Today I was browsing some of the professional genealogy society-type websites. I hope to one day become certified in some sort of genealogy-related area. I know that I’ll enjoy doing genealogy for the rest of my life and hopefully I’ll be able to help others.

The first one I came to was Board for Certification of Genealogists. I was curious as to what it took to become certified. It actually seems in reach since applicants are sent a photocopy of an historical document that relates to the geographic areas and time periods in which they normally work. I read over one of their example that dealt with an area I’m familiar with, an 1870 Wisconsin Deed. Everything that they went over would be something that I would normally ask myself or make notes on. I don’t have much experience with deeds, but I can figure out the basics of what I’m looking for. Have any of you readers become, or tried to become, certified?

I know that one of my weak points right now is probably sourcing. Don’t get me wrong, I add every possible source to everything I enter into my family tree, but I’m not hip on the lingo. Does anyone know of any good references of how to write out your sources, preferably free? BCG has a book, but they want me to spend $45 on it.

I also looked at the National Genealogical Society’s website. This is not really a certification, but it is a central location that a lot of genealogists go to. Is anyone here a member of NGS? Are the online courses worth the money? I’d like to become a member, but I want to make sure I get my money’s worth. I hope to one day be able to go to one of their genealogical conferences. I’d love to meet other genealogists.

I do plan on becoming a member of a local genealogical society, the Milwaukee County Genealogical Society. A lot of my family lived and died in the Milwaukee County area. Plus, it’s pretty decent deal at $12/year and you get some access to helpful local information, etc. Plus, it’ll make me go out and meet other people doing research in the same area. Maybe I can help them get their website into the 21st century, too. What are your experiences with local genealogical societies?

Photo: amyc500@flickr

After getting more interested in the military history of my family tree due to the talks and searches I did on Saturday, I decided to try some other options. I usually don’t do a lot of searching on Google for family members, since I usually get a lot more misses than hits. I tried to narrow it down by using quotes and full names, locations, etc. Somehow, I had ended up on Google Books. I kept wanting to search their collection of books, so I decided to try now.

I had no luck finding anything on my grandparents in World War II. I then searched for my great-grandather, Joseph Zalewski, who was in World War I.  Unfortunately, his military records were destroyed in a fire in 1973 at the National Personnel Records Center – St Louis, Missouri, so it’s all been info based on word-of-mouth. But, lo and behold, what is this?

The first book I found was “Soldiers of the Great War.” Unfortunately, I couldn’t find his name in this book, but a lot of the text was very small. The second book was much more important, anyway. The second book was “The Official History of the Eighty-Sixth Division” published in 1921. On page 110, it listed a Joseph F Zalewski that lived at 900 Fratney St, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. That was my great-grandfather’s exact address in that time period. Success!

Now we know exactly what division and battalion he was in when he shipped off to Europe. He was part of the 86th Divison, Company B, 331st Machine Gun Battalion. I scanned through most of the book trying to find any other important information. It did mention that when they were shipped off to France in August 1918 that they never saw combat before being shipped back in November, due to the Armistice. Stories say that Joseph saw combat and was involved in some “major battles.” My guess is that when they “skeletonized” the 86th Division before shipping them back that Joseph was sent to another division. I still need to find this information, but at least I have much more to work with.

The Official History of the Eighty-Sixth Division
By John G. Little, United States Army 86th Division, States Publications Society

As luck would have it, I found a copy of this book on eBay by someone who was selling some of his grandfather’s military books. I was able to download a copy of the book in PDF form from Google Books, but having a hard-copy would be very cool.

So, again, repeating what I said in my last post about newspapers, never underestimate some of these lesser-known places for family information. They can be invaluable.

After going out to dinner for our birthday (my wife & I) with my parents last night, we got to talking a bit about genealogy and some stories about my grandparents. It was mentioned that my maternal grandfather was in World War II. I was never sure on this subject since I’ve heard nothing about. I’m told that he doesn’t talk about it for reasons unknown to my parents. He’s never even mentioned it to my mother. I completely respect his decision. Who knows what he may have experienced in Europe in the 1940s.

I’m aware of all of the documents available for World War II either at Ancestry or Footnote, so I thought I’d look around. I have yet to find any mention of my grandfather in any documentation available. This doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. I saw it mentioned that some documents have yet to be released due to privacy. My mom and dad mentioned that they think he was a Sergeant since my grandmother sometimes calls him “Sarge.” Does anyone know of any other places to check?

