How to Collect Information at Family Gatherings

Family gatherings during the holidays are opportunities to gather family information such as stories and pictures. Since these opportunities may come only once a year, it is crucial to approach family members carefully. The trick is to collect information without being a pest.

Melanie Mayo, Family History Daily editor, wrote a fun article, “8 Ways to Gather Family History Without Hijacking a Holiday Event.” Mayo states, “How can we broach the topic of sharing family history gently, and make it an enjoyable experience for everyone.” Mayo’s simple and fun ways to gather information are:

1. Ask for a little, Get a Lot - Make sure you bring a recording device to record the stories that are shared. Mayo mentions that we should ask “every person in the room to share one memory of their childhood and/or one family story they’ve been told.”

2. Make Sharing Super Simple – An interview sheet with “no more than 5 questions” passed out to everyone at the gathering is a great way to collect information, especially if the questions are kept simple.

3. Create a Casual Conversation – Photos are a great way to get the stories flowing. Don’t bring a lot, just a few. Make sure they are interesting and a chance to get answers to questions such as who the man in the back row is.

4. Give the Gift of Sharing. My Life’s Story are books with personal history prompts that will create a lasting family keepsake — a great gift to give to the older members of the family showing that you care about their story.

5. Look Beyond the Obvious – Bring cards to gather family recipes. Even asking stories about family heirlooms is important history gathering.

6. Be Prepared for Anything – Make sure you have a scanning app on your phone, and you know how to use it or bring a Flip-Pal portable scanning. Someone may have photos there you have never seen before.

7. Ask for Verification – If there is information that you are not sure about, this is the time get it cleared up.

8. Lay the Groundwork for Future Sharing – Collecting contact information is a great way to contact family members that may be interested in sharing information.

A family gathering is a great place to gather family history information and going about it in a fun tactful way will bring you great results.

Christmas Traditions

With the popularity of DNA testing, we are finding out what our ethnicity is. A popular Ancestry DNA commercial starts with Kyle whose family tradition said they were German. When he gets his DNA test results back, he finds out that he is Scottish. He had to trade in his lederhosen for a kilt. How many of us have had this kind of surprise and had to readjust our views on our ethnicity? A fun practice during the holidays is to incorporate the traditions from our ancestral countries into our festivities.

I am, according to Ancestry DNA, 80% England, Wales, and Northwestern Europe. I did a Google search for Christmas traditions in England, and I found some fun ideas to incorporate into my festivities that will encourage my family to show an interest in their ancestors. I found the article “10 Ways to British Up Your Christmas Holiday” that had some great ideas. An amusing idea is to burn the letters written to Santa Clause so that Father Christmas can read them in the smoke. Crackers (wrapped tubes pulled apart) are a great custom too. These are readily available at the local stores. Wassail is a favorite drink during the English holidays. Another idea is to have the tree and the decorations down within twelve days of Christmas so that you will have good luck for the next year.

My next ethnicity is 9% Ireland and Scotland. Since I know that my Grandfather was half Scottish, I did a Google search for Scottish Christmas traditions. I found out that Scotland had canceled Christmas in 1640 and did not celebrate it again until 1958. I don’t think my family would enjoy this tradition, so I searched for Irish family Christmas customs. Irish traditions include putting a tall, thick candle on the sill of the largest window on Christmas Eve to give a welcoming light for Mary and Joseph. A round cake full of caraway seeds is an Irish custom too.

FamilySearch Blog has a great article “8 Holidays around the World” In Finland, at Christmas, they place a single lit candle in the snow next to the graves of their loved ones representing the resurrection of these ancestors. A great tradition. The blog ends with these words of wisdom. “The holidays we celebrate and traditions we practice are a significant part of what binds our families and cultures.”

Fan Charts

TreeSeek.com is a fun website that takes your information from FamilySearch and creates beautiful FREE charts. You can download these charts and print them out yourself, or you can order a copy from TreeSeek. TreeSeek creates an 18”x 24” on 24 lb. Archival paper for you to frame and cost $24.99 plus shipping. Charts like this are a beautiful gift of family history to treasure for generations.

