GFHC open thread: fieldnotes from a genealogy seminar

larmos for Genealogy and Family History Community

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Friday October 12, 2012 · 11:30 AM PDT

2012/10/12 · 11:30

Genealogy & Family History Community

Leave the blood feuds at home

On May 19 I attended an all-day seminar held by the Seattle Genealogical Society. The speaker for the day was George G. Morgan--a genealogy guy. He gave 4 lectures that day.

I first heard about the lecture on their podcast. I told mr. larmos about hearing it, and he suggested that I go to the seminar as my mothers' day present. I thought it was a great idea, but our days are very busy as we're trying to get our house ready for a big move in about 6 weeks. Time is precious. But, Mr. Larmos argued, "seeing George G. Morgan" is kind of like going to see Paul McCartney last summer."

"Yeah," I had to agree. It was for me.

larmos for Genealogy and Family History Community

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Friday September 14, 2012 · 8:10 AM PDT

2012/09/14 · 08:10

Genealogy & Family History Community

Visit our favorite LINKS, but leave the
blood feuds at home

When you have children invariably at some point you will have to find a way to pass time while you wait for them to participate in some activity. Since my then three-year-old couldn't drive, I had to do a bit of waiting on him while he went to developmental preschool this spring (he's a bit of a late talker).

One day of waiting on the kid I decided I'd head over to the Seattle Genealogical Society and see what I might find in their library. Earlier in the month I had been to a lecture there and noticed by looking at their online catalog that they had a surprising amount of material relevant to my particular counties of interest in Illinois of all places! Had I known this earlier in my genealogical pursuits I'd have quickly become a regular at the SGS library, but alas, I discovered it just one week before the kid's school was done for the summer (and my kid-free time was over). (By the way, if you live near Seattle or have relatives from the area you should join, their library is GREAT and it's right across the street from the National Archives Seattle location!)

Anyway, my trip to the library began at the front desk, where a kind woman signed me in, and let me pay her a small fee to use the library for the day. I was nervous about going by myself, as I always worry about not following protocols properly and making a fool of myself, but my fears were totally unwarranted. The woman's kindness melted away any nerves I had. (I arrived at 2:20 pm, and had to leave by 2:50 pm to go pick up the kiddo, so this was hardly a DAY of researching!) She encouraged me to become a member, but I told her we would be moving out of state soon, and would not be able to avail myself of the benefits of using the library beyond that first trip, sadly. She was not pushy at all. The kind lady asked me what states I'd be researching there, and I told her Illinois. She led me to the shelf with the Illinois books, and explained that they were organized by county. This organization enabled me to quickly and easily find my counties of interest.

larmos for Genealogy and Family History Community

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Friday July 27, 2012 · 2:19 PM PDT

2012/07/27 · 14:19

Genealogy & Family History Community

Leave the blood feuds at home

I imagine the conversation between my ancestors, James Allen Huston and his wife, Amanda Hogan Huston, went something like this, "James, we are so far away from our families here in Oregon. Our baby girl and young boy will not get to know their grandparents, or the place where you were you and your family were some of the first to build homes. I know we just purchased this land and the journey out was so hard, but perhaps we could sell the land. This is unproven land, and it's so rainy here. We could use the money to return to Illinois by boat, because I'm sure not doing that Oregon Trail thing again. No way."

I can imagine this conversation so easily, because I found myself having a similar conversation with my own husband just a year ago. Being halfway across the country when something bad happens is hard. Last June Mr. Larmos' dad almost lost a battle with a particularly nasty blood infection. We had a very hard time getting Mr L from the Pacific NW to East Tennessee, and we spent a tense night at our home getting updates via text message from his brothers who were there. After going through that, we knew we didn't want any more of those nights. Moving closer would be the only way to avoid being at the mercy of airline schedules. There were lots of reasons to move back, but none more important than family. (It certainly is not going to be the midwest's weather!)

larmos for Genealogy and Family History Community

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Friday April 20, 2012 · 9:13 AM PDT

2012/04/20 · 09:13

Genealogy & Family History Community

Leave the blood feuds at home

Archie Lee Garrison, my great grandfather, was born in 1882. He was the son of Miles & Mary Francis Garrison and born in Logan County, Illinois. Miles and Mary had little money, and were not able to provide Arch with any sort of start in life as many farm parents were. They did not own land themselves, so Arch had to leave home to find work from time to time.

