Growing Trees As genealogists and family historians, we think of our research as growing trees. In the field of science over the past few decades, there has been an effort to grow more trees, as a way to make up for all the forests that have been cleared as humans have moved in to farm, and build villages, cities and  businesses. Nurturing Forest Webs Recently, research has shown that "monoculture" where only one kind of tree is planted, does not have the same benefits as forests do. As a result, there has been more research to see why there is a difference. In short, what they have found is that a forest works as a system, not a just a group of plants and animals. The similarities to human communities were striking; forests operate as complex systems of interacting parts, including living members and other elements. Such interactions create intricate webs of interdependence, with key processes such as energy flow and nutrient cycling sustaining life for all who live there [1...

"Hopscotching" might not even be a proper verb. For those of you who have forgotten what hopscotch is: all it takes is a stick or piece of chalk to draw a pattern in the dirt or sidewalk. Then you hop through the pattern. Google says: "The goal of hopscotch is to be the first player to successfully hop and jump across the hopscotch board (1-10 squares"—and then a bunch of rules.  "Hope & Megan" CC BY-NC 2.0 The picture above is closer to what I recall. I remember my kids playing it on the driveway. Recently I've been doing something similar in my Ancestry.com® online trees, using "Pro Tools" which costs me $10 per month. Besides the excellent capacity to see the DNA matches of my matches, Pro Tools can also sort their matches, which often gives me wonderful clues about where they fit into my tree.  Sometimes I just want work that requires less brain power and also improves the quality of my tree. For various reasons, I recently had to rec...

La Fenice Opera House from the stage. Pietro Tessarin, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons What Do You Want to Learn? and from Whom?  The 2024-5 SKCGS Speaker Series draws to a close Saturday, June 21, 10–11:30 am; Peggy Clemens Lauritzen, AG, FOGS will present " The Scots-Irish in America ." Register to attend at SKCGS.org . Doors open at 9:30am. Your Education team will meet tomorrow, Tuesday June 10 to plan the 2025-6 year , and would love your guidance. Have you heard a speaker who can take what you thought was a complicated subject, and not only make it understandable, but which leaves you eager to try it out?  How about someone who makes a method sing, instead of dread? Tell us! Write to:  education@skcgs.org Looking Back... In this past educational year, we've heard from both nationally-known speakers, and some of our own.  Our year began with Steve Little, "Today’s Limits Are Tomorrow’s Breakthroughs."...

Getting It Right  [i] From My Bookshelf Getting It Right is a style guide for consistently recording family history, making it easier and more efficient to share information regardless of which family history software programs you use. It provides guidelines for consistently recording information on paper records such as Family Group Sheets and Pedigree Charts, and guidelines for submitting Temple Ordinances for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Names By page 16, I had stopped going into my Ancestry tree to make changes in the way names had been recorded.   Now, instead of Carl R (Charles) Larsen, his name reads Carl Rudolph Larsen, and in the AKA field, the name is Charles. He was baptized as Carl in Norway and began using the name Charles after the family immigrated to the United States. Dates The section on dates contains the clearest explanation of double dating that I have ever read: “All dates from the 25th of March through the 31st of Dec...

Image by  Suzanne Morris  from  Pixabay   In Flanders Fields BY   JOHN MCCRAE In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row,      That mark our place; and in the sky     The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below. We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,     Loved and were loved, and now we lie,         In Flanders fields. Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw     The torch; be yours to hold it high.     If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow         In Flanders fields. Human need to honor The need to remember our dead seems to be part of our human psyche. From prehistoric and Viking burial mounds to Egyptian tombs and Roman coffins, from Victorian mausoleums to battleground burials and monuments, humans from the beginning hav...

Courtesy of Pixabay After a bit of literature review, the natural name of this post had to be  Collaboration on Every Level , because we humans live complicated lives. Our physical existence starts with a collaboration between parents and between a sperm and egg. As we move through life, we rely on family, friends, and institutions such as schools, churches, libraries, clubs, teams, and the larger culture, legal system and governments.  As the out-going president of South King County Genealogical Society, I see how much non-profits rely on others such as genealogy organizations, libraries, archives, historical, cultural, lineage, ethnic groups, as well as state, national and even international groups. When reading the Washington State Genealogical Society Blog , it's easy to see how we all depend on one another. The Washington Presidents Council , for instance, was formed for mutual support as Covid-19 changed our social landscape forever. It has been an important part o...