Sweet & Low

I'm reading Sweet & Low by Rich Cohen (New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 2006) right now. It's interesting to read as a family history buff. For all intents and purposes, that's what the book is. It takes a family story and family characters and blends that information with history and context. It does this extremely well.

Although most of the people that Cohen is writing about are still alive, he is distanced from many of them, both emotionally and physically (he grew up in IL, while they lived in NYC). In this way, he is your typical family historian.

Cohen uses the tools of all family historians: wills, newspapers and court documents, but also has the luxury of interviews with living family members. The story he creates is an excellent read. In an article for Slate.com, Cohen writes that he "would write as if everyone had died long ago." In fact, this is sometimes how it feels.

As the son of the daughter who was disinherited from the family fortune, however, he is far from neutral. So although he uses primary sources and interviews, there is a decided slant to his writing that leaves you wondering what the other side might be. At times, he ascribes motives to his family characters or describes them from childhood memories that leave you squirming; who can tell what others are really thinking or meaning from such limited information? Unfortunately, I haven't yet turned up any rebuttals or corrections from other family members (so maybe it's all true).

All in all, though, I would recommend the book as an interesting read, particularly for those of us writing family history stories. If nothing else, it is a good reminder that even primary sources and people may sometimes skew our glimpses into the past.

Salon Advice Column/Marshall Family

So it has been a long time since this Salon advice column ran (in Sept 2006), and I'm still irked by it. The basic premise is that a daughter is irritated by how obsessed her parents have become by genealogy. The reply is what bugs me, since it essentially says that genealogists only are interested in finding out which famous people they are related to. You can read the replies; lots of genealogists wrote in to disagree, and say they do it for a whole host of other reasons. It looks like the most common reason is to find out more about history and "where I came from". You can read about my reasons for doing genealogy here.

Also, I haven't been writing very much this week, because, ironically, I have been doing research on someone who I might not be related to, but who is famous (ish). The Marshall family of western Pennsylvania has frustrated me for a long time, in part because I don't have easy access to primary records, and in part because there aren't very many primary records that were created. I am searching for more information on James Marshall (b. about 1822 in PA) who was married to Mary Lauderback (b. abt 1827 in PA). Their children were:

1. George Albert Marshall, b. 1845, probably in Brownsville; m. Viola Carter in 1865; d. 1933 in OK?
2. Erastus S. Marshall, b. 10 Aug 1847 in Elizabeth, Allegheny Co, PA; private, Co. E, 155th Pa. Inf. Zouaves; m. Sarah Melchi in 1867; d. 10 Jun 1919 in California, Washington, PA
3. Eperitus Marshall, b. 1849; m. Martha ____; d. 1908; carpenter (spellings of his first name vary widely)
4. Jemima Marshall, b. abt. 1856

In 1850, the family lived in Elizabeth, Allegheny County. In 1860, they lived in California, Washington County.

As an adult, Erastus lived in California. Eperitus also lived there for a time. George lived in McKeesport, before heading west.

The problem I am having is that James Marshall is WAY too common a name, even in sparsely settled western PA, especially since the family moved around so much.

In the course of looking for more information about MY James Marshall, I kept running across information about a James Marshel, b. 1753. I collected it, on the assumption that if I did manage to make a link from my James Marshall to a possible grandfather, James Marshel, I would be really irritated with myself for having not paid attention to all the other references. But then, I got interested in the James Marshel who might not be mine. He's an interesting character for sure. Plus, I learned a whole bunch about western PA history that I didn't know, but that is helpful for doing additional research.

This week, I decided it needed to be put into narrative form, because I was losing track of the notes and quotations and so forth that I had compiled. You can read a draft of what I've been working on here.

Here's a dilemma though. Do I want to be related to him? On the one hand, it would be nice to be related to someone whose letters and so forth I could actually read and learn more about. On the other hand, he doesn't seem to have been a very nice character. Everyone will have someone not so nice in their tree (probably many of them). You can't always find out much about them... although they tend to leave more of a trail than the nice ancestors, what with court documents and all. But it's sort of disturbing to find such people in your family tree.

