Generous Genealogists

Over on Google+, I've circled a number of genealogists, and through them, I'm finding more genealogists around the world. This blog post by Judy Webster is just so wonderful that I wanted to share it with you:

Genealogy Leftovers: Genealogists for Families: keeping the memory alive...: "For as long as I can remember, my father set aside a small sum of money that he would periodically lend to a hard-working person in need of short-term help. We called it his 'Do Good Money'. Dad passed away last year at the age of ninety, and I want to honour his memory by continuing his tradition. I have just found an easy way to do so."

Her post goes on to describe the non-profit organisation Kiva, and invites her readers to join her Kiva lending team, Genealogists for Families.
I hope that you will read her lovely post and consider joining her team. It would be lovely if this team could grow to include genealogists from around the world and to become a family tradition for all of our families.

Matrilineal Lineage

Over on Geneamusings.com, Randy Seaver has suggested that folks post their matrilineal lines. It's taken me several hours, including interruptions, to get this post done, in large part because I wound up discovering new information about my father's mother's line. Or, at least, new for me.

My matrilineal line is:

• me -> Pamela D. Lloyd: b. Chicago, Illinois
• my mother -> Luella Jean Rote: b. July 2, 1921 in Sandusky Ohio, d. January 17, 1999 in El Paso, Texas; m. Winston D. Lloyd in November 1957 in international waters between the US and Canada, a second ceremony was performed in January 1958 in Ann Arbor, Michigan
• her mother -> Lulu Craun: b. July 26, 1889 in Indiana, d. February 21, 1966 in El Paso, TX; m. Galen Weiker Rote
• her mother -> Maryann Beck: b. September 1855 in Ohio, d. aft. 1920; m. John Craun in 1885 in Butler, Indiana

I have not had my mitochondrial DNA tested.

Please note, I have been able to discover very little about my mother's family, so if you think you may have information about any of the people mentioned here, I'd be delighted to learn about it.

On the Lloyd side, the matrilineal line of my father is:

• my father -> Winston Dale Lloyd: b. Pensacola, Florida
• his mother -> Inez (Sissy) Minerva Herrington: b. in Pensacola, Florida, d. January 24, 1986 in Pensacola, Floria
  m. Elmer Bruce Lloyd on July 7, 1922 in Pensacola, Florida
• her mother -> Ezella F. Boykin: b. August 26, 1866 in Quincy, Florida, d. January 14, 1959 in Mobile, Alabama
  m. Isaac Newton Herrington on December 29, 1885 in Jackson County, Florida
• her mother -> Jane Carolina McKeown: b. October 1845 in South Carolina, d. aft. 1900; m. James Cornelius Boykin in 1881
• her mother -> Sidnah Flemon Clark: b. December 2, 1820 in Chester South Carolina, d. July 13, 1902 in Gadsden, Florida
  m. Rev. Oliver Evans McKeown in South Carolina
• her mother -> Jane McClintock: b. Noevember 13, 1798 in Chester, South Carolina, d. August 1872) m. Alexander Clark in 1817 in South Carolina
• her mother -> Sidnah Flemming: b. 1776 in Virginia, d. January 20, 1839 in South Carolina
  m. Matthew McClintock
• her mother -> Sidneh Rosine: b. 1735 in Sweden, d. 1810 in Winsboro (Winsborough), South Carolina
  m1. Brown (widowed, circa 1759, while pregnant and living in Pennsylvania when, according to an unconfirmed story, her husband and first son were killed by "Indians" and she was taken captive; her second son was born in captivity and later went on to become an "Indian hunter.")
  m2. George Fleming in 1762, in Virginia

Although variants of Sidneh's story can be found in a number of places, the original version appears to be told in "A Brief Sketch of the Coulter Family in America."

Resources for Genealogists and Family Historians

Over on Genea-Musings, Randy Seaver has posted Comments on the 1940 U.S. Census RFQ and SOW.* What this means is that the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is looking for bids on the work of indexing the 1940 U.S. Census.

Near the bottom of the post, Randy Seaver offers his opinion regarding free access to these records, and the agreements between the NARA and various commercial sites. In this context, he stated, 

I think that NARA will eventually host the census on its own site, with one of the name indexes available from some provider for use in a NARA facility.  That's the type of agreement they made with Ancestry.com, Footnote.com, FamilySearch.org, etc. to permit indexing of other NARA databases they are free to access in a NARA facility.

