Your Genealogy Matters

Part of genealogy is being able to put yourself in the other person's shoes, because sometimes you have to think like they would think when you hit one of those "Why did they do that," brick walls. And some of the time, that revolves around the "discovery" of a child who was not part of "the family" as "the family" was presented to you.   This can either be because of issues around conception, the death of a child or the loss of a child through adoption. In order to be a good detective, you need to take off the hat that wear that drives your moral decisions and outlook on life.  What I mean is that if you approach a 1900's problem with your 2017 ideas about what people should do and shouldn't, you could be keeping yourself from understanding what happened and judging others on their actions.  That isn't our role.  Our role is to find out what happened. Taking that 2017 hat off also requires that you have to know the soci...

My father, Pvt. Marvin A. Koblentz served in the United States Army for ten months, 22 days, during WWII, before a heart defect (failure of the aortic valve to form completely in utero ) resulted in a Honorable discharge.  He graduated from Law School then was hired by the Justice Department to resettle those held at Tule Lake Internment Camp.  He was so shocked by the conditions, humbled by the people held by their government, that once the camp was decommissioned that he resigned from the Justice Department, and went into practice as a general practice attorney.  He never turned a client away, because he wanted to make sure that every American had their fair day in court with the best possible representation.  He had a family, he provided, he suffered more than most with person tragedy.  He endured, but died in 1995.

Got your results, but that third cousin has no tree? Well, fudge.  You have seen the commercials for DNA tests. Ancestry is the largest advertiser, but there are others.  And they all have people or actor portrayals of "people" who are surprised by their DNA results. " I want to learn more about my <Insert Nationality/Ethnic Group Name> heritage ," they say, surrounded by Indian pots, or dressed in native clothes or on tour in their newly found ancestral lands. " My parents made me take up German Lieder because they thought our family was from Munich, but according to my DNA tests, I should have been taking Italian Opera lessons instead! " " Take your genealogy further, " and " Let DNA break down those walls " is the other hook. That's the marketing - opening doors through DNA testing. The problem is, DNA testing isn't a magic bullet, it isn't a panacea, and it sure isn't Gabriel's horn.  It...

We certainly have. I was going to pull a really great post together first thing this morning at 4:45am, EDST, we were awakened by the sound of a gun going off and then complete silence and total darkness. No one was shot, no one fired a gun, but the bloody Edison (power) went out again , for the fifth freaking time in 11 months. Well, that got us up out of bed because the battery backup alarms freak out the dogs.  So we had to turn those off.  And then the dogs were up.  So I find a lantern and like Ma Ingalls I went down to the cellar where the breaker box is located when a SECOND gunshot sound went off and the whole supply line for the five houses on our block went down. Bloody Hell! So I get BGE on the line (the power company) and make two calls.  First was to report that the power was out and the man - a human! - was as lovely as he could be.   The second call was to a woman at the power company who assured me last month that our problem was fi...

Going through my late aunt's pictures, we found this one with the note on the back: "With the war coming, I thought we'd better buy a new car before they stopped making them." If you have really studied American history from the late 1930's through the 1940's, you know that the nation slowly ramped up it's production of war goods even before December, 1941.  The U.S. may not have been in the war, but it was involved in the war effort.  American industry, after the Nazi's stormed into Western Europe in the fall of 1939,  helped to support the United Kingdom in it's efforts to stave off Germany. My Aunt Nan, on the right with the white bow in her hair, was on high alert.  She had reflexes like a cat when it came to getting news on the European front. In the 1940's she working as a durable goods bookkeeper for her employer.  She saw that raw goods were getting harder and harder to get as world markets were cut off, and she also knew that...

Likens Cemetery, Marion Township, Marion County, Ohio, April 1942 The picture above is of Likens Cemetery, also known as Likens Chapel Cemetery, sometimes known as "Lykens Chapel Cemetery" in Marion Township, Marion County, Ohio.  It is located about 500 feet south of Likens Road, and about 1,500 feet west of the intersection of where Pole Lane intersects Likens Road.   I have family there. Originally a cemetery for the Zuck Family, it grew and was added onto over the years and at one time served the families of Likens Chapel, one of four Methodist Episcopal chapels on a circuit ridden by Rev. Jeremiah Crabb Monnett.  Around WWI, the frame structure was replaced with a brick building still at the corner of Pole Lane and Likens Road. By March 1, 1942 there were more than 300 burials at Likens, all with some type of marker.  In 1976, there were only 130 markers. What happened? In March, 1942, the United States Government arrived in Marion County and evicte...

