you are making headway fast. I am not sure how much i cna add to the wealth of info others have given you. for that matter, I have kinda lost track of what you are now looking for. Perhaps you could update us on your current quest?
One of my favorite resource sites is http://www.cyndislist.com/ She has put together an incredible list of 1000s of links to follow through. cyndi has been around for a long time, and the research material she links to are awesome.
Most of my work has been on my father's side, since nobody had ever worked it, and I spend most my efforts looking though microfilm of German court and church records. Little of my time is spent on searching US records, but once you get across the pond, I might be more help, especially if you find your way to German ancestry.
In years past, I have used the extensive resources of the LDS Salt Lake City Library. You can search their catalog from home at http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/Library/FH...ameset_fhlc.asp If you find resources that are interesting or hopeful to you you can locate your nearest Family History Center and order microfilms, fiche, books etc to be sent there from SLC. These places are also staffed by folks quite happy to help you with questions. Some of these volunteers are great, some are just giving their best effort, but all that I have met have been wonderful to talk with. You do not need to be mormon to use their facilities, and I have never been "pressured" by any stretch of the imagination.
I will caution you to not get real excited about trees you find through them. They are considerd often quite exaggerated. for that matter, I never take someone else's internet tree as anything more than a starting point for "real" research. The job is not done until it is documented with your own visual, preferably hands-on, verification of legal documents, and the more verifications the better. What I mostly use from the FHC is their microfilms of government documents from courthouses etc around the world.
The internet has been a great boon to genealogy buffs, and at the same time, a great pain. the hobby can be so fascinating it is easy to get over excited and in one's zeal, post as "fact" what is no more than a guess. Others pick this info up from the internet and compound it. Eventually someone posts a tree, and now someone else uses that undocumented tree as their own "documentation" It can be frustrating. I actually have a tree posted, in which I purposely mispelled an ancestor's given name, so I can track who has brought my research into theirs. Sometimes we find that correct connections have been made, sometimes we find someone grabs the surname and assumes it connects. I am quite happy to share my research, but I prefer to keep some control over how and where it is posted.
Anyone who does genealogy knows the thrill it is when you bingo, or make a breakthrough, and we rejoice with you when that happens. Its a great community. Some walls take years to break down then all of a sudden the dike is broken and out falls the most fascinating historical artifacts. while waiting for the breakthrough, I love to research info about what people's lives were like in the area of my search. How did they travel, why, what were the economics, what was their spiritual quest like, or as in your case, the health issues.
SOOOoooooo, welcome to da brotherhood, and watch out, I shook my family tree and all that came out were a bunch of nuts.
Now for some fun stuff- and I am so glad you got your father to share what he knows, and you have written or recorded what you can. Oh if I had paid attention to Gramps and his stories, what an easier time I would have had.
As I said, I work mainly my father's line, but I do keep in contact with researchers on my mother's side, which is well documented back to the 1300s. The first immigrant to the US in her line came in 1624, and he and his descendant started many a puritan church in the north east (CT/MA etc.) A few years back, Terri and I took a trip to Niagara Falls, and I called a researcher I had met online 3 years earlier, who I knew lived about an hour away from there. We share a common ancestor from the early 1700s. I invited him to meet us for dinner at the Minolta Tower.
We had a wonderful dinner together, and great conversation, then towards the end, he reaches under the table and pulls out a notebook he brought. In it he had drawn detailed maps to and of two cemetaries. John tells me, "I looked ten years for this grave, I am saving you the trouble. It is your 5th great grandfather's, and his family. However, I cannot place this one name that is buried with him." I looked at the name, and said "Oh, I know her, she is....(I gave the relationship)"
a big sigh came across his face, and he smiled, "I am so glad we met tonight, that name was driving me nuts." Of course, I was the big beneficiary of the location of my 5th great grandfather's gravesite, which we drove to the next day south of Utica. I never would have found that beautiful site, a cemetary from the early 1800s, with about 150 graves, located next to the remains of the church he founded. what a thrill.
The other cemetary map showed me exactly where to find my 6th and 7th great grandparents graves in Durham CT. and my 7th's house (still standing) located down a road which still bears his surname. what a country!
