Hi again

I realize I've been a bit scattered with this blog, but I'm hoping to get blogging again, particularly when it comes to my writing. I also plan to write about my cooking as I have done in the past, with links and hopefully pictures as well. I'd also like to post tips on genealogy here. We'll see which of those three I manage the most.

My goals for this year were to work on a few different things:

1. I do the Goodreads challenge every year and have for about five years now. My reading challenge this year is 50 books, but in addition, I'm focusing only on sequels because I've been reading so many series without finishing them. if I manage to get through the 50, I then plan to add in Jewish stories, as it is of particular genealogical interest to me. And if I get through ten of those, or 60 books total, then I want to go through some of the classics I haven't managed to get to yet. We'll see how far I get. Doing okay so far. I've already finished 5 books so far this year.
2. Then there's my genealogy. I've started up my Ancestry subscription once more, and I plan to see if I can push myself further into the past, and to get all of my great-grandparents' siblings and their families detailed on the site. I also want to get my ideas for my new family books firmed up. I've already had some success finding new things in my tree, but I'm hoping for more. I also plan to help a few friends with theirs, if I can.
3. I've also decided to get better about my expenses and bills. Specifically to save for genealogy, trips, clothes, and cat expenses. I've got a few things in the works. We'll see if any of it works.
4. Then of course, there's my blogging. I've let it drop off in the last few years, aside from the Good news posts I did last year. Those got to be too much to deal with, but I have so many things to blog about. I've been trying to share the records I've found for the Hillinger/Seneft/Kresch/Reich families with that branch on Facebook. I also need to get posting on Oh, Spusch more often. And to my review blog as well. Then there's this blog. I want to work on writing here about writing, genealogy how-to, and cooking.
5. Cooking goals for this year are making one crock-pot meal a week because I got a new crock pot for Christmas. I've got a nice long list to work from, and I'm looking forward to seeing what I can do with it. I'll write up the success stories at the very least. I will possibly also post about new sources of recipes, and tips and tricks as well. I may also write up my new crock pot, which is awesome, and definitely my all-time favorite present this year.
6. Last but not least is Writing. Every year, I do the NaNoWriMo challenge, which is about the only time I manage to write anything significant. I managed to get my 50k for last NaNoWriMo, but I haven't finished the story, so I need to do that. I also always set the goal of getting some of the previous NaNos finished, but I haven't managed any but the Fanfic ones so far. So I will try again.

I think I'll try to do a weekly check-in of my goals here, and I'll make lists and posts about Genealogy, Cooking, and Writing. So here's to a more productive year.

Friday Update

So I've been doing my best to catch up on my tree now that November's over.

And I've also been posting an Advent Calendar this year for my ancestors, and I've done the first three posts, all on my dad's father's side of the family so far, but I've got a plan for how to space them out. I've had fun with them so far, and I'm learning more about what's missing from each as I write them up, and they're getting a bit longer with each person I write up. I am pleased to discover that, despite the fact that I'm starting with my great-great grandparents, I believe I have photos of all of the people I'm writing up, but three of them.

Follow Friday:
Just one post today.

Randy Seaver of Genea-musings discusses Standardizing Place Names in genealogy. Definitely a difficult subject, given that everyone has at least one ancestor who can trace their line back to an area that no longer exists or no longer has the same name as when our ancestor came from that location.

Tapestry.com
I have also been playing with a new toy today. I'm not sure what I think of it, yet, but if there was a software program that used the information taken from the questions at the site, I would definitely consider buying it. The site is called Tpstry.com aka Tapestry.com, and it is not your usual online genealogy site.

You create a (currently free) account, and fill in your name, then it begins to ask you questions. You can have several family groups on the site, and can invite friends and family to answer the questions as well. Some of the questions are a bit silly or otherwise jarring, like "what sex is this person" and "is this person still alive," but you can also make up your own questions, and therefore can configure it to what you need to learn about your family members.

From these questions, you create timelines and interrelationships between the people listed, not to mention a basic family tree, though the family tree part of the site isn't particularly great yet.

I've run across a few minor flaws in the programming, but the site is still very new, and I'm hoping that it will only improve from here on.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun:
Randy Seaver's blog had a good fun post this past Saturday, and I can't resist it.

1) Think about the games that your whole family would play when you were a child.

2) Tell us about one (or more) of them - what was it called, what were the rules (as you remember them), who played the game, where did you play the game, who usually won?

3) Write your own blog post, or write a comment on this post, or write a Facebook comment or note.

There are six years between myself and my sister, so I spent a lot of time when she was young making up ways to distract and to entertain her. Quite a number of games come to mind, really.

