DNA Contest
DNA testing is quickly becoming the next frontier in genealogy research. Allowing people to connect with unknown cousins and possibly break through brick walls in their genealogy research. DNA testing can also help us discover where we come from.
Thomas MacEntee with GeneaBloggers is running a contest this week, giving away a free DNA test from AncestryDNA. Click the link below to enter the contest.
Two Years, 29 Days…
I’ve stopped and started blogging many times over the years. I always have the best of intentions and then daily life gets away from me and the days turn into weeks, which turns into months, and apparently this time…years. It has been 2 years, 29 days since my last post. What have I been up to?
While I have not been updating my blog I have definitely been busy. The most important thing that I have been up to is that 8 months ago my husband and I celebrated the birth of our third (and last) child. Now that the “having kids” chapter of our lives is over it’s time to look forward towards my next adventures…RAISING those kids and spending more time focusing on my research, genealogy, and historic preservation efforts.
What started out a couple of years ago as Martinage Genealogical Research (MGR) is now “A Historic Perspective” Consulting. I have not left genealogy and historic research by any means, but in fact, I have stretched it to include my other professional work as a historic preservationist. While I’m still figuring out some of the details I am planning on offering the following services:
- Genealogy Services
- Research Services (online or located in the Northeast Florida, Southeast Georgia areas)
- Historic Preservation Consulting
- Best practices for restoring your historic home
- Researching the history of your house/building
- National Register Nominations
- Florida Master Site File surveys
In the near future I plan on adding drafting and contracting services as well as helping guide you through the bureaucratic process of remodeling your historic property through the City of Jacksonville and the City of St Augustine.
Where’s It Gone?
Has it really been over 7 months since my last posting? I can’t believe I let time get away from me that quickly. I guess such is life with a family and two businesses.
It’s a new year and time to focus once again on MGR! I have allowed my previous URL address expire and I’m looking for a catchy and easy to remember URL address. I think I found one but I think I’m going to bounce it off of a few friends and family before I purchase it and redesign my site. My first choice is Martinage Genealogy (.com) but it’s a bit of a mouthful and not the easiest of names to spell.
Last year was a great year for my own family research. I wish I can find the smoking gun officially connect two lines that I KNOW are connected together. I have found photographs of men and women that look so much life my father, grandfather, and other family members in that line that they could pass as siblings. Too bad photo analysis isn’t acceptable as genealogical proof. I’ll keep plugging away and one day I will find it! I think I will start a secondary blog about my quest to connect my Tucker ancestor’s to their strongly suspected Brummett relatives…
If Walls Could Talk: Researching Your Historic Home
Wow, has it really been two months since I last posted an update? Time has really gotten away from me and I am just now starting to feel like I am coming back to earth and moving at a normal rate of speed.
On May 5th, I co-facilitated a session at the Restore Jacksonville conference regarding researching your historic house. My focus was the use of technology and online resources in aiding a person to research and learn about their historic homes and businesses but also the people behind these structures. In hind sight we should have split the session into two separate sessions. There was simply too much information for two people to cover in one 45-minute session. I ended up having to condense a 20-minute talk (which I had already condensed heavily) into less than 10 minutes. I had to rush through all of the material I had but I at least got to mention and talk about several resources that I hope will be of help to those in attendance.
If I have another opportunity to speak with my co-facilitator, Joel McEachin, we agreed that we needed a longer sessions or to do two separate sessions so we can cover all the materials that each of us has to go over.
If you are looking for someone to speak on this topic or any topic releated to genealogical research please feel free to contact me. I love having the opportunity to help others learn how to find out about their past. You can email me at martinagegenealogy@hotmail.com
Restore Jacksonville Conference
I will be speaking in my first conference in May! Ok, I will be doing a joint session on a topic that is not the main point of the entire conference but is incredibly important to most of the people who will be in attendance at the conference.
On Saturday, May 5th I will be speaking at the 2nd Restore Jacksonville conference on the topic of researching your historic home. My focus will be the use of online tools and resources to discover who not only lived in your home but who they were, who their family was, what they did, where they came from, what they did with their lives.
I love research, and I especially love the ability to use the internet to complete the majority of my research. I do find going to the library to do research I can find myself losing track of time but getting to the library to do physical research can be difficult with two extremely young children.
The main topic of the Restore Jacksonville conference is sustainability and restoration of your historic home, focusing on green topics. It’s a far cry from my genealogy and research passions but this is something that I am incredibly involved with. “The greenest building is the one already built.”
Run on over to RestoreJacksonville.com and check out the conference. All of the information about the sessions and how to sign up should be on the site or will be forth coming (I believe there are a lot of details that are still being finalized and are not quite ready to be published on the website yet). The keynote speaker will be the former host of This Old House and Renovation Nation, Steve Thomas. I’m so excited about this fact, I’m a HUGE Steve Thomas fan thanks to all the thousands of This Old House shows my father forced me to watch as a child.
Family Tree Maker 2012
For Christmas 2010 I requested the 2011 version of Ancestry.com’s Family Tree Maker software. I had read good reviews about the software and I really wanted a good desktop version for my GEDCOM files. It didn’t take me long to run into one major problem. There was no way to easily update both my Ancestry.com tree and my desktop gedcom files. I would have to update any changes in both places and that really wasn’t going to work well for me. I was disappointed, especially since at that point in my research I was doing a major clean up of some of my rookie “add everyone I can possibly be related to no matter how distant” into one LARGE tree.
In the past year Ancestry has made a great deal of exciting updates to their online databases and personal trees that have made my task of cleaning up my tree so much easier. My favorite has been the “how are we related” tool on the personal pages of each person in my tree.
