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BillionGraves Challenge for June: Win a FitBit!
After a long winter in the U.S., it’s finally warming up! Just last week I did my first BillionGraves cemetery field trip of the season. So I’m pleased to see that they’re offering a BillionGraves challenge to those who take pictures or index:
“This month we are giving away Fitbit’s 5 cutting edge fitness monitoring devices to the top 5 photographers AND transcribers! Read the details on our blog HERE.
“It can’t be any better than doing your favorite thing- taking pictures of headstones and transcribing them, AND winning prizes! So take advantage of the rising temperatures to capture some headstone images at your local cemetery or get your transcribing game on.”
We’ve blogged about BillionGraves before: it’s a leading site for capturing cemetery headstones around the world. Their free app (for iPhone and Android) makes it easy to find a cemetery near you (wherever you are) that needs imaging; use your smart phone to take geo-tagged tombstone photos; transcribe any images you care to; and upload them to their site. (I always upload when I return home so my phone will upload images using my home’s wi-fi instead of charging me data.) But you can also participate in the challenge by indexing records already on their site, if cemetery visits aren’t your thing.
Got kids who are out of school and looking for something to do? Take them with you to image headstones. My kids don’t necessarily prefer this to going to the pool, but they’re game sometimes, especially if a stop at an ice cream stand is part of the deal. Here’s Lisa Louise Cooke’s interview with BillionGraves staffer and tips for getting started:
Technology United These Long-Lost Siblings 90 Years Ago!
It’s common to hear of long-lost relatives who rediscover each other online or through DNA tests. But nearly 100 years ago, another new technology–the radio–united a pair of long-lost siblings 40 years after one ran away.
This newspaper article reports that Alonso Jones’ children were sitting around one day in 1926 listening to the radio. Then they heard the announcer say, “Alonso Jones, wherever you are, listen…Your sister wants to see you at Worthington, Ohio. She has not seen or heard from you in forty years. You were born at Antiquity, Meigs County, Ohio, at the time of the Civil War….”
“You were reared by Captain William Roberts, an Ohio River flat boat man. You went with him on a produce boat when you were a boy and ran away while the boat was lying at the bank in Arkansas.” The article reports that the man telegraphed his sister and arranged to meet her. What a great story! And what a great family history find for anyone researching Alonso Jones or his sister, Mrs. Robert Eakin, or his guardian, William Roberts!
Salt Lake Tribune, January 1, 1926, p. 1. Digitized at Ancestry.com.
This article illustrates two fantastic tips for newspaper searching.
FIRST, I originally found this article in the Salt Lake Tribune, digitized at Ancestry. I was struck because the story was about people from Ohio and Arkansas–not Salt Lake. As we still see today, local news stories of the past were often reported in other cities. When searching digitized newspapers, don’t automatically discount search results that otherwise seem right but appear in out-of-town papers.
SECOND, curious about this story, I used Lisa’s search strategies from her book, The Genealogist’s Google Toolbox to search for more information about the people mentioned in the article. I got a hit on a possible match for the riverboat caption. I also found that the Google News Archive had this same article in The Evening Independent in St. Petersburg, Florida (shown above). The copy above is much clearer to read and slightly different. For these reasons, it can sometimes be worth looking for duplicates of news articles and/or obituaries for your relatives.
Want to learn more? Genealogy Gems Premium members can also listen to Premium podcast episodes GGP 36 and 3GGP 37 about newspaper searching (Lisa talks about Google News Archive in episode 37). Or get the ultimate scoop in How to Find Your Family History in Newspapers! It’s packed with inspiring family history finds in the newspaper and all the tools you need (online and offline) for finding your own.
Family History for Kids Starts WITH the Kids
Kids don’t recall much of their young lives. But we as parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles know their stories. We can give their lost memories back to them.
Conversations with my kids always go better when I let them choose the topic. So I chat a lot about Minecraft, music and the everyday dramas of third grade. But the number one thing each of my kids loves to talk about? Themselves!
So how do I talk to them about family history? About ancestors they never met, who never played Minecraft or heard a Piano Guys song? With my kids–and likely with the ones in your life–family history starts with THEM.
Kids don’t recall much of their young lives. Our memories before the age of 10 or so aren’t that specific or consistent. But we as parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles know their stories. We can give their lost memories back to them. We tell them about the day they were born. About grandpa playing his guitar for them. Which television shows they loved. How they felt about sitting on Santa’s lap. Who gave them which toys and quilts. The funny tantrums they threw. How they got their biggest scars.
They love stories about themselves. My kids ask for these stories over and over. They commit them to memory. They push for more details. These stories–and the tone in which they’re told–teach them how valued they are and influence their sense of identity and self-worth.
We blogged recently about how powerfully our personal stories influence our present and future. That can be true for children, too! What stories can you tell a child you love to teach them more about themselves? What could you make or give them that shares a piece of their past with them? If you’re a quilter, why not make a little photo quilt like Seneca’s? Here’s a tutorial video from YouTube:
