Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Tiny update

It's been a little while. No real news lately. I've been wrapped up in fraternity family trees and history recently, thanks to Facebook. I do have a few more Master Profiles on Geni under my belt now though. I said before that I had just added Richard Petty and his family to the tree a couple of weeks ago. He, his father, and grandson (still working on Kyle) are all Master Profiles now. Yay!

Other than that, I've still been on the hunt for photos. I've found a few photos of cousins, but not as many as I'd like for mine and my husband's direct ancestors. I'm still looking though. Contacts I've found through Find A Grave have been a big help, and I've been going back through old Ancestry message board posts.

In other news, Pocahontas is apparently not my grandmother now. She is a distant ancestor's sibling's wife's grandmother now. Still related, just not directly. Oh well. Still have plenty of interesting ancestors to satisfy me. :-)
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Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Oh the tangled webs we weave...

So, as I mentioned a few weeks ago, I started researching blood types within my family and my husband's. I wasn't expecting to get very far since people rarely know what blood type their great-great grandfather had, but I was expecting to get a little further than I've gotten thus far. It seems to be a rare occurrence to know one's blood type. I feel like I've known mine forever, and then in 12th grade I got a card to prove my blood type when I donated for the first time. But in any case, I've hit many brick walls in this quest. Still, I have been able to find out a bit.

As I mentioned before, my mother-in-law has type AB+. Since talking to other relatives on her side, I have come to know that her sister is probably type AO+. This means that their mother, whose blood type I don't know, had to be either AO or BO. I am hoping to get in touch with their brother in the near future to see if he can help narrow down that possibility further.

I have also found out that my mother-in-law's father's great-niece's blood type is O-. I find it amazing that in the same family just two generations down, the AB possibility was wiped out completely on one lineage.

My father-in-law's side is the exact opposite it seems. Of his three living siblings, I have spoken with two of them, and they, like my father-in-law, are all type O+. This means the probability of one or both of their parents being O+ is very high. I have not been able to confirm their parents' blood types yet, but I'm working diligently on it.

The most interesting thing I've found so far in my husband's family is a set of twins on his mother's side. One is type O+, while the other is AB "something". This is entirely possible in fraternal twins (which they are) when one parent is AO and the other is BO, but still! To see it happen... I'm still amazed!

I have gotten less exciting results in my family, mostly because I haven't found nearly the same level of information on my side. My father's family is the only side I seem to have found info on so far. My dad is O+, as is my brother. In asking around, I have found that both of his parents were O+ as well. This means that all of my dad's full-blooded siblings (he has several half-siblings) are type O+ as well.

Also, my dad's stepfather is O+. So the half-siblings on that side are O+. I have yet to find out the blood type of my dad's stepmother, but if it turns out to be O+, I think I will be more shocked than the twins on my husband's side.

Another interesting thing, like with my father-in-law, my grandfather's two full-blooded brothers are also type O+. So, again, the chances of one or both of their parents also have type O blood is quite high. I hope to gather some more info on this side of the family soon, and I hope to find any info on my mother's side even sooner!

Another thing I recently started adding to my family tree on Geni is "namesake" information. I have so far added information on myself, my husband and his brothers, and my mother-in-law and her sister. This is another quest I don't expect to extend very far, but I'm trying while I can.

Ancestry also did another free access weekend a couple of weeks ago. From April 22 to April 26, "military records" were free. I got very excited at first, but after doing a few searches I realized it really only included WWI draft info and WWII army enlistment summaries. This severely limited what I could find. After only a few hours, I was able to find all I really needed. The most exciting bit I found was a document for my great-great grandfather who immigrated from "Bohemia." I know very little about his family and his wife's family, so this was a big find for me!

Another thing I was finally able to do is ask my brother how all of my family Facebook friends are actually related to us. In doing this, I found out that my father's family has a lot of divorces/second and third marriages. This only means my blood typing quest may prove really interesting on his side. I also went through my family tree brackets asking him if he had gotten any further on any of the lines. He didn't know much, but I was able to find out a bit.

