A Matter of Temporary Insanity

There are times when you just have to sit and shake you head.  There are no words to describe the situation fully.   Today hosted one of those events for me.
I have been searching for one of my ancestral family for years without success.  I’ve looked at my research notes repeatedly hoping that they would offer [...]

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Slow Burn to War

While researching further information on my ancestors who served as soldiers in the Revolutionary War, I realized that over the years, my memory regarding the sequence of events leading up to and during the war was faulty.
Over time the nuggets of information and stories we find about our ancestors tend to create divergent parallel [...]

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Those Wacky Styles

Looking through some old photos of my wife and myself today, I laughed out loud a few times.
Wearing striped bell bottoms or Levi’s that always look too short seemed to be the order of the day.   Why did I wear my Levi’s so short?  Every photo showed three inches of socks showing between the bottom [...]

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Mad Dogs, Genealogists and Data Storage

Whenever I run into topics and words that were common in the mid-1800’s but are all but meaningless today, I consult my copy of Austin’s Indispensable Handbook and General Educator.  We love this old book.  It was written by George L. Austin, M.D., who in 707 pages covered every topic the young ladies and wives [...]

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Full Circle or Infinite Loop?

After a full day of family history research finding data that supports my own records, I started wondering why it was so difficult to find information on my ancestors in the first place.  The information was available on numerous and various sites.  “Ain’t the Internet great?”, I thought.
And then I started noticing identical sourcing comments, [...]

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The Kirke’s (Churches) of Bornholm Island – Denmark

Technorati Tags: Patronymics,Research Tips,Bornholm,Danish Census

One branch of my ancestry lived on Bornholm Island in the Baltic Sea for hundreds of years.   The island is located east of Denmark, north of Poland and South of Sweden, covers 227 square miles and the language is a dialect of Danish called “bornhlmsk”.
Because of the small land size and [...]

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Embedded History

Standing in line with other fourth graders, I dropped my lunch ticket and bent over to pick it up from the floor.   The fellow behind me had two newly sharpened pencils sticking out of his pocket and turned to talk to some one just as my head went down.   I’ve had a one-eighth inch piece [...]

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If Wishes Were…..

We all have certain presents we’d like to receive for Christmas but know that they’ll probably never actually appear.
In 1986 I made slight detour coming home from business meetings in northern California and stopped in Angel’s Camp, California to meet a long lost cousin.   When I arrived, I found him teaching tennis to some youth [...]

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No Passport. No Reservations.

I stopped living on a jet nine years ago and don’t miss the constant hassle of airports, hotels and lost hours from home and family.   The only trips I really enjoyed were those that involved family history research or visiting Disney.   Why Disney didn’t build a large complex in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, I’ll never know, [...]

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Lost In Google Books

I’ve delved into Google Books since the first day they appeared on the web.   Knowing that the collection grows continually, I set aside time every month to cruise the byways of the site looking for new attractions and new rare book shops.  Window shopping never fails to result in a ’sale’ during these excursions.   I [...]

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