augusti 15, 2016 by Elly - Legacy Tree Genealogists Project Manager Leave a Comment

Onsite Research Around the World: What to Expect

onsite research It’s an exciting time to research your genealogy. These days records and information from around the world can often be quickly accessed online with a few strokes of a keyboard. Major subscription databases like MyHeritage, which has well over 6 billion historical records so far, are actively growing their online records collections. FamilySearch continues to put more and more Family History Library microfilms online and recently released a new collection of 4.2 million images of civil registration records from the Rome, Italy area. Even more obscure record sets can be accessed online; for example, FindMyPast just added 13,000 prison records from Plymouth, Devon to their collection.

Easily accessible online records have become a crucial part of genealogy research and should never be overlooked. However, with all of this information at our fingertips, it can be tempting to forget that not all records are available online and to limit your research only to those sorts of resources. In reality, for every online record, there are countless numbers of historical documents that have never been photographed or microfilmed, let alone digitized and put online. Many common ancestral countries have very few records available online or even at the Family History Library.

Russia, Australia, and South Africa, for example, all have excellent historical records for genealogy purposes that are often not easily accessible. Although the digital community is making inroads, the bulk of genealogically-relevant documents throughout the world remain recorded in fading ink on the original paper on which they were first written.

When online and microfilmed genealogy resources have been exhausted, it is time to turn to onsite research.

As an international professional genealogy company, we have the privilege of working with onsite researchers to find records that are being held in archives, libraries, churches, and other repositories around the world. Obtaining your ancestors’ information from these documents is far more complex than just sitting down to a computer and entering a few key points of data into a search engine, or quickly scrolling through a microfilm. The process requires patience, skill, and experience working with original documents as well as a familiarity with each archive and the linguistic, legal, and cultural roadblocks and expectations that accompany working in a specific country.

Every archive’s goal is to preserve information and records, but each can have varying systems of (and budgets for) organization, preservation, and public accessibility. This can sometimes make viewing and retrieving the documents challenging. Political or other local circumstances in the area in which the archive or repository is located can also greatly affect the process.

Still, while the repositories may differ, the primary stages of most onsite cases look similar. For instance, when an onsite researcher is asked to find information on a family after all online and microfilm resources have been exhausted, the first step is usually identifying where the pertinent records might be held.

For example, in Italy the records for one town are usually held in three places: the provincial archive, the Town Hall in the village, and the local parish church. The provincial archive is usually the most easily accessible, but they often don’t have records prior to the mid-1800s, and some records may be missing. Therefore, the best place to begin researching for each case may be unique. This particular portion of the research (determining where the records are held) can often take a long time by itself, before any actual records can even be looked at.

In many places in Eastern Europe, records may be held in different towns depending on the religion to which the ancestors subscribed, and where they attended church. Records may even be held in other countries because of the historical changes in political boundaries. A wise researcher will often contact various archives to confirm that the necessary records for the right time and place are available at that archive before scheduling a visit. Even then, however, there may be no guarantee when the researcher visits that the records will be there. Belarus is one country in which it is notoriously difficult to conduct onsite research because their actual physical holdings never quite seem to match their listed collections.

The records themselves at these archives are usually kept in bound books or folios of various sizes, and they may weigh several pounds. The ink may be fading, the paper delicate, the spines crumbling. There are often no indexes and each record will be a paragraph of old, flowing handwriting followed by another handwritten paragraph, and so on. It is almost never as simple as checking an alphabetical list for the right name(s). Most often, each page of each book must be carefully read to look for the ancestors in question. In order to do so, a researcher must be skilled at reading old handwriting efficiently, and often in different languages or even alphabets. For example, in certain places in Poland the records may be written in German, Polish, or Russian (which uses an entirely different alphabet) depending on the time period and the political entity running the country at the time.

Many archives are very research-friendly and organized and do everything they can to make using their records a pleasant and successful experience. On the other hand, some are disorganized and have very limited budgets or resources, making working there a challenge. The archive may impose strict rules on how many books or folios a researcher can look at in a day or may not have complete or clear listings of their inventory. They may not even have the records they claim to have after all, or may not be able to physically find them in their facility (this happened to us once in Romania!). Many archives require someone to request information in person, meaning that requests by mail or in other formats are not possible. Sometimes archives close at unexpected times for renovation or move into a new building or experience budget cuts. We have also encountered situations in which record sets which are normally available have been sent away for preservation and are inaccessible for weeks or even months.

Researching in churches presents its own obstacles, since the records are not public. They are considered private property and it’s ultimately up to the priest whether he will grant access or not. Many priests will allow researchers in their church for a limited number of hours for a donation, but if it’s the middle of winter in a remote Italian town and you’re trying to read faded records in an unheated parish church building lacking any and all amenities, the experience can be far less than pleasant and require several trips.