It was this mention that made me realize that I may not be taking full advantage of the NARA's free resources. A quick check of the NARA's site turned up Resources for Genealogists and Family Historians, which provides a wealth of online resources.

While on the NARA site, I also learned that my belief that I'd have to go to Washington, DC to access these records may have been incorrect, since they have a number of regional sites around the country; not all of these sites offer the same resources, so if you are planning a visit to one of the regional centers, make sure the records you need are available there.

I live in Tucson, so the nearest NARA site for me is the National Archives at Riverside, CA (Pacific Region), approximately 440 miles from my home. The NARA reports:

We hold historically valuable materials created and collected by Federal agencies and courts in Arizona, southern California, and Clark County, Nevada. These records constitute a major resource for the study of Native American history, Naval history, westward migration, Asian immigration, civil rights, and other subjects.

Since most of my recent ancestors are from the eastern half of the US (my dad was born in Florida, and my mom in Ohio), this doesn't help me much. However, my husband does have some ancestors who lived in these areas. So, if I plan a trip to this location, I'll be focusing on my husband's family.

Like my parents, my dad's parents are from distinctly different regions. For my dad's mother's line (Herrington), the National Archives at Atlanta will be most useful, as most of her close ancestors were from the South. My dad's father was born in Pennsylvania, so to follow his line, I'll have to head north to the NARA's Mid Atlantic Region (Center City Philadelphia), where records for Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia are maintained. My mother's father (Rote) was also born in Pennsylvania, so while I'm there I can try to track down more information about him. Her mother (Craun), however, was born in Indiana, so to track down this branch, I'll have to head over to the Regional Archives for NARA's Great Lakes Region, which are housed in Chicago, Illinois.** Great! Although I was born in Chicago, my parents left when I was a baby and I've wanted to visit for as long as I can remember.

---

Notes
* RFQ = Request for quote; SOW = Statement of Work
** Lines referenced: LLOYD, HERRINGTON, ROTE, CRAUN

Genealogy Links

This weekend, I've come across a number of genealogy links, as a result of my Google+ account.

A number of Google+-specific websites have sprung up since the Google+ service became available, among them Google+ for Genealogists. In addition, at least a few notable genealogists are on Google+:

• Dan Lynch, author of Google Your Family Tree: Google+ website
• Mark Olsen, Marketing Manager for FamilyLink.com: Google+ website
• Paul Allen, founder of Ancestry.com, currently with FamilyLink: Google+
• Thomas MacEntee of GeneaBloggers.com: Google+ website
• A.C. Ivory of ProGenealogists: Google+

I'm sure there are more, but those are the ones I'm specifically aware of.


I love the Genealogy Software Reviews site. There's a short description of each software product, plus a rating system powered by users.

What fun to discover the GenealogyInTime website. This is an online magazine offering free articles. You can sign up to receive their free, weekly email newsletter, which lists all the new offerings of the week; the resources page offers some great resources; and the Genealogy Twitter Reader allows you to follow genealogy tweets.

The British genealogy site GenesReunited has added family history articles to their offerings, and launched a new Facebook quiz app, designed to help you discover which of several historical periods you are best suited for.

There are many factors that contribute to our health and well-being, as well as to the health problems we may encounter throughout our lives. The answer to the old Nature vs. Nurture questions is both! You can help make trips to your physician's office easier, and keep track of important medical information about you and your family by storing your healthcare data online. The article "Discovering a Family Health History Tool – A Summer Journey" on the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) blog recommends the My Family Health Portrait, offered by the Surgeon General’s office, to help you create a record of your family's health, which you can store on your computer. The My Family Health Portrait offers integration with Microsoft HealthVault. I've tried them both out; My Family Health Portrait is simple to use, but is limited in the health conditions covered and offers fewer features than Microsoft HealthVault. Microsoft HealthVault, on the other hand, encourages you to enroll in a number of third-party programs, which can be seen as either a bonus, or an annoyance.

Published in 2005, but still quite interesting (and new for me), the New York Times' "Geographic Society Is Seeking a Genealogy of Humankind" article, by Nicholas Wade, describes a joint project by the National Geographic Society and IBM to "reconstruct a genealogy of the world's populations and the migration paths of early humans from their ancestral homeland in Africa."