What started me in genealogy was the realization that my father had always wanted to know exactly where in Germany his grandfather had come from. My great grandfather was a shoemaker (welcome to the shoe biz laleo) who had immigrated to Lawrence MA in 1868. That is all we knew. Through the miracle of the internet, I eventually found a man in German who replied to a posting on a genealogy forum I had placed about a year earlier. Wolfgang's great grandmother shared my surname. Through numerous ims and emails, and a few telephone calls, (he trying english, me trying german- settling for a little of both) over the years, we continued to work.
Finally I found the town my ancestor came from, (with Wolfgang's father's inestimable help translating old German handwritten script). It was 5 km from where his great-grandmother was born. His cousin still lives about 10km away. I contacted his cousin via email, (using altavista translator since he reads german and russina, but no english- its in East Germany). Tomas gratiously asked if I would like him to go to the village where my great grandfather was born, and take pictures of the old church where he was baptized, and the surrounding area. I was thrilled and offered to pay, but my offer was refused, with him saying, "no, Before the wall came down, Wolfgang's family sent us packages of food to help us live, I can do this to help repay my debt"
Tomas took the pictures and sent them to me. The next month I met my mom and dad in MN for a fishing trip. I gave the pictures to my dad, who got a wee bit teary-eyed to see them. He was so thrilled at long last to see what the place looked like. We had lived in Germany (1957-60), but could not travel to East Germany at the time since it was in the Russian Zone., and Dad was military. Dad died 3 months later, and I am so glad I could do that for him.
Terri and I hope to travel to Germany this fall if it works out, and all my German "relatives" are begging me to stay at their houses, eat their food, and be driven by them wherever I want to go. What a way to see the country!.
So far, we have 7 separate trees developed, back to 1704, of my surname, none of which we can conclusively tie together. All seven originate within 15 km of the same place in Germany, and all can be traced to pre-1800. Some day, some day, we pray to find that illusive butterfly of a link that will make Wolfgang, Tomas, myself, and the others, cousins officially. We have documented every person we have found with my surname, anywhere in the world we have found them, and can trace all of them back to the same 15km in Germany. We absolutely must be connected, but we refuse to claim it until we can prove it.
Oh how fun it is, and the stuff we find. so close, but never finished.
And now a word of caution about "original Source Documents"
They are only as good as the information that was given to the recorder.
As with the census the recorder may or may not have gotten it right. On the other hand he may have gotten erroneous information.
I have a family of GUBTAILS who are really GUPTAILS but the name got put on a property deed with the wrong spelling and it was easier for the family to change the spelling of their name than to prove they were really GUPTAILS and have the deed changed.
My grandfather was born in 1878 but we always thought he was born in 1880. Why?because my great grandfather in order to get a break on Life insurance gave his age as two years younger than he really was and so changed my grandfathers birth information to coincide with his deception.
Original documents are great but they may be no more reliable than Aunt Minnie's notes in many cases, and in many cases your conscientious Aunt Minnie may be more accurate.
Now are you thoroughly ( or is that Throughly) confused???
And now a word of caution about "original Source Documents"
Original documents are great but they may be no more reliable than Aunt Minnie's notes in many cases, and in many cases your conscientious Aunt Minnie may be more accurate.
Now are you thoroughly ( or is that Throughly) confused???
LOL, WELL said! My great grandfather's marriage certif gives his wife's birthday 2 years different than her gravestone. The gravestone would indicate she was 16 when she married, the marriage cert made her 18. I am guessing that the gravestone is more likely correct rather than admitting to marrying at 16 at the time of the wedding (ahem). I put one date in my database, but have the other in "notes" also, with both sources annotated.
Keep EVERY tiny scrap of data you obtain, sometimes later on you can get further corroborating evidence, any of which may or may not be accurate. HOW FUN!
Actually, my mother's side is well-recorded, beginning circa 1300 in Hessen-Darmstadt (wherever that is). Hans Peter Umstat of Crefeld, Germany arrived here in 1685, and settled in Germantown, which was divided between thirteen families. The place where my family settled is now Fairmont Park, if you're familiar with the area.
When I was around four, my family went on a world tour to visit some of those places where my family originated, which included Switzerland, Holland, and Germany. The only thing I remember about it is the ducks at the fountain, and the reason I remember even that much is because my father bellowed something about how he didn't travel across the globe so that he could see ducks, and I started to cry, and my mother said it was alright to look at the ducks. So for a few days afterward, my mother took me out early to the fountain, where I would chase the ducks around before my father woke up, and we'd be back at the hotel room before breakfast. Germany has ducks, that much I know. Or maybe it was Holland.
