Hasn’t this been quite a week? Somehow there wasn’t a lot of time or brain power left after putting out sandbags, packing “Get Set” bags, and waiting. It is the waiting that is sometimes the toughest. But the photos of the bags around the garage doors and the story of why they are there will make a good piece for our own family history. And I won’t forget that during this time my dog, an Aussie, apparently tried to herd a skunk out of the backyard. Yuk!

It did remind me that there are lots of good people in the world despite what we hear on the news. When the neighbors help to haul sandbags to our house and help spread them and we all get together in the street to decide if it is time to go or do we wait. Those are good people.

It also reminded me, as to family history, a couple of things. We need to write these stories down as they happen and put them away for future generations. I think we also need a list. I am into lists lately. But in this case a list of family history tasks. Those things that could take 10 minutes, those that take 30, those that take an hour, etc. Probably also a list of those that can be done without internet and those that need Wi-Fi.

It also might be a good time to have a few “go to” books that help you with your family history. Books that remind you of the steps for finding things or maybe it is history books that help you learn about the time and area that your family lived in. Or just a couple of good novels for a mind break!

As I am writing this another idea is a back-up. Do you have your family history backed up in the cloud, in an on-line program or on a flash drive. As I was deciding what to pack and what to put on higher ground, my flash drive go the selection. It is a lot easier to pack that up than notebooks and folders and file cabinets.

I hear the rain start again so I will put this away and return to my family decisions. Ironically, if this happens next year, the maintenance yard where we get the sandbags is walking distance from my house. Just so you know, We are all ok, so is the house, so is the dog, and I can’t speak for the skunk.

Hope everyone is safe, dry and ready for the holidays.

Heidi Geise, education@hqrl.com

Did you celebrate what you learned last year and make a plan for what you want to learn next?

I did go back and review some of my old findings on a family that I have been challenged by for years. I found answers to why they may have moved from Tennessee to Illinois and how they were able to make the move. Evidence that my male ancestor worked as part of the “Guards Right” and the payoff was in land that he later sold providing money to move to Illinois. I also found evidence that there was more than one woman with the name Agnes Penquite and the other one is in the quaker records not mine.

While I was watching yet another football game, I googled, “Were there any Quakers in the Ostrander-Hartzell Families” which is another line of my family. My sister is convinced that there were stories. AI came up with no quakers, however, there is a large Ostrander Family Association page that claims the name is unique enough that we are all related. There is a book that their researchers have been working on and evidence that takes everything back to 1600s. About that time Ohio lost to Indiana (football not 1600s) and I didn’t read further but I sent the link to myself and can’t wait to dig into this. Maybe a group to join.

One thing I am learning is to be open minded about the possibilities. Don’t assume you know something and head down that trail as if it were true. Think about all of the possibilities and then prove them true or false. I have been trying AI as it can pull things together and then I can decide fact or fiction or find a resource that I may not have found yet.

Another thing I am learning is that there are no shortcuts. Or I should say the only shortcut is to do things thoroughly in the first place. Don’t skip over possibilities or potential documents because you don’t think they will help. LOOK AT THEM! Decide if an answer is to be found correct or not based on the facts that it provides not wishful thinking. Family history is not easy, and it isn’t quick.

I get frustrated and wonder if I have gone far enough. I haven’t found anything new for a long time…I must be done. Then I remember my beginning lessons in genealogy, “why am I doing this work?” Is my “why” still relevant? Have I completed the task to the satisfaction of my “why”? If the answer is yes, it is time to find another “why” or a new hobby. If the answer is no, what am I missing? What steps have I skipped? What do I do now or where do I get help?

Let’s see where all that takes us! So far it hasn’t led to any breakthroughs but that could be from 10 hours caring for a toddler and then 2 days later 12 hours with him. But I can sing the Bluey song and the opening of the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and the Hot Dog Song.

Just one new finding might do the trick!

Heidi Geise, education@hqrl.com

1. What are 3 things you did differently to work on your family history in 2025?
2. What are 3 new sites you visited to do research?
3. What were 3 things you wanted to learn about your family history in 2025 and did you learn them? What were you hoping to learn that you still are looking for?
4. What were 3 things you learned in 2025 about how to do family history.

