Welcome to week 17! DNA is our topic this week. It has figured prominently in the news over the last few years. Multiple stories have been written about its use as a tool for cracking cold cases as well as identification of John and Jane “Doe’s. Much has been discussed about the ethics of DNA…
Should be a Movie!
Week 16 – I was thinking today that this year (and this month) are flying by! While it’s been relatively mild in my part of New York State, it’s also nice to see trees and flowers starting to bud. Warmer weather is starting to creep into the cold and summer will be here soon. This…
Solitude
The topic for this week is “Solitude”. My grandfather’s brother, my great-uncle Ollie. Ollie was six years younger than him. Most of what I know has come from a few stories from my grandma, and what I’ve found from records research. Ollie was born in Elba, New York, the fourth child of Freeman and Minnie…
Begins with a Vowel
The topic for this week is “Begins with A Vowel”. It always surprised me that three out of four of my grandparents ended up in the same small farming community, Elba, New York. The town has 2500 acres of muckland soil that supplies the onions giving Elba the title of “Onion Capital of the World”,…
Light A Candle
Wow – we are thirteen weeks into this year! I am grateful we are coming into springtime here in the Northeast part of the country. And also, my favorite time of year – baseball season!! This week’s topic is “Light A Candle”. The practice of lighting a candle is closely associated with remembrance of our…
Genealogy and Memberships
This week’s topic is about membership. I was thinking about my family and what groups they belonged to. My father was a truck driver, and Teamsters member. Then there is my maternal great-grandfather, a member of the Engineers Local, and the Fraternal Order of Eagles in the early 1900’s. I wasn’t familiar with the Eagles,…
Lucky
This week’s topic is “Lucky”. There are quite a few things that pop into my head when I hear that word. There’s the luck of things like a winning lottery ticket, or a weather front that doesn’t drop multiple feet of snow where you live. There’s the luck of dropping a piece of toast on…
Translation
My blog this week is short as I spent the last few days attending the RootsTech conference virtually. It is a free genealogical conference (yes, free). The only cost is our time. It is and was time well spent! The topics are diverse. They are meant to help levels interested in family history. Amy Johnson…
Gone Too Soon
It’s hard to believe we are nine weeks into the new year! This week’s topic is “Gone Too Soon”. This is a bittersweet one for me. I think of my mother and how I would have loved more time with her. I was a child when she died from complications of diabetes. My mother and…
I Can Identify
This week’s topic is “I Can Identify”. This made me think about my maternal grandmother’s parents. I’ve mentioned before how I knew little of her family, outside of their names and where she was born. I would pick up the research and put it back down again. Ironically, I live in the city where she…