Making progress on my Genealogy Do-Over

I have been working on my do-over since 2015.  After 2 years and a few months, I have accomplished two very important goals.  I had an overwhelming amount of digital information that needed to be logged and added to my rootsmagic tree.  I am very please that I have complete not only 1 surname, but 2 surnames (out of four).  I'm still working on the remaining files but I also still have a lot of paper not digitized at all.  So sorting and scanning is still in the future.  But I am very pleased with my progress!  

House History pt.1

There are a lot of people looking for the history of the house they live in now or where they grew up. I have also done a bit of looking. My starting knowledge was that my parents bought the property before my brother was born in 1966. The woman who sold the farm was named Shoemaker and lived there with her daughter. The husband had already passed. Our address was 1444 84th Ave.

I believe I have found the correct couple from newspaper accounts. Mr. Cornelius Shoemaker married Hattie Lubbers 23 November 1917. "The newly-weds were the recipients of many beautiful and useful gifts, and will make their home one and one-half miles southeast of this city where they will be at home to their friends after December 15." This would have been before the address was assigned and was probably a rural route. There were of course other articles that helped me narrow it down. And it doesn't say they built the house so maybe it was already there? More to discover.

The Lubbers surname is quite familiar to me since that was the maiden name of my great-grandmother. There are a large number of folks with that surname still in the area but I am not totally sure they are all related. Maybe. To narrow the field down, I am working on the many family group sheets of the family and hopefully I will find a connection.

Do-Over Log Jam

www.catskillarchive.com

One of my first ventures into the trenches of Genealogy in 1997 (about) was meeting with my mother's cousin who had done TONS and TONS of work on our shared line.  She very generously shared by copying all her files that included newspaper clippings and handwritten memories.  So I started as a name collector with that huge file of handwritten family group sheets.  But what I did NOT do was sourcing.  I had no idea where that name or date originated.  I negated the work done by others by not giving credit to the original.

As I go back through those pages plus other collections, I'm looking at a lifetime of work by many as well as record of who came before me.  I'm not a name collector.  Rather I'm honoring the work of my relatives.  The years and years of their efforts (typing, organizing, going to libraries) are worth the hours of effort by me.  Their love of family and history deserves preservation.  What I'm hoping to pass down to my descendants is a well organized record of my work, including names and faces and stories of those who came before,

Solar Eclipse 21 August 2017

 So today the solar eclipse finally happened. I say that because about a week ago, locals figured out they needed special glasses to view the eclipse safely.  And the news said: "Hey, the library has glasses!"  But not ALL libraries did.  So we were bombarded with requests.  (Similar to tax season.)  And the branches that did have glasses and events definitely experienced even MORE disruption, rudeness and lines!

(I had purchased 6 glasses from Amazon about a month ago.  And they were not some of the bogus ones that were being sold either.  And since I had gotten them "early", I didn't purchase them at an inflated price.)

Claire had her Senior Orientation and I had the day off work.  Peter & Eric were both at work but had glasses if they could take time to take a look.  My mother and her husband Lloyd also came over to share in the experience.  It was actually amazing even if it wasn't a total eclipse in Michigan.  Luckily the clouds were not to bad either.  So note to self:  be prepared in 2024!

Why I deleted my Ancestry.com Family Trees

I have had an account with Ancestry.com since Mar 2002, that is 15 years folks.  Some of that time was via a membership and other times not.  My mother did a DNA test through Ancestry.com and she also got one for me, a few months later.  When my mother first got her test results, I was able to see the PUBLIC family trees managed by people who were related to my mother.  A lot of people don't have them but it was nice to have the option to browse DNA matches tree.

A few months later I did my DNA test through Ancestry.com and guess what.  Yep, I couldn't view the family trees from anyone except my own.  When I click on the link, it sends me automatically to a membership screen (see below).  All I wanted to view was a tree that someone created and posted in the public trees.  Why does this require a subscription?  Why does Ancestry think that my research should only be viewed by members?  

Since my DNA results are there, I do still have an account.  But I will not be purchasing a membership anytime soon. Frankly, Ancestry has gotten so huge that even a basic search returns too many results to manage because it includes tons of internet sites as well.  So if you are interested in finding relatives via DNA testing, I would recommend using a different company.

UPDATE: Aug 20th - just found out why my mother could view trees and not me.  Nothing was changed by Ancestry EXCEPT my mother actually bought a membership.  I'm not even sure she knows what that means.  So still would not recommend Ancestry.com DNA.

Found this picture of my family and it made my day!

I was casually looking around for some genealogy stuff, switching between windows, when I needed to go to Family Search.  I have an account, of course, but I never really looked at some of the newer functionality of the site.  But this time when I logged in, it sent me to a photo screen based on a simple tree I had put up awhile ago.  The first picture totally got my attention and it was amazing!!  A cousin I didn't know, had this picture with her family genealogy and I had never seen it or even heard of its existence!!

As soon as I saw this picture, I knew which family.  The young man on the viewers left is my great-grandfather Ben.  The reason I recognized him is because I have a wedding picture of Ben and his bride, Emma, which would only be about 5 years from this photo.

So at this time of the family, the father, Minne had died 5 years before of "lung fever".  The only other direct family to pass away was one of the little girls, Klaaske in 1900.  Since Klaaske passed away from "strophia" (some form of muscle atrophy ), this picture is probably around the time of her death (before or after) in 1900.  The only other picture of the mother, Marie, is when she is much older and her face is shaded by a hat.  But you can see the lower part of her face and it does seem to resemble this picture too.

Now that I'm looking at the picture again, there is a weird blank spot between the boys.  May be this picture was altered?

3 Rules of Genealogy (for beginners)

1st (and easiest) rule of Genealogy : Always start with yourself and work backwards

2nd (harder) rule of Genealogy : Always site your sources so you can find that information again if needed

3rd (hardest) rule of Genealogy : Always site your sources so that ANYONE can find that information again; including yourself when you forget what you meant in rule #2