Fading History

When I moved to North Carolina, it was primarily for the purpose of boots on the ground research in the state that I had learned many of my ancestors were from and I had yet to learn that Lincoln County was going to be a hot spot of research. Online research can only carry a researcher so far before the trail runs cold. I searched online for a Lincoln County genealogy society where I could sit in on a meeting, perhaps join the society, but I quickly found out that Lincoln County does not have a society. My search brought me to a Lincoln County history Web page that was out of date and had very little to offer other than noting the local war re-enactments. This was so discouraging.

With no real plans other than to check out the Lincoln County library for resources, I set out one Friday morning on my hour and a half drive with family tree in hand to see what I could see. The library is a good size with plenty of parking in a quiet area of the little town of Lincolnton. It was a nice surprise to find out the library has a genealogy room the size of a small bedroom with a dedicated librarian to assist researchers. What I learned during my visit is what I suspect is happening all across the nation. There once was a society but, if there are any members still living, they no longer get together. The local historian has passed away. The person running the local war re-enactments has stepped down. Local government, which funds the public library (and the genealogy room), is budgeting funds in other areas.

I thoroughly enjoyed my visit with Jamie, the Lincoln County genealogy librarian. She was so helpful in my personal research by sharing what she knew about the area and even pointing out on Google maps the very property that my ancestors lived on. She just knew. That’s why the local genealogy library is so important. Being able to sit for an hour or more and talk research with someone who lives there and researches there too was wonderful. However, Jamie is discouraged with the inattention and lack of support for sharing the rich resources she manages. She no longer asks visitors to sign the visitor log. No one but Jamie is paying attention. Jamie has plans that all research can appreciate but is limited by the lack of a platform on which to share her work. She is organizing loose papers in family files, digitizing many of those items, and looking for more items to digitize – all for us online researchers that cannot make the trip to Lincoln County.

Here is the real problem: no one in charge of the Lincoln County library has given Jamie the means to share these digital records. All of the records she digitizes sit on a hard drive. No one but Jamie can see them. Jamie’s requests to place these records online are being ignored. How many libraries around the country are just like this one? Lots of printed resources, clippings from the local paper, obituaries, parade photos, family histories faded from years of sitting in a grey metal file cabinet, or worse, pages stuck together from lack of archival care – with no society or historian to organize, preserve or digitize any of these resource materials.

So, for now, if you would like Jamie to look something up for you, she will. She will scan her findings and email them to you. And, she will store those findings on the hard drive for the next person that contacts her. That’s just it, you have to contact her. This is old school research, sort of.

I leave you with a few photos that I took of clippings in Jamie’s files of the local Lincoln County historian, Gaither Shrum, who passed away in 1995.

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DNA Denied

Why even test? What do you hope to find in your DNA results?

Depressed sums up how I feel about our latest DNA revelation. It was big news, still is. However, not all parties were as excited as we were to learn of this big news. For 56 years, my husband has lived on this Earth. Most of those years, he knew he was adopted. Most of those years, he has searched. For? A deep understanding of what makes him tick in ways that no one in his adoptive family ticks. There are things. He stands out.

Birth momma has been known for a couple of decades now (without DNA assistance). She died before we could meet. Maternal birth sibling connections were made instead. They recognized him as part of their family. On that deep DNA level, they acknowledged him regardless of some painful memories that it evoked. He was not turned away. We thank them for that and recognize it probably was not easy at times to open their heart to a brother from a less than happy part of their own childhoods.

How powerful and personal that acknowledgement is! The denial of which is just as devastating.

The DNA pursuit of his paternal birth father seemed the only hopeful route. Spit in a tube, wait for your email that your results are ready, then what? Story after story can be told about how the latest DNA testing services can put together families that were separated via adoption, reveal secret family connections, or assist law enforcement in the pursuit of cold case answers. What we have learned along the DNA test route is that not all tests glean useful answers. You also have to learn a lot of basic biology to follow the results. What then?

We used FamilyTreeDNA as our first testing service in 2010. The results gave a pretty exciting answer. Ashkenazi Jewish. Your paternal side is 100% Ashkenazi Jewish. Wow! Yet, there were no close matches and few we contacted responded back.  Why did they even take a DNA test?  Now what? 

Fast forward to Christmas 2018. I had been an Ancestry subscriber for years yet had never taken their DNA service seriously. It finally sank in though that we needed to try a different database, a more well known database, one that had been advertising on TV for a good while and would attract a wide variety of testers, just for the fun of it. We took advantage of the holiday sale pricing for the autosomal DNA (family finder) test.

Spit in a tube, wait for the email that your DNA results are ready, then what? A bomb shell dropped. His number one match said “Predicted relationship: parent/child – immediate family member.” Ethnicity: European Jewish. Shared DNA=3,441 cms across 58 DNA segments. Wow! It is him! No kidding! 56 years later and my husband finally knows who his birth father is. What now?

Reach out, say hi; I have been looking for you for so long; can we have a conversation? Just to get to know each other. Not so fast! What if he never knew you existed? What if this is a bomb shell for him, too? What if he did know you existed? Bomb shell just the same.

