Follow that Genealogy Hunch!

Sometimes you should follow your genealogy hunches. My definition of a genealogy hunch is when many of the facts don't fit your ancestor trail, although a few do, but you just have that funny feeling this might be your family tree.

I'm not saying you automatically claim the family as yours. The trick is to do more research on that specific person or family you found, and see if you can prove or disprove your genealogy hunch about them.

As an example, recently I took up a hunt for a branch of my King family that I had put on hold several years ago. The family in question consisted of father Thomas born circa 1835 in Upper Canada (present day Ontario), a wife born in England and seven children all born in Ontario between circa 1859 and 1869. The last sighting of this ancestral branch of my family tree was in 1871.

I had never been able to find them in the 1881 Canadian census or the 1880 American census, or any later genealogy records. I searched land records, vital statistics (births, marriages, deaths) and census records. The problem of finding them was made even more challenging due to the common surname KING and the common first names of the children - James, Elizabeth, Thomas and so on. Often there were several individuals who might or might not be the correct ancestor.

This weekend I pulled out the old genealogy notes and went back at it. This time I determined that I would find them in 1880/1881 census, that I would stick to that census until something turned up. Hours later and still nothing. I was becoming increasingly frustrated.

I used both FamilySearch.org and Ancestry.com to hunt in the USA 1880 census and only FamilySearch.org for the 1881 Canadian census. I used both because each website has a different type of search engine. I used wildcards. I used soundex. I broadened my search and tried various methods - no first name, just an approximate year of birth and birth location. I tried each child (no parents). I tried a child with a father's name. A child with only a mother's name. I used approximate dates of birth and locations of birth with no first or last name. No search trick that I know turned up the family.

But I had noticed a family living in Michigan which was very tantalizing. The names of husband and wife and all the children fit with my missing family. The years of birth were also correct. But the problem was the birth locations! The father Thomas King gave his place of birth as New York instead of Ontario. He also said his parents were both born in New York where my Thomas' parents were both born in England. His wife said she was born in Ohio not England and the children's births were given as Ohio and Michigan. I checked the image in case the transcript was in error. It clearly showed the locations transcribed. But I kept coming back to that family, and was unable to discard them.

Finally I took my own advice and began tracking that family, following them forward in the Michigan census for 1900, and having a hunt on the Pilot FamilySearch.org website in the Michigan Vital Statistics. Bingo!

The 1900 Michigan census showed Thomas as being born in "Canada Eng" (which is English speaking Canada, generally Ontario), father and mother born England but with a different wife. That threw me but I turned to the Michigan Vital Statistics on FamilySearch.org and quickly found the marriages of several of the children of Thomas and his wife. Since her maiden name (Daville) was given in those records, I knew I had the right family. The next piece of the puzzle was the find of Thomas marrying to a second wife just before that 1900 census was taken. In his marriage record his father's and mother's names were given and they were the correct parents.

I spent an enjoyable evening tracing Thomas and his family in Michigan, and was even able to find some obituaries of some of his grand-children. What a lucky break but it may not have happened had I not ignored the glaring inconsistencies in those birth locations in the 1880 census. Following my genealogy hunch, and tracing the family I thought might be the right one proved to be the key. Finding those primary source records that proved the family to be the family branch of my ancestor tree was what was required and with a few more hours of research it all fell into place.

Dnyastree launches Surname Map for Canada

The following press release was sent to Olive Tree Genealogy by Dnyastree. I took a look and really enjoyed their new Surname Map for Canada. There's also one for USA and other locations.

New York, March 5, 2009 – Family network dynastree just launched the Canadian version of its famous Surname Maps. The free tool that shows the surname distribution of more than 600,000 Canadian last names is the perfect companion for surname research.

The Canadian surnames, mostly of English and French origin, can be searched for under http://www.dynastree.ca. The distribution among the provinces is shown in a coloured map,the user can choose from relative or absolute distribution. With the help of dynastree’s tool,the origin of surnames can be researched quickly and easily.

Dynastree is a fast-growing family network to build a family tree. Once the family tree is started, relatives can be invited directly to add knowledge and help to extend its reach.Together, family members can enter information on other relatives and ancestors. The communication with relatives and friends can be established and carried on even if the connection had been lost or if they live far away.

Ancestor Name Changes

I still remember the frustration I felt many years ago trying to find the origins and ancestry of my Loyalist ancestor Isaac Vollick.

I had diligently followed all the standard genealogy research procedures. I had traced backwards (with much trial and tribulation but that's another story) along my father's lines until I reached Isaac, a Loyalist with Butler's Rangers.

I had census records, land records, Upper Canada land petitions and other documented facts. I knew Isaac had been a private in Butler's Rangers 1777-1782. With much slogging through various microfilm I had found records of his enlistment years. The Loyalist and early Ontario records are sparse so it was a challenging process but over the course of 3 years I learned quite a bit about Isaac.

He settled in the Niagara area of Upper Canada (Ontario) with his wife Mary and at least 10 children. His petitions for land grants as a Loyalist contained much detail. Mary's husband, Isaac, was imprisoned three times by the Americans for his loyalty to the British King. After Isaac joined Butler's Rangers and fled to Canada, Mary was left with ten children, six of them small.

Mary continued to aid the British, and in 1779 she and the children were taken from their home at North River, by American patriots. Their home was burned, Mary and the children were marched 80 miles north through the forest and left in destitute circumstances. Mary and family made their way to Canada and reached Montreal by July of 1779. They received food rations, lodging and blankets until 1782 when they settled in the Niagara area as impoverished Loyalists.

