We are approaching the summer season in the US and for many of us that means family gatherings.  Between the countless scorched hot dogs and vats of potato salad we will find time to sit around a picnic table and catch each other up on the seminal events that have shaped our lives since we last saw each other.  This is often a time to pass around the new baby and to remember those that passed on.

There is something reassuring about stepping away from our normal hurried existence and spending time with our extended family, those we see but a few times a year and those we see but a few times in our life.  Making connections across those distant lines makes the world a bit smaller, a bit friendlier and more in sync.

These are the times when the conversations are slower, the laughter is a little louder, and the smiles are more heartfelt.  This is where we share stories and bond to one another across generations and family lines.  We are social creatures and gatherings like this are instinctual, it brings a sense of comfort, security and harmony to bring the herd together.

There may not be a better time to advance your own family history or genealogy research than at these events.  Take some time to print or draw your family tree and highlight not only what you know, but where you still have some holes to fill.  Make sure that everyone at your gathering knows that you are doing research and you are interested in their information.

We all have a piece of the puzzle, even siblings have something unique and different to share about Mom and Dad that is meaningful and worthwhile.  Take this opportunity to get people talking to each other about your family, this is not just about you getting the data you want, it is about establishing and re-establishing connections to generations and insuring that the legacy of those generations is preserved.

How many time have you stared at a tattered and faded group photo from years ago and wondered who those mystery people were?  As the resident genealogist or family historian you bear this responsibility for this generation, you are responsible to get an image of this gathering, identify each person in the image and preserve that information.

So this year, before the first to go start packing up the kids tell them that you are interested, you are interested in their stories, their photos, their memories.  And then most importantly, follow through.

Geneabloggers has an open thread on  Serial Entrepreneurship and the Genealogy Industry that looks at the rising number of genealogy related internet sites and software tools.  A few good questions are posed about whether this spike in attention is a good thing, does the incubator model prove helpful to the genealogy community, and also asks about the products being produced and the role of the community in developing these products.

By trade I have been leading enterprise software development for nearly 20 years and as such I likely have a bias towards new technology and see the importance of technological innovation.  The current wave of technological innovation has occurred in the development of social networking.  The nouveau riche of this era are the many startup software companies that have gone from 0 to astronomical valuations in record time.  Facebook is valued at about $50 billion (with a B) and Twitter is valued around $10B.  This kind of money will obviously attract a lot of prospectors seeking to provide value-added services of add-on capabilities.

The upside of this for the genealogy community is that we will see a lot of new tools coming out.  Genealogy is uniquely positioned to see an influx of tools and technologies for two primary reasons.  The first is that genealogy is fundamentally about the connections between people and this is also fundamentally what the social networking movement is about.  There are many niche and nuanced sites within the social networking space and genealogy is primed for an entrant in this space.  I expect Ancestry.com to bring out new capabilities that focus on it’s membership and their connections to each other.

The second fundamental reason why the genealogy community is primed for technological innovation is because at it’s core genealogy is about data and data is the currency of computing.  What made genealogy difficult for years was that the data we were mining for was often buried deep and it took long hard hours of physical effort to unearth that data.  You traditionally had to physically move to different geographic locations to locate and study books or microfilms of books.  The computerized indexing of this data has had a profound impact on how research is done, I would argue that nothing has done more to further our understanding of the collective history of humanity.

Rapid innovation leaves in it’s wake ideas that did not pass the test of time and one particular downside is that the community can get distracted and confused by the sudden well-spring of new capabilities.  How can we know which tools to use?  When is it safe to migrate to new platforms and try out new capabilities?

The genealogy community has always prided itself on quality research and there are many staunch defenders of the proper methods for research, citation and verification of data as facts.  The same technological advancements that make it easier to perform quality research make it easier to perform sloppy research as well.  Serious genealogical study used to be reserved for those willing to make a significant investment in time and effort, when all of the data was tucked away in dusty books in faraway places it took a serious commitment to bring it back to the light.  Today, serial entrepreneurs have given rise to the capabilities that make it remarkably easy for many people with a casual interest in genealogy to quickly assemble an accurate view of their family history.

