Journal
33 articles on finding ancestors, reading records, and keeping the story with the evidence.
December 30, 2021 · Christopher Hall
Four days before my 32nd birthday my mother, 52, died suddenly. It was Monday. On the previous Friday she was cleaning up a property after a storm. She walked over a cistern when the cover gave way and she fell. She suffered a bruise on her thigh. She phoned her doctor who pro...
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December 20, 2021 · Tracy Hall
Do you ever get sentimental? Wish you knew more about your ancestors? Where exactly did they all live? How did they live? Why did they move so much? In general, were they happy, content, maybe even miserable? This summer while I was back home in Illinois, I had my aunt and mot...
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December 10, 2021 · Tracy Hall
Did you have ancestors that fought in World War II? Did any of them have stories that were heroic? Maybe they never talked about what happened. Maybe they were not supposed to talk about the things they did in case they endangered those who were part of helping. Here is one st...
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November 30, 2021 · Christopher Hall
Last month I reported about a chance opportunity we had to get closer to my ancestors at a cemetery on private land . It was a spur of the moment decision to make the stop, but we would not have even known the cemetery was nearby if we had not done a bit of preparation before...
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November 20, 2021 · Tracy Hall
World War II is known for many things, one of the more famous was "Tokyo Rose," a woman who spoke for one hour daily to the allied troops. She went by the name "Orphan Ann" but the American soldiers who looked forward to her show called her "Tokyo Rose." I don’t know about you...
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November 10, 2021 · Tracy Hall
Did you have poor ancestors that lived on the eastern seaboard in the mid 1850’s? Especially in the New York City area. Have you researched and found the horrible homelessness of children? For 75 years between 1854 and 1929 up to 200,000 indigent children were taken from the c...
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October 30, 2021 · Christopher Hall
As we were traveling through mid-America, I was navigating through an unfamiliar city. While looking at my map on my phone I noticed a star. Several months or maybe even a year or two before, while doing some family history research, I had placed the star there. We were noting...
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October 20, 2021 · Tracy Hall
Recently I was reading an article about getting women more involved in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) subjects. These subjects have typically been men dominated fields. The article was focused on Ireland and how there were some women who broke the barrier lon...
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October 10, 2021 · Tracy Hall
If there is one thing I try to stress to people, it is to learn the history surrounding where your ancestors came from. Is there a historical reason they left their homeland? Is there a historical reason your ancestors headed to a new area? History is very important and helps...
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September 30, 2021 · Christopher Hall
This is the sixth and final installment of Generation Two of our two-generation study and our thirteenth and final installment overall. This generation is concerned with Mark Hall Shearn born 1800 in Midsomer Norton, Somerset, England and his family. The first generation was c...
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September 20, 2021 · Tracy Hall
How many of us have ancestors that left Ireland during the great famine or maybe even before or after, in search of better opportunities to take care of their families? How many people have issues tracing their ancestor path? Such as I have found my ancestors in Ireland and th...
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September 10, 2021 · Tracy Hall
While researching World War II information I stumbled upon a story of the liberation of a POW camp that had not been known at the time. Did you have any relatives that served in the European Theater of WWII? Maybe that helped with the liberation of POW camps?
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