All of this wonderful information was important as I then knew that Isaac and family had lived in New York. But I could not find any evidence of anyone with the surname Vollick in New York before or during the American Revolution!

I knew that one of Isaac's sons used the surname Follick but that was just a slightly different spelling, the phonetic representation of the name Vollick. I knew there were alternate spellings - Volk, Vollic, Valick etc. But still no luck finding Isaac or even any evidence of his last name.

Then one tiny clue jumped out - on the pay list of Captain William Caldwell's Company of Butler's Rangers 24 Dec. 1777 to 24 Oct. 1778 I found a listing for Isaac Volkenburg But no Isaac Volkenburg was found on the roster of Captain Caldwell's company, only Isaac Vollick. It suddenly occured to me that Volkenburg could be abbreviated to Volk (which was one of the alternate spellings for Isaac Vollick's surname that I had found)

Then serendipity lent a hand. This was back in the days before the Internet made our genealogy lives so much easier and faster, and I had been sending in queries to various genealogical publications in hopes of connecting with someone else searching the same family. Bingo! A letter from a woman in the Niagara Falls area changed everything.

She explained that my Isaac Vollick had in fact been born in Schoharie New York as the illegitimate son of Isaac Van Valkenburg and Maria Bradt. The Van Valkenbug family was a well researched Dutch line who had settled in New Amsterdam (New York City) and Albany area in the early 1600s. Apparently my Isaac had shortened his name while in Butler's Rangers to Valk which became recorded as Vollick and other spellings.

Further research confirmed this story and his baptismal record was soon found. Sponsors at Isaac's 1732 baptism in the High and Low Dutch Church in Schoharie were Isaac and Lydia Falkenburg [sic. should be Van Valkenburg] his paternal grandparents.

These two seemingly small acts (finding the pay list for a man with a similar name to Isaac Vollick the Loyalist, and connnecting with another researcher) proved to be huge, as confirming that Vollick had been Van Valkenburg led me down many other research paths and finding my ancestors back several more generations to the early 1600s. It also led to the discovery that I had a Mohawk ancestor and of course that led to even more exciting genealogy finds, as well as writing a book called The Van Slyke Family in America.....

So if you have a brick wall ancestor my advice is to think outside the box and don't dismiss the possibility that the surname you are looking for might have been something entirely different!

DNA Genealogy - Choosing DNA Groups to Join

When my husband and I sent for our Y-DNA Kits from Ancestry.com and Family Tree DNA, we knew we had to choose DNA groups to join.

My Y-DNA kit was to be taken by my brother so that we could find out about our McGinnis male ancestors, while my husband's was for himself for his Massey male lineage.

So what groups should we join? The obvious choice seemed to be a surname group - McGinnis for me, Massey for my husband. But the Surname Project for McGinnis on FamilyTreeDNA only had 22 members and the description stated it was for "McGinnis from No. Ireland (Ulster)who settled in America. This project was started by testing two men whose ancestors came from Ulster to Eastern Pennsylvania before the Revolutionary War .."

That didn't fit what I wanted. My McGinnis ancestors were Catholics from Northern Ireland but they settled in Canada during the Famine Years (1840s). So after some thought and further research into what was available, I opted to join Ireland Heritage My McGinnis surname was listed, and the group numbers were high. I felt there was more chance of a match with others who were related in this group.

My husband wanted to join the Massey Surname Group on Ancestry.com but it only had one member. His decision was to join the Ireland Scotland Wales England British Isles Group which had 121 members.

We honestly had no idea how to make our choices, DNA testing was new to us both so we just decided that a criteria would be the numbers in the group, the geographic location the group was focused on had to match our known ancestral origins, and if possible, our surnames would be included in the group list.

So - our Groups were chosen, we had sent in our DNA sample kits and now we had time to do more reading in our struggle to understand what we would see when our results arrived.

Archives of Ontario UPDATE

The Archives of Ontario will be closing the doors of their 77 Grenville St location at 5:00 pm on Thursday March 26, 2009. The Archives will re-open with full service at their new facility on Thursday April 2, 2009 at 8:30 am.

The Archives' new address is:
134 Ian Macdonald Blvd
Toronto Ontario M7A 2C5

Phone numbers and email addresses will remain the same.

Visit the Archives of Ontario website for more information.

For those planning on attending the OGS Conference 2009, a Tour and Research
Day at the new Archives is planned for Friday May 29. Complete information
is available on the OGS Conference website.

DNA Genealogy - The Kit Arrives

The big day had finally come. The Family Tree DNA kit arrived first (probably because I ordered it a few weeks before my husband ordered his Ancestry.com DNA kit). I was ready to have my brother come up and take the test so we could have our McGinnis Y DNA tested.

The kit was very user-friendly, instructions for use were easy to understand but we hadn't realized that my brother would need to collect 3 samples. As well, the instruction sheet (DNA COLLECTION METHOD) stated that scraping of the cheek for sample cells had to be done before eating or an hour AFTER eating and drinking. Each sample had to be collected 3 to 4 hours apart.

That was tricky logistically as my brother had only come up for the day and somehow we had to get those 3 samples taken before he had to head back home (an hour and a half drive). For anyone who has the collection kit in their own home it is not a big deal.

