Wordless Wednesday Minerva Terrace

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

Minerva Terrace

Saturday Night Fun 1930 Census

Hey genea-fanatics - it's Saturday Night, time for more Genealogy Fun!!

What can be more fun than finding records online for FREE? Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to:

1) Go to www.Footnote.com. Pick one of your ancestral family members that was in the 1930 US Census and search for that person. The 1930 US Census is FREE through the end of April on Footnote.com. Are you a Footnote member already? Fine. If you are not, you will need to register to access the 1930 census, but they will not ask you for a credit card.

2) When you find the census image with your ancestral family member, figure out how to see the source citation (Hint: click the "About image" link): figure out how to Download the Image; figure out how to Print the image.

Well since I got home late from a concert and will not be near a computer much tomorrow, I will describe how I found all my ancestors in the 1930 census before Ancestry indexed the 1930 census.
About six months before the 1930 census was released just over eight years ago I found a website that listed the boundaries of the enumeration districts for most cities in the USA. I downloaded the list and with a map of Spokane started drawing lines on the map and soon I had all the enumeration districts mapped out for Spokane. The day the census films arrived in our library I was there with my map. I found the enumeration district for the address my mom and her parents were living, pulled out the film and on the first block they listed in that enumeration district was my mom and her parents. They used a separate sheet for each block and went around the block collecting the information, so when I found my grandparents I just put a dime in the machine and out came a copy of that census page.
I also had mapped the voting precincts for 1927, the last year the voting precincts appeared in the city directories. Why? because the 1900, 1910 and 1920 census used the voting precincts for their enumeration districts, but I guess since they were not listed in the 1930 city directory they made their own enumeration districts.
For my dad's family I knew they lived on a farm near Blanchard, Idaho and so they were pretty easy to find and I got lucky as my dad was listed there also. He was still alive when it came out so I asked him where he was and he was working for a logging camp somewhere in North Idaho, so finding him listed with his parents was a bonus.
I then went looking for my aunts and uncle. My uncle Ralph was living in Douglas County and I found him quickly, but since the census taker spelled his last name as Hensen, he is listed that way in the indexes for 1930. It should have been Hansen.
My aunt had married a man named Fred Woltermann and they were living north of Columbus Montana in 1930. In that area they used school districts for their enumeration districts, so I asked my dad what school district Columbus was in (he went to school In Columbus from grade one through the second year of high school). Did not find the Woltermanns in that district so I wandered around the microfilm a little and came upon a Woltermann School District. It listed about 20 people and about 12 or 13 were Woltermanns including Fred and Francis (Hansen) Woltermann. So now I had copies of all four grandparents and 5 of the children of those grandparents. Weeks later when Ancestry finally got the indexes for our area done I checked them and found the same places for all I had found earlier.

Festival of Postcards Great Falls, Montana

These postcards are from my dad's postcard collection






Nothing on the back of this first postcard.















This is the back if the second postcard. Anton was my grandfather Anton Mikkel Hansen, and the postcard was sent June 29, 1914 to Mrs. A.M. Hansen my grandmother, actually Anna M. Hansen.

Wordless Wednesday Mammoth Hot Springs

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

Mammoth Hot Springs
I don't know any of the people in the picture

52 Weeks to a Better Genealogy Letters

After reading several of the other blogs and their letters, it looks like most of them actually have an idea on how to write a letter to ask a question or find information.
Why is letter writing important to me? I am one of many volunteers that get to answer queries from other genealogists and while most come by E-Mail, I still get many letters.
When I took a beginning genealogy course years ago, one session was on writing queries. The instructor passed out Everton Genealogical Helpers and they had page after page of queries that people paid Evertons to publish. Since there were hundreds of queries you could see which ones were good queries and those that probably never got an answer. You know the type "I am looking for the parents of Thomas Kelly born 1825 in Kentucky".
Today you can check any Message Board or Mail List on RootsWeb and get the same education. Which queries get an answer? Which never get an answer?
Try to help out the volunteers, let them know what you have already found so they do not have to go through the same search you have already done. A few days ago I got a query asking to find the birth dates for five children of a couple I had not researched before. While we have quite a few birth records, where do I start? 1890s, 1920s, 1940s, etc. I found two birth dates, and he said that confirmed those two dates, but nothing on the other three.
If you know nothing about the people your query is on let the volunteer know that also.
Good queries bring good answers, so check out how to write a good query.

Saturday Night Fun FamilyTime Line

Hey genea-friends, it's Saturday Night - time for more Genealogy Fun!!

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

1) Open up your genealogy family tree software (you do have family tree software, right?) and:

2) Create a timeline for one or more of your ancestral families. The design is yours to create - make it as intricate or beautiful as you wish. timeline" - you should be able to find detailed instructions.



Well the genealogy software I use most of the time is Ancestor Quest version 2, and I knew it does not have a time line chart, but that is not why I keep using Ancestor Quest 2. I recently got Ancestor Quest version 12 and while it has a lot more bells and whistles it does not have a time line either. This time line is from Family Tree Journal version 10.1 and that version of FTJ is about 15 years old and a DOS program, so that is why no nice graphics like Randy's Roots Magic 4 program. I talked to Bruce about another feature of FTJ that I have been looking for for 15 years, the ability to print multiple pictures in the notes. His Roots Magic works just like my Ancestor Quest it prints one picture in the notes and the rest of the pictures end up in a scrapbook at the back. An example of this from Family Tree Journal was my uncle, he wrote an autobiography of his life for his kids, and when I entered it into FTJ, I had his graduation picture from high school print right after him telling about high school, his first marriage picture after that in the biography, his second marriage picture after second marriage in biography, etc.