Years ago when I was a college student in Ohio, I was warned about "Adelbert".  Adelburt was a local character, known for throwing outrageous parties, and was a direct descendant of a major royal family through one of the lesser lines.  And  Adelbert loved to hold court.  He was, how do you say, a unforgettable. Adelbert's house was filled to the gills with antiques, newtiques and just plane weird stuff.  But one things Adelbert had were pictures of his famous ancestor who reigned over a western European country for many a year. Somehow I found myself a guest of Adelbert's through a neighbor of mine who knew someone who was in Adelbert's inner circle.  Lucky me.  Right?  Meh. So I had the chance to visit with Adelbert and I said "This is an amazing collection you have of your ancestor, chit, chat, chit, chat..."  Adelbert told me all about his search for this ancestor's image, how he was related, and then said that "whenever a univer...

Have to take today off regarding the Family Car.  We are surrounded by family having just hosted Thanksgiving in May. A full house of 11.  Yup, 11.  That breeze you feel is the air coming out of inflatable mattresses.  A good time was had by one and all.  Lots of folks who are departing throughout the day.  We'll be back on Wednesday!

Miss Hortense is bored.  But Master Julian is attentive and open to learn more.  One of the things that confounds me, constantly, is how people's minds wander.  I say that because if my brain wasn't attached goodness knows where it would be. We all have those days, those topics, those moments when we lose sight on the purpose of our task. When it comes to meeting with distant relatives, or making connections with people who have agreed to share information, images, documents - whatever - that can aid us in the search for our ancestors, we have to sometimes remind ourselves to be on our best manners. This means looking your best, being prompt if you are arriving (or forgiving if they are coming to you), and being prepared with paper, pencil, and having anything you wish to share with them ready. All of these points show that you respect their time, their help, and their interests. Other do's and don't include: DO accept a beverage if offered.  The are...

Today's "Family Car Monday" tells a different story.  Instead of identifying a car, we're looking from inside a car at the surrounding's on the outside - a street scene if you will - and we'll use the cue's to give us a rough date on an image. This picture was taken during a family trip (not my family) to the gulf coast.  The back of the image says "Jackson, Mississippi?", and it may well be. So how do we find a possible date for this picture?  The car's, of course! The wagon's excepted, we can tell one thing, right off the bat: The car that the photographer is riding in was produced from the early 1930's onward into the early 1940's.  We can tell this by the rounded curves of the window frames. As American automobile manufactures entered the 1930's, they discovered that eliminating squared corners from metal stamping eliminated the need to patch in right angles in the stamping's because the steel could conform...

When you take a college level course in introduction to philosophy,  you learn that there are certain types of arguments that are built on falsehoods, also known as fallacious logic. They include, but are not limited to: Post Hoc Ergo Promptor Hoc , the "therefore, because of this" argument. Straw Man , where you attack by twisting your opponent's position and words Ad Hominem , Where you attack the other person instead of building a sound argument for yourself.     In genealogy, the culprit that people will use, or in reviewing other people's work find, is the Post Hoc Ergo Promtor Hoc.   What a Post Hoc logic statement does is allow people to make a conclusion based condition, instead of making a conclusion based on a review of verifiable evidence.  So when you draw a conclusion based on a trend, or a pattern of repeat, and think "Well 'this' is true because in the past 'that' has happened to others.  Therefore it has to b...

Taking a mental health day off.  See you Friday!

It's a what? If its Monday, it's Family Car day here on Your Genealogy Matters. Today's car picture comes from the Malcolm and Turner families of Crawford County, Ohio.   In the driver's seat is young Kathryn Malcolm, "off to pick up Earl" according to the back of the image. The bigger question is what is Kathryn driving? Katheryn is the behind the wheel of a 1926 Nash Advanced Six sedan.  Instead of steel disc wheels, it sports the optional wooden "Artillery" wheels that many owners preferred over the early steel disc wheels, which gave a "harsh" ride. So our second question is - for those of you too young to remember - what is a "Nash" and isn't that an odd name for a car? The Nash was a product built by the Nash Motors Company, or Kenosha, Wisconsin.  Originally the Jeffery Motors Company - incidentally the company that built the first "Rambler" automobiles in the early 1900's, Nash was named f...