Family Tree DNA kindly provided 4 simple drawings showing opening the kit, scraping one's cheek, inserting the sample into the collection tube and sealing it. The instruction leaflet was 8 easy to understand steps.

My brother vigourously began scraping the inside of his cheeks for the required 60 seconds. Since the leaflet stated "A great scape gives us a great sample" he scraped quite forcefully to the point where his cheeks bled! That was overkill.

The next scrape was 3 hours later and unfortunately I forgot to start a timer for 60 seconds. So my poor brother scraped for almost 3 minutes (it's amazing how one's sense of the passage of time can be so wrong!) before we realized it was well past the 60 seconds required.

After all our little goofs, we were set. We had all the tubes inside the provided plastic bag with our kit number. We sealed it, my brother signed the release form and we put everything in the self-addressed envelope to be mailed.

Then we sat back and waited. And waited. And waited. It seemed to take forever but of course DNA testing, like good cooking, requires time and patience! It can't be rushed. Approximately 5 to 6 weeks later we got our first email from FamilyTreeDNA saying our first set of markers was complete. That was pretty exciting!

I had, after a lot of reading, decided on what DNA project(s) to sign up for on FamilyTreeDNA so I'll talk about that process in my next post.

DNA Genealogy - Friend or Foe?

Last year I decided to jump on the DNA Genealogy bandwagon. I wanted to find my McGinnis Family origins in Ireland and my years of slogging through microfilm and contacting others had not turned up any new clues. Even the county they originated from eluded me!

So I started reading about DNA, DNA testing for genealogy purposes, which companies were selling DNA kits, which DNA studies were considered the best and so on. It was extremely confusing! I didn't understand enough to know if I was comparing apples to oranges.

What was the difference between the number of markers being compared? Did it matter which test I purchased or what company I bought it from? The only thing I was sure of was that I wanted a Y-Chromosone test and that one of my male relatives (with the McGinnis surname) would have to take it on my behalf.

CHOOSING A MATERNAL versus PATERNAL DNA TEST

Paternal DNA tests give you information from your father's side of the family. It can provide close family connections and likely ancestors. Only males can have a Paternal DNA test done, and if you are searching a specific surname, the male being tested must carry that surname. Basically this is the DNA passed down from father to son through the generations

Maternal DNA tests follow your mother's line, back on through female ancestors only. So a Maternal DNA test will follow the path from your mother to her mother, to her mother's mother, and so on.

WHICH COMPANY TO CHOOSE?

After a great deal of research, I narrowed my choices to Ancestry.com DNA testing and Family Tree DNA.

HOW MANY MARKERS?

Ancestry.com DNA testing offers a 33 marker Paternal Lineage Test (Y-Chromosome 33) or a 46 marker Advanced Paternal Lineage Test (Y-Chromosome 46).

FamilyTreeDNA has a 12 marker, 37 marker and 67 marker test kit.

FamilyTreeDNA was much more money than Ancestry.com DNA testing

Both companies DNA tests included analysis of the markers of a man's Y-DNA as well as predictions of the haplogroup of the paternal lineage. Your haplogroup identifies the general area where your ancestors migrated tens of thousands of years ago.

MY CHOICE

Eventually I decided to go with the FamilyTreeDNA 37 marker Paternal Y-Chromosome - DNA Test which is $250.00. My husband ordered the Ancestry.com DNA testing 33 Marker Paternal Lineage Test (Y-Chromosome 33) which is $79.00. We wanted to try them both to see what the differences were between them.

Then came the wait for the kits to arrive. In my case I also had to work out the logistics of either getting the kit to my brother or getting my brother to drive to my house after the kit arrived.

At least the wait gave me more time to do more reading on the subject! I'll talk about taking the test samples and also the results of the DNA tests in a later post.

1916 Canadian Census online

Ancestry.com has the 1916 Canadian Census for the Prairie provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta to their online Canadian Census Records databases

This database is an every name index to individuals enumerated in the 1916 Census of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta and also includes images of the original census documents. Information listed includes: name of each person in the househould, gender, age, birthplace, relationship to head of household, year of immigration to canada, military service, and religion.

This adds to the existing Ancestry.com Canadian census records for

* 1851 Census of Canada East, Canada West, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia
* 1891 Census of Canada
* 1901 Census of Canada
* 1906 Canada Census of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta
* 1911 Census of Canada
* Ontario, Canada Census Index, 1871 - Free Index

2009 Declared Year of the British Home Child

Between 1869 and the early 1930s, over 100,000 impoverished or orphaned children were sent to Canada from Great Britain during the child emigration movement. These children were known as British Home Children.

They came as young as babies to age 18. An estimated 12 per cent, or four million, of Canadians are descended from a British Home Child.

New Brunswick is the first province in Canada to recognize the contribution of the British boys and girls brought to Canada a century ago by declaring 2009 the Year of the British Home Child.

"The Great Britain of the late 19th century was marred by poverty, pollution and social imbalance," Justice Minister T.J. Burke told the Legislative Assembly after tabling his motion of the declaration on Dec. 16, for which he received unanimous support of the house

As a result of the devastation in Great Britain, a number of charitable organizations emerged to create the British Child Immigration Movement. Both the Canadian and British governments supported the program, which reduced the cost to British taxpayers and provided Canada with workers and young children for adoption.

But once here, the children who came along with their unusual accents, faced the pain of separation from their families, ridicule from communities and even their new families, abuse and often horrendous working conditions as labourers and domestic helpers on farms across the province. [Source: http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/city/article/542738]

You can search theBritish Home Children ships passenger lists from 1865 to 1935 on Library & Archives Canada website.

