The Steelers had a big day on Saturday, and so did I.
One of my hobbies is Genealogy. Some days when you're researching your family Genealogy, you move forward in the game, by finding a name here, a small piece of information, a little hint that allows you to find out more. Other days, you score a touchdown, and find a huge piece of information that alters the course of your research. Once in a while, you score the equivalent of a Steeler Win and you find that piece of information that is the ship your ancestor came over on - the name, the date or anything related to that trip they took across the ocean that was the beginning of your life here in America.
My relatives took many journeys, some from Ireland, others from Germany and some from Italy. I do most of my research on my Irish side of the family, since those are the relatives most familiar to me. If you aren't famous, like the Rooney family, your poor Irish history is pretty difficult to find, combined with sparse record keeping in the 1800's. About 2 months ago, I did score a touchdown in my Irish history by finding a lead in where my Kelly family (the Smith's of Irish names) possibly came from. I was excited and thrilled because it's the first thing I really have "discovered" on my own, without help from my genealogy cousin, who's done a ton of research before me.
In the past two months, I've been concentrating on the Italian side of my history. This is the side I know the least about, but since they came here in the 1900's, there are likely to be more records to be found. Unfortunately, even though the 1930 census became available last year, I can't find my father's family at all. This should have been easy - I thought I even knew the street they lived on - but inexplicably, they aren't there. Where could my grandparents and three children (one of those is my dad) have been in 1930? I was disappointed and discouraged, but I continued to sign on to my Ancestry account several times a week, typing in names and searching for information. I've searched the Ellis Island site and can't find anything relating to my grandfather, even though I know the approximate year he came here. The thing about researching on the Internet is that search engines are not perfect. Sometimes, finding information depends on how you type a name in or how the transcriber read the words on the ship's manifest or the census report.
The big event for this past weekend was the Steelers-Ravens playoff game. Sometimes when I watch the game, I wear earphones to hear the radio play by play, so I don't have to ask so many questions (because even after 33 years of watching this game, I don't think I'll ever understand it!) After the first half, I was frustrated, so I got up and logged onto my computer and started typing in genealogy searches. There were 15,000 matches to my grandfather's last name and with the game proceeding in my ears, I started clicking through page after page of results. The Steelers started to do well, which of course means if you're not in the room when they do well, you need to stay where you are, so their luck won't change. I'm still searching, page after page.
The Steelers score a touchdown. Well, now I'm just staying right where I am, so I don't jinx them. When I reached about page 35 in the results, I started to see his name on citizenship papers, and opened one up that I knew the second I saw it - it was him. This was my grandfather and the ship he came over on was listed and the year was close, and I'm asking myself, could it actually be him? I then went to the Ellis Island site and typed in the ship name and the date I found on the papers discovered on Ancestry and there was his name and his father (I did know he came here with his dad), and it was spelled incorrectly in a way I wouldn't have even guessed. But it was him.
And here I was, while the Steelers were winning the game and my husband and sons were yelling and cheering in the other room, and the game is blaring in my ears and I'm thinking - this is it - the ship he came over on, the date, the name of the boat and I'm scoring my own WIN in my family history. In addition, I've discovered that he came over and stayed with an uncle, so there were relatives from Italy here that I didn't even know about before, so it's an entirely new family lead to research. And I found one of the most important finds in the family history game, another name. On the ship's manifest papers, his step-mother's name is listed, and the great grandmother who was a blank space on a chart before, now has a name. Her name was Frances.
Showing posts with label genealogy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label genealogy. Show all posts
Monday, January 17, 2011
Monday, March 15, 2010
2010 Census - what does this have to do with fabric?
This week you'll be getting your 2010 census in the mail. We all know that the census is used to allocate government funds and to form legislative districts.
As a genealogist, I want to stress the importance of filling out your forms for your great great grandchildren. No one will be able to see the answers to these questions for 70 years. Be accurate. Make sure you print very clearly and legibly. Spell everyone's name correctly. Give the correct age.
The census is an invaluable tool to find family members and learn who they were and where they lived at a certain point in time. There are only ten questions in this 2010 census. They are extremely simple. To paraphrase the questions are these:
How many people in your household?
Are there any additional people living there?
Is the home owned or rented?
What is your telephone number?
What are the names of all the people living there?
What is their sex?
What is their age and date of birth?
Are any members Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin?