We waited a few days. Then, sent a private message via Ancestry asking if we could talk and get to know each other, a little or a lot, whatever he was comfortable with. No response. What we do know here is that birth father does not manage his own Ancestry DNA account. Birth father’s wife does. Our message was sent to birth father’s wife. We sent a follow up message three weeks later asking about their thoughts, feelings, and to simply confirm receipt of our message. No reply. Just the immediate cold act of blocking us from sending any more messages. Loud and clear.

This brings up a whole host of possible emotions going on in their household. It also makes us wonder if she will tell him. This father/son conversation cannot take place without her blessing. The lack of acknowledgement is powerful and painful. Now what?

Wait for a softening of her/his heart. Pray for their family. We are not the only ones that see the DNA matches. There are many close DNA matches on his paternal side. Will any of them reach out to say hi, who are you? If not, this begs the question, Why did they do a DNA test?

Pray for our next steps, if any.

DNA Ethics – Free Webinar

DNA Ethics is the topic of a webinar I attended on Wednesday courtesy of Legacy Family Tree. Judy Russell discusses many legal questions and consents related to accessing, sharing, and storage of our DNA. Legacy is providing free access to non-subscribers until January 9, 2019.

Access this temporarily free webinar via this link: https://familytreewebinars.com/download.php?webinar_id=881

Maternal Legacy

Nancy, Mary, Catherine, Martha, Lulah.

I never knew you though I am you.

Miracle Needed

The tide came quickly. It takes a lot of mental and physical energy to accomplish organizing an office as messy as mine. In a world of quick solutions, this project does not have one.  I was overcome with mental exhaustion quickly. I soon lost focus, and worse, heart for the prize. My Genealogy Do-Over would have to wait for something miraculous which was just around the corner.

In 2016, I dipped my toe in the minimalism wave. This community of people who live with only that which gives them joy was just what I needed to accomplish some very difficult tasks that I have been delaying. Letting go of things is hard when the things evoke good memories and feelings. Sentimentality and simply not being ready to face the emotional tide I was going to experience became my prison. The guided minimalist approach I took made the chore a lot easier. The declutter categories I put into practice were:

• Trash (useless to me and others)
• Give Away (quality and useful to others)
• Maybe Keep (not sure if I want to let go)
• Keep (Joy / Value)

My home office was not the starting point for this new minimalist journey; it was the many boxes of my mother’s things that I stored after she died a few years ago. I felt guilty doing anything enjoyable in life when I knew I had this task that I kept delaying waiting for me.  What I learned when opening those boxes and truly looking at the things she kept was that their value to me was not as the objects but the memories they evoked such as the smell of her many purses with the half sticks of Juicy Fruit gum in each. The purses went to a local non-profit thrift store. Mom can not use them and I would not use them. The emotional journey those purses took me on was hard but worth it.

Processing the decisions for each item with the minimalist approach made it much easier. The Maybe Keep category was the best thing I could have put into practice.  I gave myself permission to keep some things. Surprisingly, I did not keep as much as I thought I would.

I then put the minimalism approach into practice throughout the rest of my home. This is not an over the weekend kind of process. Even taking a week or so to declutter a room, the process is fluid. What I loved and brought me joy one month may not the next. Setting an item aside to see if I need it in the next three months teaches me what is necessary in my life. It forces a person to ask what brings joy or value?

My home office is now finally getting the attention it needs. No longer am I feeling guilty for treating myself to an organized office. However, what a tough task it can be for a genealogist to let go of things. It takes a lot of soul searching and questioning every single item to determine if that item has value. The very definition of value has to be determined as well. What is of value to a genealogist?

Genealogy Do-Over: Rewards of Week 1 – Day 2

Mid-day Saturday and I am in the thick of it, sorting through paper and consolidating boxes. Our cross-cut paper shredder is my best friend today.

My efforts have been rewarded in a couple of ways already. One, I found a certified copy of my own birth certificate. I knew it was somewhere.

Reward number two:  drum roll, please. A humble spiral notebook with my mother’s handwritten life story, 33 pages just as full as the first. She was born in 1921. Her story book stops in 1938 around when my parents were married. As much as I want to stop everything and read it through, I will not.  I am pretty sure I know much of it already. What a treasure though. Mom died in 2012. Seeing her handwriting is like getting a hug.

Page one of mom’s handwritten life story.

Genealogy Do-Over – Week 1

I learned of this thing called a Genealogy Do-Over a couple of months ago while at a conference. Sounded scary but deep down I knew I needed to get on board. Starting with Week 1 today (July 3), I have taken some time to review my research practices and have begun to better organize my office.

The topics of Week 1 are:

• Setting Previous Research Aside
• Preparing to Research
• Establishing Base Practices and Guidelines

Setting Previous Research Aside.  This will take a bit of work. I am so disorganized. I have research in every form and stashed in various places in the house:

• office desk
• five-drawer file cabinet
• on book shelves in binders and folders (or not)
• travel case that I take to conferences
• TV tray in living room where I sit and read while watching/listening to TV
• moving boxes that are still unpacked
• two desktop computers (old and new)
• two laptops (broken hinge one that is slow and new fabulous purple replacement)
• flash drives (who knows how many)
• memory cards from my camera (again, who knows how many), and
• a terabyte external hard drive

The electronic files are duplicated in several places I am sure. I lost some of my research when another older laptop and a previous external drive crashed. To say I need this Do-Over is an understatement.

