Google Trends

Kathi at AncestorSearchBlog uses Google Trends to compare the 2004-2008 trend history for those searching for the word 'genealogy' compared to other hobbies such as gardening and scrapbooking, and other interests such as politics and religion.

It's an interesting comparison. My biggest initial surprise was the graph for religion, for while it remained fairly consistent, it was clearly seasonal, dropping drastically every year at the end of December. The suggestion that people lost interest in religion at the end of December was fairly disconcerting, until I factored in the drop during the summer as well. That's not because there are no religious holidays in the summer, my initial suspicion. A large number of people who use google, go on vacation every summer and at the end of December. (And during that period of time, when they're on computers, they're searching for other things.) You can see a similar effect with the graph for politics, though there is an unexplainable spike in November every two years.

However, I decided there were a few more genealogy related graphs I was curious about. And my investigation led to additional queries.

1) I wondered how many people searched for "Genealogy" but didn't know how to spell the word correctly. I was also curious about other key words/phrases such as ancestry, family history, and family tree.


It turned out that back in 2004, 'genealogy' was the #1 searched for phrase out of this group, but in 2008 'family tree' has surpassed it. The other three are less frequent searches in comparison, but I did note that it appeared that in 2004 'geneology' was more popular than 'ancestry'. In the past 4 years there has either been an increase in spelling skill, or perhaps the popularity of a particular website has influenced the results (by a tiny factor).

Since everything is relative in Google Trends, I decided to look at this comparison in greater detail by focusing just on these two terms.

The search frequency for 'geneology' and 'ancestry' became neck and neck at the beginning of 2006, and 'ancestry' surprassed 'geneology' in 2007.

But one of the interesting features of Google Trends is that while the default gives you the results for the entire world, you can narrow it down geographically. Here's the same comparison above, but just for the US.

As you can see, there are similarities, but 'geneology' is definitely more popular in the US than elsewhere in the world. What this says about our schools is up to you.

Google Trends allows you to get even more geographically narrow minded. I was satisfied with just the US for the comparison above, so for the next chart I decided just to see the general trend for 'genealogy' in my home state. The graph was indeed extremely worrisome.

Prior to about March or April of 2007 there was basically no interest in Genealogy in the state of Missouri. And then there was a dramatic spike. This corresponds with my genealogical research. Coincidence? Could this just be me?

I decided we needed more information.

Genealogy, Beer, Cardinals, Rams (State of Missouri)



George Bush, Clinton, Genealogy (state of Missouri)


I think I can say with relative certainty that there is an issue with the amount of available data skewing these results. So if you narrow your search down to the state-level, be forewarned...

Stop me if you've heard this one...

Here's a joke I heard over lunch today:

Little Billy asks his mother, “Mom, where do humans come from?”
His mother responds, “If you look in the Bible, we are all descended from Adam and Eve.”
Little Billy then goes to his father, and asks him the same question.
His father responds, “Modern science tells us that we are all descended from monkeys.”
Confused, Billy returns to his mother and tells her what his father said.
His mother thinks for a moment, and then responds, “The monkeys, that’s his side of the family.”

Genealogies of Biblical Proportions

There's a fun article in the Tampa Tribune on a Genealogy of Biblical Proportions. The article is about a genealogy discovered on Ancestry (in their Family Trees section)

If ever there was a tangled web, this was it. I got lost just looking at one line of it, but sure enough, it did go back to what someone has entered as "Joseph, father of Jesus" and "Mary the Virgin." This genealogy showed only one child of that union: Joseph Arimathea. Jesus was not mentioned, but perhaps the compiler of this lineage thought that went without saying.

This compiler did give a date of birth for Joseph as the year 100 in Bethlehem. The date alone makes the relationship questionable: How could Jesus have a brother born 100 years after he was? I am not a scholar of the Bible, but this was the first time I had seen Joseph Arimathea linked as the son of Joseph and Mary, although some have speculated that he might have been related to Jesus. According to medieval legend, Joseph took the Holy Grail containing the blood of Jesus to England.

2010 census - will genealogists care in 2082?

Terry at Hill Country and Blaine at The Genetic Genealogist mention the US Government's plans to go low-tech with the census count in 2010.

Related, I've seen a few bloggers over the past few months discussing what will be asked in the census, with the fear we are headed to shorter census forms, with less information on them. There's also a fear we might go to statistical sampling, and thus not get a complete count. Valid concerns for genealogists.