It's my father's mother's side that we're working on right now, although I want to get back to his father's side. My great grandfather came from Frankfurt, and my great grandmother came from Switzerland (German speaking). We have the names of the ships they came in on, and the dates. We know my great grandfather did something with leather (he was a pocketbook maker), as did my great-grandfather from his mother's side, apparently ("Morocco finisher").
Do you know anything about the Ashenfelder family? Are they German or Pennsylvania Dutch? When did they arrive? Where did they come from? What was their religion? We think they might be somehow connected to a "Jacob Holtzman."
Right now, I got sidetracked trying to find more about this Irish great-grandfather, who's been a little hard to track down. I'll find him yet. (Sudo, you'll be relieved to know that my father found some civil war heroes on our heretofore unknown Irish side. Yankees, the entire lot). My grandmother's life has been a bit of a mystery, between the fact that she was orphaned, died relatively young, and had a tumultuous childhood.
HAPe, I very much enjoyed your story about your travels, and where all these discoveries have taken you.
Templelady, sometimes those little gaps (like the 2 year age difference) are what make the person come to life. Suddenly, you know a little more about the character of the person.
Linda, again from my father:
Thank Linda for her kind message. I truly do appreciate what she has helped dig up.
Mo, that's so true about the documents. I don't remember if I mentioned it earlier in this thread or in an e-mail to laleo, but I have marriage license applications signed by my great-great-grandmother for her two underage daughters, and on each she spelled her last name differently. Either that or one (or both) girls forged her signature. But different members of the family, who lived at the same time, used the two different spellings, so maybe no one was sure which was the right spelling!
On a related note, I was telling laleo the other night that another confounding factor is that people would lie to hide scandals. My dad's paternal aunts always told him he had a great-aunt who died in childhood. It turned out that she actually committed suicide when she was about 19, but apparently Dad's aunts wanted to keep that skeleton in the closet.
That's a great tip, Mo, about getting someone to pronounce foreign names to figure out how they might have been spelled phonetically. I found some of my Thoburn ancestors on one census spelled Phorburn! I never would have looked under that name in a million years. I think my cousin stumbled across it because someone in the family with a different last name was living in the household and she searched that name.
I'm going to try that trick Mo mentioned about searching a town for just a first name. I have one great-grandmother whose maiden name turns up nothing, no matter how many ways I can try the spelling.
HAP, loved your stories, too. I always thought it would be nearly impossible to search for ancestors in non-English sources, but you've proven me wrong. Almost all my folks were English or Scottish or Irish, so at least I don't have a big language barrier.
laleo, what I did was so minimal that it's almost embarrassing to be thanked, but I'm glad your dad's enjoying the find. That's how genealogy works sometimes. You can search for months or years for something, and then someone comes along and gives you a little boost that sends you in the right direction...one of the reasons I enjoy it so much.
If anyone else reading this thread is interested in genealogy but inexperienced, please jump in. As you can see, people are more than happy to share!
O.K. you guys all have me hooked now. Thanks for the suggestions. I did go ahead and pay for one month of ancestor.com. My paternal line is a bit tricky because my grandparents were from Mexico but never became citizens, so I've been unable to find their names in census docs. My parents both died when I was young, so I don't have much oral history to go on, but last night I remembered while searching my grandmother was a twin and somehow remembered her twin's married name and that she had lived near us, so was able to find her death info which provided her maiden name and her father's surname!!!!! That was so exciting.
Also, just in a random search of the 1930 census, I found my mother's family listed in some po-dunk town in New Mexico, so that was cool. My mom's cousin has documented all of her side of the family which came over from Barcelona in the late 1700s on a land grant from Spain to settle New Mexico. They came thru New Orleans and my cousin found the ship document with their family names listed. She's going to get us copies of what she's found so far which I'm so anxious to read.
But the breakthrough on my dad's side was exciting. My paternal grandfather is Aurelio Jimenez which in San Antonio, TX where he settled is like having the name Joe Smith. So I may have a little more trouble finding his info and I don't know the extended family there in TX.
