Compliments of Hazel

There are a couple more photographs remaining from the stash I brought home from my foray into the foothills of northern California last fall. Most of those photos I found on that trip have now been reunited with descendants of the picture's subject, just as planned. Some, though, have yet to find their way home.

Depending on how well I guessed the rarity of names—or name combinations, in some cases—for a given location, the photograph which I found abandoned in an antique store up in Gold Country could be successfully reunited with family. These last two photos, though, were not my best guesses.

The photo I'm sharing today was a darling one, so I guess I can argue, "Who could walk away from this one?" Besides, in my defense, the photo did provide a first name. And a location—a place I was sure couldn't have boasted a large population back one hundred years ago.

As it turns out, though, Hazel was a more popular name than the status I pegged it as. Of course, I still need to estimate the date of the photograph, thus allowing me to ballpark the year of Hazel's birth.

For sake of argument, though, let's assume Hazel was born in the decade beginning with the year 1880. During that decade, at least in the United States, thirty six hundred baby girls were bestowed with the first name Hazel, earning it the rank of eighty-fourth out of the top two hundred baby names from 1880 through 1889.

Perhaps, with a rank like that, I might have a chance of figuring out just which Hazel was which in the city of Aberdeen, Washington. After all, at that point, Aberdeen would only have been a tiny town, since it wasn't established until 1884.

By the time Aberdeen was officially incorporated as a city in 1890, the popularity of the name Hazel had shot up to twenty third place. With an estimated twenty thousand baby girls bestowed with that name between 1890 and 1899, my chances of finding just the right cherub diminished greatly. Still, I'd be looking for Hazel in a city of only 1,638 people. This couldn't be too hard, could it?

Right. A quick search on Ancestry.com for people born in the county containing Aberdeen, anywhere between the years 1880 and 1900, yielded ten family trees with potential candidates for our Hazel. None of them, incidentally, happened to include a photograph of their Hazel.

On the off chance that anyone researching their ancestors might include a Hazel born in—or living near—Aberdeen, Washington, I'll share her darling (albeit tattered) photograph here. Who knows? Crowdsourcing may lead us to a connection for this poor orphaned photo yet.

Above: Photograph from the Finch photography studio of Aberdeen, Washington, labeled on the reverse simply, "Compliments of Hazel." Photograph currently in the possession of the author pending return to family members.

So Much to Do

Genealogy conferences can be inspiring. Sessions about how to solve brick-wall problems, or how to successfully employ specific research techniques can leave an audience encouraged to try their hand at these techniques, once back at home.

I generally come away from such conferences with a mental to-do list of new projects—or at least resurrected projects from dream lists of prior years' conferences. This year was no exception.

That would not normally be a problem. It is energizing to take on a new challenge. But this time, I'm not sure. The project that keeps staring me in the face will be a big one. Yes, I've blogged about it before, and most of the story is already laid out for me. Not, however, the research. And there's the rub.

The story that keeps calling out to me is the one about my grandmother's safe-busting fourth cousin, John Syme Hogue, the one who almost lost his neck in Canada after a rowdy crime spree through midwestern America. That's a story that would take a book to tell in its entirety.

I first picked up on the story at the close of 2015, when I ran across a document while researching my grandmother's family on Ancestry.com. Though I had my doubts when I first started work on this branch of my grandmother's line, it did turn out that a descendant of the United States Supreme Court's first Chief Justice was wanted for murder in Canada.

After I finished the blog series on John Syme Hogue, the fugitive whose fate was to be hanged on the gallows in Essex County, Ontario, almost exactly one hundred years ago, I set it aside. True, the story needed more research work, but I never got to that point. The task seemed too immense, taking in on-site research at both the governmental archives in Ottawa, Canada, and in Charleston, West Virginia—besides other tasks.

The trouble with setting aside mammoth tasks for a more convenient time is that there never is a more convenient time. Here I am, almost three years later, still wishing I had sat down and just done the work—written the book.

It was while I was reading another book that I found encouragement to get back to work. In a chapter on how to "Follow the Process" in The Obstacle is the Way, author Ryan Holiday shared a story of an illiterate man who, despite his handicap, was yearning for greatness. The young man attended a speech by well-known orator Henry Clay and was captivated.

Afterwards, the young man

tried to make his way toward Clay, but he couldn't form the words to speak to his idol. One of his friends shouted out for him: "He wants to be like you, even though he can't read."
   Clay grabbed one of his posters, which had the word CLAY written in big letters. He looked at [the young man] and said, "You see that, boy?" pointing to a letter. "That's an A. Now, you've only got twenty-five more letters to go."

