Genea-what Dictionary

If it hasn't been used already, Genea-buddy. A person or persons who researches with you. May be a person who mutually helps you or maybe a person who goes with you to a repository to do their own research.
Oh, how I miss my genea-buddies since I moved out of state. We used to road trip to various repositories regularly. I am on blogging hiatus, but will blog this topic after I come back.

See SNGF on Genea-Musings Saturday, March 19, 2011.

Who Do I Blame?

Last Saturday, Randy Seaver posted his SNGF post Who's To Blame.

Hey geneaphiles - it's Saturday Night, time for more Genealogy Fun for all Genea-Musing readers.

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (and we need more of you to do this, otherwise it may end...), is to:

1) Read Brenda Joyce Jerome's post Who or What Do You Blame? on the Western Kentucky Genealogy blog. She asks these questions:

* Can you identify person or event that started you on this search for family information?

* Did you pick up researching where a relative had left off?

* Did your interest stem from your child's school project on genealogy?

* If you have been researching many years, it may be hard to pinpoint one reason for this journey.

2) Write your responses on your own blog, in a comment to this blog post, or in a note or comment on Facebook.



Below you will find an excerpt from my 'book'. It's not the first chapter, but is the first chapter that I wrote almost seven years ago.


Written December 2003:

The story behind this picture is one of several reasons that I chose to start studying genealogy. This picture was taken at Jerome's & Diana's (my son & daughter-in-law) wedding. The story behind the picture goes back of course to the planning of their wedding. Diana's father, Ray was deceased when Diana & Jerome married. I can tell Diana loved her father so much, she spoke of him often. So to honor Ray, Diana chose to walk down the aisle alone and to be not given away by a living person. Also as a tribute to Ray, along with all the other deceased relatives who couldn't come to the wedding in body, Diana decided to have a table of pictures. The pictures were of those folks to show how many were attending in spirit. The only living souls' pictures on the table were those of Diana and Jerome when they were younger.

I'm sure I heard of the plan to do this table tribute before that, but on 24 March prior to the wedding is when I can put a date to the plan of this table. I called family members to tell them to "bring pictures" and explained to them why. Among the calls I made were to my sister in law, YSB (Vonnie). During that conversation, Vonnie gave me a definition for this tribute. She said it's called libation and was derived from Swahili. I was so thrilled for the tribute to have a name, I had to go home and look up this word, libation.

Essentially the meaning of the word in context of the picture was spelling out the act of libation that I remember seeing in old movies and also on the streets of Youngstown as I grew up. The scene in the old movies would go something like this. A bunch of drunks would stand around as they were drinking a bottle of their favorite beverage. They would pour out a bit of the liquid; usually before they took the first sip themselves. And they would do so to commemorate those who were not in attendance; most often because they were deceased. I'm sure the original meaning was not for bunches of drunks to pay this tribute. As I looked at the definition, there were other meanings. Some religious in nature, as well as secular. As for the folks in Youngstown, they created their own meaning. Added to those who were deceased were those who were at that time in Viet Nam or those who were incarcerated.

As I start to write my personal & family history, you can see that I'm starting in the middle or you might even say near the end. Since the wedding of Diana & Jerome was only a year and a half ago, and there's no telling how much longer, I'm going to live… Farther along in the story, I'll share with you other reasons my love for genealogy is still going strong after a year and a half. Heck I can remember when I didn't even know how to spell the word, somehow I was trying to stick another o in it; a common misspelling of genealogy is geneology. And you know what? I didn't want to start the story with "I was born…" or "Once upon a time…". That's boring. I want this story to be one that will hopefully live on. And those who know me know that I love to tell stories.

As I reread this story, I see that the part about my great grandparents, Smith and Pinky are missing. All my life, I had known my grandmother Clara and had seen younger pics of her. I didn't know her husband but had seen a picture of him. I had never seen this picture of his parents.

Here is an excerpt from my blog, Sunday, January 17, 2010.

They are my favorites! When I first saw their photograph almost eight years ago, I said "Who are these people? WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE? WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?" And wondered why I had never seen this picture before. That was the beginning for me. Almost eight years of finding more about my folks and finding more about myself that I didn't know before.

Further explanation goes that this is among the photos that were sent. Matter of fact, my cousin, FHNM (Fran) sent the Smith & Pinky photo about a week ahead even though she was coming to the wedding herself. I had been bitten by the bug in March; expecting that I would have descendants one day. The day I got that photo in the mail was THE day that I got the fever. If you take a look at the libation table photo, you can hardly tell, but Smith & Pinky are in the center back of the photos on the table.

