Steve's Genealogy Blog

Today marks the end of my first year with this blog. My fellow students in an online genealogy class encouraged me to start this blog and have been faithful readers all along. I’ve also had considerable support from George Morgan and Drew Smith of the Genealogy Guys Podcast.

I started this blog on April 18, 2006 without a clue as to what I was doing or how I wanted to do it. I’ve now posted 344 articles and friends have contributed 9 GuestBlogs. I’ve posted something just about every day, but some days I simply didn’t have access to the internet, so I’ve missed a few days here and there.

The blog began with a chronicle of my spring trip to Salt Lake City; and, appropriately, the year ended with another trip to Salt Lake. Despite the fact that I can view microfilms at my local Family History Center, I find I can accomplish much more in a couple of intensive days at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City where I can conduct research without distraction, and can rely on help from the staff of the Family History Library if I need it.

During the past year, I’ve made some remarkable progress in my family history research. I have been contacted by two cousins in Poland, two cousins in Britain, a cousin in Massachusetts, and a cousin in New York, none of whom had I ever contacted before. In fact, I probably would never have made contact with these people if they had not found me through this blog.

In addition to these blood relatives, I’ve also been contacted by collateral relatives – cousins of my cousins and relatives of my cousins’ spouses. Some of these contacts, including members of the Izbicki, Gibson, Skowronski, and Markiewicz families have provided me with a wealth of information to help me research these lines in more detail. I’m almost suffering from information overload as a result of their help. Not a bad situation to be in, though!

I’ve also published research that I’ve conducted for others. In particular, the research I published on the family of Jan Savitt, the bandleader from the 1930s and 1940s, resulted in a quite unexpected benefit for Jan’s daughters. Two people wrote to me to tell me that had memorabilia about Jan Savitt that they wanted to share with Jan’s family, but they didn’t know how to find them. Since I was conducting the research for Jan’s daughter, Devi, it was easy to establish contact between these good Samaritans and the Savitt family. Jan Savitt’s family now has newspaper articles, videos, and other precious memorabilia they never knew about before.

I’ve made lots of new friends through this blog, including other bloggers, well-known genealogy lecturers, not to mention my new-found relatives and the other genealogists researching the same family lines.

This blog is quite different than most other genealogy blogs in that I concentrate on disseminating information about my ancestors and share images of original documents. Because I concentrate on my ancestors, it is my own family who have found my blog most interesting. Most other genealogy bloggers share news and advice, and as such will naturally command a larger audience than I ever will. Despite that, the number of page views I’ve counted on this blog has increased constantly during the past year, to the point where I can honestly say I have an audience.

I recently installed a Cluster Map on this site to pinpoint the locations from which people have accessed my blog. If you haven’t looked at the Cluster Map yet, there’s a link to the map in the upper part of the sidebar on the right of this page. I expected to see readers from the United States, Canada, Poland, and England, but I have to admit, I was a bit surprised and pleased to see that people in Germany, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Spain, Greece, Australia, Mexico, and even Pakistan have read my blog.

Well, I’ve rambled enough for one day; but, before I close, I do want to wish a Happy Anniversary to the other prolific genealogy bloggers I know who also started a blog in April 2006: Randy Seaver, Megan Smolenyak, and Joe Beine. Here’s to you! Sto Lat!

My last day in Salt Lake City was a bit less frantic than Friday and Saturday were. I slept in late this morning and spent some time reading the Sunday newspaper (the print edition) while having breakfast at the Marriott City Center.

My favorite places to stay in Salt Lake City are the Hilton Salt Lake City Center, the Salt Lake City Marriott Downtown, and the Salt Lake City Marriott City Center. I usually stay at whichever is the cheapest and I can usually stay for $100 a night or less.

For this trip, I stayed at the Salt Lake City Marriott City Center because I wanted to visit the Salt Lake City Main Public Library today. The Marriott City Center is only a couple of blocks from the library, an easy walk.

I have to admit that I don’t know all the resources available at the Salt Lake City Main Library. The only thing I’ve ever done there is to research records in the Salt Lake City newspapers. One great thing about researching newspaper records on microfilm at the Salt Lake City Main Public Library is that paper copies from microfilm are free! Another bonus is that the other patrons researching newspapers on microfilm are generally a friendly and talkative bunch, so the time spent there is enjoyable.

