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DLVGC Chapter News
We’ve been working overtime on developing a great schedule of meeting topics and special speakers to keep our members’ (and our guests’)
interest in genealogy alive and educational. We think we have an excellent schedule of speakers and look for renewed participation in the regular meetings every second Monday of each month.
Google-
The consummate search engine
by Gil Greene
A recent Saturday found me at Bergen County (NJ) College, fascinated by a presentation about Google. Why? We all know how to use Google! Or, do we? I think it’s like most of us using only one-tenth our brain power on a regular basis. We “Google” a name and think we’ve done all we can. Far from it.
The master-of-Googlery, Dan Lynch was holding forth on all we don’t know about Google. He is not an employee of Google yet knows all the ins and outs of fully utilizing this fantastic search engine.
A few excerpts from his remarks may set the scene:
Q: Why Google? A: Simply put - they're the leader with over 65% market share in the United States (Source: Nielsen Online), more than 3-times their nearest competitor (Yahoo!, then Bing/Live/MSN). Google also has versions of its service in more than 160 different countries worldwide. This is perfect given the appeal of family history research.
Q: Do All Search Engines Work The Same? A: No, results from competing search engines will yield slightly different results because each uses their own proprietary factors and algorithms to determine the results most likely to match your search criteria
Q: Why is Google so interested in Genealogy? A: Well - they aren't really. But their mission sure does seem to make sense to us as family historians. Google's mission is”to organize the worlds' information and make it universally accessible and useful." Google and others perform the most basic or all computer functions without any discrimination - - simply comparing one string of text with millions of others seeking those that match.
Q: What is a “keyword”? A: A 'keyword' refers to both a single word or multiple words making up a search query. For example: ‘greene’ or ‘gilbert greene’ or ‘gilbert kennedy greene’ are all considered keywords (or keyword phrases).
Common words (also called 'Stop Words') are generally ignored by Google (a, of, the, and, or, not, to, how, if, where, how, etc.) EXCEPT AND and OR, as noted below.
Google and most other search engines perform special actions when using ‘reserved terms’ or Boolean operators:
AND (when typed in upper case) requires presence of both terms on results pages (but no proximity required), such as: greene genealogy AND malden
OR (when typed in upper case) allows for either of multiple conditions, such as: gil OR gilbert OR gk greene
Another aspect of Google (and other search engines) is the ability to “filter” information; as Dan explained it, much like an archeologists screen filters out the dust and dirt, leaving the valuable chard, bone or artifact being sought.
Special Symbols for Filtering Results
• Minus sign (-) acts as the word NOT as an operator (though NOT isn't actually supported by Google as an operator - go figure?)
• Quotations are a MUST if you want to filter effectively for genealogy "gilbert greene" or "greene, gilbert"
• Asterisk symbol (*) acts as wildcard replacement for any number of consecutive characters (a word or abbreviation)
-ONLY works when used inside quotations
-Can use multiple asterisks, helpful for finding maiden names, such as: "gilbert * greene" or "george ** ruth"
• Tilde (~) processes immediately following term along with similar words having same or similar meanings
~genealogy will yield results including terms such as: ancestry, family, family history, family tree, genealogical, genealogists, roots, surname, tree, vital records, and others...
Special Considerations for Genealogists
• Some names and terms have various common meanings and will require special thought when submitting queries to filter unwanted results (e.g. - Brown, White, Ford, Fox, Bass, etc.)
• Different topics will require different search strategies, such as:
- Common names or locations will require you to filter OUT results (narrow)
-Less common names or locations will require you to expand possible results (widen)
Google Query – How Filtering Narrows Results
greene 51,480,000
greene~genealogy 760,000
greene~genealogy AND malden32,100
greene~genealogy AND malden OR lynn39,810
“thomas greene” ~genealogy malden massachusetts150
“thomas greene” ~genealogy malden Massachusetts
–maine 61
Going from over 50 million results, down to 61 results with just a few extra key strokes---pretty cool, eh?
Important Note for Genealogists
There are at least three common ways that our ancestors names are commonly transcribed, so be sure to think ahead and ask Google for results of all three when using quotations - not just one!
• "gilbert greene" will not find "greene, gilbert"
• Use the OR command to capture all three variations as follows: "gilbert greene" OR "greene,gilbert" OR "gilbert * greene"
Special thanks to Dan Lynch and his seminar for help.