Innovation has reduced the barrier of entry for many amateur genealogists which overall I view as a positive.  I welcome all that are interested into the community and I do not feel that everyone has to do work of the same level of sophistication.  I would like to see transparency into how well researched given “facts” are but I am willing to live with the rise of factually inaccurate noise in order to also raise up the level of factually accurate information.  As we bring more family experts into the picture the inaccurate noise becomes largely self-correcting.  Wikipedia, while not perfect, is a prime example of how this works.

The genealogy community has proven to be willing to invest in their passion.  We were long ago recognized for being willing to make journeys of thousands of miles, often at considerable cost, to further our data collection habit.  Today, the cost of an Ancestry.com World Deluxe Membership represents a significant investment as well.  As long as this community is willing to invest then the entrepreneurs will find out what they want and find new ways to deliver it; better, faster, cheaper.  In the end this is good for the community and good for the collective knowledge of human history.

Geneabloggers daily prompt is for Thankful Thursday and that got me to thinking about what I am thankful for in my research. There are many thankful roads I could have traveled but for this post I settled on the Family Antiquities road.  I can recall as a young boy sitting with my paternal grandfather and having him show me a hand-drawn family tree that outlined the generations that had collectively resulted in, well, me.  I remember understanding that this document was important by the way that my grandfather handled it, I was too young to understand the information and what it all actually meant though it was clear that it was an important document to our family.

I have that original document in my collection today and it is a clear and vital link to my past.  Once it became evident that I was taking an interest in our family history I became the collection point for many family artifacts.  When my grandmother was moved into an assisted living arrangement we found boxes of old photographs, newspaper clippings, funeral cards, all the things that genealogists salivate for, amongst the stacks of birthday polaroids and old photo albums.

Within that collection I also found some old documents, some very old and in Old German script that had obviously been written with a fountain pen or quill.  As I pieced this collection of documents together, I refer to them now as our Family Antiquities, they began to tell the story of my paternal ancestor that emigrated from Bavaria in 1849.  It is interesting that my family collected and preserved these documents and not others.  Martin Voelker was my ggg-grandfather and I have a several original documents that provide insight into his life.  I have some photos but otherwise relatively little for his son Adam who was my gg-grandfather.

Being presented those original documents, in their cryptic Old German, definitely helped to push me down the genealogy path, to peak my curiosity and desire to understand more about who these people were, what they were like, and how they helped to shape our family.  For my ancestors who viewed these documents as valuable for future generations I am eternally thankful.  For Martin’s desire to keep some record of his ancestral home in Sailauf, Bavaria, I am thankful.  For Martin’s son Adam and his son Conrad who followed through in the preservation of these artifacts that grow more valuable with each passing generation, I am thankful.

I have made scans of Martin’s original documents and house them in the Antiquities Archive on this site.  I am thankful for having this connection and for those that have preserved and I am honored to join them in keeping this tradition intact.  Has your research led to your own antiquities archive?

One of the joys of genealogy is being able to look back into time through old photographs, the visual images bring a depth and meaning to the cold hard facts that we so often deal with.  It is not uncommon to come into contact with old photographs and documents that have been kept in boxes for years.  Many of these artifacts have become frayed and tattered with time, all paper based documents will decay over time.  Modern archival papers are much more capable of preserving photographs and documents that we might create today but the photographs and documents that were produced 50 or more years ago were not designed for archival and will suffer much more damage.

Interestingly, documents from the early 1800′s and earlier were often made of  thicker and more durable paper or cloth simply due to the simplistic manufacturing processes and may be even more durable than those manufactured papers of the late 19th and early 20th century.

Handling photographs and documents

One of the most important things you can do in handling old photographs and documents is to wear a pair of clean soft gloves.  The oils that naturally occur within your skin are detrimental to the documents and will accelerate their decay.  This is not a question of how clean your hands are, it is simply a matter of naturally occurring oils from your skin coming into contact with these documents.

The next most important aspect of proper handling of these photographs and documents is to simply treat the very gently.  Paper and fabrics typically become more brittle over time and any unnecessary movement or handling can result in damage.  It is not uncommon to find documents that have been folded, photographs that have bent corners etc…  As tempting as it may be it is often best to leave this as they are, do not try to straighten them as you are just as likely to tear or separate that component than you are to straighten it.