Thanks for sharing what you've learned. It helped me get "un-stumped".
My folks are from Greece...I was born two months after they immigrated back in 1832...that's all I know about my geneology...bunch of olive pickers probably...LOL
Jard, here's a link that has links to several resources for researching the genealogy of people from Mexicio. You might have already checked this out, but if not, it might be helpful:
Don't be discouraged about a common name. I have Smiths on both sides of my family, and I've had more success finding out about them than I would have imagined.
One thing I love about genealogy is the great networking! Just yesterday I got a big surprise from my cousin's daughter, who also has the genealogy bug. She found 1841 and 1851 census records in England for my Smith great-great-grandparents on my dad's side of the family and e-mailed them to me. They were here waiting for me after a looooooooooooong week at work. I'd tried to find them before and failed.
You'd be amazed what clues can help with a common name. In this case, there were two. One was that my Smiths, on one census, were living with my relatives with a not-so-common name--my great-grandfather and his mom and dad and all his siblings except the youngest, who wasn't born yet. The second clue was that they were living in the tiny mining town where my great-grandfather was born.
One of the records also solved another mystery: Dad had tried to find this place in England called "Twizell" for years, because it's on my great-grandfather's birth certificate. He had checked old maps and atlases of Durham County, England, and had asked English researchers--nada. Lo and behold, on the 1851 census, we discovered that the family lived at "50 Twizell Cottage" in a township by another name that wasn't even on the birth certificate. All the men in the family were coal miners, so I wouldn't be surprised if these cottages were owned by the mining company.
So that's the way genealogy goes. You might search for months and keep hitting brick walls. Then, out of the blue, another piece of the puzzle falls into your lap.
Dr. OilField: If you were born in 1832, may I pleeeeeease interview you when you get back to the USA?
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HAPe4me
wow Laleo-
you are making headway fast. I am not sure how much i cna add to the wealth of info others have given you. for that matter, I have kinda lost track of what you are now looking for. Perhaps you could update us on your current quest?
From: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/genealogy
Etymology
From Old (and modern) French généalogie, from late Latin genealogia, from Greek γενεαλογία, from γενεαλόγος 'genealogist', from γενεά 'generation, descent' + λόγος 'student'.
Noun:
genealogy (Note spelling: not geneology)
The descent of a person, family, or group from an ancestor or ancestors; lineage or pedigree.
One of my favorite resource sites is http://www.cyndislist.com/ She has put together an incredible list of 1000s of links to follow through. cyndi has been around for a long time, and the research material she links to are awesome.
Most of my work has been on my father's side, since nobody had ever worked it, and I spend most my efforts looking though microfilm of German court and church records. Little of my time is spent on searching US records, but once you get across the pond, I might be more help, especially if you find your way to German ancestry.
In years past, I have used the extensive resources of the LDS Salt Lake City Library. You can search their catalog from home at http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/Library/FH...ameset_fhlc.asp If you find resources that are interesting or hopeful to you you can locate your nearest Family History Center and order microfilms, fiche, books etc to be sent there from SLC. These places are also staffed by folks quite happy to help you with questions. Some of these volunteers are great, some are just giving their best effort, but all that I have met have been wonderful to talk with. You do not need to be mormon to use their facilities, and I have never been "pressured" by any stretch of the imagination.
I will caution you to not get real excited about trees you find through them. They are considerd often quite exaggerated. for that matter, I never take someone else's internet tree as anything more than a starting point for "real" research. The job is not done until it is documented with your own visual, preferably hands-on, verification of legal documents, and the more verifications the better. What I mostly use from the FHC is their microfilms of government documents from courthouses etc around the world.
The internet has been a great boon to genealogy buffs, and at the same time, a great pain. the hobby can be so fascinating it is easy to get over excited and in one's zeal, post as "fact" what is no more than a guess. Others pick this info up from the internet and compound it. Eventually someone posts a tree, and now someone else uses that undocumented tree as their own "documentation" It can be frustrating. I actually have a tree posted, in which I purposely mispelled an ancestor's given name, so I can track who has brought my research into theirs. Sometimes we find that correct connections have been made, sometimes we find someone grabs the surname and assumes it connects. I am quite happy to share my research, but I prefer to keep some control over how and where it is posted.