1. What 3 things are you wanting to discover about your family history in 2026? What are your research plans for each?
2. Of the new sites you visited in 2025, which will you continue to go to for your new research? What are 3 new sites that you will explore in 2026 as you continue your work.
3. Have you made any plans as to how you will share your learning? What are your plans, and have you started to implement them? If not, why not?
4. What help do you need to move forward in your work?

Coming to you early for the busy week ahead.

 

Are you hosting or visiting for the holiday festivities? Large gatherings or quiet social events? Now for the tough question. Any plans to share your family history findings or gather more information from family at the events? One friend of mine has talked about posting the family tree and just letting people look at it. The stories aren’t there but maybe some conversation starters.

Our gatherings are small. No real opportunity to share more stories at them. As I write that, a couple of thoughts cross my mind. Maybe it would be a good time to just ask how people feel about knowing their family history? What do they want to know if anything and how would they want to learn about it? It can be as short or as long as people want it to be and the baby and 3 dogs will let it be. That would be a logical step in our household.

Another idea that came to mind is a gift my sister-in-law gave my husband a few years ago for his birthday. We got a pencil bag in the mail filled with folded strips of paper, 65 I think. The activity was to pull out a paper and read what was on it. Each paper had a memory on it. For example, “ordering the awful, awful burger” or “releasing our turtle ‘Ichabod’ back to the Mississippi River.” When each paper was pulled and read, there was an opportunity for a story. My husband would tell us what the story was about, when it happened, etc. We did a few at a time when we got together. It was actually quite fun and filled with lots of laughter. I don’t recall if there were stories to be saved for when the grandkids were older, but it is possible. He was a rock-n’-roll musician in Reno.

You could do that the way my sister-in-law did it for us. I think you might even be able to give everyone a few cards to write a memory starter or 2 of their own, throw them into a fishbowl, a pull them out over the course of the event.  Or maybe it is questions they put on the cards. It could be fun.

The real issue here is how you can share your hard work or gather more information to continue your work on your family history. And do it in a fun, stress-free way. What are your ideas? Have you already done things in the past? And of course, doing it all while basting the turkey, mashing the potatoes, snatching bites of the meal along the way. (There was the time I put a piece of pumpkin pie topped with whipped cream on my sister’s chair….yes, just before she sat down. Who was more angry, Mom or my sister?)

Whatever you decide to do or not do with the family and your family history, make it a great holiday season. Make more memories to put in your future family history writing.

Heidi Geise, education@hqrl.com

1.  A German special interest group she belongs to invites “folks to meet and put their heads together to solve genealogy problems and share their German heritage and successes.  One group does hybrid sessions.  At the holidays, they asked everyone to bring a treat from their German heritage to share.  If you joined virtually, you were supposed to show, tell about and enjoy your own treats. It was a fun way to honor the tradition and share with others.” You could do the same for various other special interest groups. We could do something before or after a speaker on a special interest topic.
2. ” The Omaha public library does a couple of things to help bring folks in.  In March, they hold a Genealogy Week celebration.  Every day has something different to offer.  And every day that week, the local genealogy society staffs a time where they help people get started with their family history or help them problem solve their challenges.  It has been a popular program.  They end the week with a major speaker in the library.” It wouldn’t have to be in March and it wouldn’t have to be as grand as our previous Autumn Quests. It too could be hybrid.
3. “There are special interest groups meeting monthly on DNA, German, Viking, Polish, Writing, etc.” at the Omaha Public Library.

“So…pause for a moment. Look beyond the technical aspects and consider the unseen frame. What do you truly want to convey? What emotion do you want to capture? What story are you trying to tell? It’s in these deeper considerations that the true magic of photography unfolds…” (Sime.digital-photography-school.com, October 30, 2025) Oops! Wrong hobby article! Or is it?

Read that again and leave out the part about photography. Could it also be talking about our hobby of family history? What do we want to say about our family? What stories do we want to convey? What emotions do we want to bring forward through our stories and our history?

Let’s look at it through the lens of our last entry about doing one-name studies or one-location studies or cluster or collateral studies. I am doing a little research to learn more about these approaches, but my initial learning is that it depends on our purpose. It depends on the story we want to convey, the picture we want to create.

