Any of you ever work on your family genealogy?

[andyofne]

I've been completely absorbed in ferreting out my family tree. It's all pretty cool but also horribly frustrating.

Makes me sad that I didn't get to know my grand parents better.

[Tempus]

My step-father was a genealogy buff and it occupied a great deal of his time, but it also lead to lots of travel and interesting discoveries. I think I've told you that I took a look into my family history but didn't get too far before the necessity of travel put an end to it.

[andyofne]

Times are changing, thankfully, and a lot of records are being digitized and made available. Unfortunately, there's usually a subscription cost to incur in order to access those records.

I've been studying up on a couple genealogy forums (message boards as they call them) and it doesn't surprise me to see old timers poo-pooing those of us who are 'new' to the endeavor and are spending time doing research on line.

According to some of the old timers, you can't call yourself a genealogist unless you've traveled across the country and spent days or weeks holding a magnifying glass over a moldy ancient tome (or at least peering into a microfiche viewer in some dark state archive building).

I've purchased short term subscriptions to ancestry.com, footnote.com, and newpaperarchive.com (I suspect the same company owns all three).

On footnote, I discovered over 100 pages of my great, great, great grandfather's civil war era military records (mostly related to his pension requests after 1890). On one hand written page he had detailed a lot of information about his family history along with that of his wife. Pretty cool stuff.

In the newspaperarchive.com database, I have found hits on another branch of the family virtually ever year from 1829 to 1920. Some of it is simply a name and address but it often lists an occupation or has some tidbit about an accident or event.

The last time I tried the "online research" method was 2003 and the state of the online archives was really shitty so I have been pleasantly surprised by what I've found thus far; although there are still major gaps and plentyof missing pieces for me to find.

I can clearly see that in some cases the only way to get information is to find someone willing to help who lives in a particular place or to go there myself (unlikely!).

I've sent off for some birth, death and military records from various agencies (all charge a fee, of course). So I'm hoping to find some more useful info from those sources.

[Tempus]

That's cool. I'm glad to hear that these services have gotten it together a bit. You found a lot more info than I was able to.

[hoser]

I chased my family tree a few years ago, found a great grandfather's signature in a Ship's Manifest from Ellis Island in NYC, he traveled here in 1904.

Coincidently enough, talking about it with you a few weeks back Andrew made me dig up some old phone numbers and I managed to spend a few hours with a cousin today, that I haven't seen or talked to in 12 years. He lives in Arizona and was in NYC on business. He was formerly the personal chef for Ron Perlman, Robert Dinero, he mentioned a few other tools. Now he's like a Major Domo, he is an Estate manager for a retired billionaire dot.com honcho who made all his money early on by brokering domain names.


Crikey, it went very well

[andyofne]

Originally Posted by hoser

I chased my family tree a few years ago, found a great grandfather's signature in a Ship's Manifest from Ellis Island in NYC, he traveled here in 1904.

Coincidently enough, talking about it with you a few weeks back Andrew made me dig up some old phone numbers and I managed to spend a few hours with a cousin today, that I haven't seen or talked to in 12 years. He lives in Arizona and was in NYC on business. He was formerly the personal chef for Ron Perlman, Robert Dinero, he mentioned a few other tools. Now he's like a Major Domo, he is an Estate manager for a retired billionaire dot.com honcho who made all his money early on by brokering domain names.


Crikey, it went very well

Here is a document I found using footnote.com. It is one page out of 110 pages of my great, great grandfather's civil war pension records.

There is a lot of information on this page, but it's hard to decipher.

It is amazing to have a printed copy of this document, a sample of his handwriting and a record of names and birth dates that no one else in my family has ever seen.

[hoser]

That's cool

[andyofne]

Yeah, I thought so. I eventually managed to puzzle it all out. At first glance, it doesn't make a lot of sense. Well, maybe even after a third long, hard look even... but anyway...

[Tempus]

That's way cool.

[andyofne]

Someone posted this on a genealogy forum. I don't know whether or not they were trolling for another response or if it's real... either way, sounds like a great family:

I have a situation where someone married into my family and then when the mother died he married his step-daughter. How do I reflect this situation without having to key in this person twice?