My search for that information turned into finding a nice collection of newspaper articles on my maternal family line. I happened to find my grandfather in an article from the Sheboygan Press in 1941 mentioning that he came in 3rd place in some sort of kite contest. I also found their wedding announcement, a mention of a speeding ticket he got in 1968 and a bunch of other neat articles. I also found some other obituaries and wedding announcements. Don’t underestimate the information in some of these old newspapers. Ancestry has a lot of newspapers on file that are mostly searchable. Footnote doesn’t have a lot yet, but knowing them they’ll be getting a lot more and I like their system a bit better.

Here are some examples of what I found:

• Augusta (Luedtke) Last Obituary – My great-great grandmother
• Leon & Mildred DeBroux 50th Wedding Anniversary – My great grandparents
• Sled Patent Article – A patent introduced by my great grandfather. I want to look more into this.

Just find a local paper on one of these sites, if there is one available, and just browse around by searching for last names. You’ll find some cool stuff.

You’ve been doing all of this work on your family tree in your software of choice like Rootsmagic or Family Tree Maker. You’re in contact with some people via the Internet about different people and generations in your tree. You find it annoying that you need to type the information into emails and message posts all the time. Plus, when you update the info, the posting is still old. What do you do?

Setting up your family tree onto your own hosted website isn’t very difficult today. There are tons of hosts out there now that are extremely cheap compared to few years ago. For example, my host, Dreamhost, gives you more space and bandwidth than you’d ever need for like $9.95 a month (depending on how much you pay at a time.)

There are a few options out there to host your own family tree website. I’m currently using The Next Generation of Genealogy Sitebuilding for my family tree hosting. I had used a free, open-source program before, but it had some issues with my current host so I looked for something else. TNGGS has worked wonderfully for me and it’s very powerful and customizable.

Most Linux-based hosts have all of the items you need to run TNGGS. MySQL and PHP are almost standards in web hosting. A Windows-based host may have these capabilities, also, but your mileage may vary.

The only caveat to using TNGGS is that it’s not free, but I wouldn’t hold that against it. The developer, Darrin Lythgoe, has put a lot of work into it and has answered any questions that I’ve sent to him. I’ve also received free updates since I purchased my original copy.

There are other options such as Ancestry’s online tree and dynastree.com, etc but you don’t have a ton of control over these. The pro for them is that you can search and connect to other people’s trees, which I do also. For example, at Ancestry I wanted to update my online tree with some new information I had. Unfortunately, if I would do this than I would lose all of the items (census, records, etc) I have connected to my family tree.

Now when you need to put some information into an email or a message posting, you can just paste in a URL. The person on the other end can just visit your online tree and see the latest info. Or, if you enable the option, they can log in to your site and add their own info or edits.

Feel free to email me about my experience with TNGGS or stop over at the official site and take a look. I definitely recommend it. I can also help you set it up or answer any questions about hosting, etc. I have a bit of experience.

*This is just a personal opinion. TNGGS has in no way, shape, or form paid for my review.

I’ve been doing some indexing for FamilySearch. Helping index old documents for other people to be able to freely search is a good thing to do. Plus, I like seeing all of the history of some of these places. Stop on over there and lend a hand.

While indexing a bunch of New Hampshire Pre-1900 death records, I came across a lot of “causes of death.” A few of them interested me since they were named quite odd. I first was confused by “Consumption” since my first thought was that someone ate themselves to death (come on, you thought it, too.) So, I visited the site where everyone goes to figure something out, Wikipedia. It turns out that consumption is actually Tuberculosis or TB. It was called consumption is the 1800s because “it seemed to consume people from within.” I thought a lot of these names were interesting and it’s also interesting to see epidemics sweep across certain areas. Also, if you’re looking through your family tree, it’s good to be able to see patterns such as Heart Disease or Stroke in your genes.

I thought that listing some of the more common causes of death and their descriptions/name changes would be helpful to some people out there.

Tuberculosis – aka TB, Comsumption, phthisis pulmonalis – a common and often deadly infectious disease caused by mycobacteria. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs (as pulmonary TB) but can also affect the central nervous system, the lymphatic system, the circulatory system, the genitourinary system, the gastrointestinal system, bones, joints, and even the skin. TB caused the most widespread public concern in the 19th and early 20th centuries as an endemic disease of the urban poor. In 1815, one in four deaths in England was of consumption; by 1918 one in six deaths in France were still caused by TB. In the 20th century, tuberculosis killed an estimated 100 million people. source

Diptheria – is an upper-respiratory tract illness. It is characterized by a low grade fever, a sore throat and a membrane adhering to the tonsils, pharynx and nose. This membrane can suffocate the victim. One of the deadliest outbreaks was from 1735-1740 in New England. During this time, some towns had 80% of their children under 10 die.

