Saturday Night Fun Genealogy Calendar

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Make a Calendar!
from Genea-Musings by Randy Seaver
Hi SNGF fans - it's Saturday Night, time for some major Genealogy Fun!!!

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to:

1) Open your genealogy software or family tree program of choice and make yourself the highlighted person.

2) Find out how to create a Calendar to show birthdays and/or anniversaries of yourself and all of your ancestors (or all relatives, or all persons - your choice!). The "Help" button is your friend here!!! It can be done in all of the current software programs.



3) Create your calendar. Pretty it up if you want. Save it. Can you show us a page from your calendar - say January 2010? This is from Ancestral Quest version 12


4) Which of your ancestors (or relatives, or descendants - your choice!), if any, were born on 30 January?

January 30
20th birthday for Kevin Campbell
176th birthday for Sara Hamer
80th Anniversary for Henry and Bertha Bengston

This is the landscape view page 1, it has more entries on page two. My mom and dads anniversary on January 14 ended up at the bottom of the page. Portrait view got all on one page but only used initials for given names.

Color code
Blue male birthday
Pink female birthday
Green anniversary

52 Weeks to Better Genealogy Challenge 4

We are supposed to go to the library and check out how to do an inter-library loan of a genealogy book in a distant library.

As a library volunteer I have used inter-library loans quite a lot, so it is as easy as filling out a form, and selecting the material you are interested in. Our library does not let genealogy books out of the library, so I have been pleasantly surprised that other libraries do loan out genealogy books. Most of the items I had used inter-library loans for was newspapers. Most newspapers are on microfilm somewhere, and you can get a copy of the newspaper from your hometown by inter-library loan right now, you do not have to wait for it to come on the internet, and the cost is right, free.

Wordless Wednesday Golden Gate

One more picture from my great Aunt Latisha Vanderpool's trip through Yellowstone Park July 21-28, 1915

Golden Gate (Notice the three coaches)

Non Genealogy post US Figure Skating

From January 14, 2010 Spokane hosted the US Figure Skating Championships and the winners would go to Vancouver to represent the USA in the Olympics. This picture is the US Olympic Team. While I had to work many days, I did get to the arena each evening and both Saturdays and Sundays.



The last day the 24th they had the winners from the novice, junior and seniors give a program, and you can see some of them on NBC tonight. The second picture was what they call the finaly. They load up those tables with souvenirs bunches of frizbie rings and some other towels or t-shirts, they ask the Olympians to sign the souvenir and throw it into the stands. Each of those tables came out heaping with these souvenirs, and it took them about 10 minutes to throw them all out to the crowd.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Your Interests?

It's Saturday Night - time for more Genealogy Fun!!

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to:

* Tell us about your "other" hobbies or interests outside of genealogy and family history research, writing, speaking, etc.

Wow: is there other life away from genealogy?? I am a do it your self-er, love watching all the "how to" shows on PBS and DIY. When it warms up I like gardening and eating the produce from the garden.

Wordless Wednesday Bitter Root Mountains

One more picture from my great Aunt Latisha Vanderpool's trip through Yellowstone Park July 21-28, 1915

Saturday Night Fun Remember When

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Remember When?
from Genea-Musings by Randy Seaver
Hey there, it's Saturday Night, time for more Genealogy Fun!!

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission Impossible music!), is:

1) Remember when you were 12 years old? On a summer day out of school? What memory do you have of fun activities?

Yes I remember when I was 12 years old, the 1960s had just started, John Kennedy was running for President, and I spent my summers either at home during the week days or at the lake on the weekends. See the post I did on How I spend my Summer Vacation for the Carnival of Genealogy.

DNA Cartoon

I copied this cartoon from the My Comics Page. As an accountant I thought it was very funny. Maybe they want to audit his family?

Follow Friday Trace your Dutch Roots

This is an interesting blog on hints for tracing your Dutch Roots. Henk Van Kampen does a good job in keeping the posts interesting.
My great grandmother was Dona Vanderpool and so I have been tracing Vanderpools for a long time, but have yet to cross the "pond" to Holland.

Blogging will be kind of sparse for the next ten days as I have tickets to the US Figure Skating Championships that is here in Spokane and will be on NBC

Wordless Wednesday Geyser

One more picture from my great Aunt Latisha Vanderpool's trip through Yellowstone Park July 21-28, 1915

This picture does not have a label, so I do not know which geyser it is.

Tombstone Tuesday Symbols

This is a picture of the tombstone for my Uncle Leigh Hansen and his wife Madelyn (Luckey) Hansen from the cemetery at Priest River, Idaho.
The Graveyard Rabbit Journal was interested in symbols on tombstones, so here is a couple. My uncle was a plumber and my aunt was a rural mail carrier.

52 Weeks To Better Genealogy - Challenge 2

Go to your local public library branch again. Examine the local history, archives and/or special collections section. Ask a librarian if you don’t know if your library has special collections or where they are located. Be sure to check the reference section, too, as many of the newer and more valuable books are held in that area. If you have a genealogy blog, write about what you find in your library’s local history and special collections.

