Saturday, February 27, 2010

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Two Tickets for Sweden, please!

Over at Genea-Musings, it's time for Saturday Night Genealogy Fun.

This time Randy Seaver asked

If you won the grand prize in the Ancestry.com Ultimate Family History Journey Sweepstakes of $20,000 for genealogy travel to places of your choice, where would you go, and what would you do?

Well, I don't think there's any question in my case - the Dear Daughter and I would start packing for Sweden!

We'd look for some help planning our trip first though as there's so many ancestral places we'd want to visit, for instance, Axmar Bruk and Gåsholmen, Hamrånge; Woxsäter and Bollnäs, Gävleborgs; Gallivare, Norrbotten; Brunflo and Hallesjo, Jämtland.

And I'd want to visit the major Archives sites in Sweden and the Swedish Emigrant Institute, if possible. And there seem to be a good number of genealogical events in Sweden, mostly organized by member groups of The Federation of Swedish Genealogical Societies.

Of course, if our trip was like the television shows and the commercials, we'd find all the info we're seeking in a very short time, so we might even get to see lots of museums, the Swedish Northern Lights and, of course, we'd have time to visit a real IKEA and buy a souvenir or two (Orrefors for me).

Ancestry.com's Grand Prize is $20,000 travel money for one lucky person, but also an eight hour consultation with an expert genealogist. (Might that be Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak? Way Cool!) And five experts in fields relevant to your personal family history (Swedish military records and bouppteckning/estate inventories...) to help you learn even more and Annual World Deluxe Subscriptions for you and five family members.

Now that last prize is interesting. I often do wish I had five relatives that were that interested in genealogy, but maybe that last prize might bring a 'new to us' relative or two out of the woodwork. Like winning the big lottery, eh?

Our Swedish Surnames:
AXNER, BROSTRÖM, ERIKSSEN, JOHANSON, LOFHOLM, RYDBERG & ZETTERBERG: SWEDEN TO CANADA: http://www.tribalpages.com/tribes/swedesinbc

Winter 2010 Geneabloggers Games!

From a Newdale, Manitoba snapshot album. Believed to be Mary Janet WOOD of Nottawa, Ontario, Canada. Damaged; poor condition. Private collection.



These were very challenging Games this year, as the 2010 Geneabloggers Games schedule involved 2 out of town visits and then visitors to my home. Since those Other Games are going on in my own home town, there's been a lot going on all around us even when I was home.

So, as many may have expected, I did much better in the categories that allowed me to compete on-line and late at night and far from home.

Here are my results:

#3. Organize Your Research

Here I did well – Platinum! completing almost all the tasks.


Mostly these items organized were from my mother’s collections or were Newdale, Manitoba, Canada photographs. The Master List was not completed. I do have a list, but since many of my things have recently been moved and re-organized, this is now out of date. This will be a priority in March.


#4. Expand Your Knowledge


Here I won a Bronze, but I did teach a class on Maps. Coaching like that should get me a little bonus 'warm fuzzy'.


#6. Reach Out and Perform Genealogical Acts of Kindness


Again, Platinum! In this category, I had intended to post some more cemetery photographs at the BC Genealogical Society’s Cemetery Committee Flickr group, but just didn’t make that finish line. That too will be a priority in March. But I certainly did comment on-line and I encouraged several groups of genealogists to join Facebook and Twitter! I did two lookups and I indexed 2 cookbooks as well.


All in all good exercise! Thanks and congratulations to all the participating, and cheering Geneabloggers. We all appreciate the enthusiasm!

Monday, February 22, 2010

GIRVIN SASKATCHEWAN FLASHLIGHT PHOTO - A CARNIVAL OF POSTCARDS

Divided back postcard, black and white. Postmarked Girvin, Saskatchewan, 1911. 'Stray' postcard, from private collection.

The theme for the upcoming Festival of Postcards is:
Light!

Here's my submission - a Saskatchewan, Canada postcard showing a 'real photograph' - a flashlight photograph.

