Genealogy
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Sunday, November 25th, 2012There are many, many ways to gauge the value of a genealogically interesting document. There are many terms as well—primary, secondary, original, derivative… What is often missed is that it is almost always impossible to use one of these terms for a whole document. Every statement made in a document is different. Some are in [...]
Accounting for the Past
Sunday, November 18th, 2012This week I used an unusual source. A 130-year-old personal bank book. It might not seem to be a likely piece of genealogical material let alone a treasure trove but one should never leave a stone unturned. Sometimes things were saved simply because they were never thrown away. Other times they were saved because they [...]
Veterans
Sunday, November 11th, 2012Today we mark the anniversary of the end of The Great War, also known as The War to End All Wars. Before the the 1940s, it was The World War. Today we think about veterans. We think about the men and women, living and dead who served their country. As genealogists, we should be quicker [...]
Notes to Self
Monday, November 5th, 2012As I research I often think of things to do, fragments of plans occur to me, possible research strategies start to form and ideas pop into my head. In short I think of things that I can’t do right at the moment. I probably have that in common with roughly 100% of people who do [...]
Mixed Motives
Sunday, October 28th, 2012Last week I brought up motivations. Motives can be important and I don’t mean ours, though they might be important too. I mean our ancestors’ motives. It is a question that gets asked about the accused. Did he have a motive? We ask questions about our ancestors motives all the time. Why did they emigrate? [...]
Observations on Mysteries
Sunday, October 21st, 2012The title for this post is stolen with pride. I’ve been reading Believing is Seeing (Observations on the Mysteries of Photography), by the director Errol Morris. I knew I had to read the book after hearing several interviews with him that touched on his almost maniacal pursuit of the correct order of a pair of [...]
Conserving Ancestors
Sunday, October 14th, 2012A few weeks ago I was looking at a photograph with a client. It isn’t your ordinary snapshot. It measures about one foot by three feet. It is also about one hundred years old. It also had a problem. It has been rolled up in a cardboard tube for decades and is now both a [...]
Home Away from Home
Sunday, October 7th, 2012The other day I heard a book mentioned. The title was At Home in the Universe. There are two books by that title and I have no way of knowing which one had been mentioned but it struck me as an interesting title. Home can mean many things, where you grew up, where you live [...]
The Surface and the Deep
Sunday, September 30th, 2012One sailor says to another as they looked out on the ocean, “That’s a lot a water.” The other one replied, “Yep, and that’s just the top of it.” Sometimes we’re awed by the top of the water. We forget that there is more to it than that. To understand the surface, we need to [...]
Two Births
Sunday, September 23rd, 2012Last week I wrote about “the two deaths.” This week it has occurred to me that I could try to turn that on its head. If the concept of two deaths can make sense, what about the idea of two births? The first birth, like the first death, would be physical. The second death is [...]
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