The Dog Days of Summer

Here we are in the middle of summer.  Lots of people on vacations and working in their gardens.  Any Genies out there working on genealogy?

I am mostly working on photos.  Before my trip I went through what seemed like hundreds before picking a bunch to share with relatives I would see along the way.  One cousin even scanned them all and presented me with a USB drive full.  Now I'm back thinking this would be a great time to really get all my photos scanned and organized.  We have Photoshop Elements so that will be the first stop before moving some to my family tree software and websites.  Wish me luck!

Sylvia sends you a link to a movie at the Pickford through Thursday.  "Three Identical Strangers" is the story of triplets separated and birth and adopted by different families.  The Pickford review calls it a "feel-good story" with an "unimaginable secret with radical repercussions for us all". 

https://www.thedailybeast.com/three-identical-strangers-the-disturbing-true-story-of-triplets-separated-at-birth

Family Search has been promoting a new feature about pioneers and wagon trains.  I wasn't paying much attention because I thought my ancestors only migrated as far as Arkansas.  Today I got an email trumpeting "You have a pioneer relative".  I couldn't pass that up, could I?  Most were pretty distant from me but those of you with real pioneers might find this very interesting.

Sign on to your familysearch.org account (free if you don't have one yet).  On the first screen in the upper left corner there is a button for "Discover Your Pioneers".  It presents each one individually with a picture, a link to the wagon train information, and some basic information.  On the lower right a button says "View Relationship".  This displays a little tree showing your family line up to your common ancestor and the line down to the Pioneer.  On this tree I found several ancestors I didn't have in my personal tree.  I'll be researching them and making sure I find proof for myself.   

One of my favorite podcasts broadcast twice a month is the Genealogy Guys.  Drew Smith (author of Organizing Your Genealogy book) and George Morgan have been broadcasting their podcast from Florida for 13 years and researching their families for decades.  They recently added a companion blog at blog.genealogyguys.com.  This points out the differences between blogs and podcasts.  Drew and George love to podcast news, answers to emails and "how to" items but sometimes news needs to go out right away.  And sometimes an explanation needs a screenshot. And sometimes there just isn't time in a podcast to fit everything in.  They just had to have a podcast and a blog and both will be superb.

Here we are in the Dog Days of Summer and genealogy is still all around us if we have the time.