Musings of a Genealogy-Nut

Tomorrow, Wednesday, June 1, I will be hanging out in the Ancestorville chat room on Facebook hoping there are some other Ancesterville residents interested in heritage scrapping.  If you are on Facebook, contact me and I will direct you to one of the two chats at 3:00 EST and 8:00 EST.

I was in the chat room at Ancestorville one evening on another topic when I mentioned scrapping heritage, genealogy, ancestors, etc.  There were a couple who didn't know what "scrapping" was, let alone heritage scrapping, digital or otherwise.  There were a couple more who knew about scrapping but hadn't linked it to the stories of the ancestors.  I know at least one who has already jumped into it and keeps me informed.  I don't know all the answers, even if the "Mayor" of Ancestorville called me an "expert" but I have links...lots of links.

My suggestion for getting your feet wet is to choose one photo, piece of ephemera, or copy of an important record, scan it, place it loosely on a blank page and tell the story...every detail you know.  I usually type mine on a computer but handwritten is even better.  THEN go looking for backgrounds and decorations.

My partner and his sister

Then and Now pages are fun to do if you have the photos.  Sometimes it is a bit of serendipity to find a pair of photos like these, and sometimes you have to set up the "Now" photo.  There is always Photoshop if you need to do some fancy cutting and pasting.  I was lucky to find this "now" shot but it was a group shot so other people had to be removed by the magic of Photoshop.

My mother with her older brother, my oldest uncle.

Special occasions are great for that little push you might need to tell a particular story.  My mother often talked about her big brother and the anxious times her family had during WWI when he was away fighting.  I am so glad she told me so many stories. 

It amazes me how little my own children absorb of things I tell them so getting the stories and photos together on these pages might help the old stories live on.  It makes up for not having enough time to talk to my children with their busy lives. 

It never ends, but if it did what would we have to do?  I was unable to sleep the other night and decided to find out a bit about my late-ex-husband's grandmother.  I had met her in Savannah in a nursing home while we were on our honeymoon.  She thought her grandson was her son but on genealogy she was quite clear.  She was Mary Mozelle Bourquin.  Family Tree Maker and Ancestry.com to the rescue.  FTM is alsolinked to Genealogy.com and I have a membership so I didn't think a thing of it when her name came up in a Genealogy page in a book The Bourquin Family.  I copied it all down by hand, at least what was important at the moment.  Her birth date, (she was still alive when this book was done in 1936), dates of all of her children, their spouses, and their dates, and number of children as of 1936.  I also had her parents' names and dates.

It was really late by then and I was tired.  I skipped to the first page of the book and copied down the first entry, Jean Baptiste Bourquin, his birth date, that he was a physician, and immigration from Switzerland to South Carolina in 1738. 

Then I went to bed.  Now I cannot get back to that book any way.  I may have to call the Gen Center in Salt Lake City.  I cannot figure out why it doesn't show up any more. 

Second Cousin Once Removed:

My second-cousin-once-removed, Jennifer and me.

 Through matching tree entries in Ancestry.com, Jennifer and I discovered "missing" branches of our families.  Her great-grandmother and my grandfather were siblings.  The children of the two families were so close they even had their photos taken together.

My Uncle Sid at the top, Uncle Lyman on the right.  Their Cousins Hilmar and Naomi are at the left. About 1904 before my aunt and mother were born and younger cousin Doris..

My mother remembered the 7 children being together often...then when Mother was about 7 or 8 they didn't seem to spend any more time together.  Why?  I had not been able to locate information on the internet and that branch of the family tree was just gone.


The story was this:  My grandfather's sister, (Jen's great-grandmother), died in her early 40s leaving her minister husband with 3 young children.  Eventually he remarried but the link between the two families was gone and never was restored...until now!!!


Jen had a photo of the old family home where her great-grandmother and my grandfather were raised.  How precious THAT was! 

I passed on the originals of about 8 photos of her ancestors that belong rightfully to her and her sister.  We exchanged information about our respective branches and our current families.


A lovely afternoon!!!

Since our break-throughs often change the nature of a whole part of our genealogy, they also often make some heritage scrapbook pages in error, or irrelevant.  Rather than destroy those pages, I have made some of them a first part to a two-part double page.

The Meyer Family

JOURNALING - Original Heritage Page: In spite of many hours searching Ancestry web sites, we can find no trace of my grandfather’s sister, Tracy, husband Monty, or children, Hilmar, Doris, and Naomi (not pictured).  At the time of these photos they lived in Kalamazoo, Michigan and exchanged many formal photos with my mother’s family.  They were dear and close cousins.  Where are they?

The Meyer Family-revisited

JOURNALING: Follow-up page created over a year later:  One day, while searching on Ancestry.Com, I noticed a “shaking leaf” by mother’s Cousin Monty’s name.  When I found the matching information, on someone else’s tree I sent her a message.  Monty was her great-grandfather.  She was able to fill in family information.  Monty’s mother, Tracy, my grandfather’s sister, died young and Monty remarried.. That seemed to separate the two families.  I will be meeting this relative in a few weeks and giving her the collection of photos of Monty's family I have saved.

Several sites where you enter your family tree information will alert you when there are matches between your tree and another one on file.  If the site allows messages between tree owners you MIGHT find a long lost cousin, pieces of important information,or location information.

In another case, I am still searching for some information.  I created a pair of pages and will be submitting them here and there hoping to find someone who recognizes the place or people.

This farm tintype from Grandma Anderson's collection

 JOURNALING: This tintype was with my grandmother’s things when she died.  It is very large for a tintype and must have been important.  It could be either a Scarlett farm or an Anderson farm.  Scarlett farms were in Indiana, most in Noble County.  The one Anderson farm was in Ohio.  The number of people could include in-laws and hired hands.  There are 8 children, the husband and wife in the center, an older man and woman (in-laws?), and two older girls who could be servants or relatives.  Since there are no possible cousins, second, or third, this beautiful homestead remains a mysterious link to my ancestry.  We roughly dated it to  the 1890s.

The main people in the photo

JOURNALING:
These appear to be the parents in the photo of the Family Farm.  They do not match any other people in photos or tintypes that I have.  There are some children, one young lady and, what appears to be, 2 housemaids and an older man:  hired hands or some in-laws.  I will keep looking to see if any of them match a known ancestor.

More than anything, I would like to know if this beautiful farmhouse still exists and how it fits into my genealogy.