If you find a name of interest, and if the child was a part of the Dr. Barnardo's homes, you can contact Barnardo's for the records. They can be reached at aftercare@barnardos.org.uk

My husband has a British Home Child in his ancestry and sending to Barnardo's for his records provided a wealth of informative genealogical detail plus photographs of the child when he was admitted to Barnardo's Homes in 1897.

Marj Kholi's Young Immigrants to Canada website is another must for those seeking a British Home Child ancestor. Descendants can also check the British Home Children Registry for a name of interest.

Another website of interest will be the British Home Children Descendants site.

Graveyard Rabbits - Sisters killed on board Galway Castle in WW1

The new Graveyard Rabbits Carnival is starting! The topic for the premier edition of this carnival is "exceptional finds." Share with us those rare and unique cemeteries, gravestones, monuments, memorials, inscriptions, etc.

This is a Funeral or Memorial Card for two sisters who were killed on the same day in 1918 on board The Galway Castle

In Loving Memory of
Ivy and Freda
The dearly loved children of Howard and Frances Reeves of Johannesburg, who were lost in the Galway Castle which was torpedoed by a German submarine when returning home from England

On Sept 12, 1918
Aged 9 and 7 years

"An Enemy Hath Done This"

Problems with Cook County,Illinois Death Index, 1908-1988?

Richard Carruthers wrote to AskOliveTree.blogspot.com with a very informative and interesting study he has undertaken.

Because Richard's email is quite long I have edited it for publication here on OliveTreeGenealogy.blogspot.com. It will be useful for thos searching in Cook County Illinois Death Records on Ancestry.com

In 1886, Edmond Henry ROBERTS) married Illinois-native, Minnie C.
SMITH. They had four daughters and one son all born in Illinois between 1887 and 1903. I have located all but the youngest daughter in on-line Cook County birth indexes on the new LDS prototype page.

I checked the "Cook County,Illinois Death Index, 1908-1988" which is online at Ancestry.comand found no relevant entries. I have tried
several ways to search for them, and have had some very curious results about which I thought you might like to know and consider.

First, in the search box provided by ancestry.com, I put in the surname ROBERTS. That yielded a total of 2,058 results for the entire span of the collection, but no Edmond/Edmund ROBERTS entries at all. There were 5 records for a Minnie ROBERTS, but the likeliest who died in 1943 when our Minnie (SMITH) ROBERTS would have been about 75 years old, turned out to be for a Minnie Spencer ROBERTS

Then I looked more carefully through my old files, and found that years ago (on 30 May 2000!), I had copied from LDS microfiche number 6016533, records from the actual index produced by Cook county, which covers much of Chicago. Labelled "Cook County Illinois Bureau of Vital Statistics 1877-1916", and had found the following entries which looked promising:

on MFC 53/70 (all bearing the number 6016533)

Name Date of Death Age Place Certificate Number
ROBERTS, Edmund H.; Dec 14 1911; 50 YR; Chicago; 0000016378
ROBERTS, Minnie; Feb 7 1911; ?40 YR; Chicago; 0000016096
ROBERTS, Minnie; Dec 3 1915; 30; Chicago; 0000017450

Armed with this information, I returned to the ancestry.com database 1908-1988 decided to leave all fields except the one for the year blank in the search box. It turned out that no death records are indexed for anyone dying in Cook county, Illinois in 1911 appear in the index. Then I tried a bunch of other years, and finally did a systematic search of records using only the year in the box provided
for that. The results that yielded were very interesting and rather disappointing.

First off, the database actually contains death records starting as early as 1897, but missing for 1910, 1911, 1912, 1913, and 1914 entirely. For the rest of the years to 1916 I got the following results:

1897-1 record
1898-10,858 records
1899-8,513 records
1900-14,040 records
1901-7,964 records
1902-5,872 records
1903-4,903 records
1904-3,393 records
1905-2,335 records
1906-4,234 records
1907-6,487 records
1908-14,918 records
1909-287 records
1910-1914 no records at all!
1915-35,402 records
1916-39,673 records

These are records for a database that supposedly covers the period 1908-1988 and contains 2.7 million records according to ancestry.com's own on-line information!

Examining the entries over the foregoing period, I discovered that from 1897-1915 all the records appear to cover only names where the first name is made up of two letters and the last name is made of four letters! Most of these names appear to be entirely nonsensical. I suppose that some of them may include the deceased person's initial and the first four letters of their surname, but this is by no means clear. There is no explanation of this shortcoming in the explanatory information that ancestry.com provides about this database. It is surely relevant, too, that only in 1916 do real names as we use them appear in the index. At least I can report that this happens most of the time. Some records still appear in the 2-4 letter format of the earlier years.

Clearly there are problems with this database. I know from the microfiche that the real records indexed by Cook County, Illinois's Bureau of Vital Statistics exist for the period 1871-1916 in an entirely comprehensible, standard format. What then is the online database purporting to cover the period 1908-1988? For one thing, it
doesn't cover all the years from 1908 to 1988 as advertised, and in fact contains records from at least a decade earlier. The coverage, however, only appears to begin to be accurate from 1916, though it still has some of the problem material over the earlier years I've already outlined. It's really misleading to a researcher not to be
alerted to these deficiencies in the ancestry.com version of the index.

