I've not been watching because I just assumed it was geared towards entertainment & not toward real genealogy.

I first got interested in tracing my family genealogy after reading 'Roots' & then watching the TV series several decades ago.

I published an 800+ page book on my Mom's genealogy in 1998. I spent about 12 years on the research & writing. The experience took us all over the country visiting town halls, cemeteries, museums, universities (Rutgers University especially), ancestral homes, libraries, historical societies, & historians. The internet was just starting to be useful during the last six months of my researching. At that time, many New England communities were getting their vital records online. The Family Tree Maker community was small enough to be a great opportunity to meet others researching similar ancestral lines.

For the past 10+ years, I've working on Dad's genealogy. It's much tougher sledding than Mom's. Russia didn't start releasing records until after the fall of the USSR. It took me awhile to locate & make connections with several professors throughout Russia who I felt comfortable enough with to negotiate contract labor. I've been incredibly pleased with the results. One professor and his wife, from Saratov University, have been priceless in their assistance & support. And, thankfully, my family emigrated out of Germany to Russia into a Crown colony. Being a Crown colony meant that detailed records were maintained by the tzars over the centuries...both civil & church. The Russian Consulate's office in D.C. has also been extremely supportive in helping me get translations from the old Russian into modern language. Amazingly, the Russian military has even coughed up pictures. With the help of the German-Russian Historical Society, I've almost completed my goal for lineage. I've got a bit more writing to complete, send the book out for second editing, & eventual publishing. I've been trying to get it completed for the past 3-4 years & just haven't devoted the time/energy required due to illness. Maybe, 2010-1012 will be the time I can wrap up, 'Thunder on the Steppes' and call it a day.

Genealogy is a fascinating hobby, to me. I've learned more about my family than I ever imagined possible. I've also learned to be accepting of decisions my family members made that seemed so terribly wrong and non-understandable.

For anybody starting a genealogical journey, I'd say not to expect to ever truly finish. That was one of my hardest decisions in editing my Mom's book, 'Family Ties'. At some point, you have to cut-off searching or it's never ending. I made a personal decision to follow through with the marriages, children, & lives to include only aunts/uncles & their offspring. Where important historical events were outside that range I made sidebar notes (such as ties to important US historical figures and/or European royalty).

I have boxes & boxes of documentation in the attic. lol Again, my personal decision was to strive for 3 independant sources for each fact. It was not always possible & I again spent considerable effort to explain my decisions when I could not provide written proof from at least 3 sources. The bibliography in Mom's book is huge & took hundreds of hours to compile even with software support. I self-published & had 6 copies bound in burgundy leather with gold cover/spine lettering, printed on 100% linen paper gold edging, 2 marker ribbons, & a dozen blank pages for add-on notes for future generations to record their family's data. The rest were just library bound copies.

Doing genealogy you'll learn much more than the birthplace of your GGG grandfathers. You'll learn so much social, political, & economic history. You'll learn much foreign language. You'll learn fantastic organizational skills (or give up the hobby!). I could go on all day writing about the education genealogy has provided. Sometimes, in my research, I've learned that I couldn't continue until I backed-up & took the time to get myself into a specialized university history course where I could just monitor the class.

It's also not an inexpensive hobby. Each copy of a birth certificate, marriage certificate, and death certificate costs between $10 & $30. Getting church & civil records from Europe is expensive. The travel costs add up quickly. You cannot expect to do an accurate research using just the internet. The internet provides many clues today but all of those clues need to be backed-up with hard evidence. To the best of my knowledge, no state provides vital record copies for free. Census records are now available online as are Ellis Island records & that's a huge help. Also, there's a charge for copies of naturalization records, military records, etc. It adds up pretty fast. In total (I didn't keep specific records), I'd guess we've got $20K+ in 'Family Ties', including publishing. 'Thunder on the Steppes' will be more because I had to pay for research on Russian soil.

Good lifelong hobby that gets the entire family involved.

Maybe, I'll start watching the show.

/tricia

I haven't even heard of it, I'll have to tell mother. She's really into the geneology, I took her to Toledo to do a bunch of research at the library there a couple of months ago, she'd probably love that show.

Anyway, she found that we were distantly related to the Mikesells that have the Mikesell Potato Chip company, LOL, like that'll get us anywhere!

I did find some information on my great-great (?) grandfather when he was in the civil war and sent away for it. It turned out to be court-martial papers for leaving his post without permission. Given he's one of OUR relatives, he probably was drunk in a gutter or at the local brothel, and at least he came back. (grin) He had to wear a ball and chain for one month whenever he was not on duty and had to forfeit $25 of his pay. That was probably quite a lot then.

Mom was so excited when I told her I'd found military papers for him. She was a little surprised to find out what they were!

Annie

Annie, I was told that a lot of men left their companies during the Civil War because they had to go home and get in the harvest. Then they came back when that was done.

I didn't watch the show, but it sounds like it might be interesting. I'm wondering if they pick people they know will be easy to trace. For instance, if you have ancestors in early New England, there are good records. Ellis Island immigration helps too. I have neither.
I was intensely into family history some years ago. But I find that I get obsessively involved (really it's hard to do if you don't keep an immense amount of information in your head, at least for the knottier puzzles) and I needed to do other things. But when my granddaughter was born last summer, I looked into her dad's ancestors, and found that she descends from the first permanent settler in North America, a Parisian named Louis Hert. And the whole wonderful world of French-Canadian genealogy is calling to me now.

I like Sara Jessica Parker so I tried watching the episode about her journey, but I just couldn't get interested enough to watch it all.

Ann

Before my mother passed away, she encouraged me purchase a book published by a distant family member. I am so glad that I did. I found out that I am a descendant of King Edward I.

I have seen this show and liked it well enough. The show I love that is similar is History Detectives. Although not necessarily about genealogy, it also uses research to unravel the story of different objects related to American history. I enjoy seeing the research techniques and resources they use as much as I enjoy the stories.

Here is a link that might be useful: History Detectives

OMGosh, I'll be at History Detectives' website for a year and a half!

Fun!

/tricia

I meant to watch the show - thought it sounded interesting.

I'd love to do a genealogy on my family, but have never tried. My parents didn't stay close to many family members and I have very few memories of the ones they did stay in touch with because I was so young, relative to everyone else. I'm especially interested in my maternal side, as my grandfather, who I never met, was from Sweden. I found a few very old photo "postcards," written in Swedish, that I presume are his family members.

I think the value of shows like this is to reminds people that everyone has a story, and no one story is more important than anyone else's.

Tricia, SWDYTYA really is more entertainment than genealogy. I mean, the sponsor is Ancestry.com, so you know their target is people who don't know anything about their family history, to get them thinking along the lines of coughing up for the membership fee. That said, they keep the plugs down to a minimum. I'm watching it really for the stories more than the research factor. Still, given your level of expertise, you might find it boring or little frustrating to watch because it does gloss over how much work it is and how long one can search and find nothing. Im glad I already started digging a few years ago before reading your post though. You would have scared me right off the whole venture. LOL! No way can I spend 75% of a years income on a hobby. Its not that important to me.

Annie, I have a distant cousin whom is claimed to have died by choking on a piece of fried pie while home on leave from the Confederate Army. How much you want to bet that was a cover story for defection?

I havent heard of the show Ill have to watch and see when it on I always like that kind of show.

Way back in the 60s when my DD was born I did a family tree for her baby book and got carried away. At the time all my grandparents plus 2 of my great grandparents were living. The information they all gave me was priceless they all talked for hours gave me pictures and family bibles that had been in closets for years. I was able to trace most of my family back to the early 1700s and some earlier than that. My XH's family was a little harder but I did manage to go back quite a ways.

About 15 years ago my dad got a letter from the Blackburn Family Association wanting any information he had about his grandmother descendents. Our family history from the Blackburn side can now be traced back to 1675 Ireland. I have kept them updated with marriages, births and deaths in our family every since.

I guess I am the holder of family bibles I have over a dozen and my DH has several from his family. DD got her grandmothers from her dads side of her family when she passed away. One from DHs side is almost 300 years old and I am afraid to even open the box anymore its literally falling apart. I have sent copies of the record they contain to the Mormons and the Blackburns and I registered our family with Ellis Island when they requested information years ago.

Its funny some people are so interested and cant get enough of family history and some just dont care at all. I sent an email to my brothers daughter asking permission to send information on her new DH to the Blackburn Association and her reply was "why would I care about a bunch of dead peoples" LOL

Claudia

Here is a link that might be useful: Blackburn Genealogy

I do love family history. I know alot about my mom's side because when they came here from Wales, they prtty much stayed in the same place, so stories were passed along. I don't know much at all about my dad's side. They were all kind of weird so no one talked much. That would be a challenge, to track down that side of the family. Maybe that's aproject for when I retire.

BTDT, I know what you mean. If I'd have known when I started it would have stopped me in my tracks also. But, over the extended period of time it just adds up. A week trip here researching and another week somewhere else, hundreds of vital record copies, Rutgers University copied over 200 pages of info, and then the publishing costs. At some point though you reach the time when you've just got to finish...so much work & nothing to show for it unless you get something concrete in your hands. Or, at least that's what I told myself towards the end of Mom's genealogy.

I like ancestry.com. Was a member for years & years. It doesn't help me at all with my Russian research so I dropped my membership six or seven years ago. Well, that's not entirely true. I do use ancestry.com for rough census tracking.

It's fun & I love playing Sherlock Holmes.

/tricia

LOL! Cluadia, my sister is/was the same way. Her response was "Until DNA testing was invented, you couldn't prove who were the real parents anyway, so why bother?" She did agree to photograph a cemetery for me, but she wasn't happy about it. There's 23 years between us, so she could have been a help in getting clues had she had more interest.

That's wonderful that you had access to the great-grandparents! I started looking when DH and I realized that neither of us could name all fuor of our grandparents! I was a late-born child of much, much older parents. They couldn't name their grandparents, either.

