Living The Dream!

Back at the end of January my friend Dana Leeds, The Enthusiastic Genealogist, wrote in her blog about telling our own story.  She reminds us that our stories are just as important as those of our ancestors. In researching our past we often acquire tunnel vision and fail to make notes of our own momentous moments. Dana’s story about her childhood was charming, and something I’m sure her daughter and eventual grandchildren will enjoy.

This got me thinking about my husband and his story of how he came to the United States. My husband grew up in India. When he was born, India was still under British rule. His father was a policeman and about 18 years older than his mother, who was a mere child of only 14 years when he was born. Despite the fact that his father was employed, their life was a struggle. There were often times when there was not enough money for food. Every rupee and paise needs to be accounted for.  Somehow Raman manages to get through school, even graduating from college and even gets a Master’s degree in Physics. At age 19, he lands a prestigious job as a junior research fellow at the National Aeronautics’ Lab, Bangalore  earning 250 rupees a month.

The Jayamahal Road Building was actually a stable of the Mysore Maharaja's Palace

 There he works directly under the director and founder of the lab Dr. P. Nilakantan. He was rich! He was on top of the world! But it was short lived, for his father suddenly drops dead. His carefree world collapses as he becomes the sole provider for his mother, grandmother and three siblings.

His job at the Nat’l. Aeronautics Lab is not as copacetic as he hoped. Co-workers are jealous and are full of resentment of his position. But disaster strikes here too, in 1964 the Director dies. Now suddenly his job is in jeopardy. The writing is on the wall as his research slows down. No one was willing to take him on to help continue the work. Something had to change. His only hope and dream was to somehow get to the US continue his education and earn more money.

But this takes money too. Applications to any university have a fee and then there’s postage. All this added expense was difficult to come up with. It also took time. Raman applies to Harvard, Princeton, and John Hopkins and he was accepted at all of them. But none of them offered any stipend or scholarship.

Call it Karma, call it Fate or the alignment of the stars, we all know life can change in a heartbeat. One night when he was visiting a fellow co-worker he noticed an application in the wastepaper basket. It was for Brown University.  His friend’s parents refused to let him travel to the US for further studies. The reason behind their refusal is that for the Braham class of India, it is taboo to travel across the ocean. But Raman put that thought behind him and asked if he could have the application. Armed with renewed hope, he sends in the application with a letter pouring out reasons why the application fees should be waived. And then he waits.

Brown University in 1964 was celebrating its bicentennial.  In celebration of this momentous occasion the University has extra money to give to well deserving applicants.  Raman was one of those lucky applicants. He was given a stipend of $163 a month and tuition was waived!

Somehow he manages to get the money for a passport and airfare and with just $7.00 in his pocket, he leaves India. Fifty-one years later with a PhD, one son, a lovely daughter-in-law, a handsome grandson and a wonderful second marriage with me, he continues to live the dream!

                                   And of course he lives happily ever after.

Behind Every Dark Cloud

In the book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, by Harold Kushner his philosophy basically is, it happens it just plain happens. It's part of our lives. We can deal with it or let the event overwhelm us, and paralyze us into despair.

 

About nine days ago, my computer crashed! And I mean crashed. Thankfully, my husband is a retired university professor and  the IT department is willing to help. Hopefully they can do their magic and get things running. Sadly though I already know that I've lost ALL my family documents and photos. No I did not have a backup.

 

When this reality set in, I assure you, there was a ROYAL melt down. Can you blame me? Years of work gone, just gone is a matter of seconds. I had three choices: 1) blame everybody else or 2) curl up and never touch a computer again or 3) figure out  if I had a flash drive or a CD that had some of these items. Well I could not blame anyone else. It was clearly my fault for not having a backup. Option 2 was never an option. But option 3 offered a glimmer of hope.

 

That glimmer of hope, that sliver lining appeared when I remembered that I had three flash drives that at various times I had copied over documents and photos from an old computer. Though this isn't an actual backup it does have some of the valuable documents and pictures.

 

Sadly I guess this means there's a Do Over in my future whether I wanted to or not. But more importantly what is the lesson I learned, BACKUP, BACKUP,  BACKUP!

Now What?

Now that things are easier to find, the question arises do I do a complete do over as Thomas MacEntee suggests? I really hate the idea of “tossing” things aside and starting over it seems so overwhelming. It occurred to me that perhaps the next logical step would be to figure out what do I have and what am I missing. Luckily for me I have Sandra Rumble’s wonderful software GenDetective. Yes, Sandy is my friend; no she didn’t ask me to do this nor am I an employee of Rumblesoft, just to be clear.

GenDetective is a wonderful tool to help you visualize your family research plus it is easy and fun to use. Anyone can use it as it’s compatible with FTM, RoootsMagic, Legacy and Ancestry. All you have to do is make a GEDcom file, export it to GenDetective click on Analyze My Family and your done!  With this software you can run all kinds of reports that help you see your progress in your journey of researching your family history. From bar graphs, footsteps and maps your progress becomes tangible.