Smile For the Camera - I'll Stand By You

Step 8 (Genealogy Research Papers) of creating a Genealogy and Family Hope Chest is not quite finished so today I'm submitting another entry for Smile For the Camera: Brothers & Sisters.

The word prompt for the 11th Edition of Smile For The Camera is brothers & sisters?

I collect CDVs (Cartes de Visite) which basically are photographs taken between 1854 and the 1880s. I'm particulary interested in Civil War era photographs. I love the formality of these early photos, the elaborate gowns the women wore, the hairstyles and accessories (hats, gloves, jewellery, books, etc) and the stiff poses of individuals. Each CDV is a moment in time, captured on film forever.

Yesterday I posted Smile for the Camera - Little Beauty and her brother which is a CDV taken ca 1858 of little Cornelia Fowler and her big brother Smith.

Today I want to contrast that 1858 photo with a recent photo of two siblings. This photo was not posed in a studio, it was taken outdoors in 2007 on the first day of school. Because it is recent I'm not going to reveal the subjects' names.



The clothes obviously are quite different from 1858! But what strikes me is their little faces. Little sister leans her head spontaneously on big brother's shoulder and gives a loving smile. Look at big brother's half-smirk, slightly embarrassed, as if saying "Ho-hum.... Here we go again....".

He is protective big brother, she is adoring little sister. It's one of my favourite modern photographs of all.

Genealogy and Family Hope Chest Step 8: Genealogy Research

Well here we are at Step 8. We are ready to tackle the Genealogy Research we've done over the past 10, 20, 30 or more years. That's a lot of paper!

Everyone works differently. Some researchers use binders to store their research. I use filing cabinets.

I have 2 cabinets with 3 drawers each - the kind that sit sideways, each cabinet is 3 ft wide. I also have a regular filing cabinet with 2 drawers and 3 sets of loose hanging file folders on top of furniture in my office.

And let's not forget the piles of research papers defying the laws of gravity sitting on my desk!

It's not feasible to think that any family member, no matter how passionate they are about genealogy, will take all my filing cabinets and papers home with them after my demise.

No library, archives or musuem will want them either. Many genealogists mistakenly believe that their research will be welcomed by these institutions but for 99% of us it will be a "thanks but no thanks". (If you happen to be famous, I'm sure your papers would be gladly accepted!) These institutions simply haven't got room for storage of such items, nor do they have the staff it would take to go through personal research papers and organize and archive them.

So - what to do? We've dedicated a great deal of time, energy and money into this consuming hobby of ours, and we don't want our research findings to be lost forever.

My personal solution is to create booklets on each family name. These booklets can be printed, coil bound and donated to a library or local archive. Here are 3 examples of pages from a booklet I am creating for my King & McGinnis families of the Guelph area of Ontario

Example 1

Share them with as many family members as you can. I plan to donate a copy to the archive and library in the area where my furthest back ancestor first settled.

Example 2

So for example my booklet on my King family who settled near Guelph Ontario circa 1847 will be donated to the Wellington County Museum & Archives, and to the Guelph Public Library.

Your booklet does not have to be complete! Don't wait until you have found that last piece of the puzzle, print up what you have NOW and share it. You can always send an update or addendum or print an entirely new copy for Libraries or Archives

Example 3

Your booklet can be a few pages or hundreds. You can concentrate just on your direct ancestry or you can do all the siblings and their branches. There is no right or wrong. It is whatever suits YOU.

Make sure you put copies of your original records in with your booklets. Make copies of microfilm copies of the various records you found over the years. Put them all in the booklet. That way even if your filing cabinet(s) full of paper and records are lost, you have preserved your research in booklet form.

My husband prefers the scrapbook type method. He makes one digital scrapbook per family and only for his own direct ancestors. He likes to have more graphics than text and he draws little borders around the different items he chooses for each individual.

For example he might put a newspaper clipping on the same page as a census report and a church record for one individual. Each item has its own unique border to help set it apart. One short paragraph for each ancestor is added. He ends up with a very nice (and easy to read!) scrapbook on his ancestors.

Whatever method you choose, just do it. Don't fuss too much, don't wait until you are "finished" because we are never finished our genealogy research! Create your booklet and have fun.

Coming Home - The Story of Dad's Ashes

My father came home yesterday. Forty-nine years ago at the age of 47, he died. After being cremated, his ashes were interred in an unmarked grave somewhere in a cemetery in a very large city.

I knew what Cemetery he was in but when I went there to visit him on my 20th birthday, I was told that there was no way to find him as he was in a type of pauper's field. Since he had no marker, the cemetery staff said it would be impossible to find his resting spot. That news was quite upsetting to me but I accepted it and went on my way.

Seven years ago a very kind and generous individual heard my story and took it on himself to investigate further. My father's resting place was found, duly recorded in the cemetery books. I don't know why staff didn't look that up for me when I was 20...

I was thrilled but didn't want him there without some kind of marker. But what to do? Move him to another spot in the cemetery? I didn't like that idea as all his family is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in Guelph Ontario.

This month my mother passed away and the decision was made. Since Dad was born and raised in Guelph, and married my mother there, and since his parents, brothers and several sets of grandparents and great-grandparents are all buried in Woodlawn, that is where he would go.

The cemetery arranged to disinter my father and ship his ashes to me for re-interment later in Woodlawn Cemetery (now called Woodlawn Memorial Gardens) It was a very happy day for me yesterday when I picked up my father's ashes at our local post office.

