Ancestry Magazine

The Web is full of answers—as long as you know which ones to trust.
There may still be a few diehards who distrust any information obtained online, but for most of us, online databases have become a major source for indexes and images associated with family history. But can you trust the information you find in cyberspace?
The Web carries whatever a user posts without regard to quality or value.

In the 1970s, it was the open classroom. The 1980s saw no pass, no play. In the 1990s, music and art programs were forfeited for the sake of money. And today, education reform is getting hammered by school vouchers, charter schools, and “No Child Left Behind.”
So what would happen if we took education back to where it all started?

It’s April 1927, and Arie, who would one day become my grandmother, is feeling familiar labor pains, so my future granddad takes the wagon and drives very fast to get the midwife. He brings her back to their home in Morgan County, Alabama, where my mother is born. She—my mother—is very small. They say that if she had died they could have buried her in a shoe box. She’s not healthy.

Never assume a mundane project won’t turn up some wonderfully juicy details.
I thought I was well prepared for anything I might find in my family’s past.

You load sixteen tons, and what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
Saint Peter, don’t you call me, ‘cause I can’t go;
I owe my soul to the company store…
From “16 Tons”
by Merle Travis
The work was dangerous. The hours long. And the slim portion of the paycheck that made its way home at the end of the month? It never seemed enough.
Mining.

The good news about this photo is that there is a note in the upper left corner that identifies who is in it.
My grandfather
M. Noonan
The bad news is that we don’t know which M. Noonan is the right one.
The owner of the photo has a list of four possible M. Noonans:
1. Maurice Noonan
b. 1831, d. 1885
2. Michael Noonan
b. 1831, d. ~1900
3. Maurice Noonan
b. 1903, d. 2004
4. Michael Noonan
b.

Lewis Hine dedicated his life to stopping child labor from behind a camera. Today, Joe Manning is dedicating his retirement to finding the children in front of Hine’s lens.
To the best of his knowledge, Joe Manning has no blood ties to anyone featured in the 50,000 child labor photos taken by Lewis Hine a century ago. But that doesn’t keep them from feeling like family.

Every year, Granny would pull this handwritten mustard pickle recipe out on a morning when the foothills of the Canadian Rockies outside her door were ablaze with autumn color. She’d be in a hurry—the hard killing frost was always so unpredictable. She had to get to her garden.

My husband and I took our first family history trip years ago in a small 15 ½ foot trailer. With four small children, we crossed several states to attend a huge family reunion. Hundreds of relatives gathered to celebrate reconnecting our California roots with their Southern branches after a 110-year separation. Tears flowed as relatives embraced cousins thought for decades to be lost.

You may not realize it, but two ancient cultural forces that have been at odds with each other for centuries—work and play—are finally starting to bury the proverbial hatchet, at least in the Western world.
Consider the following:
I was hiking with my friend, a doctor. We were an hour from the city, surrounded by trees, bugs, and sunshine. It was a holiday weekend, and we were there to relax.