Advice - 52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History - Week #52

Week #52 – Advice. Do you have any advice for future generations who may be researching your family? For example, was there a name change or a significant relocation in your past? This is intended to be a very flexible question. Answer it any way you wish.

Hopefully, my research will be handed down in some way so that future researchers will have a head start. One bit of advice is to use the message boards and blogs to make contacts with others researching the same families. One of the most fun and rewarding parts of researching my family has been finding others that are interested in the same families or surnames. Be careful sharing information on the living though as once it leaves your hands you can't control how much of it is published.

Watch out for different spellings of names even within the same family and don't assume that those that spell the name the same are related. While this applies to any surname, I have found my Rohrer family especially difficult to trace due to different spellings. I finally had a breakthrough by searching on one of the more unusual first names and found the name spelled "Rear"!

One surname with an interesting twist is my Pulskamp family. Their surname was originally Krampe, but as owners of the Pulskamp farm in Germany, they took the name Pulskamp. The farm in Germany eventually passed to Bernhard Brüwer/Brewer who then took the Pulskamp name. My Pulskamp family kept the name when they came to the US.

My final piece of advice would be to not just collect names, but to find out more about the individuals behind the names. That's what makes the research truly interesting. Well, hard to believe that this concludes the 52 Weeks prompts! On to 2012!

This a weekly challenge from GeneaBloggers called 52 weeks of personal genealogy history.

Holiday Events - 52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History - Week #51

Week #51 – Holiday Events. Where did your family gather for the Christmas or Hanukkah as a child? Which family members and friends attended the event?

For many years, we used to alternate between my family's house in Central Florida and my cousin's house in Miami. Christmas dinner was usually just attended by the two families with my parents, sister, aunt, uncle, two cousins, and myself. When we were at my family's home, friends from the neighborhood used to stop by during the day.

This is a weekly challenge from GeneaBloggers called 52 weeks of personal genealogy history.

Holiday Gifts - 52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History - Week #50

Week #50 – Holiday Gifts. Describe any memorable Christmas or Hanukkah gifts you received as a child.

There always seemed to be at least one big surprise on Christmas. The ones that stand out the most are a new Schwinn 3-speed bike that I rode for many years, a small stereo, and a camera. The stereo had a turntable with attached speakers and I used it all the way through my first year of college in the dorms. The camera was a Kodak Brownie camera that used flash cubes. I took my first pictures with it and have some fun pictures of my family and my school years thanks to that camera.

This is a weekly challenge from GeneaBloggers called 52 weeks of personal genealogy history.

Historical Events - 52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History - Week #49

Week #49 – Historical Events. Describe a memorable national historical event from your childhood. How old were you and how did you process this event? How did it affect your family?

The most memorable historical event during my childhood has to be the moon landing in 1969. My Dad worked for NASA and was very involved in the Apollo program. I grew up on the Florida Space Coast and many of my friend's parents also worked at the Kennedy Space Center. I was ten years old when the first moon landing occurred and we didn't have a way to record the event on the TV. My Dad took pictures of the TV instead!

This is a weekly challenge from GeneaBloggers called 52 weeks of personal genealogy history.

Blogiversary - January 4, 2012

I just realized that my first Blogiversary is coming up on January 4, 2012. I've learned quite a lot in the past year about blogging and my family tree. Highlights have been "chatting" with some of the other bloggers and sharing tips.

My biggest success since starting the blog has been finding information about two of the WWI vets in my family - Julius Councill who was killed in 1918 and Edward Creeden who served in the US Army, Marines, and the Canadian Expeditionary Forces. People that commented or emailed on my posts were a big help in wading through the NARA records and someone even pointed me to a picture of Julius.

The blog has helped me organize my notes on my surnames, although that's definitely still a work in progress! Doing some of the Geneablogger prompts has been a big help in realizing how much information I've gathered and in spurring me on to locate new info. I learned a lot about my family while doing the Fearless Females series of prompts in particular. The 52 Weeks prompts have been fun and although I'm behind at the moment, I will finish them!

Thanks to all who emailed, posted and followed my blog. Hope to hear more from you in the coming year!

Thanksgiving - 52 Weeks of Personal Genealogy & History - Week #48

Week 48. Thanksgiving. What was on your family’s Thanksgiving table? Do you serve the same dishes now as your family served in the past?

We always had turkey, stuffing, sweet potato casserole, green beans, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes and gravy for Thanksgiving dinner. For dessert, we had pumpkin pie and sometimes mincemeat pie and other sweets. We still have the same dishes, but in recent years we've had sweet potato and pecan pie for dessert.

This is a weekly challenge from GeneaBloggers called 52 weeks of personal genealogy history.