I did not participate last week in the go to the library and search out books you might need for your research, because I have volunteered at the library since 1993 and have pretty much used all the books and microfilms they have.

This week I am supposed to go check out any Special Collections at the library, and our library has a wonderful special collection in the climate controlled Northwest Room. This collection started early in the 1900s when the librarian of that time George W. Fuller started collecting any books or manuscripts he could find on the northwest. The collection consists of books, maps, directories, periodicals, and archival materials on the history, exploration and settlement of the northwest. Including Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana and British Columbia in Canada.
Gladys Smith Puckett the librarian from 1937 to 1960 also collected more northwest materials. They also have a picture of the first building to occupy that piece of land in the downtown, a passenger depot for the electric railroad to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.
The Northwest room is in the downtown Spokane Library and due to budget cuts is not open all the hours that the downtown library is open, so check the open times before coming to the library. They do not allow coats or backpacks in the Northwest Room, and pencils only.

I have used that collection quite a bit and it is a great collection of materials that pertain to the northwest. They also have a subject index for the newspaper from 1880 to 1920 done by the WPA during the depression. None of the materials there can be checked out and quite a few are so old they will not let you make copies and degrade the materials more.

Happy 101 Award

Thanks Miriam for the Happy 101 Award!


I am supposed to list ten people to give this award to, but it looks like nearly all of those I really would like to give this award to have already received it and some several times, so I will just list the 10 things that make me happy.


1. Doing Research

2. A quiet Archives or library

3. A working Microfilm reader or copy machine

4. Gardening

5. Canning the produce from the garden

6. Eating that produce on a cold winter day

7. Going to "the lake" in the summer

8. Floating on an inner tube at the lake

9. Friends at the genealogy society

10. Lemon fudge

Saturday Night Fun "Super Powers"

Dean Richardson posted What’s Your Genealogical Superpower? on his Genlighten Blog - Genealogy Documented blog last week, along with a nifty picture of a young lady with a big S on her shirt flying (is that Dean's wife?). I thought Dean's question was a great one for SNGF - so your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to...

1) Answer the question: Do you have a genealogical “superpower”? (i.e., a unique research ability or technique that helps you track down records or assemble conclusions that others can’t?) If so, what is it?

2) Tell us about it in a blog post, a comment to Dean's post,.

1) I guess my super power is experience. I have read the articles on can you be an expert without being certified on Genealogy Star, and while he makes a lot of good points, I think I am an expert on research in the Spokane area. I have researched in almost all the court records in the Spokane Courthouse, helped to index some of those records, made numerous copies and so I know what is available there and what is not available. I have researched in the library in the genealogy section, old newspapers, and the Northwest Room. I have even indexed some of the records in the genealogy section. So when others need help in the library or courthouse I get the queries, and experience helps me find an answer, and maybe some extra information not asked for, but easy to find if you have searched the records before. There was a company that used to say give the customer more than he pays for and they will come back. I try to do that also.

Follow Friday Washington Secretary of State Blog

While this blog is not a real genealogy blog, our Secretary of State is the head of the Washington State Library and the Washington State Archives, so this blog does have some articles on the library and the archives. Sam Reed also tells about elections, and the legislature. They also show pictures from around the state of Washington.

Volunteering at the Library for COG #88

In 1993 I was asked by Carolyn Weidner the library volunteer coordinator to volunteer as a “gene helper” at the library. The library was being rebuilt and the temporary library was in the old “Penny's” building kitty corner across the street from the old library building. The old library building was actually the old “Sears store” which had been donated to the city in 1962. In the temporary quarters they put the genealogy section right inside the east door of building and since Spokane gets rather cold in the winter a lot of “homeless people” would come into the warm library and warm up and sleep. The shift I was on was from 6 to 9 pm on the second Thursday of the month and so we had a lot of “homeless people” come in then, so that is why Carolyn was looking for as many men volunteers for the evening shifts.

January of 1994 the new library opened and the genealogy section is on the third floor. I continued on the second Thursday as a “gene helper”. We helped anyone that came to the library to find books or microfilm and to just generally get them going in their research. A lot of nights were not very busy so I worked on my own genealogy research. I was also online on Prodigy then and answered some queries for obit lookups and other easy to do research. Late in 1997 Ray Fisher the EWGS researcher announced he was retiring from the research, and I asked if I could replace Ray and do the research for EWGS. I was told no one could replace Ray, but I could try the job for a year on probation and if I did a good job I could continue.
This is a picture of the opening when they were moving books hand to hand across the street from the temporary library to the new library building. The lady in pink is our present EWGS President Donna Phillips and the lady to her left is Melode Hall.

