My Favorite Things

One of my favorite movies has always been the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic, The Sound of Music. At one point during the movie, Julie Andrews gathers the storm-skittish von Trapp children around her and tries to ease their fears. What ensues is one of my favorite songs from the movie: My Favorite Things. While lightning flashes and thunder booms around them, Julie sings a pitch-perfect list of things that make her happy.

I am a list maker too, though I don't usually sing them. If I want to remember everything I need to get at the store, I make a shopping list. If I want to accomplish anything on Saturday or during summer break, I need to make a to-do list. Lists are my friends.

A list is also a quick and easy way to add to your personal history. These lists cannot substitute for humorous anecdotes, interesting stories and spiritual experiences, but they can add a lot of interesting information that does not fit into a story setting or on a pedigree chart.

Try creating some lists of your favorite things to add to your personal history. Here are a few ideas:

• My favorite breakfast foods are ... 
• My favorite candies are ... 
• These are the books I enjoy reading over and over again … 
• My favorite pizza toppings are … 
• My favorite board games are ... 
• My favorite television shows are ... 
• As a child, my favorite television shows were … 
• The jobs I have held over the years are … 
• My favorite restaurants are ... 
• My favorite movies are … 
• These are my favorite dishes that Grandma serves … 
• These are a few of my favorite scriptures … 
• Favorite outfits I remember wearing as a child were … 
• These are my favorite teachers … 
• My favorite places to visit in the Kansas City area are … 
• These are favorite books my mother read to me as a child … 
• My favorite hymns are … 
• These are the popular songs I have enjoyed recently … 
• These are the things I enjoy doing in my spare time … 

Though we don't want to wallow in negativity or self-pity, these can make for interesting lists. Try making lists such as these:

• These are my least favorite foods … 
• Books that were so stinking bad, I couldn't finish them ... 
• These are the bones I have broken so far … 
• These are things that my siblings did that annoyed me … 
• These are things I did to annoy my siblings ... 
• These are the candies I most often pilfered from my children's Halloween bags, Easter baskets, etc. ...  

Lists can be a lot of fun to create on your own or as a Family Night activity. Plan a list-making night and have each family member make lists for the same categories and then compare. Lists can be your friends too.

Just Sayin'

When my mother was a teenager, she used to clean her older sister Isabel’s house to earn a little money.  One day Isabel had to go somewhere and instructed Mom to “just hit the high spots.”  Mom dutifully only dusted the high spots – cabinet tops, upper shelves, the tops of window frames, etc.  When my aunt returned home she wondered why her younger sister had not dusted anything.  When Mom explained that she had followed her directions and only dusted the high spots, Isabel explained that “hitting the high spots” meant to give the main pieces of furniture and quick, light dusting – not a thorough pick-things-up-and-dust-under-them dusting of everything in the house.

Moms, aunts, and grandmothers are bastions of verbal wisdom.  Some of it they get from their mothers who got it from their mothers.  But sometimes I think they just invent these clever phrases in moments of frustration. One of my aunts and a neighbor lady used to tell their children to go play in the highway.  No one ever called DFS on them because this was just their loving way of saying, “Go away kid, you bother me.”

In our house, when we went outdoors to play and forgot to close the door, it was not uncommon to hear Mom call out, “You need a hook on your butt!”  That was her not-so-subtle way of telling us to turn around and pull the door shut behind us.  If we had indeed possessed the proverbial hook on our butts, said hook would have grabbed the door as we headed out and pulled it shut for us.  I have never heard of another mother that used this phrase.  I think mine made it up – after all, this was the same woman who told us that we would never learn to whistle if we didn’t eat our bread crusts.

I made up such a phrase when my kids were little.  It happened thusly: Often when we would go on an errand or outing, one or more child would insist on bringing along a vital, important, and crucial personal item.  Invariably, at some point during our outing, I would be approached with said life-sustaining item and asked to hold or carry it.  On one of these occasions I refused.  I looked my child in the eyes and said “I am not a pack mule.”  I was met with a “huh?” and had to explain what a pack mule was.  They then had to carry the now tiresome item themselves until we returned to the car.  It didn’t take long before my children stopped trying to pawn their possessions off on me.  They knew what they would hear if they tried. Maybe someday they'll use this phrase on their kids.  I'm curious to find out.

Crazy Names

I have a 3^rd great-grandfather with a one syllable surname that I have found spelled in the following ways: Keef, Keefe, Keeffe, Kief, Keif, Keiff, Kieff, Kieth, Keith, Kieef, Kieffe, and Keiffe.  The only version I have found “set in stone,” is Kieef, which appears on a couple of family gravestones.  Thank goodness for computer databases that search for similar spellings at the same time.

I wanted to introduce my kids to the idea that they might find their ancestor’s name spelled any number of ways in historical documents.  To do this, we held an "Craziest Name" competition for our weekly family night activity.  The object was for each person to come up with as many spellings of their own given name as possible.  The only rule was that the spelling had to sound like the person's name if pronounced phonetically. We all had a great time laughing and groaning as we shared our lists of names.

Following are a few unusual spellings of my daughter’s name, Jessica. 

• Jesuka                                        
• Jessekah                                         
• Jesakuh          
• Jhesyka                                      
• Jhessycka                                        
• Jessuhkuh       
• Gesica                                        
• Gesika                                            
• Ghessica       
• Djessika                                     
• Djesikuh                                         
• Ghessuhckuh

Go ahead, try coming up with crazy alternative spellings for your name.  It's a lot of fun!

