When recording the lives of your ancestors, it is essential to have at least two online family trees. I always knew it was a great idea for everyone else, but for many years I resisted doing this myself. I had traveled to numerous courthouses, spent countless hours in libraries, etc., and I was not about to let anyone else steal MY research. I also knew that there might be errors, and I didn't want anyone copying my errors from tree to tree.
Several years ago I decided to try posting a private tree to Ancestry.com containing just a small portion of my ancestry. It was so easy to search census and many other records, because Ancestry did it for me through their "shaky leaf" hint system. The tree was easy to use, and I could access it from anywhere that I had an Internet connection. But then I decided to see what happened when I made my tree public. All I can say is WOW! Yes, people copied my information from tree to tree, but they also found additional information that I copied. Occasionally someone would catch an error. When I corrected the error, I noticed that the other trees would, one-by-one, get changed to contain the new correction. The best part came one day when a researcher had noticed a family Bible for sale on eBay. She searched Ancestry.com public trees for the ancestor's name and found my tree. She notified me that the Bible of one of my ancestors was for sale. I won the auction and am now the proud owner of a Bible published in the 1700s. I never again wanted any private trees.
If you are going to have any DNA testing (and I hope to encourage you to do so), online trees are essential. I find almost all of my DNA cousins through Ancestry.com, and my greatest discoveries have been made by comparing Ancestry public member trees. Almost everyone who is serious about their DNA research has a tree there.
There is no such thing as too many family trees. Post your ancestry on as many sites as you wish,but these two sites that are critical: Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org. Here are why these two are important.
Ancestry.com is the best known website for family historians and genealogists. Ancestry has a massive subscription base, and most subscribers have their own family trees there. Once you start a family tree, you can search Ancestry's databases for records and attach the records to your ancestor's profile. Ancestry even searches the most popular 20% of their databases and reports "hints" on your ancestor's profiles. Note that they do not search all of their databases, so you will want to do your own searching. You can add photos, documents, and stories of your own to the tree. And best of all, you can search other public member trees where you will find relatives who have these items about your ancestors. I can't tell you how many great photos and other items I have received from distant cousins whom I never knew existed. All living people appear on Ancestry's trees as "Private", so their names and other information are not searchable.
FamilySearch.org is a well established website, but its newest tree system, FamilySearch Family Tree, has only been around for about a year. Instead of each person having his own tree at FamilySearch, everyone works on a common family tree. That means that we are not duplicating efforts. When you find a 1850 census record and attach it to the correct family, it never has to be found again. Everyone will see the new record on the tree. The same applies when someone adds a photo or story to an ancestor's profile. If someone adds a photo of one of your ancestors, you will not have to find it. It will appear in your tree.
Please note that you cannot search for, or find, any living person at FamilySearch Family Tree. Even if you give me your full name, date of birth, and ID number in the system, I still can't find you. Even my own children can't find me on FamilySearch, so I can still tell them I'm 29 years old! All deceased people should appear in the tree only once, but because living people are not searchable, they may be entered into the tree multiple times. Each person adds all living family members to their portion of the tree so that they can view them. Once you've added your living family (who are visible only to you), you can search for the deceased family members and connect them to your tree. FamilySearch's collection of digitized and indexed records is available directly from FamilySearch Family Tree, so you can connect them to your ancestor's profile. In addition, you can add your own photos, documents, and stories.
If you do not have a family tree at one or both of these sites, I cannot encourage you strongly enough to do so. Each system have different records and different technology. You will leave a lasting family legacy by using both systems. You can create a tree for free at Ancestry.com, but searching their records requires a subscription. Everything at FamilySearch is free, just create an account and get started.
Monday, July 21, 2014
Monday, July 14, 2014
The Foreigner
Ahhhh, China. What an experience. I had studied a year of college Chinese, could read several characters, but I felt like a complete infant. Even getting off the plane and navigating the airport was scary.
I remember being in a shopping mall after I first arrived, not being able to read any of the signs, and nobody being able to understand what I was saying. It was really tough (and almost degrading) to have to say to my daughter-in-law, "Emily, I have to go to the bathroom." She stopped what she was doing, walked me there, and waited for me. Imagine how that felt.
Everything in China seemed different. I expected to have difficulty with language, but I didn't realize how many things would be close to impossible without the constant companionship of my daughter-in-law--my personal interpreter. I couldn't take the bus by myself because I couldn't read the bus maps, couldn't read the rolling sign at the front of the bus that had the name of the next stop, and couldn't understand the bus driver call out the name of the stop. Of course, all transportation had the same problems. Taxi drivers didn't understand me, and I couldn't even navigate the streets on foot without being able to read street signs, names of shops, etc. When I finally took my first subway trip to go alone to a bookstore, it was a real accomplishment. But I did it!
