What I learned at NeSGS from an UNofficial blogger

This last weekend I attended NeSGS (Nebraska State Genealogical Society) annual conference with featured speaker Beth Foulk. Beth is from the Kansas City area and volunteers at the Midwest Genealogy Center, which I visited in March.
I enjoyed Beth's presentations; she is fun, provides great outlines and informative. All great to have in a speaker. Plus we share the same first name. I'm not sure if she is an Elizabeth though, as I am not, so we may not share the same given name (which was a small part of her talk).
Beth talked about timelines, beginner mistakes, genealogy book web sites, sourcing and Nebraska settlers. I enjoyed ALL of her topics, but my favorite was probably the genealogy book sites. I also learned a lot about the NEW NESGS.org web site presented by Floyd Smith III.

Check out the all new nesgs.org web site. New features include a calendar where anyone can add events. Beware though, if you try to add a quilting event, Floyd will delete it. Only genealogy events should be added. This should help us have a place where all Nebraska genealogy events can be located online.
Members have special benefits on nesgs.org. Why should I be a member you ask? Well for a mere $20, you can see applications of first family, pioneer family and others. Some of these include much genealogy for a family, as much as 12 pages for one family! Plus you get the Nebraska Ancestree mailed to you. Also you get access to ALL past issues of the Ancestree on nesgs.org so you can search them. Past issues of the New Brass Key will also be online for members. Members can rent microfilm and library books.

What I learned from the genealogy book web sites topic: Well I'm sure you knew (as I did) that there are online books on books.google.com and also Heritage Quest (available through your library). Also Family Search has about 80,000 books on books.familysearch.org and these are all genealogy and history.
BUT the new and big one for me was www.hathitrust.org. They have 16,000 genealogy releated books drawing from about 40 universities. Hathi Trust has over 10 MILLION books online. No need for a Kindle now, just pull up this web site, do a search and pull up the PDF file of what you want to read. Plus on Hathi Trust you can make a list of books, so if you want to save your genealogy books to find later, you can. Note that this list is public so John Doe can see what genealogy books you have saved.

Well I'm sure I have gone on long enough. I always enjoy genealogy conferences, getting to know others who enjoy what I do, learn new web sites and techniques, and having fun. No losing weight though, as there is a lot of eating and sitting. Good food at the Midtown Holiday Inn in Grand Island, highly recommend their mashed potatoes. Yum yum!

Funeral Card Friday: great uncle Paul

My grandmother's family seemed to be blessed by living long lives. Sure, she had two brothers die in infancy and one sister die as a teenager. But once her and her siblings made it to adulthood, they seemed to live a long life.

front of funeral card

Here is the funeral card from my great-uncle Paul P. Regnier. He was my grandmother's brother. Uncle Paul and Aunt Laura never had any children, so I think they enjoyed seeing their nieces and nephews and great-nieces and great-nephews. They lived in the same town as my grandparents, so often when the family gathered, Uncle Paul and Aunt Laura would stop by. 

Uncle Paul was born in 1906 and lived to 2005, until he was 98 years old. The last years of his life were spent in the nursing home. His younger sister never married or had children, and she was particularly close to him especially late in his life. This great-aunt of mine is the last sibling of my grandmother who is still living, at the age of 94. My great-aunt is in the nursing home and my mom takes care of her finances.

I particularly like the front of this funeral card with the pretty scenery. I think perhaps this is a Thomas Kincaid photo but I'm not sure. 

Rest in peace Great Uncle Paul; you led a good long life.  

Treasure Chest Thursday: Marriage momentos

Well I am months behind on blogging but I found a couple subjects on Geneabloggers I thought I might blog about, so hopefully a post today and tomorrow.

My "treasure chest Thursday" post is not from a treasure chest at all, but they are special momentos to me. They come from my walls. I have my great-grandparents' marriage license framed with photos, and my grandparents' marriage license framed with a photo and their rings. Plus I have my own marriage momentos framed.

First here is my great-grandparents' marriage license framed with photos: Chris (Jorgen Christian) Jorgensen and his wife Katie Nelson. This is written in Danish.

Okay I had that image rotated and now it rotated back when I added it.
Next is my grandparents' marriage license with photo and rings: Mable L. Foster and Lars Alfred Jorgensen

Last is a collection of my wedding momentos that I put in a shadow box:

Everyone took pictures of my wedding cake so I had lots of extra photos of that.
These are very special to me.
If you have wedding licenses and photos, I'd advise framing them so you can treasure them, rather than have to sift through papers or folders to find them.

