Family Tree Magazine Is Doing It Again!

Family Tree Magazine is taking your nominations for your favorite genealogy blogs now through November 30th. For details, read today's post at the Genealogy Insider.

To nominate your favorite blogs, go to Nominate a Genealogy Blog for the Family Tree 40, or click on the Nominate a Blog emblem at the top right of my blog.

© 2010, copyright Michelle Goodrum

Sorting Saturday - You've Got Mail!

© 2010, copyright Michelle Goodrum Most of us have heard the saying, "You've Got Mail!" As genealogists and family historians that saying takes on a whole new meaning. In our endeavors to document our work, we collect not only photos, letters, birth certificates, and all sorts of other paper documents but also the electronic kind. That includes email.

Mine is out of control. Mainly it's because I haven't been able to decide what to do with it. You see, several years ago, I had this system. All of my mail came into Outlook Express. I would save the email, along with any attachments, as an Outlook Express file in whatever family folder on my computer was appropriate. That worked pretty well although I did worry that someday I might not be able to open the Outlook Express file due to changes in technology. So I would also save it as a .txt file. There was a problem with that however, in that if there had been an attachment to the email neither the attachment nor the name of the attached file was saved in the .txt format. I figured between the 2 systems I was probably OK. And I was. Until my hard drive crashed...

Most of my stuff was backed up so it was just a big hassle. However, we decided going forward to leave our email "in the cloud" with our Internet Service Provider. It's easier that way since we access our email from different computers. But what to do with the genealogy email? I really prefer to save those with the rest of my genealogy files.

In the last several years since that hard drive crash, I've just been accumulating those genealogy related emails in a family folder "in the cloud" that is my ISP. Ugh! I need to do something, anything!

Recently, someone (I'm sorry I can't remember who) suggested saving emails as PDF files. That way, the file can be saved with the rest of my genealogy files and if there were any attachments, the file name for the attachment is preserved within the body of the email. PDF has become so standard that it, hopefully, is unlikely to go away. At least not anytime soon... The best part is that it should be E-A-S-Y to do.

Just to be safe, maybe I'll save them as .txt files too...

I'm curious, how do you handle your genealogy related email files?

Photo by Nieve44/La Luz

Veterans Day - WWI Service in Russia

© 2010, copyright Michelle Goodrum Roy Bindon's US military service during WWI was a bit unusual. He was inducted into the Army 30 April 1918 in Chicago, Illinois and shipped out to Siberia, Russia on 2 September of that same year. Roy was trained as a sniper and served with the Machine Gun 31st Infantry and later the 27th Infantry.

Roy Bindon, sitting, in Khaborovsk,
Siberia 1918. Original privately held
by Carol Fuller, [ADDRESS FOR PRIVATE USE].

The American Expeditionary Forces in Siberia were charged with keeping the Trans-Siberian Railroad open and out of the hands of the Bolshevicks. Roy and his comrads arrived in Vladivostok and went to work. As Roy's daughter told me the story:

One day the troops had gone up past Volodevestock (?) and Verteneudinks (?). She thinks it was beyond Verteneudinks. The troops were out guarding the Trans-Siberian Railroad and Roy, being a machine gun sniper, was sent out in the woods by his commandant.

While he was out, the Bolshevicks camped below the tree that he [Roy] was stationed in, where he had set up his machine gun sniper position. They [the Bolsheviks] spent the night below him and he had to stay up in that tree all night long. He hung on for dear life until they got up early the next morning and moved out.

When Roy thought the Bolsheviks were sufficiently gone, he reported back their position to his commandant. The commandant, had a canvas tent or some other temporary structure that was somehow heated. As Roy reported in to the commandant, the warm air hit his cold eardrums, and his eardrums burst. He slowly started going deaf from that point on.

It really is a rather extraordinary story. I was able to confirm it by obtaining Roy's military records (see sources below). According to these records, Roy was treated in December of 1918 at an Army hospital in Khabarovsk, Siberia.


Roy came back from Russia and spent many years in Hines hospital because he was slowly going deaf and the ringing in his ears just about drove him crazy. After reading Roy's military records, I can only imagine the frustration he and the family went through trying to get him the medical help that he needed.