When she was very small, we used to play hide and seek, but she was too young to understand that she had to wait, and she was definitely to young to count yet, so I would tell her to wait where she was, then run ahead an try to find a place to hid before she could run after me. We actually had quite a lot of fun with the game, and played it quite often.

We also inherited a number of games, most of which were missing pieces in varying amounts, meaning we often had to loot other games to play anything. Which led to the idea of combining them.

Our favorite, which we played a number of times, was Payday, which I got from someone for a Christmas or Birthday present one year, but was rather dull on its own, so we would combine it with the game of Life, and occasionally with the game Careers. We'd play a month of Payday, then start the game of Life using the money we'd gained in that first round rather than what we were supposed to start with according to Life. When we got to the choice of career path, we would use Careers if we chose to go onto the university track to determine our career, and only play a month of payday if we landed on a Payday to determine how much we got. It made for exceptionally long games, but it also gave variation to games that I think we would otherwise have grown bored of.

So many more games I could mention, though. Monopoly, which my sister says she got good at defensively because she was so much younger than I. Trivial Pursuit, Pictionary, and Scattegories, all of which we played at family gatherings for several years in a row. My sister and I are extremely scary when it comes to Pictionary--there have been times when one or the other of us have drawn a single line--and the other guessed it. There was also Take Off, gotten to improve my sister's geography, and Mille Bornes, which had their day...

Really, we played a lot of games as kids. It's one thing I miss quite a bit, really.

Family Tree Calendar:
Just one event for this week.
Hans Knudsen and Christine Jensdatter married on December 2, 1854 in Vejle, Denmark.

Friday Genealogy update

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Mine was very nice. Got to see my Uncle's remodeled place. Very roomy, and a lovely warm gas fireplace.

Have a lot of Genealogy stuff to catch up on, and I need to make a to-do list, really, because this month has left me quite behind. Got a bunch of information from my aunt, and I need to add that to the information I already have. At least now I have the family trees in some form for all sides of the family. I also plan on taking a trip to Office Max and getting fresh supplies so that I can keep track of things better. The current system I have really isn't working.

Forgot to post last week, so I'll do two weeks of calendar here today, though it's only adding one more event to an already short list:
November 18, 1757, Ana Maria Andersdatter Brunn was born in Bergen, Norway.
November 19, 1863, Jorgen Larsen and Ivare Christensen were married in Vejle, Denmark.
November 23, 1754, Anna Margretha Sorensen was born in Gelting, Germany.

Genealogy update for the week

Not a whole lot going on this week, Genealogy-wise.

I made an earlier post this week on my great-uncle, my grandfather's brother, for Veteran's Day. And I've got my usual post for tomorrow, but the one after it will be out of the order I usually do because of a new discovery I found for my paternal grandmother's side recently.

While I was writing it up, I realized I don't have his birthdate, so I did a search for his birth record, but nothing yet, though I did find a few copies of records for other people on that branch of the family.

Nothing for Follow Friday today, but Randy Seaver's challenge for last week was tempting, so I decided to play today:
1) If you found a bottle on the shore, and it had a genea-genie in it, and rubbed it and you had ONE WISH to make about your genealogy and family history research, what would it be?

2) Tell us about it in your own blog post, in a comment to this blog post, or in a comment or note on Facebook.

For me? This has changed a number of times over the years, but right now, my answer would have to be meeting my paternal grandfather's parents to be able to interview them about their lives so that I could get more information about where our family came from.

For Alex, I'd want to clarify his names. He went through a number in his life, both first and surname, and I'm not even certain what his birthname truly was. And I'd also want to ask about his family's time in England, and if he was the only one who went to Camp Douglas, or if others in the family went as well.

For Dora, I'd want to know more about her sister Minna, and whether she had other siblings, and I'd want to know more about her family, and where she grew up.

I've felt the loss of both of them very strongly lately. Alex died shortly before my father was born, and Dora months before I was. And because this is the side of my family that I have the least on, it's also the side I have the most questions about. I'd love to fill that gap.

I know I was lucky in the fact that I had not only all my grandparents, but three of my great-grandparents who were still around when I was born, but I still wish I could have met more of my great-grandparents. Especially now as I am the family genealogist.

Calendar for the week:
Unfortunately, all deaths this week. :S
Lauge Nilsen died November 8, 1661
Mathias Frandsen died November 9, 1827 in Vejle, Denmark
Mathias Frandson (his grandfather) died November 13, 1796 in Vejle, Denmark

Friday Genealogy update

So, I know I didn't do one of these last week, but I was a little Genealogied-out from spending the weekend with my sister and working on a lot of Genealogy stuff while I was there. It was great, though.

