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Blog Entries: 1 to 10 of 53
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Why Take the Next Class
What do you do when you see that there is a class being offered that you might like to participate in? I imagine you consider the history of your family and if it is in a region, state, or country your research tells you there might be family connections.
Where do you find that? It might seem obvious that census records could point to a particular area. If you have done as several of our presenters over the years have suggested and built a timeline then you would have a pretty good start to this. There are those in between years and if you have land records that might help you navigate some of those years.
I have also found it helpful to figure out who was living in the area at the time your family might have been there or even before or shortly after. If it was early in American history, who owned the area? Was it French, Dutch, Spanish, English? Was it part of a larger territory such as Louisiana or Virginia? Were there early settlements of Germans? Were there settlements of Quakers or other religious groups fleeing from one of several situations that brought them to what would become America?
Did the family come to the new country and stay put where they landed or did they move north or south or west? What brought them in the first place and what motivated them to move on?
So many questions? Which have you looked into and which are you still considering? Have you written the questions down so that they become a focus for some of your research? AND, HOW DOES THE NEXT CLASS HELP YOU FIND THE ANSWERS YOU ARE LOOKING FOR?
Our next class is doing Missouri research? You may have lots of history here or you may have none but is there something you can learn about doing research in general that this class could help you with? Mybe you are like me, I don’t know at this point if I have family that was in this area for a long time, but I have suggestions that they at least were there for a short time. Many of them farmers who went for less crowded more fertile land only to find that in the neighboring county which was a different state they could find less crowded more fertile land. Perhaps it was because of the geography or the politics but many of these state research classes address the potential for some of this.
Consider all of the questions that might help you tell the story of your family? They might not immediately pinpoint an exact family member giving dates, locations and names but maybe they will suggest the story behind the family and the culture they brought with them through the years or why “fruitcake” was on the holiday table?
“See you in Missouri!”
Heidi Geise, education@hqrl.com
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Learning From and Preparing to Learn
I try, as much as possible, to share how I am using the learning I do in our HQRL classes as I do my own family history or how I am preparing my history learning for the next class. If you have been reading this blog, I hope you see my efforts. The last class on social history was especially interesting I thought. Her goal was for us all to come away with ideas. Ideas about how and what we can look for and apply to our family histories that fill in the gaps between the dates, locations, and names. As I have said before, to tell the story of our families. She talked about bringing those ancestors to life and to understand a little better why they did the things they did based on their lives and times rather than judging them based on our life perspectives.
With her short case studies, it led me to continue my research into the religions and occupations of my family. Based on my own family knowledge, my paternal grandparents belonged to the First Christian Church in our hometown. I used the speaker’s ideas to look further into this church history especially as everything leading up to this tells me that there was a long line of Methodists on all sides.
Looking up the history of that church in our hometown told me that it was established in 1952 in town but in Oregon in the mid-1800s. That information explains perhaps why the change happened when it did but not why. So, I looked for the differences between the 2 belief systems. It explains why someone might have changed but not necessarily why my grandparents specifically did. This raises questions for me. What were the religious beliefs of this couple’s ancestors, and could they have influenced the change? Perhaps their parents or grandparents came from a different church in their previous location and when moving to this new hometown, found the only church that they could.
The speaker suggests that there are hints we can get from history, google, and just general information but then how does that lead us to the more specific. We must do some critical thinking. Where does the information, whether specific or general, lead us and where can we look for that information?
The other part of the speaker’s message was about why we want this information. Why should we care as family historians? Her reasoning was to help answer the question: “What was it like?” What was it like to give birth, court and marry, make a living, serve in the military, etc. (Annette Burke Lyttle, CG 6/4/26) That is what I intend to continue to do as well as continue to find how it connects to me.
As I continue this work, I want to prepare for the next class which is about Missouri. Now, I don’t have a lot of family history from this part of the country but, what do I always say, “Learners can learn something from any class or resource.” It isn’t so much about finding resources in Missouri for me. It is more about strategies for researching in states or in states near Missouri. Maybe it is about history and learning that boundary changes meant that where my family was from was once part of the same territory. Maybe it is weather or historical events that impacted Missouri and my family roots.
I guess we will find out on June 18th!
Heidi Geise, education@hqrl.com
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Review What You Have
Between anniversaries, birthdays, and doggy “gotcha” days it has been busy here so not a lot of research being done. I did, however, take the opportunity to start a review project. I am going through each family group and looking at all the documents I have saved. My purpose is to read with care and see what I may have missed when I first saved them.
