Adding Photos to Find-A-Grave

In a recent email the topic of adding photos to Findagrave was mentioned. It got me thinking that one of the things I’ve often meant to do is to create a little “cheat sheet” of the steps involved in processing photos before I upload them to that site. It’s not that it’s that overly complicated, but it’s something that I do only sporadically, and so I always have to review it and re-learn it each time. Thus, posting a little cheat sheet on this blog will give me a quick way to review the steps in the future.

A Brickwall Broken Down!

Quite sometime ago, I found an 1825 newspaper marriage announcement for my 3x’s great-parents Jacob and Anna Garber. In the marriage announcement they were recorded as Jacob Gerber and Anna Cummel. Jacob and Anna lived in Berks County, PA, in the area of Amity township. Anna had apparently died before the 1850 census, and I had been unable to find any further information on her. I was also unable to positively identify all of the children of Jacob and Anna  — but that all changed a couple of days ago!!

Happy New Year 2010!!

It’s hard to believe how fast 2009 flew by, and here we are already the first day of 2010! As I am sitting here waiting for the rest of the household to wake up (it was a pretty late night for all), I was thinking about New Year’s Day superstitions.

I am told that my Grandfather was a very superstitious man. He died when I was very young, so I have to rely on what my relatives have told me. Apparently one of his superstitions was that the first visitor on New Year’s Day should be a dark-haired man.

Altered Vintage Photo?

About 10 years ago, or so, I remember seeing a display of vintage ancestor photographs that some very good friends had on the wall in their home. I remember thinking at the time that they were so lucky to have the old photos and wishing that we had some of our family. As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, several years later when I started to get involved in genealogy research, I found out that my Mom had quite a few that she had been storing, all but forgotten, in the attic. And as she has come across the photos, she has been passing them on to me.

One of the most puzzling was a family photo of John and Mary (nee Newman) Evans and their children. Here is an unretouched version that I scannned:

Re-visiting Brick Walls

Sometimes it is really strange how things work out!! More genealogical information is being added to the internet every day. Sometimes we just need a little nudge to go back and re-look at branches of the family we haven’t looked at for a while in order to find that new information.

Back in July of 2007 I posted a query on a genforum message board. It was in regards to the father of my husband’s 2X’s great-grandmother, Emma Jean Miller. From Emma’s 1886 marriage application, I knew that her parents names were Samuel Miller and Catherine Smith. Unfortunately, I could not seem to get anywhere with Samuel. He does not appear with Catherine and Emma on any of the censuses, and so I don’t know if he died, they divorced, or perhaps they never married.  I also couldn’t find any trace of Catherine after she signed a consent form for Emma to marry in 1886. (BTW, she signed the form as Catherine Smith.)