Anyone who does genealogy knows the thrill it is when you bingo, or make a breakthrough, and we rejoice with you when that happens. Its a great community. Some walls take years to break down then all of a sudden the dike is broken and out falls the most fascinating historical artifacts. while waiting for the breakthrough, I love to research info about what people's lives were like in the area of my search. How did they travel, why, what were the economics, what was their spiritual quest like, or as in your case, the health issues.
SOOOoooooo, welcome to da brotherhood, and watch out, I shook my family tree and all that came out were a bunch of nuts.
~HAP
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HAPe4me
Now for some fun stuff- and I am so glad you got your father to share what he knows, and you have written or recorded what you can. Oh if I had paid attention to Gramps and his stories, what an easier time I would have had.
As I said, I work mainly my father's line, but I do keep in contact with researchers on my mother's side, which is well documented back to the 1300s. The first immigrant to the US in her line came in 1624, and he and his descendant started many a puritan church in the north east (CT/MA etc.) A few years back, Terri and I took a trip to Niagara Falls, and I called a researcher I had met online 3 years earlier, who I knew lived about an hour away from there. We share a common ancestor from the early 1700s. I invited him to meet us for dinner at the Minolta Tower.
We had a wonderful dinner together, and great conversation, then towards the end, he reaches under the table and pulls out a notebook he brought. In it he had drawn detailed maps to and of two cemetaries. John tells me, "I looked ten years for this grave, I am saving you the trouble. It is your 5th great grandfather's, and his family. However, I cannot place this one name that is buried with him." I looked at the name, and said "Oh, I know her, she is....(I gave the relationship)"
a big sigh came across his face, and he smiled, "I am so glad we met tonight, that name was driving me nuts." Of course, I was the big beneficiary of the location of my 5th great grandfather's gravesite, which we drove to the next day south of Utica. I never would have found that beautiful site, a cemetary from the early 1800s, with about 150 graves, located next to the remains of the church he founded. what a thrill.
The other cemetary map showed me exactly where to find my 6th and 7th great grandparents graves in Durham CT. and my 7th's house (still standing) located down a road which still bears his surname. what a country!
What started me in genealogy was the realization that my father had always wanted to know exactly where in Germany his grandfather had come from. My great grandfather was a shoemaker (welcome to the shoe biz laleo) who had immigrated to Lawrence MA in 1868. That is all we knew. Through the miracle of the internet, I eventually found a man in German who replied to a posting on a genealogy forum I had placed about a year earlier. Wolfgang's great grandmother shared my surname. Through numerous ims and emails, and a few telephone calls, (he trying english, me trying german- settling for a little of both) over the years, we continued to work.
Finally I found the town my ancestor came from, (with Wolfgang's father's inestimable help translating old German handwritten script). It was 5 km from where his great-grandmother was born. His cousin still lives about 10km away. I contacted his cousin via email, (using altavista translator since he reads german and russina, but no english- its in East Germany). Tomas gratiously asked if I would like him to go to the village where my great grandfather was born, and take pictures of the old church where he was baptized, and the surrounding area. I was thrilled and offered to pay, but my offer was refused, with him saying, "no, Before the wall came down, Wolfgang's family sent us packages of food to help us live, I can do this to help repay my debt"
Tomas took the pictures and sent them to me. The next month I met my mom and dad in MN for a fishing trip. I gave the pictures to my dad, who got a wee bit teary-eyed to see them. He was so thrilled at long last to see what the place looked like. We had lived in Germany (1957-60), but could not travel to East Germany at the time since it was in the Russian Zone., and Dad was military. Dad died 3 months later, and I am so glad I could do that for him.
Terri and I hope to travel to Germany this fall if it works out, and all my German "relatives" are begging me to stay at their houses, eat their food, and be driven by them wherever I want to go. What a way to see the country!.
So far, we have 7 separate trees developed, back to 1704, of my surname, none of which we can conclusively tie together. All seven originate within 15 km of the same place in Germany, and all can be traced to pre-1800. Some day, some day, we pray to find that illusive butterfly of a link that will make Wolfgang, Tomas, myself, and the others, cousins officially. We have documented every person we have found with my surname, anywhere in the world we have found them, and can trace all of them back to the same 15km in Germany. We absolutely must be connected, but we refuse to claim it until we can prove it.