You Can Not Do That In the Library

Last night I went to the fundraiser for the Spokane Public Library Foundation at the library called "You Can Not Do That In The Library". They had a band "Too Slim and the Taildraggers" that played very loud music. The Friends of the Library had a silent auction of used books, and they served pizza from a local pizza parlor and beer and pop. When was the last time you got to party in the library among the book shelves. Actually this is the fourth one held at our library and each has been well attended.
Why is this important to genealogists? Eastern Washington Genealogical Society and the library have been partners for many years, all the materials EWGS has collected over the years are housed at that library (the gene materials are on the third floor and the party was on the second floor). EWGS also provides gene helpers for people coming to Spokane that need help in the gene section.
The Friends of the Library had a silent auction of used books and if you have read my earlier posts on the EWGS Presidents on the EWGS Blog you will see EWGS played a large role in the founding of the Friends of the Library group.
EWGS, The Friends of the Library and the Spokane Public Library Foundation are all helping the Spokane Public Library, and in these budget cutting times the library has been able to open on Mondays this year. In 2005 they had a big budget cut and closed on Mondays, but with help from these three groups and some grants and partnerships with local job hunting groups they are now open one more day a week. We as genealogist need to help support our libraries as not all the information for our ancestors is on the internet, and if the library is closed that information is locked away from us.

Saturday Night Fun Which Ancestor?

Hey, it's Saturday Night, time for more Genealogy Fun!!!

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

1) Tell us: Which ancestor or relative do you readily identify with? Which one do you admire? Which one are you most like, or wish that you were most like? Which one would you really like to sit down and have a heart-to-heart conversation with?



This is my uncle Leigh E. Hansen at about age 5. The reason I like this photo is it looks like a picture of me at age 5. I never had a WWI uniform like he did, but we resemble each other in all the pictures we have of approximately the same age. He was a farmer till WWII when he became an aircraft mechanic and was sent to Panama to keep the bombers running that patrolled the Panama Canal, and spent the whole war there. After the war he went back to farming till his parents died and then he started working for a plumber part time and eventually went out on his own. He married late in life and never had any children, and lived to age 94. I posted a picture of his gravestone with the pipe and pipe wrench on it. His wife was a rural mail carrier so the mail box is for her.

Wordless Wednesday Liberty Cap

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

Liberty Cap

Ancestor Approved Award

I was rather surprised that Greta gave me this award. I have not been blogging much lately since the long hours of work have kept me away from my blog. I do like to read all the other blogs in my Google reader each day.
Those who receive this award are supposed to list 10 things we have learned about our ancestors that have surprised, humbled or enlightened us and then pass the award on to 10 other genealogy bloggers who we feel are doing their ancestors proud.

1. I was really surprised I had so many ancestors from New England

2. Surprised that an ancestor owned Cape Cod

3. Surprised to find several ministers in the family since our family have not been very religious.

4. Surprised with so many ancestors that came to this country early, that I have not found an ancestor that was a Civil War veteran.

5. I have always been enlightened by those that know so much more than I do about researching ancestors.

6. Also enlightened by those that are so much more technology savoy than I am

7. Humbled by those that have gone ahead and helped or gathered data for all of us to use today.

8. Humbled by those that think I know everything about researching.

9. Humbled by those that left me so many records of my family.

10. Surprised by so many followers here.

Now it looks like most of the blogs I read have already gotten this award, so I will just pick a few

Diane at Canada Genealogy or Jane's Your Aunt

Dr. Bill at Dr. Bill Tells Ancestor Stories

Jenna at Desperately Seeking Surnames

Evelyn at A Canadian Family

Saturday Night Fun Revolutionary War Ancestor

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (come on, this isn't Mission Impossible), is to:

1) Find an ancestral line that stretches back to the time of the US Revolutionary War (1775-1783), about 230 years. Define your person-to-person connection (the person actually met the next person on the list) back to a historical figure from that time.

1. I knew my grandfather Charles Rupert Kelly (was named after him also)

2. Charles Kelly knew his father Robert Forsyth Kelly

3. Robert Kelly Knew his parents Thomas D. Kelly and Margaret Josephine Forsyth.

4. Margaret Forsyth knew her parents Mary Williams and Robert J. Forsyth (Robert was a War of 1812 veteran that served under William Henry Harrison a future President)

5. Mary Wiliams knew her dad Daniel Williams and mom Mary Jackson. (Mary was supposed to be a cousin of Andrew Jackson, but I have not proved that yet). Daniel Williams was a Captain in General Greens Southern Army in The Revolution, he also migrated to Kentucky with Daniel Boone after the war.

Thursday Treasures 1913 Easter Postcard

This is one of four Easter postcards in my dad's collection of postcards, and the only one with much writing on the back.

It says To Claude
from
Minnie.
I am going
to school.

The postmark says Bisbee, Ariz and it was canceled March 19, 1913.

I don't know who Minnie is, so maybe one of my dad's classmates from school.

On the front it says Copyright 1907 by Fred C. Kounsbury