Alan Jackson, Books and a lil' bit of Genealogy (Research Diary, no. 9)

My Research Diary:
Part to-do list...
Part dear diary...
Part Nosy-Nellie...

Weekly events, plans (and a question or two) from my oh-so exciting genealogy (and sometimes non-genealogy) life...

"The smallest bookstore still contains more ideas of worth than have been presented in the entire history of television."
- Andrew Ross

~~~~~*~~~~~*~~~~~

What happened these past couple of weeks:

On a Personal Note... Mom and I went to see Alan Jackson in concert (for those of you that don't listen to him, he's a country artist). While he's not my favourite musician (though mom loves him, which is the main reason I got the tickets), I still can't believe that he came to Oshawa of all places! Artists of his caliber usually play in venues in Toronto or Hamilton or Casino Rama - not little ol' Oshawa! ;)

Blog housekeeping...

• Thanks, as always, for reading! I appreciate your comments and I think I've followed everyone in turn, but if I haven't, please let me know!
• I added a Resources page, on which I've listed (mainly) cemetery transcriptions and books I own... (It was also an experience in creating a Google Docs form - I work frequently in Google Docs documents, but I've done a form before. It was quite neat (and easy)!)
• In addition to "Resources" tab, I merged the "Surnames" and "Locations" pages into a new "Research Interests" tab, deleted the "Brick Walls" page, and modified my "Research Plans" page (to which I added a category for future "Research Plans/Brick Walls" posts)!
• I also played around with the new font styles! Let me know what you think! :)
• I've added 33 new-to-me blogs to my reading lists - see below (though I'm sure there will be more, as always!)

Genealogy:

• I celebrated my first blogiversary with "Sort of 1..."!  Thanks to everyone for the congratulations!
• A post intended for Military Monday turned into a Mystery Monday...with "The Curious Case of Crago"
• I continued with the FamilySearch indexing, moving on from the 1861 Ontario census, to Manchester (U.K.) parish registers from 1908/1910 and 1930-1932, and to New Brunswick death registrations (FS had labelled them English, but in reality, they were mixed French and English records).
• I created two spreadsheets in Google Docs: one for book Inter-Library Loan Orders (ILLOs) and the second for microfilm reel orders...
• ...and I am currently awaiting a microfilm which contains the "Archibald McNab Papers" and just may list Alexander Cameron's arrival date in Canada!
• Regular features included Tombstone Tuesday (continuing Oshawa Union with Askew/Harlow, Askew/Westlake, Broadbent/Joughin, and Ferguson/Stevenson), Wordless Wednesday (Charlie and an historic train station), and Tabloid Thursday (London Blitz rescuers/ees and Diptheria & Typhoid)

Books:

• Two ILLOs later and it's finally finished!  ;)  I finished reading G. J. Meyer's A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 - 1918. While it wasn't a difficult read, it was an enjoyable one and I wanted to give it my full attention (and at just over 600 pages in hardback, it was also quite hefty!). Though I had some minor quibbles with it, on the whole it was an excellent, very readable, and comprehensive history of the war (mainly from a military perspective, but also including social and political overviews). I definitely recommend it!
• I also finished (and was quite happy with the first three):
  
  • Sharon DeBartolo Carmack's Organizing Your Family History Search: Efficient & Effective Ways to Gather & Protect Your Genealogical Research - she not only covered personal genealogy resarch, but also touched on research projects and professional genealogy.
  • Charlotte Zeepvat's Prince Leopold: The Untold Story of Queen Victoria's Youngest Son
  • Ken McGoogan's How the Scots Invented Canada - short, 1 to 2 page biographies of various Scots and Scottish descendants who impacted Canadian life, culture, history, science, etc.
  • Harry Adler's Tracking Down Your Ancestors: Discover the Story Behind Your Ancestors and Bring Your Ancestors to Life (eBook) - I borrowed this mainly to play with our library's new eReaders, so I don't know if my dislike stemmed from the eReader itself (I can see the possibilites, but only for occasional use), or from the book (I ended up skimming most of it). I've found a few other eBook titles that I want to read, so we'll see about the eReader...

New-to-me blogs:

• Canadian genealogy blogs (3)
• Lundy Family History
• My Journey Back
• OntarioGenealogist
• History blogs (2)
  • The Empire Called and I Answered
  • May Hill's WWII Diaries
• Cemetery blogs (3)
  • Glasgow Ancestry
  • Grave Encounters
  • Stone Gardens
• British Isles Genealogy Blogs (8)
  • Anglers Rest
  • Blundering Blindly Backwards
  • Digging Up the Ancients
  • The Family Recorder
  • Growing Family Trees and Vegetables
  • The Professional Descendant
  • Scottish Genealogy Blog
  • You Don't Choose Your Family
• General genealogy blogs (17)
  • Are My Roots Showing?