But how bad would it really be if we completely lost the census as a research tool starting, let's say, with the 2010 or 2020 census? I've been giving this some thought.

Certainly, when I am researching ancestors from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the online census forms have been a godsend. So, one can extrapolate, in 100 years the future generations will find the census forms I am on a godsend, too, right?

I'm not so sure. Records on people prior to 1900, and in the early part of the 20th century are sparse. That's a lot of the reason we love the census. In some cases, it's all we've got. But it's not like relatives are untraceable after 1930. Record keeping starts to improve greatly in the 20th century.

Vital Records are going online. In 2082, 72 years after 2010, when the 2010 census is released, I'd be surprised if there was much information on it that wasn't obtainable easily somewhere else. Maybe genealogists will welcome it as a verification of what they have learned elsewhere. Or maybe we will enjoy reading what our ancestors "said" as opposed to what we we already know.

Back when there was discussion about the "Mother of all Genealogy Databases" I had doubts that such a concept would ever exist because the logic it takes to connect "John Smith 1" with "John Smith 2" will be too complex for computers. Especially with the data available prior to the computer age.

However, with the 2010 census, we're talking about data available now. I can easily envision a government database where one enters the social security number of a deceased individual, and retrieves a display of public information. This display could be just about anything the government knows about that individual not deemed private information. If you're not sure of the SS#, you will naturally be able to look it up like you are now. Sure, lots of our ancestors don't have Social Security numbers, but if we were born in the US, we all do now. (And legal immigrants get id#s too.) This database isn't available now, and probably isn't possible now, but by 2082?

I haven't been doing this very long, but the greatest part of the census seems to be the family groupings allowing you to trace a family back. But recently Ancestry.com uploaded the IRS records from the 1860s and 70s, with a handful of later ones as well. I've never had to list dependents on a tax form, alas, but I believe when one does, one names them.

With the Texas marriage and birth records available at Ancestry I was able to find distant cousins born within the past ten years. By 2082 I expect the birth information of everyone reading this will be as easily available to their descendants.

There are probably other reasons to fight against statistical sampling. (I don't entirely trust statistical sampling to be an accurate count, and since the amount of representation is dependent upon the results I suspect there could be political shenanigans with sampling.)

However, while the future is always difficult to predict, I suspect the census won't be as useful a tool for genealogists of the future as it is today.

Car-nival of Genealogy

The 45th Car-nival of Genealogy has been posted, with 36 participants sharing stories about family cars. Lots of high-octane reading. (Insert groan here.)

And the theme for Carnival #46 has been announced:

What traits run in your family? Which of them did you inherit? Do you have your mother's blue eyes? Your grandfather's stubbornness? Your aunt's skill with knitting needles? Is there a talent for music in your family? Or do you come from a long line of teachers? Have you ever looked at an old photo and recognized your nose on another family member's face?

More info on submitting here

Polish Suburbs

Back on March 17th I joked about my great-grandfather Barney growing up in a suburb of Dublin, Ireland, known as Warsaw.

A few minutes ago someone left a comment on that post that yielded an interesting discovery. The commenter had a grandfather who insisted the family came from Scotland. It turned out his family came from Schotland, a suburb of Danzig (Gdansk) Poland.

My great-grandfather didn't merely say the family was 'from' Dublin, Ireland but claimed to have attended school there. So this possibility of generational geographical confusion isn't enough to explain away his fibbing. However, it might provide an interesting source for the idea of the fib. So I started looking through towns of Poland just for kicks.

And I discovered: Deblin, Poland, just over 100km from Warsaw.


View Larger Map

I will certainly have to keep this possibility in mind.

So You Want a Wiki?

Here's the post I promised awhile back on the Technology themed Carnival of Genealogy.

You want a genealogy wiki. What are your options? As I see it, there are two basic options.

Option One: Find a public "Genealogy Wiki"

Is there a "One World Tree"-type website, but in wiki format? There is at least one: FamilyPedia, which is on Wikia. Wikia is a product of the same company that is responsible for WikiPedia. Basically anyone can create a Wiki about anything on Wikia, and someone's already created one for genealogy, so there's no real reason to recreate the wheel.