Separating old photographs and documents from each other is also important.  Many different chemicals and inks can cross-contaminate and further accelerate the decay of each other, it is best to take that shoe box full of documents and put them into an acid-free archival album or storage sleeve.

Archival Storage Bags

The proper preserving of photographs and documents requires that you seal them from the elements that will accelerate their decay.  Typically, this is best accomplished by sealing these documents into a polypropylene bag .  Polypropylene will keep the destructive elements off of your photographs and documents while still allowing them to be fully visible as the material is crystal clear.  You can purchase these bags in a number of sizes and ideally will keep one photograph or document per bag.  Keeping one per bag will also allow you to write on or place a sticker of important information about the contents of the bag without marring the original document.

Preserving photographs and documents that are your family heirlooms will help to insure that these artifacts will survive for future generations and provide an indelible link to your family’s past.

Do you prune your family tree?  Do you keep your family tree, and your primary research, limited to those of your direct paternal and maternal lines?  Do you allow only blood relatives in your tree?  Alternatively, do you let your family tree grow wild and connect in all sorts of in-laws and out-laws through marriages and do you trace those families as well?

I have personally chosen the latter route and have agreed to bring in everyone that I can connect through a marriage.  This clearly opens me up to an exponentially larger number of individuals ultimately but I admit that I do not chase them all down with the same energy.  Clearly, I have spent considerable time on my wife’s family as well as the family of my grandmothers and their siblings.

I do place a special emphasis on being able to trace my paternal line, and all it’s descendants, cleanly and have done that.  I am also very intrigued by the connections that come up when I pull in the marriages and the siblings by marriage.  Through this means I can draw a connection to Davy Crockett, a lieutenant colonel that died at Valley Forge under George Washington, and if we believe all of the data one particular line that is researched back into the 14th century European nobility.

This for me adds spice to the genealogy quest and I have met some wonderful people along the way who were not blood relatives but distant connections through married cousins 4 times removed and the like.  Having spent time this way I have begun to appreciate that the “six degrees of separation” is likely more than just an anecdotal observation.

Where do you stand?  I am interested in how many of you keep a neat and tidy family tree of blood relative and how many let their tree grow wild.

An open letter to Ancestry.com

Ancestry.com is an incredibly valuable resource, their online collection of records is certainly the most extensive collection available to the general public.  I have been a subscriber to Ancestry.com for several years and one of the best innovations that they have come out with were the Ancestry.com family trees and the ability to link data from their records base and other family trees at the click of a mouse.  There is perhaps nothing that has grown my collection of data faster, and more accurately, than this method.

I am a paid subscriber to Ancestry.com, my ID on Ancestry.com is KYVoelkers, feel free to drop me a line there, and I support their business model.  There is one aspect of the business model for Ancestry.com that befuddles me and that is why they limit the viewing of family trees to paid subscribers.  Opening up all Ancestry.com family trees to public view, with owner permissions of course, would serve a highly valuable public service and would certainly drive more subscriptions to Ancestry.com.  Further, if Ancestry.com were to make their family tree data search engine friendly they would drive additional traffic, and hence future subscribers, to their site.

I like to make my research available to others and have used a number of different software programs over the years to not only house my data but also to make it available online.  The tools at Ancestry.com are perhaps not robust enough to satisfy the most demanding researcher but the value of of their online family trees for making their research visible can not be understated.  I currently maintain my data in two places, one at Ancestry.com and another for general online public viewing.  This implies that I am trying to keep two data sets in sync and jumping through unnecessary hoops to make this happen.  The ability to use the Ancestry.com tools to find and update my family tree from their records base means that most of my updates are now coming through this channel and I can either export a GEDCOM from Ancestry.com and load it into my other program or perform dual data entry, neither option is ideal.  What would be ideal is for Ancestry.com to open up their family trees and make them viewable to the public, and watch their subscriber base rise with it.  Seems like a solid business decision to me anyway.

On April 2, 2012 the National Archives will release the 1940 Census data, which according to law must be kept private for 72 years.  Many genealogists are eagerly awaiting this once in a decade event.  For many this will help piece together some missing elements of their puzzle and it will certainly open up some new questions for many others as well.