  • Census Junkie
  • Discovering Latvian Roots
  • GenBlog
  • A Genealogist's Sketchbook
  • Genealogy, I Am Doing It!
  • The Journey Takers Blog
  • Kinexxions
  • LibLady's Genealogy Blog
  • My Big Fat Cajun/Irish/Scottish/English/German/French/Southern Family Blog
  • Orations of OMcHodoy
  • Shaking Family Trees
  • The Shy Genealogist
  • Voices: Past and Present
  • Winging It
  • Wishful Linking Family History Blog
  • Witch Genealogist With a Black Cat

What's coming up:

• Regular features, including Military Monday, Tombstone Tuesday, Wordless Wednesday (I just found some old photographs!), and Tabloid Thursday...as well as my continuation of the 2010 "52 Weeks to Better Genealogy" series (which I've ignored for a very long time!)
• All the recent talk about Research Toolbox's has me thinking - the "Links" page will be replaced (sometime!) with a new "Toolbox" tab...though I haven't worked out all the details yet!
• Edition #103 (Women's History) of the Carnival of Genealogy has been announced and I'm mulling over an entry...

My Question (among questions!):

Do you have a favourite cemetery website?

I have always like the Northeastern Gravemarker Gallery.  And then I've found it's expanded to all of Canada at the Canadian Gravemarker Gallery!  While there is a lot of gaps, it is turning into the premier site for Canadian cemeteries.  There's just so much to find - and all pictures! ;)

Thanks for reading!
Jenn

52 Weeks to Better Genealogy : Week 7...the results

Amy Coffin of the We Tree blog (and hosted by Geneabloggers) presents "52 Weeks To Better Genealogy", a series of weekly genealogy prompts / suggestions / exercises that (hopefully) will help anyone to become a better researcher.

The challenge for week 7:

Play with Google Maps. This is a helpful tool for determining the locations of addresses in your family history. Where your ancestral homestead once stood may now be a warehouse, a parking lot or a field. Perhaps the house is still there. When you input addresses in Google Maps, don’t forget to use the Satellite View and Street View options for perspectives that put you were right there where your ancestors once stood. If you’ve used this tool before, take sometime and play with it again. Push all the buttons, click all the links and devise new ways it can help with your personal genealogy research. If you have a genealogy blog, write about your experiences with Google Maps, or suggest similar easy (and free) tools that have helped in your own research.

The Results:

I've played with Google Maps (and their neat street views) a few times before at work - and sometimes for work (assisting customer's in finding locations, directions, etc.).  This is the first time I've used Google Maps for my research, and I found a few interesting tidbits...

I first decided to google Arnprior District and Memorial Hospital (in Arnprior, McNab twp., Renfrew co., Ontario, CAN), where I was born.  I found myself in luck - with a street view of the building (and the World War I cenotaph visible in front of the building):

(click any image to enlarge)

(map of the Arnprior area on the Ottawa River with the hospital marked)

(hospital sign, dated (I think) 1945?)

(general view, with the sign to the right - it's a nice, old-fashioned building)

Next, I decided to take a wander "up north" to Cobalt (Bucke twp., Temiskaming dist., Ontario, CAN), where my mother was born and my grandparents (her mother and step-father) still reside.  After my parents divorced, this is were we lived until I started kindergarten.  Lo and behold, guess what I found:

(map of Cobalt and surrounding area)

(my grandparents' house!)

(the United Church where my grandparents were married - since she was Baptist and he was Anglican)

(Cobalt railway station, now "The Bunker", a military museum)

After we left Cobalt, I remember riding the train (the Northlander, which was a 10 hour trip) to visit them, and arriving at this station (when it was still the station) at night.  The train is still my favourite way to travel. 

I then went back to the Ottawa area to look at Kinburn (Fitzroy twp., Carleton co., Ontario, CAN), where my father was born and grew up, my parents lived while they were married, and I spent the first two years of my life.  Unfortunately, google failed me here - there was no option for a street view beyond the major roads:

(map of the Kinburn area)

(satellite image of the Kinburn area; in the top right corner (just hidden) is the Kinburn/Carp intersection...)