Oh how fun it is, and the stuff we find. so close, but never finished.
Enjoy it,
~HAPe4me
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templelady
And now a word of caution about "original Source Documents"
They are only as good as the information that was given to the recorder.
As with the census the recorder may or may not have gotten it right. On the other hand he may have gotten erroneous information.
I have a family of GUBTAILS who are really GUPTAILS but the name got put on a property deed with the wrong spelling and it was easier for the family to change the spelling of their name than to prove they were really GUPTAILS and have the deed changed.
My grandfather was born in 1878 but we always thought he was born in 1880. Why?because my great grandfather in order to get a break on Life insurance gave his age as two years younger than he really was and so changed my grandfathers birth information to coincide with his deception.
Original documents are great but they may be no more reliable than Aunt Minnie's notes in many cases, and in many cases your conscientious Aunt Minnie may be more accurate.
Now are you thoroughly ( or is that Throughly) confused???
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HAPe4me
LOL, WELL said! My great grandfather's marriage certif gives his wife's birthday 2 years different than her gravestone. The gravestone would indicate she was 16 when she married, the marriage cert made her 18. I am guessing that the gravestone is more likely correct rather than admitting to marrying at 16 at the time of the wedding (ahem). I put one date in my database, but have the other in "notes" also, with both sources annotated.
Keep EVERY tiny scrap of data you obtain, sometimes later on you can get further corroborating evidence, any of which may or may not be accurate. HOW FUN!
~HAP
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laleo
German ancestry? You asked for it.
Actually, my mother's side is well-recorded, beginning circa 1300 in Hessen-Darmstadt (wherever that is). Hans Peter Umstat of Crefeld, Germany arrived here in 1685, and settled in Germantown, which was divided between thirteen families. The place where my family settled is now Fairmont Park, if you're familiar with the area.
When I was around four, my family went on a world tour to visit some of those places where my family originated, which included Switzerland, Holland, and Germany. The only thing I remember about it is the ducks at the fountain, and the reason I remember even that much is because my father bellowed something about how he didn't travel across the globe so that he could see ducks, and I started to cry, and my mother said it was alright to look at the ducks. So for a few days afterward, my mother took me out early to the fountain, where I would chase the ducks around before my father woke up, and we'd be back at the hotel room before breakfast. Germany has ducks, that much I know. Or maybe it was Holland.
It's my father's mother's side that we're working on right now, although I want to get back to his father's side. My great grandfather came from Frankfurt, and my great grandmother came from Switzerland (German speaking). We have the names of the ships they came in on, and the dates. We know my great grandfather did something with leather (he was a pocketbook maker), as did my great-grandfather from his mother's side, apparently ("Morocco finisher").
Do you know anything about the Ashenfelder family? Are they German or Pennsylvania Dutch? When did they arrive? Where did they come from? What was their religion? We think they might be somehow connected to a "Jacob Holtzman."
Right now, I got sidetracked trying to find more about this Irish great-grandfather, who's been a little hard to track down. I'll find him yet. (Sudo, you'll be relieved to know that my father found some civil war heroes on our heretofore unknown Irish side. Yankees, the entire lot). My grandmother's life has been a bit of a mystery, between the fact that she was orphaned, died relatively young, and had a tumultuous childhood.
HAPe, I very much enjoyed your story about your travels, and where all these discoveries have taken you.
Templelady, sometimes those little gaps (like the 2 year age difference) are what make the person come to life. Suddenly, you know a little more about the character of the person.
Linda, again from my father:
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Linda Z
Mo, that's so true about the documents. I don't remember if I mentioned it earlier in this thread or in an e-mail to laleo, but I have marriage license applications signed by my great-great-grandmother for her two underage daughters, and on each she spelled her last name differently. Either that or one (or both) girls forged her signature. But different members of the family, who lived at the same time, used the two different spellings, so maybe no one was sure which was the right spelling!
On a related note, I was telling laleo the other night that another confounding factor is that people would lie to hide scandals. My dad's paternal aunts always told him he had a great-aunt who died in childhood. It turned out that she actually committed suicide when she was about 19, but apparently Dad's aunts wanted to keep that skeleton in the closet.