That young man, though unable to read or write, applied himself to the process simplified by Henry Clay's explanation, and within a year started college. Of course, at the other end of that story, we discover that that particular young man turned out to be James Pollard Espy, known in the mid-1800s as "the Storm King" for his convection theory of storms. The process, as Ryan Holiday puts it, is to "simply do what you need to do right now. And do it well. And then move on to the next thing."

So...about that book? If "even the hardest things become manageable" through utilizing "the process," then Holiday assures us, "Even mammoth tasks become just a series of component parts."

If books are made up of chapters and chapters of paragraphs and paragraphs of thoughts in word form, then perhaps those component parts aren't that big and scary, after all.

Back to "Real" Life

The trouble with genealogy conferences is...they end.

And then? We are left dragging ourselves through the duties of real life. Details which, once before conferences, weren't all that bad. Just ordinary.

It's the doldrums back home, where I arrived after a scintillating weekend at the Southern California Genealogical Society's Jamboree. With the last conference session ending at 6:00 Saturday evening, our family opted to make the six hour trip back home a leisurely drive on Sunday.

Then came Monday.

Like any Monday, my day started out preparing for meetings. The first Monday of each month is our genealogical society's board meeting day. So such mundane activities as drawing up the agenda become part of the not-so-scintillating life-afterwards duties in my post-conference reality.

But that's okay. Having had the opportunity to attend a large genealogy conference brings with it the mandate to bring back some of that excitement and educational value to our local setting. Our ninety-seven member society may not have the budget to bring in the likes of Maureen Taylor or Lisa Louise Cooke to speak at our monthly meeting, but we can report back to our members on what we learned.

Better yet, we can bring some of those members with us next year. While it is a long drive for members in our local society to attend the Southern California Genealogical Society's Jamboree, where I've been enjoying myself for this past week, it is a reachable distance.

In fact, we had no sooner begun our board meeting yesterday, than one of our members mentioned that she had been considering attending this year. After hearing the reports from other members, she's definitely making plans for next year. Sometimes, it is much easier for a person to decide to attend if friends are going to be there, too. Conferences can be rather lonely experiences, otherwise.

The Southern California conference committee does everything they can to make first-time attendees feel right at home. They certainly do foster a friendly and welcoming environment. What a difference that can make. Besides making first-timers feel more comfortable, it has a way of convincing people that this is an event they'd like to return to, next year. And what organization doesn't appreciate repeat customers?

Perhaps all those touches are what go into creating an irresistible conference package—and what go into that letdown, once the car is parked back in the driveway at home, the suitcases are unpacked and the laundry is—ugh...well, you know what's ahead. It isn't glamorous.

I guess you could say that's the price we pay for having fun. But hey—I'd have to do laundry anyhow, even if I stayed home last week. If it weren't for such a great conference, I guess I'd have nothing to complain about.

Add Another Kit to the Mix

When it comes to DNA testing, genealogists found themselves advising adoptees to "fish in all three ponds" to find answers. I doubt they suspected that pond would expand to include five major testing companies.

Since I knew I was going to be in the "neighborhood" last week at the Southern California Genealogical Society Jamboree, and since I knew test kits might be going for enticing sale prices, I figured I may as well spring for the fifth and final (so far) DNA company's kit. Soon as my kit—and my husband's, too—makes its way through the multiple steps in the process, we'll have a UK-centric view of our ethnicity estimates. We won't, however, be adding another column to the data tracker for matches from Living DNA; they don't provide information on matches. Yet.

In the meantime, here's how research progress went for me in the past two weeks—those two weeks full of good things (like genealogy conferences) and not-so-good stuff (like having a Windows update fry my computer and cause me to shell out repair dollars I'd rather have spent on genealogy conferences).

Could I keep up the research pace despite those challenges? How about adding 207 individuals to my mom's tree? And another thirty seven to my mother-in-law's tree? With that, I'm now at 13,342 in my mom's tree, and 15,333 in my mother-in-law's tree. Not bad for that much less computer access in the past two weeks.

Those DNA test matches keep rolling in, too. After the breaking news last month about law enforcement's epiphany about the usefulness of genealogical databases, it seemed—based on online buzz at least—that many people were going to yank their DNA test results from the various websites. Yet, these past two weeks, things seemed to stabilize, at least from my tiny perspective.

