By Kathleen MacLeod Hanzeli On 23 April 1991, my father in law, Victor E. L. Hanzeli, died.  He was 65.  He was born in Budapest, Hungary on 21 October 1925, an only child.  He lived through the Nazi occupation and the siege of Budapest, which was the second longest of World War II (102 days.)  He had been a seminary student in Vienna, but due to the war he wasn’t able to complete his studies there.  Instead, he returned to Budapest, met my mother in law, escaped (with accompanying stories the likes of which movies are made!) with her and her parents and sister to the West in 1947, moved to New York City via Salzburg and Paris and eventually settled in Bloomington, Indiana, where my husband and his sister were born.  Later they came to Seattle, where they contributed three more children to the good of society.  Victor completed his studies, earning his Ph.D in Romance Languages and Linguistics at Indiana University in Bloomington and became a pr...

By Dorothy Pretare In my prior post, “What Will Happen to Your Family History Stuff”, we identified 1) the types of family history stuff and their possible locations, 2) your hopes and possible options, and 3) some steps to help ensure your hopes/wishes will be honored. One of those steps was to “Organize Your Stuff”.  This step will help you in your research and make it easier to share information with others.  First, each of us may approach tasks in different ways -- think about handing an unorganized grocery list to a few people and watch them shop in an unfamiliar store.  Since there are many ways to organize items, I suggest you check “The Organized Genealogist” on Facebook or “Organize Your Family History” ( https://organizeyourfamilyhistory.com/ ) or Cyndi’s List ( https://www.cyndislist.com/organizing/ ) for her list of links to various methods.  Just select a method you think will work for you and remember you can always change your method of organizin...