(the intersection at Carp Rd. and Kinburn Side Rd., looking towards Kinburn - the closest street view I could get on Google)

Research Diary (No. 2)

What happened this week?

Not much, actually.

Having been working all weekend, I haven't touch anything genealogy, nor did I complete challenge 7 of the "52 weeks to better genealogy series" (but I'm planning to do that today - and maybe even challenge 8 (historical maps) - since I'm off!).

And then there was the two cakes I had to do for work...

The only thing remotely to do with genealogy this week was a calendar I've started at google.  I'm planning to put all events in that I know dates for and (eventually) have a "This week in my family blah blah blah" thing.  (Or something like that, anyway... ;-)   Oh, and the blogs, of course (I keep adding more all the time - there's too many good ones!)

I'm still in my sorting and organizing phase, so no real actual research (besides the gems from the Ottawa Citizen) is going to be done anytime soon...

What's to be done this week?

      1.  The "52 weeks" challenges (weeks 7 and 8).

      2.  Family group sheets clean-up and organization.  I have all my source documention (births, deaths, census, etc.) somewhat neatly (there's one last pile I have to complete) organized, so it's on to the actual extraction.

      3.  Continue to search the Ottawa Citizen back issues for tidbits.

Non-genealogy, this week we're getting (from a friend at work) a dining room set (5 chairs, table, buffet and china cabinet), so I also have to do some moving and shifting...

52 Weeks to Better Genealogy : Week 7 - the challenge

Amy Coffin of the We Tree blog presents "52 Weeks To Better Genealogy", a series of weekly genealogy prompts / suggestions / exercises that (hopefully) will help anyone to become a better researcher.

The challenge for week 7:

Play with Google Maps. This is a helpful tool for determining the locations of addresses in your family history. Where your ancestral homestead once stood may now be a warehouse, a parking lot or a field. Perhaps the house is still there. When you input addresses in Google Maps, don’t forget to use the Satellite View and Street View options for perspectives that put you were right there where your ancestors once stood. If you’ve used this tool before, take sometime and play with it again. Push all the buttons, click all the links and devise new ways it can help with your personal genealogy research. If you have a genealogy blog, write about your experiences with Google Maps, or suggest similar easy (and free) tools that have helped in your own research.

I'll post my results later this week...

Blogger reader = Google = Ottawa Citizen = genealogical happy dance!!

While browsing my blogger reading list (I'm not a fan of the Google Reader), I happened to come across the most recent entry (February 2nd) from the "Librarians Helping Canadian Genealogists Climb Family Trees" blog: "Google makes Historical Ottawa Citizen available online"  Wow!

The short entry barely gives anything away, merely excerpting a small clip from a (current) Ottawa Citizen article by Kelly Egan and stating digitalized copies begin (roughly) in 1890.

Deciding to give it a go (though my ancestors lived throughout the western reaches of the Ottawa valley, they rarely strayed (in official records, anyway) towards the city itself), I clicked on the Google link.  Typing in a few keywords ("barber" and "pakenham") and entering "Ottawa Citizen" in the source box, I hit the enter key.  Little did I expect one of the first entries to jump right off the page...

From the Ottawa Citizen, May 2, 1955, p. 4:

Michael Barber
KINBURN (Special) - Funeral service for Michael James Barber, a resident of Kinburn all his life, was held in St. John's Anglican Church, Antrim, Sunday afternoon.  Mr. Barber died at his home Friday after an illness of several weeks.  He was 82.  Rev. P. Caiger Watson conducted the service.  Burial was in St. Mark's Anglican Cemetery.  Mr. Barber leaves his wife, the former Linda Grainger; three daughters, Mrs. Beattie Timmins, of Pakenham, Mrs. Amy Cameron of Arnprior, and Miss. Pearl Barber of Ottawa; and a son, Norman, at home.

http://news.google.ca/newspapers?id=uc0wAAAAIBAJ&sjid=-dwFAAAAIBAJ&dq=barber%20pakenham&pg=4291%2C25754

(click image to enlarge)

(Did I do my genealogy happy dance?  You bet your bottom I did - and startled the dog and the cat in the process! ;-)

This is my great-grandfather!!! 

This (the Ottawa Citizen), is a resource I wouldn't have thought to check.  Arnprior (where my grandmother lived and is closer than Ottawa), had it's own newspaper (Arnprior Chronicle) which I have earmarked for further study (I've previously went over a few surviving issues that the Archives of Ontario had).  I can't wait to explore further...