Facts in Fiction
Getting the feel for when and where your ancestors lived can give you a better understanding of how they lived. Unfortunately, sometimes histories that offer information on a locale can be pretty dry. Why not put some fun into it and let someone else do the research for you?
Got your own version of family history that’s just begging to come out? Maybe you need a wiki.
A wiki is a website where anyone can participate by adding new information or changing existing information—anytime and instantly. Start looking and you’ll discover wikis exist on almost every subject. Even family history.
I remember a story about a woman who always cut the end off the roast. Asked why, she said it was because her mother did. Someone asked her mother, and the mother said the same thing—because her mother did. Grandmother, tracked down and asked the same question, said, “Because I never had a pan big enough.”
Tradition lives on in our kitchens, at least through some of the foods we eat.
In the world of genetic genealogy, I descend from Helena, a “daughter” of ancestral Eve. My father descends from Jasmine. We know this because we tested our mitochondrial DNA. The results identified us as descendants of certain “clan mothers,” but more importantly, the results provided us with the potential for finding other people who descend from the same line of women.
While it’s true that records of private attorneys can contain valuable information about an ancestor, particularly when that ancestor was the attorney’s client, two problems arise that tend to render these records unlikely and inaccessible sources.
Better with words than people? Then the Oxford English Dictionary wants you. The 250-year-old dictionary, already brimming with more than 600,000 terms, wants to make sure they have the pedigree straight on 40 of those, just to be sure everyone is in agreement as to exactly where those words came from.
Everybody loves a genealogy challenge, but when Nampa, Idaho city employees started spending the greater part of their days locating gravesites for call-in family historians, city officials knew something had to be done.
It’s happened to all of us. We approach the computer on a Monday morning, ready to get down to business, start by checking our e-mail, only to find out the whole system is hung up. The cause? A well-meaning relative sharing his or her weekend’s snapshots, each one formatted to eat every last ounce of space in our inbox.
When Kathie Bennett and Norma Jeane Ferguson set out to raise money for the Fitzgibbon Cancer Center in Marshall, Missouri, their simple idea of creating a custom dollhouse for auction soon gained a life—and a history—all its own.
As the pair set up home in miniature, it suddenly dawned on them—why stop at decorations?
To give is to receive. At least that’s how it worked for Janice Lane.
When Janice first heard about Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness (RAOGK) in 1999, she knew she would become a volunteer. What she didn’t know was that, eventually, helping others would help her, too.
