On Halloween, my husband and I went on a historical tour of the oldest cemetery in the town that we lived in. This is the first one we have gone on together, and the first I’ve attended in years. I learned so many things! The town I live in has a Mission. The Mission Cemetery wasn’t located near the Mission itself. I learned that where it currently stands was not the original location of the cemetery. It had been moved several times before it arrived at its permanent location. Sometimes, the reason for moving the cemetery was financial. The real … Continue reading →

Making a simple mistake in your genealogy research is understandable, and generally harmless. However, intentionally doing genealogy wrong, in an effort to illegally make money for yourself, can result in a prison sentence. That’s exactly what happened to a women who was filing false tax returns with information she found while doing genealogy research. In April of this year, Shannon Kathlina Grimm, who lives in Montana, decided to do some genealogy research. The problem was, she wasn’t searching for information about her own ancestors. She also wasn’t helping other people fill in their family trees. Instead, Ms. Grimm was looking … Continue reading →

One of the great things about genealogy is that in the course of collecting information about who your ancestors were, where they lived, who they married, and when they died, you may also get to know more about them through family stories, newspaper articles, or other resources. I think that names and dates are important, but it is the pursuit of information about my ancestors’ lives that is my favorite part about genealogy. During a recent visit with my dad, I learned a little bit more about my grandfather, whom I never met because he passed away before I was … Continue reading →

I have been working on putting together my family tree. This is something I simply don’t have a lot of time to devote to, so I am doing it in small pieces. This week, I decided to see if I could locate information about a family member who meant a lot to me. To my surprise, I found my grandmother! I must admit, I am not an expert genealogist. If I were, I suppose I would have completed most of my family tree by now. Instead, I have scattered notes with scribbled, haphazard, portions of my family tree, and some … Continue reading →

I have known for a long time that my husband’s grandfather had been a prisoner of war. Over the past couple of days, both my husband and I have learned even more about his grandfather thanks to a newspaper article that someone else in the family found and shared with us. Interestingly enough, the person who found the article was not from the same side of my husband’s family that my husband’s grandfather was from. Ronald Delaney was my husband’s paternal grandfather. One of my husband’s uncles on his mother’s side of the family recognized the name when he came … Continue reading →

Memorials take many forms. There is a growing trend to create online memorials for family members who have passed away. I was reminded of this when I received a somewhat confusing email a few moments ago. Today, many of us live our lives online. We write blogs and journals, create audio content, and post photographs of subjects that are important to us. We share these little pieces of ourselves through social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter, or Google +. This content will remain online after we have passed on, (unless someone actively removes it). Traditionally, genealogists would attempt to … Continue reading →

Part of what makes genealogy interesting are the heirlooms, photographs, and other artifacts that connect us to the ancestors who came before us. Gravestones can also bring connections. Sometimes, these important pieces become lost. It is fascinating when, years later, they are found and returned. Last year, I wrote about a story I’d read about in a newspaper. The gravestone of an infant had somehow become lost from the old cemetery that the baby was buried in. This story happened in Georgia, and had a happy ending. Someone found the gravestone and posted the information about it online. Eventually, the … Continue reading →

There are many things that you can learn from the dead. This is why genealogists spend time in cemeteries, searching for the gravestones of their ancestors. Every so often, you can find some fascinating stories in the news about cemeteries, or parts of them, that genealogists have found. Sometimes, those stories can be quite bizarre! There are tombstones surfacing on Ocean Beach in San Francisco, California. Imagine, walking down the beach and finding a large, intact, tombstone sitting on the sand! It seems that, every so often, the shifting sands on the beach uncover some tombstones. Everyone talks about them … Continue reading →

Most families have at least one or two family heirlooms that they treasure. They might take the form of photographs of relatives, jewelry from an ancestor, or your great grandmother’s china dishes. In my family, we have heirlooms that keep us warm, and that we can fall asleep with. I am talking about the crocheted blankets that my grandmother made. One of my grandmothers loved to crochet. I have memories of her spending hours crocheting while watching television. She seemed to have an endless supply of brightly colored yarn, and an equally endless supply of family members that she wanted … Continue reading →