Want Free Genealogy Records? Volunteer to Help Create Them!

The LDS Church is the behemoth of genealogy records. They have microfilmed an enormous number of records and keep them all in storage under a mountain. No, really, under a mountain.

Whether or not you agree with the religious reasons for storing the records, the fact remains that the LDS Church has done all family historians a great service by saving the records and making them so available to researchers all over the world. Virtually all of the collection on microfilm or microfiche can be requested by a genealogist and will be sent for the costs of mailing to a local Family History Center.

The church has begun the process of transcribing some of those records to be made available for free online, and needs help. Think you can volunteer? I bet you could. It can be done at home, by applying, downloading their software and then transcribing a batch.

Two people transcribe every record and if there are differences between the two, a third person has to reconcile the differences. So don't worry if you don't have any experience!

The Problem with Web 2.0

Okay, so I have to say that I like a lot of the new options provided by Web 2.0 applications which give you the opportunity to work with other people to navigate the web and share information. Wikis are great fun (I love Wikipedia), and I think that blogging has a place as well. Here's my dilemma though. Mostly, I disagree with people about popular culture. For example, I just visited Digg.com. Among their top stories with 174 Diggs was this one about Hayden Panettiere in a See Through Dress. I find this distressing. Am I alone?

Maybe part of the problem is that Web 2.0 is mostly catering to a younger crowd than me (oh dear, I'm aging myself). Are there stats about this? Well, I know that MySpace is dominated by a younger crowd.

Still, I'm a snob about other things as well. The popular books that are on the New York Times bestseller list? Most don't appeal. So maybe the problem is with me! Feel free to consider me a snob about these sorts of things.

How does this relate back to genealogy? Well, I did a quick look at the bookmarks under the tag "genealogy" on del.icio.us. I am really just concerned about the trend toward social networking for family history and genealogy. In my experience, published information about family trees, etc. is best taken with a grain of salt... and sometimes a lot more than a grain or with another kind of substance altogether. As an example, especially of this latter, see this article from TechDirt about fake family trees.

In general, I just worry that people aren't sharing their sources, and aren't doing the kind of quality work that can really be relied upon. This is also why I hated group projects as a student.

And, yes, I know about glass houses. There is certainly stuff on this web site that I have my doubts about. And nearly all of it came from secondary published genealogies or the sort of social networking that I am now railing against. If I could go back to my high school self and give her a stern talking to about this, I would. In the meantime, I am simply doing my best to correct these things whenever possible.

And I know that sometimes this isn't possible. For example, in my Asa Hamlin's Father story, I show how I looked for primary sources to verify Lura Hamlin's parentage, but all I have been able to find so far is in a secondary source... a local history. Still, this information seems more reliable than many other secondary sources I've seen.

Using Blogger with Rootsweb's Freepages

As mentioned on the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page, I am now using the program Blogger to create and update pages with ongoing content, like the Asa page or the Genealogy & General Subjects blog.

Blogger is a free, online program to create web logs (called "blogs" for short). The company was recently purchased by Google. Blogs can be used as informal journals of opinion, or they can be more technical and formalized.

Entire websites can be built using a blog format, which enables you to easily incorporate links, images, videos, sound clips, and text in one place. This makes blogs an excellent tool for easily documenting a family's history with photos, images of censuses (or other primary documents), links to related sites, and videos of tombstones or other relevant locations.

Blogger comes with some built-in templates that allow easy formatting (and which may be modified for more advanced users). You type in content as though you were sending an email, and it automatically creates the coding for you. It will also, like most blogging programs, automatically archive previous posts for you as well. One of the features that makes blogging different from standard web publishers, however, is the ability for other readers to post comments about what they have read.