My newest exciting thing (as if the rest isn't exciting enough) has been Family Search. This website has select census records for free as well as information on marriages and deaths. I have had great luck researching several family members and have found missing siblings for others. I have spent all my free time lately on that site. I am quickly running out of people to search on the site, but I added Richard Petty to the tree a couple of days ago (another relative Andrew and I share) so I have a whole new line to research now!

Anywho... I think that's about it for now. Hopefully I will have more information soon. Until then!
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Monday, April 18, 2011

Reference Websites


I know if I don't start one of these now, I will never do it. I need to clean-up my bookmarks section of my browser and have one consolidated list so I know where to go when I have questions about where I found information. Also, which sites I've exhausted and which I haven't. So here goes. This will be a work in progress.

Family-based sites:
FOCUSING ON MY FAMILY:

FOCUSING ON THE IN-LAW TREES:

GENERAL/UNSORTED/UNEXPLORED SITES:

Location-based sites: 
GEORGIA:

NORTH CAROLINA:

Random sites I had bookmarked:
ROOTSWEB STUFF:

GENFORUM STUFF:

RANDOM/UNSORTED STUFF:

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Saturday, April 16, 2011

Sesquicentennial Anniversary of the United States Civil War

I can't believe 150 years ago, the Civil War was just starting. It seems like ages ago, yet in the realm of family trees, it's just a few short generations back. Ancestry and Footnote both did free access "weekends" (though they lasted an entire week) on all Civil War records last week from Apr 8th to Apr 14th. Footnote also threw in the 1860 census records for free. I spent all 7 days downloading as much as I possibly could.

At first, for the Civil War records, I was searching exact names of soldiers I already knew had fought and linking the info right away to their profile on Geni. I quickly realized how much time I was wasting with this method. Instead, I switched to simply searching a few surnames and then once finding someone matching that surname, I searched all other people in the same infantry for other surnames I recognized as also possibly being related. Now, after a very long, obsession-filled week, I have two folders FULL of documents for hundreds of soldiers that may or may not be related to myself or my husband. I have the task now over the next couple of weeks (or months) of sorting through all of the information and connecting whatever I can.

Amazingly, I was able to gather all of the information I set forth to find in the seven days, and I even had a couple of hours left on Thursday to download some addition census records in hopes of finding in-laws of in-laws living down the street from each other and whatnot.

Someone on Geni also had the bright idea of starting a massive Civil War project on Geni. Underneath this master project, there will be related projects for both troops and battles. I have already started a few of them myself:
  • 1st North Carolina Junior Reserves
  • 22nd North Carolina Infantry
  • 26th North Carolina Infantry
  • 27th North Carolina Infantry
  • 33rd North Carolina Infantry
  • 44th North Carolina Infantry
There are many other troops on which I downloaded information, but those few either had definite links to me or my husband or required somewhat immediate attention due to their importance in the Civil War or specific battles. So far all six of these groups are just bare bones, but I'm hoping to get them more fully completed as I continue to go through the documents I downloaded.

I must admit though, my main goal for doing all of this Civil War research is really to find some connections that were made merely by fighting with each other side by side in the war. Families that married each other, families that moved due to new land they discovered or land they felt connected to, and how family dynamics were changed when a father or brother left and died during the war. These stories are my main goals.

Also, a new task I'm tackling is finding out relatives' blood types. It started with my mother-in-law talking about donating blood and why my brother-in-law couldn't give doubles (he's type A, a type too common to need more than a pint per person). She told me she is type AB+. Her husband is type O+. She also told me her dad was AB-. I find this all very interesting. That means that my husband is type AO+ (the O of course being somewhat "recessive" when it comes to typing). This means, myself also being AO+, that our children will either be type A or type O. The fact that my mother-in-law is AB though is what really got me interested. I only know of types A and O in my immediate family, so the thought of others having been out there is something I would like to know. This will be a difficult task, and I doubt I will have much luck, but until I reach a very hard brick wall on this subject, I will keep plugging away at it.