On this trip I was able to print out copies of about 30 newspaper records, most of which were obituaries. Along with all the records I found at the Family History Library, it’ll take a while for me to digest all this new information.

Now, I’m back in San Francisco, a bit bushed and ready to call it a night. Not to repeat myself, but I had a very productive weekend!

Today I spent most of the day researching vital records in Vermont, particularly the Gibson and Paradee surnames. I could have spent the entire day on these records, but I wanted to look at a couple of other records, too.

I searched the 1871 and 1881 Canadian census records for the Gibson family. I found three relevant Gibson families in the 1871 census, all related to John and Sarah Gibson, but I could only find the family of Willard Gibson in the 1881 census. I don’t know where everyone else was in 1881.

I also searched the San Jose city directories for two people who, according to the 1930 census, were residents of San Jose, California. The couple was listed in San Jose in the 1931 city directory, but not in later editions. From this information, I’m not sure if the couple moved out of San Jose or if one of them died. I’ll have to look at other records.

Finally, I searched the parish records for Wigry, Russia (now Poland) for records on the ancestors of the Izbicki family of Worcester, Massachusetts . I found a few records, but now I’m running out of time .  The library closes soon, so I’ll have to pack up and head back to the hotel.

Unfortunately, my laptop has been acting up ever since I arrived in Salt Lake City. It now shuts down by itself after a few minutes. I have been able to copy sufficient information to paper in order to keep my research going, but I’m rather concerned about this situation . I suspect the fan is malfunctioning and the computer is overheating. I’ll have to get the computer repaired, so blogging may be intermittent until things are fixed.

Tomorrow, I plan to spend some time relaxing in the morning and then spend some time at the Salt Lake City Public Library in the afternoon . I head back to the west coast in the evening.

All in all, it’s been a productive weekend.

My first day at the Family History Library involved something I never thought I’d be doing – hunting for Italian ancestors. The reason I thought this experience would be unlikely is simply that I don’t have any Italian ancestors.

I’m searching for these ancestors for a client who knows when and where her parents were born and the maiden names of their mothers, but little else.

Fortunately, the Family History Library has microfilmed copies of the civil registration for Augusta, Siracusa, Italy from 1820 to 1929, and census records from 1682 to 1815, giving me coverage from 1682 to 1929!

I spent the entire day yesterday searching through these records and was able to find records that listed my client’s parents, grandparents, great grandparents, and even four of her great-great grandparents .  Even so, I’ve barely begun to look through the records.

One important record set for researching Italian roots that I never knew about are the allegati. More about that at a later date.

An important website I learned about for researching Italian genealogy is italia.indettaglio.it . In particular, since I was researching Sicilian surnames, I was able to follow links on this site to the Sicilian Surnames Search Engine in order to confirm the spellings of the surnames I found in the records.

In that way, I was able to confirm that the surnames I found in the civil registration records were frequently encountered names in Sicily, and was even able to find the frequency of those names in the village of Augusta.

More tomorrow.

Tonight, I’m flying to Salt Lake City to spend two days at the Family History Library (my annual spring trip). 2007 is the off-year for the United Polish Genealogical Societies Conference (held in Salt Lake City in even-numbered years in the spring); so, for me, I’ll be able to spend two entire days in the Family History Library with no interruptions.

I have a number of goals for this trip, including:

• Find records for the Polish ancestors of the Izbicki family
• Trace the Sicilian ancestors for a client (should be fun, I’ve never looked into Italian or Sicilian records before)
• Track down the Vermont vital records for some elusive members of the Gibson family
• Look up some Canadian census records for the Gibson family

I printed out film numbers for the microfilms I plan to view; and, two weeks ago, I emailed a request for the staff to pull five films from the vault so they would be available while I’m in Salt Lake City.

I’ll also get to see first-hand how the Family History Library patrons are dealing with the recent discontinuation of full access to Ancestry.com .  In recent years, the census area on the second floor was all but abandoned since it was so much easier to just search the census on Ancestry.com.

In the past, it seemed like whatever records I decided to copy at the Family History Library were made available online within a few months of my visit. I don’t expect to see the Sicilian or Polish records online anytime soon, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see additional years of the Canadian Census online in the coming months.

Reminder to myself: Don’t forget to bring the thumb drive this time!