Sometimes complications arise because records are not held by government archives or churches but by individual families. In mainland China, families have often held onto their genealogy through generations (and in defiance of previous communist commands to destroy it) but it requires tracking down the ancestor’s village of origin and reaching out to living family members to request access to these precious family records. If they can be located and then translated, though, they can take your genealogy back to about 1000 AD. If you’re really lucky, you may even be one of the families that can be traced back to about 1500 BC! This is a cultural legacy which is unique to that part of the world and one of which those of us of European descent can only dream!

Even if records are held by a government or other public institution, local circumstances and factors outside of the researcher’s control may affect the accessibility of the records. Archives may be closed due to extreme weather. Once, our researcher heading to an archive in Eastern Europe couldn’t get in because there were tanks blocking the road! In another instance, after completing some highly successful research projects in Turkey, the recent political upheaval has caused some delays. It may take a little time for things to settle down and for genealogy research in the governmental records to be able to progress forward. Research in other countries like Israel can often be stymied due to legal restrictions on who is allowed to request records (often family members only). In some countries, a signed power of attorney is a sufficient means of overcoming this hurdle. In other cases, however, there is no other recourse.

We share these anecdotes not to be discouraging, but to present to our clients and friends a realistic view of this process! Substantial frustration can be avoided on both sides when are all able to be educated about and patient with the challenges unique to tracing foreign ancestry. Though the wait may at times be long, and the progress can be slow, we have many examples of clients who were overjoyed to finally make the connection with their international forebears and who could not easily have done so without the dedication of Legacy Tree’s agents.

Despite the obstacles that researching in original records throughout the world presents, onsite researchers continue to push forward searching for ancestors and extending genealogy back further than what can be accomplished using online or even locally-microfilmed records alone.

While onsite research may take more time than a quick internet search, each record that is found is truly precious and should be viewed as a family treasure!

Do you have ancestors from another country? If you’re finding yourself stuck due to lack of record availability in the United States, Legacy Tree Genealogists can help. We have onsite agents in most countries around the world and can work to identify and obtain the records you need. Contact us today for a free consultation.

september 24, 2015 by Elly - Legacy Tree Genealogists Project Manager Leave a Comment

The Importance of Oral Histories

A compilation of information to prepare you for recording meaningful oral histories.

I recently had the privilege of attending the Foundation for East European Family History Studies (FEEFHS) Conference in Salt Lake City. While there were many helpful courses, the one that stood out to me most was an oral history class presented by Ina Navazelskis, a journalist of 30 years and a current interviewer for the United States Holocaust Museum’s Oral History Branch.

Ms. Navazelskis taught us that oral histories are a spoken resource. While this may seem obvious, I was struck with the realization that when we create an oral history, either for ourselves or by interviewing family members, we are creating a resource, a spoken record, which can be referred back to, cited, and used by future genealogists. Imagine if we had oral histories from our ancestors of 200 years ago—how invaluable and treasured something like that would be!

What Are Oral Histories?

As a resource, oral histories are not necessarily meant to be a record of factual information. Although they can include facts and sometimes help correct inaccurate or incomplete records, chronology (specific times and dates) is generally the first thing to go in our memory. What is more important with oral histories, however, is that the thoughts, memories, experiences, and perspectives of the person are captured. These are aspects of a person’s life that don’t get recorded in other records and this is what makes oral histories so invaluable.

How to Prepare for an Oral History Interview

With well over a decade of experience interviewing Holocaust survivors and witnesses for the museum, Ms. Navazelskis stressed that proper preparation as an interviewer is the key to obtaining a successful and meaningful oral history. As part of this preparation, she recommended a few key steps.

Write out your goals ahead of time. Do your research by reading background information about the time period or people involved, and creating timelines or geographically mapping out the person’s life to become closely familiar with it.
Maintain control of the interview but do not be afraid of silence.
Ask both open- and closed-ended questions without judgment or censure, and listen with courtesy and respect.

She also included more specific tips. To begin, it is often best to verify the person’s name and how they spell it, when and where they were born, who their parents and siblings were, and what their parents did for a living. This not only records these facts and makes them part of the record, but also helps set the tone and prepare the mind for remembering. From there, you can continue into the first topic that you planned to discuss. When you have learned enough on that topic, you move to the next and so on. It is good to start with more generalized questions and then gradually work towards becoming more personal, especially if the subject matter is something that may be difficult for the person being interviewed to talk about.

What Equipment Do I Need to Record an Oral History?

Although the Holocaust Museum generally uses a camera crew and state-of-the-art professional audio and video technology to record their interviews, most people do not realistically have access to that sort of equipment – and that’s fine! The most important thing for a family oral history interview of your own is to make sure the sound is clear. A clear picture with garbled audio is essentially meaningless – but a clear audio with fuzzy or no picture is still a valuable oral history.

There are many options and resources for conducting oral histories available to the general public that don’t involve dropping thousands of dollars on professional recording equipment. One of my favorites is the new StoryCorps app. This app allows anyone with an Android or Apple device to easily choose interview questions, properly prepare, and then record interviews. The interviews can be edited and uploaded to the StoryCorps website to share with the world or even archived with the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress!