Presidents' Day

Today is Presidents' Day. If you have the day off, I hope you had a good one. When you work at home as a genealogist and stay-at-home mom, today is not a day off.

So do you have presidential relatives? If you descend from people of early colonial days, it's pretty easy to find out.

Using my five unique Mayflower ancestors and the list of famous descendants on Caleb Johnson's Mayflower History page, I found some presidents that are my relatives.

1. President John Quincy Adams and his son President John Adams descend from John Alden.

2. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt descends from John Howland, and he also descends from Isaac Allerton and is therefore related to my husband.

3. President George Bush and President George H. W. Bush descend from John Howland.

4. Vice President Dan Quayle could be my closest presidential relative as he descends from Myles Standish and John Alden, and their children Alexander Standish and Sarah Alden who were married (as I also do). He descends from a son of theirs.

5. Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin descends from John Howland.


Another famous person who I am probably closer related to is Dick Van Dyke. We share common ancestors Myles Standish and John Alden, and their children Alexander Standish and Sarah Alden who were married. Then he descends from one sister (Sarah) and I a different sister (Lorah).

A couple years ago I found my step-mother-in-law's family is related to President Barak Obama. They didn't really take that as good news. As you can read in Megan Smolenyak's book, President Obama's mother has ancestors from early colonial America so he has many relatives. His mother was white, although we don't seem to hear much about her.

Happy Presidents' Day! Have a happy day of whatever genealogy or family history you can do!

Review of genealogy goals 2012

Well here it is January 2013 and I'm late in blogging (again).
I want to review my goals from 2012 to see how I did, and then in the next post form some genealogy goals for 2013.

Personal genealogy: 1. I wanted to finish my husband's Mayflower application, which I worked on some, but I still need to finish and mail in, so progress made but not completed.
2. Starting our SAR and DAR applications, no progress made, did not start
3. I did do some more work on my brick wall lines (my Irish DACY) and a few others. I went to my mom's hometown and found several obituaries. Good to have the obits although they're not on my brick wall lines and didn't provide much new info.

Volunteer genealogy: 1. I did finish photographing the Osceola Cemetery (Nebraska) and put all the names on Findagrave. Photos are all taken, but not on the site. I also started photographing the Graceland Cemetery in Shelby and put names on Findagrave. Progress made, almost complete!
2. Get a directory and signs up in Stromsburg Cemetery: This goal is dependent on the board, and we are making progress but haven't gotten this done yet. So I've try to do all I can with this one.
3. Updating Kearney Co GenWeb: This goal changed during the year, as I found someone else to take my place as Kearney County GenWeb coordinator, and I adopted the Polk County GenWeb. Since I live in Polk County, maybe this makes more sense, although I have no ancestors or relatives here to my knowledge. And I've done nothing with the Polk County GenWeb site since I adopted it. I need to figure out how to upload (FTP) again, download a free program, etc.

Writing, Research & Reorganization: 1. Write 2 blog posts a month or 24 for 2012: Well I did this halfway; I wrote 12 blog posts for 2012.
2. Take one day and go somewhere not too far (Tilden or Fairbury) to find more records on one of my family lines: DONE! I took a Saturday in early October and got some obituaries in Fairbury, and some gravestone photos for others.
3. Keep my genealogy papers and computer files organized and do backups monthly or at least quarterly: I did do some of this but definitely could've done better. I did a couple backups, I think. I have piles of papers in baskets.

Education & Socialization: 1. Go to at least one genealogy conference: DONE! I went to at least two. I went to the Nebraska conference in Grand Island in May, and went to the Family History conference in Kearney sponsored by familysearch.org.
2. Take at least one genealogy webinar: Didn't do. Still need to sign up and do one. It's just hard to find one to fit my time, and to decide which to take.
3. Continue to read other genealogy blogs and follow #genealogy on FB & Twitter: DONE! I have read other blogs sporatically, and do follow lots of people on the Facebook and the Twitter.
4. Continue to meet almost monthly with our local genealogy group: DONE! We meet almost monthly, the last Monday of the month, although usually skipping May and December.
5. Look into some education to becoming a "professional" genealogist: Progress made! I went through most of the family history course online and joined a couple more associations. I guess you might call me a "professional genealogist" as I have now gotten paid for genealogy work I've done for others. And I'm loving this!

