Thursday, September 3, 2015

What Went Wrong?

I seem to be losing that sense of my family's history that has always been so important to me. All of a sudden it has become big business.

Now it is all about meetings, number of members, boards, newsletters, blogs, professional web sites, lineage societies, and celebrity family trees on cable tv.

Whatever happened to finding your ancestors in a country cemetery in Kentucky. 

That is genealogy!

I have looked back at some of my posts from the holidays a year ago. Posts about my family. My crazy cousins. Family traditions. People who aren't here any more but are still in our thoughts as we approach the holidays. 

That is genealogy!

They didn't make us who we are today but they put us in the places we needed to be.

That is genealogy!

And we will put our children where they need to be.

That is genealogy!



Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Hey, What's All This DNA Stuff About Anyway?!

The Lucas County Chapter of the Ohio Genealogical Society will present a program about DNA and Genealogy on Saturday, September 19, 2015. The group meets at 2pm in the Huntington Room on the first floor of the Toledo/Lucas County Public Library, 325 Michigan St., Toledo, Ohio. Meetings are open to the public.

Don Hengen will answer the question, "What's This DNA Stuff All About?"

This is a program for those who have already had their testing done, as well as those who know nothing at all about the subject. This will be an excellent opportunity to get acquainted with this new aspect of family research. For years genealogy was a slow tedious process of writing letters, traveling miles to courthouses that hopefully had not had a fire, and searching miles of microfilm in search of an ancestor record. And let's not forget all those cemeteries. Then the computer was born and everything changed.

Well, not everything. You still need to visit courthouses, libraries, cemeteries . . . . but you can also search for your ancestors online in the middle of the night. (If those 4x great grandparents only knew what you are doing right now. No candlelight? No quill pen? You are staring at this screen where words magically appear! and you're waiting for something called "a pizza" to be delivered.) Yes, things have most definitely changed.

And now they have changed even more. DNA has arrived. If you want to find out how this has changed the way we do family research, be sure to attend this meeting on the third Saturday of September. 

All levels of experience are welcome at the chapter's meetings - Beginners, Intermediate, Experienced.