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May 12, 2008

Genealogy Blogger Forces Newspaper to Change Article

Well maybe I'm exaggerating just a little bit...I didn't exactly force the Denver Post to change an article...I sort of just suggested it in the comments section of a story about energy.  I was reading this article called Big Oil Now Seeing Green and towards the end the reporter improperly used the word "descendants."  I wrote a comment telling them they should have used the word "Ancestor" because what they had just didn't make any sense.  Every now and then I see these two words used incorrectly in newspapers, and felt it was my duty to point out the error of their ways.  The original paragraph read as follows:

"Exxon Mobil, the company formed after the 1999 merger between Exxon and Mobil, was publicly challenged recently by the Rockefeller family to boost its renewable-energy research. Descendants of the Rockefellers founded the company that became Exxon Mobil."

When I checked it out this morning I saw the article was changed to reflect the proper word.  I rarely comment on news stories, but I just couldn't let thing one go by - I was surprised they actually made the change.  My comment is the first one on the list, and surprisingly it was the only one concerned about this important error...the rest were about trivial economic and environmental issues.

Nitpicking to keep the world safe for genealogy!

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May 11, 2008

Happy Mother's Day - Mary J. Zaring (Dec 24, 1920-May 13, 1971)

I found some cool photo's of my mother as a child up through her young adult years and thought it would be a good tribute to her life.  What I like about these photos is they show how vital and active she was.  By Scan0002 the time I was born she became a typical parent trying to balance work and a family with two small boys.  Now that I'm the same age as she was when she died, and we have 11 year old twins, I realize she was just tired like most parents.

The first photo is probably one of the earliest I have of her.  She's standing with her arm around her little brother (Franklin E. Zaring Jr.).  I don't know the exact date of the picture, but she appears about 6 or 7 years old so the year was approximately 1926-1927.  It's probably somewhere in the Denver area because of the flat paved road on the left and the cement sidewalk on the right.   I love the car in the background.

The second photo appears to be my mother's high school graduation day in 1937 - she's the young woman on the right.  I have a lot of photos of my mother during her high school years at Saint Francis De Sales - this Scan0003 was a Catholic school.  Some of these photos will be highlighted in upcoming "Who Are These People?" posts - many of are of unidentified boys.  I love this photo because the smile you see here is the one I remember when I was growing up - she was a very warm and affectionate woman and I think this photo shows it. 

The next two pictures of her skiing are cool.  I love the group photo on a ski slope with her friends.  My mother is the short one who's the 5th person from the left.  With the Scan0004 exception of the clothes and hairstyle, she looks like the typical ski bum you see in the Colorado mountains today.  For some reason, she stopped skiing after my brother and I were born.  I don't know if she got hurt when she was younger, but she still encouraged my brother and I to ski and we started at a young age.  An interesting note on the skis she is using in both photos...we Scan0005 still have those skis and poles.  I remember playing with them when I was a kid and my brother has them mounted on a wall in his house.

This last photo is one of my mother either shortly before she married my father or shortly after - meaning me and my brother are only a few years away.  She's standing at the gate of the Kenosha Trout Club up in the mountains in Park County, Colorado.  This was a members only club where the well-to-do had cabins and an big private lake to fish in.  My grandparents were the caretakers of this club and were given a place to live - the stone building behind my mother was their house.  I Scan0006 spent many fun summers and Christmas vacations at this place.

I have many other photos of my mother and letters from her scrapbook that I will eventually process and post, but I love these because they show her as a young, attractive, and very active woman.  I've actually learned more about my mother after she died (I was 14 at the time), through my genealogy efforts, than I learned when she was alive.  You know what?  The more I learn about her the more proud I am of her being my mother - Happy Mother's Day, Mom!

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May 10, 2008

Geni.com - Timeline Feature

A few weeks ago I got an email from Geni.com about their new time-line feature and thought I'd try it out.  Timelines are a key tool I use in my genealogy research.  What I try to do for each of my ancestors is place Franklin_timeline them at least once in every decade of their lives using some kind of official documentation.  Timelines really help me identify knowledge gaps where I can zero in on the parts of a person's life where I need to dig.  For those relatives who lived in the 19th and 20th centuries, I've been fairly successful, but I'm happy with whatever I get for those who lived earlier.  I started off using Microsoft Word when I built these things, but now I just use a spreadsheet like Excel. 

The Geni.com timeline works pretty well, but it took me awhile to figure it out because I don't really use the site very much.  The way it's set up is you enter all of the details on each family member and in the end you will get a consolidated timeline for your whole family.  I was only looking to develop one for my grandfather (Franklin E. Zaring) as a test, but got a little confused and after about 20 minutes of entering his data, I discovered I was entering his information under my profile.  I almost gave up after making this stupid mistake, but pushed ahead and got it done. 

The result you see in the image is a pretty good timeline.  It's got all of the basic info on my grandfather, the revision history including all of the info I added today, and below is the timeline itself.  The image doesn't show his whole life, but it gives you an idea of how the whole thing works.  I was a little disappointed that the timeline wasn't as cool as the Web 2.0 style family tree function.  I was also hoping I could export it somehow and have a stand alone timeline I could store in my electronic files, but I don't think this is possible.

I'll probably just stick to my Excel spreadsheets because of all the work I would have to go through inputting all of the data into Geni, but overall I'm pretty impress with Geni's timeline function.

