Children Enjoy Family History!

This post has been adapted from one that I put on the grandchildren's blog a while back.

Connor~Cool as a cucumber just before the presentation.

Getting children involved in family history is really a great idea. It give them a sense of who they are and where they came from and helps them visualize a bigger picture when it comes to family then just their own immediate family. A few years ago I got to go to the kids' school and listen to Connor give his ancestor report. He did a lot of research and did an interesting presentation to his class about Grampa Andrew. A few of his facts and dates are incorrect but the point was it got him thinking about his ancestors and he seemed to really enjoy that. You are never too young to begin to look beyond yourself and into the lives of those who came before you.

This is a wonderful assignment that gives the fourth graders an opportunity to actively learn about their roots. It is a way for them to appreciate who and where they came from and to realize that the choices made by their ancestors affected who they themselves are. If Andrew had not decided to come to America...then what for the rest of us? Their decisions allowed us to live and be who we are today. They didn't often consider such things when they made these kinds of decisions but we can truly appreciate them in retrospect, can't we? Where they choose to live affects every generation after that. Because our ancestors marry people they live near.

Connor, as your grandparents we am very proud of you, as are your Mom and Dad. We recorded this presentation to share with Grampa and Grandma Gloria and the rest of the family and some friends. Your previous experience as a news reporter on TV for two broadcasts of the local news and your opportunities to speak in church have helped you become very comfortable in front of a lot of people. What a wonderful experience. Not a lot of adults could have done as well as you did and with such confidence and ease. Good Job, Con!

Happy Halloween For the Genealogist In You!

For my Favorite Genealogists!

I was shopping with my good friend this morning and once a month we visit a warehouse collective sale called Room With A Past. They always have seasonal things for the home and when I saw this I cracked up and just could not resist it.

There in this great black frame is this antique photo sitting demurely on a shelf. Some clever person had added little black glittered witch hats for a whimsical treat this Halloween. I had to have it to commemorate and remind myself of the year I fell madly and passionately in love with Genealogy for time and eternity.

Reflection on the Generations~2005

Recently while cuddling in bed with my six-year-old granddaughter, Piper, she asked me what life was like when I was a little girl. It made me reflect on how my life is suddenly seeming long to me.

Looking back made me keenly aware of the changes that have taken place within me and the world I call my own. Growing up in the 50’s and 60’s was a cake walk compared to today and yet it was laced with trials and tribulations, excitement and great joy, hard work and fun times too. It was filled with love and learning, family, the perplexities of life and a boat load of boring days too.

Each era seems to have a unique way of molding and shaping us into who we are destined and desirous to become. One thing that has become apparent over the the fifty something years I have lived is that each of us continues to learn, grow and change all of our lives. I am beginning to realize more and more that the essence of who we are also remains somewhat the same while our environment and our experiences create and hone the facets of each diamond in the rough.

As I thought about how my life was different than Piper’s as a little girl I saw clearly that the changes are just as dramatic as those experienced by my grandparents and me. She was flabbergasted to know that when I was six we had just gotten our first black and white television. There were no microwaves, cell phones, Barbie Dolls, computers, video games, VCRs, DVDs, CDs, I-Pods, Palm Pilots, Videos, Air-conditioning in homes or cars, no electric hair dryers for home use, no fast food, and no huge and abundant birthdays or Christmases.

She could not comprehend only having three or four dresses to wear to school and church and a few play clothes. I can still remember that in the fifth grade I had a blue dress with a drop waist and a rhinestone pin and a red plaid dress and that one week I would wear one of them three times and the next week two times. She didn’t comprehend why as a girl I could never wear pants to school, or that we washed our hair only once a week and went to bed with wet pin curls to have curly fluffy hair for church on Sundays. We didn’t have Wal-Mart and we didn’t just go shopping for stuff as entertainment. If we ever went out to dinner it was a very special occasion, not the twice weekly trip out the kids are use to these days. Dessert was also a very special treat, not a twice daily occurrence or more as it is today.