Myocardial infarction – commonly known as a heart attack, occurs when the blood supply to part of the heart is interrupted. Heart attacks are the leading cause of death for both men and women all over the world. Important risk factors are previous cardiovascular disease (such as angina, a previous heart attack or stroke), older age (especially men over 40 and women over 50) and tobacco smoking. source

Dysentery – is a disorder of the digestive system. Dysentery is typically the result of unsanitary water containing micro-organisms which damage the intestinal lining. source Amoebic dysentery is caused by a small parasite found in contaiminated water. Ameobic dysentery is often known as “Montezuma’s Revenge”, a reference to the legend that the Aztec king Montezuma poisoned the water of Mexico for all that were not born there as revege on the conquistadors.

Cholera – is a water-bourne disease. It is transmitted through contaminated water or through eating improperly cooked fish, especially shellfish. Cholera killed due to the fact that it severely dehydrated the victim. There were a few cholera outbreaks in the early to mid 1800s in North America.

There are also some larger ones such as Influenza, or the flu, and Smallpox that caused issues in the 1800s. You also get the common “Old Age” cause and others such as “Accident” or “Suicide.” It’s interesting to see how they lived in the 1800s and what things you always had to be worried about. That makes me think how good we do have it today.

AnceStories has a nice post about Organizing Your Digital Photographs. I have a basic organization (translates to “I know where some things are”) of my photos, so this will come in very handy.

It also gives me some new ideas. It may also help down the line when I start adding more photos to the collection. This could also be used for other digital documents or files you may have.

I am hoping to spend some time interviewing my living grandparents. Obviously, I guess, though I would love to be able to talk to my late Grandpa Zalewski again. I have tons and tons of factual data; dates, times, places, etc. What I don’t have a lot of are stories and first-hand accounts.

My grandparents are getting old. They are all in their 80s now and you can tell that they have some issues getting around. I know my Grandma (Corrigan) Zalewski asks me the same questions about my house everytime I see her (I bought her house when she moved to assisted living) but she can rattle off stories and names like there is no tomorrow and she loves to do that. I can only assume it’s the same way with my maternal grandparents.

I picked myself up an Olympus audio recorder just for this purpose. It seems to do exactly what I need and nothing more. In my tests, it recorded great audio. I’d like to sit down with them and just start asking small questions and maybe bring up some names just to spark their memory. I picture talking to my Grandma about this like chipping the glass on a large aquarium and just seeing it crack open further before you’re hit with a deluge of water. This is why I want the recorder. I won’t be able to write, or even type for that matter, as fast as she can tell stories.

I know people have done this type of thing before. Does anyone have any tips or good interview questions to ask? Obviously, I know her, so I don’t need any sort of introductory-type questions.

Technology is important to me. Since I was a kid, I’ve always loved technology. When I got into the genealogy game, computers and the Internet were already cemented in our lives, but genealogy was just starting to use it. I was lucky to start my genealogy research when the Internet was around. I am in awe of all of you who needed to do most of your research using things such as the Family History Libraries and postal mail. Like most things on the Internet, people sometimes jump to conclusions and believe everything they read, which can cause some research to be done incorrectly. I’ve always had technology in my research, and in my life, so this Carnival of Genealogy post was right up my alley. We were told to just pick one of each of the items below and to try not to talk about other things. So here mine goes.

The piece of hardware I rely on the most, besides my computer, is my digital camera. I use it mainly to take photos of headstones and other cemetery-related items. Sometimes I will also take photos of historic locations related to my research. Since it’s a digital camera, I don’t need to worry about how many photos I take (except I need to make sure not to fill my memory card.) Currently, I have a Sony and it’s all I really need for what I use it for. Seven megapixels is way more quality than I need. Though, I gotta say it’s nice for when you need to have a lot more detail, which works especially well on those hard-to-read, old headstones.

The software that I rely on most now is RootsMagic. I began using it about a year ago when I read some reviews and it looked worthwhile to try. I was previously using Family Tree Maker, but it seemed like it was getting bloated and more expensive. I don’t need a lot of fluff, just the basics done well. FTM had a lot of online add-ons and other things that usually just got in my way. RootsMagic, while different at first, became easier for me to use due to its basic design and functionality.

The website I rely on the most, in genealogy and everything else, is Google. From Google Search to Google Maps to Google Docs, it’s all extremely helpful. And now with Google’s Street View on their maps, I can even see the house that my ancestors possibly lived in. Milwaukee was recently completed and today sometimes checking out this houses in person in some of these neighborhoods isn’t the smartest idea. While the results aren’t all genealogy-related, sometimes I run across something I wasn’t expecting. This happened to me while searching for my Muhm ancestors a few months ago. I’m not sure what I’d do without it sometimes.