That's a great tip, Mo, about getting someone to pronounce foreign names to figure out how they might have been spelled phonetically. I found some of my Thoburn ancestors on one census spelled Phorburn! I never would have looked under that name in a million years. I think my cousin stumbled across it because someone in the family with a different last name was living in the household and she searched that name.
I'm going to try that trick Mo mentioned about searching a town for just a first name. I have one great-grandmother whose maiden name turns up nothing, no matter how many ways I can try the spelling.
HAP, loved your stories, too. I always thought it would be nearly impossible to search for ancestors in non-English sources, but you've proven me wrong. Almost all my folks were English or Scottish or Irish, so at least I don't have a big language barrier.
laleo, what I did was so minimal that it's almost embarrassing to be thanked, but I'm glad your dad's enjoying the find. That's how genealogy works sometimes. You can search for months or years for something, and then someone comes along and gives you a little boost that sends you in the right direction...one of the reasons I enjoy it so much.
If anyone else reading this thread is interested in genealogy but inexperienced, please jump in. As you can see, people are more than happy to share!
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jardinero
O.K. you guys all have me hooked now. Thanks for the suggestions. I did go ahead and pay for one month of ancestor.com. My paternal line is a bit tricky because my grandparents were from Mexico but never became citizens, so I've been unable to find their names in census docs. My parents both died when I was young, so I don't have much oral history to go on, but last night I remembered while searching my grandmother was a twin and somehow remembered her twin's married name and that she had lived near us, so was able to find her death info which provided her maiden name and her father's surname!!!!! That was so exciting.
Also, just in a random search of the 1930 census, I found my mother's family listed in some po-dunk town in New Mexico, so that was cool. My mom's cousin has documented all of her side of the family which came over from Barcelona in the late 1700s on a land grant from Spain to settle New Mexico. They came thru New Orleans and my cousin found the ship document with their family names listed. She's going to get us copies of what she's found so far which I'm so anxious to read.
But the breakthrough on my dad's side was exciting. My paternal grandfather is Aurelio Jimenez which in San Antonio, TX where he settled is like having the name Joe Smith. So I may have a little more trouble finding his info and I don't know the extended family there in TX.
Thanks for sharing what you've learned. It helped me get "un-stumped".
J.
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likeaneagle
Like Jardinero said, names are tricky ..
My moms last name is McKenzie, and there are four ways of spelling it.
We found out the correct spelling , which is MacKenzie..
and to boot...my great great great grandfathers name was Otis Moredock McKenzie.....that was the easy part..
Is that Scottish or what..
have fun...
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oilfieldmedic
LOL Sudo...good one
My folks are from Greece...I was born two months after they immigrated back in 1832...that's all I know about my geneology...bunch of olive pickers probably...LOL
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Linda Z
Jard, here's a link that has links to several resources for researching the genealogy of people from Mexicio. You might have already checked this out, but if not, it might be helpful:
http://genealogy.about.com/od/mexico/
Don't be discouraged about a common name. I have Smiths on both sides of my family, and I've had more success finding out about them than I would have imagined.
One thing I love about genealogy is the great networking! Just yesterday I got a big surprise from my cousin's daughter, who also has the genealogy bug. She found 1841 and 1851 census records in England for my Smith great-great-grandparents on my dad's side of the family and e-mailed them to me. They were here waiting for me after a looooooooooooong week at work. I'd tried to find them before and failed.
You'd be amazed what clues can help with a common name. In this case, there were two. One was that my Smiths, on one census, were living with my relatives with a not-so-common name--my great-grandfather and his mom and dad and all his siblings except the youngest, who wasn't born yet. The second clue was that they were living in the tiny mining town where my great-grandfather was born.
One of the records also solved another mystery: Dad had tried to find this place in England called "Twizell" for years, because it's on my great-grandfather's birth certificate. He had checked old maps and atlases of Durham County, England, and had asked English researchers--nada. Lo and behold, on the 1851 census, we discovered that the family lived at "50 Twizell Cottage" in a township by another name that wasn't even on the birth certificate. All the men in the family were coal miners, so I wouldn't be surprised if these cottages were owned by the mining company.
So that's the way genealogy goes. You might search for months and keep hitting brick walls. Then, out of the blue, another piece of the puzzle falls into your lap.
Dr. OilField: If you were born in 1832, may I pleeeeeease interview you when you get back to the USA?
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