Each enumeration of the census asks slightly different questions and the details asked in the 1940 census were as follows:

1. LOCATION: Street, avenue, road, etc.
2. LOCATION: House number (in cities and towns)
3. HOUSEHOLD DATA: Number of household in order of visitation
4. HOUSEHOLD DATA: Home owned (O) or rented (R)
5. HOUSEHOLD DATA: Value of home, if owned, or monthly rental, if rented
6. HOUSEHOLD DATA: Does this household live on a farm? (Yes or No)
7. NAME: Name of each person whose usual place of residence on April 1, 1940, was in this household.
8. RELATION: Relationship of this person to the head of the household, as wife, daughter, father, mother-in-law, grandson, lodger, lodger’s wife, servant, hired hand, etc.
9. PERSONAL DESCRIPTION: Sex — Male (M), Female (F)
10. PERSONAL DESCRIPTION: Color or race
11. PERSONAL DESCRIPTION: Age at last birthday
12. PERSONAL DESCRIPTION: Marital status — Single (S), Married (M), Widowed (Wd), Divorced (D)
13. EDUCATION: Attended school or college any time since March 1, 1940 (Yes or No)
14. EDUCATION: Highest grade of school completed
15. PLACE OF BIRTH: If born in the United States, give State, Territory, or possession. If foreign born, give country in which birthplace was situated on January 1, 1937. Distinguish Canada-French from Canada-English and Irish Free State (Eire) from Northern Ireland.
16. CITIZENSHIP: Citizenship of the foreign born
17. RESIDENCE APRIL 1, 1935: City, town, or village having 2,500 or more inhabitants. Enter “R” for all other places
18. RESIDENCE APRIL 1, 1935: County
19. RESIDENCE APRIL 1, 1935: State (or Territory or foreign country
20. RESIDENCE APRIL 1, 1935: On a farm? (Yes or No)
21. PERSONS 14 YEARS OLD AND OVER — EMPLOYMENT STATUS: Was this person AT WORK for pay or profit in private or nonemergency Govt. work during week of March 24-30? (Yes or No)
22. PERSONS 14 YEARS OLD AND OVER — EMPLOYMENT STATUS: If not, was he at work on, or assigned to, public EMERGENCY WORK (WPA, NYA, CCC, etc.) during week of March 24-30? (Yes or No)
23. PERSONS 14 YEARS OLD AND OVER — EMPLOYMENT STATUS: Was this person SEEKING WORK? (Yes or No)
24. PERSONS 14 YEARS OLD AND OVER — EMPLOYMENT STATUS: If not seeking work, did he HAVE A JOB, business, etc.? (Yes or No)
25. PERSONS 14 YEARS OLD AND OVER — EMPLOYMENT STATUS: Indicate whether engaged in home housework (H) in school (S), unable to work (U), or other (O)
26. PERSONS 14 YEARS OLD AND OVER — EMPLOYMENT STATUS: Number of hours worked during week of March 24-30, 1940
27. PERSONS 14 YEARS OLD AND OVER — EMPLOYMENT STATUS: Duration of unemploymen up to March 30, 1940 – in weeks
28. PERSONS 14 YEARS OLD AND OVER — EMPLOYMENT STATUS: Occupation: Trade, profession, or particular kind of work
29. PERSONS 14 YEARS OLD AND OVER — EMPLOYMENT STATUS: Industry: Industry of business
30. PERSONS 14 YEARS OLD AND OVER — EMPLOYMENT STATUS: Class of worker
31. PERSONS 14 YEARS OLD AND OVER — EMPLOYMENT STATUS: Number of weeks worked in 1939 (Equivalent full-time weeks)
32. PERSONS 14 YEARS OLD AND OVER — EMPLOYMENT STATUS: INCOME IN 1939: Amount of money wages or salary received (including commissions)
33. PERSONS 14 YEARS OLD AND OVER — EMPLOYMENT STATUS: INCOME IN 1939: Did this person receive income of $50 or more from sources other than money wages or salary? (Yes or No)
34. Number of Farm Schedule

There are the usual and expected questions contained here but there are also a few surprises.  One surprise is the amount of questions that deal with employment status.  It should be noted that the Great Depression saw unemployment rates that topped 22% in the late 1930′s and then had edged back down to 15% by 1940 but clearly the Census Bureau was interested in understanding more about the overall return to work of the population at large.