As a young, single man he worked on threshing crews across the midwest and grew onions for people in his home town. He kept track of the work he did in a diary I found amongst his son's and my Papaw's things.

Follow me past the orange cloud and I'll tell you about the diary and Arch's work in the fall of 1907.

larmos

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Sunday April 01, 2012 · 12:21 PM PDT

2012/04/01 · 12:21

Genealogy & Family History Community

Leave the blood feuds at home

Well, according to NPR, tomorrow's 1940 census release is like the Super Bowl for genealogists. And, if you're going to have a super bowl, certainly there would be a tailgating party, complete with jello salads. Although, really this is way cooler than the Super Bowl, this happens once a decade!

I thought I'd host one, and we can chat about what and who we think we'll find tomorrow. I also thought I'd do a walkthrough of finding one of the enumeration districts for my people and maybe people can include a few links in the comments that have helped make sense of the whole event.

larmos

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Friday February 03, 2012 · 9:00 AM PST

2012/02/03 · 09:00

The online genealogical community is all abuzz about several big things--two happening this weekend and one now less than 3 months away. I'm talking about RootsTech (a big genealogical/technology conference in its second year, which streams keynotes and other sessions!), the premier of the 3rd season of Who Do You Think You Are? (tonight's episode features Martin Sheen--perhaps we'll gain some insight into Charlie?), and the release of the 1940 census. And, I just heard yesterday that fold3 is making all of its African American records free this month.

This week, in honor of the upcoming release of the census, I decided to talk about the importance and ease of indexing. Of course, when the 1940 census is finally released it won't be indexed at first. However, an army of volunteer indexers will get to work right away, so that finding our ancestors will be just as easy as it is for the 1930 census. I like indexing because I feel like I'm making a positive contribution to genealogical progress and it doesn't cost me money, I can do it in short bursts, and it makes me feel good. Besides, it's EASY, and you kind of feel like you're seeing stuff that others haven't seen yet. Like you're an insider.

Follow me beyond the puffy orange cloud to see what indexing records at family search looks like for yourself.

Genealogy & Family History Community

Leave the blood feuds at home

larmos for Genealogy and Family History Community

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Friday December 09, 2011 · 9:05 AM PST

2011/12/09 · 09:05

I am a self-proclaimed Christmas nut. I love it. I love the music, the lights, the wrapping all of it.

Why do I love Christmas? And what does this have to do with family history? Well, let's just say Christmas (more specifically Christmas trees) are in my blood. Follow me beyond the squiggly cloud for my answer.

larmos for Genealogy and Family History Community

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Friday October 21, 2011 · 9:05 AM PDT

2011/10/21 · 09:05

For the past six months (since GFHC's intro) I've been drinking up information about genealogy. A free trial at ancestry turned into a subscription to the world deluxe--all because I found some stuff about an ancestor. Then I found blogs. Genealogical podcasts, however have quickly become my favorite source, aside from our open threads which started it all. One such podcast in particular has educated me so much about genealogy--the Genealogy Guys Podcast (available in iTunes--over 200 episodes). In 200 episodes they have covered a lot of ground and explored many types of interesting and unique sources.

In one episode a listener had emailed to offer to send digital copies of a 100-plus-year-old cookbook from New York that she had found in Canada (for fun, here's a link to the cookbook she found, it's public domain, published in 1800s, and at google books). It dawned on me then how many of our women relatives may be hard to find in traditional and official records, they exist in the community-created cookbooks. These records not only can place a relative in time and location, but they also can give us a taste of our families' and their neighbors' traditional foods. We can taste how they celebrated at a summer picnic, or fed a hungry family a week-night dinner, or splurged at a holiday party simply by following a recipe.

