In the spirit of the holidays, I like to sometimes give the gift of genealogy to some of my family members. My grandparents, especially, love getting family history gifts. For a couple of years I’ve given my grandparents a nice, printed out copy of their family tree. My maternal grandmother loves to just sit and read it (usually correcting a few mistakes.) Though, I feel sort of boring giving them basically the same thing every year, even though it’s updated. I thought about making a really nice one using the Ancestry Press, but I doubt I’ll have the time to design it and get it printed and sent in time.

My paternal grandmother loves her Irish culture and history, so that one is usually somewhat easy. My maternal grandparents are German and then a mixed bag. What I need from them is photos. I have almost no photos from my maternal side. I have tons of photos from my paternal side, thanks to my grandmother’s collection. If I had photos, I could merge them nicely with a family tree to give them something that they can keep and cherish and possibly even hand down to more generations.

I know a lot of you out there are into genealogy and probably are more creative than I am. Are there any clever ideas out there for genealogy-related gifts, or even a creative spin on the old “Family Tree”?

As the news mentioned last week, Ancestry has opened it’s DNA area. I’ve been a user on Ancestry for many years and I also have become involved in Genetic Genealogy via the National Geographic study and also Family Tree DNA. So, I was more than happy to test our Ancestry’s system.

It was easy to transfer my data over from FTDNA to Ancestry. Currently, they can only transfer from FTDNA or National Geographic, though I imagine if you have your data handy you can convert it yourself. You just need to bring up your DNA data and type in the values into Ancestry from one of these two companies.

It took a few minutes after I entered it for it to find some matches, though unfortunately there are none before 26 generations out. They show you your matches in a nice graphical format including a map. They also give you an estimate of the number of years, along with generations, that this person and you may have a common ancestor.

If you have an Ancestry.com account and also have received your DNA info, I would recommend trying this out. Any and all data can help everyone!

Link: Ancestry DNA

Well, my Grandpa is doing much better now. My wife and I visited him in the hospital on Saturday and he was his old joking self. Hopefully, he’ll be coming home shortly.

I’ve been out of the “genealogy circuit” here for the last few weeks, so that’s why I’ve been slow on the posts. I’m working on getting more information that will allow me to post more often, even when I’m not actively researching since I don’t always have time to do family research.

For all of you genealogy bloggers out there, where do you find the inspiration and information to be able to post quite often even when not actively researching? I’d like some tips to help me get the ball rolling.

Well, not-so-good news today…

My grandpa on my mother’s side is in the hospital. He went in for what I think was quadruple-bypass surgery and at first he was doing well and starting to wake up. But, I got word earlier this evening that he took a slight turn for the worst when his body probably started rejecting the new changes. He’s a small, thin guy, but hopefully he can fight his way. So, whoever you are out there reading this, please send your “good vibes”, “happy juju” or whatever you have laying around his way. Thanks.

Update: He’s much more stable now. Hopefully, he starts feeling better.

The way that I got started doing genealogy research happened in 1999. I had always been somewhat interested in my ancestors, especially related to my surname, but most people are. My grandfather, Richard Zalewski, had passed away that year of cancer. Around that time, I had also run across some hand-written family trees and also an article in our local newspaper about familysearch.org. It had mentioned that the website was getting hammered by visitors since it went live and that they were working on fixing it.

When I got home I was able to get onto the site and did a general search on “Zalewski” and was amazed at all of the entries I received. From there I collected information from family sources, free resources on the Internet, and other sources. I can say that I would never be as far in my research as I am now without the power of the Internet. It just snowballed from there, as all genealogists know, “Once it hits your lips, it’s so good.”

I seem to be one of the minority of genealogy researchers that is of the “young” variety. I usually get weird looks when I’m scouring local cemeteries for headstone, since I can only be there to vandalize, I guess. Though, with the Internet, I am seeing a lot more younger genealogists and I think that’s great.

How did you get started in your genealogy research?

I merged the two trees together, so there is now only one tree on the website. It’s much easier to search and browse now.

I logged back into Ancestry and found some new things that they have implemented. I’m really impressed with their “Personal Tree” option. What you do, like a lot of other sites, it upload your GEDCOM to it. It’s puts it into tree form, which you can share or not. But, the nice part is that it automatically searches the Ancestry site for matches. This makes it much easier that requiring you to type in the search info every time you want to find something. It now automatically takes into account birth, death, marriage, spouse, etc for you. It’s very nice. If you have an Ancestry subscription, give it a try, though I’m not even sure you need a subscription to use it.

Looks like I’ll be back into doing some family genealogy research. It usually just takes something to re-spark my interest. Along with wanting to use my subscriptions, instead of paying for not using them, I watched a bit of a show on Irish immigrants on the History channel that helped me want to look again.

So, there will be more updated content here in the coming days and weeks. I still need to merge trees.

Oooh, a post title with a double-meaning.

Well, for one, there have been a few additions to the Zalewski Surname Project over at Family Tree DNA. Thanks to everyone who has joined! If you’re a Zalewski or related to one, see what you’re missing by looking at my Zalewski Surname DNA Study page.

Also, everyone can welcome Darcy Zalewski to the family. Darcy is my new wife and she is so excited to have a new, more-complicated name to use. Oh, don’t forget about being last in line for everything now.

I really need to get back into doing some more research on my family tree, but I just haven’t had the time. I also don’t want to waste my subscriptions, because you know how expensive they are.