One last resource is an Australian site, Onlinenames.net.au, where you can either search for, register, or both, the surnames for which you are searching. Once a surname has been entered, any search performed for that surname through the website will automatically create an email, so you can contact others who are also researching that name. If the surname(s) for which you are looking are extremely common, this might not be the site for you, but it seems likely to be helpful for uncommon names.

A Few Things About My Cousin's Crafty Daughter

My favorite cousin and I have been having fun catching up on things. In the process, I learned that her daughter has a blog, My Crafty Condition, on which she recently posted A Few Things About Me. Being a bit behind in my own posts here, I thought I'd share her post, and add a few things about myself, mostly following her lead.

1. I don't think I've got the same mole that my cousin and her kids share.
2. My belly button is also an innie. So much so, that when I was pregnant it never turned inside out, as so many women's do.
3. I got my first pair of glasses when I was ten, shortly after complaining that sunlight gave me headaches.
4. In high school, I wasn't all that fond of history classes, although I had enjoyed reading historical novels since elementary school (I also read mystery, fantasy, and science fiction novels). So far as I was concerned, my teachers and textbooks took entirely the wrong approach by focusing on names, dates, countries, and trends, instead of what it was actually like to live in past times and places.
5. I don't remember ever getting detention; although I could be wrong about that. I do remember that when I was in either fourth or sixth grade, I was nearly sent to the principal's office for insisting that there was, too, such a thing as negative numbers.
6. My favorite girl scout cookies are the mint chocolate kind.
7. Whenever I can get away with it, which is most of the time in the casual desert Southwest, I wear sandals that I can just slip on. When I do have to wear real shoes, I think I put my socks on first, then my shoes.
8. Aside from my husband and our kids, my nearest family (excluding relatives I've never met) is slightly over 320 miles away, and most of my family is thousands of miles away. When I was a kid, my parents used to take me and my brothers to Florida nearly every year, but I haven't been able to manage that. I miss seeing my cousins.
9. When I was a kid, everybody called me Pam, and I hated my name. When I was in my late teens or early twenties, I figured out that it wasn't my name, but my nickname that I disliked, and I've gone by Pamela, ever since. I never had a nickname until I met my current husband and he took me to meet his lama (my husband practices Tibetan Buddhism) and his teacher said that my name Pamela, was the same as the Tibetan name, Pemala, which is the diminutive of Pema, and means lotus. Ever since, Pema has been my husband's nickname for me.
10. When my children were babies, I used to dance around the living room with one in my arms. They're too big, now, and I don't dance nearly enough.
11. When I was in college, I joined a belly dance club for the exercise, only to have my teacher and classmates talk me into making a costume and dancing with them in public. We danced on campus and at local festivals. After doing something like that, any fears I might once have had of dancing in public are a thing of the past.
12. I'm way too clumsy to even consider getting onto a treadmill while wearing heels.
13. I used to wear heels, even though I knew they were bad for my feet; my favorite pair of heels were a pair that had once been my mother's. Now, I usually wear flat-soled shoes, Birkenstocks, or sandals with a heel of less than 1/2 inch. My feet insist on it.
14. It takes about half a glass of wine for me to start feeling the effects of the alcohol, so I rarely drink more than a single glass. I love sweet drinks, and I'm usually just as happy with a non-alcoholic alternative; for example, I'll usually drink a "nada-colada," instead of a piña colada.
15. I never liked horror movies and used to avoid anything that was likely to have gore in it. Even the scene at the beginning of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country turned my stomach, once I realized that those pink/lavender blobs were actually Klingon blood. Strangely, I didn't have the same issue with reading gory scenes. However, since becoming hooked on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and then its spin-off Angel, my tolerance has increased to something that resembles that of normal people.

Where I’m From, An Adaptation

Over on Genea-Musings, the Saturday Night Genealogy Fun was to write a poem, based on George Ella Lyons’ poem “Where I’m From,” using the Where I’m From template posted by Fred First in November of 2003.

I’m a couple of days late, but here’s my version, which occasionally departs from the template:

Where I’m From by Pamela D. Lloyd

I am from white, sandy beaches and warm Gulf water, from dark, warm, muggy nights  and catching fireflies on the front lawn.