We discovered that we have not one, but two pictures of my great-grandmother Dora with her sister Minna. Seems I'd seen the shot a number of times, but it was only scanning in the shot of the two of them as young women that made me realize I'd seen her face before. So that was fun. A lot of other minor discoveries as well, including a shot of Dora's eldest, Ben, who died in the mid eighties. I remembered him, but it had been so long since I'd seen his face that I'd forgotten what he'd looked like until I saw the shot. He and Grumpy were so much alike, they should have been the twins. ;)

Made a post about my great-grandfather Holger today over at Oh, Spusch. His is the best-researched line in my tree, mostly because my grandmother and her sister were so desperate to find information about their mother. I'm glad they were. I love having so much detail, though I'm coming to find that there are gaps in that, as well.

My main focus since Monday, however, has been NaNoWriMo. I've done it every year but one since 2006. For those who don't know (and/or don't want to follow the link), NaNoWriMo is a challenge to write a 50k word novel in the month of November. It's great fun, with lots of support from the site and the forums at the site, though it's not for those who aren't used to writing every day, or who can't write enough per day (about 1700 words per day). I've enjoyed it every time I've done it. And won each time, too. This year I'm doing something that most would consider breaking the rules--I'm playing in someone else's universe. Now I just have to hope I have enough story to make it through 50k. I've managed 10k already, so I'm doing pretty good.

Nothing for Follow Friday today, since I've been so out of it the past two weeks.

Really need to update this calendar, as I know I have some new dates to add, but here's the stuff from the past two weeks:
10/25/1846 - Leonharde Marine Linkhausen died in the Lofoten Islands in Norway from complications of childbirth.
10/27/1765 - Maren Mathiasdatter died in Vejle, Denmark at the age of 84.
11/02/1822 - Jens Pedersen and Mette Matisdatter were married in Vejle, Denmark.
11/07/1826 - Abalone Mortensdatter died in Vejle, Denmark at the age of 82.

ETA: Just went through my program, and it turns out there are a whole ton more dates than I had before, and there's one that I just have to share, because I'm so very glad I have it now -
10/30/1919 - Alex Hillinger and Dora Kresch were married in Frankfurt, Germany.


And I've an idea for this December for Oh, Spusch that I hope people will enjoy--I'm going to do an advent calendar of three generations of my family--my grandparents through great-great grandparents. Wish me luck!

Friday Genealogy update

Had a friend abscond with me for a few hours today, so not much on the genealogy front, but I did make my post at Oh, Spusch this week. The final bit of the Visual Family tree I have posting there--the Jones Family.

I also had one possible revelation this week. My great-grandfather, Holger Hansen, has a brick wall on his maternal grandfather's side. I've always had his grandfather's parents listed as Lars Christensen and Oertha, and was never even sure whether that was a first or last name, as the tree had had been handed to me from my grandmother.

In entering everything into The Master Genealogist, I discovered that the name was never Oertha, but Bertha, with no given surname. Unfortunately, that made all three names horribly common, so, despairing, I asked one of my online Danish friends how the best way would be to find a marriage record for them.

He proceeded to check the record books of the town where their son was born, and found one record for the right name and date I had. But the names of the parents were off: Lars Andersen and Birreth Marie Sorensdatter. So...if I can figure out where we got the names we have (Birreth comes off sounding very much like Bertha in English), I may have found my great-great-great grandfather's parents. And jumped yet another wall on that side of the family. :)

Follow Friday:
Just a couple things today.

Two pieces on Scots-Irish; one from Carolyn L Barkley at GenealogyAndFamilyHistory.com, and one from Virginia Fox at The Faerie Folk Hid My Ancestors.

The other is a fun game about what you might want to get about/from your ancestors if you had a time machine from Lorine McGinnis Schulze at Olive Tree Genealogy.

From my Family Tree Calendar:
10/20/1845 - Rasmus Hansen was born in Knudstrup, Denmark
10/24/1865 - Else Katrine Larsen was born in Ringive, Denmark

Friday Genealogy update

Posted some musings this week over at Oh, Spusch, and I've started a subject-a-day language blog called Glossology at tumblr for Welsh, Danish, and German, with more to come if I actually manage to learn something out of it, particularly languages relevant to my genealogy search. There are two more things that I'm probably going to post over at Oh, Spusch, but given that it's 7:30, they'll probably wait until tomorrow, one about Genealogy software, and one about brick walls.

ETA: My major find today was looking up an address for Leon (and Mindel) Seneft in London based on the address their daughter Jennie gave at Ellis Island. The view of the house is here. I believe their house was the black door. #66 Lucas Street, London.