49 years later, his journey is almost complete. In the spring we will have a little ceremony to welcome Dad and Mother to their resting places in Woodlawn.

Smile for the Camera - Little Beauty and her brother

Another short break from my posts about how to begin a Genealogy and Family Hope Chest to submit an entry for Smile for The Camera.

The word prompt for the 11th Edition of Smile For The Camera is brothers & sisters? Were they battling brothers, shy little sisters, or was it brother & sister against the world? Our ancestors often had only their siblings for company. Were they best friends or not?

This is one of my favourite pictures from my collection of over 3,000 CDVs (Cartes de Visite). It was taken ca 1858 of Cornelia and Smith Fowler, children of Dewitt Fowler.

Look at the tenderness in little Cornelia's hand lying on top of her brother's. I love her little basket purse with the flowers and her hair so carefully done in ringlets. Little Cornelia is dressed as a miniature adult as was the custom for that time period. Smith is sitting upright in his chair looking very serious as befits an older brother.

Sadly little Cornelia died shortly after this photo was taken. She is buried in Waites Corners Cemetery in Cambridge New York. Her big brother Smith is buried there too. He lived until age 54, dying in 1903.

Genealogy and Family Hope Chest Step 7: Memories & Stories

Can you believe there is still more to talk about in our plan for creating a Genealogy and Family Hope Chest?

Your memories and family stories are invaluable. The story your grandmother told you of riding in her dad's Model T in the rumble seat may be lost forever unless you preserve it. What about the stories your mother told you of her dad's love of practical jokes? And Grandma telling you about how much she loved her mother's dumplings. These are precious memories that deserve to be passed on to future generations.

Any family lore about your ancestors' origins or personalities may also disappear with the next generation. That story of your Great grandpa Sam making dandelion wine and getting drunk on it is priceless! The family lore that Great Grandma Lizzie was considered the blacksheep of the family and eloped with your great grandfather against her parents' wishes - it's all you have to make her come alive as more than a name and some dates.

Maybe your family never told you any stories but that's okay because you have your own memories of them! What do you remember of your grandmother? Your grandfather? There must be something and your memories are worth sharing.

The first step is to share those stories and your memories verbally. Tell your family, your children and your grand-children. If they roll their eyes you know they've heard the stories before but that's good! It might be fun to pick a traditional time of year, such as Christmas. Go around the table and have everyone tell their favourite story of an ancestor or family member at the table.

The next step is to write your stories and memories down. That doesn't mean write them in your genealogy progam and you're done. That doesn't mean write them down and file them in your overstuffed filing cabinet and you're done. Nope, you have to write those stories and memories down in such a way that they will be saved and carried on.

There are different ways to accomplish this - you can write them as part of your own Memoirs. They can be inserted gradually into a daily journal or diary that you keep. They can be written as part of the notes about an ancestor and a Genealogy Booklet created to be shared with other family members.

But here's a few tips - if you are writing your memoirs or keeping a journal, choose a book to write in that looks important, expensive or old. It's all pyschological but if you write on scraps of paper or in a cheap Daily Planner, the odds are those writings will be tossed out.

I use handcrafted leather books that have handmade paper from Iona Handcrafted Books - they look like something that should be kept, not discarded. My handmade leather bound journals also make me feel like writing in them! I talked about these journals in an earlier post called Keeping a Journal for History & Genealogy The idea is to make your journals look important and worthwhile so that the next family member is reluctant to throw them away.

If you are creating a Memory Booklet to share with other family members, be creative in its title. Pyschologically people will save something called "Memoirs" even if not interested but will probably toss "My Story".

Think about it - most of us are reluctant to throw out a Bible even if we are not interested in the Family Register pages within. But if we are not interested in such genealogical items we would not hesitate to toss out individual pages titled "Family Register". I like to think about my audience and not all my descendants will be as passionate about genealogy and the preservation of family stories and data as I am.

Subconsciously, something handwritten is considered more worthwhile and important than something typed. Handwritten is unique. Typed may be mass produced.

We tend to save items that we deem important, thus the handcrafted leather journal with handmade paper filled with my messy handwriting has a better chance of surviving through several generations then something I type on 8 1/2 x 11 paper, coil bound. So why not do it all? Type it up and share it. Write it out by hand and keep it in your journal box.

I talked about storing documents and original papers in an earlier post Genealogy and Family Hope Chest Step 5: Original Documents.

I love antiques so I have a collection of various size boxes and trunks. I use them for my document and journal boxes. This little set of three assorted boxes has come in very handy for me. The bottom one is my Journal Box, the middle one is for my mother's journals and the top one stores CDs right now. That will change as I think of more family genealogy items I want to preserve and store.

My Document Box is full so I have a separate Antique Box where I store my journals. I like to keep them separate anyway. You can see that my earlier journals weren't always these nice leather-bound books! What a hodge-podge. But since I have them all together in one nice antique box, I think there's a good chance they'll be kept and preserved by future generations.

Genealogy and Family Hope Chest Step 6: Treasures

We're making good progress in the plan for a Genealogy and Family Hope Chest. We've organized and identified old photographs, and stored them safely after making copies for other family members.

We've separated original documents from photocopies and stored those documents in a document box.

An interesting thing has been happening since I started writing these posts. I've taken a second and third look at my own cherished family items - and realized I have a great deal more work to do in organizing and preparing them for others to have one day. Last night my I created (by hand) a fan chart showing 5 generations of my ancestry. These were added to my document box that I talked about in Step 5: Original Documents.

