Google for Genealogy

 

Google should be one of the most-used tools in your genealogy tool box. The "wag" is that you can ask Google for information on a zillion subjects. (No, Google will NOT be able to tell you where great-grandma was buried.)

Family Tree Magazine offered this 8-page Cheat Sheet as an insert in their magazine a while back. My opinion? It's worth the $9.99 but ONLY IF you use it! 😐

Here are the front page Google Search Tips:

• Save time; search properly
• Disregard punctuation
• Disregard capitalization
• Don't stress spelling
• Put the most important search term first
• Use the Advanced feature
• Set up Google alerts/automated searches
• Use Google Chrome

Did you know Google offers (for free):

• Google Books, 40 billion books
• Google Translate
• Google Maps
• Google Earth
• Google Drive
• MORE!

There are dozens of tutorials on YouTube (also part of the Google family) to teach you!

Genealogical research is more than just picking the "low-hanging fruit" and sitting back. Genealogical research is learning how to reach that "higher" fruit!  Google can help, I guarantee. 😀

Anniversary of Expo '74

 

Did you attend Expo '74 in Spokane? Do you realize that that was 50 years ago? I expect that there will be many activities and celebrations marking that anniversary during the coming year. 

How did Expo '74 get started? And how come in Spokane?

A little booklet titled Spokane: Background to Expo '74 by Dr. William B. Merriam, Professor Emeritus at WSU, provided lots of background to answer those questions.

In the early 1960s, Spokane began to undergo a change from a perceived "overgrown country town" into a city with the civic leadership, the resources, the courage and imagination to conceive and stage an Expo '74. 

Through the 60s and into the 70s, plans to "make Spokane better" were snowballing. River bank beautification was a top priority. Back in 1913, the Olmstead Brothers had offered to design a Great Gorge Park to extend from the city center past the then Natatorium Park and Fort Wright. Obviously, their proposal was never acted upon. But rediscovered their report, and reading their words, helped push Expo '74 along: "Nothing is so firmly impressed on the mind of the visitor to Spokane as the great gorge into which the river falls near the center of the city. The city should preserve what beauty and grandeur remains of its river gorge." 

All the ideas, thoughts and plans came together by 1973 when promotion and construction feverishly began. Much demolition was required along with re-designing and landscaping. 

"By spring of 1974, Spokane was set for the opening, on time, of the biggest event in the city's history.... Expo'74...conceived, planned, promoted and constructed in record time."

Do you have a memory from Expo '74 that you'd be willing to share? If so, let me know, please. My memory is of our 7-year-old son getting lost in the crowds and finding him, in tears,  being held and soothed by a handsome Black man who was selling cotton candy on the Washington street bridge. 

Chinese Genealogy

 

True story: My Chinese daughter-in-law asked her father, who was born in China and immigrated to Vancouver, B.C. as a young man, to write the family genealogy. He did. He wrote it in Chinese. And she cannot read Chinese. But she treasurers it nonetheless.

Recently in Washington, a bill was passed to honor Americans of Chinese descent in January. The bill designates January as Chinese Descent History Month. This was planned to honor Americans of Chinese descent and their contributions to Washington state. 

The FamilySearch Library (formerly Family History Library) in Salt Lake City, has been preserving records of Chinese families since the 1980s and is currently houses the largest collection of such records in the world. If you (like me) have a Chinese ancestor or relative, the FamilySearch Library is THE place for you to start digging into their history. (After talking to them, of course!

But I recently (April 2023) read a post by Huang Wei on the Voices & Opinion blog stating that the Shanghai Library (Shanghai, China) "is home to arguably the world's top collection of Chinese genealogies, including more than 300,000 volumes of nearly 40,000 different genealogies, totaling 456 surnames." 

A Chinese genealogy is a historical document that records (1) the lineage of a blood line descended from a single ancestor, (2) the blood relationship between family members, and (3) a family's assets and customs. Sadly, one thing they do not typically include are records pertaining to female members of the family.

If you'd enjoy reading Huang Wei's entire post, click to https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1012694

Serious January Thoughts

 

Why does this joke make us laugh? Aren't we like the disbelieving lady clerk, smirking at the poor fellow's lack of knowledge?

At a recent EWGS Fall Seminar, I chatted with many of our marvelous members. Many of these members would classify themselves as "no longer spring chickens." (Me among them!) But I was dismayed and saddened to chat with more than one senior genealogist who was struggling with "what SHALL I do with all the genealogy stuff I've collected??"

As a group, they offered the usual excuses: Don't know what to do, don't know where to start, don't have time, don't have interested family, not computer literate, "it's just too overwhelming."

I did understand. I was sympathetic. I did offer my one-on-one help. Hopefully some will take me up on that offer.

But bottom line:

• YOU collected the stuff
• YOU must so something with all of the stuff
• Yes, it is terribly sorry that you didn't do this earlier...
• Do you really want all the stuff of your years' work to go to recycling?
• Chances are near 90% sure that if YOU don't do something with all that stuff, nobody else will. 
• No, your gene society doesn't want it; the FamilySearch Library doesn't want it; and your grandchildren surely DO NOT want boxes and binders of papers!!
• And it's patently unfair of YOU to expect that they will. 
• YOU collected the stuff. 

