Follow Friday on Saturday- The "I'm Always Catching Up" Edition

So Google Reader has been telling me for some time that I had 1000+ posts to read and I finally found time to catch up.  While there were many more posts I would have liked to share with you all, these were the ones that I just had to include.  I'm also posting this on Saturday, because I just couldn't pass up a post on Black Friday, so my followings were postponed until today.  Now to make sure that I keep up on my Reader on a daily  basis....

I'm actually starting out with a post that was not from another blog, but I felt it was significant to genealogists anyway.  As I was reading CNN this week an article on "Brown Babies" in Germany caught my eye.  Perhaps a part of history that we are unfamiliar with, but as genealogists could come across if our research for ourselves or others includes African American ancestors.  Ignoring the political incorrectness of the "Brown Babies" label, the article illustrates that a large number of children (in the thousands) that were given up.  These children were fathered between white women and African American Soldiers following WWII.  The women being encouraged to give up their children and the military moving the Soldier when a relationship was discovered.  Shameful.  Please check out the post, "'Brown Babies' Long Search For Family Identity".

I actually came across this as I was reading the news.  Save A Grave posted the same video.  Very sad that so many people's remains were washed away in Tropical Storm Irene, that only about 1/2 of them have been recovered, and then to top it all off some of the tombstones that had been recovered were stolen/vandalized.  Seriously?

Lorine McGinnis Schulze over at Olive Tree Genealogy has a challenge for us all!  Read about her request that you  give 15 minutes to photograph tombstone at local cemeteries in the "November's Genealogy Challenge" and then get out and photograph those stone and get back with Lorine!  I'll be heading out this weekend!

Greta's Genealogy Bog tells how she is having fun creating a webpage for her family's genealogy in her post, "Fun Stuff You Can Do With Weebly."  I love Weebly.  Thomas MacEntee first introduced me to Weebly in one of his many awesome webinars and I use it almost daily for my PTA's website.  It's so easy, you just drag and drop.  Did I mention FREE too?  Who doesn't love free stuff.  There is a "pro" version with more bells and whistles that you pay for, but I haven't needed it yet.  Greta has reminded me with this great post that I need to do the same and get to creating a page for my family's genealogy.  Check out Greta's experience with Weebly.  Everyone I know that uses it absolutely loves it!

At Faces of My Family, Lisa Swanson Ellam reminds us that sometimes it takes awhile to get the answers we need.  It took 11 months in her case, and a slight surname spelling variation!  Don't you love successes!?!

Jennifer Shoer at the Scrappy Genealogist is, well...scrapping!  Join Jennifer for Scrapbook Sundays.  They've been going on for about a month, but it's never to late to start!  Something I've often wanted to do, but never seemed to find the time.  I'm starting to grab pictures and information and I hope to be joining Jennifer and her fellow participants!  What better way to remember our ancestors and to pass something beautiful on about them!

A great post by Deb Ruth at Adventures in Genealogy where she details some great finds and connections she made through Find-A-Grave.  I'm always a big fan of Find-A-Grave and have had much success there as well.  Don't miss out.  Read her post, "Connecting on Find-A-Grave".

Lots of great stuff out there and I'm going to do everything I can to not get so far behind again!

Treasure Chest Thursday - Share a Treasured Family Album...with EVERYONE in the Family

Quirk Album/Scrapbook recreated digitally for sharing

Lorine McGinnis Schulze from "Olive Tree Genealogy" inspired this post with her "Shutterfly: I'm Loving It!" post.  I'm also a fan of Shutterfly.  I love that you can create calendars, mugs, and photo albums through their website.  It's truly a wonderful way to create a family treasure!

In May 2002 as my family and I were preparing to depart Hawaii which had been our home for the past three years and head to our new duty station in Monterey, California, we were blessed to be able to stay with my aunt and uncle in Kailua.  My aunt shared with me some wonderful family photos and a very old family scrapbook from the Quirk side of the family.  We knew little about the album apart from the fact that it was a Quirk family album.  It had belonged to my grandmother, Mary Ann Brown nee Quirk, and had most likely been put together by one of her aunts and given to her. 

