Genealogy Interactive

Who Do You Think You Are on NBC will be kicking off the third season On Friday, February 3rd at 8/7 Central time. Watching the trailer has me quite excited to tune in for this season. Call me a sentimental or whatever you want, but these programs are the PERFECT example of why I do what I do in the genealogy field. If this season is anything like previous seasons I promise.. No, I guarantee that at least half, if not almost all of the episodes will in the least entertain, touch you and might even move you.

Pardon the passionate introduction to this program (for those of you not familiar with the series), but if you’re so inclined this might be one of the best shows to watch with your family. This season begins with the ancestry study of Martin Sheen. Anyone interested in family tree research must tune in for this program that is sure to be an inspirational show. The introductory video preview can be seen here:

I’ve included a short description of the individuals below and a link to their Wikipedia page because everyone is always curious about who some of the individuals are. The names are in no particular order and do not correspond to the order of the episodes:

Martin Sheen – Actor with a long career from 1967 to the present. Father of well-known actors Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen.
Blair Underwood (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blair_Underwood) Actor best known for his roles in The Event, LA Law and other television titles. He has also appeared in dozens of other television shows and motion pictures.

Marisa Tomei – Requiring little introduction this sweetheart began appearing in As the World Turns in 1983 followed by several other appearance before breaking out big for the film My cousin Vinny in 1992, earning her an Academy Award. Still active in film and still making people smile.

Helen Hunt – Another incredibly well-known actress, Helen is widely famous for the television series Mad About You and feature motion pictures such as Twister, As Good as It Gets, What Women Want and many others.

Rob Lowe – Excuse the book prop (I’m not being compensated for it) but the connection between Rob Lowe and the Sheen/Estevez family from the first episode is one of the many fascinating parts of his recent book Stories I Only Tell My Friends – is Excellent. The film and TV star has a resume too long to list but we’ll say it begins with the movie The Outsiders in 1983 and the television film Drew Peterson: Untouchable from this year.

Edie Falco – Best known for her multi-award winning performance in the HBO series The Sopranos has also appeared in numerous other television and film works.

Reba McEntire – The unmistakable voice of Reba returns to television in the third season of Who Do You Think You Are. This country music icon and well-respected actress won’t be acting or singing this time (is there a song involved?) – We’ll see the real Reba McEntire as she follows the clues to bring her back to her roots.

Jerome Bettis – A.K.A The Bus is one of the most well-known Pittsburg Steelers of the generation, playing ball in Pittsburgh from 1996 to 2006. A first round draft pick in 1993, retired after winning the Super Bowl in 2006. The 6th-leading rusher of all time in the NFL will be exploring his genealogical past with up this season.

Rita Wilson – Well-known actress and wife of over 20 years to Tom Hanks will likely be investigating her family tree overseas with roots in Greece and Albania. First appearing in an episode of The Brady Bunch in 1972, she has been a highly successful actress, Broadway performer, musician and film producer.

Rashida Jones – Daughter of Quincy Jones, Rashida has made a name for herself. This Harvard graduate has starred in many recent television and movie efforts you might have heard of such as The Office, Boston Public and a movie called The Social Network.

Jason Sudeikis – Saturday Night Live and 30 Rock star also appeared in films such as What Happens in Vegas and in Horrible Bosses.

Paula Deen – Celebrity cook and restaurateur, author of numerous cookbooks and occasional guest judge on television reality series Top Chef.

Visit the NBC Who Do You Think You Are web page here.

We will be discussing the episodes here on Geneosity.com from this post and we are looking forward to your comments.

A frequent complaint in genealogy research is “I would love to learn about my family tree but I can’t afford professional help or the fees all these websites charge”.     The amount of money you can spend is inversely proportional to the combined volume of time you’re able to spend doing it AND how resourceful you are.   Money and time must be spent and that is just a fact.   Play it smart, however, and there are some great things that can be accomplished with relatively little money. (more…)

It’s interesting how genealogical records can provide a glimpse of our own personal history, but can also offer a peek at something of historical curiosity. How about a dose of haunted history?  On August 4th, 1892 at the address of 92 Second Street in Fall River, Massachusetts there was a double murder committed that would continue to be talked about more than 100 years later. The house is revered as one of the many haunted places of Southeastern Massachusetts. Lizzie Borden who was 32 at the time shared the home with her father Andrew and step-mother Abby, sister Emma and the household maid, Bridget Sullivan at the time of the incident.