I also found it interesting that a question was asked about income for each individual over the age of 14.  This will be very interesting data to see plotted across a family or a geography.  I expect that will also have a bit more validity than it might in today’s world.  I can not prove it but I believe that it is accurate to say that the Census Bureau and the enumerators that went out into the field were likely held with higher esteem than those that perform this work today.

An Article in the journal Science recently estimated the total information storage of human existence at about 295 exabytes, give or take a terabyte.  For this information to of any meaningful value we have to put an exabyte into perspective.  Most of us have become comfortable with the concept of a gigabyte, typically home computer hard drives are sold in gigabytes with 500GB, or 500 gigabytes, being a fairly common designation.

The “byte” hierarchy goes like this:

1 byte = 1 character
1024 bytes = 1 kilobyte
1024 kilobytes = 1 megabyte
1024 megabytes = 1 gigabyte
1024 gigabytes = 1 terabyte
1024 terabytes  = 1 petabyte
1024 petabytes = 1 exabyte
1024 exabytes = 1 zettabyte
1024 zettabytes = 1 yottabytes

These are terms that many of us are not that familiar with so let me try and put this into the perspective of something we are familiar with.  Roughly ten years ago we were buying hard drives in the hundreds of megabytes, today we are buying hard drives in the hundreds of gigabytes and at this rate within a single generation we will be dealing with information in the hundreds of exabytes.  The rate of growth here is phenomenal.  If a byte was an equivalent to an inch then this is what the progression above would look like:

1 byte = 1 character = 1 inch
1024 bytes = 1 kilobyte = 85 feet
1024 kilobytes = 1 megabyte = 28 yards
1024 megabytes = 1 gigabyte = 0.94 kilometers
1024 gigabytes = 1 terabyte = 636 miles
1024 terabytes  = 1 petabyte = 651,000 miles
1024 petabytes = 1 exabyte = 666,894,336 miles = 1 light hours
1024 exabytes = 1 zettabyte = 682,899,800,064 miles = 0.6 light years
1024 zettabytes = 1 yottabytes = 699,289,395,265,536 = 700 light years

The point here is that the geometric progression is staggering, we have moved from being comfortable talking about megabytes into  gigabytes with terabyte vernacular now becoming commonplace.  Once we graduate from terabytes to petabytes, and we will, the enormity of the vast storage starts to move beyond our comprehension.

So what does the digital media explosion have to do with genealogy?  It has everything to do with the genealogists innate desire to be a hoarder and to retain all things.  As we move into the digital millenium this will become an increasingly daunting challenge for the genealogy researcher.  The hardware manufacturers will still run ahead of us but who among us is prepared to manage this much stuff?  As we migrate to fully digital it has been noted that we are far more prone to capture everything; to keep the videocam wideopen for the entire soccer game, to shoot 100+ photos at 10MB+ each so that we get just the right one, etc…  The result of this digital excess is that we are consuming bandwidth at an alarming rate.  I purchase an HD videocam last year and found that a 3 minute video at the highest resolution clip clocked in at about 1GB!

The point of all this is that as genealogists we need to get in front of this curve, while the majority of our collection today may be shoeboxes full of black and white photos, we should fully expect that our hobby will morph into something much more digitally storage intensive.  Thousands of digital images and video clips of todays generation will be lost in the coming years due to improper handling of these artifacts and misunderstanding about the relative fragile nature of a digital artifact.  We have all become accustom to acid-free paper and polyethlyene bags for archival storage of paper artifacts and it is time for each of us to get smart about long-term digital storage.

I will spend more time on this topic as it is a critically important one for each of us.  In the meantime, take a look at your collection and ask yourself what contingencies is your digital archive prepared for.

In a prior post I had written about my own use of paid professional genealogy research.  I found this researcher from participating in a geography specific forum.  I knew from other posts that he had extensive experience in the specific region of Germany that I knew my ancestors were from and I had also read several reviews of his work from others that had used his services.  This knowledge made my selection rather straightforward and I strongly advise you to obtain references before sending anyone your money.