Genealogy is for the dogs

I was an avid reader as a child and my favorite books included stories about dogs (the sainted Nancy Drew was my other favorite read, but that's another topic).  Dog books were the best.  Lassie, Beautiful Joe, Prince Tom - I loved them all.  At one point, the bulletin board in my bedroom was a shrine to Jim Kjelgaard and his beloved Irish Setters.  I loved dog books so much that I named the puppy I got for my 10th birthday Ginger, after the title subject in the book "Ginger Pye." Dad even took me to a dog show once because of my great love of (ie. obsession with) dogs.

When I first started researching my family history, back when we usually used the word "genealogy" instead of "family history," I was taught that the first thing I needed to do was fill out a "Pedigree Chart." Pedigree? Champion dog Prince Tom had a lengthy pedigree.  All the dogs at the dog show had pedigrees. There's even a brand of dog food that bears the name.  Why on earth do I need to fill out a pedigree chart, those are for dogs!

News Flash!  We all have a pedigree.  A pedigree is simply a list of who your ancestors are: your parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and so on.  A pedigree chart is a way to display that list so that we can easily see where each of those people came into our story to help in the making of us.  Another cool thing about pedigree charts is that when you turn them on their side, the chart resembles a tree with a trunk and branches.  Pedigree chart = family tree.

Sample Pedigree Chart

 Pedigree charts are useful for another reason.

We recently had a severe thunderstorm roll through our area.  The wind whipped our maple tree around in a frenzy, resulting in the loss of a good sized limb.  Now there is a gaping hole in our tree's foliage where the limb broke off.  A pedigree chart shows us the holes in our family tree.  When you don't know who your great-grandparents, or great-great grandparents are, those lines are left blank on your pedigree chart, leaving gaping holes in the foliage of your family tree.  It's good to see where the holes are because that gives you a starting place for your family history research.

In this electronic age family history research is changing rapidly.  There are a growing  number of web sites where you can begin creating your family tree, or pedigree, up in the cloud of the internet.  However, I still believe that it's a lot of fun to fill out your first pedigree chart by hand.  It could be a fun family night activity. Below are a few links to charts that you can print out and fill in by hand, or fill in online and then print out.

1.  http://www.byub.org/ancestors/charts/pdf/pedigree.pdf   Type in the names on the chart and print.

2.  http://c.mfcreative.com/pdf/trees/charts/anchart.pdf   Print chart and fill in by hand.

3.  http://familytreemagazine.com/upload/images/pdf/ancestor.pdf  Print chart and fill in by hand.

When you fill out your first pedigree chart, put yourself on the #1 line.  Your mother and father go on lines 2 and 3.  Your grandparents will go on lines 4, 5, 6, and 7.  And on it goes.

Have fun filling out your first pedigree chart!

Welcome to my blog!

My ancestors appear to be about as exciting as a banana.  I have not been so lucky as to discover royalty, horse thieves, or great inventors in my family tree.  My familial lines teem with farmers and laborers.  Sure there's the odd brick mason, storekeeper, and hotel clerk, but that seems to be it - on the surface.   When I dug a little deeper, I found that one of those farmers was part of a Virginia militia unit that marched to Baltimore to protect it from the British in 1814.  I found that another farmer, my 4th great-grandfather, never married my 4th great-grandmother, and despite having 3 children with her, married someone else and let her claim a pauper's burial at the expense of the county where they lived.  I discovered the odd fact that one of my great-grandfathers and his leg were buried a week apart.  Weird, huh?

Digging deeper is where all the fun - and sometimes, disappointing - stuff is.  By digging deeper you find all the great information that makes up that itty-bitty dash on your ancestor's gravestone.  You know, the dash that separates the year of birth from the year of death.  The dash encompasses everything your ancestor ever did between the day they were born and the day they died.  I hope this family history blog of mine can inspire a young person or two (or an old person or two) to find joy in learning about their ancestor's dash.

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I would love to claim that all my kids are deeply interested in discovering their family history.  They're not, and I put a lot of the blame for that squarely on my own shoulders.  I found great joy and excitement in the hunt and discovery of new ancestors, and happily shared my new discoveries with my kids, occasionally.  I confess that I didn't do much to involve them in the hunting process. As a result they viewed it as mostly something old people do (because even in my 20's I was old to my kids).  About ten years ago, when I asked who wanted all my compiled research when I passed on to the great beyond, I was met with hemming and hawing and averted eyes.  With their response to my question, or lack thereof, I realized that I had messed up and slowly began to recognize what I could have done differently

As I thought about it, ideas began to come to my mind for ways I could have involved them more.  I brainstormed and eventually came up with over 100 activities that could help kids participate in family history in a fun and enjoyable way.  In time, I put the list online, titling the web page "101+ FunFamily History Activities for Kids."  Eventually the number of activities increased to over 200.  My daily hit tally was modest and my little page even received a Family Tree Magazine "Site of the Day" nod early on.  Then the host site, Yahoo's Geocities, went belly up.

I didn't want my little web page to die so I registered for a domain name through a $$ site.  Unfortunately, that didn't work out because I just couldn't figure out the intricacies of the hosting site.  Then one day I remembered that Rootsweb gives out free web space for family history themed pages.  I applied for space, got it, uploaded my page, and promptly forgot about it.  Maybe it gets hits, maybe it doesn't.  To tell the truth, I've never bothered to check.  However, I've never really forgotten about my little list of activity ideas and have decided to breathe new life into it yet again via this blog.

My goal is to focus on a different idea from from the list with each blog post, though in no particular order.  I'm excited about being able to expand upon it with photos too.  I hope that the ideas I expound will enrich your family's involvement in history research.  Have fun!