More Iowa Death Certificates

Be sure to sign up for email updates from FamilySearch.org! While I don't receive these every month like I would expect, when I do receive them, they almost always pay off. The email I received this morning definitely did. Included in this month's update was the fact that they added new indexed records to their collection of Iowa death records. I've searched this collection previously but since they said there were updated indexed records, I thought it couldn't hurt to do another search. I entered just the surname of "Panther". This resulted in a large number of records, as I expected. I then stepped through each one, verifying I had the death certificate for each one listed.

Laurel Hill Cemetery

My wife and I visited Laurel Hill Cemetery in Omaha, Nebraska last weekend, hoping to find the graves of some of her ancestors. It was a spur of the moment stop. I didn't have any of my research of her family with me. I had to rely on my memory of names of her family to figure out who might be there. I could access the tree on RootsWeb but I didn't have much of her tree uploaded prior to RootsWeb going offline over a year ago. No uploads have been allowed since then.

So we wondered the cemetery, looking for familiar names. We found only one surname from her tree and it wasn't clear who was buried there.

Glup (pronounced Gloop) is the maiden name of my wife's paternal grandmother. Once we got home, I looked on Find-A-Grave and it says the baby's name was Edward. I do not have an Edward Glup documented in her tree yet but, based on the families that lived in the area, I tend to believe Edward was my wife's grandmother's nephew. Her parents would have been Carl Glup (1856-1939) and Augusta Zych/Zeeck Glup (1857/60-1933). This couple is buried in Laurel Hill but we could not find them.

Are You Related to Anyone Famous?

I just learned about a very cool tool provided by Family Search. It's called Relative Finder. It will tell you about any famous people, living or from history, and tell you your relationship to them, such as fifth cousin, once removed etc. This uses the Family Search Family Tree so you are relying on the research of others. Still, I believe this can be used like any other online family tree, as a clue. Once you find the information on Family Search Family Tree, you can then research the original records and prove this. You can only run this tool on the person you are logged in as and that has a Family Search Family Tree entry.

First, if you don't have one already, create a free Family Search account at https://www.familysearch.org. Go to Family Tree and add the individuals necessary to connect your family into the tree. So much research has already been done, you likely will only need to add your ancestors that are still alive, since you won't be able to find them in the tree. Living individuals can only be seen by the person who added them. Once this is done, go to https://www.relativefinder.org and sign in using your Family Search account.