I've added that and the location of one of the other Seneft children, Jack (found on the back of a photo of my great-grandfather) to a map I'm slowly working up with all the locations I'm finding as I do my research. There's a lot I haven't added in yet, but if people are interested, here's the link.

Follow Friday:
From the Armchair Genealogist: Defining Today's Family, about how today's mixed families are even more confusing than those of the past. I'm not entirely sure I agree, except that these things are out in the open more than they were in the past, that's all.

Genealogy's Star wrote a Testimony against procrastination in genealogy that everyone should take to heart.

Olive Tree Genealogy had a great idea--You Tube & Genealogy--using You Tube (and similar sites) to see your ancestors' home towns.

The JewishGen Blog posted the final installment of the Cycle of Life: Natural Disasters series.


In my Family Tree this week:
Henrick Bergthon Bordewick and Leonharde Marie Bordewich married in Norway on the fourteenth of October, 1887.

Busy and genealogy-filled week this week.

Went up to my Aunt's cabin on the coast on the West side of the Olympics with my aunt, my mom, my sister, and my niece. I was a bit nervous to be without the Net for two days, but I was surprised how little I missed it. I missed people I talk to, but that was about it.

Sis brought her computer so we could go through family photos, and I found a few extra branches to our family tree--two which I knew about, but one which I did not, and still need to find the exact connection to my tree, but, still very exciting to have more names. Sorted out a few things, still working on others, but it was a very productive and nice visit.

I spent some of today and a little of last week looking through images of the paperwork about my father's father's family in Germany. I'm pretty sure I have towns now. Next step is to look into a few addresses I have (one in Germany, possibly two in London), and look on JewishGen for more information about those specific towns.

I also spent some time today looking into the Howells/Gabriel line. I might have found a bio of the man I currently have listed as the father (Even Lewis) of the matriarch (Catherine Jones) of that family, but the link was broken. All I can do is hope that the link will be fixed at some point.

I still have a long way to go on both searches, but I do feel like I'm making baby steps, at least.

Follow Friday Links:
* George Geder at Geder Genealogy talked about some of the things missing in Genealogy programs, in particular, blended family support and ethnicity. Pt 1, Pt 2, Part 3. He also posted a fun list of 10 Essentials for Genealogy & Family History Success. I might have to make my own list like that... But I loved his choices.

* Laura at It's All Relative posted her 12 Step Program for Genealogists.

* The Jewish Gen Blog added two more articles about Natural Disasters in our Families' lives. Part 3, Part 4.

* Lorine McGinnis Schulze at Olive Tree Genealogy wrote about getting past Brick Walls.

No events in my family tree events list this week.

Hope everyone else had a good week, and is looking forward to the weekend. :)

Friday Genealogy update

September went so fast... And now it's October, and I've at least a half-dozen more things planned this coming month, when I usually tend to have one or two things planned in a month max. Oh, well, at least they're fun things.

This past week I spent a day with my sister and niece, and yesterday with a family friend down from Vancouver, and come Monday, mom, sis, niece and I will be heading up to my aunt's cabin to have a "Bordewick girls get together," never mind that none of us actually use the surname. ;) I've been trying to decide what paperwork to bring with me...hopefully I won't forget anything.

I made two posts on Oh, Spusch this week, not including the Surname post I'll be putting up tomorrow. The first was an experiment in birth order position in one line of my tree (the longest I could find). It was interesting. The second was a piece about all the names for "grandmother" my family has used, complete with photos.

So much going on that I didn't do a whole lot of actual Genealogy work on the tree itself today, but I did find an interesting article for Follow Friday about keeping track of name variations.

Three events in my Family Tree Calendar this week, all weddings:
Johan Bordewick married Henrikke Roness in Nordland, Norway 0n September 27, 1860 (his second marriage, and third woman to bear his children)
Jens Hansen married Else Larsen in Vejle, Denmark on October 1, 1885
and Mathias Frandsen married Kristen Poulsdatter in Ringkobing, Denmark on October 2, 1796.

And I had a rant on American Genealogists and Heraldry, but I'll save that for a week when I can think.

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.

Friday Genealogy round-up

Distracted last night, so I never got around to this. It's been an odd week, starting with brother-in-law's wedding, which was nice enough. The new couple seems very happy.

Not a whole lot accomplished on my Family Tree this week. I transcribed a series of notes from the visit my grandmother and her brother and sister took to see their mother's brother before his death in 1987 and posted that to Oh Spusch. As I say at the bottom of the piece, I actually have four great-great uncle Hanses, of which this Hans is one.