The other core feature of many blogs, including those produced by Blogger is that you can sydicate the page and offer a subscription to readers. This allows readers to peruse your new content with a web feed without having to visit your site as regularly. For example, readers of my Asa page can check to see if there are new updates, videos, or pictures directly from their home page or desktop or mobile phone or PDA. This is a convenience for many readers.

Most blogs are kept on dedicated servers, meaning that if you have a blog and a Rootsweb's Freepages account, you probably just have links between the two. The difference between this and what I am about to explain is that Blogger will publish your blog to your Freepages account. If you have other content that is not in blog format (as I did), this enables you to keep it all in one location.

Okay, enough explanation of the concept. Here is how you can create your blog on Freepages:

1. Go to Blogger and sign up for a free account.
2. Next, create your blog. Under the "create a blog" section, you will choose the "Advanced Blog Setup" link.
3. Blog details:

• Title - whatever you like
• Listed or unlisted - in a directory like your phone number... public or not?

4. Server details:

• FTP server - always users.freepages.rootsweb.com
• Protocol - always FTP
• FTP path - depends what folder you want to use on Freepages. If your website is at http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/ you are using the genealogy_html folder. If your website is at http://freepages.family.rootsweb.com/ you are using the family_html folder
  

Whatever folder you use, it MUST already exist on your server (i.e. if you are going to use a subfolder, you should create it before you do this step). You separate folders using the slash: /

In the example below, I opted to create a "genblog" folder inside of my genealogy folder for my Pretend Blog, so for this step I wrote in genealogy_html/genblog/. This path directs Blogger to install the files in this folder. You could just use the genealogy folder instead, however, in which case you would write in genealogy_html/.

NOTE: To direct Blogger to the appropriate path on Rootsweb, you must use the following formats:

genealogy_html (to the genealogy folder)
history_html
family_html (etc.)

The key thing to note about these formats is the underscore between the folder name and html.

• Blog filename - you can name it pretty much whatever you want. This will be the end of your URL (website address) for the blog when you finish. In my example below, I named the file pretend.html, so my URL would be http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~mabgenealogy/genblog/pretend.html
• Blog URL - this is the URL where your blog will be, but without the filename you gave above. In my example, the URL I wrote in is http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~mabgenealogy/genblog/
• FTP Username - the username assigned to you by Rootsweb
• FTP Password - the password assigned to you by Rootsweb (don't forget that it is case sensitive, so caps must be in caps!)
• Word verification - type in what you see (a security feature)
• Hit continue!

5. Choose the template you like and hit continue.
6. You are DONE! Now you can create posts and tell the blog to "publish" and it should put everything on your Rootsweb site exactly where you told it to.

I hope this was helpful to you. If you used this page to create a website, please use the "comments" section below to tell me about it and give me the URL.

Ethics & Letters

A large part of my family history site has recently become the Family Documents & Stories section. In fact, these two areas are among the most frequently visited of the site.

I have to wonder however about the ethical dilemmas posed by publishing some of these documents even after the death of everyone involved. For example, in several of the letters to Rose Plaisted, her suitors specifically requested her to "Burn when read". Well, clearly, she didn't. And, in fact, those letters were passed from her daughters to her granddaughter to my mother... three generations who didn't destroy them. So whose ethical dilemma is that? Of course, prior to me, the letters were in a box, not published for all to see. Still, how could I resist? They're hysterical!

Of possibly more concern is the more recent skeletons in the closet... the people who are remembered by those who are still living. For example, I quote my great-aunt, Eva Scott, in The Letter from "Mother". She clearly didn't mean for anyone to see that letter, especially not anyone in her family. How was she to know that her suitor was saving his correspondence and would donate it to Cornell upon his death? (The irony being that she is one of Rose's daughters and didn't destroy that correspondence).

I guess the lesson here is that sometimes our letters come back to haunt us. I recently heard from a friend of mine from high school. She still has packets of letters that I wrote to her. I can only imagine what I might have said.

What do you think? Where are the ethical boundaries?