When I was her age the dentists did not believe in using Novocaine on children and I can still remember the pain and terror of having my teeth that were untreated by fluoride drilled and filled. Life was more painful and less painful at times than today. It was harder in some ways because we didn’t have so many of the modern conveniences we now enjoy, but less complex because life was less complicated and less stressful. We didn’t have so many choices to make for every little thing. Sometimes I find myself yearning for those days when I go to buy diapers, or ice cream or a cold remedy and have to filter through 80 choices. We didn’t have to read the labels on food to make sure we could recognize anything that was actually contained in the package as edible. In those days we could walk to the store alone or with a small friend and not fear pedophiles or kidnappers like we do today. We didn’t need our own swimming pool, playing in the sprinkler was just great.

Ironically, with all the differences in our worlds of growing up, the essence of that little girl I held in my arms was not that different from me at her age. We both were sweet and innocent, had a longing to be pretty and feminine and to feel loved. We both wanted the attention of our parents, our grandparents and our teachers and friends. We both had a deep and inborn longing to one day meet Prince Charming and have a little family of our own. We both had an abundance of goodness within our hearts and a desire to please. We were both the firstborn in our family and ladened with the responsibility to be a good example to our siblings. Sometimes we relished that and other times it was a burden we didn’t care to bear. Somehow, we accepted and carried out the role as best we could.

Somehow that role of the firstborn carries on for a life time. Piper is doing an excellent job. She is great with Julia and almost like a little mother to her baby sister, Chloe. She is sensitive and wants everyone to play by the rules. I am the same and it has hurt my heart a lot to know that people sometimes don’t care how I feel nor do they live by the rules. People often just make up their own rules as they go along and fair or right has little to do with it. I hope that as Piper grows those painful learning experiences will be gentle on her kind and tender heart.

Piper loves being a girl. The pinker and frillier and more sparkle something has the better she likes it. She is my girl! She loves to dress up and have fairy dust on her little arms and to feel like the true Princess she is. I hope that as she grows she will continue to enjoy her femininity and that she will learn to love her body and enjoy it. I pray she never falls into the body image trappings of society like thinking she is too tall, too big, too white, too anything that causes her distress and makes her feel awkward or different or less beautiful than she is. I hope that a good and healthy self-concept just grows within her naturally and that she doesn’t struggle with it like so many do. I have not grown up with the luxury of that blessing. From my era I don’t think many girls have. I hope Piper’s generation is smarter.

Somehow, I saw in her hope for a bright future. She has a wonderful faith in the temple and a great desire to marry there one day. When she was tiny and didn’t quite understand marriage, she cried because she could not go right in and marry me in the temple one day as we were strolling by. I tried to explain our sealing but I think it went over her little head then.

I hope that she can marry a man as wonderful as her Daddy and her Grandpas and that she can know the joy in her own family that I have had. I hope that her husband will cherish her and help her and love her as much as she deserves. Not because she will be perfect, but because she has a pure heart. That is just something you can see in a little girl’s eyes when you hold them close and snuggle up with them in the morning.

The joy that I felt when looking at her made me realize that one of the blessing of grand-parenthood is that there is a bit of ourselves that has the chance to vicariously do things over again. The mistakes I have made do not have to be hers, if I can teach her and share my cache of experiences and wisdom somehow. As my heart is turned to her I hope that hers will also be turned to me as she grows up. The more chances I have to cuddle up with her in the mornings now the better the outcome will be later. Those precious moments bond us together one little snuggle at a time.

Journaling/Blogging Tip: If you have written something from the past that your family might enjoy, resurrect it and post it or copy it someplace to them all to enjoy.

Eventually I may split these journal entries into a new blog of their own, I am just including them here to give you ideas on how to collect and keep things that may be significant to your own family history. Also as I am organizing my own things and scanning photos if I come across one that I want to do a mini-bio on I'll include them in this blog for now. If you are more interested in the research aspect and what is available out there online you can just skip over these narratives about specific family members.

One of the things I hope to accomplish here is to give a look at all the different ways you can create, record and keep a vibrant, growing family history. It includes far more than researching your genealogy.