At Legacy Tree Genealogists, we would love to help you prepare for your family oral history interviews. We can gather documents and create timelines of a person’s life, mapping out geographically where they lived and when. We can point out major events in their personal life as well as significant local or historical events they may have lived through. We can even use the information we find to help prepare questions that will open the door to the stories of your family members. Contact us today for a free quote.

juni 19, 2015 by Elly - Legacy Tree Genealogists Project Manager 11 Comments

11 Do’s & Don’ts of Writing Family Biographies

Our team has completed thousands of hours of writing client biographies. Review our tips for writing family biographies that will help make your ancestors come to life!

Recently, we published a post on tips for writing a family biography that others would want to read. Perhaps that article inspired you to begin your own, or to dig up an unfinished manuscript and take a closer look. Maybe you’ve got the organization part figured out, but your writing itself needs some polishing.

At Legacy Tree Genealogists, we have a lot of experience writing – not just on the part of our researchers, but also by our project managers and editors, who look over each report and make sure it is ready for publication. As you can imagine, the daily application of these skills has been very educational. Here, then, are eleven do’s and don’ts of writing family biographies using real examples from real biographies that we’ve really written…or rewritten.

1. Do Begin with an Interesting Story or Detail to Engage The Reader’s Interest

“With no way of knowing that a ceasefire would be signed exactly one month later, James Ralph Wilson registered for the Great War draft on 1 September 1918 in Birmingham, Jefferson, Alabama. He was 33 years old. As a salesman for the Shapleigh Hardware Company of St. Louis, Missouri, James Ralph Wilson had no home of his own and gave an address at the Edwards Hotel in Jackson, Mississippi. His nearest relative was his mother, Mrs. R.O. Wilson, living 250 miles away in Irondale, Alabama.”

2. Don’t Use Overly Sentimental Verbiage

This is not a romance novel.

“devoted friends”
“tears could never compensate for the loss”
“mother’s arms and sweet lullabies”
“saddened the hearts”

3. Do Use Wider Local and National Historical Context to Bring Your Ancestors’ World to Life

“As disastrous as the Civil War was, particularly for the South, Jonathan was one of the fortunate ones who made it back home alive. This was especially amazing in view of the fact that his regiment participated in many of the most gruesome, storied battles of the whole conflict: John’s baptism by fire occurred at Williamsburg as part of the Peninsula Campaign shortly after his enlistment. He would also have been involved at the Battle of Gettysburg in summer 1863, which had the highest death toll of the entire war.”

4. Don’t Use Clichéd Idioms (Unless it is a Specific One that Plays an Important Role in Your Family’s Verbal Culture!)

“pillar of society”
“across the pond”
“needle in a haystack”
“kill two birds with one stone”
“barking up the wrong tree”
“went over it with a fine tooth comb”

5. Do Look Outside Typical Genealogy Sources to Glean Supplementary Details

“This invoice, for the cutting of cloth for a vest and coat, suggests that Washington was embarking on some adventure which required a new suit. Since we know that Washington married his wife, Nancy, in 1843, it is possible that the new vest and coat were for courting purposes.”

6. Don’t Paraphrase Existing Biographies or Histories. Beware of Plagiarism!

Either include a direct quote, or rewrite the facts in a completely different order in your own words. Footnotes with citations are always helpful, too!

“‘John P. Osatiuk immigrated to Canada from the village of Waskevche, Bukovina, in Ukraine and came to the Canora district. He spent the winter in Canora, married Katie Boychuk of Buchanan. Her family was also from the village of Waskevche and came to Canada in 1906. They moved to Preeceville area in 1907 and took up a homestead, south of Lady Lake N.E. 10-35-5.’”[1]

John P. Osatiuk came to Canada from the small town of Waskevche, Bukovina, Ukraine. He wintered in Canora and then married Katie Boychuk of Buchanan. Her family also came from the same village of Waskevche, arriving in 1906. John and Katie took up a homestead in the Preeceville area in 1907.

7. Do Use Visuals to Add Interest

If you don’t have photos of your ancestors, consider using screenshots from Google Maps of places they lived, historical maps, images of historically-relevant artifacts, or illustrations of historical events.

The Half Moon Inn of Heathfield, Sussex, England, where Isabella Jardine met Edwin Russell Hill in 1928. (Image from http://www.halfmoon-inn.co.uk/Half_Moon_Inn/home.html)

8. Don’t Data-Dump

Hint: If you cross out the names, dates, and places and there are hardly any words left, you need to rewrite.

“⊠married ⊠ ⊠in ⊠.The couple had nine children, the first six born in ⊠: ⊠ was born ⊠, ⊠was born ⊠, ⊠was born ⊠, ⊠was born ⊠, ⊠was born ⊠, and ⊠was born ⊠.”

9. Do Include The Hard Parts

It’s good for us to remember that our ancestors were people, too.