What is each member's race? (multiple choice answers)
Does any member sometimes live or stay somewhere else?
That's it. It should take no more than 10 minutes to fill it out. And this is the really important part ---MAKE A COPY of the form you fill out. Keep it with your important papers. Let it be something that is handed down in your family. If you have kids that don't live at home, ask them to make a copy for you and keep the whole family's records together. Remember, your own family can't access these records for 70 years, so if you had a copy it would make genealogy record keeping so much easier for your family's historian.
How does this relate to fabric, you're asking? Let me tell you a story.
It took Census workers about 8 years to tabulate the data from the 1880 census. The Bureau appealed to their workers to find a more efficient way to tabulate the data. A man named Herman Hollerith, a statistician who worked for the Census Bureau, riding the train on his way to work one morning, found his inspiration while watching the conductor punch holes in tickets. The conductors could punch codes onto the ticket indicating a passenger's height, hair color, build, eye color, etc, so only that unique passenger could use the ticket. Hollerith designed a similar paper card and punch hole system to record the information the Census Bureau needed. One column was used for a person's sex, another two for their age, two for the year, etc.
He made the card the size of a U.S. banknote and then created a tabulation machine based on an 18th century machine invented by Joseph Jacquard, that had automated the weaving of fabrics. Jacquard was a French silk weaver, who invented a way of controlling the warp and weft of threads on a silk loom by recording patterns of holes on a series of wooden boards, looped together with a series of cords. (That was the fabric part)
Hollerith succeeded in producing the machine that Charles Babbage (considered the first computer pioneer, designing analytical computing engines) and Ada Lovelace (possibly the world's first programmer) had dreamed up in the 1930's. The machine allowed the user to input census data using punch cards, store the data, process the data, and output the data. The 1890 census count was completed in 3 months. He not only solved the Census problem, his punch card system was the basis for computing for the next 70 years.
In 1896, Hollerith quit his job at the Census, and started the Hollerith Tabulating Machine Company. The company rented it's equipment and maintained the right to produce the cards. The card was able to represent an account, a transaction, a part, an invoice, or a check and as a result businesses could automate their processes. His company merged with two other companies and was renamed CTR (the Computing, Tabulating and Recording Company). By 1914, the company was suffering some hard times and sales were lagging. Hollerith hired Thomas J. Watson, the top salesman at National Cash Register Company. Watson was an effective leader. To boost employee moral he increased sales commissions, provided employees with insurance and paid vacations and demanded absolute loyalty. Under his leadership, sales soared. By 1924, the company had expanded and changed it's name once again to International Business Machines (IBM).
By 1918 over 100 million card were being produced. All data was transcribed to punch cards. The card became the perfect medium for entering, manipulating and storing data. Cards had become the universal medium for handling data and IBM machines processed the data. This set the stage for the computer revolution.
Herman Hollerith and his punch cards truly changed the course of history.
Filling out that 10 question census doesn't seem so hard now, does it?
(Don't forget to make a copy for yourself!!)
As a genealogist, I want to stress the importance of filling out your forms for your great great grandchildren. No one will be able to see the answers to these questions for 70 years. Be accurate. Make sure you print very clearly and legibly. Spell everyone's name correctly. Give the correct age.
The census is an invaluable tool to find family members and learn who they were and where they lived at a certain point in time. There are only ten questions in this 2010 census. They are extremely simple. To paraphrase the questions are these:
How many people in your household?
Are there any additional people living there?
Is the home owned or rented?
What is your telephone number?
What are the names of all the people living there?
What is their sex?
What is their age and date of birth?
Are any members Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin?
What is each member's race? (multiple choice answers)
Does any member sometimes live or stay somewhere else?
That's it. It should take no more than 10 minutes to fill it out. And this is the really important part ---MAKE A COPY of the form you fill out. Keep it with your important papers. Let it be something that is handed down in your family. If you have kids that don't live at home, ask them to make a copy for you and keep the whole family's records together. Remember, your own family can't access these records for 70 years, so if you had a copy it would make genealogy record keeping so much easier for your family's historian.
How does this relate to fabric, you're asking? Let me tell you a story.