This morning when I opened my browser I noticed the add for the 2012 Family Tree Maker. They are offering a new tool for their software that has me VERY excited! This year they have added a TreeSync feature that enables you to update your tree no matter where you are. With the press of a button I can now make sure that my desktop files are synced with any changes that might have occurred with my online tree. It also allows my family to view the latest version of my research without having to check out my online tree. I wish my sister was still with us, she would have been so excited at this latest development. She always wanted to have a copy of my latest GEDCOM every time I saw her.
I think I am going to look a little more into this latest version and I might just need to purchase an update to my 2011 software.
What are you looking for?
What are you looking for in your search for genealogical research services? Are you looking for someone to help you with a brick wall that you have run into? Are you looking for someone to help you get started in your research? Maybe you’re looking for someone to do the research for you and give you a finished product. I want to hear from you.
I have been doing research for several years now but this site is my attempt to go where I have dreamed of going for a long time, working completely for myself doing research.
Your feedback in what you are looking for would be of a great help to me so please feel free to share exactly what you are looking for!
Genealogy Links
I am working to establish a few links to my site that may come in handy for you as you look into your past.
I will be adding several of my favorite sites over the next few days so when you visit please take a look over to the right hand task bar to see what’s new!
Family Legend
We all have those stories about our ancestors. Stories of who they were and events that may have occurred in their lives. We hear the names and places of where they lived. Did you know that those stories, people, and places can be extremely important to helping you decipher your past? Obviously the people and places can be pretty obvious as starting places in your research. But sometimes the research doesn’t add up with those names, places or stories. But something still tells you that there is something to them and you just want to know what the connection is. This is part of the mystery that keeps me searching and going deeper in my research.
In my family tree I have a name and a place but I have not yet been able to connect the two with the people that they are supposed to be connected with. When I started my research I began by using some research that my father’s cousin had compiled together for the family many years previous. The information had a woman named Mary as married to my 3rd great-grandfather. As I began to dig into my genealogy and census records I understandably listed her as the his wife. However, I was shocked to discover that the corresponding census records did not match. I found 2 that listed his wife as Elizabeth. In the 1880 census my 3rd great-grandfather was listed as a widower. That is also the last known record of him and his family (with the exception of my 2nd great-grandfather).
As I continued my research I discovered a distant cousin who was descended from the sister of my great-grandfather. She too had this same woman named Mary in her family tree. She found the mismatching census records and just combined the two women into the same person Mary Elizabeth. However, there is no evidence that Elizabeth and Mary are the same person.
Due to the lack of an 1890 census and any other records of this family other than my 2nd great-grandfather I can not corroborate my theory as of yet (I’m determined to discover Mary and Elizabeth’s true identities!) but here it is. Elizabeth died in 1880 in childbirth or soon after. This is supported by the fact that living with my 3rd great-grandfather at the time of the census was his 1 month old son Jasper. I theorize that he remarried at some point after the census to Mary to help him raise his family. This was a common practice at this time on the frontier. My research so far has been fruitless but this is a plausible theory and I will continue searching until I hopefully find the answer.
The other family legend is related to the two brothers of my same 3rd great-grandfather. The last known record of them was in the 1860 census living with their parents as single men. As we know from history soon after the Civil War broke out and many men enlisted in the armies. The family story has them either serving in the Civil War and never returning or leaving for Oklahoma (which ironically is where my mysterious Mary is credited as coming from). Other than this story there is no known ties for this branch of my family tree to Oklahoma. Recent research found two men whose names and ages matched these missing brothers enlisting in a regiment from an adjoining county with their cousin. Due to a free trial of Fold3.com I was able to pour over Civil War enlistment records for this unit looking for these two men. I found them. It appears that the youngest brother died shortly after enlisting while in camp probably of one of the many illnesses that were rampant in the army camps. The other brother lived to see action but died of injuries in Mississippi approximately a year after enlisting. Their cousin survived the war and returned home after its conclusion to get married and raise a family in the same area. I am still curious as the origin of the Oklahoma theory but I feel proud to know that I have most like solved the mystery of my “uncles.”
While this entry is long I hope my personal stories help to illustrate my original point. These family stories could have much truth in them and insight into your family’s story. It is important to pay some attention to these stories as you research because you could be surprised at the end result. They also help to provide curiosity and drive to discover the truths behind these stories even if the truth seems to be elusive
Purging My Personal Tree
A few months ago Ancestry.com did some updating to their website and their family tree features. One of the new features they introduced was a “view relationship to me” button. I was so excited when I found this new feature. I knew my tree had a great deal of erroneous connections and people that were no longer connected to anyone that needed to be weeded out. At one point I started to make a new, leaner family tree but my heart was still in my first tree…I just didn’t want to start all the way over from scratch even though I went a little overboard (ok WAY overboard) with my tree as I started my research.
I have spent the last several months going person by person through my entire tree using this button. I think I have removed somewhere around 4000 people from my tree that were not connected or were only connected by marriage to one extremely distant cousin and really didn’t need to be in my tree any longer. Today, I am FINALLY 100% finished with going through all the people in my tree. As I type this I believe I have one family left to sort through and that will only take about 15 minutes of my time. Now I will have to start this process over unfortunately because as I deleted some families I missed the spouse and children of the children I deleted…so I have to double check one more time. I know that will take a couple of more months of gradual work to get through but it will be quicker this time because I won’t have millions of hints popping up for everyone anymore (Ive already sorted through the majority of those). I have also changed the last names of my direct ancestors (or at least 90% of them) to all capitals so I can find my direct line more quickly as I look at the lists of names.
I can’t wait to get back to the point that I can start digging deeper for more information about my main family lines and try to answer some of the questions that I have and better trace their migrations. But first I want to make sure the people in my tree is as clean and lean as possible…
A Historic Perspective Consulting 