However - I see serious problems with using a public Wiki for family genealogy. I've seen some of the gross errors in Ancestry's "One World Tree", and I suspect there will be a lot of fighting ultimately between different users over ancestors, as one tells another that they have the wrong "John Smith" married to the wrong "Jane Green"

There is an "Alternate Surname" of "Newmack" on Ancestry for a local relative in a census. That means someone researching a relative with the "Newmack" surname found my family, and decided they were their family, and decided to be "helpful." On a Wiki I certainly could tell them "hey, sorry, you're wrong" and change it back. But what if they don't think they're wrong, and a fight ensues? Who's going to resolve these disputes to the satisfaction of both sides?

Option Two: install a wiki on a private website.

What do you need?

First, and foremost, you need a website where
1) you can install scripts written in languages such as PHP
2) you have access to MySQL databases
3) you can password protect your site

Wait! I don't understand those words!

PHP is a computer programming language. MySQL is a type of database. You don't have to know anything about either, as there are pre-written applications that you can install without knowing the languages themselves.

Every host that provides space for websites will have a list of features that they are able to provide. (Or at least every professionally run one will.) So you will only need to look through the list of features for the words "PHP" and "MySQL".

If you decided to skip #3 - password protection

you will likely find yourself coming back to it. You might not have a problem with anyone seeing the information on your website. However, wiki software allows anyone to modify the information. And while there aren’t going to be a lot of people interested in vandalizing your family history, there are computer-programs scouring the web looking for wiki pages to turn into spam. Think about the emails you receive. If it’s not password protected, you will have to spend some of your time fighting spam. If it is password protected, you will be spending zero time doing this. Password protection also allows you to put “family only” stuff on the site you might not otherwise.

Choosing a Host

To achieve #1 and #2 you are going to need to pay a host, but prices have come down from where they once were. There are a lot of hosts to choose from. I am only going to mention two that I have personal experience with, and feel I can recommend.

Hostrocket.com
$5/month (if you buy 2 years), $10/month if you buy 1 year
1000 GB of storage space
Unlimited bandwidth
Maximum 10 websites per account (maximum increased 1 website per month)
10 MySQL databases
PHP, MySQL, Perl
Lots of Extras

Dreamhost.com
$9/month if you buy 2 years, $10/month if you buy 1 year
500gb of storage space
5TB of monthly bandwidth (increases by 40gb each week)
Unlimited MySQL databases
Unlimited domains
Lots of extras

[Note: You may be familiar with one that has better prices. As I said, there are a lot of hosts competing against each other. I have had several years experience with both Hostrocket and Dreamhost, and have received good customer service from both of them. They have also both been in the business for awhile. Since 1999 for Hostrocket, and 1997 for Dreamhost. They're not likely to disappear tomorrow.]

While some of the figures look different for these two, for 90% of all people, they are the same. You probably know how many gb of space your computer holds. 1000 may be double 500, but both are probably more than you’re going to need. I am currently using about 3 gb of space to host six websites, including two family-wikis, A research site for a 19th century French author, and a literary magazine.

5 TerraBytes of bandwidth isn’t unlimited, technically, but you aren’t likely going to get that much traffic on a family website – no matter how large your family is. Due to its educational nature, my research site actually gets a fair amount of visitors, and it uses about 500 mb of bandwidth a month. (0.5 gb or .0005 tb)

One thing you may notice is that it is possible to host more than one domain (www.yourname.com) on one account. It might be possible to find somebody (or multiple somebodies) to split the cost of the account. In that case, Hostrocket’s limit on MySQL databases and on domains might make a difference in favor of Dreamhost at some point.

The domain names themselves cost about $10/year at godaddy.com.

Many hosts will have something they call ‘one-click installs’ or something similar, where they have a list of programs that can be installed almost with the click of a button into your account. This list can vary. Both Hostrocket and Dreamhost do have wiki-software in their one-click install list. However, there’s a difference.

Hostrocket lets you choose between PhpWiki and Tiki-Wiki. Both of these work well, but they have a different look-and-feel from the software that is used to run Wikipedia, which more people are familiar with. If you are actually familiar with editing pages on Wikipedia, you will probably want to install the software it uses. There’s nothing stopping you from installing it on HostRocket, but you’re going to have to install it manually (or get HostRocket support to install it for you.)

Dreamhost has MediaWiki (and PhpGEDView - a popular genealogy app) on their one-click installs.

So if the website is going to have a Wiki as one of its requirements, Dreamhost is slightly favorable between these two options, and it is where both of my family wikis are currently hosted. I have never attempted to install MediaWiki manually, so I am unable to give any advice on that, though the instructions are online.