Now, I blame my determination for finding the answer to My Simon and determination to write these stories; mine and my ancestors', to keep me on the genealogy path.

Thank you, Brenda, for providing the idea for last week's SNGF! And thanks to Randy for passing it forward!

Stay tuned for Part II.

I know, today is Monday

From Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings

Hey, genealogy readers and champions - it's Saturday Night - time for more Genealogy Fun!

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to:

1) Pick one of your ancestral lines - any one - patrilineal, matrilineal, zigzag, from a famous ancestor, etc. Pick a long one if you can.

2) Tell us which position in the birth order that your ancestor was in each generation. For example "third child, first son." Also list how many children were born to these parents.

3) Share your Birth Order work with us on your own blog post, in a comment to this blog post, in a comment on Facebook, etc.

Mine is short and sweet:

1. Me (195? - ) only child of Pinkie Ann HARGROVE & Clovis Lee DRAPER
2. Clovis Lee DRAPER (1926 - 2000) fifth child, of six sons of Ella Lee BRIMMER and John Pink DRAPER 6 boys, 0 girls (John had 1 boy and 5 daughters from his first marriage)
3. Ella Lee BRIMMER (1890 - 1969) first child, one of three daughters born of Florence STEWART and Sing BRIMMER, 3 boys and 3 girls
4. Florence STEWART (1873 - bet 1900 & 1910), one of one children born of Ella STEWART and father not found
5. Ella STEWART (1855/6 - unknown) oldest child, one of five children born of Pollie STEWART and father not found, 4 girls and 1 boy
6. Pollie STEWART (1840 - unknown)

Please visit Randy's blog at http://www.geneamusings.com/

It's Saturday Night

From Randy Seaver's Geneamusings:

Hey genealogy connoisseurs, it's Saturday Night, time for more Genealogy Fun!!
Your mission, if you decide to accept it, is:

1. Go to the Wayback Machine at http://www.archive.org/ (it's right in the middle of the web page)

2. Enter the URL (web address) of your first genealogy blog or website into the search field. [If you don't have a blog or website, then enter your favorite blog or website.]

3. Tell us about it in your own blog post, in a comment to this blog post, or in a comment on Facebook. Show us the image of your web page if you can.

I checked back in March to see if my blog was on the Internet Archives yet. It wasn't then and isn't there yet. I am not anxious on this one because I guess it will eventually get there.

And if you look at my next most recent article, maybe you'll see some more to consider when you visit the Wayback.

It's Saturday Night!

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to:

1) Open your genealogy software or family tree program of choice and make yourself the highlighted person.

2) Find out how to create a Calendar to show birthdays and/or anniversaries of yourself and all of your ancestors (or all relatives, or all persons - your choice!). The "Help" button is your friend here!!! It can be done in all of the current software programs.

3) Create your calendar. Pretty it up if you want. Save it. Can you show us a page from your calendar - say January 2010?

4) Which of your ancestors (or relatives, or descendants - your choice!), if any, were born on 30 January?

Have fun with this. How can you use this information during the coming year?

Here's a SNGF activity I get to participate in. Why? Because I already have it done. Yeah! Welllll, I did have to make a screen shot but the calendar was done. I noticed that Legacy did not have a way to include the death dates. It's OK, there are only about twenty of them already done out of 112. About 25 are still living. The other 67? About fifteen are death dates that I know but don't have entered and the other fifty or so still have to be researched. But of course, that is the reason for my focus on ancestors day. I decided to call it Celebrating Ancestors. Again, I got the idea from Michael Neill Use their Birthdays and decided to take it a step farther.


You can see here that I have two birthdays and one anniversary. Not showing are two death dates in January. I penned them in and they show up here in red text for visibility. That completes January except for Elizabeth's death in January. I don't know the date of her death. It's on my list of research to do next time I go back to OGS.

How can you use this information during the coming year?

To sum it up, I have those fifty or so death dates to do, about twenty birth dates that I have no clue and about 85 marriage dates I don't know. WOW! When you look at those numbers like that, maybe I'm being too ambitious to complete this birthday thing this year. I already wrote when I realized in my last post that I couldn't do more filing until I rearranged a little bit and I couldn't do the Celebrating Ancestors thing until I did more filing. OK. I'll just do the best I can. Filing, is after all, the priority for this year along with identifying brick walls. See? This stuff is in my head but not documented.