Preparing to Research. In all honesty, I seem to research better at night after the sun goes down. I am not as distracted with other things of the day a.k.a. pesky housework. I am a natural night owl anyway. Many of my siblings are, too. That’s the kind of thing you don’t necessarily learn in researching ancestors. I wonder if Delanie was a night person.

My thoughts on preparation would be to gather my essential items close and have templates of forms and filing system at the ready. Here is my to-do list for this week:

• Review the templates available on Genedocs Template’s Facebook page at Genedocs Templates.
• Watch and adopt useful practices from Linda Debe’s instructional YouTube video entitled Organizing Digital Files found here:  Organizing Digital Files.
• Attack (clean) my office and create a healthy, organized environment conducive to better research.  This will include gathering and organizing all of the research from the various stashes throughout the house.  And then, Set it Aside!

Office – Before

As an incentive to follow through with that last bullet point, my shameful office pic should serve as motivation. I hope to have an After pic before Week 2 starts. I think I need an intervention. Wait, this Do-Over is just that!! Going to do my best but I get tired just looking at this picture.

Establishing Base Practices and Guidelines. This feels like I am making New Year’s resolutions. With all good intentions, here are some things that come to mind in how best to research.

1. Do not research in the wee hours of the morning (it is currently 1:30 a.m.). Did I mention I am a night owl?
2. Keep research materials at my desk/office area not all over the house. This is why my office must ultimately be a comfortable place to sit at the desk and have a separate comfortable reading area. I don’t always want to be sitting at a computer (I do that all day at my 9-to-5 job). I like to read newsletters and blogs on my iPad while curled up on the couch.
   1. Research materials include:
      1. laptop
      2. Evidence Explained
      3. notebooks
      4. Evernote (have not used this before but intend to try it)
      5. Research logs
3. Develop and maintain an electronic filing and naming system.
4. Go paperless when possible. Keep all notes and papers in an electronic format. Original documents can be filed safely away in an archival friendly manner.
5. Back-up ALL electronic files:
   1. on a cloud server
   2. on external hard drive
6. Keep learning!  Continuing education through conferences, blogs, webinars, newsletters, history books, interviews.
7. Join my local genealogical society and relevant societies to my personal research. Check. Already have done this.
8. Give back! Regularly contribute to the genealogy community.  Do not always take, take, take. Transcribe cemetery headstones, share obituaries, or other interesting facts that I find along the way.
9. Establish daily tasks to keep my research from becoming stagnant. Perhaps on Monday I can write a blog post on my weekend research accomplishments. Tuesday could be focusing on a particular person. I imagine this will fluctuate as my research develops. It could be that I take Mondays to think through what my tasks should be for that week in blog form.

I am curious to see how this list changes as I get further into this Do-Over. Old habits are hard to break. Taking things slow and being deliberate about each task should bring me closer to the goal — breaking down brick walls through organized research!

I have given myself a weekend to get a lot of the office organization done. Wish me luck!

If you are interested in a Do-Over for your own research, check it out here:  Genealogy Do-Over.

Genealogy Do Overs

Yeah, been a while — life takes priority.  Don’t forget to hug those you love and live life in the now no matter how badly we want to keep researching the past all night, and day.

I attended a genealogy conference today for the first time in a few years.  The speaker was Lisa Alzo (http://www.lisaalzo.com).  Very, very helpful topics, one of which gave me the permission I needed to start over with my research.  Have you heard of a “genealogy do-over?”  Me neither.  What a great idea.  I have been so disorganized in my young life as a researcher.  Starting fresh with a new tree and using knowledge I have now that I did not have 10 years ago — now that is a pretty appealing idea to me.

My tree has become so overgrown with who knows who they all are.  I made a boo-boo many years ago and incorporated someone else’s tree into my own.  My, my, I wish I could hit the “Undo” button on that one.

A thought occurred to me today as I was listening to the topic of “using a research journal with Excel” –do you use one? me neither — that my research is like a real tree.  The roots are shallow and spread out like I have been watering the surface for 10 years.  Nothing substantial, deep, or truly life-giving has been given to my tree.  I am watering shallowly with wide research using easy resources rather than bringing my family to life by digging deep.

Here is a link to the “do over” blog that Lisa Alzo discussed briefly today: Geneablogger.com – Genealogy Do Over

Where I begin …

I am seriously thinking about doing this with a brand new tree.  Lots of work, I know.  Will I be able to stay focused, organized, and glean deeper results from my research if I start fresh using the new tricks I know now?  Time will tell.

and the Winner is …

The DNA results were that Steve is of Ashkenasi Jewish ancestry.   Very interesting.  Still have not found relatives, though.  The folks that Steve e-mails who have been determined a relative by Family Tree DNA do not write back.  And, there are absolutely no Mitchells in the relatives list.  Was birth momma fibbing?

Waiting ….

Yea, they got the test swabs back in the lab.  Waiting for results. 🙂