As the podcast covered, one can use cookbooks and recipes as a source of genealogical information. Old cookbooks are something that one should strive to preserve and pass down when a family member passes, particularly those church or community cookbooks. Additionally, consider what you can do to collect and preserve your family's food traditions. After hearing that podcast episode it was clear to me what my first genealogical writing project was going to be--a cookbook.

larmos for Genealogy and Family History Community

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Friday September 09, 2011 · 9:58 AM PDT

2011/09/09 · 09:58

Sorry this is a little late getting put up, everyone--I had some image problems! I had the hardest time trying to decide what to write about, as a newbie, I don't have a lot of completed stories I can tell yet, I just have lots of tidbits of things. I picture here, a document there. I'm feeling overwhelmed by some stuff I recently collected that should be helping my research along, but instead I'm just kind of stuck...

Apart from one ancestor whose parents traveled the Oregon Trail and settled in Portland for a time, most of my family roots are in the midwest. When you live in the pacific northwest, as I do, that restricts your family research to what you can find online or in family history centers (which I still haven't been brave enough to visit yet).

This summer Mr. larmos, the 3 year old kid and 13 year old dog rented a minivan and drove from the PNW to central Illinois and Tennessee to spend a month visiting our families. The highlights of the drive included a stop in Yellowstone and a very long detour to get across the Missouri (flooding).

While I was visiting I got to scan a mountain of photos, papers, clippings, from both families, visit my dad's hometown, walk a family cemetery, visit the Abe Lincoln Presidential Museum and Library, etc. After the curls I'll share a few of my favorite discoveries with you and talk about how I managed to scan and organize the stuff I found.

larmos for Genealogy and Family History Community

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Friday June 10, 2011 · 1:30 PM PDT

2011/06/10 · 13:30

Thanks to the GHFC my family tree is growing. Genealogy has quickly become a huge time suck. As soon as I tuck my almost 3 year old in bed, I start googling, and searching for dead relatives. I've checked out so many books from the library on genealogy, subscribed to some podcasts, joined ancestry and generally annoyed Mr. larmos with tales of my findings.

larmos for Genealogy and Family History Community

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Friday May 13, 2011 · 9:08 AM PDT

2011/05/13 · 09:08

Last week I mentioned that I had been investigating techniques for the preservation of old family photos. Edwardssl mentioned that she had hoped that someone would write about this, so I said I would.

My motivation in learning about this is to understand how to care for the photos that I will inherit from my parents. I have photos from many different eras, from Civil War, to present and in different formats, from tintypes to card-mounted in the late 1880s, portraits from the early 1900s, snapshots from the 30s and up, disc camera film (remember that experiment! I had one), Polariods, digital etc. --these all need preserving.

I will take my turn in the open threads (and possibly extra diaries) to share what I discover.

larmos

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Friday April 15, 2011 · 11:52 AM PDT

2011/04/15 · 11:52

I'm happy to host this tax day open thread for GFHC. Really this group has motivated me to do a significant amount of work on my own family's history. I already have found things that my long-researching uncle had not (nice to stand on the shoulders of those family historians who hand their work down to us).

My searches have been rewarded with discoveries of documents the family had not seen, stories that we had not known, at least 2 Revolutionary War vets, one pauper, one trip on the Oregon Trail and then around South America to NYC, then to Illinois and many branches's surnames name spelling changes over the course of the 1800s.

I'll introduce you to some of my family after the jump.

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GFHC open thread: fieldnotes from a genealogy seminar

GFHC Open Thread: Finding John F. Stogdell, a Genealogical Success Story

GFHC open thread: Going home

GFHC open thread--A page from my great grandfather's diary

GFHC's 1940 census release tailgating party open thread

GFHC open thread--Indexing at familysearch.org is SO easy

GFHC open thread: Christmas trees and family trees

GFHC Open Thread: Family history, cooking and recipes

GFHC Open Thread, Or What I Did on My Summer Vacation

GHFC Friday open thread: progress report

GFHC Friday Open Thread: Preserving Your Heirloom Family Photos (part 1)

GFHC Friday Open Thread: Meet my family