Healing the Rift of a Century A cousin reached out to me last week on FindAGrave.com , because I had posted pictures to her grandfather's memorial.  Find a Grave, database and images ( https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/38737708/rolland_stewart-wade : accessed August 23, 2024), memorial page for Rolland Stewart Wade (14 Jun 1898–3 Dec 1962), {{FindAGrave|38737708}}, citing Blue Mountain Memorial Gardens, College Place, Walla Walla County, Washington, USA; Maintained by Blue Mountain Memorial Gardens (contributor 47135041). She had never known her grandfather or anyone from his side of the family, for reasons her father had never wanted to discuss. But now that her parents have passed on, she felt that she was missing a piece of her history, and decided to go looking for some answers. Rolland Wade Her grandfather, Rolland Wade (1898-1962), was an older brother of my great-grandmother, Olive Wade Swenson, whom I was fortunate enough to know as a child. I told her what I knew of Roll...

 Summer is a great time to travel to the old home places and distant repositories. What's your first step?  Create Your Plan The longer your trip and farther away your destination, the more preparation you will need. Are passport, visa, special vaccinations required? Early on, write away for maps; some are available for free but arrive by mail; good local maps will help in the planning process. How about connections with researchers in the localities you will visit? Join some local societies, and start conversations with the local history groups, libraries, colleges, courthouses, archives and museums. Create a spreadsheet or table to gather names, contact information, closed dates, hours of operation. Before you leave, print your itinerary and the info sheet. Leave a copy at home with friends and family, too.  Prepare short biographies of ancestors who lived locally to leave in vertical files in libraries and archives. Ensure that each bio has your contact information; if...

 Go There! Generated by BingImageCreator AI 'April 19, 2024 How times have changed in family history research! Traveling to your family's homeplace or writing letters to genealogy or historical societies, courthouses, local libraries and archives used to be the first step in beginning family history if there were no published books or periodicals we could consult.  Later, we had access to microfilm, which required traveling to where that microfilm was. Now, our first step is often to see what's online at Ancestry.com, other pay sites, and free sites such as FamilySearch.org . But as we know, no matter how fast these services add new databases, only a small percentage of records are or will ever be online.  Why Travel? Beyond records, though, why should we travel to gather our family history? Two reasons: everywhere is different, and only by going there can we experience that. Reading about the history, geology and social forces that shaped the community is one excellent w...

Generated with AI (Microsoft Bing Image Creator) ∙ January 7, 2024 at 12:54 PM Jones Family Tree: Sanford Talbert Jones and Ethelyn Stephens At the end of 2023, I had a wonderful surprise and wrote about it here: Piggy-back . Antoinette has been generous, sharing family photos and history, which really led to breakthroughs in my son-in-law Jason's tree. Researching families outside of my "own" has been enriching, and I learned so much researching the family of  Ethelyn Stephens, Jason's great-grandmother. She married Sanford Talbert Jones the first, who was a laborer for the City of Los Angeles at the end of his life. To the right is a part of a photo of their son Sanford II (in the middle) in an old fire truck, from a great article about Black firefighters in Los Angeles. [1]  Sanford Talbert Jones II and Ruby Alexander Sanford carried on his father's experience in working for LA city. He  married Ruby Alexander who was born in Louisiana, possibly in New Orlea...

Generated by Bing Image Creator In your research experience have you been contacted by someone who had a picture or other item that belonged to your family and they wanted to give it to you? If it was something you have sought for years, weren't you thrilled to finally have it and so grateful for the person who sent it to you? Maybe you have been on the other side, instrumental in connecting an orphaned heirloom with its family. Didn't it feel great to make that connection? I've had it happen a few times and I always feel so satisfied when I succeed.  Several years ago I was researching the history of photography for a presentation I was doing for the society. I needed examples of antique photos because I didn't have very many in my own family. I went to antique stores and shopped on Ebay for good examples of very early photography. When people found a stray photo in their collections that they didn't want, they offered them to me for my use. Making Trans-Continenta...

It's a blustery Autumn day as you wait with your friends for the morning school bus. You've tried to give extra care to your appearance today and your hair is just not at its best. Maybe you should have gotten a haircut last week--or maybe you shouldn't have gotten a haircut last week. On top of that, acne has erupted on your face and your favorite shirt didn't make it through the wash this week.  Of course. . . It's School Picture Day! Funny that decades later I remember that Freshman year picture day so well.  My only consolation was that most of us had similar experiences and a couple of months after the yearbook came out, no one remembered what you looked like the previous year anyway.   Wouldn't you love to find your parents or grandparents in a record of their school years? Who knew that school yearbooks would become another valuable resource for genealogical research? Use yearbooks:  to prove family relationships  to establish time and location ...

North Idaho miners c. 1895 ML Strickland files Wyatt Earp & Dodge City Peace Commission 1883 Online image As you are getting ready to write some of your family history, (and you are getting ready to do that, aren't you?), you are probably looking through old photos for inspiration.   Images add interest to the narrative of your story  Images can confirm dates, such as those on gravestones Family photos help confirm relationships Photos can establish time and place for elusive ancestors But, sometimes you need some help identifying people, places and/or times. This is when a reverse image search may be just the tool you need. What is a reverse image search?   A reverse image search is an online content-based image retrieval technique (CBIR) that uses algorithms to match a sample image with one(s) online. Matching an online image may help you identify people by dating something else in the photo such as a car or building.   Reverse image searching has bee...