My Grandparent's Names

Earlier today, Randy Seaver posted about the names he gave his grandparents and then challenged other genealogy bloggers to post about the names they gave their grandparents.

So, what names do I give to my grandparents? I call my grandparents, Grandma and Grandpa. If I happen to be talking to a family member about one of my grandparents, I might specify with the surname of my grandparent. For example, I would say, "Grandma [Surname]." I can't say for sure, but I think it was the same way for my parents as well. In referring to my grandparents, my parents call them "Mom and Dad," even if they are not their parents, but their in-laws. (As far as I know, I don't believe my parents' calling each other's parents, "Mom and Dad," has ever caused problems, although I did have a high school teacher who got upset that his married daughter called her father-in-law, "Dad.")

Speaking of parents, I have only called my parents either, "Mom and Dad," or, "Mommy and Daddy" when I was younger. I have never been allowed to call my parents by their first names, although I understand that there are some parents who do allow their children to call them by their first names. If I ever have children, I don't believe I would allow them to call me by my first name. I guess I'm just too traditional to allow that to happen.

Some Useful Technology For Genealogy?

"What technology do you most rely on for your genealogy and family history research?" Well, that happens to be the question for the next edition of the Carnival of Genealogy, and I'll confess, it is not a question that I can easily answer. I could only choose three items, one each from the categories of hardware, software and website. So, which three items did I choose? Here's my choices:

Hardware: For the hardware category, I would have to say that a ubs 2.0 flash drive has been one of the items I have relied the most on. (I couldn't choose my computer.) I have a flash drive that I use to store my genealogy software and family tree. Of course, I must state that this flash drive is also password protected. I would not put my family tree on a flash drive that did not have a password-protected component to it. There are many different ubs drives out there at different prices and storage capacities. The flash drive that I use for my genealogy has 256 MB of space on it. I keep my genealogy files and genealogy software on this flash drive. (I must state that I have other flash drives that I use for school.)

Software: For the software category, I would have to nominate the genealogy program that I use. I use Family Trees Quick and Easy, version 5. How did I come to choose this program? Well, a few years ago, my college's bookstore was selling some computer programs for five dollars or less, and I happened to notice that one of the programs was a family tree program. Since I already knew what the price for other family trees programs were being sold at, I bought the program because it was such a bargain. Even though I have tried some other free and demo versions of family trees, I have never been impressed by those programs. I like the program that I use, and I am happy with the program.

Website: For me, this category was the most difficult for me to make a decision. For the moment, I think I'll have to go with Rootsweb's message boards. As there are many different categories and topics for queries, I think many novice genealogist could find a lot of information on how to do genealogy research or where to find records. (I had a hard time coming up with this answer as there are many websites and blogs that I visit, and this was best I could do at the moment.)

So there are my three choices. Do you agree or disagree with me? As always you can leave a comment.

Some Interesting Articles ...

I've wanted to mention some articles that I found interesting over the past week or so, but I never got around to mentioning them. So here are some articles that I have found interesting:

• "Copyright Issues: Photographs" at GeneaBlogie
• "Age of Consent vs Age of Majority Explained" at Olive Tree Genealogy Blog
• "If These Walls Could Speak: A German Häuserchronik" at What's Past is Prologue
• "Building a Better Blog" at the same blog as above
• "What is Blogging? Why Would I Want to do it?" at Kinexxions
• "What's Next? European Genealogy & Social Networking" at 100 Years in America
• "European Genealogy Resources Online" at the same blog as above
• "Nagyon Köszönöm! The National Archives of Hungary in English" at the same blog as above
• "British WW1 Medal Cards on Ancestry" at Anglo-Celtic Connections
• "New Genealogy Guide for Finland Research" at AnceStories: The Stories of My Ancestors

I realize that I have listed a large number of articles, but I thought these articles were interesting. Enjoy!

Update at 2:30 p.m.: I added the links to the articles for Anglo-Celtic and AnceStories, and more post labels.

More on Kosovo and Serbia ...

A few days ago I mentioned that Kosovo had declared its independence. I've been watching the news, and I forgot to mention that the United States (along with some other countries) has recognized Kosovo as an independent country within the past couple of days. Now today, earlier this afternoon, I learned that protests were held in Belgrade. Some were peaceful but other protests were violent. And the U.S. embassy was attacked by those violent protesters. You can read more here and here.

