I was preparing for today’s class by reading the hand out and have a confession: I don’t use research logs. Shame on me! Don’t get me wrong, I have tried various methods. I totally understand why they are important. I want to use them. My problem is where to keep them so that I can use what I have put into them. I am hoping our speaker, since she mentioned them has some organizational tips. 

So, I did ask her and I also watched a GenealogyTV with Connie Knox and here is my take away. Make the log and your research plan one and the same and include the info you need for citations. You can do it on the computer or pencil and paper. If you Google Research Logs there are lots of templates that you can get for free and then you can modify them to personalize them to meet all of the above needs and work for you and then keep it with the family group info in my folders or notebooks. I am going to give it another try as I know that they are very helpful. I think I am going to need bigger notebooks and more of them and an organizational change of plans. Office Depot here I come.

As you know, I read a lot of history and try to combine that with the family history. Recently, as I was reading, I was trying to remember when I thought my ancestors had been in the country I was reading about. In this case it was Switzerland. I decided to review the history of that family and write it in the back of the book. Not just the dates but the locations that I am aware of as well. I am trying to sandwich my learning. Coming from both ends if you will. 

This is what I mean by that. I have tried to take my family history backwards as I know you should. Getting all of the information, evidence direct and indirect that I can to tell me where my ancestors were and when over time. Then I study the history of the American location during the time and see what I can learn about the groups that immigrated into the area when my ancestors were there. I am looking at 1700s, 1800s or earlier. Then I come at it from the other direction. What was going on in Switzerland or Scotland or The Netherlands, etc. in their history. As I read that I come across those dates that I wrote in the book and the names of locations. History then is more meaningful because the people in that history may have been my ancestors.

I don’t know if this is the right way to do the work but it is what I am trying now. I find it fascinating when to history research from immigration out of a location and into another match up. The history points to craftsmen leaving Scotland into Northern Ireland and then into Virginia for example and then my family history follows a similar pattern. Education was important to them and it is to me. Sure it would be nice to have direct evidence, some of which I have found through this process such as passenger lists, but the life the people might have lived is important as well.

Historical Maps would be helpful as well so that I can visualize the places the research is talking about. 

Then we come back to the most recent class, Collateral and Cluster research. This blog entry to go on for a long time so let me leave it with, they fit in here exactly. It is about finding the brothers, sisters, aunts and uncles, etc that might give additional information to tell more of the story. One of the “non direct line’ of family just might list a name, date, location that your direct line left out. 

Add to this Cluster research where you are looking at the neighbors, church members, business associates, people immigrating from the same country, etc and you have the making of even more story to be added to your family history.  

What was the learning….we have heard it before….slow down and take it one step at a time.

  Heidi Geise, education@hqrl.com

November is right around the corner. Soon the beautiful fall colors will be leaves for me to rake up in my yard. The clocks will turn back, and it will be time to get the turkey. Where does the time go? In the last 2 classes of the year perhaps we will discover projects to keep us busy during that time we have between Thanksgiving and New Year's. Who am I kidding? What time will that be? 

We do have 2 more classes, Cluster and Collateral Research and Tips for the Occasional Genealogist. These 2 classes are back-to-back so there will be lots of learning to do.

For me recently it has been a lot of history reading. I read 3 history books, Irish History, History of Scotland, and the History of Ulster Ireland. I have been on a personal mission to try to understand what was going on during the time my ancestors might have been in any or all of these locations and why they might have left one for another or all of them to come to America. Some of the books also told of the folklore, myths, legends, and fairy tales of the areas. It was actually quite interesting. I wish I could say that I totally understood all of it. but I think some of it is about understanding the time period and having to be there as they say. I understood the books; it was the mindset that if I want to be king, I will wage war on you and kill your family which might also be mine. 

And then throw in the Tuatha De Danannn, Banshee, Selkies and that is just the Irish. There are the creation stories of the lands and islands. The loch (lake) that was created when one giant took a handful of dirt and threw it at another giant and missed creating the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea and a divot in his own land that became a lake. Now I understand the reason for these tales, and they are really quite interesting. I also understand that reading a history of a location that goes back as far as these places do will bring with it a lot of stories to explain the happenings of the day. And boy are there a lot of them.

One of the things I was curious about was the crossover from one to the other. And there was a lot of that as well. The names may have been slightly different but the stories very similar making my mind go to the fact that they had very similar origins. It also made me wonder about my grandkids project of giving them children's books from countries our ancestors came from. I have got the books and a few toys to match up with them, and I have written notes like “this story comes from the land of your ancestors.” But one particular book of Scottish Fairy Tales I am going to read myself first and give to the parents and let them decide when to read the stories to the young ones, so they won't be scared. 