So how can you find a qualified individual without this type of insight?  One avenue that can provide helpful is to contact the Association of Professional Genealogistswho can help point you to a researcher.  APG charges fees for membership and requires members to adhere to a code of ethics which can help to weed out those that do not take their work seriously.

The APG provides it’s members with resources to assist them in advancing their craft, honing their writing skills and keeping current with the latest in resources for the professional researcher.  You may also want to ask whether the researcher you are about to hire has any professional certifications or affiliations.

A few things you should consider in working with a professional:

• Always insist on a written agreement for the services that will be performed, the fixed costs, the variable costs and any limits you want placed on those expenses.  Be clear about these limits, if you can only spend $500 then make sure that is clear up front.
• Be clear about the deliverables that the researcher will prepare and how they will be prepared.  Ask for a sample of what has been delivered to previous clients.
• Ask about how failure to find any meaningful data will be handled.  This can be of particular importance to everyone being satisfied with the work.  It is quite possible that the researcher will reach a dead-end and not be able to provide you with any data that you might consider particularly valuable.  You should understand that in most cases researchers are compensated based on the time that they spent doing their research and not the quantity or quality of information that they return.
• Lastly, you should understand who will own the copyright to the work that is produced.  In most cases the researcher will retain this copyright and for individuals that are paying for research for a personal basis this may be perfectly acceptable.  Others may be paying for research that they intend to publish and if so copyright ownership is a much more important topic.

The currency of genealogical research is the common set of data or facts that is typified by the data elements and relationships identified within the GEDCOM format.  Date of birth, date of death, surname, mother’s maiden name, place of origin, these are but a few of the very common facts of information that form the basis of genealogical research.

As important as these facts are there is something far more important that it often overlooked, the opportunity to capture the essence of a person, the thoughts, ideas and philosophies that make each of us our own unique individual.  Who has not looked backed upon their own ancestry chart and wondered about their great-grandparents and the childhood they experienced, what they saw, what they experienced, the joys and sorrows that they shared.

For those that have passed it is often difficult enough to piece together the simple facts, date of birth and date of death.  Sometimes the discovery of a marriage date or a census entry of a previously unknown cousin can feel like a significant revelation!  How much more meaningful would our research be if we had a written testimonial from our ancestors that spoke to what they thought, what they felt, what they believed in, what they struggled with.  While we can never recapture what did not exist, we all have the opportunity, and dare I say responsibility, to capture what does exist and preserve that.

Every genealogy student and family historian has an obligation to preserve your family history.  I urge you to seek out your oldest living relatives and talk with them.  Interview them in a manner that is comfortable to them and ask questions that go beyond the facts and that help you understand the personas, the thoughts, the struggles and triumphs that bring life, character and interest to their GEDCOM facts.  As interesting as it is to know that your ggg grandmother Sallie May was born in 1812 and died at the tender age of 34 in 1846, how much more meaningful would it be to have a written record of Sallie’s own thoughts and perspectives?

For genealogical researchers it can be difficult to project into the future but we should recognize that the only way that this type of information will be retained is if we document it and publish it.  The genealogical community often looks upon themselves as the detectives of the past and we may be uncomfortable in documenting the present but we must recognize that today’s present is tomorrows past.  When it is clear that your family looks upon you as the family archivist that confers upon you a responsibility to document not only the past but also the present in preparation for the future.   Each of the individuals that we wonder about, whose stories will too often go untold, are those whose stories we let slip between our fingers.  As our family archivists we have an obligation to help future generations understand who our family members were and thus who they are.  Go capture their stories and document them while they can be told in the first-person.

The vast majority of software programs that we work with in our research are oriented around collecting facts not a holistic view of an individual person.  It is up to each of us to augment our core set of facts with a more free-form capture of information about these individuals so that subsequent generations have a sense of the values, traditions and human qualities of these people.  My wife once asked me about my interest in genealogical research by asking, “why do you do this, you don’t even know these people?”  My response is that one day someone will ask the same questions about us and if we want our grandchildren’s children to know something about who we were and what we stood for then we need to write that down.  So go and talk to your oldest relatives, capture their stories and then capture your own.