Why do this? As I have learned more about what I want to learn and what I might want to look for, I suddenly realize that I have more information than I thought I had. Sometimes I find my own mistakes, such as a set of parents for one GG parent that has 2 possibilities in one of the large databases and I am not sure either is correct. I found a document that lists his parents being born in Holland and England and that is not on either set of his potential parents’ information. But then the document I found was a census from a Veterans Hospital from 1905 when he was 89. Maybe that one has the wrong information.
On the more positive side, I found documents that list religions and occupations which are really the 2 things I am looking for right now. I am just trying to fill in some of the gaps that might help tell the story of what life was like for them on a regular basis. Turns out there are more Methodists in the family than we thought. On one I found the minister that officiated a wedding and researched him to find that he was a traveling minister in the area that did Methodist Revival Meetings. That was interesting.
Excuse me for a moment. I have to go work off some of the birthday cake. It turns out my 2-year-old grandson decided to live up to the “2 Year Old’s Reputation”. It must be an honor code for them.
Although I didn’t get my grandmother’s horticulture gene that turns out she got from her grandfather, I do love flowers and art and photographing flowers. As I was planting new photo subjects, I tried to connect with that gardening gene. It would be interesting to know what being a gardener vs a farmer was like in 1880. That is part of the social history that our next speaker will talk about.
I think about what life was like in the 1800s and I picture the old programs I remember from TV. Horses and buggies or wagons to get from place to place. Iceboxes rather than smart fridges that can tell you what you need from the store next trip. Women didn’t typically have careers, they were busy growing the food, cooking the meals, cleaning the house. No robotic vacuums for them!
I wonder if I have it correct? Finding some of the resources that describe church life, community involvement, occupations, customs and traditions, etc might clear up the memories of the “Little House on the Prairie vision I have and reality. I guess we will see after the next class!
Don’t forget about the other classes this summer: Research in Missouri, AI, Norwegians in America, Researching Germany, Finding Records in What We Have/Power of Clues and more after that.
See you soon!
Heidi Geise, education@hqrl.com
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Unusual Places to Find Irish Immigrants
The class on May 21st was a gem. Our speaker, Debra Dudek, gave us more than our money’s worth of ideas to find Irish records in “unusual places.” The big take-away for me was to step away from the routine of the big databases and go to sites where you can find emigration, alternative military info, naturalization records, fraternal organizations and even prison info. She gave us a lot of valuable locations to look in and then a quick case study of what going to some of these lesser used sites might result in as we dig, analyze and tell the story of our ancestors.
I don’t know about you, but I am not great about going to these other locations. Sometimes I just don’t know the sites to go to (she solved some of that) and sometimes it is just easier to connect to the sites that are part of my routine. Whether you use ancestry.com, Family Search or another large database, they become habits. I don’t think she was trying to tell us to eliminate those but rather to not use them exclusively and to maybe use the “unusual” places a greater percentage of the time. That is at least what I took away from the class.
What does that mean for me? I think my next steps are to use some of her ideas to continue to dig here at home. I have quite a bit, I believe, to still find before I can go on to some of the sites she suggested such as RootsIreland.ie. I did get 2 of the books she recommended, Irish Immigration to America by Szabados and Finding Your Irish Ancestors in New York City by Buggy. I can tell you the second one needs a magnifying glass. The type is very small but I will manage.
I was able to confirm several generations on one of my maternal 4x GG side and get it to England and France by using the WikiTree site. I Googled the name and the WikiTree site came up and had a lot of info that someone had put on and confirmed. Remember, you must identify sources on this site to confirm. When I confirmed with sources, to meet up with that ancestor, it linked my info with the existing info and confirmed what I had thought was the path before. Now I will look at other sites to see if I can find those original documents in church records and military records and land records.
The next class on Social History can also help by explaining moves and if whole communities moved together to various location in America or as our speaker stated, perhaps they went from England to Canada or Germany or France to England to Canada before they ended up in Virginia or Ohio or Pennsylvania or where ever they made their first American home.
I am off to read about Irish Immigration to America now, have a latte, bake a cake for my grandson’s 2nd birthday, and pet the dog, her “gotcha day” is the 1st. Busy week.
See you at the next class.