Addressed to: Miss Gertrude Walker, Earl Grey, Sask.

Postmark: Girvin, Sask, Fe 21 [??]

Message:

Girvin Sask Feb. 21st, 1911
Well old girl how are you? Still in the land of the living? This is a flashlight we had the other night after the carnival – printed a little dark but I guess you can find me asleep. Yours, L. Doull [?]
Know the parson?


In the 1900s, ads in newspapers appeared offering flash sheets and flash powders to amateur photographers. Professional photographers too offered their services in photographing interiors of houses or offices, or party or family groups at home.

For more about some of the techniques, see Chapter IX. Flashlight Photography by F. J. Mortimer, F.R.P.S., (Editor of the Amateur Photographer and Photographic News.) in The Sinclair Handbook Of Photography edited by James A. Sinclair (London, England: James A. Sinclair & Co., Ltd., 1913). Text on-line at Chest of Books, developed by Stas Bekman of Vancouver, BC, Canada.


Girvin was part way between Regina & Saskatoon in Saskatchewan; now apparently it’s not quite a ghost town. See some photographs at Mike Stobbs' Girvin Saskatchewan "The Street's are There But The Signs are Gone" website.


Thursday, February 18, 2010

Immigrants in Canada's West - 1898 - Carnival of Central and Eastern European Genealogy

Titled: "John Klatt family. Emigrated from Tubitz, Galicia, about 1893." Vicinity, Lemberg, Saskatchewan, Canada, c. 1906. Theodor Nickel collection / Library and Archives Canada / C-089684. (Note: there are other KLATT photographs at Library and Archives Canada - some can be viewed on-line.)

"Immigration Statistics - Canada, 1899

The Heterogeneous Mass of Which the Future Populations is to be Composed - Nineteen Nationalities Represented.

... the Canadian Pacific land department last year sold parcels of land in Manitoba and the Northwest to 289 foreigners. The nationality of the purchasers being as follows:

Austria 71

Russia 62

France 22

Belgium 20

Sweden 19

Iceland 12

Norway 9

Hungary 6

Denmark 3

Bohemia 2

Findland 2

Galicia 2

and one each from Holland, Switzerland, Roumania, Italy, Turkey, Poland and Prussia.

During 1898, purchasers from the British Islands numbered 221 divided as follows: England 208; Scotland 74; Ireland 36; and Wales 3."


From the Morning Telegram, January 30, 1899, page 1. Spelling shown is as in the article. Found at Manitobia.ca - http://www.manitobia.ca/

See also:

Lemberg, Saskatchewan, Canada website - history, photographs.

Lemberg, The Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan.

Written for the Carnival of Central and Eastern European Genealogy, 26th Edition. Watch for this edition's Carousel soon at Jessica's Genejournal.

Monday, February 15, 2010

Third Annual iGene Awards - Academy of Genealogy and Family History


It's time for the 90th edition of the Carnival of Genealogy:
The Third Annual iGene Awards, The Best of The Best!


It's Academy awards time... time for the Academy of Genealogy and Family History, aka AGFH, to honor their best blog posts of 2009 in the following 5 categories:


Best Picture - Best old family photo that appeared on your blog in 2009. Tell us which you liked best and why.

The best family photograph of 2009 is the IRWIN family reunion group portrait that appeared in the Carnival of Genealogy - IRWIN Family Reunites - Manitoba Canada. Although it is a nice photograph of a handsome family, you will have to see the photograph to see why it deserves special recognition!

Best Screen Play - Which family story that you shared in 2009 would make the best movie? Who would you cast as your family members?

Remembrance Day 2009 - Muriel Scott - George Rogers, Vancouver BC Canada was 'almost' a movie. It's a slide show about my parents and their service in the Canadian Army during World War II. I'd certainly like to do more with the information I have.
Maybe a movie would be good... let's see, I have to be historical, of course, perhaps Norma Shearer could play Mum as the young 'Scottie', and who as Dad? Well, I know who Mum would want playing opposite herself, Ramón Novarro!