Imagine going to the grocery store where you can't read what's in the boxes on the shelves. I didn't recognize 3/4 of the fresh produce. There were hundreds of fruits and vegetables that I'd never seen, and the signs couldn't help me because I didn't read those Chinese characters. The meat department was bewildering with every part of dozens of animals were displayed. I was often saying, "What's that?" My daughter-in law would reply something like, "Pig's ear."
On a holiday for honoring ancestors, I had gone with Emily to visit her grandfather's grave. We got on a bus that took dozens of people directly to the cemetery. We all got off and the bus driver told us when to be back at the bus. When we returned, the bus driver counted the people and discovered that there was one extra person. That person would have to get off. He looked around to see who might not have been there before. He looked at me, then asked everyone, "Was the foreigner here before?" Everyone said yes. I thought, "If there's one person everyone would remember, it's me. I'm the one who stands out like a sore thumb." But of course, if there was one person to suspect of doing something wrong, that would also be me. That's who I was here: "The Foreigner."
One day I was on a train traveling from Beijing to a beach city. I was wondering why I was in China at all. I am one of those people who believes that everything happens for a reason. Why was I in China instead of somewhere else? What was I supposed to experience there? On that long train ride, I had nothing else to do but sit and think. I sat wondering what these interests of mine had in common: family history, DNA, old arts and crafts, antiques, China, food storage and preservation, heirloom seeds and gardening. Then this thought came into my head, "Living like your ancestors." What?? So I thought about it. Well, obviously family history and DNA are used to discover who my ancestors were. Learning to do old arts and crafts, learning gardening, food storage and preservation, and understanding the uses of various antiques would all help me to learn to understand more about their lives. But China? What did that have to do with anything? Oh . . . the immigrant experience! I thought about the hundreds of struggles I had living in a country where I could barely understand the language and where I was definitely different from others. Everywhere I went, people stared at me. I was studying Chinese constantly and not progressing fast enough. When I spoke, people still didn't understand me. I understood a little of what it must have been like for our ancestors who came to America and didn't recognize the foods found there or how to grow them, who struggled to communicate, who struggled to fit in.
Then I knew. I not only understood how to find ancestors, but how to live like them. I could teach people how to discover their ancestors in the truest sense--not just to find their names, but also who their ancestors really were. This is my life's work. I've been trying to learn about my ancestors since I was eight years old. I've been doing genealogy of some sort since I was ten, and I've been doing it seriously, even obsessively (researching and teaching) since 1976. And now, even though I am the author of two books published more than a decade ago, have lectured and written dozens of articles, ordered and evaluated hundreds of DNA tests, and have been the president of genealogical societies and the director of Family History Centers, it is time to really get started.
Sunday, March 24, 2013
Long Time, No Hear
I started this blog years ago with great intentions. But life took a turn, and I could barely cope with my own thoughts, much less get them out to others. So what was the big turn? Divorce. I had been married for 34 years, had eight children (who are now grown), and my last daughter graduated from high school. Then my husband walked out. I went through a deadly painful year-and-a-half divorce process and wondered, "What do I do with myself now?"
While going through the divorce, I went back to school and studied more history. I also studied some Chinese because I had a grandson who lived in China and spoke very little English. I was taking such a heavy course load and writing so many papers, that I had little time to think about what I was going through. Of course, digging up and completing all the legal papers didn't help, but I still managed to ace all those classes.
Then it was time to move out of the house where I had thought I'd spend the rest of my life. As I packed up years of memories and tried to decide what I should take and what I should leave, I thought I'd lose it. I left with a friend and moved to Texas.
One of my sons contacted me and said, "Mom, why don't you come live with me in China? You need to get away. I said there was no way I'd do that to my daughter-in-law, Emily. She got on the phone and asked me to come. I asked, "Do you really want your mother-in-law living with you?" She said, "Of course! I think it will be fun!" I thought, "I'm about the furthest thing from fun right now." But I packed again and moved to China. I'll talk about China and how it changed my views of family history in my next post.
While going through the divorce, I went back to school and studied more history. I also studied some Chinese because I had a grandson who lived in China and spoke very little English. I was taking such a heavy course load and writing so many papers, that I had little time to think about what I was going through. Of course, digging up and completing all the legal papers didn't help, but I still managed to ace all those classes.
Then it was time to move out of the house where I had thought I'd spend the rest of my life. As I packed up years of memories and tried to decide what I should take and what I should leave, I thought I'd lose it. I left with a friend and moved to Texas.
One of my sons contacted me and said, "Mom, why don't you come live with me in China? You need to get away. I said there was no way I'd do that to my daughter-in-law, Emily. She got on the phone and asked me to come. I asked, "Do you really want your mother-in-law living with you?" She said, "Of course! I think it will be fun!" I thought, "I'm about the furthest thing from fun right now." But I packed again and moved to China. I'll talk about China and how it changed my views of family history in my next post.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
The Ultimate Family Historians
Who are The Ultimate Family Historians? All of us who are now doing genealogy and family history should begin to consider ourselves in this category. That probably includes you.