This 1880 census shows the entry for the long-time next door neighbor Adelaide (Buffington) Churchill who was cited to have been the first person to see and speak with Lizzie Borden almost immediately following the double murder of Lizzie’s father and step-mother. Adelaide and Sullivan in the following minutes began to search the house for Mrs. Borden, thus discovering her next to the bed in the upstairs guest bedroom. Also in this census image at 96 Second Street is the entry for Alice Russell, who appeared at the trial in testimony that Lizzie had spoken to her the evening before on her suspicion that someone had been trying to poison her family.

The following census image is from Ancestry.com, displaying the 1880 Fall River Massachusetts return for 92 Second Street. Note that Sullivan was not employed by the Bordens in 1880 and doesn’t appear in the census. Could the long unknown killer or a witness to the double murder have been a neighbor appearing in the 1880 census?

Ancestry.com 1880 census image of Borden Household at 92 Second St. in Fall River, MA

Pages and pages of History review to end the 2nd quarter of my daughter’s 8th grade year cost her the entire Sunday evening this past weekend. She had already worked half of the afternoon on Math. I walked into the dining room to find her staring at the page in disbelief – and doing nothing. It was after eight and she still had seventeen sentences to write. So I sat down to help her break the task down into mentally manageable pieces.

Her review required her to write a sentence about each of the terms and names listed on the review page at the end of the section. Simple enough, she had to leaf through the book to find the location of the bold terms, and inevitably, there were several on each page in the same order she found them on the list.

We turned to the page that contained the terms she was looking for and I noticed a name. George Catlin. On her mother’s side, my daughter has a long line of ancestors by the surname of Catlin. George Catlin was famous as a painter and author, and lived in the late 1700s to the mid 1800s. My daughter’s grandmother on that side of the family has a maiden name of Catlin. Years ago I traced the Catlin line back to the 1600’s when my daughter’s ancestor Thomas Catlin had arrived in Connecticut from England in or about the year 1630. A reasonable presumption led me to believe that George Catlin might be a relative of hers, being that the Catlin name wasn’t a terribly common surname of the period.

I opened her family tree file and looked back to the time period of when George Catlin lived which was from 1796 to 1872. My wife and I laughed when we both said we kept picturing George Carlin the comedian. Wikipedia stated George Catlin was born in Wilkes-Barre Pennsylvania in 1796. My daughter’s Catlin line resided mostly in Connecticut until the late 1700s and they started moving west through PA, OH, IN and finally settling in Illinois. For a single generation they did live in PA, and it happened to have been about 60 miles away from the birthplace of George Catlin. This was encouraging.

The rest of the story unravels pretty quickly as I opened Ancestry.com to look up the family tree for George Catlin. Most of the time you’ll find that historical figures have been traced already by someone, so the first place I looked for him was in the Public Member Trees. Sure enough there he was. With no immediate association I could find to my daughter’s family tree on that page, I clicked the name of George Catlin’s father Putnam Catlin. Things began to fall together.

Putnam Catlin’s father was Eli Catlin and his mother was Elizabeth Way (Noted from a then-difficult to read document in my file identifying her maiden name as Ely or Way). It’s been years since I looked at these names but what I find interesting is how quickly I can recognize names I’ve researched in the past. Eli and Elizabeth were the connection I was looking for. Eli Catlin was Putnam Catlin’s brother. A match!

Quickly I filled in the connecting descendants of Eli Catlin in my family tree software. I haven’t been part of that family for nearly nine years so I hadn’t previously completed the listings of siblings that far back. A few minutes later I returned to the dining room with a chart showing my daughter’s connection to the individual in her history book. George Catlin it appears is my daughter’s first cousin, eight times removed.

Facts and sources are yet to be documented, but there’s enough information linking them in the Ancestry Public Member Tree to safely call this a 99% probability of a match. My daughter was surprised and pleased to learn this. She took a copy of the chart I printed and put it right in her history book.

The next thing she did was call her mother to tell her. “Dad figured out that I’m related to someone in my history book named George Catlin.” Her mother replied “he was an artist of some kind, right?” So much for discovery. Her mother had already heard of him but at least I succeeded in helping my daughter find her history homework to be more meaningful.

I told her “With ancestors here going back as far as the 1600s, you’re bound to be related to someone that was either historically famous or someone associated with a historical figure.” Pre-colonial ancestors arriving in about 1630 meant that her relatives shared this country with only about 4,600 other white inhabitants at the time (According to a reference on olm.net).  Further, her family record states that Thomas Catlin and his family arrived and settled in Connecticut. Connecticut had very little record of any population until 1650, meaning my daughter’s ancestors might well have been among the first settlers of that state. Fascinating. She also happens to be related to Phineas Catlin, who the town of Catlin, New York was named for. But that’s another chapter.