5 Things I Have Learned About Organizing!

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Getting My Ducks in a Row!

Over the past months I have really struggled trying to get organized! This organization had to take place within my mind as much as within my papers Piled Higher and Deeper (my PhD in Genealogy and Family History.) It has been like running backwards in a corn maze in the autumn of my life.

I do envy people that are starting afresh right now. No ancient history, no past piles yet unfinished, no thirty-three years worth of questions lying dusty and unresolved. No old papers, yellowing in ancient places, searching for their spot in time and eternity. No documents or photos being devoured in plastic file boxes or plastic sleeves, unprotected from acidic chemicals. No issues with boxes and boxes of photos vexing them and yet to be sorted, categorized, scanned and filed electronically, as well as tangibly.

If you are one of these people, starting now, be happy! You have every possible advantage right in front of you. If you are one of these people languishing now with all of the above concerns~take heart! You can and you will get organized if you stick with it. There are so many helps now and people willing to guide you either forward or backward as needed. You will find the end of that maze eventually.


Here are some things I have learned in the last few weeks that have made a big difference for me.

1. Know your style of learning. Are you an auditory learner, a visual learner, a hands-on type of learner or some combination of the above? Does taking and analyzing your notes help you to remember? Does teaching, writing, etc. help you retain information? More than one teacher is one chapter ahead of their students, right?

I have always known that taking notes helps me to learn and remember but I have just recently learned that is only half of it. After I learn something I need to carry it with me awhile by actually analyzing my notes and transcribing them into a narrative form. That really helps me. Then I need to file that in a place I can lay my hands on it in 30 seconds. Taking notes and then putting them in a pile or losing them folded in a book or notebook some place almost guarantees a short term kind of learning. Time marches on relentlessly, but learning for me needs to be savored.

As an example, my genealogy mentor and I exchange copious amounts of email. (God bless him!) One day he was helping me figure out our scanner and telling me a lot about the inner workings of the machine and how to scan and save documents and photos. The thread of emails on this subject had about six detailed entries for me from him. Tuesday I took all those emails from my electronic email that I have organized into folders right in my email program, printed them out and analyzed them. I then created a narrative analysis of what he taught me so that I could understand it. I don't need to know everything about scanning right now. When I felt confident that I understood it well enough to do what I need to do as a scanner, I filed it in my How-To Genealogy/Scanning folder. Now if I forget at some point I know exactly where it is.

2. Devise a plan of filing and organization that works for you. There is no perfect way that suits everyone. You have to come up with your own method of how to do it so that you can find your own things. Take lots of advice from others but adapt what they tell you to a style that works with your brain, not theirs. I will share exactly what I do next time.

3. Change some of your paradigms. When I first came back to genealogy I thought that now that we have computers, everything needs to be stored electronically. I got on that and also thinking, 'Ah, no more papers to deal with, hooray!'

Wrong. You still will have a plethora of paper; you still need to have paper files in addition to filing electronically. As an example, you will scan your documents electronically and file in your computer folders but what about your original documents? You are not going to throw them away, right? So you will have various methods, not just one for saving your information.

That was something I had to wrap my head around and catch a vision of it that worked for me. In addition to my mentor/teacher, I asked a few other people how they do it. What I gleamed from all of them has now become something that works for me...so far. I am sure I will tweak it as I go along but I feel I have a good starting point now. Stress, gone in that department, whew!

4. Ask the Right Question. We all have holes in our understanding and comprehension of anything we are trying to learn. With genealogy and family history I have had to overcome lots obstacles and still do everyday in the realms of hardware, software, technology in general, how and where to research and capture my information, wading through lots of source options, my time management, etc.

I have just discovered recently that it is important that I analyze where my issues are and learn to ask the exact question for which I need an answer. That I am sure sounds a little obvious but what I am saying is that I have to do my homework first and then ask for clarification or guidance. My question needs to be narrow in scope so that I can fill in those holes. As an example, "Can you tell me how to create a folder on a PC?" as opposed to "How do I store my information electronically?" One step and concept at a time it starts to make sense.