Look for Dan Lynch’s book: Google Your Family Tree - Unlock the Hidden Power of Google, Lynch,Daniel M. FamilyLink.com, Inc., Provo UT, October 2008 ISBN 978-0-9820737-1-1
Contact Information:Dan Lynch, 163 Beechwood Avenue, Trumbull CT 06611
Website: Email:
Beyond Simply Google
by Barbara Ellman
Google now has a series of tools at the top of the page that are well worth checking out. Try starting with Google Images. While it is easier to get results with a more unusual name, just type a name in the search box and see what comes up. Click on the image that you are interested in and it will open up the link to the page context within which the photo appears. I quickly found the 1957 Kindergarten photo of a cousin. I was amazed at how much information I was able to learn about family members -occupations, schools, where they lived and even added several new family members.
Checking out what is hidden under the More (click on it!) at the top left of the page, I used Google Scholar to learn about the learned activities of my educator and doctor relatives. I was thrilled to find that one relative is a well-known AIDS researcher and a father-son team are cardiac research specialists. Google Patents told me that a cousin holds several patents and that he works for Microsoft.
Google Books helped me find out that a cousin was the president of an aviation company in Little Ferry in 1945 and that a relative's relative was one of the first spies for the CIA. When searching You Tube (using Google's link), I found several videos of a family wedding.
Using Google Maps, research the addresses where your relatives lived, view the buildings that are there today and take a virtual walk through the neighborhood by using the Street View feature. The site also had links to user-created maps of the area showing landmarks and photos from the area. Go to Google Earth for a satellite view of the area. If you don't have an exact address, try this with ancestral towns.
Set up Google Alerts to keep you informed of any new posts on a specific story, individual or location. This feature lets you set up email alerts on any search criteria you want and is a great way of keeping up with ongoing events.
Using these Google tools is often just the beginning of the search. They will suggest new avenues to explore and ways of confirming what you have found out. And all from the warmth of your home and keyboard. The Archivist, Genealogical Society of Bergen County, NJ, Volume XXXV, No. 4, November 2008 Winter Genealogy, by Barbara Ellman
And…another recent addition:Google Language Tools can perform foreign language translation (to or from) on your behalf; while results may not be perfect, they certainly expand your own language skills for many words.
Dan also mentioned, under the More pull-down, there is a category “More Search Tools”. Try it for setting up a timeline for your family.
Books of Interest
Love word origins as much as ancestral origins? Learn words named after little-known people in Anonyponymous; The Forgotten People Behind Everyday Words by John Bemelmans Marciano (Bloomsbury). Etienne de Silhouette, for example, cut costs by asking his portrait painter to render just a shadow of his image, and acrobat Jules Leotard designed the costume that made Jazzercise possible.
Our 19th-century American ancestors were fascinated with mystical experiences. In Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation (Bantam), Mitch Horowitz explores the history of the Ouija board, Spiritualism's influence on f the Senate and the source of the slogan on the dollar bill.
Research in New Jersey, written by professional genealogist Claire Keenan Agathe, this guide to the Garden State leads researchers down the right path to finding their ancestors— from the colonial era to later immigrants. This is the latest of thirteen states now available. The guides are economically priced, so you can buy the print version for your library (NGS Member: $14.50; Non-Member: $17.50) and the electronic PDF version (NGS Member: $8.00; Non-Member: $10.00) for your computer. NGS members receive a discount on purchases made in the NGS online store. Shop the NGS online store (
Are You a Smith?
Though Smith is the most common last name in the United States and the United Kingdom, fewer than 5 million people worldwide bear the name (it ranks far behind the name Li, held by 108 million people). But you might be a Smith and not even know it. These surnames are based on various languages' words for the metalworking profession:
De Smet Dutch
Ferraro Italian
Haddad Arabic
Herrera Spanish
Kovacs Hungarian
KovalenkoUkrainian
Kovalev Russian
Kowal_Polish
Lefevre French
Lohar Punjabi
Schmieder Yiddish
Sedans Greek
Seppa Finnish
If I Were To Start My Genealogy Now
Diane L. Richard
It’s easy to tell someone embarking on their research to keep the basics of research in mind. We all know the textbook basics—but, do we remember the practical side?
Start early. If you can’t start early; at least start!
All too often, I discovered new relatives just before or after they died, thought of questions when I could no longer ask them.. I found houses that had just been torn down, or attics and basements where documents and photos were held had been dam-aged in storms and so on! All lost opportunities that were once within my grasp.
Don't wait! Even if you don't know exactly what to ask or what information you need, just get-ting started is key.
Listen to your relatives stories!