None of the pictures were labeled so no one was identified.  Bummer.  We were able to make out one of the people in the album for sure...Mary Ann, and she was in at least half of the pictures.  Score! The album was beginning to fall apart.  Mary Ann was born in 1913 and this obviously was from that era.  I made sure that when I scanned the images (600 dpi) that I scanned and saved them in order.  I fact, after I cropped the photos from each page, I saved them by page number (pg 1a, pg 1b, etc).  I wanted to keep the photos in context.  They were obviously put in the scrapbook in that order for a reason...even if that reason was the chronology of events.  It would undoubtedly give clues.

So after this week of being in family history heaven we moved on to our next duty station.  I became a Drill Sergeant and life got busy.  The pictures sat for almost 8 years and then I finally discovered Shutterfly albums and decided to do something meaningful with them.

I couldn't think of what to get for my mom for her birthday/Mother's Day (the both are always close) so it dawned on me to put together a copy of the album for her.  It's not exact but at least the photos are in the right order.  I even made the album pages black like the original album and added pictures of photo corners (something I wish the original had!).  I had shown the scanned images to my mom on previous trips home, trying to figure out who the people were.  Even though we hadn't solved many of the mysteries knowing our family history I was able to add at least some text with each page even if it asked a question, "Who were they?"  "Could it be this person/event?"

I created a pedigree chart for my mom and placed a picture of a coal breaker in the background (coal mining family here!).  I printed it on a mailing label (a 8-1/2x11 sized giant sticker), and placed it on the inside back cover.  I just gave it to my mom during this trip home.  It took awhile for me to get everything the way I wanted it.  She loves it and seeing how much she loves it meant so much more than I could possibly say.

There have been some benefits already.  My mom's memory was jogged a bit more.  I mislabeled a photo of people standing in front of a "Jeanesville, PA" sign as possibly being at a train station.  My mom reminded me as to how small that city was and that it was unlikely to have had it's own train station.  That Elizabeth Quirk was the postmistress for Jeanesville and this was most likely on the house since the post would have gone through there.  The album is saved on my Shutterfly logon and can easily be changed for the next person that gets a copy!

Shutterfly puts little orange triangles by pictures that may not print well or text that may have spelling mistakes

Follow Friday on Saturday?

A day late, but not a dollar short!  There were so many posts I wanted to mention this week and I know I won't even be able to touch on a fraction of the great blogging I read this week!  Since I had a Friday post already, I figured I'd get this out today...I rarely find something to blog about for Saturdays!

So on to the good stuff...

Lynn Palermo over at the Armchair Genealogist had a wonderful post "When Fear Holds You Back From Doing Your Best Research".  A very timely article for me since I'm finally getting back home and will be entering the Luzerne County Courthouse for the very first time in search of probate for my ancestors.  I'm excited, I'm nervous and I certainly needed the reminder that preparedness is the key!  Thanks, Lynn and if you haven't read the post yet, head on over!

Lorine McGinnis of Olive Tree Genealogy's post "Worldictionary - an Interesting iPhone App" was very interesting.  I love all the new apps out there and I really want to download this one and play with it.  A translation tool like no other.  Still won't translate handwriting, but Lorine's got a great work-around for that!

Renee Zamora from Renee's Genealogy Blog had a post on merging and splitting .pdf's.  Something I think most of us would be interested in.  I usually have to use a little cheat to do this, but if there's software that does it, how much better is that?!?  It's also free, although they would appreciate donations.  Check out Renee's blog "Merge & Split PDF Files" for the details!

And lastly for this Following (and I am leaving out so many, but will catch up!) Ancestry.com for this weekend only is offering the membership applications for the Sons of the American Revolution (1889-1970).  There are more than 145,000 applications/1.2 million records.  Jump on this while you can!

Have fun tending those roots...and writing all the awesome blogs!