Heidi Geise, education@hqrl.com
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Time to Reset
What do you do when you get stuck or lose interest in your research at least temporarily? We have talked about this before, haven’t we. Sometimes just leave it alone for a while but how do you get reconnected or remotivated?
In the Beginning Genealogy Class we just had there were several suggestions:
- Start writing the story that your family history research tells up to this point. If you don’t like to write, you can use things like Storied.com or Memories (part of Ancestory.com).
- Go to someplace like Historyhub.history.gov (connected to NARA). It is a “research support community for everyone, including genealogists, historians, & citizen archivists” where you can ask general questions and get help for your research questions. There is a similar group of WikiTree called G2G where you can ask more specific questions about your family research and get suggestions on what to look for and where. (I recently did this and they had suggestions of places to call or write or visit.
- Historypin.com is a Pinterest type site for history where you can build stories, see photos, see old photos of locations with new ones to compare.
- Someone suggested finding a novel that is set in the time and place of your family research and just relax and read to paint a general picture of the life at the time and place of your ancestors.
The main thing is to have a plan. What are you trying to find? What do you know and what do you want to know and where might you look for it? Learn about the history, society, terrain, boundaries, etc that might give you additional ideas about where to look or where people might have come from. I have tried this and found it interesting to see for example that many of the people in the area may have come from the same general area in Europe or may give clues as to what religion they practiced or why they came. I found a 3x GG born perhaps in Guernsey Co, Ohio and married in Wheeling, Ohio Co, Virginia (now W. VA). When I researched these locations, I found that Guernsey Co, Ohio is part of the greater Wheeling Metropolitan Area which includes Wheeling and Elm Grove, Ohio, W. VA where some lived and were buried in the Presyterian Cemetery. And yes, Guernsey gets its name from the Isle of Guernsey in the English Channel. None of this proof of anything for my family but interesting and possibly hints to research. By the way, I read a novel, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows about the area during WWII.
The other way to get reconnected and motivated is to take classes, perhaps at HQRL. Ireland is coming next week and Social History and Missouri in June. Don’t forget the connection with other family history enthusiasts when you take classes or come to HQ.
See you at the next class as we all get reconnected and learn.
Heidi Geise, education@hqrl.com
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Finding New Ways to Learn
I hope you have been enjoying the gorgeous weather we have been having (if you live in western Washington at least). As I was enjoying the warmth, the front porch, and the dog sitting beside me I was reviewing some previous journalling I had done and ran across the quote, "don't get lost in the steps only to lose focus on the objective." I believe it came from the book Ikigai by Hector Garcia and Francesc Miralles.
So. what do I mean? Sometimes I get caught up in the steps too much? But in photography, and in family history I believe as well, there is a visualization process. Instead of snapping off as many photos as possible in the 30 minutes I may have (which could be hundreds in digital photography), the creative process would be to think about a subject, consider the light and the potential compositions, and what it would take to make that photo happen and then to take action and photograph the subject. Isn’t that kind of true with family history? What am I visualizing for the use of this research and how do I make that happen?
It might mean that there are classes to take to help you understand the technical skills or research skills needed to make your vision become reality but that is the process. We learn new skills to meet our objectives. True for any undertaking.
That brings me to classes for family history whether from HQRL or elsewhere. There are 2 approaches, 1) Find classes at your favorite site (HQRL I hope) and take them and apply them as you can or 2) Look for classes anywhere that fit your current research focus, take them and apply them. Now as I write this, I realize it is probably a bit of both.
I am not trying to discourage you from taking our classes; however, I am an educator, and I can’t compete with the learning tools available to all of us beyond our own library. If you are truly trying to learn about how to do family history for your own family story, anything you can find that teaches you about history and genealogy is invaluable especially if it helps you meet your objective.
With all that said, I just found another “gold mine” of learning tools, Allen County Public Library video collection. Perhaps you are ahead of me and have already found this site, but there are over 400 videos in this collection alone and they are free to watch. My recommendation is to look at HQRL’s class list and then go to places like Allen County Library, Mid-Continent Library, and Ohio County Public Library, for example, to find resources that can help you learn what you want. Other libraries in larger communities may also have this kind of collection as well as libraries connected to universities. Family Search and Ancestry also have classes that you can take. Don’t be afraid to browse or to go to Cyndi’s List to find “Libraries, Archives and Museums” or to go to YouTube.