I think that's pretty much it in the recent realm of genealogy for me. I shall be back soon with, hopefully, more news!
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Thursday, March 24, 2011

I can't believe a year has passed...

One year ago today, I got married to the most amazing person I've ever met. The time has flown. I look at photos of our ceremony, and it feels like yesterday. It was such a happy day. And today has been a happy day, despite hardly seeing each other. We worked opposite schedules today. We celebrated yesterday instead though since we knew this would be the case. We went out and perused some of our favorite stores and then went to a brewhouse for dinner, just the two of us.

Today is also a day we share with my inlaws. They got married on this day 32 years ago. I looked back through some of their wedding photos today. It's amazing to see the changes that happen in 32 years. They were so young (though not as young as we are). They may not be so young, or brunette anymore, but the light in their eyes and the love between them is still there. I love going to visit them for the very reason that their house is always so full of love and happiness. I want to have that when we have children. I want them to enjoy being at home while they're growing up and coming back home once they're out on their own. It brings a smile to my face to think of raising children together. If they turn out anything like their daddy, I will be a happy mom. That is several years down the road still, but it still crosses my mind from time to time.

Apparently it is also my husband's godmother's anniversary too. (I didn't even know he had a godmother!) Donna Smith has been married to her husband, Rodney, for 20 years now. I can't wait until that milestone. Well... I can, but I can't. Haha. Donna is also from Randolph County. That means, more than likely, they are related somehow. Maybe I will find that connection soon.

I have lately, however, been shifting my focus from adding people to the tree as I said last time. I'm still investigating source documents on what I have already. I've also been checking to see if I have any of what Geni calls "zombies," people who are actually deceased but still listed as living. I have so far only found one though. I have a feeling there are many more out there though. I just have to track them down.

Another rather important thing I guess I should mention... I found out at least one relationship between me and my husband. A while ago, though I forgot to record it at the time, I found a link through Pocahontas. Since I didn't record the path, I therefore could not figure out our relationship to each other. All I remember is she was a cousin of his and she's my 13th great-grandmother. In any case, I found another path I was able to track through Annica Jansen and Thomas Southard. Through that connection, we are seventh cousins 15 times removed. That is distant enough for me that I don't have the same fear as my mother-in-law of our children being "retarded." Haha.

It somewhat saddens me because my husband does not share the same joy of genealogy that I do. He feels as if these people that came before him mean relatively little now. I disagree. I feel a need to seek the people who came before us and learn from them and figure out why we grew up the ways we did. I love the feeling of having a legacy or a family right to uphold. I'm hoping to find some photos of his more distant relatives in hopes that it will make him feel more connected to his past and his family's past, especially if I can find a relative that looks like him.

Anyway... I'm think that's about it for now. I will be back soon I'm sure with more news and updates. Until then!
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Saturday, March 19, 2011

I found it!

So, after a few months of searching, I have finally found it. I found out the relationship between husband's parents. They are third cousins once removed. I told my mother-in-law about this, and she was shocked. She always thought they were something more like fifth cousins. She said they had to be more than third cousins or else her children would have ended up retarded. Well, lucky for all of us, all of her boys are lovely and very much not retarded.

I'm still working on finding the relationship between my own parents, but with each new person I find on the tree, I come closer to discovering the connection. I have, however, been taking a break the last couple of days in adding people to the tree. I have instead been pruning and preening my profiles. Geni has what they call "Master Profiles." They have a wonderful format to them that will actually be very helpful with a little side project I'm working on that I won't mention yet. So far, I have four master profiles. (I'm so proud of them!)

In addition to updating my own profiles, I've also been helping fix some other people's work too. In Geni, when merges happen on two profiles, the "About Me" section is also merged and there is often duplicated information left behind. I've been helping out wherever I'm able in fixing this and leaving behind nice and readable profiles. I've become more addicted to that than I was in just finding relatives and ancestors (if you can believe it).

