"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...

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...

Key in a door; public domain. Courtesy of Picryl. In genealogy and family history, context is "the examination of individual lives within the framework of a broader history" [1]. Context is Key Context is key because  context unlocks meaning in the records we uncover , and leads us to more (and better) records and collections. For instance, finding a land description and platting it is step one, then when the plat is on a map along with the neighbors, we can see who the ancestor knew, worked alongside, attended church with, and who the singles might have married. Learning the geology of the area leads to understanding what crops were grown, and so how the land shaped the daily lives of those living and working on it. Life on the Great Plains is very different from the hollers of Kentucky or the coastal plains of the East. People often migrated in groups, and in general chose to move to an area where their skills and knowledge would be useful.  Context for land acquisitio...

Volunteering Hands, Royalty-free image courtesy of PickPik This is Volunteer Appreciation Month, and we have much to appreciate and celebrate! Officers These are the folks who have stepped up and taken responsibility to support our mission in a multitude of ways. Many of us are part of more than one team, some take on lots of tiny jobs which few notice, unless they don't get done. President, Vice President, Secretary, Treasurer; all are critical to the health of South King County Genealogical Society.  Out-going President Valorie Zimmerman Vice President Alexis Hacker Booker Secretary Melanie Hinds Treasurer Michele Mattoon Board The Board is made up of the officers and the team leaders who choose to take on more responsibility. In particular, MaryLynn Strickland is the voice for the Membership on the Board, along with her work in the Education team. Thanks to all of you! Education Our pre-eminent duty as a society is education , both of our members and the general public. Th...

Courtesy of PicPick Unknown Unknowns US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld once famously said There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know.  The three realms of knowledge which Rumsfeld cited are what we can explore by creating research reports for our ancestors and others such as members of the FAN Club, F amily, Friends, A ssociates and N eighbors. Last Monday, MaryLynn illustrated the value of researching more of the FANs of your ancestors, in The Shot Heard Round The World .  At the beginning of the year, I wrote about my plans for 2025 genealogy research , including research reports for my closest 52 ahnentafals, one every week. I'm a bit behind, and many of the "reports" are just placeholders, I've already found so much. I anticipate that the rest of this year will be full of discoveries of pr...

Courtesy OpenClipArt,  CC0 1.0 Universal The introduction of DNA testing for genealogy was revolutionary. The Sorensen Foundation, NatGeo and other non-profit efforts, along with scientific research yielded books such as Bryan Sykes'  The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry   back in 2001.  But until Family Tree DNA began offering Y and mitochondrial (mt) DNA kits for sale, there was only the crudest information available.  Thanks to Bennett Greenspan of Family Tree DNA, who persisted in finding a way for this important data to be available to genealogists, we now have these wonderful record sets. He and other citizen scientists have persisted; the more we test, the more we know about shared relatives and our deep ancestral history.  The  Human Genome Project helped immensely and scientists of all types continue to deepen our knowledge of not just Y and mitochondrial (mt) DNA, but also autosomal and the more-rare...

In honor of Women's History Month and each of the brave, generous, tenacious women described:  Barb and Bob, Ted and Lola: Loss, war, love and enduring friendship .   The story begins at the meeting place: 4711 Meridian Avenue, Seattle .  4711 Meridian Avenue, Seattle, Courtesy of Google Maps Four families and a l egacy of connection What seems like chance—the convergence of four young lives in one small house in Seattle—created bonds that would last lifetimes. The story of Bob and Barb, Ted and Lola reminds us how seemingly random moments can shape generations, including the author's very existence. The Meeting Place: 4711 Meridian  The story begins in a modest house in Seattle, owned by Mary Shutt, a woman who had already weathered more than her share of grief. Living with her was her daughter Barbara Jean, known to everyone as "Barb," a bright Lincoln High student with her whole life ahead of her. The Foundation: Mary's Journey Mary Reese was born in Indiana i...

Slot Machine by Bing Image Creator 26 Feb 2025 Reassessment This year I've taken on a "52 Ancestors" project , where I'm creating a research report for my 52 closest ancestors in ahnentafel order. Well, it's only the beginning of March, and I'm already behind. On the other hand, while catching up, I noticed an anomaly on my great-grandmother Annie McPherson Cowan's FamilySearch profile ; she had parents reported there with names close to her actual parents' but upon checking the sources, it became obvious that someone had attached her to the wrong parents.  Check Your Lineages* L ots of people are using the FamilySearch Family Tree right now since RootsTech Relatives has been activated through 11 April 2025, so I wanted to be sure to get this fixed right away.  My first step was to leave a note in the Collaborate section after checking the connected records. Evidently I had not filled out great-grandmother Annie's tree on FamilySearch very well ...