Confederate Cemetery Vandalized

The Oakwood cemetery in Raleigh, North Carolina, was vandalized. Headstones in this Confederate cemetery were toppled and defaced with spray painted "KKK", "white supremist", "slavery" and other graffiti.

Cemeteries are a place of rest for our ancestors. A place of peace and a place of remembrance. It's a place of history. Likely, most of those people buried in this cemetery are someone's ancestors. If someone disagrees with what the people in a cemetery lived for and died for, they should just stay away, not vandalize it. If everyone vandalized the headstones of those they disagreed with, every single headstone in the entire world would be damaged. No matter what their political orientation and no matter how they lived, how would you like it if your ancestors' headstones were damaged?

Never Use Expedia

No, this isn't a genealogy post and I apologize for that, but Expedia so messed up my vacation and it's become so obvious that they will do absolutely nothing to fix it that my only option to make sure that Expedia pays a price for their mess up is to post it for all to see.

I'm not going to go into details but just suffice it to say that should you ever book anything through Expedia and there is ANY hiccup in your travel plans, no matter how small, Expedia will be worse than worthless. At best, they will do absolutely nothing. At worst, they could end up charging you more than double and you'll be stuck talking to overseas operators on the phone that don't care whether or not you're satisfied. They'll promise you the moon but you'll get nothing.

Don't use Expedia for any travel arrangements. Just don't.

Now....back to genealogy.

--Matt

Top Posts of 2015

2015 is nearly over. In many ways, it was a very good year, with my new home and new job. It's also brought some sad news, from illnesses of cousins to the loss of the old family home. In regards the my genealogy blog, we hit 100 blog posts and have surpassed 22,000 hits. Now it's time for a rundown of the most popular posts of 2015.

Coming in at #5 is my step by step instructions on how to create an animated photo-mosaic of an family portrait. It's a neat little project that can be added to a family history presentation that, I believe, helps demonstrate to the non-genealogist all of the documents and photos a genealogist accumulates.

The Mathematics of Genealogy

When most people begin looking into their genealogy, I tend to believe their thinking is much like mine was when I first started out, which is something along the lines of this, "I have two parents and two grandparents. I see this branch of my family tree goes back 5 generations so I have 10 ancestors!"

In reality, the growth in the number of ancestors is exponential. Every generation you go back, you double the number of ancestors you have. This make sense on the surface, but again, I don't believe most people fully grasp what this means. If I was able to trace back every single branch of my tree as far back as I have my Brandstetter line, the numbers are virtually astronomical.

Ancestral Origins Based on DNA Test

There is some confusion out there in regards to a person's genealogical makeup vs their DNA makeup. You frequently hear people say they're half German and half Irish, or a quarter Polish, a quarter German and half Italian or some such makeup in regards to their genetic and/or ancestral origins. For most people who make these statements, they don't make a distinction between the two or even think there is a difference. In actuality, there is an enormous difference between your ancestral origins and your genetic makeup.

Veteran's Day 2015

Today is Veteran's Day. In honor of this day, I'm posting a few things about my dad's and my grandfather's military service.

While I don't know much about my grandfather, Leo Henry Miller's military service, I know he received a service medal for The Great War For Civilization.

Leo Henry Miller - Medal for The Great War For Civilization

 I know this photo is not a military photo but it is the only portrait I have of him close to his time in the service. This photo and this medal hung on the wall in our living room while I was growing up.

In Honor of Facial Hair

It is now "No Shave November", where men choose to do away with their razor and grow a manly beard. In honor of this month dedicated to not shaving. this post is dedicated to the facial hair of my ancestors. The style of mustaches and beards, I'm confident, is a sign of the time and location your ancestors lived. I wish I could say I was an expert at the styles of facial hair of various times and locations, but all I can do is post the photos of my grandfathers of varying degrees of "great" as samples.

Saving and Archiving Photos

Let's say you're scanning in photos or documentation and need to decide how you're going to save them. What file format do you use? For the non-technically minded, file format means what file type you are using. On Windows computers, the file extension tells Windows how to open the file. For example, Windows knows to use Microsoft Word to open a .doc file and a web browser to open an .html file. Image files can be in the format of .jpg (jpeg), .bmp (bitmap), .tif, .png and many others. The difference is mostly in how the file is compressed, meaning how small the file is made for the same size photo.

