Ancestry Magazine

No wonder Aunt Snake didn’t know what to call her big sister.
Our grandfather “Pappy” was notorious for labeling family members with a nickname. Some were cute and funny and some, well, were neither.
Sometime before 1986, my cousin David (a.k.a. Goliath) and I had the opportunity to sit down with Pappy and chat about these names and some other things. This was when I first heard of Squidge.

I have been planting flower bulbs this week. All winter the daffodils and tulips will lie under the ground, and it will seem like nothing is happening. But next spring, when I need flowers the very most, some will reward me with beautiful blossoms. Not all will bloom the first year. It may take two or three years for some to produce blossoms.

There is an old saying in real estate—the three most important things about a home are location, location, location. The same holds true in genealogy. Over the years, I have learned the value of networking with other genealogists who share my location, location, location interests. For example, my maiden name is Munk, and I have a number of Munk ancestors on the island of Bornholm in Denmark.

My near death experience began as whimsy.
Six feet under Fillmore County soil, my Minnesota territorial relatives were resting in peace. I dutifully paid respects to them each Memorial Day and other days in between. But I longed for a larger picture, about 826 square miles to be exact—I envisioned myself a tombstone tourist visiting every Fillmore County cemetery.

Maria, a favorite hospice patient of mine, died recently at age ninety-six. I would visit her weekly in the brown-shingled home she shared with her son and daughter.
From her bed in what was once the dining room, Maria could look past a table filled with plants and childhood pictures of her four sons and three daughters to her backyard.

My mother and I would buy groceries every week at Spot Cash Grocery. As Mom shopped, I would peek around the meat counter and watch the butcher work. He had the largest hands and feet I had ever seen, and he spoke with a heavy accent. I was a little afraid of this stern-looking, powerful man but not enough to keep from watching.

I sat down one afternoon poring over my list of standard, generic questions, trying to determine why they didn’t seem to be accomplishing my present research goal of finding out more about the Loveday family.

When I announced to my employer eight years ago that I was going to leave his company and go to work for Ancestry, he asked me, “How fun is it going to be working on books about dead people?” At the time, I didn’t have a good answer, and I admit that it was my biggest concern about taking the job. But now, looking back at the past eight years, I’ve discovered the answer.

My female relatives can be as slippery as secret agents. They pop up on my radar, only to blip out again. They use nicknames, aliases, and other sorts of identity tricks. With chameleon-like proclivities, the women in my searches have pushed me to the limits of my skills and over the edge of frustration. Consider the case of my father’s cousin about whom my generation knew virtually nothing.

In 1990, Steven Covey formulated the ground-breaking list of “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.” They are: 1) be proactive, 2) begin with the end in mind, 3) put first things first, 4) think win-win, 5) seek first to understand, then to be understood, 6) synergize, and 7) sharpen the saw. Let’s see how these habits apply to us as genealogists.
1. Be proactive.