I may have found another connection to the Bordewick side in the Bordewich branch in this tree. Harald Bordewich is listed as Johan Petter's grandson in my tree, though the father listed doesn't match, and there is no grandfather on the tree, so I'm not sure where the differences came in. But having Bordewich as a last name is already unusual--having Tiller as a middle name kind of seals it for me, because that's Johan's mother's maiden name. I've sent off an email to the creator of the tree. Here's hoping he'll email back.

I also discovered that one of my distant cousins is a historian and published writer: Fergus M Bordewich. Saw his name a number of times, so I looked him up on Amazon. His story about his mother sounds fascinating, if horrifying. I may have to buy a copy and pass it around the family. He's also written several historical texts about American history. Definitely take a glance.

No new follows this week. Been too distracted to do more than glance at other blogs, though I did read a bit.

Family Calender for the week has one event:
9/12/1834 - Christine Jensdatter born in Vejle, Denmark.

And a more present-day set of birthdays--this weekend my husband celebrates his 42nd birthday, and mine follows the day after. I'll be 41.

Friday Update

Busy week. My brother-in-law is getting married tomorrow. It's been one of the busiest Genealogy years in a while for me this year. Births, deaths, and marriages on several sides of my family. I'm hoping, after this weekend, it will calm down a little. I have a feeling I'll have a big end-of-year summary about the changes in my tree this year as well as the finds...

Because it's been a crazy week, I decided to take it easy today, and had a friend down to watch some Buffy and just visit.

I did my usual scroll through my Google reader, though. I found a few interesting things:
A: Family Tree Maker 2011 came out this week. A lot of geneabloggers have been talking about it this week.

I've used Family Tree Maker for most of the time I've worked on my family tree--probably about 8 years now. But when Ancestry bought out the company, and it became more and more an offline version of their site, I became less and less pleased with it. I don't mind Genealogy programs that have connections to sites online, but to make whole sections of a program dependent on having a paid subscription to a site seems very greedy to me. But then, many things about the way Ancestry does their business bothers me.

So I've been looking for replacement. At the moment, I'm playing with Legacy 7.4. It's very equivalent to FTM, and has some things that work far better, though I'm not as pleased with their reports system. I also installed Roots Magic on a friend's computer, and that, too, has some nice options. I think, though, if I could afford it, I'd probably get The Master Genealogist. Mostly now, I just need to decide, I think. But those three seem to be the top contenders.

The main problem with choosing is that there aren't many people out there who have tried more than a handful of programs for a more than a moment or two, as Genealogy's Star mentions in a blog post.

So I'll keep playing with Legacy, and unless I find something in it that truly annoys me, I'll probably buy myself the latest copy. Unless I find I have enough money to afford the Master Genealogist, I think.

I'm still debating whether to type it in fresh to make sure I have the facts all sourced properly when I finally do choose.

B: I found an article about the dialogue between the Mormon Church and the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors about the Jewish ancestors found in the Mormon genealogical databases. I don't think this is likely to end any time soon, really. It seems uncomfortable to me that the only ancestors of Jewish faith that they're negotiating about are the ones who died in the Holocaust.

I'm glad the Mormons have this interest in genealogy, because it benefits the rest of us, but it feels wrong to baptize people in a faith they would have refused to take part in while they were alive. I don't care what their reasons are for it, it's like renaming an ancestor. Not something you should ever do, for any reason.

The problem is, those of us who have Jewish European roots need as many options as we can get. So do we let it go because we can get the information from them, and hope they follow the rules they're setting down for themselves? Or do we hope that JewishGen becomes that big and comprehensive on its own?

C: The Disney Channel will be premiering a kid-centered Genealogy program starting in November. I hope it encourages a whole new generation of genealogists.

D: The Slovak Yankee wrote an interesting article about standardizing Genealogy in the common law way.

E: Family Tree Folk made post about the Seven Daughters of Eve, or the Mitochondrial Mothers of the human race.

F: And last but not least, two articles about genealogy and the movies:
Movie vs Reality: The Real Story of the Von Trapp Family
and
Climbing up Gene Kelly's Family Tree

Some blogs I'm following as of this week:
We Tree and Apple's Tree, which I have been following on my reader for some time, and The Jones Surname, which covers the Welsh Jones roots. It's a new blog, so I'm not sure if it will help me or not, but I'm hoping so.

No moments in my family tree this week, though I think it's about time to update that soon...

And I do have a Surname post all ready for tomorrow.

Genealogy Day

Well, it has been an interesting week, and an eventful day for me.

Started today by posting about an ancestor I knew little about, Gabriel Howells, over at Oh, Spusch. This is my mother's mother's mother's father, and all of the Welsh side is still more untidy than not. I've learned a few things in typing it up--mostly that it is very hard to resist the impulse to correct bad or boring writing. most of the paragraphs are two or three times longer than I would have otherwise done myself without major reason.