It took Census workers about 8 years to tabulate the data from the 1880 census. The Bureau appealed to their workers to find a more efficient way to tabulate the data. A man named Herman Hollerith, a statistician who worked for the Census Bureau, riding the train on his way to work one morning, found his inspiration while watching the conductor punch holes in tickets. The conductors could punch codes onto the ticket indicating a passenger's height, hair color, build, eye color, etc, so only that unique passenger could use the ticket. Hollerith designed a similar paper card and punch hole system to record the information the Census Bureau needed. One column was used for a person's sex, another two for their age, two for the year, etc.
He made the card the size of a U.S. banknote and then created a tabulation machine based on an 18th century machine invented by Joseph Jacquard, that had automated the weaving of fabrics. Jacquard was a French silk weaver, who invented a way of controlling the warp and weft of threads on a silk loom by recording patterns of holes on a series of wooden boards, looped together with a series of cords. (That was the fabric part)
Hollerith succeeded in producing the machine that Charles Babbage (considered the first computer pioneer, designing analytical computing engines) and Ada Lovelace (possibly the world's first programmer) had dreamed up in the 1930's. The machine allowed the user to input census data using punch cards, store the data, process the data, and output the data. The 1890 census count was completed in 3 months. He not only solved the Census problem, his punch card system was the basis for computing for the next 70 years.
In 1896, Hollerith quit his job at the Census, and started the Hollerith Tabulating Machine Company. The company rented it's equipment and maintained the right to produce the cards. The card was able to represent an account, a transaction, a part, an invoice, or a check and as a result businesses could automate their processes. His company merged with two other companies and was renamed CTR (the Computing, Tabulating and Recording Company). By 1914, the company was suffering some hard times and sales were lagging. Hollerith hired Thomas J. Watson, the top salesman at National Cash Register Company. Watson was an effective leader. To boost employee moral he increased sales commissions, provided employees with insurance and paid vacations and demanded absolute loyalty. Under his leadership, sales soared. By 1924, the company had expanded and changed it's name once again to International Business Machines (IBM).
By 1918 over 100 million card were being produced. All data was transcribed to punch cards. The card became the perfect medium for entering, manipulating and storing data. Cards had become the universal medium for handling data and IBM machines processed the data. This set the stage for the computer revolution.
Herman Hollerith and his punch cards truly changed the course of history.
Filling out that 10 question census doesn't seem so hard now, does it?
(Don't forget to make a copy for yourself!!)
Saturday, January 31, 2009
The Shadow of your Smile
If you noticed the comments to the last blog entry, my friend mentioned that the phrase "each one of our ancestors on our tongues" in the inaugural poem is how she sees me. She explained "I think that you are very tied to your ancestors...and they are near your 'surface.' In your everyday life you think about, and search, and do things your ancestors have done.....I do not think that is "Noise" to you, and if it is, it's a good noise that keeps you grounded in family." How ironic that she would say that, considering what I wanted to write about today.
I've spent the last few months, with my son Zack's help, scanning photos from the 20's, 30's, 40's and 50's (almost done). We started on this project so that everyone in the family could have a copy of my grandmother's photos, even though there aren't a ton of them. I took the opportunity to ask around for more photos from other relatives. I had photos from 6 different sources, my grandmother, my great-aunt, my mom, 2 of her sisters, and then my dad's photo albums.
I've sat with my grandmother and my mother looking at most of these photos, having them tell me who they are. I've looked at the photos in my dad's photo album, absorbing and analyzing them, and he had the insight to label most of his photos. For the most part, I've lived these pictures over and over again, so identifying them wasn't expected to be hard, just time consuming.
The six folders of photos had several that crossed over, and one aunt would label it one way, and the other aunt another. Sometimes the back of the photos said something else. I wanted to start teaching Zack who some of these people are (it seems so obvious to me). Except for the fact that he kept labeling everyone who was young as Nanny (his grandmother), we finally got into a rhythm. We used labels in one folder to help us in another folder. We soon realized that there were two or three parties scattered over the photos, with different photos in the folders. Zack started using clothes to help identify people in certain photos, which was very perceptive.
Then I lost my helper because he had to go back to school in January, so I continued. I came across one photo of kids that I sent to my "genealogy cousin" (because his dad and mom were at this party) and it turns out they were his brothers and sisters. The party pictures were taken by my dad (most of the 40's-50's photos are after he came on the scene), so I've seen them before. He would take group photos of the adults in the family, one of the brothers and sisters, one of the kids. Does this sound familiar to anyone who knows me? Then I came across a picture with my dad and one of my aunts in it, and several people I wasn't sure of. I identified some from other labels, and kept thinking it over, trying to puzzle out why those people would be in a photo together. A day later, it hit me - it was an "outlaw" photo, and that narrowed down the choices of who the others were in the picture.
