Well, I'm pretty excited!

For those of you who have never beaten your head against brick walls
for decades, trying to find information on your ancestors, you probably
won’t understand how this could be exciting, but it is.

Today I received confirmation from a cemetery in Chicago that proved a
woman buried there is my great-great-grandmother, Margaret Hinchey.
I’ve only been looking for her for several decades.

I found her buried in the same lot as her son, who she preceded in
death. It’s an unmarked grave. They were poor. I don’t know why, but
since I started doing family research, it’s been important for me to
know where my family is buried, so I know I’ve actually found them.
Finding records isn’t enough. I need to actually find them.

And I have now found my great-great grandmother. That’s pretty
exciting. : )


Susan
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On 16/06/2012 04:15, Susan wrote:
[color=blue]

For those of you who have never beaten your head against brick walls
for decades, trying to find information on your ancestors, you probably
won’t understand how this could be exciting, but it is.

Today I received confirmation from a cemetery in Chicago that proved a
woman buried there is my great-great-grandmother, Margaret Hinchey.
I’ve only been looking for her for several decades.

I found her buried in the same lot as her son, who she preceded in
death. It’s an unmarked grave. They were poor. I don’t know why, but
since I started doing family research, it’s been important for me to
know where my family is buried, so I know I’ve actually found them.
Finding records isn’t enough. I need to actually find them.

And I have now found my great-great grandmother. That’s pretty
exciting. : )[/color]

So you’re so excited and you just can’t hide it?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6A6pMO_WKM

:wink:

Simon
Novell/SUSE/NetIQ Knowledge Partner


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Congratulations Susan! I haven’t done any research, but I enjoy
looking at it and I have family members who have done the research for
our family. The Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana is
considered an excellent geneology resource. Not sure how much of
their records are on line, but if most are not, it might be worth
checking out if you are ever in the area.

Ken

Did you use the find-a-grave site to help with this or some other
method? I’ve used it in the past to resolve a problem with an ancestor
that genealogy records showed was burried in two places (California and
Illinois). Marilyn uses it all the time in her research.


Kim - 6/18/2012 10:53:39 AM

Kim:

No, I’ve checked Find A Grave in the past, and I don’t think they have
much information on the big cemeteries in Chicago, except for those
famous who are buried there. I do plan to add my people to their
records, though.

Last fall some time, while I was researching a different Irish line in
my ancestry, I came across an individual I thought could be mine, and
copied the records I found. The birth year wasn’t identical, but it
seldom is. It was within a couple of years. He turned out not to be my
line, but another line, and in the process of doing the research, I’d
met some folks from the other line and had been made an honorary member
for having provided them with quite a bit of information on their line
that they hadn’t yet found themselves.

So every time I run across something for their line, which I usually do
because the two men have the exact same name and lived in the same
area, I send it on to them. They’ve even invited me to their reunion
this fall in Chicago. I wish I could make it!

In return for all of the things I found for them, one of them who lives
in Chicago and likes to visit cemeteries, volunteered to see if he
could find some of my people in one of the cemeteries and take photos
of any graves he found. I gave him a list of people, and he went to the
cemetery just recently.

It’s a huge cemetery in Chicago where just about every Roman Catholic
born between 1885 and maybe some time in the 1930s is buried -
something like 142,000 graves, and still growing. Find A Grave has just
over 5,000 of the burials listed on their site. I think the 1930’s
was when they opened another RC cemetery further south.

I already knew my Margaret’s son was buried at this particular
cemetery, from his death certificate and obituary. And the obituary of
the Margaret I thought might be mine indicated the same cemetery. The
obituary didn’t mention any children, though, so I wasn’t sure if she
belonged to my line.

They apparently have information kiosks on the cemetery grounds. All
you do is enter the name, it prints out a map of where the grave is
located in the cemetery, as well as where the actual grave is, along
with the lot and grave numbers. If you have more than one person in a
lot, you can then print out a lot report, which lists everyone buried
there. All from a kiosk, so the staff doesn’t have to be bothered. With
142,000 graves there, I’d imagine they got bothered quite a lot before
putting in the kiosk system. Too bad they don’t have an internet
connection for doing searches.

So, my hanai genealogy cousin stopped by and printed out some reports,
and sent them along to me, with some headstone photos for a different
line. I still had some questions, because the reports didn’t give death
or burial dates, so I emailed the main office of the cemetery asking
for those, and they kindly replied with the burial dates, which
confirmed that the records I’d found were for my Margaret.

A very large proportion of those I look far end up being in Chicago,
but there are a few elsewhere that I’ll try Find A Grave again, and see
if they come up with anything. : )


Susan
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Hey Susan,
[color=blue]

They apparently have information kiosks on the cemetery grounds. All
you do is enter the name, it prints out a map of where the grave is
located in the cemetery, as well as where the actual grave is, along
with the lot and grave numbers.[/color]

Wow…dying has become high tech. :slight_smile: Yea, it would be nice if such
things were linked on the Internet…but hey, our medical system can’t
even do that for the living yet, why would I think it would be there
for the dead?
[color=blue]

one of them who lives
in Chicago and likes to visit cemeteries, volunteered to see if he
could find some of my people in one of the cemeteries and take photos
of any graves he found.[/color]

That’s how I got my info on Find-a-grave. I just put in a request and
someone I don’t even know picked it up and went and took the picture of
the grave for me.

