Generated with Bing Image Creator AI, 21 September 2024 A recent article which I can't seem to find again got me thinking, mostly about the title, which was something close to " coming together in order to disengage ." As I recall, it might have been about dissipating political tensions post-election. But it got me thinking about why we gather together in genealogy and historical societies and associated groups. Research and writing can be lonely. Just yesterday I spent hours imaging and downloading the 100+ pages of my third-great-grandfather's Revolutionary War pension application. Both my son and husband clearly didn't understand why I bothered! But I bet all our readers here DO understand, and maybe that is why we gather so often, even just to chat with other researchers.  I found one article on the web about children's education which says, Children & adults must first feel safe in order to feel connected enough to learn. The adult’s job  is to keep ...

Dealing with the lack of records is one thing, but how do you confront multiple records of crimes such as robbery, horrors visited upon the indigenous, child abuse, rape, pogroms, murders, enslavement, massacres, genocides, and other disasters? I think we all encounter family history that is difficult to handle.  The discovery of a child rape left my mother, sister and me sobbing as we read the court records of what my mother's father had done.   Years ago, when I  found a record indicating that a probable direct ancestor owned other human beings as slaves, my response was simple. I stopped researching for a while.  Eventually I decided that I needed to learn more about the institution of slavery in the US, the records I would find, and the harder part; doing the work to document the enslaved people and their descendancies. In this way, descendants of enslavers can help repair some of the historical damage, because many of the records which can help descendants are o...

Auburn, Washington  February 2019 Not that anyone wants to be reminded of what is outside your window this weekend, but disasters of one kind or another have impact on our family life.  Thomas MacEntee has graciously shared his   10 Ways to Document Disasters in Genealogy Research How did our ancestors persevere and survive in the face of disaster - natural, manmade and financial - so that we could be here today to tell their stories? Learn how to not only locate your ancestors amidst the rubble but give voice to their stories. 1.  Research historical newspapers. Not every disaster was headline news; read small town “gossip” or “goings on” columns to find more information. And certain misfortunes might not be mentioned so as to not embarrass a family or other reasons. Read between the lines and connect the dots. 2.  Conduct cluster and collateral searches. Using census and other records, look for a spike in deaths in certain locations or on certain dates....

Part II—Fire Spreads Death in Franklin Mine By MaryLynn Strickland By 1894 the miners of Franklin were working side by side—people who had migrated from Pennsylvania and Ohio, immigrants from Wales and England, single young Italian men hoping to earn enough money to bring their families to the US and black miners who had been “imported” from the mid-West in 1891.   Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper articles in 1894 related stories of miners striking throughout the United States.  Miners in Roslyn, Washington, had become divided over a wage reduction.  The August 18 paper reported that black miners had accepted the reduction; white miners were holding out and there was talk of moving black miners from Franklin to Roslyn.  Other news of the world dominated the front page of each issue. Picture property of Black Diamond Museum, permission granted for this purpose But “Stifled by Smoke” was the headline on the front page of the August 25, 1894, is...