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5. Be Patient. An acorn does not become a mighty oak for a long time. As an acorn, when you have sprouted and begin to grow, nurture the acorns that are struggling around you. Share your light, your space, your water. Look up! Where you are looking is where you will end up.

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In my next post I'll share what is working for me specifically
in the organization department.

PhD in Genealogy

Sharon, Vermont, 2010
This is one of the most beautiful, peaceful
places we have ever been.

I am using this photo on this post because it is the birth place of the first Prophet of the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Joseph inspired much of the work that we as Latter-day Saints do as genealogists today. I can remember the peace I felt here very vividly on this little road. I hope there are some ideas here to help you have a peaceful journey in doing your own family history.

I started to work on collecting and recording our genealogy about 33 years ago. Our church asked us to compile a four-generation Pedigree Chart with accompanying Family Group Sheets on ourselves, our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents. These would all then be sent to Salt Lake City to become a part of an Ancestral File Collection, housed there in the Family History Library of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

When you begin your genealogy you will see these two forms below almost immediately. They never go away. And they multiply faster than bunny rabbits, if you are lucky! If you want a PhD in Genealogy, just fill in the blanks and then set it down on a table or desk some place thinking...

I'll figure out what to do with that later!

That is all there is to getting that PhD. It stands for Piles that get Higher and Deeper. I have earned this prestigious degree! You may call me Doctor if you want to, but you don't have to!

In all fairness to myself let me explain. In the words of Hillel a rabbi and scholar from many years ago, "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I?, And if not now, when?" So in the spirit of that thought, I want to spare you the grief of getting buried alive in your papers.

Back in the day, I would willingly go off to the Oakland Genealogical Library and work on my family's lineage. Faith precedes the miracle it has been said! I was being obedient to the request of our prophet. We were new in the church at that time, and never considered a request from our prophet as optional. We still don't because we love and trust them to never lead us astray.

I took my trusty yellow legal pad, a pen, and green file box with some manilla file folders inside that I could tote around. I had collected some information from my parents and Jim's parents and grandparents and off I went.

Since I was starting with myself I did pretty well there. I knew my name, birth date, place of birth, who I married and when and where and that I was still alive. I knew everything there was to know about our three children. Easy! I knew we had the birth certificates and marriage certificate somewhere at home, so I was all set. Generation 1 nearly done! Piece of cake!

Big hint: When you get to this point stop and think, how am I going to keep track of my papers documents, photos, heirlooms and the like?

When I use to do home decorating professionally, I went into many houses to do consultations. Let me just say this...If you are person that stacks your mail up for a week before opening it, you have lots of newspapers laying around, old magazines, etc. then I'll assume lots of paper does not seem to bother you.

However, it will when it is your genealogy and you are looking for something and cannot lay your hands on it. I had clients that had a problem with this and I would have them open and sort and file and throw away junk mail everyday. When your house is on the market you cannot have piles of anything sitting around. So they would practice before the house listed. What they learned...It is not hard, one day at a time, but waiting until it is choking your existence; that when it gets really difficult.

This is especially true with genealogy and organizing your work, research and findings. This little exercise of dealing with your paper daily may help you if you are comfortable and relaxed about papers everywhere in your house. Sometimes we get so use to the way we do things that we do not even 'see' we are being buried in papers. Many of my clients did not know this was an issue in selling your home. So it may be with some budding genealogists. Trust me here, it is an issue for genealogists.

So getting back to my story, I made a file that had my husband's name on the little, white label and then I put everything pertaining to our little family in that file. Then I put in files for our parents and whomever else we already knew we had descended from directly. There were a lot of blank file labels for a long time. But that little file tote served my purposes for a long time. I could lay my hands on anything I needed just by keeping current on my filing.

Hint #2. You have to find a system that works for you and that you understand. The most important thing is to find something that you can try right away. Trying to go back and do it later is not a good idea, in spite of the fact than many of us are having to do just that.

So how did I get into the PhD program in genealogy you're wondering? Simply put, genealogy kept getting better while I was busy with raising a family, working, developing a business, writing and the like! We got computers and software programs. We got the Internet where websites for genealogical research started to crop up all over the place. Lots of records were digitized and more and more are being added too various databases everyday by the thousands.