I think I showed you this before, but I experimented a little with
using Google Sites to host some genealogy. Seems to work pretty well
EXCEPT the further down the tree you go, the less rank Google assigns
to it. I’ve had a few people contact me from it:
https://sites.google.com/site/kimgronemangenealogy/ It’s still way
incomplete. I’ve only put basic info for a few generations there.
I’ve imported my entire GEDCOM on geni.com and MyHeritage.com but I
just don’t like the way they limit what you can do on those sites.

Curious: What program do you use for your genealogy?


Kim - 6/19/2012 10:51:47 AM

Kim:

Nice site! I started a free site years on Rootsweb, and still maintain
that one. Space is unlimited, so I’m able to upload high resolution
census images and photos and not have to worry about space. I started
it mostly so I could check what I already had, when I was somewhere
doing research. I have a link on that site to a blog where I post
recent finds, and my family checks that from time to time. I think.

As for genealogy programs, right now I’m using RootsMagic 5. I’m using
it because some elderly friends use it, and wanted me to help them with
questions they have, so they bought and sent a copy to me. It’s pretty
nice. I’ve used several in the past - there was one called Ultimate
Family Tree I really liked. Don’t like Family Tree Maker. Used PAF for
awhile, and that was fine. There’s one I’d like to test more, whose
name I can’t remember. I’ll look it up tomorrow. It might be Master
Genealogist or Legacy Family Tree.

What I like about RootsMagic 5 is they added a Research Manager, where
you can enter what sources you checked, what you were looking for, and
the result of the search. So you can enter your negative research,
also. I’ve done quite a lot of that, trying to find one particular line
who seems to have made a concerted effort to avoid being in ANY records
anywhere.

I don’t like the gedcom upload sites, either. I’ve only uploaded mine
to Rootsweb. I don’t find their format particularly easy to follow
connections, but it’s better for my purposes than any of the others.

I HATE that you can have a free account at Ancestry, create a public
tree there, but no one else can see it unless they’re either a paid
Ancestry member or you’ve invited them to the tree. I also hate their
One World Tree that links people who have absolutely nothing even
remotely in common as if they’re related. They combined my
great-grandfather born, raised and died in Chicago with some fellow
born, raised and died in California who was 15 or 20 years younger than
my great-grandfather. I called them and gave them a piece of my mind
over that one. I don’t think they really care about accuracy, they just
care about making people feel like they’re finding something so they
keep paying the piper.

Well, enough of my Ancestry rant. LOL! There are some programs out
there that create an html tree and pages from a gedcom for you that are
pretty good. If you’re interested, I can look up the name(s). Let me
know.


Susan
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By the way, I LOVE the cartoon on your site! LOL!

The Master Genealogist has a feature I’d love to see in RootsMagic5,
which is the ability to create datasets. What that does is put a number
in front of the identifier for a person that shows what dataset that
record is from. I think it would be useful for when importing gedcom
files. I don’t often import someone else’s data, but when I do, it
would be nice to be able to easily differentiate data others found from
data I found and entered.

Legacy Family Tree has some nice mapping features. I’d created a Google
Map years ago showing where my ancestors lived, died and were buried in
Chicago and the rest of the world, and I found that very useful in
trying to find people in census or church records. RootsMagic5 is
getting into mapping, but not quite as extensively as Legacy.

ourroots.us is my site. That’s just a front end for the site that’s on
RootsWeb. I wanted a name my family could easily remember, but wanted
to leave the data where it is already, at least for now.

What software do you use, and why do you like it? : )


Susan
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This is the software I’d like to get if I ever decide to redo my site.
Right now, mine’s purpose is mostly as a repository of documents.

http://lythgoes.net/genealogy/software.php

The sites I’ve seen that use it are very nicely laid out. They’ve got
links to user sites under their “Sample Sites” link. : )


Susan
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“Susan” wrote:
[color=blue]

you probably won’t understand how this could be exciting, but it is.[/color]

Indeed it is VERY exciting!


Danita
Novell Knowledge Partner
Upgrading to GroupWise 2012? http://www.caledonia.net/blog/?p=514
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“kgroneman” wrote:
[color=blue]

Did you use the find-a-grave[/color]

Searching for Zanre:

Grave Search Results
Sorry, there are no records in the Find A Grave database matching your query.

How did I know that would happen - LOL.


Danita
Novell Knowledge Partner
Upgrading to GroupWise 2012? http://www.caledonia.net/blog/?p=514
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On Wed, 20 Jun 2012 18:29:09 +0000, DZanre wrote:
[color=blue]

“kgroneman” wrote:
[color=green]

Did you use the find-a-grave[/color]

Searching for Zanre:

Grave Search Results
Sorry, there are no records in the Find A Grave database matching your
query.

How did I know that would happen - LOL.[/color]

Does that make you a cabbage patch kid?