Does this sad scenario have to be inevitable for you?? Don't you want to leave a legacy and not a mess? There is an answer, I promise. Here's how:

• DECIDE to DO something
• MAKE TIME to DO something
• MAKE IT A PRIORITY
• Ask for help.......... your friends, EWGS folks
• Ask me! I'll happily come to you to help you get organized and started...

Started on what, do you ask? Getting all your information from those boxes and binders of paper into a computer database. THERE IS NO OTHER WAY. Believe me, that is the only way to leave your computer-oriented posterity a legacy. 

Think about it.

ShipIndex.org........ Want to see the ship your ancestor arrived on?

 Never heard of ShipIndex? Well happy January gift to you!

Founder Peter McCracken and his team, based in Ithaca, New York, have created a website offering over 3,000,000 citations (pictures of ships!!) and offers nearly 2000 learning resources. Here is a snip from their Resources page:

I know you cannot really read this but there are over 12 L-O-N-G pages of references for your learning and most of them are free. Subscriptions are $22 for three months; $35 for six months; and $65 for one year. (Gonna have surgery? Gonna need to housesit or stay with a declining relative? Wouldn't this help you get through those days??) 

ShipIndex.org includes a listing for anything that carried cargo and/or people and sailed under any country's flag. 

Just for fun, I typed in Titanic, never realizing that there might be other ships with that name:

Royal Titanic (Recreational; Cape Fear, NC; built 1979; 14 gross tons)

So something maybe new for you in 2024..... enjoy and learn!

Clallam County Genealogical Society & Cattle Brands

 The Clallam County (Washington) courthouse, built in 1914, in Port Angeles, is surely one of the most picturesque courthouses in America. I remember being in that building years ago and the women's restroom stalls had pink marble walls!

The Clallam County Genealogical Society (CCGS) was founded in 1981. In 2020, the group purchased a newer and larger building ......... which they desperately needed to house their library of 3000 books, periodicals and microfilms. If you're thinking of a trip to Port Angeles, and want to visit their library, know that their entire catalog is accessible online:  www.clallamcogs.org.  

CCGS also maintains  offers an index to the 500 Pioneer Family files...... pioneers who were in Clallam County prior to Washington statehood in 1889. 

The Fall 1988 issue of their society's periodical (no longer published), there was a great article originally found in a 1945 issue of The Genealogy Magazine of New Jersey. The title was "The Use of Livestock Brands and Earmarks in Genealogy."

The article states: "The system of marking the ears of cattle and hogs was used in the early days just as cattle brands are employed in the West today. In colonial times, livestock were often allowed to roam freely on the village green. When evening came, the marks were necessary to separate which animals belonged to which owner. The registration of marks was kept by the village clerk and later by the county auditor.

"Such registrations were continued well into the 20th century when vast herds of cattle and sheep roamed the vast acreage of public lands in the West."

I know that the Eastern Washington Branch of our Washington State Archives has brand books for our state. I've looked up the registered brand for hubby's uncle and VIOLA, there it was. If your Pacific Northwest ancestor had roaming livestock, it's quite likely that he had a brand and that that brand (or ear mark) was legally registered.

Women Lost Their Citizenship Because They Married Foreigners?

 Bet you didn't know this American history tidbit!

In 1907, Congress passed the Expatriation Act, which decreed, among other things, that U.S. women who married non-citizens were no longer Americans. If their husband later became a naturalized citizen, they could go through the naturalization process to regain their citizenship. 

But none of these rules applied to American men who they chose a spouse. And he wasn't eligible for citizenship, she could be denied!

WHAT? You're saying? And rightfully so. Sounds terrible, doesn't it? 

Once American women got the right to vote in 1920, they started lobbying lawmakers, pushing them to recognize that their citizenship should not be tethered to that of a husband.

To shorten the sad story, laws did evolve and by the 1940s women born in the U.S. no longer had to limit their marriage prospects to native-born men or naturalized citizens.

Consider your family tree..... did this "trouble" affect any of your grandmothers??

(Thanks to a 2017 post by Tanya Ballard Brown on the NPR website, Code Switch.)

Bits, Pieces, Jokes & Trivia

 

What's at the end of a rainbow?  (The letter W.)

Did you gift a Slinky for Christmas? This toy was the brainchild of Richard James, a mechanical engineer, who invented it in the 1940s.

What do you get when you cross a cat with a lemon? (A sour puss.)

People who scuba are a divers group of people.

Pet shop customer: "Do any of your dogs go cheap?"  Owner: "Sorry, all our dogs go woof."

Proper listening is the foundation of proper living. (Plutarch)

Dalmatian puppies are born without spots? T or F?  (T)

Why are income taxes due on April 15th...the same day the Titanic went down?

If swimming if so good for your figure, why do whales look the way they do?

Why is it called baby-sitting when all you do is run after them?

January..... Time To Let Go

 

To let go does not mean to stop caring.

To let go is not to cut myself off; it's realizing I can't control another.

To let go is not to enable but to allow learning from natural consequences.

To let go is not to try to change or blame another; it's to make the most of myself.

To let go is not to care FOR but to care ABOUT.

To let go is not to FIX but to be SUPPORTIVE.

To let go is not to judge others but to love them anyway.

To let go is not to DENY but to ACCEPT.

To let go is not to point out others' faults but consider my own.

To let go is not to criticize others but just be the best I can be.

To let go is not to regret the past but to thankfully live for the future. 

(Why this particular post today? It is the start of a new year and we all know there will be obstacles to over come so we must "let go" and be thankfully positive.)