During a good part of that time, I was not actively doing my genealogy. So now that I have been back at it for 10 months, I realize how things are moving so much faster. Just our printing capabilities now have increased the paper flow exponentially on every level. When I opened my dusty, old box it still had carbon paper in it! I have easily collected a large binder crammed full of papers in the last 10 months that are not properly filed yet. I have gone through several note books just writing notes on the various things that I was learning and didn't want to forget. These are also not filed properly yet. I have found as I am learning how to actually find what I am looking for more effectively, I have more copies of things like census records I need to deal with.

Also I have attended some great seminars and a conference and classes, all of which I have notes for that need to be analyzed and filed where I can access them. Best of all, networking is much easier now. We have met a great person working in an area where we are working and he has sent us many, many groups sheets and pedigree charts, Individual Summaries of source materials and other things from his research on common ancestors.

See what I mean about the bunny rabbits? The paper keeps coming at a phenomenal rate. The technology, the wonderful people willing to give all to help you, fantastic resources available to us...all these things contributed to my PhD. I am thrilled with all of it, I just need to get on top of it!

So I have been struggling with this and how to do it and have gotten some opinions on what works best for other people. I am ploughing through it now and it is hard. I want to spare you that by having you get organized from the get go. In this era of computers, Internet and the rest of it, you need to have a plan. You have to work out a time to put away what you find in a safe place. I don't want you to get a PhD in Genealogy, you go get one in something else. OK?

Andrew Ferrera

4 Oct 1985~31 Mar 1982

This is Jim's maternal grandfather. We just got this old photo from Jim's mom yesterday. It is in perfect condition and we all love it. Jim already has one framed and sitting on his desk. He was quite the dapper young man wasn't he? Our daughter-in-law, Melissa, really loves the stockings. Me, I think the pinky ring is a nice touch. Not too sure about the hairdo but love that we can have this glimpse of what young, Italian men were like in the early 1900s.

Since this is how Jim and I remember him it is
great to see he was once young and fancy too!

Andrew left the old country and sailed for America and better opportunities when he was 18 years old. He came into New York but settled in Montclair, New Jersey the first few years and worked in the grocery business as a fruitier with some brothers and possibly a cousin. He married Marguerite Franchini on February 24, 1924 in New York City, NY. She was also Italian and from the same Province in Italy. She was born in San Colombano, Genoa, Italy. They had one daughter, Gloria Marie born in Monleone, Italy in 1926. She is the mother of my husband, James.

Grampa was the sweetest man and I thought of him as my Grampa too. He was a gentle man in every sense of the word. He adored his grandsons and was a good father and husband. He would literally give you the shirt off his back. He was humble and so kind. He treated me so well, always making sure I was comfortable and happy. One time I remember I was not feeling well while at their house. He insisted I lie down on the couch while he brought me a blanket and some tea. For Grampa a little tea fixed everything.

He loved people and he cared for others all the time. He was a grocery store owner and the entire neighborhood loved him. They knew him as Andy, we knew him as Grampa Andrew, but his real name was Antonio. When he left Tasso, Italy and came to America, his name was changed to Andrew. We found this typed on the back of his naturalization papers. He has a great-grandson that carries his name and a great great-grandson as well. Both of their middle names are Andrew. Both of them have brought honor to his fine name.

This photo was taken in Tasso, Italy in December of 2010, and is what remains of the old homestead where Jim's Grandpa was born! Grandpa painted everything this color of green that he mixed himself and is now fondly known in the family as "Grampa Green." It was a shock to see where he got the idea! Every time he painted that color on something it probably reminded him of home and family left behind.

Family History Tip:

If you have old family photos scan them to preserve them and file them electronically with a good back up system. Your posterity will be glad you did. As you can see it doesn't take a lot of effort to leave a little mini-bio on a loved one and a few photos for them to be remembered by their posterity. Of course you can also do a more elaborate one if you desire and time permits.