All this is to say that even though I haven't found a new ancestor lately, I have learned a lot about where some of my ancestors might have come from. Heidi Geise, education@hqrl.com

We had a new topic for HQRL on Thursday, “One-Name Studies.” Our speaker began by reminding us that we have probably all been fascinated by our own names and that is not unusual. Have you ever traveled and looked through the phone book for surnames that you recognized or googled your name long before AI and any interest in family history? I was glad to know that I wasn’t weird when I did that. 

One-name studies attempt to find all the surnames you may have whether they connect to you or not. By looking for all incidence of a surname, you may find a connection you didn’t know about or explain a non-connection that you were struggling with. To me there is another point that he made that I think is relevant and key to why it would be good to join a one-name study: collaboration. There are several ways to get involved with these studies and from what I can tell they all include collaboration. 

WikiTree has one-name studies that you can contribute to and ask questions of. Guild of One-Name Studies is another site. These sites and others often ask you to help confirm information so that the trees are accurate. What sources do you have that can help support a line? There are also Family Association sites that often send newsletters or have reunions or all sorts of activities. My experience as an educator tells me that like other resources, some are better than others, so my recommendation is to look at the groups carefully. Do they answer your inquiries? Do they support their thinking with facts, documentation, etc? 

I recently connected with a family historian to help me unscramble a part of my tree that I wrote about earlier, a family from N. Ireland that came to America from Londonderry and seemed to become Quakers once here. When I connected with him, he had done a lot of research on the one-name study he was working on and sent me a 140 page draft of a book he is writing. In the process he was able to explain the reason the family left N. Ireland, why they were in N. Ireland in the first place, how they connected with the Quakers and as it turned out, why the children kept marrying within the same surname. I won’t go into all the history (remember I said it was a 140 page draft) but lets just say the surname had been banned and they changed their surname to keep from being executed and they weren’t all changed in the same way. Look, isn’t family history hard enough!!!

Connecting surnames to surname distribution maps like ISOGG Wiki can be interesting as well or even looking at DNA results and I know that at least on Ancestry it will tell me the potential migratory patterns of that DNA then combine that with history and surname info and perhaps you will find a way to get through that brick wall or just find interesting facts about you family lives.

Another new topic for us will be coming on November 5, “Collateral & Cluster Research”  and the last one for the year is the rescheduled class on the “Occasional Genealogist.” 

See you in class!

Heidi Geise, education@hqrl.com

Well, I want to get some business out of the way first. Rootstech registration is opening September 24. The event itself is March 4-6, 2027. Great event with lots of speakers and topics for all levels of family historian. The online registration and event is typically free but I am not certain of that for this year. I just haven’t seen anything that says otherwise. You can, of course, attend in person in Salt Lake City, which isn’t free but it has the perks of the vendors, other family historians to visit with and, of course, the FamilySearch Library.

Ok, Thursday we heard about “Getting the Scoop on Digitized Historic Newspapers.” It was great. Lots of incredible information about the history of newspapers, where to find them, which are free and which cost, and how to use the online search tools in the major newspaper sites. The speaker, Eleanor Brinsko, had lots of great tips on what to do and what not to do when looking for information in historic newspapers. She suggested a book, The Family Tree Historical Newspaper Guide, for a great resource. Check out the HQRL bookstore as it may be on our shelf. If not it is on Amazon (what isn’t).

Eleanor suggested things to look for in newspapers besides just the names such as addressed, school and church information, advertisements, cooking tips and domestic advice columns, town gossip sections and local events. These things can help tell the story of life for you family when they were in the location as well as suggest links to look for to get more details. For example, an article might mention someone coming to dinner from out of town or attending a party. Names of people and locations they traveled from can give you hints for more research. I found my grandparents’ engagement and later their marriage information in the Portland, Oregon paper. They were from McMinnville, Oregon, 45min. away. Be open minded about where to look and look for information perhaps many year after they have passed. Their names may come up years later when an event is remembered in the community and/or paper. 

On another note, I have a holiday gift idea especially for those with young children. We have often talked about how to get young kids interested in their own family history. Here is a thought, children’s books from other countries. For my own curiosity (and possible early shopping ideas), I Googled “Children’s books from The Netherland” or “Dutch Children’s books.” I did the same thing form Irish, Scottish, German, Swiss, Northern Ireland, etc.  I got all sorts of titles and then looked to see if I could get them on Amazon (of course I could). There were the old standards like Hansel and Gretel, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Chronicles of Narnia, and Hans Brinker or The Silver Skates. I just learned this, did you know many of our standards came in variations in other countries? But there were also those familiar in the country they are from with characters like Miffy, Globi, Violet’s Voyages: Switzerland (includes a St. Bernard), and Our Wee Place. There were others probably from here about traveling other places like The ABCs of Amsterdam (England, etc) or Good Night England (Scotland, etc). You have to watch for the language it is written in and perhaps how scary it might be but there are tons of choices. And of course – HEIDI.