“In 1850, Alden Harrington was found living among approximately 175 prisoners of the Connecticut State Prison in Wethersfield, Hartford, Connecticut. Interestingly, the census enumerator recorded the prisoner’s crime in the far right column—Alden’s was listed as theft. In addition to this extra information, the enumerator also listed a year next to the prisoner’s name. No notation could be located in the census that explained this year, though it was likely the year in which the prisoner entered the prison. Next to Alden’s name was recorded the year 1850, suggesting that he was imprisoned the year the census was taken. The crimes of his fellow convicts ranged from murder and rape to horse stealing and adultery.”

10. Don’t Pass Judgment on Your Ancestors

Tell the facts and let the readers draw their own conclusions.

“If Maude’s birthdate is correct (as several documents will attest), she was only about 13 or 14 years old when she and Howard—who was 18 or 19—married, and she had her first child before the year was out. Although average age at first marriage has fluctuated historically and often been lower than we would consider normal in the 21^st century, even this degree of youth was unusual for the time. It appears likely that Maude had found herself pregnant, and the wedding was hastened in order to legitimize the baby and guarantee support. It seems that something more than young love must have acted as the catalyst to the union.”

Change to:

“It is possible that Maude became pregnant, and the teenage couple married in order to legitimize the baby and guarantee its support. However, without their marriage record (and its exact date), we can’t know for certain.”

11. Do Ask For Help!

Instead of procrastinating indefinitely, let us help you share your ancestors’ stories with the world. Contact us to learn more and to speak with a project manager.

[1] Preeceville Historical Society (Saskatchewan), Lines of the Past (Preeceville, Saskatchewan: Preeceville Historical Society, 1982), pages 714-175, Family History Library book 971.242/P4 H2L.

maj 14, 2015 by Elly - Legacy Tree Genealogists Project Manager 7 Comments

Bridging the Gap: Writing a Family Biography Others Will Want to Read

Writing a compelling and interesting family history biography is one of the finest examples of experienced genealogists. Review our outline that will help share the stories of your ancestors.

Sometimes as genealogists we get so caught up in collecting all the details about our ancestors that we forget the other important side of family history – sharing it with family members! If you have a closet overflowing with old documents or a database full of facts, and you decide you’d like to share what you’ve learned with others, it can be overwhelming to know where to start. As a primer, review our article, 11 Do’s and Don’ts of Writing Family Biographies.

It can also be confusing to find the best way to share the information you’ve spent so much time gathering. If you’ve ever caught yourself telling family history stories to a non-genealogist and suddenly realized they had been staring at a spot over your shoulder for the past five minutes, you’ll have already learned that it can be difficult to present it in such a way that others can absorb and appreciate.

While online trees and photo pedigree charts have their place, the best way to tell the story of your family is to write it. A written family biography can be much more interesting to other family members than raw genealogical data, while still incorporating all the details that you have painstakingly gathered over the years. The key to a good narrative family biography is finding the right balance between simplicity and detail.

Narrow Your Scope

First, begin by narrowing the scope of your written biography to something that is both manageable to write and to read. If you want to bio several key ancestors in your family tree, consider choosing one ancestor to get started with, or even just a portion of one ancestor’s life. A surname lineage can be more easily tackled three generations at a time. To conquer your entire tree, divide it up into more reasonable sections. For example: paternal grandfather’s ancestry, paternal grandmother’s ancestry, maternal grandfather’s ancestry, and maternal grandmother’s ancestry. As Legacy Tree researchers, we often approach our largest research projects this way, and it creates a nicely organized and easily followed finished product.

In addition to identifying the scope of your written narrative, it helps to determine which direction you will be going – forward in time, backward in time, or a combined approach. For biographies on one person, it is usually common to begin with the ancestor’s birth, continue throughout his life, and end at his death. However, it may be more interesting to begin with an important event later in his life, then return to the beginning of his life later. For large narratives on extensive families, we find it is often best to begin at the most recent ancestor as an adult and work backwards chronologically to their parents, grandparents, and so on.

Organize

Second, gather and organize the materials, documents, and details that you want to include in a way that will be easy to refer to as you write. It can be helpful to have digital images of all of the documents, either attached to each relevant person in an online tree or database, or organized in chronological order by person into folders on your hard drive. This makes it easy to incorporate photos or snippets from documents into your written narrative. Visual aids often make the stories you’re telling come alive, not only for you, but especially for the non-genealogist family members with which you hope to share your work. (If you have received a report from us recently, you may have noticed that we are incorporating more and more images in the body of our reports. These serve to illustrate the narrative and also provide natural breaks in the text allowing the brain some time to absorb what is being read.)

For online documents, you can keep a list of links handy to quickly pull up a document when you need it. If you do this, don’t wait too long between the time you set up the list and the time you write because online links can change; always keep a copy (digital or paper) of the document itself as well, with a reference to where it was found. If you prefer to work from paper documents – as many genealogists do – be sure to keep them organized in labeled folders that you can easily find and access when writing about the ancestor or event. It is also a good idea to transcribe old handwritten cursive documents into a printed font which can be read and referred to much more quickly.