Best Documentary - Which was the best informational article you wrote about a place, thing, or event involving your family's history in 2009?

The Vancouver Exhibition, 1927 - Carnival of Genealogy, written for the 80th Carnival of Genealogy, is the winner here. Although I have no specific details about the Rogers family's experience at the 1927 Fair, I researched in historical newspapers and in publications to see what their Fair visits might have been like. Sometimes we need to do this, to flesh out the few details we have left to us.

Best Biography - Which was the best biographical article you wrote in 2009?

The winner in this category is They Worked - Smile For The Camera - Beekeeping in Ontario Canada, a short piece about Samuel Wood of Nottawa. Ontario, Canada.

Best Comedy - Which was the best funny story, poem, joke, photo, or video that you shared on your blog in 2009?

No question - the funniest thing I shared in 2009 was Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Famous (?) Look-alikes. Wow! Me and Burt Reynolds together, well, sort of. (Thank you, Randy Seaver!)

The IGene Award spotlights all Geneabloggers' efforts at recording their genealogy and family history in 2009. For a look at all those recognized by the AGFH for 2009, go to Creative Gene where the winners will be seen very soon.

Winter 2010 GeneaBloggers Games


In keeping with the spirit of the season, I'm participating in the Winter 2010 GeneaBloggers Games which began Friday, 12 February 2010 and go right through Saturday, 27 February 2010.

The Summer 2008 GeneaBloggers Games were a great success in attracting both new and experienced genealogists to blogging and gave established bloggers a chance to meet others and to promote their research and writing. Here is a link to my own 2008 Summer Sports posts.

These Winter 2010 GeneaBlogger Games will be the same - and they will be a neat spectator sport! There is no pressure on participants or viewers to participate in all the games, but I hope many will and look forward to seeing the results and cheering all the medal winners.

Opening Ceremonies, including a parade of heritage flags, is already up at Geneabloggers and the Closing ceremonies will be there too. And, once again this year footnoteMaven has designed the badges and medals. Thank you footnoteMaven! And thanks to Thomas MacEntee for all his organizing work behind the scenes.


My own 'Current Genealogy Research' heritage banner which you see displayed here includes the flag of Scotland, for my maternal DNA line back to Islay, Scotland (and beyond), the flag of Sweden for my research on my husband's family, and the flag of my own country, Canada, where I'm always researching someone.

I've qualified to participate in these three Competition Categories this year:

#3. Organize Your Research
#4. Expand Your Knowledge
#6. Reach Out and Perform Genealogical Acts of Kindness


For my first run down the slope this week, I'll be re-organizing my scanned photographs into a new computer and tagging a certain percentage of these as well. I have been practicing for some time for this event, and I got a good workout at the January Scanfest too, so I hope to make good time in this run. No more bunny hills for me! (The Apres-ski part is always fun though.)


For the Winter Game details, please see the Winter 2010 GeneaBloggers Game page at GeneaBloggers.

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Newdale Curlers? 8th Edition - Canadian Carnival of Genealogy

"Genuine curlers' brooms at Sparling's. These brooms are specially adapted for household use." Minnedosa Tribune, 29 January 1903, page 3.


Canadian prairie women were (and are) avid curlers. The historical newspapers often mention 'ladies curling', but seldom seem to give the women's names. (The men do often have their names published.) I believe this photograph, from a family collection, shows a group of Newdale, Manitoba, Canada women and children at a curling event. I suspect the 'ticketed' women must be the members of the women's team. Unfortunately, there's no identification with the photo, but I do recognize my Na in the front row and a few other women. If you recognize someone, please do let me know.

Curling was always a big sport in Newdale - 2009 was the 100th anniversary of the Newdale Curling Club. My grandmother talked often about the year she was on a trophy winning team and she displayed the team photograph in her apartment. Silly me, why did I never ask her exactly which year that was? Researching that is one of my goals for 2010.

Posted for the 8th Edition of the Canadian Genealogy Carnival, hosted by Looking For Ancestors.