 

For example, this screenshot shows me who is missing a birth date, birth location and if I have full names for the parents. The little foot prints at the top show me I’m not too bad. But clearly there is info missing as indicated by the purple, pink and blue colors on the graph. This report can also be run for more specific things such as immigration, census, military, and occupation. You can make it as detailed as you want. It also becomes a wonderful companion when planning a trip to a courthouse. Sandy also has a whole section devoted to preparing for a trip. Guiding you through the five w’s-who, what, what, where and how.

But the report I love the most is, My Family: Research Progress for …and you pick your ancestor.

This partial screen shot shows me what I have for one particular ancestor, my 2x Great-Grandfather Joel D. Charles. According to the little footie’s at the top I have 8 out of 10. Not bad! The report tells me I need to find his occupation, a burial date, an obituary, a will or probate records and a cemetery marker. Life after organizing my files will now make it easier for me to find the missing information. I know, for example that I have a picture of his headstone.  I also have an index for his probate records which will help with searching on Familysearch.org.  Armed with this new courage, going back to my RootsMagic or FTM or even Ancestry.com to fill in the missing information will be easy. Doing a complete do-over is daunting to say the least and I’m not sure I’m up to the task. But filling in the missing information one ancestor at a time is certainly a more do-able approach for me.

Check it out at GenDetective.com.

Pick Yourself Up, Dust YOurself Off, And Start All Over Again!

It was only a few weeks ago, that my genealogy documents, books, and all that goes with it looked like this…

              Now I am proud to show off what it looks like today…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Though it still needs a bit of tweaking, it is considerably easier now to locate a census, a vital record, church records or a photo.  This tedious process also brought to light what I am missing! There is so much more to find to complete a family’s history.  It actually took me by surprise because I thought I had been fairly thorough. But then I realized, when I started in my family research, it didn’t occur to me to source my findings. Just about everything I have will need to be found again and documented properly. UGH! Talk about a Genealogy Do-Over™!

 

So Much To Uncover

About a year ago I decided to write a story for my Dad about his family. It would be a surprise for him for his 95^th birthday. I also thought it would be fairly easy as I had all the information, or so I thought. It quickly became obvious that the story had to have more than just fact after fact. It needed to have interesting tidbits about the location where the family had come from in Germany and where they were to make their home in the United States. It needed pictures, in addition to those of a census or passenger lists of places and people. All this added research took time, but in the end was well worth my effort.  In the end I felt that for my first attempt at compiling a family story, it was a job well done.

With the finished project in the mail, the waiting began. Would he like it? Would he take the time to read it? I waited and waited and finally he called about four days after I had posted it in the mail. Something you have to know about my Dad, when you call him on the phone, he NEVER says hello or goodbye! He just starts talking. Oh he might say something like, “Is that you?” and then just start right in. So when I picked up the phone his first words were, “I’m overwhelmed.” At first I wasn’t sure what he meant, but then he repeated it and I understood. Now mind you he hadn’t read it yet, that wouldn’t happen for a few more days, but he could tell a lot of effort had been put into this small book. He did eventually read the story and when he called after finishing it he said, “I’m still overwhelmed! Make one for Mother’s side too.” But the best compliment he gave was when he told me how it brought back so many memories. I had found on Google maps, a picture of the house he had lived in with his grandparents, parents, and baby sister. He told me about how he slept in the attic, his grandparents and parents slept in the two bedrooms and his sister was in the living room; how only company used the front door; and that there was an outhouse in the backyard and he was always afraid of falling in! He also told me that they had chickens and a cistern. He then told me he wouldn’t let my brother, who lives with him, touch it till he had finished reading.  Who could ask for anything more?

With that project done, it was time to concentrate on my Mom’s side of the family. This will be more of a challenge than my Dad’s because his heritage is German and my mothers’ is Irish. On her side we have family names such as Kelly, Grady, Roach and Cummings to name a few. Deciphering who is who will take time, lots of time.

But taking the lesson I learned from writing my Dad’s story, I started first with looking for pictures. Luckily for me I remembered a box I had gotten from cousins of my Mom, who had lived in Penn Yan, NY. They were sisters who lived to be 93 and 100 years old. Two little spinsters who taught for 40 some years and never married. At first I didn’t think there was going to be anything of value. It seemed that it was an album after album of pictures of trips that they had taken together. But then a notation under one of the pictures caught my eye. There in an album from a trip to Ireland there was this:

 

A picture that has the caption “Grandma Kelly’s house near Kerrick on Shannon”! WOW, I had no idea. This album will have to be put to the side for further scrutiny.

But also tucked in the box and a file cabinet that I had forgotten about were these gems:

  A family picture of the two young future teachers with their parents,

cousin and uncles

         Just a few of the Mass cards of family  and friends with birth and death dates.

                       And last but not least a portion of a World War II ration card!

This is just a sampling of the treasures that were waiting to be found. Thank goodness these two ladies loved to travel, take pictures and write things down! The time of discovery is here. To paraphrase Capitol One commercial, "What else is hiding in that box?"