Friday Update

Not having the greatest of months, but I do have a lot to share today.

I: Ancestry.com and Footnote.com
I saw the news about Ancestry.com acquiring the parent company of Footnote.com. I'm not a fan of Ancestry.com for several reasons.

1 - I don't like how they've set themselves up as the monopoly company online for genealogical records. Yes, I know it makes finding the records easier, but what if they suddenly fail? Are all those records going to disappear into the ether? It worries me.

2 - I dislike any company that insists on getting your card number for a "free" account. If it's a free account, they don't need it. If it's an option to store it after you have an account, that's different. But making it necessary to have an account at all really rubs me the wrong way.

3 - They are not the actual repositories of these records (yes, I get that this seems to speak to point one, but it really doesn't, because many of the sites they've taken over have been subsumed by the larger site, so the actual online access to the record is only through Ancestry any longer. So if they crash, that record is no longer available online.). As such, I have a hard time paying a third party to get a record that I can get some other way, if not online.

4 - Their records are far more limited than their ads would have you believe. This isn't something I know by personal experience of the site, but more personal experience of the American genealogical community at large. They, like any other American site, tend to focus more on American records than anything else, which does me no good when most of my ancestors weren't here in America. So why should I pay for something that will be of almost no help? And how can I be sure it will, if I can't access the records freely enough to know there's something in there worth paying for?

Thank god that they won't be able to take over FamilySearch.org or JewishGen, because I like having the variety of choice, and not having to pay unless I see something I know will be worth buying.

II: Who Do You Think You Are?
I enjoyed this show when it started last year here in the states, but for the constant Ancestry.com ads in the show and between segments of the show (see rant above), but the stories didn't feel like they spoke at all to the searches I was doing for my own family. Most seemed to focus on "being American," which was hard for me to relate to, given my recent foreign ancestry. I enjoyed the show, and I look forward to future episodes, but there just felt like a disconnect there for me.

So my husband got me the first five seasons of the UK version. I have never been so enthralled. Even when they didn't connect to my tree in some way, they felt less nationalistic than the US counterpart, and some of the stories got so close to my own as to make me tear up. They still haven't really covered Welsh genealogy to my satisfaction, but the stories they have covered have been amazingly varied.

I can't wait to see the most recent two seasons.

III: Personal genealogy pursuits
Posted about my Brick Walls today over at Oh, Spusch. An update on how I'm doing with the first three I posted about a few months back, and an addition of a fourth line that causes me trouble.

Got a new Genealogy program from my folks for my birthday: The Master Genealogist. I've been slowly importing my family tree from scratch, starting with what I'm sure I knew when I started my search, then going through all the versions of the family trees I have on paper and adding in new information from those. It's slow going, but I think in the long run it'll be worth it. I expected to have more trouble with the program, because I've heard how hard it can be to deal with, but I've only had a few minor problems so far. And I love that it keeps track of actual twin births.

And I seem to have narrowed down the town for my great-grandfather's birth in Galicia: Sedziszow.

IV: Follow Friday
Lots of links to share:
Family Tree Folk posted about uncontaminated Viking DNA found at a Viking dig site.
Genealogy's star posted about Identity Theft and Genealogy.
Adventures in Genealogy posted a great article on the origin of Surnames.
Layers of the Onion wrote about Basics for Beginning Genealogists (which are pretty good for those of us who've not really given it a lot of thought, too).
The JewishGen Blog did an article on natural disasters that our ancestors might have witnessed or been affected by in some way. Part one - Part two
And there will be a new book coming out about Anne Frank and her family, including many more sources beyond her journal.
And last but not least, there is a new project out there called the Restore the Ancestors Project that is hoping to create an archive specifically about the slave plantations of South Carolina in order to provide a database for those looking for their slave ancestors. A great project, and I hope they have great success with it. I'd love to see more of the same in other states.

That's everything for today. No events from my family tree this week. Hope everyone out there is doing well.

Friday Genealogy Report

I spent a good portion of the day with my mother today, mostly going through old photos, and trying to "name" more of the older generation (her grandparents' siblings, mostly). It was nice to be able to spend time with her, and show her some of what I've discovered online--including the census form from 1900 that lists the Park family in Philadelphia, PA.

I also got to visit with dad, which was nice, because I found myself drawn into that side of the family tree yesterday--or rather, his dad's side. It's always been the side I've known the least about.

My grandfather was never a talkative man, specifically when it came to his childhood. And with the history his family has, I can't say I blame him. He and all his siblings were born in Frankfurt, Germany the 20's (except one), and they were Jewish. We're lucky. His dad got out and took the family with him in the early thirties, but it left a mark.

I've always known it was there, but the more I uncover in my research, the more I realize just how deep that mark goes.
* Sam, my grandfather, was only about ten or eleven when they left for France, but he remembers better than his (younger) sisters. Even his twin, Minna, says that he recalled more than she did. Likely a good thing, given the fact that the atmosphere against Jews at the time was already quite dark.
* Alex, their father, was born in what I now know was the state of Galicia. I've always known the family was from "Prussia" or thereabouts, but not much beyond that. Dora was born there, too. I'm still in the process of tracking down the names of the actual towns they were presumably from. In researching Galicia yesterday, I learned just how bad it must have been for them. The Polish nickname for the area was "Naked- and Hunger-land." Though I did learn that the Jewish towns were known for their increasing learning.
* Alex was in England during WWI, and was caught up in the anti-German movement of the time, and sent to a camp known as Camp Douglas, which was a place Germans and Prussians and other enemy aliens were kept. I had heard his family went together, but I'm not sure if that is true or not, as I have since found a picture of him alone at that camp, but addressed to his brother Jack.

I used to watch Fiddler on the Roof and think to myself, "Oh, but my Jewish family lived differently than that." After my research this week, I have to admit to being wrong all those times. The Galician Jews had a great deal of connection to their Ukraine neighbors. To the point where the Jews of both countries were probably closer to each other than their gentile neighbors. While my great-grandparents might not have been born in "Anatevka," it sounds as though their towns were probably not too far different.

It does make me sad that what they did to my family destroyed that religious conviction in my grandfather. Because of it, I lost things I know I can't even begin to understand. In going through my blogs this week, I learned something I never knew before. That yarmulke are actually labeled to record the gathering they were made for. It just makes me wonder how much else I don't know.

Just one more link for Follow Friday on somewhat the same note. The Accidental Anarchist wrote about Prejudice in his blog this week. How little we've changed...even if the names and locations have. Makes me wonder if we ever will.

Just one event in my Genealogical Calendar this week. This September 14th would have been my Hansen great-grandparents' 92nd wedding anniversary.