Shop and research to get your toddlers interested in their history!

Heidi Geise, education@hqrl.org

Last week we visited cemetery research. We learned how to research in cemeteries, where to find on-line resources for them and got a whole page of places to check into. The speaker was very informative about cemetery marker history. The class happened to coincide with the Family Tree Magazine article on Cemetery Research which provided lots of dos and don’ts about researching in the cemeteries themselves.

I didn’t find anything for myself but maybe some of you did. I have discovered things related to cemeteries that has helped like the cause of death in the records and because of the cemetery’s connection to a religion and the time period and location I was able to make the leap to the immigration time and location which I have already written about (Virginia back to Newry, County of Down, Northern Ireland). I have a resource I have used, The Ancestry Detective by Charles Pembroke, and that really says it all. Family historians must be detectives.

I also discovered on FamilySearch that if you go to the right on a detail page of an ancestor, there will be a score for the information. You can see further what you need to do to get a more complete score. Something similar on WikiTree if you go to the first option along the top and go down that list, you come to Tree Aps. You get a tree that is color coded basked on whether it needs further work to connect to the next level. Both helpful next steps.

I have been trying out some AI more directly. I have tried a general question to Google and then either looked at the resources listed after the response from Google and/or followed up with the questions it generated. If you haven’t done that this is the general trajectory: 

• I am trying to connect (this ancestor to this one) in (time period and location)

• Google response and Google follow-up – do you have a surname • My response • Google gives me history and more questions to narrow down the search

• I respond to that and so it goes

By doing that I found by 3x Great-Grandfather connected back to his Great-grandfather and his wife, where they lived and in some cases what they did for an occupation. It also suggested further places to look and offered to help find information. The information included where to look as it seems there is a rather rare (as I understand it) connection again for Scots-Irish from Scotland to eventually Quakers in America as my ancestor married into a very strict Quaker family. I will have to do more digging but I do have a page from a HQRL resource from a Quaker Meeting that supports this lineage.

A wise HQ librarian reminded me recently that perfect may not be what we are looking for when we are talking about records from the 1600s. What we are looking for is connective tissue. Do the dates make sense? Are the resources reliable? Are the names and locations logical? Is there more than one source saying the same thing and are they from different resources?

Well, enough about me, what are you finding? Are you ready for Newspapers?

Heidi Geise, education@hqrl.com

We have a break until our next class September 3rd about Cemetery Records and the September 17th about using newspapers. It might be a good time to do a little reflecting. Here are some questions to consider:

1. What have you learned about how to do family history this year or this summer?

2. What have you tried based on that learning?

3. Have you taken that learning further doing learning beyond the presentation?

4. What have you learned about your family history based on that new learning and work?

Topic-wise we have had presentations on using city directories, breaking through brick walls, applying naming patterns, and researching Dutch, Missouri, Norwegian, and Irish records. We also learned how to use AI, German Church records and why we should care about Social History. Wow, we really had a lot of new information to gather and use. Have you applied it to your family history work? 

I have tried, sometimes with more success than other times. Sometimes it didn’t apply to my family, but I tried to take something from it and apply it to my areas of interest.

The most recent class on German church records didn’t prove fruitful but I did learn, as I wrote about before, that my German ancestors on the line I was researching were actually Swiss who moved to Germany and then immigrated so I tried to apply the church records to Switzerland. In doing that I also revisited my German resource information and learned that Swiss records were often kept in the original town or “commune” that they were from but may not live anymore. Because of the Swiss “rights of citizenship” the records stay in the original commune.  The next step is to figure out the original commune. Whew, just when I thought I was making progress. Hey, maybe that is why records say they were from Hirzel and they show the surname in citizenship records in Pfaffikon! I just realized this as I am writing this. I guess that is another piece of evidence supporting the writing of your information as you go.

As you reflect, think forward as well. What do you want to learn from cemeteries, newspapers, one-name studies, and from “The Occasional Genealogist”? Are you familiar with these resources? Is there anything you can do to get ready for these presentations besides get sign-up for the classes? (Cheap plug, I know!) Interesting fact, Family Tree Magazine has an article this issue on German records and one on cemetery research.

Keep learning and happy hunting!

Heidi Geise, education@hqrl.com