Let me know in the comments if there are other aspects about maintaining a Family Wiki that you are interested in.

Loldog

Janice, at CowHampshire, has challenged other GeneaBloggers to post Lolcats.

I have nothing against Lolcats, but there are two types of families with family pets. There are cat families, and there are dog families. (And then there are the rare families where cats and dogs have learned to live in peace together, and it is the owners of these pets we should be appointing as diplomats to foreign nations...but that's an argument for another post.) Anyway, my family has always been a dog family.

I am also going to violate another tradition of Lolcatdom, and the text in this picture isn't coming from the dog's mouth. It's coming from the invisible kid, but it's in the invisible kid's real handwriting, and real words, written down 34 years ago, and scanned in from a scrapbook tonight.


Elsewhere in the scrapbook the kid mentions Daisy as a dog, so the kid probably wasn't confused. This is likely his first known recorded usage of a metaphor (age 5). And as April is National Poetry Month, it seems appropriate.

Yes, the invisible kid is me. Daisy was half Springer Spaniel, half Poodle, and probably the most intelligent dog I've ever known. All the dogs I've known have had their own special qualities, but Daisy cornered the market on intelligence. She even taught herself, without any assistance, how to ring the doorbell to indicate she wanted to come inside.

And she certainly had a foolish appearance at times - as illustrated in the photo - which makes it even more appropriate for today.

New Mexico Death Certificates Redux

The microfilm I ordered from the Family History Library, which was supposed to contain the death certificate for my great grandfather, Melvin Van Every, came in at the library, so I looked through it. There were no death certificates from Dona Ana County. The film was labeled "Bernalillo - Grant Counties 1929." Dona Ana could have been misplaced in one of the other two rolls for 1929, but at $6/roll I didn't like the prospect of ordering the two other rolls and possibly discovering they completely failed to film Dona Ana for that year.

However, GeneaBlogie recently had a post on various states and their openness of records. And he stated that despite the New Mexico State website, the state has a statute that says records may be made available 50 years after death. (Which makes sense...since the Family History Library obviously got access to them.)

So I did some more searching and found myself back at the NMGenWeb website. I'm not sure how I missed it last time I was there, but the volunteers at the Death Index offer to obtain photocopies of any death certificate listed in their index (which currently spans 1899-1949). $1 for the first certificate, 50 cents for each additional, profits going towards expanding the index.

They're actually going to get $2 from me, as I will order the certificate for William Thetford, who I believe was the father of Melvin's second wife, Josie Thetford. There's also a "Jessie Thetford" who died in 1938, which I don't think is Josie, since if the 1930 census is correct, the age is about 8 years off, but we could have transcription or other errors either in the census or the death index, so it's certainly worth 50 cents.

Cars

The topic for the 45th Carnival of Genealogy

Cars as stars!

I don't yet have many photos of family cars. I have a photo of my maternal grandfather, Martin Deutsch, in a jeep, though it was property of the US Army.


I have a photo of my paternal grandfather, Melvin Newmark, standing by a car. Is it his? Does he have a job as a valet? What kind of car is it? I don't know the answers to any of these.

The writing snipped off at the top reads, in my grandmother's hand: Mel, June 1930. I'm thankful to her for several good photos of my grandfather when he was young. In 1930 she was 16 and he was 18.

My maternal great grandfather, Melvin Van Every, wrote to his daughter in January of 1925,

"The next time I go to El Paso I will go in the Buick and I generally get back the same day. We still have the original tires on it and it is always ‘rearing’ to go. I left the water in the radiator one night and it developed a small leak from freezing."

My paternal second great grandfather, Selig (Dudelsack) Feinstein was a shoer of horses from 1890-1900. And horses were necessary back then to pull carriages. "Car" is just an abbreviation for "Carriage," and was utilized prior to automobiles. Alas, I have no photographs of family in horse-drawn carriages.

And the gilded Car of Day,
His glowing Axle doth allay
In the steep Atlantick stream
-John Milton (1608-1674)

My own personal car history is relatively short.

The first car I ever drove was a hand-down from my father, a Toyota Cressida. It met its end one morning turning left out of a residential neighborhood onto a busy street. There were some bushes that blocked the view of oncoming traffic, and rain deadened some sound, so I didn't hear the fire engine's siren. No one was injured, except the car.