And along the way I have disproved many of the family myths we were told -- there are no recent Irish Ellis Island immigrants, there is no Native American medicine man, there was no pirate, my grandfather could NOT have been a Spanish American War hero given he was only only three years old when it started, and it was my mother's side of the family who was dirt poor and illiterate (not my father's).

You might consider contacting a local museum about the best way to preserve that 300 year old Bible. There are special wrappings and boxes for archival purposes that will help presrve it.

Tricia, about threee or four years ago, a customer who is a history professor, told me that LDS FHC in Salt Lake was in heavy negotiations with several of the former eastern Soviet countries to arrange for preservation and digitalization of records. She was excited about it because her grandfather was from Latvia. Who knows, you might get lucky and they'll have digitalized some leads in the area you need! :)

There is a collection of papers sitting in Perkins Library at Duke that I would dearly love to get my paws on for an hour or two, but I just don't think that's going to happen. I'm just glad low-vision aids have gotten so much better in the past few years. It makes things so much easier!

Renee, we're probably related, LOL!

I think many men defected because they WERE needed at home, either to harvest or to plant or to fix farms that were destroyed by war or natural causes, whatever. If your family is being destroyed, what do you do?

My mother is way into the research, she loves it and talks about it all the time. She just found out that the great-great grandmother she's been searching for was named "Twigg" and not "Turk". Funny how that handwriting on documents got things all mucked up!

On Dad's side of the family someone did a very involved family tree that traced his Dad's side of the family back to Ireland in the 1700s, but I haven't been to a reunion since I took Dad in 1999, so they may have gone further back yet.

Annie

Annie, have your mom take a look at the Blackburn sit it includes 425,000 people who came over from Ireland not just the 105,000 descendants from the Blackburn line. We may be related LOL

BTDT, the Blackburn Association has started a DNA project and are asking for volunteers Im trying to talk my dad into it but not getting anywhere.

Claudia

Thanks, Claudia, I will!

Annie

Claudia,

My DH's brother and my SIL didn't care about their ancestry either. Then, a couple years ago my SIL's mother passed away & a couple months ago I got a call asking me how to get started researching her genealogy. So, you never know. People get interested for such a wide variety of reasons. Now, my BIL and his wife are headed to Wales in June to vacation & do some research on DH's family that I've asked them to dig up.

BTDT, my experience with the accuracy of LDS info has been poor, at best. There's stuff on LDS's website pertaining to my family that's just not true. My grandmother's name is even wrong. There is a German-Russian Historical Society that has been working with the Russian government for over a decade now & their work is invaluable for researchers. I never would have found the Russian professor if not for the GRHS. Time will tell on the LDS project. For now, I'll wait & see how they document their information.

Here's a couple pictures of 'Family Ties', the book on Mom's genealogy. I wrote well over a hundred articles for the book describing the history behind the people. A bunch of dates and places don't really tell the story of a family. I wanted to make the story come alive. I wrote the Introduction last believing it would be a slam dunk after all the research. Wrong. It took 3-4 months & ended up 31 pages. rofl

Revolutionary War (I used various flags depending on the war)

Just an example of an article and picture of a family crest.

There are over 200 pictures...

In order to make Dad's book come alive I decided to write a short novel as an introduction to the nuts & bolts of the genealogy. I used my grandfather's life as the foundation. I thought this book would be substantially shorter since I cut off research in 1767 but it's going to be close...I'm about 640 pages now & unfinished.

It's hard to stop. Fortunately, binding contraints impose limits or you end up with multiple volumes. lol

/tricia

Tricia, I agree about the LDS website. At best it is an electronic dumping ground for public sumbissions, and even the LDS say they cannot and do not verify any of the information submitted. (Frankly, I think the website does more harm than good.)

I'm talking about the bricks and mortar FHC library and records repository in Salt Lake City, the one where they house the scanned images of the original documents, not the website. At the SLC library, I was able to view scanned images of wills, lands grants, ships' manifests -- lousy illegible handwriting, torn edges, water damage and all.

BTDT,

One of the things I'm enjoying now is helping other people with their searches. I'm a contact point for the historical society on surnames in my Russian village. They fairly regularly pass on to me requests for assistance. I've got lots of very large (like 6'x5') caligraphy charts for many surnames of original German settlers in Russia during the reign of Catherine The Great. I have to move the furniture in order to open the charts on the floor they're so large. :) There were only 957 original settlers in my village & the original manifests still exist from 1767. Seems like I'm related to just about all of them!! (hanging head) On my Mom's side, my DS hates that he's my son & also my half 6th cousin once removed AND my 8th cousin. That happened back in the late 17th century in what is now West Virginia (Shinnville). No explaining, on my part, of how the family tree ended up with a couple circles will appease him! Hey, there were only a few original settlers & their kids had to marry somebody!!

Anyway, I really enjoy the thrill of the hunt so it's fun for me to help others on their search. I love the excitement when I can tell them, "Bingo! I've got your ancestor on my charts!"

/tricia

Here is a link that might be useful: Shinnston, WV