Thursday, February 04, 2010

January Genealogy - Finds and Favourites

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CanadaGenealogy, or, Jane's Your Aunt isn't a baby anymore. She is now five years old! Her first post was 3 February, 2005. Seems like yesterday, really.

I've planned to do a few new things on the blog this year. Other bloggers. like Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings are already featuring 'best of genealogy' posts of the month or week. I do appreciate those lists, but wouldn't want to do quite the same thing.

Since I spend quite a bit of time on the 'net, sometimes, it seems, just wandering around admiring little nuggets and niches here and there, I thought I'd share some of each month's 'finds and favourites' with my readers the first week of the next month. I'm hoping some links will be helpful, or that an occasional find will make you think, or perhaps even give you a genea-laugh. After all, some of my finds might be quirky, but you just never know when stray genea-information will come in handy, do you?

So here's January 2010's list of Find and Favourites - more than a baker's dozen here, in no particular order:

1. Backupify - The ever helpful Thomas MacEntee at GeneaBloggers wrote about Backupify, a new service to back up one's on-line data at websites like Twitter and, yes, I signed up! This will be added protection for my tweets and updates, but also for my Flickr photos and this blog. So far, Backupify works with Twitter, Google Docs, Wordpress,G-Mail, Facebook, Zoho, Delicious, Flickr, Basecamp and Photobucket.

Thomas mentioned an article about Backupify at Digital Inspiration too - excellent site for news and views about all kinds of practical web tools and technology. The free Backupify offer has now been extended to February 15, 2010, so do have a look and see if this might be helpful to you.

2. Black History, Library and Archives Canada – February is Black History Month and LAC introduced a new Black History Month portal page with links to Black History information at LAC and at outside sites. Glad to see this as I'm sure this type of portal page attracts new readers and researchers. I hope this one will be expanded over the next while.

3. Lost Cousins – The biggest genealogy news in January for me was that Lost Cousins has added the 1911 Irish census to its matching system. That census information is free from The National Archives of Ireland. (By the way, Library and Archives Canada was a key partner in the Irish historical census project and digitized both the 1901 and 1911 Irish censuses.)

Do you have ancestry from the British Isles? Are you not a member of Lost Cousins? Why not? You can register for free, or for under $20 Canadian, you can be a full member with additional benefits. Go to LostCousins.com to learn more about it and to register.

4. Who Do You Think You Are-Live 2010 – the UK's National History Show has added on-line 'What's Your Story' guides from The National Archives of the UK for those with ancestors who were in the Army, or who were criminals, divorced, Irish, Jewish or Scottish, and migrants. Attending this show sounds like a dream genealogy vacation indeed. WDYTYA -Live 2010 is February 26-28th in London, England. In case you can attend, several companies have 2/1 ticket offers, including S & N Genealogy and History Times .

5. Elevator history - I have to confess I've never thought much about elevator history, except to admire some of the older ones I've been in, for example, in the old Provincial Courthouse in Victoria, now the Maritime Museum, but here's a neat website, The History of Elevators, with links on elevator history, including the virtual Elevator Museum. You might find an elevator inventor in the family. (This website is courtesy United Elevator in case you need an elevator repaired in the greater Vancouver area of BC.)

6. Recipe Calculator from SparkRecipes - I've volunteered for a heritage cookbook project. (More about that later.) Here's a nifty calculator for the nutritional value of a recipe. Whoa! my Na used far too much butter! (But she was tiny!) I found this on-line calculator through Real Age.

7. A Book About Pub Names - the history of Britain as told through its pub signs - This is an e-book by Elaine Saunders who is on Twitter as @Book_About. I don't drink that much, but several of my relatives managed or worked in pubs and inns in England and Scotland. Elaine's blog, It's a Book About... hasn't been updated for a while, but there are some pub photographs there and she has a link to an excerpt from her book that's on-line free.

Now two Canadian genealogy/history blogs - via Loaded Web

8.
Glengarry County - Do you have an interest in Glengarry County, Ontario and area, in Canada? Check out the Glengarry County blog which includes information about the genealogy publications of Alex W. Fraser (of Courtenay BC) and Rhoda Ross.