Then I bought a used 1991 black Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme. It had an electronic dashboard, and shortly after purchase, the wiring went funky, and most of the time I had no idea how much gas I had, or how fast I was going. The first isn't a problem - as long as one gets in the habit of just filling up once a week. The second can be an issue. The car passed the required state inspections though when I renewed plates. I have no idea how the Oldsmobile met its end, as I was actually able to find someone to buy it from me when I was ready to buy my first new car. (Except for its dashboard issue, it still drove well.)

My first new car was a black 1999 Honda Civic. I only have one photograph of it, taken in 2003.

Once again, no one injured but the car. (And this time, luckily for my insurance, the fault was clearly on the other driver)

My current car is a 2003 Honda Civic. And in August, G-d willing, I will own it.

Genealogy Can Save Your Life (Update)

Two months ago I posted about how important it is to know when and how your recent ancestors died. At its most basic, if certain diseases run in your family, you can be tested early for those diseases.

The American Cancer Society recommends those without risk factors to have a colonoscopy at age 50. For those with members of the immediate family with colon cancer, it is advised to begin checking 10 years prior to the age of the relative was diagnosed. My maternal grandmother died at age 51.

This morning I had my first colonoscopy, and two polyps were removed. I'm 39. If I hadn't known about my grandmother, and waited until I was 50, there's a good chance I wouldn't have made it.

An Easter Bloom

While it isn't a lily, this bloom was picked by a father on Easter Sunday to share with his daughter (my maternal grandmother) - 82 years ago. It has surely seen better days, but how many blooms get to be preserved for 82 years?


(scanned, it has been placed back inside the envelope, where it will be preserved even longer.)

New at Ancestry

There were a few items new at Ancestry this week for the state of Missouri that caught my attention.

Missouri Still Birth and Miscellaneous Records.

This database contains various miscellaneous records from Missouri from 1805-2002. These records were mixed in with birth, marriage, and death records located on microfilm from the Missouri State Archives. Examples of types of miscellaneous records presented here include: still birth records, school censuses, board of education minute books, receipts, and probate records.

It's organized only by county name, and unindexed, so when I feel bored I can browse through the 72,000 pages for St. Louis. (not likely)

Missouri Death Records (1834-1931)

These records come from the Missouri State Archives, but there are some pre-1910 records here that aren't at the state's Missouri Digital Heritage site. I suspect everything from 1910-1931 in this database can be found in the state's death certificate database.

Missouri Marriage Records 1805-2002

I was all prepared to discover that like the Missouri Birth Records they uploaded a few weeks ago, there were less than a dozen entries in the last thirty years or so of this database. But I was wrongly prepared. This is a conglomeration of marriage license applications, marriage licenses, and marriage indexes.

While some counties have the actual licenses, with the date the marriage was solemnized, it seems St. Louis has only the applications, through 1959. The Ancestry index lists the application date as the date of marriage, which of course is wrong. There's no evidence the marriage happened, just that it was planned, and it almost certainly happened on a different date.

After 1959 some marriages are indexed, but the only information you get is names, date, and the book and volume number, or certificate number. Of course, this could be more than you already knew, and you can use this information to order the certificate from the county clerk. I don't know what fraction of the marriage indexes they have scanned, but it's certainly not complete, for example there were only 24 marriages indexed for all of 1960 in St. Louis.

I did find the applications for several family marriages, and one or two licenses for family members who were living in neighboring counties. Only one surprise. There is a marriage license (without a date of marriage) for a distant Cruvand cousin who prior research indicated never married. Of course, he might not have. This application also happens to have a parental consent signature for a minor female. So there could be a story there.

Friday Five

CowHampshire has inspired me to do a Friday Five

Queen Esther - 1850 - Division 11, Madison, Fl - age 14
Purim Carmine - 1816 - Ross Ohio (Ohio Census 1790-1890)
Ahasuerus Marsales - 1810 - Schenectady, NY
Queen Vashti (is currently living in the Bronx, according to the Public Records index...will she appear on a census released in the future?)
Mordecai (one name only) - 1930 - Lamar, Al - age 0 (ok, this is a newborn without a first name, but, still...)

Lots of Hamans.

Terms of Endearment

I have discovered a collection of about a dozen letters written to my grandmother, Myrtle Van Every, from her father, Melvin, between 1925-1927. Lots of new information, including a first name to the mystery individual she was married to between 1927-1929.