This part of the tree is all from Northern Wales, as far as I am aware. And the other two major things I learned about this branch are that apparently one of my Ancestors (Lewis or Lewys Edwart) was a Quaker, which I had not heard before, and that there are no women recorded in this family line before my great-great-great grandmother, Catherine Jones, Gabriel's mother.

So I set out today to try to remedy this in some way. And I may have succeeded. In looking for more information on Gabriel, I found information on his grandfather, Gabriel Hywel, and two possible children and a wife. The Family Search.org Beta site pulled up two separate records for two births to a Gabriel Howell and his wife Gwen, alternately Gwen, Gwen Howell, and Gwen Evan. All likely to be the same woman, and just variations of her name, as I have seen the same variation in things I have been sure of. The first was to an Evan Howel, and the second to a Howel Howel, who must be my g-g-g-g grandfather, because the date and location matches too well for it not to be. I need to look into it further, but I have no reason to believe the record wrong, given the date and location.

The other discovery this week is that I did more research on the paperwork I got from my dad's sister about their grandparents on their dad's side. This has always been the shortest part of my family tree because of the difficulty my grandfather had talking about his past, and the fact that none of the fathers in that line were particularly talkative about their pasts.

The paperwork is all in German (aside from the letters my grandfather wrote to get them), but they do include not only his own birth record, but also that of all his siblings, and their parents' marriage record, their birth dates and locations (I'm fairly certain of this now), and their parents (or at least three of them) names.

However, each time I glance through the papers, I can't resist, so when my friend was down on Wednesday, we decided to guess at what the name of the location was under my great-grandparents. We guessed at Galizien, which led me to this site about Galicia, an old Prussian state that covered some of the area to the East of Germany, south of Poland, and north of Austria. As I had heard through family lore that they were born in Prussia near or around where Poland is now, I'm pretty sure this is it. I'm still trying to figure out the names of the towns, though.
From what I can read on the sheets, the names look like Szdziszow or Rzdziszow; though the first letter doesn't look like the other capital Rs in the hand-written parts of the document; and Czuder or Czudei or something like that. I'm not sure that that one is a C, either, but It doesn't look like the G below it in Galizien.
So I'm one and a half steps closer to where they were born, at least. It's a big deal. Because it means I can actually possibly find them at JewishGen, because you have to have locations to look there.

No new follows for the day, but a few interesting links:
* An article on Surnames, focusing specifically on the development of English Surnames.
* Family Search.org has a site with area-specific genealogies in them called Community Trees, if you're focused on a specific area of research.
* And Genealogy's Star wrote a two part article on how proof gets incorporated into family trees which is a fascinating read, especially to someone who's trying to be more conscientious about those things these days. Part One - Part Two

And in my family tree this week:
8/23/1796 - Hans Heinrich Bordvick and Anna Magdallena Tiller were married in Norway
8/23/1919 - Margaret Hansen was born in Cleveland, Illinois
8/26/1818 - Christine Jensdatter died in Vejle, Denmark
8/27/1849 - Gabriel Howells was born in Towyn, Monmothshire, Wales (and I didn't even realize that when I typed it up, despite typing it up only yesterday, when the date should have meant something. ETA: Ah, apparently the manuscript had the wrong birth date on it, as the record I have from his death states his birth as 8/27, while the manuscript says 8/1.)

And I think I've rambled on enough, so I'll leave my recipe plans for another post.

Friday Update

Got a cold this week, so I took it pretty easy today.

I've been going through the blogs I read on Google reader each Thursday and double-checking to see if they've been updated, and I finally got to the point where I could tell some hadn't been updated in at least a month, so I ended up unsubscribing to a dozen or so blogs, which should decrease the excess a little. We'll see.

Made two posts today at Oh, Spusch.

The first was part three of my Visual Family Tree, the Bordewicks. It was a bit odd doing that one, because unlike the others, that one feels like two trees merging--mostly because my great-grandfather was Norwegian, and my great-grandmother was Irish. There's at least one more picture I want to add to that one, though I'd love to find a shot of Heinrich and Harde to post as well. I also added a shot of Dad and his siblings with their parents to the Hillinger tree, and I'll be doing the same with Grumpy's family when we get a shot I got from my aunt scanned in and posted.

The other was a Disclosure Statement, because I found an article talking about why they're important to Genealogy Bloggers. I highly recommend any blogger out there read it. Even if you don't think you're making money for yourself, anything you say in your blog could be construed as an endorsement.

Not following any new blogs today.

No events this week in my family tree (before 1920, anyway...).