I usually do not post on politics on this blog because I have another blog for that purpose, but I did so in this case as I thought my readers might have been interested in reading about the recent events with Kosovo. I realize that the issues surrounding Kosovo's declaration have long roots in history that are connected with strong emotions, but I don't have any sympathy for the Serbs who attacked the embassy of my country. I can't speak for my fellow countrymen, but I don't believe attacking another country's embassy will garner very much sympathy from the citizens of the attacked embassy. Especially when one remembers that Serbs attacked the Albanians in Kosovo back in 1999, I don't believe the average American will be very sympathetic to the Serbs. I could be wrong, but then, I can only speak for myself. I guess the best thing one can do is pray that this difficult and intense situation does not erupt into violence or war.

More Genealogy Blogs Added!

Today, I have added two more genealogy blogs to the list. The blogs added are:

• Virginia Pioneers
• Primary Selections from Special Collections (Davenport, Iowa Public Library)

You can find these and other genealogy blogs on the lower left side of the page. Any suggestions for other genealogy or history blogs are welcome.

4th Edition of the Carnival of Central and Eastern European Genealogy

The fourth edition of the Carnival of Central and Eastern European Genealogy is now here! The topic for this carnival was a carousel, so articles on any topic that was related to Central and Eastern Europe was accepted. I had several articles submitted, and I believe this is largest edition of the carnival as of date. So read on:

First off, we have three articles from Lisa of 100 Years in America. The first article is An Eastern European Celebration in Pittsburgh. In this article, Lisa writes about the FEEFHS conference that will be held in Pittsburgh in early August of this year.

The next article from Lisa is Back and Forth Across the Kingdom of Hungary. In this article, Lisa writes about the Radix Log - Hungarian Genealogy Blog, and the useful links for Hungarian genealogy that a genealogist can find on that site.

The last article from Lisa is Crossing Borders and Language Barriers. In this article, Lisa writes about the difficulty she has in researching on her ancestors in Hungarian and Croatian language records.

Next, we have an article from Miriam of AnceStories: The Stories of My Ancestors. In 11. The Railroad Front, Miriam writes about the conditions her great-grandfather and fellow soldiers experienced in the 1918-1919 military expedition in Russia.

Next, we have two articles from Stephen Danko of Steve's Genealogy Blog. In The Website of the Plock Diocese, Steve writes about the information one could find about church records and priests in the Plock Diocese in Poland.

The last article we have from Steve is Abstracts of Presentations. This article was posted was posted on the United Polish Genealogical Societies blog, and the article contains abstracts of presentations that will be presented at the 2008 Conference in Salt Lake City, Utah in April.

Next, we have an article from Donna of What's Past is Prologue. In Polish Names and Feast Days, Donna writes about the Polish tradition of naming children after the Saint of the closest feast day.

Last, but not least, we have News From Eastern Europe ... from Jessica of Jessica's Genejournal. In this article, Jessica briefly writes about the recent events that occured in Kosovo and includes a link to a news article about these recent events.

And so that ends this edition of the Carnival of Central and Eastern European Genealogy. The topic for the next carnival will be on the traditional dishes of our ancestors from Central and Eastern Europe. The deadline for the next edition of the carnival will be March 21. The carnival will be posted on the 22nd. You can submit your article here.

I Wish This Wasn't True ...

I happened to be reading Chris Durham's blog when I came across his commentary on Alison Weir's new book. Apparently, one of Alison Weir's sources came from a World Connect family tree. After reading the Times' article and viewing the World Connect tree, I'd have to agree that using an online family tree as a source is not acceptable. To me, the listing of registers as a source was too generic; I did not know where I could find the source. The point of a citation is to give information on where one can find that source.

So, why is this important? When an amateur genealogist/family historian lists a source without including the information on the source's location or posts false information without correcting it, all genealogists/family historians look like fools. We appear to lack the professionalism of other people who do historical research. When a professional biographer or historian does this, false information is just perpetuated. It is bad enough that false information is spread around over the Internet. This misinformation does not need to be repeated in books.

Non-fiction Meme ...