One of the great online genealogy search secrets is the use of wildcards. The following methods give you the ability to improve your search capabilities greatly.

Wildcards might be one the least-utilized search features, which if used properly can produce excellent results. In genealogy research, we must be as specific as possible in our searches or else deal with hundreds of results that don’t match what we’re seeking. Wildcards are used to tell a search engine or database (such as on Ancestry.com) exactly what you want. If you haven’t used wildcards before you will seldom work without them again once you understand the power this method delivers.

What is a wildcard? Wildcards are special characters and symbols included in your search text used to filter the search results before returning them to you. You can specify exactly what you want to see, and tell the search query what you might know or don’t know ahead of time. If you’ve searched Google you’ve undoubtedly noticed literally millions of search results for a general search. Using wildcards you can filter your search down from millions of results to dozens of results. This method can be used almost anywhere a search function is offered. What this means for you is eliminating hundreds of records to review and potentially saving HOURS of research time per project. If you rely only on the filtering mechanisms offered on the sites you’re using, you’re easily missing out on half of your search capability.

Often in genealogy work we come across the names of individuals that are not a match for the person we’re looking for but shares the same name or has a similar enough name to keep confusing us. Many times a wildcard can be used to filter out the results that keep popping up that we’re not interested in.

To use wildcards effectively, we must first understand the language that databases use. There are certain characters and symbols that will tell the database query to handle our search is a specific way. The most common of these characters and symbols are the asterisk (*), question mark (?), parenthesis (), and quotation marks( ” ).

The asterisk can be used to replace one or more unknown characters, to allow variant endings to keywords, or to include results with everything before and/or after an asterisk with anything in between. For instance on Ancestry.com, you can use an asterisk to find variations of a keyword or a name. The search keyword “Smith*” will return the names Smith, Smithe, and Smithson. The asterisk is telling the database to return anything matching the name Smith plus variations of Smith using additional letters. By placing the asterisk ahead or behind a name or partial name you’ll be searching for the name itself, with all variations of prefixes and suffixes. The search for instance “*Donald” will also return results for McDonald.

The question mark is used on Ancestry.com to insert a single wildcard letter. For example, if you were to search for “East?n”, you will receive results for the names Eastin and Easton.

Similar conventions are available when searching in Google. In Google, the asterisk represents one or more words. When using the asterisk in Google, enclose the query in quotes, and place the asterisk wherever a wildcard letter, character or word might be found. For example if you were to search for “Martin * Connerty”, you will return all results that include a middle initial or a middle name in the order specified. This wildcard will also return results containing several words in proximity, so a potential result could be a list such as: “Martin, Jones, Dawson, Connerty”. Another way you might try to search: “Connerty, Martin *” is not useful because it will include anything that follows the name Martin.

Another useful Google trick that will work selectively in other search engines is the (-) minus sign to narrow the search. You’ll quickly narrow your search by eliminating frequent duplicates of the same result you don’t want to see. Entering your search term in Google usually returns thousands of unwanted results. Enter a search term and view the results. When there are numerous results for something you’re not looking for you may go back to the search box and add a space behind your original query and then type -word. “Word” being the term you wish to exclude from the search. For more information on using wildcards in Google visit http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?answer=136861.

Give them a try and you’ll be happy you did. Just remember that the operators or Boolean logic may be different for each website so it may take some getting used to, and a little bit of time to gain an understanding of how your favorite websites handle wildcard searches.

by David Haas, Geneosity.com

Chances are that you have dealt with this genealogy research challenge before, or eventually will. You’re looking up a John, Mary, Michael, or Ann with some relatively common surname, and to your surprise there are over 400 or even over a thousand people with the name you’re looking up. Before you spend hours combing through hundreds of listings that match the name and another piece of data you should try something different first. (more…)

Something that happens too often is that while researching your family tree we find ourselves looking at the image records over and over again. That’s something that I do frequently. I always prefer to review the original record when it’s not too inconvenient to do so. Original image records are one of the greatest things brought to the internet for genealogy research. Things that can be seen with your own eyes are the handwritten records of the census, voter registrations, draft cards, passport applications and more.

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Genealogy How To:

It can make the task of building your family tree much easier if you know where to find certain specific information. We have compiled a list of places where you should be able to locate specific pieces of genealogical information on an ancestor.

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