When you enter the TreeSeek website, you now have the choice to log in to FamilySearch to create your chart, or you can use the ged.com option and create a chart from your ged.com. The ged.com feature is great for those who do not use FamilySearch. If you choose to use FamilySearch to create your chart, you have the option of selecting the starting person on your chart. There are twelve different charts to from which to choose, five fan charts, three 7-generation charts, two in color and one black and white, two 9-generation charts, one in color and the other in black and white. They also create a name cloud and photo charts that use the photo of your ancestors from FamilySearch.

FamilySearch has a fan chart option also. You can print out a color 7-generation fan chart that you can frame. FamilySearch has introduced a discovery fan chart that will help you learn more about your family and your family tree. In the FamilySearch Blog, there is a great article “New Discovery Fan Chart: Explore Your Family Tree in Depth,” by Leslie Albrecht Huber. (www.familysearch.org/blog/en/new-discovery-fan-chart-family-tree) She states that “In just one glance, you can discover your ancestral heritage or learn which family members have an abundance of sources, family photos, and family stories – which could use a little more work!” A favorite feature in the FamilySearch chart is the Birth Country Chart. FamilySearch will bring up a color-coded fan chart that will show through the different colors where your ancestors were born.

Fan charts are great to give you an overview of your family. The blank spaces in the chart show your end of line people giving you an idea of where you need to focus your research. You can see which ancestor has stories and photos that are new to you. As Huber states, “You just might see your family in a whole new way.” The advancement of technology is essential in assisting us in our genealogy research!

Book Review: The Family Tree Toolkit

Christmas is fast approaching, and if you are looking for a great gift to give, a new book is hot off the press that your family and friends are sure to enjoy. It is also a great gift to give to yourself. The Family Tree Toolkit by Kenyatta D. Berry, host of Genealogy Roadshow, is an essential addition to your must-have books. This book is “a comprehensive guide to uncovering your ancestry and researching genealogy.”

This Toolkit has beginning researchers in mind; it has valuable information that the seasoned genealogist could use. The first chapter is just five pages long with how-to advice on how to get started, and the good habits that you should form right from the beginning. But the meat of the book is in the following chapters.

There is a chapter on U.S. Census Research, and the best part of this chapter is not only the great research tips that Berry spreads throughout her book but also the charts Berry has put together on all the census years, including Federal and State Census, available for each state.

The U.S. Vital Record chapter has great charts on what records are available and where you can locate them. Ancestry does not have all the vital records, and neither does FamilySearch. You may be surprised to find that Findmypast has their share of U.S. vital records. The author has done an excellent job in separating the information available for each state with these charts. A great example of the difference between the genealogy companies in the state of Massachusetts. FamilySearch has vital records for 1753-1900. For birth records, Ancestry has them for 1620-1850, and FamilySearch has these records for 1841-1915. The same for marriage and death records. If you were looking for births in the late 1660s, then you would need to search at Ancestry. After 1850, it would be best to look at FamilySearch. Knowing where to find what you need will save you a lot of time and headaches in your research.

Berry has done a great job in covering a lot of subjects. She has a big section on military research, a good section of European research, and even includes how to use your DNA results. This book is full of charts and how-to tips that make it a must to keep on your desk as you search for those elusive ancestors. A great gift for Christmas.

Heirloom Cookbooks

A collection of family recipes are a great gift for Christmas. If you have recipes collected from your mother, grandmother, or passed down from ancestors and they are just loose copies kept in cookbooks or a recipe box, then an heirloom cookbook is a great idea to preserve and pass these recipes on to your children and grandchildren.

Holidays are a fun time for family gatherings and home-cooked meals. It would be great to include recipes from these occasions that bring back fond memories. Adding memories, pictures, and even a short history of the ancestor along with the recipes makes this a special book to be treasured. You can also include special Sunday dinners that the family enjoyed on Sundays. Some recipes may have been used for generations, and these give children and grandchildren a chance to share in these delicious memories that have been a part of their family for generations. Heirloom cookbooks are a great way to share your family history with your family.

You can even include favorite recipes of each of your children or grandchildren and start traditions of passing down a new generation of memories. These recipes could consist of favorite birthday foods that include cake recipes. You can organize your cookbook by a family member, holiday, or even favorite family reunion recipes and memories. Don’t forget to add pictures!

You can create these cookbooks simple by gathering the recipes and putting them in a binder, or you can get creative and use a publishing company to print your book. If you have good copies of the recipes, include a scanned copy of the recipe instead of rewriting it, especially if they are handwritten.