Over the past few days, many genealogy bloggers have posted their responses to this meme. I wasn't directly tagged by any blogger but by reading Terry's post, I have become tagged. So, here is my response:

What issues/topic interests you most--non-fiction, i.e, cooking, knitting, stitching, there are infinite topics that has nothing to do with novels?

Well, I mostly read history books, but I also read a few genealogy books. Most of the genealogy books I read are how-to-do books. I also enjoy reading books about current events, different cultures and about different religions from my own. Most of the reading that I do is on non-fiction topics. I don't read as many works of fiction as I use to when I was younger.

Would you like to review books concerning those?

I already write mini-reviews of history books that I have read on this blog. I haven't posted a review lately, but eventually I'll get around to doing so.

Would you like to be paid or do it as interest or hobby? Tell reasons for what ever you choose.

I'm not paid now to do the reviews that I do. I have never thought about being paid, and I really do not feel like being paid for them. I don't believe my book reviews are very good to make money, anyhow.

Would you recommend those to your friends and how?

Only if I knew that they were interested in the subjects of books that I read.

If you have already done something like this, link it to your post.

Here are a few posts where I have reviewed a few history books:

• An Interesting History Book
• Another Interesting History Book
• Another Maritime History Book

I have only included the first three reviews. I don't believe these reviews garnered very much attention as they were posted very early on on my blog.

And now, I am supposed to tag ten other people. So, here are the ten I am tagging:

• Harold of Midwestern Microhistory
• Jennifer of But Now I'm Found
• CanadaGenealogy
• Olive Tree Genealogy Blog
• Terry Snyder of Desktop Genealogist
• The Ancestry Insider
• Chris of The Genealogue
• Two Sides of the Ocean
• Irish Family History
• The Polish Genealogy Project

Enjoy!

Carnival of Genealogy Posted!

The latest edition of the Carnival of Genealogy has been posted! You can read it here. The topic for the next carnival is on technology. What hardware, software and website do you use primarily in your research?

I Realized I Forgot One ...

I just realized today that I had forgotten to include another history blog. Originally, I had Mustaches of the Nineteenth Century listed in my history blogs list, but when I changed my template, the links to my history blogs got deleted. So, I've added this blog back to my history blogs list. I am terribly sorry for forgetting to add this blog. You can find this and other history blogs on the lower right hand page of the blog.

News From Eastern Europe ...

I just happened to notice yesterday that Kosovo declared its independence on the 17th. It will be very interesting to see what goes on in the Balkan Penninsula. You can read more about the declaration here.

On a side note, should I include this in the Carnival of Central and Eastern European Genealogy? Please let me know what you think. Thanks!

Added a Link ...

I just added a link to the submission page for my carnival. The link is below the Carnival of Genealogy and H.O.G.S. blogger images. It is a small rectagular image. I hope this makes submissions easier for everyone. Please let me know if this does not help. Thanks!

Just A Reminder ...

I just want to remind everyone that the submissions for the Carnival of Central and Eastern European Genealogy are due tomorrow, in case anyone hasn't submitted a post and want to do so. I will continue to accept posts up to 11:00 p.m. The topic for this carnival is a carousel. Posts written that deal with Central and Eastern Europe are welcome. The posts do not have to be recent posts.

Update, a few minutes later: I keep forgetting to mention the location of the submission link. It is toward the very bottom of the page. It is above the links to my yahoo groups. I'm terribly sorry about that.

Genealogy and History Thoughts - Column Twelve

I do not know about other genealogy bloggers, but lately, I've become a bit hesitant to post on any memories of living relatives.

I guess the best example at the moment is my Great Depression post. I could have included some of my grandparents' memories, but I just felt that that would be violating their privacy. I'm not sure if they would want to find their memories posted on the internet, so I just decided to play it safe and write in general terms. I've also written in mostly generic terms about my ancestors since the whole Internet Biography Database fiasco. I'm still uncomfortable with the thought that a genealogy company could take my words and call them their own. So, in order to prevent that, I've come to the decision to include as few indentifying details as possible. (Plus, one could possibly run into copyright violations if one is quoting or using information from another source.)

Still, I wonder how much should a genealogy blogger post on his or her family or ancestors. How much is too much? I really don't have the answer to this question. Has anyone come across this issue before? How did you resolve this problem? How much is too much?

As always, you can leave a comment with your thoughts and feelings.