

I saw this article in the New York Times and I thought it was fascinating: Obama Has Ties to Slavery Not by His Father but His Mother, Research Suggests. Not only is it an interesting journey through American history, but it is also interesting that it is his mother's side that provides this deep connection. What do you think about this?

School Days

Not sure where your ancestors attended school? Not sure if they did attend at all? Researching school roots can be tough, but here is some good advice from Tom Mooney from the TimesLeader.com:

A short lesson on researching school roots Tom Mooney Out on a Limb

Genealogy Infographic

I am currently obsessed with infographics (probably because I see at least one at work every day) and to feed my obsession, I found this great infographic about online family history trends from Archives. Enjoy!

What Are Your Favorite Genealogy Resources?

There are plenty of great genealogy resources on the web. I use the usual ones, like Ancestry, all of the websites owned by Ancestry and some of the sites dedicated to old photos -- I'm a real sucker for old photos. I also have some luck with more localized GenWeb sites. I was just wondering which ones were your favorites? I'd be interested in any of your suggestions!

New to Genealogy?

When I first started exploring my family history, I didn't really know where to begin. It seemed easy enough to just start with myself and work backward, but there were still so many questions. Where do I find more information? What information exists past family documents and stories? Realistically, how much money should I be spending to work on my family tree? Ancestry's Family History 101 page was a great help to me. If you are just starting out in genealogy, I hope you'll check it out too.

Interesting Trip

I had been planning for the past few months to visit cemeteries around Indiana where my ancestors are buried. Yesterday, I was finally able to make it to one. Most of the cemeteries I had planned to go to are located in northwest Indiana, but there was one just the next county over from where I live that was also the final resting place for some of my ancestors. In fact, these were some of the first people in this area, then the family sort of migrated north. It's funny, because now I'm back in the area where this branch of the tree started in this state. Funny how history can repeat itself.

I took plenty of pictures and I will post those soon.

New Article

Flexing my writing muscle this week. I created an new article called Guide to the Social Security Index. Hope you enjoy!

Celebrity Ancestors

I have been working on my family tree a lot in the past month and have been lucky to find a few notable names in there. Of course these are all tentative connections because after my great-grandparents, I'm still in the first phase of research. Most of these names are extremely distant cousins, but it's fun to link them up to my own family. If I get a little more proof together, I'll share some of these names soon.

In the meantime, I'll keep working and getting inspiration from Who Do You Think You Are? I love that show! Plus, I have written a new article that may be useful to all your researchers out there: Resources for Vintage Photographs.

Can't Wait to Read

...the two books I just found out were authored by my 4th cousin, 4x removed. His name was Powhatan Bouldin. He's a distant relative on my mom's side of the family. As far as I can tell, his family was into politics, military, and other important jobs. Luckily, even though the books are more than 100 years out of print, archive.org has the copies available. They have two books:

The Old Trunk (about a trunk of important papers belonging to his family)
Home Reminiscences of John Randolph: Of Roanoke (obviously about John Randolph)

I hope to delve into these books sometime soon to see just what kind of a writer this guy was. Thank goodness for public domain!

Saving the Most Important Documents

I know that sometimes I can be a paranoid Polly, but recently I have been shopping for ways to save my most important genealogy documents. I have also been looking for ways to save things for my blogs and websites. I looked at many models of network hard drive so that I can save things for both work and my side projects in the same place. I think this can offer me just what I want in a storage device.

Anticipation

The anticipation is nearly killing me. I finally bought FTM 2010, Platinum edition. It came in the mail Thursday, but have not been able to use it yet. I want to install it on the desktop that can handle all the requirements, but right now I only have access to my laptop until I move (6 whole weeks away...). And after a very serious computer virus scare a couple of weeks ago, I don't want to compromise the functionality of the laptop. So since I'm sitting here staring at the box, I wanted to know if anyone else uses this software and what you think of it. Any thoughts?

Quick Update

I've added a couple more family history themed articles to my portfolio. Check them out under the Genealogy Articles heading on the right side of this page. More updates to come soon!