I'm thinking about playing with the sheets I found last week before I move on to doing timelines and question sheets for each of my grandparents, just so that I have a few more ideas of what I want and what I need for them.

Friday Genealogy Update

It has been a crazy week, starting on Saturday with family photos with hubby's family, then a memorial for my Nana Sunday up on Mount Rainier. Yesterday sis and niece and I went to my Aunt's house to go through all of Nana's papers and things. It was a great visit, and I have a lot to think about. Even added a few notations to the family tree, and I now have a possible birthplace for my grandfather's parents--if I'm right. The paperwork's in German, and partially hand-written, not to mention the print being in a gothic font. All of which will make it especially interesting to translate. I might run it through hubby's scanner, see if that makes it any easier.

Highlights of my discoveries:
1- I've always heard about Nana's Tante Margrethe. I'm now certain I have her marked in the tree (I've heard of her several times in the past, but failed to figure out which Margrethe she was). When Nana's mother died when she and her siblings were still young, Tante Margrethe came to help out for a while. Apparently she was Holger's mother's sister, but was living in New York, so she was close by to help out until he moved himself and the kids in with one of his brothers who lived in Cleveland as well. The family lived there until he married his second wife Rose, I believe, or shortly before.
2- From the German paperwork, I've been able to understand a few things at least. Leon is listed nowhere in the papers (that I can see). This may be because Seneft (as the paperwork lists the name) was no longer recognized as Alex's surname because his parents were married only in a religious ceremony. His mother's name is listed in the paperwork, however. As Hilinger. One L, not two as we spell it now. I believe the double-L began to be used when they moved to the states, but I don't yet have a perfect grasp on that, so I could be wrong.
3-I also found the surname of a Hillinger cousin I did have, but had no surname listed. I'll have to sit my dad and his siblings down at some point and comb through that part of the tree with them, because I'm sure there's more I should know that I've just not connected correctly.

I now have a bag of paperwork and letters to go through. I can tell this is going to be a long process...but I think it will be worth it. So much to learn.

Once I got some of the paperwork sorted from yesterday, I put the more difficult bits aside. I figure I'll transcribe a few a week to get them out of the way. But for today, I focused on something I should have been doing from the start: I made a contact list. We've got a large family, but I've never been good about letters or phone calls, and only a bit more so about emails. But with all of Nana's old phone books, I decided it would be the perfect time to sort one out. I know I'm still missing a ton of people, but it's a good start. I even wrote down spouses (and whether they were dead or divorced, so that I didn't make *that* sort of boo boo), any kids (even if grown), and what side of the family tree they'd be most interested in. It's a pretty long list, but I know I've got a very long way to go--there are a bunch of second and possibly even third cousins I might be able to get in touch with through Facebook, or through first or second cousins. But I definitely need to do so NOW, before it's too late.

I've slowly been writing up research sheets (found here, with another interesting one here that I might need to play with) on each of my great and great-great grandparents with as much as I have on them. Some are a bit sparse (the Jewish line in particular), but I've tried to come up with as many questions as I could for each of them. Next step is to do the grandparents, but I think I might work differently with those, given that I knew them all personally. Might try to write out a timeline of their lives before writing up questions on what I still need.

And I've got a ton of posts I want to do, not even including the papers I want to transcribe:
* The Bordewick Visual Family Tree
* The Jones Visual Family Tree
* Brick Wall Update on the Seneft/Hilingers
* New Brick Wall post about the Welsh side of the family
* Software Comparison (IE, "Why Not to buy Family Tree Maker any more")
* New link list (with a possible focus on location)
* A Genealogist's Dictionary Pt 1 (something I have no doubt I'll be adding to quite a bit over the years)

And a few last bits:
I've added two more blogs to follow today - Greta's Genealogy Blog, a nice blog which I have been following for some time now, and Tracing the Tribe, which is specifically focused on Jewish Genealogy.

Genealogy Day

Didn't follow any new blogs today. Nothing particularly caught my eye that I wasn't already following.

Wrote today in Oh, Spusch about some new discoveries I made last on the Hansen side. Might lead to some interesting finds down the road.
Tried to do some more research on my Jewish family. Think the best bet I have right now is trying to get Dora Hillinger nee Kresch's citizenship papers or her Social Security application. So I guess that's my next step. And possibly picking my dad's head and seeing if he has anything else hidden away that I don't know about.

Looked into Drop Box, but it doesn't look like you can make the folders private, so I don't think that will be a solution for me, even though it looked like it might be.

