Elsie Schell Cowan and Thomas Cowan, mid-60s? Gramma and Grampa, as I called them, my grandparents, lived a short walk away from my childhood home. Thomas Cowan and Elsie Schell Cowan were my daddy's parents, I came to understand. My mother called them Mom and Dad too, so it took my child's mind awhile to figure out that they could not be Mom's mother and father! Maybe this was why I was interested in the family history early on - I wanted to understand why I only knew one set of grandparents. Thomas Cowan My grandfather, Tom Cowan, immigrated here from Canada in 1924. He was born in Puslinch township, Wellington County, Ontario, on his family's farm, Juniper Hill Farm. His great-grandfather established the farm in 1832, when he and his family and some neighbors (perhaps relatives) emigrated from Yarrow Feus, Selkirkshire, Scotland to Puslinch in Upper Canada. The house they built still is lived in. Grandpa's parents sold the Century Farm between 1911 and 1921 and

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 only found in th

  Education Everywhere I am an education junkie. What better addiction for a genealogist? I read books, mostly non- fiction, attend lectures and multi-session classes, listen to podcasts, and watch webinars. I  watch lots of webinars. During a recent week I had the privilege of watching three hour-long  video programs on genealogy topics. Descendancy Research The first was a presentation on Descendancy Research delivered to our own South King County  Genealogical Society by a professional genealogist located in Utah. Descendancy research is a  new topic for me. I remember attending a presentation on the topic when I was just beginning  genealogy, but it did not mean much to me then. Now I can see that it may hold the answer to  some problems in my family tree. I began watching in a vacation spot on Maui, but was soon  interrupted by a fire alarm emergency in the building. No problem: I was able to watch the full  recording of the presentation later that day. The program was free to Me

Screenshot shows the default view of the new "Exploring Chronicling America Newspapers" interactive map and timeline [1] Somehow this week I received a copy of the Library of Congress blog, The Signal, in which I found the news about this new feature at Chronicling America. I had not subscribed to this blog before but I certainly will now!  Perhaps you might find it useful as well:    https://blogs.loc.gov/thesignal/ Interactive Map and Timeline This interactive map of newspapers in the Chronicling America digital library will be a tremendous help in finding the newspapers in your neck of the woods.  Just click on a dot near the area in which you are searching and you get a pop-up with the name of the town and newspapers published in that area.  Neat! Clicking on the underlined text will take you directly to the issues where you may browse or, with the title of the available newspapers, you can do a search by name or phrase.  Not all states are included; this is a work in pro

Chance and Skill Intertwine Editor's note: Recently this story was submitted to society@skcgs.groups.io and several of you read it and commented.  It is such a great example of stating the problem, showing the methodology and resolving with that touch of serendipity we all desire, we felt it needed to be presented here. I had an unusual story to share that I thought this group would appreciate. Research Question: Find a Missing Half-Sibling My mother knows of my interest for genealogy and research and mentioned to me in February her friend has been searching for a half-sibling for a long time and maybe I could possibly help her. My mother is 80 and her friend 74. Skimpy Information of a First Marriage My mother's friend Linda shared that her father was married before he married her mother. She discovered this after he died 35 years ago. Her father's brother shared a newspaper clipping of an article written about the wedding with a photo of the couple seated at a table on an

"Exhaustive research" sounds... exhausting! However, a recent case proved to me that such work is not useless busy work, but rather reveals the truth of people's lives. Reasonably exhaustive research is the first element of the Genealogical Proof Standard. My experience trying to answer the question "who was Flora Bell Cox's husband?" led me to find who I thought was the right man, but turned out to be two Ward Farrars! That there were two men only became clear after some exhaustive research on every member of the Ward/Wardie Farrar FAN club -- the FAN club being research of F amily, A ssociates and N eighbors.  The results of this research can be seen on the SKCGS Black-Heritage-Franklin Ancestry.com tree [1] .  Flora Bell Cox is the niece of Benjamin Gaston, one of the Black miners I've been researching. Flora married Wardie shortly before the US entered World War I, and Wardie served in the "Pioneer Infantry" created with White officers a