(Dale. As I mention in the timeline I posted a few days ago, I already knew the surname was Ridgely. So my current suspicion is Dale B Ridgely, born in 1900 about 150 miles east of St. Louis in Richland, IL, and who is listed in the 1930 census in San Francisco, as divorced, and first married at age 27. Everything matches up, except no real documentation. In 1929 he was a 1st Lieutenant in the Dental Corps Reserve, in 1946 a Lt Col, and by 1957 a Brig. Gen. The internet is truly amazing.)

Each letter from her father begins with "Dear machen"

All I can find on that word is that it is either German, or a misspelling of the Dutch for the verb "to make". I'm not sure how that translates into a term of endearment.

Are there any German or Dutch speakers out there familiar with a noun-form of the word 'Machen'?

My 'Irish' Great Grandfather

To the left is a bio my great-grandfather Barney Newmark submitted to the North St. Louis Businessman's Association for their 1925 publication.

Are such bios trustworthy sources? Let's take a look.

Proprietor of a tailor shop, 1520 St. Louis avenue;
Yes.

Native of Dublin, Ireland;
Attended public schools in Ireland;
Not quite. As I like to say, a suburb of Dublin, known as Warsaw. Google Maps will provide driving directions, and it will only take you 26 hours.

Student at Oxford;
Barney doesn't say "Oxford University" or "Oxford College". During the 14 years spent in London, England, he lived within walking distance of Oxford Street, and the Oxford Circus Railway Station. He was a student of life.

Learned the tailoring trade at the London Polytechnic, London, England;
For a while it was assumed this was also a stretch of his imagination. But I have learned that the London Polytechnic was the British equivalent of the YMCA, and they provided skills training to local youth. So there is a very good possibility this is true.

Everything after that is also true. So the only outright fib was his country of origin. There was a large Irish community in St. Louis, and my suspicion is that since "Barney" isn't an uncommon Irish name, many of his customers would ask him if he were Irish, and he finally decided to say "yes." (With his fourteen years in England as an explanation of the absence of the accent.)

He also would say that his birthday was March 17th. His birthday appears as April 14th on a few documents, but no birth certificate has been found.

New Mexico Death Certificates

For awhile I assumed my great-grandfather, Melvin Van Every, died in Texas. Then I was reading something his daughter, Minnie, wrote, and realized he had moved to New Mexico after my great grandmother died, and he remarried.

I found him at the New Mexico Death Index project (1899-1949) (Note: this is a USGenWeb project currently hosted on Rootsweb. It could move due to recent consolidation of the Ancestry and Rootsweb domains.)

So then I went to the New Mexico government site to look up how to retrieve death certificates.

New Mexico Vital Records are restricted access records and are only issued to immediate family members or individuals who demonstrate tangible legal interest.

They define immediate family as: "mother, father, maternal grandparent, paternal grandparent (if father listed on record), sibling, child or current spouse." None of these are still alive. If they had included grandchild, I would have had my mother submit the request, which she would have gladly done. I wasn't very happy with the New Mexico government.

Now I am only unhappy with whoever is responsible for their web page. It would be really nice if they mentioned that some death certificates from 1889-1945 are available on microfilm from the Family History Library. Which I can order at the local library I frequent.

DNA testing comparisons

The International Society of Genetic Genealogy has comparison charts for several major genetic testing companies - for mtDNA and Y-DNA.

Price, # of base pairs/markers tested, and the length of DNA storage seem to me to be the most important factors. But even though I have read several articles on other blogs and websites over the past several months, it is still somewhat confusing making a choice.

Myrtle Ethel Van Every Deutsch (1900-1951) - a timeline

One idea that was presented in a beginning genealogy course I took from the St. Louis Genealogical Society was to create a detailed time-line for individuals in your family tree. Have an event for every year of their life. As many of these events as possible should be documented, but years can be filled in with events that were happening locally or nationally. Benefits of this include that it makes it easier to see where chronological gaps exist in your knowledge, and it creates an outline for a more detailed biography

I decided to start with my grandmother, Myrtle Ethel Van Every Deutsch. The following isn’t complete, but it’s what I know, and unless I learn more, will be filled in with local and national events. (e.g. 1901 will likely be: Sept 14 - Vice President Theodore Roosevelt begins first term as President after William McKinley's assassination. That's a pretty good historical marker.)