Well, happy learning and happy researcing.
Heidi Geise, education@hqrl.com |
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Finding History to Find Family History
In the next 2 months we have a class on finding ancestors in Ireland, another look from a new presenter on Social History, and a look at researching in Missouri. I am looking at how I can use the previous class which included some social history information and prepare for Ireland and the next social history presentation.
One of my focus points recently has been on where people came from when they came to America early on. For example, were there German communities in Butler County, Ohio in early 1800? If no, move on. If there were, did they come directly from Germany or did they come from Germany to another American location and migrate to Ohio?
I will often google the question and then look at the resources used by google. I am not looking for ancestor’s names and vitals. I am looking for migration patterns. Now, I don’t know if this is the professional family historian’s way, but it makes sense to me. If the patterns indicate that, for example, yes there were German communities in Ohio in the early 1800s then where does history say they came from? What part of Germany? Why did they leave Germany at that time?
What I am learning is more about history than family history, but I can then apply it to my family history. In my case I have found that many of my German ancestors came from SW German states like Wurttemberg and Baden for example. That immigrants into Butler County, Ohio at the time were Swiss-German. I have learned the reasons they came for farming, religious freedom, which also told me the potential religious beliefs of my family and occupations. Now these aren’t facts about my family necessarily, but they lead me down the road for more research locations which might lead to those facts.
After finding this and more about history at the time, I can investigate the locations I have for ancestors and see if anything fits, which it does. I can look for the churches from the areas in which they lived and then research church records to find names possibly.
I will repeat what I have said before and what I must tell myself all the time, “Family History research is not simple, and it is not quick.” I have yet to find my family names in any country beyond the Atlantic. But all the presenters say the same or similar things, “find everything you can on this side of the pond, before you try to cross.” With that, I think I am getting closer. If the hints that I have gotten from DNA or from the big databases have any truth to them, then looking for German or Swiss or Scots-Irish or whatever only makes sense to me, if people from those places landed in the American locations around the time I have.
All my school history teachers, both my own and those I supervised, would be so proud, I think?!
See you in the next class.
Heidi Geise, education@hqrl.com
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Patience and Careful Analysis
I haven’t been doing family history as long as many of my friends have been but the longer I do it the more I learn about the challenges and the benefits. For example, I used to just see the connections on my tree from the general database and add it to mine. It is on the database; it must be correct!?
Recently I was reviewing one line to decide what location to research. I found a 6x great grandparent couple that had lots of history written about them. He was the first president of what would become Brown University, a renowned Baptist minister and very influential in the local area. So, what is the problem?
I decided out of curiosity to look more carefully at the Research Help (warning). There were 14 sources for this person and several contained the statement that he and his wife had no children, yet 4 were listed for him including one from my line. How can that be that he had no children yet hundreds of years of descendants? There are no sources listed for births of any of the children, but then this was the 1700s. I think my trail on this line has a disconnect whether someone else adds them or not and from looking at the comments on this gentleman, lots of others found the issue as well. This will require lots of help from the class we just had (more below).
The lesson, look carefully at all of your information including the hints and resources well before you add them to your tree. One of the things that I have been doing is to add those I have confirmed to WikiTree. I did this with one line and suddenly it was fill with confirmed ancestors. I wonder what or when that will happen with this Baptist minister?
In the meantime, I am working on applying what we learned in the last class on “Researching Beyond Your Ancestor.” That is what I was doing when I ran headlong into the “no children yet descendants” issue. Our speaker talked about Cluster / Fan Club Research, about exploring jurisdictions, the importance of social history, local history and then illustrated it all with a case study. She provided a lot of resources and examples as she shared her knowledge. A big takeaway on this one was, “SLOW AND STEADY!”
Again, my learning tells me not to expect to find things at the click of a mouse. She gave us a list under each topic of subtopics to look for. It takes time to find the right information and then to analyze it. What do the facts you find tell you about your family history or about what life might have been like for people living during the same time and in the same location? What organizations were they part of that could give you names of family, friends, associates, or neighbors? She even mentioned an organization that I had only recently heard of, Knights of the Pythias, that my grandfather was part of according to the records.
There is so much to learn when and about doing family history and as I have said before, history didn’t happen overnight and it is not going to unfold for you and me overnight. (as much as I want it to!) Time for more learning – Ireland, more Social History, Missouri, AI and so much more.