Now it's time to move on to actual physical objects - the family treasures we have inherited and cherished over the years. Objects such as jewellery, china, family silver, a book that belonged to an ancestor, etc. go into this category. Maybe you have Uncle Henry's College ring, Grandpa's clock that sat on the mantle, Great-grandma's bride basket, your Grandmother's bible. Some objects will be huge, others small.

To Keep or Not To Keep, That is the Question

The first thing you must do is decide whether you are going to KEEP all your cherished objects (they will eventually be passed on in the family) or give some (or all) away to chosen family members. Do you want to safeguard the items and hope they are passed on to interested family members after your demise? Or would you prefer to hand-select family now to take over the guardianship? It isn't an all or nothing choice, you might want to keep some of the family treasures while passing other items on. But you do need to make that decision.

Your basic choice is KEEP or PASS ON. When you pass an item on be sure you have labelled it if possible or that you give information about it to whoever is getting the treasure.

Show & Tell

My grandmother told me endless stories of her family and family heirlooms she had. She showed me the items repeatedly - my grandfather's engraved gold pocket watch given to him by his parents on his 21st birthday, his watch fob and chain, her wedding ring, his signet ring, her grandmother's Prattware pot lids, her mother's special knives and forks, a toast rack her mother used ... and so on.

With each item she told me the story behind it. I knew more about Grandma's precious family objects than I did my subjects in school! Hearing the same story so many times really stuck in my mind. When I was a teenager, Grandma passed on almost all her treasured and cherished family items to me for safekeeping. I am so glad she did because they would almost certainly have been lost otherwise! I was not around when she passed away and no one would have known the stories behind these objects.

Keeping Your Family Heirlooms

Let's assume you are keeping some or all of your family heirlooms. What next? Now you have to decide

1. Do you want the items out where you can see and enjoy them?

2. Do you want to store the items safely until you have decided who gets them or you have passed on and someone else has to make that decision?

Your basic choice is DISPLAY or STORAGE

Displaying your Family Heirlooms

This choice is fairly easy to accomplish - just choose where and how you want to place your treasures in your home. I talked about ideas for displaying family mementoes such as medals and other small objects in an earlier series of posts on Displaying Family Heirlooms


Before you display your items take a good look at each one and see if you can safely label it on the back or the bottom. You want to label each item if possible with a brief description - what the item is, who owned it, who gave it to you and when.

If you can't safely attach a label, this would be a good time to take a photo and label the photo. Hopefully you already did this if you were following along in Step 1 making a list and taking photographs.

If you already have certain family members in mind for some of your treasured items, this would be a good time to add that information to the label or photograph.

Storing Your Family Heirlooms

Perhaps you don't want to display your family mementoes but prefer to store them safely until you are ready to give them away to others or your executors are carrying out your wishes. All you need do is pack them safely and carefully in a clearly labelled plastic storage tub or wooden blanket box or some other container.

It's a Personal Choice

My personal preference is to display my family treasures. Some, like Grandma and Great-Grandma's teacups, I use. I don't want the items packed away where I can't see them, I want to enjoy them and think about the ancestors who once owned them.

When my grandchildren visit, I show them some of the items that I think will interest them. I talk about who owned them, when and where they lived, and how the items were passed on down to me. I tell them that they might one day in the future be responsible for cherishing and guarding some of the objects I'm showing them. My hope is that I can instill a sense of pride and family responsibility as well as eagerness to own and cherish these items too.

Of course I am also trying to do a bit of brainwashing and watching to see which of the grandchildren might be "The One" who will carry on. With any luck there will be more than one! I have my eye on my 11 year old grandson as a future guardian for he is the one who asks for the family stories and who refers to himself as my "history-loving grandson" But I'm not ready to make any decisions right now, I'm still enjoying the wonderful memories and treasures that have been given to me to cherish by others long gone.

Baa baa blacksheep, have you any cows?

I'm going to take a one day break from my posts about my plans for a Genealogy and Family Hope Chest and write my first entry for the Canadian Genealogy Carnival 4th Edition: Black Sheep Canadian Ancestors

The topic is Black Sheep Canadian Ancestors. The prompt states

Do you have a blacksheep ancestor in your family tree? Maybe one of your ancestors was a rogue, a scoundrel, a cad or just someone who done Grandma wrong...

Did great-grandma spend time in prison? Was Grandpa a bigamist? Did Great-Uncle Harry try to set fire to his neighbour's house? Most of us have one or two rebellious ancestors who didn't quite fit the mold. Even if you haven't got a blacksheep Canadian ancestor, tell us about any blacksheep Canadian.

While I have a fair number of blacksheep ancestors, none of them are Canadian! But I remembered today that I have a Canadian blacksheep relative. Two of my great-grand uncles qualify for this title.

They didn't do anything too horrific by today's standards, but they did end up spending 18 months in jail so I think that qualifies them as blacksheep! Here's the story directly from the newspaper of the day:

The Elmvale Lance, Dec. 5, 1901

CRIMINAL SESSION AT BARRIE

Albert and Herman Vollick and Gabriel French who were accused of stealing a heifer from James Johnston of Flos were found guilty and sentenced to 18 months in Central Prison.

Judge Ardagh characterized the offence as a very grave and serious one, and punishable by 14 years in the penetentiary: though the Vollicks may have been led into it by French, he did not consider they were entitled to any leniency.