I now have 3,097 matches at Family Tree DNA, 1,018 matches at 23andMe, and 4,688 matches at MyHeritage. For each account, the match count went up: 51 at FTDNA, 115 at MyHeritage, and even nine at the ever-receding 23andMe. Of course, I can no longer measure the increase at AncestryDNA, since they cap the readout at 1,000 matches.

Same thing went for the matches at my husband's accounts. He has 1,970 at FTDNA, 581 at AncestryDNA, 1,028 at 23andMe, and 3,277 at MyHeritage. Only at 23andMe did he lose any matches in the past two weeks—which is unusual for his account, which unlike mine, always seems to increase. Despite that loss of ten matches at 23andMe, he gained twenty seven at FTDNA, eleven at Ancestry, and 77 at MyHeritage.

As far as our foray into the DNA test process at Living DNA, I wanted to see how their ethnicity readout differs from the other companies. Particularly because that company is preparing to roll out regional percentages in places like Ireland, similar to the way they currently handle their ethnicity estimates for people from the U.K., I'm curious to see those future results on my husband's account. Remember, his American-born dad descended from four grandparents who were all born in Ireland. For three of those four, I've already documented their origin in Ireland. It would be nice to see if this more finely-grained test can finger the origin of the fourth grandparent.

What? It's Over?

On what would normally be the last day of the Southern California Genealogical Society's Jamboree, I'll already be on the road, headed home. This year has seen a restructuring of the normal Jamboree fare, with not only a Writers' track added concurrently with the DNA Day, but the shortening of the sequence by one day. The SCGS is responsive to conference attendee feedback, and apparently many people voiced the desire to use Sunday as a travel day to return home before the start of the work week. I know I always did—and missed about half of the Sunday sessions. After all, a six to eight hour drive (usually eight, thanks to weekender traffic headed north again) calls for some kind of drastic measures if we don't want to roll in the driveway back home past midnight.

What was good about Jamboree this year was the great array of speakers, with the sparkling jewel on top being the banquet presentation by Diahan Southard of Your DNA Guide. Connections in and around the exhibit hall also seemed to be more beneficial than usual, this year. My one-on-one discussions with conference speakers turned out to be more tech-related than in past years, but necessary; stuff happens and sometimes, a face-to-face problem solving session goes light years beyond what can happen through an online chat with support services.

Stuff like that can happen at genealogy conferences, where events are big enough to garner top speakers but small enough to reach out and talk with specific ones during the ample breaks. The networking opportunities seem to have improved over the years—or is it just that familiar faces have morphed into friends with the passing of time and the return, year after year, of the regulars?

While the weekend was wonderful, one little detail still remains: I have yet to gather the data for my biweekly recap of research progress. Of course, missing half the week for an event as monumental as Jamboree will have an impact on that count. We'll see how that count turns out, tomorrow, after my return back home to a regular schedule again.

One thing is certain, though: next year is the SCGS Jamboree fiftieth anniversary celebration, so along with CeCe Moore, Judy Russell and D. Joshua Taylor, I'll be sure to be back in 2019.

It's the People

While people usually attend genealogy conferences for the enticing class subjects and engaging speakers, a close third to these prize-winning reasons is to come for the people.  At least, that's how I see it from my vantage point at this year's Southern California Genealogical Society Jamboree.

Where there are people, there are opportunities for great conversations. Conferences are networking times. And I love how the connections naturally happen.

Some connections are just interesting or quirky—like coincidentally ending up sitting next to the same person in several of my class sessions. What an ice breaker when two of us realized that! Perhaps we two are just on the same wavelength, but it was enough of a vibe to strike up a great conversation.

Some connections turn out to be sweet or inspiring—like running across a blog reader from Arizona in the doorway as we passed between sessions. (Thank you for your kind words!)

Some are just plain kind and generous—like seeking out author Denise Levenick, The Family Curator, because I know she sells archival quality supplies. I told her about my family photo rescuing project and how it occurred to me that it would be so much more considerate to mail those hundred year old pictures back home, encased in archival quality sleeves. While in the past, Denise maintained a booth at the Jamboree exhibit hall to sell such products, she hadn't planned on doing so this year, but kindly brought some in and dropped them off at Lisa Alzo's booth to hold for me. When I rendezvoused at that meeting place to purchase the items, Lisa told me the packet of supplies was on Denise, who I now will acknowledge as a partner in my rescue efforts. Thank you, Denise! And I enjoyed the opportunity to talk with Lisa, as well—she is one of my favorite conference speakers.

