Ancestrally Challenged

Georgia Courthouse Fires

ShaniFaye — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 13:10:26 +0000

My mom found this in some documentation she was going thru on our Strickland branch of the family…it was originally printed in the Atlanta Journal on 2/18/1979 and 2/25/1979 by Kenneth Thomas. I had it all typed up and ready to post. I decided before I did, I would check to see if I could find anymore “details” and in doing so, I’ve found someone else has already posted it online, and I would rather direct you to their site, since each county has a link for you to go read the history of the county and details of the fire etc…

So if you’ve ever wondered if the courthouse in the Ga county you need to do research has ever been damaged or destroyed… go here, scroll down the page just a bit and find out!!

Georgia Burned Courthouses

Genealogy Forums

ShaniFaye — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 13:28:30 +0000

How many of you know that using genealogy forums is a great way to look for and share information? Ancestry and Genforum, for example, have thousands and thousands of posts on each of them. I’m sure if you’ve ever googled the name of the person you’re researching you’ve gotten one or two hits pointing you in the direction of a forum/message board. Lots of historical society’s have on one their websites as well.

If you’ve never used one you might consider it, either to read information others have posted, or make your own post. Google crawls these places all the time, so the more places you get your queries posted the more people will find you and possibly be able to help you.

I’ve been running a “general” message board for about 3 years at http://www.ancestrallychallenged.com/forum and a surname specific board (Inman) http://inman.techsavy.net/ Ancestrally Challenged has loads of information posted by our users in the form of obits, cemetery transcriptions/pictures, confederate soldier service records, wills etc, and ALL of it free.

You do not have to join either of these forums to read the information posted there by hundreds of people sharing their info, but if you want to post your own query, or answer someone elses you have to register. Registration is free and all it requires you setting up a username and password using a valid email address. Whether you check out these two or find others, it is an awesome way to share and look for information.

**as a side note if you register to join AncestrallyChallenged or the Inman Compendium you will not be able to post right away, to keep out spammers I have it set up to manually approve registrations after you validate your email address so be SURE to include the surnames you are researching in the box I provide during the registration process so that I know you are a real person.

Rest in Peace Bonnie Johnson Selig

ShaniFaye — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 22:46:24 +0000

The genealogy world lost a good friend today. October 8, 2009, Bonnie Selig succumbed to Cancer. I “met” Bonnie awhile back through our volunteer work with RAOGK and it was obvious from the start she was a special person and a credit to a world I love so much… genealogy. I found Bonnie to be a warm, witty, funny person with a big heart.

Earlier this year when I took her spot on the staff of RAOGK, I prayed she would make a full recovery so that she could come back full time to the world she loved, and she served that world in the best possible way until she no longer could. People from across the nation benefited from her volunteer work and passion.

Bonnie will be missed in many ways by many people, and one of those people will be me.

My thoughts and prayers go out to her family and friends who’s main solace right now is that she is no longer in pain.

Bonnie, you were a shining example to a lot of people and we cared about you in our own unique way. Rest in peace lovely lady.

Georgia Death Certs 1928, 1929, 1930 online now

ShaniFaye — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 17:52:41 +0000

Almost 2 years after the Georgia Archives put up the death cert images for 1919-1927, it has uploaded 1928-1930. Its not as easy to use as the other ones, you have to find your person on the index then go back to the search page and enter the certificate number but hey, its better than nothing!!

This is the link for the new section

Non Indexed Death Certs

Publishing your family history

ShaniFaye — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 21:51:24 +0000

Ok, I’m looking for advise here. I think I am at the point where I would like to put my years of research in bound form and I am looking to hear from people that have done that.

I have looked at www.lulu.com and their prices are great, I have looked at Cafe Press, and eh, not impressed with their prices but they might still be an option. I am looking to print on demand only, I don’t want a short run and have boxes of unpaid for books just sitting around my house. I do not need a color option, black and white is fine and I don’t think I want to go with hardcover. I’ve seen many printed in “paperback” and I think that’s just fine for my needs.

So my question for y’all is, have you done this, who did you use and why? Would you use them again and how pleased were you with your overall results?

Comments welcome on the discussion forum Here by registered members.

Canadian Headstone Photo Project

ShaniFaye — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 14:54:43 +0000

Great site!! Its free and its free of annoying ads, which makes it one that I think you should put on your list if you have Canadian research. Its definitely one you should donate your pics to if you have them.

Group discussion HERE

SC Archive documents online

ShaniFaye — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 11:17:35 +0000

I have to credit my Mama with this find, and its pretty awesome (at least for me it has been) Lots of valuable information included here. Most of my research is in Pickens County and there are several things in there referencing my people.

www.archivesindex.sc.gov/

The documents are grouped as follows:
Confederate Pension Applications 1919 - 1938 10,242 items
Criminal Journals 1769 - 1776 2,087 items
Index to Multiple Record Series ca. 1675 -1929 173,042 items
Legislative Papers 1782 - 1866 53,489 items
National Register of Historic Places 1,415 items
Plats for State Land Grants 1784 - 1868 51,809 items
School Insurance Photographs 1935 - 1952 2,662 items
Will Transcripts 1782 - 1855 11,059 items

There CAN be more than one

ShaniFaye — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 03:05:49 +0000

Im sure a lot of us this past week were made aware of the new social networking site GenealogyWise….started by the man that started Ancestry.com back in the 90’s.