The term "Family Historian" means more than "Genealogist." To do basic genealogy, you don't have to compile more than the bare facts of birth, marriage, and death. A person who interviews family members and fills out a pedigree chart is beginning genealogy. Family history, however, involves finding out more than just the facts that will fit on a pedigree chart. To do family history we must know, as much as possible, how the people in the family actually lived. Then we record their stories and put meat on the bare bones of genealogy.
Many of us start out as amateur genealogists, and we may not see ourselves as doing any history. When I first started genealogy more than thirty years ago, I was merely trying to compile a long pedigree chart. I started by asking my grandfather some questions. I remember my grandfather telling me some stories about the family, and I thought, "I don't want to hear all of that. I wish he'd just tell me where they were born and the names of their parents." Really! I thought that! Now I want to kick my old self. I wish I would have recorded those stories in more detail.
Then I started getting "serious." Back then, I had to write letters to potential relatives and hope that they responded. I had to write letters and send checks to churches, courthouses, and governmental agencies. Sometimes I would wait for months for a response. Sometimes the response never came. I used to laugh that I was the only person I knew who would get excited by getting a death certificate in the mail.
I compiled my charts, collected whatever facts I could, and received a few photos. Most people didn't want to give up their original photos, and it could be inconvenient and even expensive to make more copies. Often they would send me photocopies of photographs. All of my documents went into file folders. My folders were organized by family surname, but that system wasn't fully adequate. I had to do a lot of cross-referencing.
If they existed, I ordered microfilms of records from the areas where my ancestors lived. I waited weeks for each film to arrive. Because most of the records weren't indexed, I had to roll page by page through every film. When I found an ancestor, I often had to make several paper copies of the record before I would get one that was readable. I spent many hundreds of dollars ordering films and making photocopies. I traveled all over the country to research in courthouses and walk through cemeteries to find tombstones.
Of course, there was really no good way to share each new discovery unless someone happened to find out about me and wrote me a letter requesting information. I conducted thousands of hours of research, and only I could see it.
That was before computers, scanners, digital cameras, the Internet, email, and the many other conveniences we now take for granted. We can locate records in seconds that used to take years to find. Again, in seconds we can find people who are related to us who may live thousands of miles away. We can communicate with them instantly and receive an immediate response. We can send them a digital copy of a photograph that is better quality than the original we have.
We can become The Ultimate Family Historians.
The word "Ultimate" has several meanings. Two of them are:
The term "Family Historian" means more than "Genealogist." To do basic genealogy, you don't have to compile more than the bare facts of birth, marriage, and death. A person who interviews family members and fills out a pedigree chart is beginning genealogy. Family history, however, involves finding out more than just the facts that will fit on a pedigree chart. To do family history we must know, as much as possible, how the people in the family actually lived. Then we record their stories and put meat on the bare bones of genealogy.
Many of us start out as amateur genealogists, and we may not see ourselves as doing any history. When I first started genealogy more than thirty years ago, I was merely trying to compile a long pedigree chart. I started by asking my grandfather some questions. I remember my grandfather telling me some stories about the family, and I thought, "I don't want to hear all of that. I wish he'd just tell me where they were born and the names of their parents." Really! I thought that! Now I want to kick my old self. I wish I would have recorded those stories in more detail.
Then I started getting "serious." Back then, I had to write letters to potential relatives and hope that they responded. I had to write letters and send checks to churches, courthouses, and governmental agencies. Sometimes I would wait for months for a response. Sometimes the response never came. I used to laugh that I was the only person I knew who would get excited by getting a death certificate in the mail.
I compiled my charts, collected whatever facts I could, and received a few photos. Most people didn't want to give up their original photos, and it could be inconvenient and even expensive to make more copies. Often they would send me photocopies of photographs. All of my documents went into file folders. My folders were organized by family surname, but that system wasn't fully adequate. I had to do a lot of cross-referencing.
If they existed, I ordered microfilms of records from the areas where my ancestors lived. I waited weeks for each film to arrive. Because most of the records weren't indexed, I had to roll page by page through every film. When I found an ancestor, I often had to make several paper copies of the record before I would get one that was readable. I spent many hundreds of dollars ordering films and making photocopies. I traveled all over the country to research in courthouses and walk through cemeteries to find tombstones.
Of course, there was really no good way to share each new discovery unless someone happened to find out about me and wrote me a letter requesting information. I conducted thousands of hours of research, and only I could see it.
That was before computers, scanners, digital cameras, the Internet, email, and the many other conveniences we now take for granted. We can locate records in seconds that used to take years to find. Again, in seconds we can find people who are related to us who may live thousands of miles away. We can communicate with them instantly and receive an immediate response. We can send them a digital copy of a photograph that is better quality than the original we have.
We can become The Ultimate Family Historians.
The word "Ultimate" has several meanings. Two of them are:
- The last in a series or progression
- The best or most extreme of its kind
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