1900 – On March 21, Myrtle Ethel Van Every was born in Maxwell, Texas, the eighth and final child of Melvin Van Every and Margaret Jane McAlpin Monteroy Denyer. (Three of those eight died as infants, so Myrtle grew up as the youngest of five children.) [Note: Ancestral surnames as middle names are common in the Denyer line, but no evidence of Scottish McAlpin roots have yet been uncovered.]
1905 – On November 8, Myrtle’s sister, Minnie Ray, at age 19, marries August Benold.
1916 – On January 8, Myrtle’s sister, Willa Ann Van Every Roberts dies at age 26, leaving behind a daughter, Agnes, age 5.
1918 - probable graduation of high school. Personnel records indicate she had a high school degree, and two years of post-secondary education.
1920 – Myrtle may be residing at Fort Bliss, in El Paso TX, at the QuarterMasterCorps, according to the census. (Surname on census is illegible.) She is a clerk at the QMC according to her personnel records.
1921 – Myrtle has begun working for the US Post Office in St. Louis according to her personnel records. Myrtle’s brother Samuel, an optometrist, also moves to St. Louis according to the St. Louis City Directory.
1923 – May 2, in Hudspeth, TX, at the age of 55, Myrtle’s mother dies of Chronic Interstitial Nephritis, a kidney disorder usually caused by a reaction to pain medication.
1926 – Sometime between 1926 and 1930 Myrtle’s brother, Samuel, moves to Kansas City.
1927 – Myrtle changes her surname to Ridgely. Personnel Records say due to a marriage. The marriage doesn't appear in St. Louis City, St. Louis County, or Kansas City indexes.
1929 – May 26, Myrtle’s father dies at the age of 66 in New Mexico. At some point in the past 6 years he had remarried. Myrtle also changes her surname back to Van Every.
1930 – On census, Myrtle is listed as divorced.
1933 – Sept 18, Myrtle’s brother, Samuel, dies in Kansas City, MO of cirrhosis of the liver, caused by alcohol. Myrtle was the informant on the death certificate. Family would later tell Myrtle’s daughters that he died in a flu epidemic. [At age 33, both of Myrtle’s parents are deceased, and only two sisters remain alive.]
1936 – December 31, Myrtle marries Martin Joel Deutsch in Springfield, IL They were driving to Chicago to see Martin’s sister, Berta, get married. Martin also received a significant raise to his salary on Dec 31, 1936 according to his Personnel Folder. This may or may not be related.
1937 – January, Myrtle resigns from the Post Office.
1938 – Myrtle and Martin have a daughter.
1940 – Myrtle and Martin have a second daughter
1942 – In March, Myrtle’s husband Martin, already an Army reserve officer, enters active service, most of it spent overseas.
1945 – Myrtle and daughters are living in West Palm Beach, FL.
1945 – November, Myrtle’s husband Martin returns home from active duty.
1946 – Family returns to St. Louis
1947 – Myrtle takes family on vacation to Texas to visit her sisters Minnie and Eva, and their families.
1951 – Sept 11, Myrtle dies of colon cancer at the age of 51.

There are family rumors of a ‘fling’ in her late teenage years. This ‘fling’ may have been with a soldier, as the 1920 census says she’s married, even though her personnel records says she is using her maiden name. (Which isn’t mutually exclusive, even in 1920.) It would also explain why she is residing at Fort Bliss as a civilian.

The personnel records in St. Louis were sparse…A signed oath of office, and a list of dates of promotions, salary increases, and name changes. I was extremely excited upon seeing this list, because my mother had known about prior brief marriage(s) but had no details, and had no idea Myrtle had been in St. Louis since 1921. I am awaiting the possibility of more records from Washington, DC.

Unfortunately, it isn't known who accompanied her on her vacation to the Grand Canyon in 1925 from which the photos were taken. Her companion appears younger, and may have been a niece.

Heavy Sigh

I have managed to find a source discrediting my Chaucer descent this evening.

According to "Plantagenet Ancestry: A Study in Colonial and Medieval Families" by Douglas Richardson, 2004, p. 55-56 (and wikipedia): Joan de la Pole was not the daughter of William de la Pole and Alice Chaucer. She was the illegitimate child of de la Pole and allegedly a nun named Malyne de Cay. This source then matches the OneWorldTree descent down through Margaret Harcourt. And I trust my ascent up through Joanna Chamberlain. (see previous entry) So there's only three unproven links to a direct descent from "someone mentioned in a Shakespearean play" - but that takes longer to say and explain than 'Chaucer'.

Back to more serious pursuits...