My mother has two brothers who are identical twins. We just kept labeling those as "twins" because as babies, who can tell? That's where my dad's photo albums came in. Meticulous to a fault, my dad labeled the photos of the twins in almost every circumstance. I am so thankful he had the foresight to label those baby photos of the twins, or none of us would have had a clue.
I used my genealogy file to cross reference ages with people in the photos or cars in the photo to determine a year for the picture. While I was doing this labeling, I signed on and was using a free trial to Ancestry.com. I've done genealogy research before, but now that the census reports are online, it's so much easier to find someone. I worked all day last Saturday online doing census research that would have taken weeks to do at the library on microfiche. Happily, my relatives are pretty reliably in Pittsburgh, and not too hard to find. There are a few stragglers though, that I'm having a hard time with. You can get so caught up in cross referencing this person with that person, and knowing when they married, and what happened in their lives so would they still be in Pittsburgh in 1920? My head was spinning when I went to bed at 4:00am that night. I dreamt of being in a maze of streets with different names and trying to find cross streets and where they intersected one another. I love to see names that have descended through the generations, and reflect on how much of a wonder it is that we ended up here at all. In a family, sometimes, only one child survived and that happens to be our ancestor.
So then, I'm back to the photos, reviewing them, and I start getting lost in their faces. I see my aunt's face in her children and grandchildren. I see my other aunt in her youngest daughter. I look at my cousins and I can tell who they are as a baby because they have the same smile at 51. I get lost in the smiles and marvel that I didn't realize until recently that I have my mother's smile. I look at my great-grandmother and I think maybe I have her smile too. I wonder what it would have been like to travel here as a young person on a boat, that probably took anywhere from 10-14 days to come to America from Ireland and from England. Did they come alone? Did they travel with family? I wonder how they met one another. I sometimes get lost in what their lives were like. My head spins for awhile over things I'll never know the answer to. I have so many questions now that no one can answer, because people who might know aren't here anymore.
Shortly before my 75 year old grandmother went into the hospital back in 1980, she and I sat on her couch for hours looking at some of these photos. She told me who was in the photos, and told me stories about the people in them. She was so thrilled to talk about her life. I know we exhausted each other that day, but I knew I was going back to Maryland (where I was living at the time) that day and she was going into the hospital soon. I wanted to squeeze every moment out of that special day, because it was unlike any other. She told me with enthusiasm about the day she first married her husband and had to keep it a secret. I had to look at her in a totally different way than I ever had before. I suddenly saw the young girl inside her - that person we all are in our mind, no matter how wrinkled our faces get, or how old or infirm we are.
So my lesson for today, is ask the questions. Ask your parents who they are and how they met. Ask them about what they like and what they are interested in. Ask about their parents and who they were and about their grandparents and where they were from. What kinds of jobs did they have and what drove them? What were their personalities like? And then write it down - for your children and your grandchildren. And then write down your own story. Write down every detail you know today, because 10 years from now, that memory will be gone from your brain. Write down every story your parents tell so it will survive them. Most importantly, when they start to talk, LISTEN.
And while you're at it - label those photos.
I've spent the last few months, with my son Zack's help, scanning photos from the 20's, 30's, 40's and 50's (almost done). We started on this project so that everyone in the family could have a copy of my grandmother's photos, even though there aren't a ton of them. I took the opportunity to ask around for more photos from other relatives. I had photos from 6 different sources, my grandmother, my great-aunt, my mom, 2 of her sisters, and then my dad's photo albums.
I've sat with my grandmother and my mother looking at most of these photos, having them tell me who they are. I've looked at the photos in my dad's photo album, absorbing and analyzing them, and he had the insight to label most of his photos. For the most part, I've lived these pictures over and over again, so identifying them wasn't expected to be hard, just time consuming.
The six folders of photos had several that crossed over, and one aunt would label it one way, and the other aunt another. Sometimes the back of the photos said something else. I wanted to start teaching Zack who some of these people are (it seems so obvious to me). Except for the fact that he kept labeling everyone who was young as Nanny (his grandmother), we finally got into a rhythm. We used labels in one folder to help us in another folder. We soon realized that there were two or three parties scattered over the photos, with different photos in the folders. Zack started using clothes to help identify people in certain photos, which was very perceptive.
