Genealogy

Epson FastFoto FF-640: The Ultimate Archiver for Photos and a Paperless Office

Printed photos have been around since 1827, and if you have boxes or albums full of them sitting in storage, you might be tempted to either pay someone to digitize them or forget them. Another option is using the Epson FastFoto FF-640; it’s a high-speed photo scanning system perfect for digitizing, and that’s just the beginning of its usefulness.


Who Am I? Ancestry DNA Knows

Last month I shipped a vial of saliva that I’d collected to Ancestry DNA; the hope was that their lab could tell me more about my genetic relatives, geographic origin, and my ethnicity. The results are in, and while there were no huge surprises,  I did get some answers.


AncestryDNA Test – What Will It Tell Me About My Ancestors?

  Genealogy is more than just a hobby for me, it’s something I tend to get a bit obsessive about. I’ve been curating my family’s tree for over ten years, building upon my maternal grandmother and uncle’s research before me. The latest tool in my arsenal will hopefully be the AncestryDNA test, which I recently completed and sent in for evaluation.


Genealogy Made Easy with Ancestry.com

Judie is a huge fan of genealogy research. She and Kevin now have a family tree that includes over 4000 people. (Yes, 4000!) I have used Ancestry.com as well and while I have a collection thus far, just over 100, it has let me learn a good deal about Elana’s and my family. Judie was telling Mike and Carly about it today, and Carly jumped right in and set up her own family tree.


A Cohen-Family 4th of July Mystery Solved, Thanks to Judie and Ancestry.com

Grandpa Alex “Sandor” Cohen Judie has actively been building her family tree and discovering the various connections in her large extended family for years. It even turns out her family lineage and Kevin’s crossed paths a number of generations ago, but from what she tells me, that is fairly common when you have family lines that haave been in the US for hundreds of years, coming down through the same states at around the same time. As she wrote about in this post regarding ancestry.com’s Macintosh software, she has a remarkably large family tree that’s been put together over the…


Ancestry.com’s Family Tree Maker for Mac Released, Thrilling Genealogy Buffs Like Me

For me, genealogy has been as much a passion as it was a hobby; my maternal grandmother and my uncle started researching their Meador and Bridwell lines years ago, and when I became an adult I picked up where they had left off, expanding the search for my father’s family, the Lipsetts and Hublers, as well. Over the years I have spent countless hours online and in libraries researching and amassing a huge collection of data; I have truly enjoyed discovering information, pictures and stories that have helped me learn more about my ancestors’ lives. Genealogy has given names in…


Restoring Family Treasures: My Great-Grandfather’s Pocket Watch Restoration

A couple of months ago, I was given a box containing a treasure like no other. Inside were the remains of two pocket watches; both were in terrible shape, and both were obviously old. Since they came from my uncle’s widow, I knew that they were somehow related to my family, but there was no further information. One of these pocket watches would yield a most amazing discovery, the other is still a mystery. When I opened the box I was given, this large Waltham pocket watch was the first thing I saw. It was in pitiful shape, having no…


Restoring and Beautifying Photos the Photofiddle Way

One of my favorite hobbies is working on my family’s genealogy; because it was also my uncle’s and grandmother’s hobby before me, I have access to a treasure trove of photographs, historical documents, family charts and other paraphernalia that they and others had collected. What’s not in my personal files is kept at the Angelo State University library in their canvas wrapped on stretchers, where it is easily shared with me and any other interested familial historians. I guess because I have always had such a relatively easy time collecting and accessing some of (what I consider to be) the…