Image by  Suzanne Morris  from  Pixabay   In Flanders Fields BY   JOHN MCCRAE In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row,      That mark our place; and in the sky     The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below. We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,     Loved and were loved, and now we lie,         In Flanders fields. Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw     The torch; be yours to hold it high.     If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow         In Flanders fields. Human need to honor The need to remember our dead seems to be part of our human psyche. From prehistoric and Viking burial mounds to Egyptian tombs and Roman coffins, from Victorian mausoleums to battleground burials and monuments, humans from the beginning hav...

"All work and no play make Jack a dull boy." I don't mean the technical volumes we rely on to keep us current in our genealogical craft. I mean works of fiction that take us to another time or another world. Some may be biographical or historic fiction; others may be cleverly written mysteries. I may be generalizing too much but I think that genealogists enjoy mysteries; why else do we seek answers for our own family history? Historical fiction and mysteries A relatively new twist in the mystery genre is the genealogist as a main character. Several authors are writing series of books with these story lines. Nathan Dylan Goodwin My introduction to this genre was a few years ago when, as SKCGS newsletter editor, I was offered a complimentary copy of Nathan Dylan Goodwin's   The America Ground .  Since it was his third book, I thought it would be a good idea to read his first two books as well.  I was hooked not only on his books but similar books by other authors. Mort...

Do you have a relative’s Dog Tags in your possession? Can you read the story they tell? Four U.S. Army Dog Tag types were issued during World War II. This set belonged to my father Alex Hacker. They were found in the house of his mother Maude Mayton Hacker in Harriman, TN after she died, by Cousin Sandra “Cookie” Giles Pride. Cookie gave them to me, Alex’s daughter Alexis. Originally this second iteration of WWII U.S. Army tags carried this information: The soldier’s name Soldier’s service/serial number Soldier’s emergency contact information, usually next of kin’s name Street Address  City and state 1941 Heralded New Medical Technology & a Dog Tag Update In November of 1941, tags began including medical information. The set shown above is of this time frame. November 1941 revision tags added space after the service number to include (a) the year of the wearer’s tetanus shot plus (b) their blood type. In 2021, it’s hard for us to appreciate how innovative the inclusion of medic...

diagram from http://www.unaids.org/sites/default/files/sub_landing/files/10_4-Intro-to-triangulation-MEF_0.pdf From Known to Unknown Perhaps you think of geometry when you hear the word triangulation, because "triangulation is the process of determining the location of a point by forming triangles to the point from known points".   [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangulation ].  Data Triangulation Data scientists use the triangulation to describe using data from multiple unrelated sources in a single study, adding reliability to the findings. Is this beginning to sound familiar? We are often urged to search for multiple sources in order to reliably report precise dates, places and relationships in our research. Even within a data source such as a family Bible record of births, deaths, and marriages, if it is evident that one person noted most of the data on a page, it is less reliable than if the data was evidently recorded by many people close to the time of the events...

[1] Exhaustive Research   When researching a difficult ancestor do you ever wonder “have I checked EVERY source that might contain information about this person”? “What could I be missing?” I have good news for you. There is a checklist for that! There are many. If one does not suit your style of research, try another one. A quick Google search brought up 1,750,000,000 results. That is a bit much to deal with. Good Sources for Checklists The Mid-Continent Public Library has a simple one-page list that I have used. [ 2 ] The National Institute for Genealogy offers a similar two-page checklist in a slightly different format. [3] Family Tree Magazine also has a one-page checklist that is quite comprehensive, including wolf-scalp bounties. [4] It does not include a space for the ancestor’s name, and is a PDF so you would have to scan and save it to the ancestor’s file. Roots of Kinship offers a complex Excel-based checklist that is incredibly comprehensive, and useful if you want ...

The Andersons of Langbro Pursued the American Dream: “Go West, young man!” Axel Ludwig Anderson and Anna Nilsdotter; photo courtesy Jeanne Rollberg by Jeanne Rollberg "A.L. ANDERSON, one of the prosperous husbandmen of Klickitat County, belongs to that great body of foreign-born population without whom the industrial and natural resources of the United States would be in their infancy. He is a native of the kingdom of Sweden, born November 10, 1845.” Thus a State of Washington historian described Axel Ludwig Anderson in a book published in 1893 in Chicago. Two of Axel’s Anderson’s brothers likewise left Sweden in the 1860s and 1870s after seven siblings and their parents, Pehr and Christina Ericsson Andersson, had died. Hilder Yngve Anderson, born July 17, 1848, and Oscar Reinhold Anderson, born April 1, 1850, struck out for America at a time when the United States was advertising opportunities in railroading and farming to Scandinavians seeking adventure and prosperity. From the ...

Repeated from January, 2021 with April update Public Hearing: Washington State Attorney General's Office January 19, 2021, I attended a public hearing sponsored by the Office of Washington State Attorney General, Bob Ferguson, requesting public testimony regarding the proposal by the Public Buildings Reform Board to close the National Archives and Records Administration facility in Seattle, move the records to either California or Missouri, and sell the building. The hearing was held virtually via Zoom. There was a limit of 200 people and the Attorney General’s Office were stunned by the number of people who attempted to join the call. If we were not testifying, we were asked to watch the call on TV W, as they could not accommodate all who wanted to join. Representatives of the Seattle Genealogical Society, the Orcas Island Society, and Sue Sheldon representing the Mason County Society had already testified, and I did not feel I had anything significant to add, so I moved over to T...