Then I lost my helper because he had to go back to school in January, so I continued. I came across one photo of kids that I sent to my "genealogy cousin" (because his dad and mom were at this party) and it turns out they were his brothers and sisters. The party pictures were taken by my dad (most of the 40's-50's photos are after he came on the scene), so I've seen them before. He would take group photos of the adults in the family, one of the brothers and sisters, one of the kids. Does this sound familiar to anyone who knows me? Then I came across a picture with my dad and one of my aunts in it, and several people I wasn't sure of. I identified some from other labels, and kept thinking it over, trying to puzzle out why those people would be in a photo together. A day later, it hit me - it was an "outlaw" photo, and that narrowed down the choices of who the others were in the picture.
My mother has two brothers who are identical twins. We just kept labeling those as "twins" because as babies, who can tell? That's where my dad's photo albums came in. Meticulous to a fault, my dad labeled the photos of the twins in almost every circumstance. I am so thankful he had the foresight to label those baby photos of the twins, or none of us would have had a clue.
I used my genealogy file to cross reference ages with people in the photos or cars in the photo to determine a year for the picture. While I was doing this labeling, I signed on and was using a free trial to Ancestry.com. I've done genealogy research before, but now that the census reports are online, it's so much easier to find someone. I worked all day last Saturday online doing census research that would have taken weeks to do at the library on microfiche. Happily, my relatives are pretty reliably in Pittsburgh, and not too hard to find. There are a few stragglers though, that I'm having a hard time with. You can get so caught up in cross referencing this person with that person, and knowing when they married, and what happened in their lives so would they still be in Pittsburgh in 1920? My head was spinning when I went to bed at 4:00am that night. I dreamt of being in a maze of streets with different names and trying to find cross streets and where they intersected one another. I love to see names that have descended through the generations, and reflect on how much of a wonder it is that we ended up here at all. In a family, sometimes, only one child survived and that happens to be our ancestor.
So then, I'm back to the photos, reviewing them, and I start getting lost in their faces. I see my aunt's face in her children and grandchildren. I see my other aunt in her youngest daughter. I look at my cousins and I can tell who they are as a baby because they have the same smile at 51. I get lost in the smiles and marvel that I didn't realize until recently that I have my mother's smile. I look at my great-grandmother and I think maybe I have her smile too. I wonder what it would have been like to travel here as a young person on a boat, that probably took anywhere from 10-14 days to come to America from Ireland and from England. Did they come alone? Did they travel with family? I wonder how they met one another. I sometimes get lost in what their lives were like. My head spins for awhile over things I'll never know the answer to. I have so many questions now that no one can answer, because people who might know aren't here anymore.
Shortly before my 75 year old grandmother went into the hospital back in 1980, she and I sat on her couch for hours looking at some of these photos. She told me who was in the photos, and told me stories about the people in them. She was so thrilled to talk about her life. I know we exhausted each other that day, but I knew I was going back to Maryland (where I was living at the time) that day and she was going into the hospital soon. I wanted to squeeze every moment out of that special day, because it was unlike any other. She told me with enthusiasm about the day she first married her husband and had to keep it a secret. I had to look at her in a totally different way than I ever had before. I suddenly saw the young girl inside her - that person we all are in our mind, no matter how wrinkled our faces get, or how old or infirm we are.
So my lesson for today, is ask the questions. Ask your parents who they are and how they met. Ask them about what they like and what they are interested in. Ask about their parents and who they were and about their grandparents and where they were from. What kinds of jobs did they have and what drove them? What were their personalities like? And then write it down - for your children and your grandchildren. And then write down your own story. Write down every detail you know today, because 10 years from now, that memory will be gone from your brain. Write down every story your parents tell so it will survive them. Most importantly, when they start to talk, LISTEN.
And while you're at it - label those photos.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
And we're off!
I only have a minute here. Mark and I are off to Adamstown tonight. In addition to fabric shopping, I'm trying to fit in a little genealogy trip too. Allentown is the location of a house that my 6G Grandfather built in 1744, and there is a second house that his brother built, which is tourable through the Lehigh Historical Society. I'm low on details today, but will update on Tuesday when we come back.
Till then.
MJ
Till then.
MJ
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