Another helpful tool we’ve discovered is the Ahnentafel print feature available in most genealogical database programs like Legacy Family Tree and Ancestral Quest. Although the computer-generated report that is produced is so dry that nobody but a die-hard genealogist will read it with any enthusiasm, it can create a very helpful outline for writing large family narratives. After entering all your information into the database, or importing a GEDCOM from your MyHeritage.com or Ancestry.com tree, all you have to do is print the Ahnentafel and the information is organized and ready to use. If you print it to a PDF you can even copy and paste the basic text to use as an outline and then add in stories and details to make it interesting.

Write

Finally, in order to produce a good family narrative that will be read and cherished for generations, we strongly recommend brushing up on your writing skills. Take a creative writing class at your local community college. Read some good biographies on historical figures or your favorite author. Or, if you are not sure your writing skills will be up to the challenge, reach out to others for help. Consider collaborating with another writer family member – you provide the research and she provides the writing skills. A college student or young stay-at-home-mother in the family may appreciate the writing experience and exposure and even a little extra income, if you are prepared to offer it.

Of course, you can always turn to the professionals for help writing your family narrative. We recently wrapped up a two-part biography on a Tennessee farmer who raised his family through the Civil War years. Although he never accomplished anything of great historical significance, not even participating in the war, we were able to piece together a beautiful story of his and his family’s lives through scraps of notes, receipts, and letters that have survived through the generations. Historical records and general information about the area and time period helped provide background context and bring his world to life.

Writing a family biography is one of our favorite projects to work on here at Legacy Tree Genealogists. We love searching out the details of our clients’ ancestors’ lives, and we also love bringing those details to life by telling the story.

Stories bring families together, but they can’t if they are not told and shared. Although online trees are bringing more and more genealogy-minded family members together, it can be hard to find and grasp the story in the tree – especially for the rest of the family members who tend to be less interested in history. An organized, cohesive, and well-written family narrative bridges that gap, bringing the stories of our past to future generations.

If you need help writing your family history biography, or would like help extending your family lines, let Legacy Tree Genealogists provide the research. Contact us today for a free quote.

februari 16, 2015 by Elly - Legacy Tree Genealogists Project Manager 9 Comments

Do Family Legends Have a Place in Genealogical Research?

Does your family history include a family legend (or two?) Here’s some of the family legends we’ve encountered while conducting genealogical research.

Every family has a storyteller or two – an uncle who brings out the same old stories at every family dinner or a great-grandma who shares cherished memories of her childhood with her grandchildren. The best stories, of course, are the ones that are passed down from generation to generation: reverent retellings of an ancestor’s importance in his community, a connection to somebody or something famous, or the mischievous deeds of the ancestral black sheep.

These stories are fun and fascinating and give a family its identity, binding family members across generations, but it has been our experience that accepting these stories as cold, hard fact can be misleading when it comes to genealogy research. Although all family stories usually have their basis in some element of truth, upon closer examination it usually turns out that the true facts of the case have been embellished throughout the years via the telling and retelling of the story from generation to generation. The following three examples illustrate this idea:

The Family Castle

One of our recent clients brought a story to us about a great-grandmother whose father was very wealthy and owned a castle in Victorian England. The story went on to say that grandma had so displeased her father by associating with the Mormons, that he made her and her family live in the furthest rooms in the castle, isolated from the rest of the family, and had left these instructions in his will.

The client was confused by the contrast of the wealth indicated by this story and the records that seemed to show that the only viable match for the father was a working-class laborer. The discrepancy between family story and contemporary records was too great and seemingly could not be validated. Once she brought the case to us, we were able to prove through multiple records that the right father was indeed a shoemaker, or “cordwainer.” It was an original copy of his will, however, that revealed the grains of truth in the family story.

While a cordwainer by trade, the father was respectably well-off and owned a series of four tenement buildings that each contained two sets of “rooms” – one set on the ground floor and one on the top floor. The bottom floor rooms were specifically labeled of more value than the top rooms (and the occupants of those were therefore designated as responsible for keeping the roof in good repair). The father and his wife lived in rooms in building One, and each of the other sets of rooms in each building were handed out to each of his children or grandchildren. The supposedly wronged daughter and her family were also given rooms in building Four, which would have been furthest from her parents but certainly not at all isolated from the whole family, as they all lived side-by-side together. In fact, her rooms were on the ground floor, which would have been the nicest of the group. It’s also important to note that the father’s will contained absolutely no mention of his feelings about his daughter’s new religious beliefs, let alone a specific provision to exclude her because of them.

To say the least, it was interesting to see how the real events had been interpreted and reinterpreted as the story had been passed down through the generations. The best part was that while there was certainly no castle involved, the family had lived in an English city named Newcastle-upon-Tyne!

