Open Thread Thursday – Free or Fee?

Whoever said There’s No Free Lunch wasn’t kidding.  Someone had to go “kill it and drag it home” (to borrow the words of Dave Ramsey), cook it, and serve it up.  It cost someone something to provide that lunch.  If they’re willing to give it away to us, great.  If not, they are as entitled to compensation - as I feel I am after a long day at work.
Such is the case with Ancestry vs. FamilySearch.  I personally think it’s wonderful that volunteers at FamilySearch are willing to digitize family history records and make them available at no charge to researchers.  But, and I say this with no firm data to back me up, Ancestry, using a paid staff, is able to provide a larger quantity of information.  And for me, right now, it’s more about quantity of information than whether or not I have to pay for access.
If documents are in the public domain, and Ancestry digitizes and sells access, more power to them.  Objectors are always free to go get the document themselves, the old fashioned way.  Ancestry, as far as I’m concerned, isn’t selling me access as much as they are selling me EASY access.  I’m quite willing to pay to have a document I want delivered to my desktop, while I sit here drinking coffee and listening to a ballgame, as opposed to having to drive somewhere (probably at some distance, as most of my research is not local) and go fetch it myself, particularly if I don’t have enough research to do in that area to justify a trip.  
Free indexes are fabulous - even if access to the original document is on a pay-basis.  For those who aren’t willing to pay, knowing exactly where to look for the document, and knowing that the document DOES exist, saves a lot of time, leg-work, and money.  A great example is provided by the Olmsted County History Center.  Their indexes are online.  If you don’t want to pay for an item, go get it yourself.  At least you know exactly where to look for it. 
The down side of all this is that the online resources are going to close down many local genealogy societies, unless the societies can re-invent themselves to fit with how genealogy is done today.   They need to offer something that the fee-based companies, or the free sites, can’t.  And most of all, LOCAL SOCIETIES NEED A STRONG ONLINE PRESENCE.  As a consumer, I have been more than willing to send a society $3 in return for an obituary.  I’d be willing to pay for a scan of an ancestral photo as well, or a newspaper article.   Online subscriptions aren’t cheap, but spending a few dollars here and there through a local society is much more affordable.
As people get busier, more and more will be using online resources to help with their family histories.  Many of these researchers will be willing to pay to get online access to the documents they need, either via memberships/subscriptions or doing business with local societies, but I believe what researchers will want more and more is quick and easy access to what they need.

Wordless Wednesday – The Secret Summer

The diary my Grandmother kept as a young woman

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun

This is the first time I’ve been able to participate in SNGF – and it IS fun!  Thanks to Randy Seaver (and Sheri Fenley) for the terrific prompt. 

Randy’s instructions:
1) Go to the www.ImageChef.com website and explore their FREE offerings. Click on the "Create" button, or choose to make a slideshow or posters from their main page
2) Make one or more posters or other creation - perhaps they relate to genealogy or your own family history. Save them to your computer
3) Show your creations to us...

So here’s mine!  Hopefully this will be a reality some day, and Peter Christensen’s ancestors will be found!

52 Weeks to Better Genealogy – the DAR Database

The last time I visited the DAR database was years ago.  Tonight, as part of the 52 Weeks to Better Genealogy challenge, I took another look at it, and I’m really glad I did.
I thought I had no direct line ancestor with any military service during the Revolutionary War.  I knew some of my Lair ancestors had brothers who served, but when I discovered that my immigrant ancestor, Matthias Lehrer/Lair, played a part during the war, I was thrilled.   At this time, I don’t know how significant his role was, only that he was paid for the loss of a gun. 
Also, more significantly, I discovered that another direct-line ancestor, Issacher Nicke(r)son, apparently had some service, under Capt. David Waterbury.  I will need to find more information on this, and joining the DAR based on this ancestor’s service will be difficult.  His son, Aaron, is said to be the father of my ancestor Joseph Nickeson, and even working with the Nickerson Family Association, I have not been able to find proof of that relationship.  But there’s hope!

She Might Have Been a Blogger

Slowly, but steadily, I’ve been transcribing my great-grandmother Virta Knutz’s journals – over 500 sheets of notebook paper spanning nine years.  Next will be a file folder with another hundred pages or so, titled “Our Trips.”  After that, another pile of pages called “Memories.” 
Transcribing her journals has given me an idea of what her life was like on the farm.  Her children lived nearby, so her days will often filled with grandchildren, as well as the household chores, made lengthier and a bit more mundane by the lack of modern appliances.  At the end of her day, she would write.  I suspect it was probably the only thing she did just for herself.  What was her motivation?  Was she lonely out on the farm?  Wanting to share her day with someone, after everyone else was in bed?  Or did she just feel an inexplicable need to put the pen to the paper?   I think many bloggers would know something of how she felt.
If Virta were alive today, I suspect she would be one of us…

Tombstone Tuesday – Tweed Cemetery

In the quiet landscape of southeastern Ross county, Ohio, sits Tweed cemetery.  Just outside of Vigo, it is nestled inside a grove of trees at the top of a hill, hard to find, I'm told, unless you know what you're looking for. 

I've never been to the cemetery, despite the significant number of my family that lay there.  The miles are too great for now.  But my “granny”, Elizabeth Freeman Graves, left such a large part of herself behind in the soil of the shady green hill.
The year 1832 began with the burial of her nearly 6 year old boy, Tavenor, in January.  Before the year was out, they would gather again in the cold December frost to bid goodbye to her mother, Sarah Toone Freeman.  Her 4 year old daughter, Martha, would be next, in May of 1841, and just 3 months later, seventeen year old son John Jr. would be laid to rest there.
Did Elizabeth and her husband John pay one more sad visit to the cemetery together before packing their trunks and loading their wagon for a new beginning in Illinois?  
How sad for Elizabeth to have to stand one very last time in the cemetery, this time at the fresh grave of her husband, who took ill once the packing and loading was done.  And how excruciating it must have been for her to turn and leave, and pursue this new life without him.
Some day, I'd like to go to Tweed cemetery, stand where she stood, see what she saw, and touch the part of her soul that she left behind there. 

Costume Dances

Subtitled: “Excuse me, Miss, could you put down your pipe and dance with me?”



For as long as I knew her, my mother-in-law, Louise, loved to dance.   Her father, Casper Kluthe, taught her to kick up her heels at his barn dances in the 1930s, when he wasn’t busy on stage playing his accordion.  The smell of the hay, the noise of the crowd as they whooped and hollered, the thundering stomp of feet and the clapping of hands got her hooked for life.  She grew up to be one of the founders of the Tri-County Dance Club in her small town, and as seen in the photo at left (that’s her in the dress), she never missed the opportunity to show someone a new dance step.





Some of her best stories came, in between bouts of laughter, the day after a costume dance.  You never knew who would turn up as your dance partner…

A witch, a hairy old guy, a strange pipe-smoking lady, a dirty bum, a ghoul, or perhaps… is that Michael Jackson on the right end??

Even Abe Lincoln might show up…

While his wife was on the dance floor, donning long-johns and a rubber chicken-head mask, her husband Herb was listening to the sad tales of this poor depressed snowman…or is that a snow-woman?  Who knows!