My goal over the next few weeks is to work my way through each project I am following on Geni and complete as many profiles as possible. My brother, who has a lot of source documents already, is slowly sending me copies of what he has to help with this.

He has been mainly helping in working out the true parents of one of our ancestors, George Hodson Triplett. His parentage has been a mystery for quite sometime. Rumors state a couple of possibilities, but I am looking for proof. I have to admit, I'm a little frustrated with this "brick wall". My brother claims to have some proof on the matter, but he has yet to get it to me, so I'm stuck waiting anxiously in the meantime. Oh well.

I guess that's about it for now. I will post again soon, and hopefully I will have something a bit more exciting to report.
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Monday, March 7, 2011

Well, I did it...

I made a genealogy blog. I've been wanting to do it for quite some time, but I wasn't quite sure I would have anything to say. After thinking about it non-stop for the last couple of weeks though, I decided "Why not?!" So, here I am. It may be slow going at first, but I have a feeling things will pick up quickly.

To start this thing, I guess I will mention a bit about my interest in genealogy. I'm not sure what exactly got me started in it. The first time I ever remember asking questions about ancestors was in ninth grade. I had an English assignment that required me to write an autobiography. Me, being the over-achiever that I am, decided it wouldn't be just about me, but also about the people that made me me.

I asked my grandmother and my great-grandmother about any relative they could remember. They had a lot of stories. That autobiography would come in so handy right now because it detailed some people we know very little about in our family. I swear somewhere I still have it, but I cannot seem to find it. If I had to guess, my parents threw it out when they moved or when I went to college. Oh well. My great-grandmother has since passed away, but what I do remember her telling me has proved to be a big help in researching her family.

In any case, that time in ninth grade I think is what started all this mess for me. I became interested in knowing who came before me and how the ways they lived shaped who I am today. Later in high school I think is when I started working on a tree on Ancestry.com. They have since become very exclusive to members only, so I have left them and moved on to Geni.com. I LOVE Geni. They suit my needs perfectly and make finding cousins and relatives very easy. But back when I started using Geni, it was just a little here and there. It has now, however, become a bit of an obsession of mine. I blame my husband's mother.

I got married last March, and my mother-in-law was so excited because she knew I loved researching family trees. She said "Now you can do ours too!" I looked a little, but I wasn't able to find much. Then, this last holiday, she gave me the holy grail of her family: a book outlining all of her father's side of the family as far as they had reached (the 1700's). Since I received this book, I have, literally, been going non-stop working on her side of the family. Then! She gives me the name of someone on my husband's dad's side of the family that has been doing that line. Between all of this information, I have been quite a busy gal.

Since acquiring all of this data, I have added thousands of people to the family tree, and I have even found a few relationships between my husband and I. Very, very distant relationships, unlike the relationship of his parents, but still. I have also gotten closer to realizing the relationship between my own parents. Their relationship seems perhaps even more distant than that between me and my husband. It's in finding all of these connections that I find myself loving genealogy.

I also have the pleasure of having someone else in my family share my love of genealogy. My brother loves doing it too. He may not be quite to the level of obsession I have reached, but he has traveled across the country researching family lines. While I would love to be able to do the same, I tend to let my fingertips do the researching. I rely on whatever records I can find online and the wonderful site findagrave.com for photos and locations of graves.

So, with all of that, what do I hope this blog will be? Well, I came up with a few ideas. First and most importantly, it will be a place I can record all of the crazy relationships and ideas that circle my head when I find new information. I can also record progress made or not made in a certain area. I also hope to use it as a way to tell stories I find or hear about family members in hopes of remembering the way they lived, saw the world, or why they moved from one place to another. I can discuss discrepancies I find in data (which often happens) and try to hash out the truth and think of ways those discrepancies may have come about. There are so many ways I plan to use this blog. I'm so excited to start. Now to work on the tree some more so I have something to write about later!
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