Many people say to only save scans and photos in .tif format. The reason for this is that a .tif file is not compressed at all. The file tells the photo viewer/editor that this bit is this color, the next dot is another color and so on for every single dot in the photo. The larger the dimensions of the photo, the larger the file size, no matter what. This way, when a file is edited and resaved, all of the changed bits are changed in the file and the file size remains the same.

DNA Testing Frustrations

One of my third cousins had their Ancestry DNA test results imported into Family Tree DNA. We had hoped that finding common matches between us could help us track down where our Kelly and/or Murphy families were from in Ireland. My father's mother's mother's parents are also her great-great-grandparents.

I see she popped up on my match list so I looked and saw that Family Tree DNA estimates we are 3rd-5th cousins. We're 3rd cousins so that estimate is correct. I see that we share a portion of our DNA on chromosome 9. This is all well and good. Now to see who our common matches are to see whose genealogy we can study to gain insight on where our family came from.

Beginning Genealogy

I'm posting this in the hopes I can help someone who is just starting to figure out how to research their family history. While I know a person new to genealogy may not know that there are blogs to help, I believe that same person is likely to do a Google search to find out how to begin. Of course, everyone will have their own recommendations of how to start tracing your genealogy. This is the way I'd recommend.

Step 0: Maybe you won't actually do this step until you've found some information. Regardless, it's important that you do it if you intend to do genealogy as a hobby. Find a piece of software to document your family history in your own database locally on your computer. I don't recommend storing your original research online. You can read about my opinion here. Store it locally and backup your information. You can then upload it to other websites to share your information.

Ancestor Appreciation Day

Sunday, September 27, 2015 is Ancestor Appreciation Day.

To go along with a post I made a while back about being proud of your ancestors, here is a poem asking another question.

Would They be Proud of You?

If you could see your Ancestors all standing in a row,
Would you be proud of them or not – or don’t you really know?
Some strange discoveries are made in climbing family trees
And some of them, you know, do not particularly please.

If you could see your ancestors all standing in a row,
There might be some of them perhaps you wouldn’t care to know.
But here’s another question which requires a different view:
If you could meet your Ancestors, would they be proud of you?

--Author Unknown

DNA Test Request

Are you related to me? Is it old news that we share an ancestor, whether that be a parent, grandparent, great-grandparent or further back? If so, this post is for you.

I am looking for cousins and aunts (since all my uncles are deceased) that would be willing to take a DNA test to help us track down our family lines. No matter if you're on my mother's or my father's side of the family, no matter if you are an aunt, first, second or third cousin, getting a DNA test done will really help!

I'm sure some of you are asking "How could a DNA test possibly help us find our family? You already had a test done and that didn't help. Why would it help if I had one done?"

Family Tree Chart for Wall Display

One really nice way to display your genealogy work is with a chart to hang on your wall. You can pay to have a professional chart created but it can be expensive. So create one yourself! The problem is creating a good looking chart. I've wanted to do this for a while but I just couldn't come up with a good looking chart. Here is a way to generate a nice looking family tree chart you will be proud to frame and hang on the wall.

First, if you don't already have it, download the free version of Legacy Family Tree software from http://www.legacyfamilytree.com. I believe this software is good enough quality to purchase the full version but even the free version will create this chart for you.

Once the software is installed, you can import from PAF or a .ged file you can export from your current genealogy software. Once you have your tree in Legacy, add only the one image for each individual you want to appear on your chart.

What's With the Blog Name?

Some people may wonder why the name of my blog is "just" "Matt's Genealogy Blog". Why not something creative like "The Panther Family in the Jungle of the World" "Millions of Millers" or "I Dig Up Ancestors"?

First, I don't want to name it one of the family names because I'm researching ALL of the family names, including some that aren't my direct ancestors.

Second, while a creative name would be neat, much like getting a tattoo, it has to be something that has real meaning to you that you're not going to change your mind on in a year or two. While you can change your blog name, the name is how someone finds you. If you change it, its very possible you may lose some readers in the process.and notes and links you sent out earlier would eventually stop working. I wanted something more permanent.

Old Diaries

I'm confident that all genealogists would love to get their hands on old diaries and journals of their ancestors'. My mother loaned me the diaries of my grandmother, Elizabeth Menke Panther from 1975, 1976 and 1980. I just looked through the one from 1975 and discovered several entries that help fill in a few blanks in my genealogy database.

Her brother, Joseph Menke died at 1:30pm on February 23, 1975