9. You might find a Canadian environmentalist in the family tree. (No pun intended for British Columbians, or loggers either.) The Great Green North blog by Ryan O'Connor is 'Exploring the History of the Environmental Movement in Canada' apparently starting with Pollution Probe in Toronto in 1969 and SPEC, the Society for Pollution and Environmental Control, in Coquitlam, BC, 1969. He seems interested in many groups, although the focus of his university research, he says, is Toronto.

10. The Doegen Records Web Project - Tionscadal Gréasáin Cheirníní Doegen - Stories, prayers, vocabulary, recorded in Irish dialect by Dr Wilhelm Doegen and his assistant, Karl Tempel, from 1928-31 on-line. A project of the Royal Irish Academy Library. Browse by recording titles, speaker's names, and speakers' origins (115 from Connacht, 17 from Leinster, 120 from Munster and 144 from Ulster). Many of these recordings, if not most, are under a Creative Commons License.

11. The Marriage in Ireland 1660-1925 Project at the Queen's University, Belfast, aims to publish a major study on Ireland, north and south, focused on families below the wealthy landowning classes. This will be of interest to those researching family in Ireland. More about this later, I hope. Via the newsletter of The Women's History Network of the UK. Professor Maria Luddy who is Co-Director of this project has already written much on women in Ireland. Follow her link on the Marriage Project page to see her titles, and also links to The Directory of Sources for the History of Women in Ireland and Women in 20th-Century Ireland: Sources from the Department of the Taoiseach, 1922-1966, both of which are on-line.

12. Ulster Heritage DNA Project - there's information on the Ulster Heritage Magazine's blog about the Ulster (in Ireland) DNA projects, (Y and MtDNA) managed by Barry R. McCain of Oxford, Mississippi and Jim McKane of Wiarton, Ontario, Canada.

13. Canadian Gravemarker Gallery - this is a now a perennial favourite of mine. I still have some real concerns about the future of many personal genealogy websites, but I certainly admire Canadian Gravemarker Gallery founder, Murray Pletsch of North Bay, Ontario. With volunteers, he now has over 500 cemeteries listed with thousands of photographs on-line free, and has had thousands of visitors since the site opened ten years ago, originally as the Northeastern Ontario Gravemarker Gallery. There's a free newsletter you can sign up for and links to free e-mail cemetery lists.

14. Scanfest! The best genealogy event on-line in January was 'the return of Scanfest'! A big thank you to Miriam Robbins Midkiff of AnceStories: The Stories of My Ancestors who organizes this. At Scanfest this time, I scanned a group of postcards that my great uncle sent home while he was working in Africa. As we scan, we chat and share tips and ideas. If you'd like to see what we're up to, go to the ScanFest link to see a replay.

15. Vintage Toronto - Here's another blog find this month; it's all about vintage Toronto postcards and their stories. I have only a few Toronto postcards myself, but I would certainly like to learn more about them.

16. WANTED! U.S. Criminal Records Sources & Research Methodology by Ron Arons - A Twitter link to a favourable review of this book on Leland Meitzler's Genealogy Blog caught my eye, and yes, I want it. Wouldn't I love to find a criminal or two in the family - more records! It's a bit more expensive to ship to Canada, but contact the author if you're interested. Free on his website are photo galleries for Sing Sing Prison and some of its Jewish inmates and an inmate database. Both Leland Meitzler and Ron Arons are on Twitter, as @Lmeitzler and @RonArons, respectively.

17. Arcalife - new at Arcalife in January - Dr. Nick Barratt is now guest blogging on the Arcalife blog. Arcalife, a British Columbia, Canada company, has a website meant for sharing and storing your family and individual histories. There are tiered memberships from free to lifetime. The lifetime option allows members regular access to the website's family history features and its innovative tools, like the Life Cube and also upgraded storage, and will enable members to pass on their digital estate.

And, that's it till next month!