Albert and Herman Vollick were the brothers of my great grandmother Mary Elizabeth Vollick who I have written about before on this blog in Putting Flesh on the Genealogy Bones. Albert Nelson Vollick was born 1869 in Hay Tp Huron Co., his brother David Herman (Herman) Vollick was born 1879 in Wentworth Co. They moved to Simcoe County Ontario with their parents and siblings some time after 1881.

Can you believe the punishment could have been 14 years in the Kingston Penetentiary? Wow, just for stealing a cow.

I have another Blacksheep person in mind to write about in a future post, she wasn't my ancestor but she was an ancestor of my daughter-in-law. I think you'll find her extremely fascinating!

Genealogy and Family Hope Chest Step 5: Original Documents

We've taken care of all your wonderful family photos, now let's move on to those original documents in your possession!

An original document is something that is unique, one-of-a-kind. It isn't a copy of a record found in an archive or library and once it is lost, it's gone forever.

Examples of Original Documents

Your original documents might include Great Grandpa's land deed from the 1800s, Grandma's Family Bible, Great-great grandma's journal she kept while taking a Conestoga Wagon across Pennsylvania to Upper Canada, letters written by your father to your mother from WW2 or WW1, Certificates, Receipts for Funeral Expenses for Great Grandma's sister, School Report Cards, original military papers of your great-uncle, the passport issued to your grandmother in the 1920s, etc.

There's always exceptions to the "rule" and it is true that some of these family documents can be found again. The military papers may be held in an archive, a vital statistics registration may be available to researchers, but they are not the original document saved by the family. You can set your own "rules" of course! These are just my definitions/rules for the plan I came up with for my personal Genealogy Family Hope Chest.

Don't Forget About YOU

Don't forget that your own items are important, and one day your descendants will be thrilled that you thought to preserve them. So toss in your Report Card from Grade 2, your Certificate of Good Citizenship from Grade 4, your old diaries, your will, legal papers, Marriage Certificate and whatever else you have that will become of historical or genealogical interest in the future.

Yes, you too may be part of history one day. Did you write about 911 in your journal? About Obama becoming the first African American President of the USA? Perhaps you wrote about a family death and funeral or a family reunion or a birth or marriage. Even if you simply made a one line notation of these events it becomes historically or genealogically interesting. So don't discount your own importance in the Genealogy Family Hope Chest.

The Hope Chest

I think choosing the right container for your treasured documents is very important. You want to maximize the chances that the chest you choose will be kept by one of your descendants. So you need to pick one that conveys importance and that would look good in someone else's home. It should also be small enough to be easily carried by one person, so something like a blanket box is not the best idea.

Why do I call it a Hope Chest? Because I hope it will be cherished and passed on down many more generations!

This is one of the boxes I use for keeping my family documents, letters, papers and journals in. I chose it because it's an antique, it looks great, and it looks like something that should be kept.

Having the documents in a box like this makes it almost certain that at some point in the future one of my descendants will pick it up and take it home. I doubt they'll throw out anything that is inside, because it has an implied importance by virtue of being in the box in the first place! This box is about 21"x14"x6" and I haven't filled it yet.

Start a Hope Chest for your Children

One of the things I did for each of my sons was to gather together their baby books, their little bracelets worn when they were first born, school certificates, report cards, trophies won, and other memorabilia from their childhood. Then I placed these treasures in WW2 Ammo boxes with rope handles that I won at an antique auction. I stencilled their full name on each box to personalize it. Each was given his box when he left home and set up a house of his own.

My sons tell me that they have added their own mementoes since that day, and I feel pretty confident they will pass those boxes on to one of their own children. I don't have a photo of the boxes I bought for my sons but here is an ammo box that looks similar. I wanted something masculine and durable for them. If I were doing this for a daughter I'd choose something more feminine

The next generation to take care of my Genealogy Family Hope Chest might not ever look through it. But I'm willing to bet they keep it and tell one of their children that it belonged to Grandma or Great-Grandma Lorine, and that it should be kept and passed on to the next generation.

Canadian Genealogy Carnival 4th Edition: Black Sheep Canadian Ancestors

The next topic for the Canadian Genealogy Carnival is Black Sheep Canadian Ancestors

Do you have a blacksheep ancestor in your family tree? Maybe one of your ancestors was a rogue, a scoundrel, a cad or just someone who done Grandma wrong...

Did great-grandma spend time in prison? Was Grandpa a bigamist? Did Great-Uncle Harry try to set fire to his neighbour's house? Most of us have one or two rebellious ancestors who didn't quite fit the mold. Even if you haven't got a blacksheep Canadian ancestor, tell us about any blacksheep Canadian.

Share the story of your Black Sheep Canadian ancestor in the 4th Edition of the Canadian Genealogy Carnival.

The deadline for submissions is April 26 at midnight EST. Submissions will be posted on April 30.

How To Submit

After you write your story on your blog, you can write to me at olivetreegenealogy@gmail.com Be sure to mark the Subject of your email as "Canadian Genealogy Carnival" Include the title of your post, the permalink URL, your name, the name of your blog and a brief introduction to your story.

If you prefer, you can submit using the form provided at BlogCarnival.com

If you aren't sure if you have a blacksheep ancestor, see the list of Blacksheep individuals in Canada at BlacksheepAncestors.com Maybe one of those listed is yours! I'm looking forward to reading about your Blacksheep Ancestor!