The Famous Ancestor

Another story theme that commonly runs through every family is a connection to a famous person. Sometimes these are proven true, but many times we find that there was a connection but not one of relationship. One family had “proved” that they were related to George Washington through his great-great-grandparents, Rev. Lawrence Washington and Amphilles Twigden. After carefully researching and documenting each generation in the family tree, it was discovered that only one link was incorrect: the client’s direct ancestor who was a contemporary of George Washington did not marry into the Washington family – but her sister did. This meant that while the client’s direct ancestors were not cousins to George Washington, they would have known his cousins and perhaps the first U.S. President himself as well.

The Skeleton-in-the-Closet

Sometimes, of course, the full details of a story cannot be proven one way or another because no records remain. This seems to be especially true for those skeleton-in-the-closet family stories – not the ones that are told over dinner or to the grandchildren, but the ones that are passed along like gossip with a guilty glance over the shoulder or an eye-roll at the folly of our ancestors.

One client’s family lore included a suggestion that great-grandpa may have been paid off by a wealthy man to marry great-grandma. It was discovered through careful record analysis that the couple was married when great-grandma was already several months pregnant. It was also proved through DNA testing that the baby was not related to great-grandpa, but was actually the biological son of another man who was a prominent innkeeper in the community. These facts certainly lend credence to the story of an extra monetary incentive to marry, but whether such a private transaction ever actually took place can never be confirmed.

In my own family, the story goes that great-great-great-grandmother creatively but firmly ensured that her husband would never take on a polygamous wife by inviting the prospective woman to dinner and putting on an elaborate show as the over-worked housewife and then declaring how grateful she would be to have someone new around to do all the work. Whether this actually happened is not recorded in any contemporary document, but certainly, great-great-great-grandfather never married a polygamous second wife.

From all of this we can take away the lesson that while family stories are wonderfully entertaining, they are not always 100% accurate. As genealogists looking for factual evidence of our ancestors and their lives, we can use family stories as clues to search out the records that show what actually happened in our family’s history. No matter how complete the records, however, there will always be gaps in our understanding of our ancestors and their lives. Whether the factual truth or a version of the truth, family stories fill in these gaps and help us see our family members as the very real and living people that they were.

If you have a family story that you’ve had passed down from generation to generation, challenge yourself to dig up all the documents that relate to those ancestors in the time period that the story supposedly happened, and see if you can find the “truth” in your story. This may involve looking for local newspapers, wills, and land transactions, paying attention to occupations in census records, and many other things, but it can be so interesting! And then at your next family party, you can set the record straight and bring your documentation to prove it!

Legacy Tree Genealogists and onsite agents are ready to help you learn more about your family history. Contact us today for a free quote to discuss your specific project goals and determine which of our project options is best for you!

november 21, 2014 by Elly - Legacy Tree Genealogists Project Manager 1 Comment

Tragedy and the Importance of Historical Context

Encountering tragedy is common in family history research, and understanding the historical context can make the events even more personable to us. Learn how to research beyond names and dates to discover the stories of your ancestors.

In doing genealogical research, it’s extremely important to look beyond the bare-bones names and dates of your ancestors, and learn about the culture, history, and events that took place during their lives. If we neglect this vital piece of the puzzle, there will often be crucial elements to our ancestors’ story that we will miss. The tragic story of the Bruse family is a lesson in this principle.

The Bruse Family

In June of 1870, August Bruse and his wife Sophia lived with their five children, ages seven to twenty-one, in Peshtigo, Oconto (now Marinette), Wisconsin.[1] German immigrants, the family were farmers and laborers, with Sophia keeping house and the younger children at school.

Tragedy and the Importance of Historical Context

Image from Ancestry.com

A little over one year later, life as they knew it was rocked to its core. The deadliest firestorm in history swept through the area on the same day of the infamous Chicago fire – 8 October 1871. Though less prominent in history, it was arguably the greater catastrophe of the two. The firestorm, probably started when small brush fires used for clearing land were whipped into a frenzy by a sudden cold front, was described as “…a wall of flame, a mile high, five miles wide, traveling 90 to 100 miles per hour…” It was so hot that it could melt sand into glass, a temperature of over 2000 degrees Fahrenheit. Survivors described a tornado made of fire that threw rail cars and houses into the air. The fire burned so violently that it jumped rivers and even jumped several miles over Green Bay. At least 1.2 million acres were burned.[2] The entire city was burned to the ground, except one building that was being built of green wood at the time.

One of the few pieces of lumber to survive the blast. Image from Wikipedia.org.

Tragedy in Family History

The wall of fire was not the only deadly part of the firestorm. People who tried to escape the flames in wells, wet blankets, and brick buildings were killed by the immense heat and poison air. The best refuge was the water of the Peshtigo River and Green Bay. Although many people waiting out the raging fire in the water were struck by burning debris, died of hypothermia, or drowned, some survived. It is unknown exactly how many people were killed, but it was estimated between 1,200 and 2,500 victims spread throughout twelve communities. In comparison, the Great Chicago Fire on the same day killed about 300 people.[3] Hundreds of those people were never able to be identified, and are buried to this day in a mass grave.