When I started, I wrongly assumed that I would be able to learn so much more from paperwork than from the people. I have since learned that in one conversation, you can learn much more than you can from hours of slogging through documents.
Search out and communicate with all your family lines.
When I started, I focused solely on querying my grandmothers about their respective families. In both cases, with deceased grandfathers, I also relied on them to tell me about their spouse's families. This worked well on the maternal side.
On the paternal side, my grandfather died when my dad was two. My grandmother then remarried, moved quite a distance and essentially lost touch with her first spouse's family. She always told me that my paternal great aunts were deceased.
You can imagine my surprise when, in the late 1980s, I learned that one of those paternal great aunts, Anna, was still living. Fortunately I was able to visit with Anna several times before she died — she shared stories and photos of herself, her parents, my great grand-father, my grandfather and even a bit about my dad as a young child. She also wrote me letters about her memories, and put me in touch with other extended family members.
Seek out distant cousins for all your family lines.
Locate and communicate with extended family!
Actively look for extended family members. On my maternal side, my gran eventually put me in touch with her two surviving cousins, Auntie Edith (Nelson cousin) and Jack (Taylor cousin), both in their 80s. For several years we enjoyed a wonderful long-distance correspondence relationship. Jack and I shared research notes, while Auntie Edith and I swapped stories and tales! They were both very interested in the family and its history; not a priority for my gran!
Similarly, for a recent client project, my client contacted a distant cousin and learned that the cousin had her mother's old address book. Based on the names and addresses found in it, we were able to learn about four previously unknown siblings of her grandmother.
Look beyond bloodlines.
Look beyond family! After all, just like you, your ancestors did not just hang out with family. After spinning my wheels on several families, I contacted the churches that they had lone-time connections to. From one, I received a letter from an old parishioner who remembered my Barna ancestors, though had nothing good to say about my grandfather Malecki. He even had a photo of Wasyi Barna and his son marching in a parade, the only surviving image I have of them. When another parishioner shared her memories, I learned about my great-grandfather, Ernest Taylor. When not an accountant, he was a Baptist minister, and stayed with this woman's family on weekends while he was preaching.
Ask people about themselves!
Interviewing someone, whether in person or on paper, is an art. I asked for facts and details, mostly about their parents and grand-parents and long-deceased ancestors. I never asked them about themselves! Ask questions about favorite foods, memories of growing up, what subjects they liked, what they did for fun, did they date, etc. Essentially, she asked them about "them"; they all responded enthusiastically and she got a great collection of human-interest stories! These are actually a more interesting read!
Facts are something that, as researchers we have a goodchance to locate and document. Personal memories, family stories and lore are the fabric of our ancestors' lives, and we are much less likely to find these except by asking living people!
Collect photos!
Collect a copy of anything you come across, whether you know how it fits in or not. I have some pictures that my gran had from my grandad's side of the family. None of them were labeled. Now, at least, we have preserved them and I have shared them with others. Who knows when I might stumble across another photo of that individual with a different group of people or in someone else's collection.
Don’t assume there are no documents!
I learned shortly before she died that my gran had the Taylor family Bible. Since I had been corresponding with her and interviewing her when visiting for years, and the Taylor family was a large focus of that, I was surprised to learn about the Bible. I then assumed she had shared what was in the Bible and, while she was alive, never asked for copies of its pages. I made a faulty assumption. A few years after my gran died, I asked my uncle to copy the personal pages of the Bible, just so I could have a copy for my file. He also copied some loose papers that were stored in the Bible. The good news is that they confirmed a lot of hard research. The bad news was that with this information, we could have focused on other, equally deserving family members!
Always ask relatives what records or documents they may have, or if they have boxes in the attic from another relative. Do ask for copies of any documents they might have. Don't assume that just because you haven't heard about something, it doesn't exist, or, even if you know about it, that it might not have some surprising information in it!
Let people know you are researching
There is a good chance that there are others out there trying to research some of the same families as you. If everyone were to communicate who, what, when and where they are researching, you'd have a better chance of finding a distant cousin!
Conclusion
Much of my advice is not about the mechanics of doing your research, it's about capturing the stories, looking beyond the obvious, creating a more complete and 3D version of your ancestors. As you gather stories, you learn about new places to research, acquire substantiating documentation and you learn more about your ancestors.
Discovering Your Family Tree, January/February 2009
Diane L. Richard has been doing genealogy research for more than 20 years. She currently does professional research in North Carolina, and can be found onlineat /Geneal