Well I think I did okay. What do you think? Obviously some of my goals I can probably just move over for 2013! Stay tuned later today or tomorrow (hopefully) for my 2013 goals.

Mayflower line

Happy Thanksgiving week! Remembering our Mayflower ancestors this week as the reason for the holiday, and thankful for their hard journey and hard times in this new country. Several are posting their Mayflower lines so I will try to post mine.

I descend from 9 Mayflower passengers (5 unique): Howland, Tilley, Standish, Mullins and Alden.

Myles Standish married Barbara
Alexander Standish married Sarah Alden
Lorah Standish married Abraham Samson (love her name Lorah, wanted to name my daughter Lorah)
Sarah Samson married John Rouse
John Rouse married Rebecca Barker
Elizabeth Rouse married Levi Barber
Elizabeth Barber married Felix Modeste Regnier
Felix Regnier (Jr.) married Sallie Sickmon
Roy Regnier married Katherine Dacy
Pamelia Regnier married Lester Seggerman (my grandparents)
my mom married my dad
Me


I will not post my Alden and Mullins line as they are basically as above, but replacing the top people.

My other line is Howland & Tilley

John Howland married Elizabeth Tilley
Joseph Howland married Elizabeth Southworth
Thomas Howland married Joan Cole
Consider Howland married Ruth Bryant
Elizabeth Howland married Isaac Barker
Rebecca Barker married John Rouse (then the rest of the line is the same)

Elizabeth Rouse married Levi Barber
Elizabeth Barber married Felix Modeste Regnier
Felix Regnier (Jr.) married Sallie Sickmon
Roy Regnier married Katherine Dacy
Pamelia Regnier married Lester Seggerman (my grandparents)
my mom married my dad
Me

My husband is descended from Isaac Allerton. He also misses another Mayflower passenger by the wrong wife; he descends from the second wife of Experience Mitchell whose first wife was Mayflower descendant Joan Hurst. I'm still working on "proving" his line.

Isaac Allerton married Mary Norris
Mary Allerton married Thomas (Sr.) Cushman
Thomas (Jr.) Cushman married Abigail Titus
Samuel Cushman married Fear Corser
Mercy Cushman married Noah (Jr.) Fuller
Noah (III) Fuller married Rebekah Sweet
Asenath Fuller married Luban/Laban Capron
Armina Capron married Thomas Richart
Oscar Emmet Richart married Caroline Ramsey
Nellie Armina Richart married James Piatt Foresman
Mary Louise Foresman married Harold Sparrow (his grandparents)
his dad married his mom
him

Sunday Genealogy Fun

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun

Okay Saturday night was football for me, so this is Sunday genealogy fun.

This week Randy Seaver of GeneaMusings has offered up a genetic genealogy game for us to play! Here is the mission:

1.                 List your matrilineal line - your mother, her mother, etc. back to the first identifiable mother. Note: this line is how your mitochondrial DNA was passed to you!

2.                 Tell us if you have had your mitochondrial DNA tested, and if so, which Haplogroup you are in.

3.                 Post your responses on your own blog post, in Comments to this blog post, or in a Status line on Facebook or in your Stream at Google Plus.

4.                 If you have done this before, please do your father's matrilineal line, or your grandfather's matrilineal line, or your spouse's matrilineal line.

5.                 Does this list spur you to find distant cousins that might share one of your matrilineal lines?

My matrilineal line looks something like this:

1. Me, and then my mother (we're both still alive and mom doesn't like too much of her info online)

2. Mom's mom, my grandma Pamelia (Regnier) Seggerman

3. Her mom, Katherine "Katie" (Dacy) Regnier

4. Her mom, Lucy Bridget (Crahan) Dacy

And that's as far as I go because Lucy Bridget (Crahan) Dacy is Irish, immigrated from Ireland, and my Irish are my brick wall ancestors.

2. I have had my DNA tested but it was through Ancestry.com so I did not have my mitochondrial DNA tested. I don't know which my Haplogroup is.

5. I have found some cousins who share Lucy Bridget (Crahan) Dacy as an ancestor and they don't know much more than I do. Would love to find cousins with an interest in researching any common lines.