Living right in the middle of the worst of the destruction, the Bruse family suffered significantly. A stone marker at Mays Corners Cemetery memorialized Sophia Bruse, wife of A. Bruse, and her three youngest children: Sophia Bruse, age 16; Frederick Bruse, age 11, and George Bruse, age 8.[4] All were acknowledged victims of the Peshtigo Fire.

Bruse family headstone, from FindaGrave.com.

It is unknown what happened to the father of the family, August Bruse Sr. He may have also perished in the fire, or shortly thereafter from its damaging effects.

The two eldest sons, Henry and August Jr., survived to rebuild after the fire’s sweeping devastation, having lost both family and friends. Both married and began families of their own. Henry even named one of his own sons Frederick, presumably after the little brother he lost in the infamous fire. For several decades, the brothers and their new families lived close to each other, though in the early part of the 20^th century, Henry and his wife, Julia, eventually migrated to Brown County, South Dakota.[5] August and his wife remained in the Peshtigo vicinity.

Going Beyond Names & Dates: Where to Look

Tracking the family in extant records is, as always, a good idea. But it was when the researcher stepped outside and began studying the town that she discovered this tragedy that changed the lives of the Bruse family members forever. The barely legible headstone of Sophia and her children states that all died on the same day, but without having a curiosity regarding the surrounding historical context, we would never have known why.

Deepen the results of your own family history research by giving this strategy a try yourself. A few tips:

Check for county histories – books that typically include everything from agricultural practices to biographies of prominent citizens. Search for them through the Family History Library catalog on FamilySearch.org, Google Books, or your local library.
Simply Google the town or county in question – Peshtigo was a perfect example of this, since the fire appeared in many top results. Even if there wasn’t one specific event that occurred in your county, you can find other details to help you flesh out your ancestors’ lives. Knowing the political feelings of the area, what crops were farmed, the predominant religion, and major migration patterns can tell you a lot about what life was like then. For tips on using Google search, check out our article, Google Searching Tips for Genealogists.

Legacy Tree Genealogists has experts trained to know where and how to look for your ancestors. Contact us today to let us know how we can help you learn more about your heritage.

Sources:

[1] 1870 U.S. Census (Population Schedule), Pesthigo, Oconto, Wisconsin, August Bruse household, page 331B, http://ancestry.com, subscription database, accessed October 2014. Sophia Bruse is listed as “John Bruse, male.” However, the placement in the family immediately after the head of household, the occupation of keeping house, and the age of 47 indicates that this was really a female and the wife of August Bruse, Sophia.

[2] “Peshtigo Fire,” http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Peshtigo _Fire, accessed October 2014.

[3] “Great Chicago Fire,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chicago_Fire, accessed November 2014.

[4] Find A Grave memorials for Sophia Bruse (1823-1871), Sophia Bruse (1855-1871), Frederick Bruse (1860-1871), and George Bruse (1863-1871), Mays Corners Cemetery, May Corner, Marinette, Wisconsin, http://findagrave.com, accessed October 2014.

[5] 1900 U.S. Census (Population Schedule), Warner, Brown, South Dakota, Fred H. Bruse household, ED 0060, page 5B, http://ancestry.com, subscription database, accessed November 2014.

oktober 8, 2014 by Elly - Legacy Tree Genealogists Project Manager Leave a Comment

It’s a Small Genealogy World

As professional genealogists, we help people learn about and connect with their ancestors every day. But did you know that we also help people connect with living relatives?

One case we worked on involved a family of eleven children who were split up after a tragedy in the early 1900s. The children of the youngest daughter, only a toddler at the time, had grown up never knowing they had a large extended family of aunts and uncles and cousins. We were able to trace almost all of the ten siblings as they moved forward with their lives, separating to follow various occupations across the western United States. The client and his sister received a whole new family that welcomed them with open arms.

Genetic genealogy has brought similar results for clients who were finally able to identify their biological father and have subsequently been accepted into the extended family as a long-lost brother.

We have also successfully been able to track down living relatives for clients in their ancestors’ country of origin. This has been especially helpful in obtaining crucial background genealogy information to jumpstart researching their family history in that particular country.

And finally, we are sometimes even able to connect one client with another. A recent client was going through some materials that had been passed around the extended family and discovered an old report we had put together. Having worked with us herself, she requested that we give her contact information to the other client who had ordered the old project. The clients then connected with each other and confirmed not only a distant cousinship, but also a shared love of learning about their family history.

Our work brings families together, literally. Lives are touched, families strengthened, and people find common ground when they find common ancestry. We love what we do!

september 19, 2014 by Elly - Legacy Tree Genealogists Project Manager 2 Comments

Biological vs. Cultural Heritage

Biological vs. cultural heritage, also known as nature vs. nurture, is a question withstanding the test of time. If DNA testing reveals surprises in your family tree, consider what “family” means to you.

