Family Tree Firsts is a genealogy blog following the adventures of Brian Parotto of Hampshire, Ill., a budding genealogist, as he works his way through the Family Tree University curriculum and reports on his family history research.
This is the last in a series of posts on my journey through my mother’s family. There have been twists and there were surprises, but I have saved the best for last. During our holiday break I spent a whole day locked in my father’s study using his scanner. My mother and my mother-in-law were there handing me pictures and documents to scan. We were very productive, and I am still cataloguing all we did. I decided that this was the perfect time to tell …
Over the past two posts I have shared with you my investigation into my mother’s family tree. This week you will discover just how close I have been to my third-great-grandmother. The most enlightening part of this adventure was when I found Berthena Cannon Morris’s grave, and realized I knew it. Not just that it looked familiar, but that it was extremely familiar, like an old friend you hadn’t seen in forever but you always wondered where they were. I realized that I had played …
In my last post I talked about my search for Edward Darnell Arvin, and how it led me to a different ancestor instead. In this segment I discover how spelling does matter, what a good friend Google is, and that Find A Grave can suck away an afternoon. The census records were very enlightening. I knew from the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) database that Julia Ann Cannon Arvin was James’s granddaughter through his son Joseph Cannon. Check them off the census lists. Then …
A few weeks ago I told you about how I broke down a brick wall by thinking outside the box… well, outside the box for me. Through the FTU Power Course I took on breaking down brick walls I learned you should look in places where records for ancestor maybe that are not in the regular places to look. Researching unusual databases, newspapers, magazines, court records, and real life locations are great ways to get off the beaten path and make family history discoveries. I …
I became fascinated with the field of genetics in high school biology class. Mr. Crawford was a task master for his honors bio kids, but I never learned so much nor enjoyed a teacher more. In the beginning we learned about Punnett Squares, then advanced into pedigree charts to show heredity in familial lines. Sounds fun, right? I continued to push myself in the sciences and attended Indiana University with the intention of getting an undergraduate degree in Sports Medicine and to become a high …
The holidays have come and gone, and once again we went home to the grandparents. My husband and I are lucky that we have all our parents living in the same town. It makes the logistics for scheduling visits much easier, and we feel very lucky that we don’t have to figure out whom to visit when and where. There was even a white Christmas; something that would not have happened if we had stayed in Virginia. To top it off, this year we even …
I had the daunting task this week of taking my car, and both children, to the dealership to get the trusty commuter car worked on for my husband. It was going to be an afternoon of fun, let me tell you. After packing the box of Legos and the video games for the kids I turned my attention to how I was going to keep myself busy for several hours. Can you guess what I did? That’s right, I furthered my genealogical education. While I …
If I could have my way, I would be a perpetual student. I enjoy learning and trying new things. Jumping into genealogy with two feet, however meant I had large holes in my knowledge base. Yes, I knew how to do research for college papers and my hobbies, but it soon became apparent that just being able to get the information was not enough. There was an entire new lexicon to learn and an all new ways to do things. There are a lot of …
In case you couldn’t tell from the title, I hail from Indiana. I lived there my whole life, well, until I was eight and my parents forced this cute country kid into the jungles of suburban Maryland. For 5 years I went home every summer and split time between my two grandmothers (shown here in May 1988). These summers were what it means to be a kid. There were afternoons of climbing trees, swimming in ponds, catching lightning bugs in jars, the quintessential Midwestern summer. …
December 2, 2011 About a year ago we started a new feature here at Family Tree University. The Family Tree Firsts blog was created to allow us to follow along with a newbie genealogist as she began the process of discovering her family history. Nancy Shively served as our first-ever Family Tree Firsts blogger. If you’ve been following along, you’ve watched as Nancy reunited her dad with his long-lost family, took her first research trip, and blossomed into a full-fledged family historian. Nancy’s no longer …