(click on the image to get the full size image)   

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May 07, 2008

Origins of Mother's Day

I found an interesting article in the Washington Post today about a woman's quest for the origins of Mother's day.  Apparently Anna Jarvis, from West Virginia, is credited with starting a movement to create the holiday a couple of years after her mother's death.  Anna succeded and the special day for mothers was created in 1914.  The interesting part of the Washington Post story says "Her's the sad thing about Anna Jarvis: Mother's Day was her only baby.  And in the end, she was so put off by its success (i.e. commercialization) that she started a petition to rescind it and was promptly popped into an institution, where she died, alone, in 1948."  What a sad story...it almost makes me feel guilty for celebrating it.  Here's Anna Jarvis' obituary from the New York Times.

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May 06, 2008

Ancestry.com - New Military Records

Ancestry.com is really pushing out military records lately.  There are three new sets of records loaded with info on Army and Navy personnel.  Randy Seaver and Craig Manson both wrote in detail about the US Army Enlistment Records 1798-1914, but there are two more sets to dig into.

Returns from Regular Army Regiments, 1821-1916.  This collection is not yet searchable, but you can browse each regiment.  These basically are monthly reports commanders had to send to their higher headquarters.  Included are names of officers and enlisted men and reasons for their loss or gain; names of officers and enlisted who are absent; but the most interesting part is some contain details of engagements these units took part in.  For example I found the entry in the 7th Cavalry Returns on the Battle of Little Big Horn.  Frame 63 out of 216 provides a little bit of narrative on the battle and discusses Lieutenant Colonel George A. Custer's command of the regiment.  At the end of the report, it says "Causalities:  Loss: 13 officers and 237 enlisted men."  From an historical perspective, this is one of the more interesting collections I've found at Ancestry.

US Navy Cruise Books, 1950-1988.  These books are searchable by name and contain photos of the crew and information about the ship.  As the database description states, these books served as a yearbook of sorts for the particular ship.  Currently there are only 10 ships listed and hopefully there will be more. 

You must have a subscription to view both of these collections.  I've linked to the description page, but if you click any other links to see the data, Ancestry will ask you to sign-up.  I'm not an affiliate of Ancestry...they won't have me...I just like these two sets of data.

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May 03, 2008

Another Civil War Causality

One hundred forty years ago Civil War Sailors, as part of a gun crew, loaded and armed a 9 inch 75 pound projectile into a cannon and fired it at a target.  They probably did this scores of times, but this one seemingly was a dud - it didn't explode.  I'm sure in the heat of battle this crew didn't even notice because they were concentrating on loading the next cannonball.  Flash forward 140 years and we find a Civil War relic hunter named Sam White trying to disarm it in his driveway when it explodes - killing him and destroying his property.

I know this is a tragedy for the man, his family and friends, but I started thinking about this Navy gun crew and wonder if, in their wildest imagination, they could ever conceive that a weapon they armed and fired in the 1860s would end up killing someone in February of 2008.  Should Sam White be counted as a Civil War causality?

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May 02, 2008

Civil Records of Selected Italian Communes

A commenter on my post about Ancestry.com beginning to add Calabria civil records gave us all a link to an incredible resource.  I clicked on the link to the site called Transcribed Records of Italian Towns and was amazed at the number towns listed.  This is another one of those wonderful sites where volunteers transcribe documents for us all to use - and the best thing is they are free.  Some of the links are to indexes and some actually have scans of the original documents.  For those towns not having transcriptions there are occasionally links to people who will do look ups upon request.  I've only browsed some of the towns listed, but plan on digging deeper soon.   

First the Ancestry.com development and now this - I'm pretty excited.  I would be more excited if the towns my grandparents came from were available, but at least I know some day it will happen.      

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May 01, 2008

Poop Sells for $960

Not just any poop was sold for $960...this was historical poop - which makes it fodder for my blog.  The poop in question is now fossilized, thank goodness, and at 130 million years old I guess most of the smell is about gone.  It was bought by a man who owns a company specializing in doing things with dog and cat poop.  He said he bought this piece of history  "in hopes of motivating his employees...and using it as a marketing tool."  He went on to add "poop is a big business in the pet industry."  I would question employees who would be motivated by historical poop, but I guess someone has to do the job.

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April 30, 2008

New at Ancestry.com - Calabria Region Civil Records

A new addition to Ancestry.com has me jumping for joy.  They are starting to add civil records from the Calabrian Region of Italy spanning from 1810 to 1936.  This is huge for me and other descendants of Italian Calabriamap immigrants.  Family History Centers have these records available now, but one has to spend hours rolling the film and I found it hard to make much progress - especially trying to translate Italian terms at the same time.  With Ancestry creating a searchable index, and linking to the pages, the whole process will be much easier.  Currently this database only contains the town of Falerna in the Provence of Cantanzaro, but I'm hopeful they will continue expanding this collection.  According to FamilySearch.org, they have microfilm of most towns in the Southern region of Italy and I'm hopeful they will get to my grandparent's towns soon.  I've been hoping for this development for a long time and I think Ancestry just earned another years subscription from me - despite the cost.   

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Genealogy Reviews Online Dot Com

I don't know if anyone has noticed or not, but (like the footnote Maven) my blog is now a dot com.  I actually Genealogyrevid43ar01ap01zl_mdm had the domain name GenealogyReviewsOnline.com  before I started this blog in October 2006, but couldn't figure out how to do the domain mapping.  Actually I was just to lazy to figure it out myself.  This past weekend I took the time, after reading the footnoteMaven's post, and it really was quite easy.  Nothing really changes for my few readers - old bookmarks and feed subscriptions will still work.  The only real change is I will have a slightly smaller URL to type when I comment on other blogs.       

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