Heidi Geise, education@hqrl.com
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Where Were They in 1776
Got a bit ahead in the blog and behind in the family history. How does that work?
As I was contemplating what to work on and then write about this week a popup appeared, 250 Years. I wondered which generation that would be for me and where they were. For the most part this would be my 4th and 5th great grandparents (7th and 8th generations). Where were they? In general: Ohio 2, VA 9, PA 2, MD 2, MA 6, NY 3, TN 1, NC 1, a couple possibly in KY and many unknown yet. And many on their way west. There were perhaps one or two from England, or Canada at that time and who knows where else.
It is clear that many of these past members of my family story were in the northeastern US and quite likely involved with the battles of the area. That makes the HQRL event America 250 Patriot Celebration particularly interesting. I’ll bet it is the same for you. See the flyer on the website for more information about what it involves and how to attend.
I also was thinking about what life would have been like for my family members during that time. What were the Faris families doing having just arrived from Northern Ireland and finding themselves in the hills of Virginia? What about the Ostranders who were likely from family roots in The Netherlands (even though my grandmother said they weren’t) and now in New York. And there were all those various families in Massachusetts. What were they thinking and doing?
It all makes me wonder about the strength they must have had and their beliefs. Did they wonder whether they had made the right choices to leave their homelands and come to this wilderness? They certainly weren’t sitting around wondering what reality TV show to watch tonight or whether kibble or natural dog food was best.
I am looking forward to the next class which is about looking beyond our ancestor. I am hoping to get a little inspiration for discovering more about the lives they led. Most of my current research isn’t so much about adding names but about adding “why’s.” I don’t think my history is that much different from so many of yours. Farmers moving for cheaper and better land away from the crowded places they landed when first arriving in America. I wonder if we aren’t a bit more isolated than they were then which seems funny to say, but many seem to have traveled in like groups (countries of origin, language, religion, families) and supported each other through community membership and meetings. What would they think of our current social media community connections, Zoom meetings, and lives that take us several states away from our families? What if we dropped them into New York City or Seattle today? I am wondering if I might be speaking Dutch now?
Heidi Geise, hqrl@education.com
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Generative Learning For Success
I was reading a book that I read every couple of years, The Success Principles by Jack Canfield, one of the editors of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, and I happened upon a reminder. Everything worth doing takes time and to be successful we must take that time one step at a time and always be open to learning.
Family History is worth doing!
We usually have 2 classes per month. Each one addresses a different aspect of doing this work. Sometimes it involves how to do the research in a particular area or for family from a specific area such as our Dutch Roots class or the upcoming one on Ireland. Sometimes it is about family research in general such as our beginning classes or classes on organization or citing sources. Sometimes it is about what kind of information to look for such as our class on Naturalization Records or Looking Beyond our Ancestors. Sometimes it is about the kind of help we can get from various databases or using AI or newspapers or support from groups like WikiTree and the WikiTree community. You get the idea. The classes cover a lot of topics. Hopefully, something for everyone.
The point is part of being successful at anything is continuing to be a learner and applying the learning one step at a time. That is the idea from the Canfield book. Even if you don’t know how you might use the information at the moment or if you have been doing family history for a long time there is usually learning that we can take away from every class if we are open to it. Maybe it is that we are doing things correctly or maybe it is a site or strategy that we forgot about or maybe it is how to help others. Maybe it generates ideas that we can use to do more learning and find more classes.
What are our takeaways from the presentation by the volunteer from WikiTree this week? Well, too many to list them all here. A couple of things that set them apart is that it is totally free. They are not a database so if you find a hint to look at you will end up at MyHeritage or Family Search, etc. You have to sign an Honor Code to change information. Also, it has a 2-step verification system. This means that no one can change your tree unless they ask you first or you give them permission. Maybe the most important learning is that it will not confirm an addition until you site the sources.
They have weekly, monthly and yearly “contests.” There are Friday Night Bingo nights, badges to earn, a ton of ways to help and to learn about doing family history. Best bet, www.wikitree.com to explore and learn more.
It really is a site to explore and play with so go play. You have a week to get ready for “Exploring the Community: Researching Beyond Your Ancestor.” After that we have beginning, Ireland, Social History, Missouri, AI, Norway, Germany, Power of Clues,,,,and June 9th, America 250 Patriot Celebration (see the HQRL website for more information.
Heidi Geise, education@hqrl.com
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