Ray was very nice in showing me around the library and also the courthouse so I could do lookups there also. While most of the queries were routine I did get some I did not have a clue on how to find the answer. One was to find some information on covered bridges in our area, I did not even know we had any covered bridges in our area, but the librarian in the Northwest Room knew all about it and handled that query. Another was to copy of page 134 from Hartford?? It was for page 134 in the Hartford records of the Barbour Collection we had on microfilm in the library.

In 2002 a new city was formed in our county called Spokane Valley, while I live in the city of Spokane it really did not impact me much, but one day at the library I got a note from our County Auditor. With the forming of the new city the county was losing about a third of their income. She was looking for a volunteer to do lookups for genealogists in the records at the courthouse, so since I was already familiar with those records I went and said I would volunteer to do those lookups. I spent from an hour or two a week doing those lookups. It was rather easy to stop at the courthouse early in the morning and do the lookups, get the copies and then head for the library that opened at 10 am to do research at the library. I still do both volunteer jobs, but seldom stop at the courthouse anymore because most of the records from our courthouse are online at the Washington State Digital Archives.

NOTE The present library building is the third building to occupy that spot, the first was the passenger depot for the Electric Railroad that ran from Spokane to Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. The second was the Sears building.

Wordless Wednesday Cupids Cave

One more picture from my great Aunt Latisha Vanderpool's trip through Yellowstone Park July 21-28, 1915

Cupids Cave

Best Genealogy Moment Saturday Night Fun

Hey, it's Saturday Night - time for some Genealogy Fun!! I know - you had a great time on New Year's Eve, and are just recovering from the holidays, so we'll keep this one pretty easy.

Here is your assignment, if you choose to accept it (frankly, I've noticed that SNGF participation has dropped off in the last month - why? Too much eggnog? Too much work? What?):

1) "What was your best Genealogy Moment during 2009?" This could be a research find, a fabulous trip, a found family treasure, etc. Your choice!

Well I guess my best research find was finally breaking the brick wall back to George Soule of the Mayflower. My grandmother was Anna Dillingham and she was a descendant of Edward Dillingham who came to Cape Cod in 1632. The Dillinghams were Quakers and not very popular with the Puritans of Massachusetts. I have the Book The Dillingham's of New England and while it does a good job of chronicling the Dillinghams from New England it seldom has anything about any of the ladies that married into the Dillingham family. One such lady was Elizabeth Chandler and she married Melatiah Dillingham. They named one child Enos Chandler Dillingham, and the Dillingham information said she was the Daughter of Enos Chandler. So I had done some searching for Enos Chandler and he was a Lt. in the Revolution according to the DAR and had married Elizabeth Soule. Elizabeth Soule was a descendent of George Soule of the Mayflower. The Soule information had the child of Elizabeth Soule and Enos Chandler as "Betsy Chandler" and the dates for her birth did not match the dates for Elizabeth Chandler birth from the Dillingham book, so was this the same Elizabeth Chandler? I know Betsy is used as a nickname for Elizabeth, but I was not able to get the dates to match. I knew a couple of things, one a lot of dates were wrong in the Dillingham Book, so I expected that it was the problem. Second I knew the Soule Kindred of America was working on a 6 generation book. Elizabeth Chandler was listed in the 5th generation book, but no husband. This fall I found the Pink book by the Mayflower Society George Soule of the Mayflower and his Descendants in the Fifth and SIXTH Generations. WOW it has Betty/Elizabeth marrying Meltiah Dillingham on page 14 and confirmed that the Soule dates were correct and that the Dillingham dates were in error. So now I know for sure I am a descendant of George Soule and this information added John Alden also. And to find an ancestor that was in the Revolution was great also. Since the Dillinghams were Quakers I did not figure I would find a Revolutionary War soldier.

Follow Friday Washington State Library blog

As a pretty new genealogy blogger I have been slowly working my way into the daily blogging schedule posted on geneabloggers. This is my first Follow Friday post. The blog I am following is the Washington State Library blog and I hope this years budget cuts do not mortally wound the library. See their post here on support for your local library. This pertains to every local library in the world.

Here is my answers for a few of the steps.

Step 2 Get a Library Card and Step 5 Volunteer at the Library
In 1993 I started volunteering at the library as a gene-helper (second Thursday each month), we were required to get a library card to volunteer. In 1998 I switched from being a gene-helper to doing research for others for the Eastern Washington Genealogical Society, and I continue that to today.

Step 7 Join the Library Board of Trustees
When I started doing research for others I really liked coming on Monday nights because the library was nearly deserted and so I could do a lot of research with few distractions, and not have to wait at the microfilm readers for others. A few years after I started the library budget was cut about 10% and so the library cut hours and closed on Mondays. I went to the Library board meeting to protest closing Mondays and it was clear the board did not want to close the library on Mondays or shorten the hours, but economics won out. After that I tried to go to all the library board meetings. When the last opening on the board was announced I put in an application for that seat, but was not selected by the mayor. I still am a regular at the board meetings, and usually the only member of the public.