Genealogy is full of surprises. As I was wrapping up a large pedigree project for one of our clients recently, a couple of birth records that had been lost in the mail finally arrived. They revealed that the man the client had always known as her paternal grandfather was not actually biologically connected to her family after all.

Now that DNA testing is affordable and available to everyone, these genealogy surprises (called non-paternity events) are becoming more and more common. Of course, they have always been there – we just didn’t usually know about them before! People are finding cousins whom the family had never known existed, and others are finding that what the records say were their ancestors (or parents!) differs significantly from what their DNA says.

Discovering True Biological Ancestry

The rate of non-paternity varies depending on many factors, including nationality, social customs, and class. However, it happens everywhere: I have even worked on a case that occurred in Salt Lake City among early, clean-living Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint pioneers. In fact, it is estimated that between 5% and 14% of a typical 5-generation pedigree can be “wrong” – meaning that the biological ancestry is different from the traditional paper-trail ancestry.

These non-paternity events can be exciting, but also unnerving and overwhelming when they are suddenly discovered. We’ve compiled a list of resources that can assist in these situations. You may begin to wonder who you really are and what information you can really trust. Therefore, it becomes very important to remember how all of this actually affects knowing where you came from.

Nature vs. Nurture

It is well established that there are two major factors that make us who we are: nature and nurture. Nature is our genetics; nurture is how we are raised. We received our genetic makeup from our biological parents, who received it from their biological parents, who received it from theirs, and on back and back. This is our biological heritage and affects such things as our coloring, bone structure, and predisposition to certain inherited diseases.

Our cultural heritage, on the other hand, comes from the people who knew and loved and raised us. This heritage includes such things as health habits, mannerisms, figures of speech, and ways to deal with things. We picked these up from our parents – whether they were biological parents or adopted parents – who picked them up from their parents, who picked them up from their parents, and on back and back.

So, although our biological heritage may be responsible for our curly brown hair and well-formed vocal chords, our cultural heritage gave us the strong work ethic and an affinity and love of music that turns us into a talented musician. In this way, both heritages contribute to who we are.

What Does “Family” Mean to You?

In addition, the concept of “family” is not biologically exclusive: a family is created and built through shared experiences. These experiences often turn into stories that are told and retold, binding families together across generations. The whole point of family history is to gather and record these stories so that they will not be lost. A family’s stories, and therefore a family’s identity, come from its cultural heritage.

In discussing her case with my client who had just learned her paternal grandfather was not her biological grandfather, I was thrilled to hear her confirm that she still wanted us to include the extensive information we had already gathered on this man’s genealogy. In her eyes and in the eyes and hearts of the family, he was still, after all – and always had been – Grandfather.

You can read about how DNA helped another Legacy Tree client here. You can also go here to learn more about which DNA test is best for your research goal.

If you have questions you suspect may be answered through DNA testing, we can help! Our team of experienced genetic genealogists combines expert DNA analysis with thorough records research and can resolve your questions. Contact us today for a free estimate.

september 8, 2014 by Elly - Legacy Tree Genealogists Project Manager Leave a Comment

Walking in Their Footsteps: Italian Immigrant Ancestors

In preparation for an upcoming heritage tour to his ancestral homeland, our client enlisted our help to learn more about his Italian immigrant ancestors.

The Church of San Nicola di Bari, Termini Imerese, image from http://panoramio.com

One of my favorite things about being a Project Manager for Legacy Tree Genealogists is witnessing how our work directly affects our clients.

We recently wrapped up a project for a client who will soon be traveling to Italy. After tracing her Italian immigrant ancestors through the United States Federal Census records in the early 20th Century, we were able to identify an arrival in the U.S. in ships manifest records. Not only did this clear up a family rumor that their eldest living son was born in Italy (he wasn’t), it revealed that the young wife, Michela, made the trip from Sicily to Cleveland, Ohio, alone and without knowing any English!

Having identified the village the couple came from in Sicily, we were able to track down birth and death records for their first two children who had both been born in Sicily in the late 1890s. Both children died within a week of each other at only one and three years old.

Three months later, both parents had immigrated to the United States. One wonders if these grieving parents were motivated to find a better chance at life for their future children, or if the trip had been long planned and they unexpectedly found themselves leaving two small graves behind instead of towing two small toddlers along.

Finally, we found the couple’s marriage record which also included copies of their individual baptism records. With this, we were able to identify the churches where each was baptized. Now, this client can visit these beautiful churches next month and know that her ancestors walked up the same steps nearly 150 years ago to baptize their babies who would grow up and move to the United States one day, changing the course of their descendants’ lives forever.

The Church at the Convento Cappuccini Madona Della Catena, Termini Imerese, image from http://fraternitamadonnacatenatermini.it

Our experts and onsite agents are experienced at tracking down all kinds of Italian family history records in a variety of locations, and can help you extend your Italian ancestry as far back as records will allow. Contact us today for a free quote!