Put together a Calendar of all the full dates I have in my family tree--not much yet, as most of what I have are either uncertain dates or only years. So I thought I'd do a little week-to-week calendar each Friday.
This week in my family tree:
August 1 -
Johan Petter Bordevick in Sor-Trondelag, Norway in 1802
August 3 -
Jorgen Larsen born in Vejle, Denmark in 1837
Bjarne Bordewick born in the Lofoten Islands, Norway in 1888
August 5 -
Mette Matiasdatter born in Vejle, Denmark in 1804

Follow Friday and more

I- Follow Friday

For Follow Friday today I've only added one more blog, Olive Tree Genealogy. It's a lovely blog that I'm very much enjoying so far.

II- Genealogy

Oh, Spuch post for the week is the second part of my Visual Family Tree, this time focusing on the Hansen side of the family tree. Includes 4 generations of Hansens, reaching back before 1900.

Comparing the photos of my great-grandparents' siblings was rather interesting. One of my Danish friends mentioned that my great-grandfather's family looked rather well-off, given how they're dressed, though that could have more to do with the fact that Holger's family were near a city, while Oline's family was in the country. Something to look into, at least.

It was also mentioned that the naming in my great-grandfather's family was a bit odd. Holger had two brothers named Hans--Hans Jorgen and Hans Knudsen. Jorgen is less unusual, but Knudsen is distinctly a surname, in this case being used as a middle name. In looking into it further, it seems that one brother was named for one grandfather (Hans Knudsen, hence the Hansen name for the entire family), and one for the other (Jorgen Larsen). Definitely made me think I've a lot of interesting things when it comes to surnames used in odd ways in my family--I'll definitely have to work on a blog-post about that.

A few weeks back I made myself a research log using Excel and making tabs for each of my four major families to keep them separate for now, and so that I don't duplicate too much research. Then, in an effort to focus on the people I need the most information about, I went through my direct ancestors and made a new list of people who fit that bill. So now I have five tabs, and I'm considering making a sixth, just focusing on the dead-end brides in my tree.

No other discoveries today, big or small, though I did learn that ukendt kvinde means "unknown woman" in Danish... :)

III- Cooking

Cooked my chicken today. It's okay, but I don't think I'll be making it again. The sweet and earthy didn't quite mix right for my taste buds.

I'm thinking I'll make something with paprika, yogurt, and lemon juice next time. Now I just have to find a recipe that works.

Did make myself some garlic bread with the sourdough round. That was nice, though I don't think I cooked it quite long enough. The garlic was a bit sweet.

More Genealogy

So, after getting fed up and whining about my Jewish Genealogy yesterday, I shifted gears and decided to go through the old family trees to make sure I had everything in my computer that was on paper.

Several years ago, I got in contact with someone who also had the Bordewick name, though they spelled it Bordewich, and he gave me a copy of his version of the family tree. Then I lost it all, including his email address, in a computer crash. Turns out I had quite a bit of it in a descendancy print-out I'd made, so I spent a lot of time going through that and comparing it to what I have now.

In doing so, I found a new tidbit. It seems that the progenitor of the Bordevick/Bordewick/Bordewich clan, Hans Heinrich, was born in Bardoweick, Germany. I knew the name had come from there, but not when or how. I'd assumed it was much further back than that. So definitely an interesting discovery. He had quite a fascinating life, too. Moved up to Norway when he was 21, and became a citizen so that he could be a shipmaster there.

It's amazing how much I'm learning, now that I'm paying attention to the little details. And how much it's finally starting to make sense.

Follow Friday and Genealogy Frustrations

Today I focused on one of the shortest sections of my family tree--my father's father's side. As Jewish Germans, it is one of those places that has always been a dead-end for me. My grandfather never liked talking much about his early life, and so I only had what had already been written down by he and his siblings.

After I began to post information at Oh, Spusch, my father sent me a copy of a letter my grandfather sent to someone who had contacted our family about more information on the Hillinger surname. It gave me a few more tidbits, but I still have no clue where his father was born, and I'm not even certain the name he was born under. The family story has been detailed at Oh, Spusch here, here and here.

Because of all the family moves (somewhere in the Prussian states to England, back to Germany for my great-grandfather, then France, then the US), the name confusion because of the change from Senft to Hillinger in the late ninteen-teens, and the fact that likely many of the records I need were destroyed during World War II because the family is Jewish, sometimes I wonder if we'll ever find anything.

I've glanced through JewishGen, but with the minimal information I know, it seems almost impossible for me to find anything there. I did make a copy of what little I had and posted it there. All I can hope now is that someone else will be able to make a connection to my tree and contact me.


For Follow Friday this week, I've started following these three Genealogy blogs: Genealogy's Star, Anglo-Celtic Connections, and the Armchair Genealogist.