I am from the hot, gritty sands of the Southwest desert, alive with lizards and jackrabbits.

I’m from Southern houses built of wood, with front porches and green grass all around, and tall trees for shade and home-made swings.

I’m from brick ranch houses with covered patios in back, scraggly grass, mimosa and mulberry trees, and plastic flowers in the flower bed because my mother had a “brown thumb.”

I am from the sea grass growing on sand dunes, and the sharp, spiny stalks of the agave and the leaves of the creosote bush, crushed in my hands to release it’s pungent, medicinal odor.

I am from off-tune lullabies and staying up too late, from Luella and Winston, Granny Rote and Granny Sissy, from my brothers, from my aunts and uncles, from my cousins.

I am from scientific answers to childish questions and handed down dolls dressed in baby clothes I once wore.

From silent home movies and tall tales of wounds received in the French and Indian War.

I am from an ex-Southern Baptist who asked, “Who created God?” and from hearing my mother say, pulling words laden with anguish and anger from deep within, “I have seen evil committed in the name of the Lord.” From devout atheism and deeply held, very personal, religious belief, both denying small-town holier-than-thou hypocrisy.

I'm from Chicago, from Pensacola, from El Paso, from Lloyds and Rotes. I’m from pan-fried mushrooms, sweet watermelon dripping down my chin, and the gumbo my northern-bred mother made for my southern-bred father.

From the airplane-propeller-mangled arm of my grandfather, the knick-knacks in my grandmother’s curio cabinet. In her closet, my mother kept boxes of figures made from hollowed eggs, crepe paper, and gimp, things she’d made as a camp counselor, that she taught us how to make, anew.

I am from paper dolls my mother played with, children’s books written fifty years before I was born, and my mother’s wind-up musical jewelry box full of treasures. I am from chemistry sets, learning how to build a radio, and how to change a tire. I am from all the books I read, from fairy tales and Robin Hood, from mysteries and science fiction.

I am from Adam and Eve, from Lucy, from nomads who hunted mammoths, from small, quick mammals that avoided the teeth and claws of dinosaurs, from the first amoeba to swim in the primordial seas.

I am one twig, one tiny branch, with two bright, shining leaves, on my tree of deep roots and many branches. One teeny-tiny fragment of the tree of Terran life.

Saturday Night Fun: Heritage Pie Chart via Genea-Musings

Over on Genea-Musings, tonight's genealogy task is to create a pie chart, based on your great-great-grandparents.

My great-great-grandparents were as follows:

16. Hiram Lloyd was born in 1825 in King, York, ON, Canada. He died on 14 Apr 1911 at the age of 86 in Sault Ste. Marie, MI, USA. Ellen Hughes and Hiram Lloyd were married on 28 Jul 1848.

17. Ellen Hughes was born on 2 Aug 1825. She died on 11 May 1896 at the age of 70 in Chippewa, MI, USA. She was also known as Ellen Lloyd.

18. Bartholemew Higgins was born on 14 Jun 1801 in Ireland.

19. Susan Swale died in 1871.

20. John A Herrington was born on 14 Jun 1801 in New Hanover, NC, USA. He died on 15 Jul 1859 at the age of 58 in Harrison, MS, USA. Sarah J Mathis and John A Herrington were married estimated 2 May 1825.

21. Sarah J Mathis was born on 29 Nov 1808 in GA, USA. She died on 27 Aug 1878 at the age of 69 in Biloxi, MS, USA. She was also known as Sarah J Herrington.

22. James Cornelius Boykin was born on 9 Mar 1843. He died on 28 Nov 1885 at the age of 42 in Sneads, FL, USA.

23. Jane Carolina McKeown was also known as Jane Carolina Boykin. She was born on 20 Jun 1845 in Chester City, SC, USA. She died on 7 Oct 1877 at the age of 32 in Sneeds, FL, USA.

24. William Rote was born estimated 1814 in PA, USA.

25. Martha Rote was born estimated 1823 in PA, USA.

26. John Ward was born (date unknown).

28. James Craun was born on 16 Oct 1820.

29. Martha McEwen was also known as Martha Craun. She was born estimated 1827.

Here's a pie chart showing where each was born:

Obviously, I'm missing a lot of information. If, by any chance, you happen to have more information about any of these individuals, I'd love to hear from you.