A search on Pinterest.com with the term “heirloom cookbook diy” will give you lots of ideas on how to create your heirloom cookbook. There are ideas for templates and lots of pictures of cookbooks that others have created. There are great visuals on how to include photos and histories along with the recipes. Not sure on how you want the cover of your cookbook to look like? There are lots of ideas on Pinterest too.

Making a family cookbook full of your family’s favorite meals is a great gift and a perfect way to pass down your heritage. You can put these recipes into binders or use websites like Sanpfish.com and Blurb.com that have cookbook templates to create your special gift.

Civil War Widow’s Pensions

If your ancestor was born between 1801-1849 in the U.S., there is a good chance that they served in the Civil War. Pensions were granted to widows and those dependent upon the soldier that served in the Union Army. For Union soldiers, the pension system began in 1862, (Confederate veterans were not eligible for pensions from the federal government, and their home states had to take care of them). More than a million men were on the pension rolls by 1893. These pension records include information that may help you extend your family lines and understand what the war was like for these ancestors.

These pension records may include the soldier’s full name, name of widow or dependent, rank, company, regiment, infantry unit, when and where the soldier enlisted, amount of pension, death date, and cause of death. This information may lead to death certificates and burial records. The resident of the dependent can lead to census, church, and land records.

Unfortunately, Fold3.com has only been able to digitize 21% of the pension files. The files are very fragile, and digitizing was halted until the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) felt assured that these records would not incur damage during scanning. Fold3.com has the digitized pension records and is available at the FamilySearch Center. There is a Civil War Pension Index available on FamilySearch and Ancestry. If you locate your ancestor in the index and their file has not been digitized, you can go to the nara.gov website and request a copy of the files referenced in the index.

I did find an uncle (John F. Swap) whose mother applied for a pension and luckily this pension was digitized. I discovered that John was the sole provider for his mother as his father had died when he was young, and she was able to receive a pension. He enlisted in 1863 in Norwich, Connecticut and died the 3rd of February 1865 of starvation, exposure, and diarrhea at the Salisbury, North Carolina prison camp. Information found in his 36-page pension file include handwritten letters from his mother and uncles. There is a handwritten letter from his Sargent who was present when John died.

The information I found in John’s pension file, along with the handwritten letters, has helped me to put “meat on the bones” of my ancestor, John F. Swap. Hopefully, you will find such a treasure too.

The “Forgotten War”

The War of 1812, also known as the Second Revolutionary War, produced many records that are valuable to genealogists. It is also known as the “Forgotten War” because it is not studied much at school and is all but unknown. Unfortunately, the War of 1812 pension records has been at the bottom of the stack to be digitized. These pension records have 7.2 million pages contained in 180,000 files (www.preservethepensions.org)

In 2008, the National Archives approached the FGS (Federation of Genealogical Societies) to save these vital records. These frequently requested pension records are not microfilmed and are in bad shape because they are deteriorating from age. The FGS bided out the digitizing process, and Fold3.com won the bid. The FGS also needed $3 million to pay for this project, and more than 4,000 individuals and 115 genealogical societies contributed the amount required to do this preservation. They have digitized A – P of surnames in this project so far. They are free on Fold3.com and will remain that way indefinitely!

If you have an ancestor born between 1752 – 1799, they may have served in the War of 1812. Statistics show that there were 60,000 members of the U.S. Army and 475,000 state militias or volunteers that served. Your ancestor may not have been in the war but wrote out an affidavit to help support a claim. (www.familysearch.org/blog/en/war-1812-pension-files/)

To find these records, you need to go to fold3.com – browse military records by war- War of 1812- War of 1812 Pension Files – browse- choose state ancestor lived in – choose the letter of the last name. I went to New Hampshire – Johnson – Jeremiah (my 2nd Great Grandfather). There are 64 pages of documents in his file. You can save these records to your tree at ancestry.com. I found a marriage certificate, my 2nd Grandmother’s signature, a document written by Jeremiah’s sister about his first wife’s death, a description of Jeremiah (6ft tall, black hair, black eyes, dark complexion). There were letters written by family members verifying that he existed and served in the war. To me, this was a treasure trove.

Check out the War of 1812 pension records and see if treasures are waiting for you there! I had no idea that Jeremiah had served in the War of 1812 and he only did so for a few months. I am so glad I checked out these records. Don’t forget the “Forgotten War!”