Sources:

Roy's Military Records obtained from the Department of Veteran's Affairs in Chicago, Illinois. More specifically, his Honorable Discharge Certificate, various Requests for Army Information and Applications for Disability Compensation.

Carol Fuller Interview, 24 February 1994.


© 2010, copyright Michelle Goodrum

Wordless Wednesday - Fall In Boulder, Colorado

The Evert Pierson Kids' Fishing Pond along Boulder Creek.

© 2010, copyright Michelle Goodrum

Sorting Saturday - Resource Files

Somewhere back in my early days of genealogy research someone, or more likely several some ones, advised me to set up resource files for places and special interest topics. This would have been before the days when there was much available on the internet to "bookmark" or download, which is what I do now as opposed to saving paper. Still, I have all these files full of old paper resources.

Last night I was filing a couple of things (specifically my French and German Word Lists from the Family History Library) when it became apparent the Resources Section of the file drawer desperately needed to be cleaned out. OK, it's True Confession Time: the drawer was so full I couldn't stuff those two documents into the France and Germany folders!

I really didn't want to spend my evening cleaning out a file drawer; I was just trying to file 2 little words lists for crying out loud! I remembered an organizing tip I learned a while back. It goes something like this: when the file drawer gets too full, pick the fattest file and clean it out right then.

The fattest file was about 4 inches thick: the Forms file, blank ones. Most of these forms, or ones similar, can be found online and downloaded. So, I kept a few favorite forms that I use regularly, kept one copy of the others that I might use, and recycled the rest. When I am so inclined, I will scan the master of those forms I really think I will use and recycle the paper. I love forms but how many iterations of a Research Log does a genealogist need? I mean I designed my own a long time ago!

The French and German word lists are now filed but there are still some other pretty fat files in that drawer. I suspect many of those paper resources can now be found online so even more real estate could be freed up in this particular file drawer. What’s hiding in your paper files?

© 2010, copyright Michelle Goodrum

Wordless Wednesday

Out for an evening workout on the Willamette River.

Corvallis, Oregon

October 2010

© 2010, copyright Michelle Goodrum

Genea-Angel Award

Susan Peterson of  Long Lost Relatives wrote the following on her blog several weeks ago:

I've noticed that many blogs carry a variety of awards and recognitions, so I thought it might be fun to provide a Genea-Angel award. It's a simple way of paying it forward - to recognize those people who have aided in your research, provided insight or otherwise given you inspiration and guidance in your family history journey. The recipient of the Genea-Angel award may display the image on their blog or web site if they choose.

Barbara Poole, of Life From The Roots and Flowers From My Area was the first recipient of the Genea-Angel award, if I'm not mistaken. Early in October, I was one of the recipients of her award. It's so nice to be thought of as an angel by someone :)

There are 3 people I would like to recognize as my Genea-Angels:

Amy Coffin at We Tree gave me that little bit of encouragement I needed to start a blog when I met her at Thomas MacEntee's "Become A Genealogy Blog User" presentation at the Mesa Family History Expo in January. I had been thinking about it for quite some time and after my conversation with Amy I went home and took the plunge. Blogging has been a life changing experience for me. Thank you Amy!

Carol at Reflections From the Fence,  and Reflections Flora and Fauna is another of my Genea-Angels. She has been a very encouraging blogger but more importantly she loves photography as I do. Not only does she write about genealogy but she posts her beautiful photographs of whatever tickles her fancy. I have found myself doing the same. The really cool thing is that not only am I taking more photographs in general but I am looking for those photo ops whenever I am out and about. Better yet, I am getting to know my camera better because I have been messing with the settings to see how it affects my pictures. All the better for making family memories or whatever happens to tickle my fancy. Thanks Carol for the inspiration!

Miriam over at Ancestories is another of my Genea-Angels. She wrote one of her Follow Friday posts about this blog. It couldn't have come at a better time. After about nine months of blogging, I'd been thinking that it might be time to try some new and different things. So it was rejuvenating to have that post come out. Once things settle down with our crazy fall activities here at home, I'm looking forward to trying some new things here at Turning of Generations.

Tell us who are your Genea-Angels.

© 2010, copyright Michelle Goodrum