Casting Your Net Fishermen in a Rowboat Throwing the Net by  fabianoshow   How many family trees have you started? I tend to want everyone together in one tree, but there are lots of reasons to have separate ones. My latest project is working on a tree for our grandson which was started by his Goldsmith grandfather. Since there will be little to no overlap between Steve's Eastern European Jewish tree and mine, it seemed simplest and most logical to just work in his tree, with his DNA matches. It's a fresh challenge and quite exciting so far. I wrote before about digging up records for the base of the tree, which has worked well.  When Steve's AncestryDNA results came in, it was fun to place all the closer cousins in the tree. Just the usual challenges finding all the living people; thank goodness for good hints including other people's trees with records. I never copy anyone's tree; instead I call up the records and analyze those, then enter the data directly from ...

 Time Horizon   Ttime Horizon by   nicola2002f (pixabay.com)   How far do you see into your future? It turns out, not only does that vary widely, but it makes a huge difference in how we live our lives. The same was true of our ancestors, but the reason I'm writing about this is that it governs how we choose to do our work. When I was young, I was interested in knowing more about my family history, but did not have the know-how. These days, many aspects are easier, but it seems like I'm running out of time. And that's OK, because it helps to focus. For more about this, listen to The Best Years of Your Life , part of the Hidden Brain podcast.  So how can I do ALL the THINGS?  I think the best way to focus is to first, listen to my heart. What do I truly want to investigate, do for someone, or even finish up? So it starts with a question, which can then become a plan . It is important to me to write it down, so even if there is inter...

  DID YOU INHERIT A FAMILY BIBLE? Surprises! My parents had an interesting way of getting rid of “things” as they aged. I lived with my family in the Puget Sound area. My parents lived in eastern Washington, so when they came to visit us, it was usually several days, or at least overnight. The first thing I remember “finding” was an unfinished piece of needlepoint that I remembered hanging around my parents’ home for years. I recognized the box as soon as I saw it under the bed in the guest room. The next time I talked with my Mother, I asked her about it, but a funny thing, she knew nothing about what I was talking about. I learned to do needlepoint and finished the piece. My husband refinished an old dressing table bench, which had also come from my parents’  home, and we mounted the needlepoint.   The bench now resides in my son’s home. I did not leave it as a “surprise” for him to find. The next “surprise” I found in my ...

Personal Experiences Hurricane David Savannah GA, Sept 4, 1979 Sometimes we are able to live through a disastrous storm and be able to find pleasant memories about it years later. September 4, 1979, Hurricane David made landfall at Savannah, Georgia, after a devastating path through the Caribbean. My husband, son and I were living in there in a row house near the historic downtown area.  My husband was a native of Savannah so he knew how to prepare for the storm. I had grown up in eastern Montana and Wyoming so I had no experience with hurricane storm patterns. Row Houses Early that day, as the rain was already filling the storm drains and causing street flooding several inches deep, we hurried to the grocery store and got chicken and vegetables, other necessary foods and some presto logs to use in our fireplace.  Then it was home again so I could start cooking meals that could be heated in the fireplace. I finished the stove cooking just a few minutes before we lost electrici...