Some meetings are fleeting moments of catching someone in the hallway. It was nice, as the day drew to a close, to have a moment to catch up with blogger Randy Seaver and his wife Linda, regulars at Jamboree. But I'll have to be quicker about speaking up the next time I notice the Barefoot Genealogist, Crista Cowan, slipping down a side hallway.

Other meetings can be leisurely and lingering, like the opportunity to share a table at one of the conference's evening banquets with Donna Moughty, the genealogist who coordinated the excellent research tour of Dublin that I participated in during our family's visit to Ireland a few years ago.

This year was a special treat in that two members of my local genealogical society's board of directors also came to Jamboree. We enjoyed comparing conference notes—and just plain chatting and hanging out together—over dinner last night. While that's obviously something we could have done back at home, somehow the distance and the different setting made it seem more special.

With only one more day left to go, I'm already sad to see the event come to a close. Knowing how responsive the SCGS Jamboree planning committee is to the feedback they solicit from attendees, I know I can expect next year to be even better, so I'll look forward even more to returning next year.

Collective Learning Resources

Coming back to my hotel room following a powerful presentation masterfully done by Diahan Southard last night, I couldn't help but reflect on the benefit of the conference approach for learning. While I lean toward preferring the institute model of learning—focused and in-depth—there is still much value in what can be gleaned in one hour sessions through the conference setting.

The benefit of gathering together for regional or state genealogical conferences is that we, as organizational members or paying attendees, pool our financial resources which we then entrust to a conference committee tasked with shopping wisely for top notch speakers on a variety of topics. While a regional conference such as the Southern California Genealogical Society's Jamboree may not be as large as a national conference or even a statewide event, the collective force of an organization of this size affords us the ability to draw well-respected experts. While local societies such as my own county's group may pay well for our speakers, there is no way we can command such a panoply of internationally recognized presenters.

Of course, if any of us can avail ourselves of this collective benefit, why not do so? Granted, it involves an investment of time and money to get to an event like this—I and others from the north end of our state had to drive for several hours just to get here a day before the event began—but the payoff is getting to spend time with experts from across the country.

Yesterday was no disappointment. Traditionally billed as DNA Day, the day preceding the official kick-off of Jamboree is a quirky blend of mind-numbing data-crunching details and inspiring accounts of adoptees reunited with birth families and other heartwarming human interest vignettes about the awesome power of genetic genealogy. Of course, the latest in genetic genealogy trends are showcased, not only in the conference exhibit hall, but in the workshop sessions and classes.

Apparently, the latest buzz is of graphing capabilities offered by companies such as RootsFinder in combination with the Tier1 capabilities at GEDmatch.com. I heard the RootsFinder name mentioned in sessions I attended by Leah Larkin and Blaine Bettinger yesterday. Of course, now I want to rush home and play with all these fun new toys, but I'll wait until after the next two days of conference. There is much more learning to come.

Top of the list is one of the conference's special offerings tomorrow. The Jamboree planners responded to attendee feedback a few years ago and decided to start offering longer sessions which could allow members to go more in-depth with targeted half-day workshops. These offerings allow more advanced attendees to spend time rolling up their sleeves and getting hands-on experience in selected areas.

For instance, I will spend the entire afternoon, laptop open at my fingertips, practicing Blaine Bettinger's Visual Phasing approach. Other workshops offered here this season include a session with Leah Larkin on Genome Mate Pro, a complex program enabling more efficient management of autosomal DNA match data; a chromosome mapping session with Dr. Tim Janzen; and a beginner's overview of genetic genealogy and comparison of DNA testing companies by Emily Aulicino.

Meanwhile, the regularly-scheduled hour-long sessions more customarily offered in a conference setting are running concurrently with this four-stage DNA workshop array. Speakers for classes include Maureen Taylor, Lisa Louise Cooke, Geoff Rasmussen, and Daniel Horowitz, among many others. In the morning, I'll catch several of those classes, myself, before settling in for the afternoon session on Visual Phasing.

Where else could you catch this many well-known instructors, all in one place and offering such a wide choice of topics, but at a conference? I may get jealous of others who are able to attend the NGS or FGS national conferences, but when it comes to face time in my own back yard, I'm happy to have the learning opportunities offered through the efforts of a regional genealogical society closer to home.