Just as there is room on the internet for myspace and facebook, there is room for more than one site like this. Yes I know theirs has lots of bells and whistles, they indeed have more money than I. I can only hope that all our members here will utilize more than one site of this kind and wont leave AS behind AncestralSpace

Seems they already made a major snafu against the wrong person and have had to issue a public apology for “behavior unbecoming”, that is unfortunate in their case, but at least they “manned up” so to speak.

I am sure they will do well and if they are even half as excited about their site as I am they have a lot of expectations. At least I know I was first right? ha ha

No sour grapes here, Im proud of what I’ve done without bombarding the members with useless ads and “ways to make money” and token contests to try to get our membership numbers up and Im proud I did it alone, no financial backing from anyone…no “corporation” stuff to deal with.

I look forward to all the posts and additions our members make there, I cherish everyone because that place was built with love and a true desire to help people’s endeavors in genealogy….free genealogy.

With much love and luck in research to you all

I am humbly yours,

Shannon

Genealogy volunteer work - adventure, thrills and outrage

ShaniFaye — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 23:03:07 +0000

So this week I got a request to go photograph some graves..at a cemetery very few people (including me) know how to find lol. In my county there are two cemeteries, Ewing Chapel Cemetery and Old Ewing Chapel Cemetery. I’ve known for 20+ years that the old one was in the wood somewhere…and this was the cemetery I got a request for. Dave and I set out early early this morning to try to beat the days heat and traffic and find it. No such luck on our own, but at the “newer” one, it was evidently clean up day so we stopped and asked a group of very old men if any of them happened to know where the old one was. They did of course and told me how to go find it, it was very near and on private property. Trouble was the directions of “go up the road a piece and turn left at the telephone pole on the dirt road” wasnt quite as specific as I needed, there were several dirt roads at telephone poles lol. We went back to ask again and a very nice man volunteered to take us up there, so he got in his truck and we followed him. When we got there I was just devastated by the condition, it was so overgrown and covered in fallen trees.

There are supposed to be 12 graves there but you can only see five (I will go back in the winter and see if you can see anymore after everything has died). While Im walking around snapping pics and watching for snakes, I stopped to take a pic of a stone when I pulled the camera away from my face, out of the bottom of my eye it looked like the ground was moving….and from my knees down I was covered in about 200 yellow jackets. I freaked just a little, I am EXTREMELY allergic and have to carry an epi pen (which I had on me), but I was wearing jeans since I knew I was gonna be in the woods and calmly walked away instead of running, trying not to pee down my leg in fear (last time I got stung by just one wasp it was a disaster). I was cussing loudly and like a sailor…Dave who was over aways with the older gentleman was running to find out what was wrong and when I told him he starts quoting a monologue by our favorite comedian (Eddie Izzard) about being ‘COVERED IN BEEEEES” he was giggling and I had to laugh and it calmed me down. I had evidently stepped right in the nest, but by calmly walking away they stayed where they were. It was quite an interesting morning, but its so so so sad the condition this cemetery is in. Im going to be contacting the historical society cemetery preservation group to see if there is something that cant be done. This an album where I uploaded the pics I took if you’d like to see … picasaweb.google.com/shanifaye/EwingChap…; an interesting pic is the grave for Mary Ewing, if you zoom in on the pic and look, you can see where they ran out of room for her name and put the last letter of her first name on the 2nd line of the stone.

I think Im going to get an extra epi pen for this kind of thing HAH

Are you a geocities orphan? Need free space?

ShaniFaye — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 13:26:14 +0000

Most of us are aware that geocities are closing down their sites. This is going to displace a lot of peoples genealogy sites. In my on going effort to promote free genealogy, I am making the same offer I made when rootsweb was taken over by Ancestry. I am offering free webspace piggybacked on my AncestrallyChallenged website, that will mean your URL will be something like this http://www.ancestrallychallenged.com/adams.htm (that is a website I moved off of angelfire years ago).

The person that manages the website must be able to design/upload files via an FTP program, because of security on the server it is not possible to ftp via the internet.

I will have access of course to the web page, but I will in no way up or download anything to it (I dont want anyone thinking Im out to steal files lol).

I would also like to make sure that anyone interested knows there is NO advertising on the page at all from any source at all. You are free to make your pages the way you like. The only thing I ask is that the page put a link to my site, www.ancestralspace.com on it, it can be any where on the page and in any format you wish, no banners required.

Anyone with questions can contact me at shanifaye@gmail.com , and feel free to spread the word via any means you see fit.

Shannon