I did some work on my family story this week. I have mentioned before my interest in the locations my family lived in, why they moved from one location to another, and why they ended up where they did. I wouldn’t call this a one-location study, but it is a study of locations. Why do I want to know that and tell that story? I think it can say something about the lives they led and maybe the sort of people they were.

I researched my mother’s paternal side specifically starting with the Vance side of my family. My grandfather was born in Youngstown, Warren, Illinois in 1902. This is a place I know little about other than it got its first rail station in 1872 and the town was laid out at about the same time. My grandmother was from McCook, Red Willow, Nebraska, another railroad community beginning in 1882 when the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad was extended. It was hot and humid in summers and mild and cool in winter. They both ended up in Phillips County and then Logan County, Colorado where there was a railroad. There seems to be a pattern.

My grandfather’s family was from McDonough Co, Il (coal country) and before that from Jackson County, Tennessee. People seem to be moving west at that time for a few reasons; railroad jobs, fewer people and farmland. My great grandfather was a well driller and his father a farmer before working for Western Tube in Kewanee, IL (4000 people worked there in the mid-1800s). The part of Tennessee they were farming was physically demanding as it was the “rugged terrain of the Cumberland foothills” so probably why they moved.

Farming and jobs aren’t surprising reasons to be relocating in this time but maybe it helps explain the movement and how they might have come together as the locations families moved to were not far apart. Well drillers, farmers, tube makers for boilers and large artillery shells for the war, and railroad men. That seems to be the story of one line anyway. I am looking forward to looking at other lines. Bet it was interesting photography country!

Heidi Geise, education@hqrl.com

Cluster research or Fan Club research. Do you do this kind of research to tell your family story? I have talked about this before. You know, in part it is going a page or 2 back and forward when finding family in the documents, especially census reports. But is it more than that?

 

I was reading, The Family Tree Problem Solver 3rd Edition by the late Marsha Hoffman Rising and updated by Sunny Jane Morton and Diahan Southard and I got to the chapter on “Researching Friends, Associates, and Extended Family Members.” It brought up the concept in a way that I had not considered before. This kind of research is important when you are solving a difficult family connection, but it also puts the individual in the context of a community. You get to know the family, the community relationships, the interactions that make that individual human, not just a name on a page.

 

So here is my other wondering, what about one-name studies and one-place studies. One-name studies, as I understand them, are researching all occurrences of a surname. This would be consistent with cluster research in that one approach to cluster research is to list all the individuals with the same surname in a county and research them. Doing this means lots of documents and not all the individuals are part of the same family and not all family members live in the same county, state, or country. Nor do all family members have the same surname. According to the WikiTree One Name Project, the purpose of this kind of research is for name origins, name meanings, frequency and distribution of a surname, migration patterns and name variations. (www,wikitree,com/wiki/Project:One_Name_Studies)

 

One-place Studies are like the name studies except that they, obviously, focus on a community. It involves looking at history, demographics, social history, economics, weather, etc. It, like the name studies, can help with challenging family history but also helps to tell the broader story of the family, why they moved, what they chose to do and why, etc. (GenealogyBank.com/blog/genealogy-101-one-place-studies by Gena Philibert-Ortega)

 

I hope this doesn’t just sound like rambling. In my head I am trying to make sense of the different approaches or combination of approaches. Like any new idea, I think more information is needed. Before you can compare approaches, you must thoroughly understand each. Just like when you compare documents you are using to research your family, you must understand the documents you are looking at. What was the purpose for creating the document? Who created it? How does it relate to the facts you already have?

 

Guess what else all of this does? Slows us down! I say that as a good thing. This is not a race to see who can finish their family history first, says the high school sprinter whose father raced a horse as a high school fundraiser. It is a mystery, a puzzle to be solved. A complete story to be told.

 

There is plenty more learning to be done on these subjects. Perhaps classes for next year at HQRL. If you have knowledge on any of these approaches and would like to present a class, please let me know. I am looking for speakers and would like some “home grown”.

 

Heidi Geise, education@hqrl.com