The idea is to write a “letter” to your photograph to show the world how things have changed, or stayed the same. Take a picture from your scrapbook and family album and go back to that exact same spot. Hold the photograph up over the spot to superimpose the old image over today’s picture. Then share the story of the photograph. Here is one example post from Dear Photograph by Gaby:

Citation: Gaby of Dear Photograph

Dear Photograph,
60 years ago, my Grandma Gladys stood with her parents at Forrest Lawn Cemetery. Yesterday, she was laid to rest beside them. As I held this photo, I could still hear her telling her lovely stories all over again. I will always carry her beautiful spirit in my heart forever. I know she has gone back home, I’m just so glad I was loved by her.
Gaby

Dear Photograph is a startup by a young man with a clear vision when it came to nostalgia. Sitting at his kitchen table going through old photo albums he realized he was sitting in the same spot as his brother in the same kitchen many years before. He held up the original image over the spot of today and shared it online, getting an incredible response. Today, Taylor Jones and Dear Photograph has been publicized in the New Yorker, Time Magazine, CBS News, and investors are coming calling.

You can add your own Dear Photograph for free at Dear Photograph and share it through your social media networks, or create your own and publish it on your own family history site and use it with yourself and your family members to help tell their stories.

I’m often asked what is “appropriate” to add to a family history blog. The answer is fairly simple: Anything you want.

That’s not very helpful, so let’s get to specifics. I’ve talked about what to put into a family history blog before, but let’s break it down in this series of articles on how to publish a variety or specific content on your family history blog.

Think about what you really want to publish and share on your family history site. Do you want to stay focused on deceased ancestors? Do you want to mix techniques and family facts together, like I do? Or do you want to celebrate your family, living and past, in all forms?

Focus on what you really want to do with your site and then go after that type of content. Blogging your passion means sharing the things that excite and energize you, not meeting some obligation or duty. Find your passion in your family history site and it will be much easier and more fun to keep it updated.

The goal of this article series is to get you thinking about what you want or currently publish on your family history blog and how you can either change or improve what you publish.

Family History Site Goals

Are you clear about your family history site’s goals? Begin the process by writing down a list of all the things you find interesting about your family history research and coverage.

Go down the list and look for the items that get your heart racing a little, that call out to you to dig deeper and find more. Maybe you should focus your attention in that direction as it matches your enthusiasm.

A family history site can be so many things, from a static style site simply showcasing the family tree for future reference to a vivacious account of all of your family’s activities, past and present, bringing the family’s history together in one place for the people of today as well as the future.

Consider your readers and their needs. If you have set a tone for your family history blog, then keep it. If you specialize in only genealogy research, tips, and techniques, announcements about a high school graduation or personal event might be appropriate or it might be completely out of character. Taking your site off topic can be a good or bad thing, so only you can decide.

If your site is only for family and not for researchers and experts, then take care in diluting the content with inappropriate topics. Match the tone to the goals of the site. If you love sharing pictures of the living family celebrating their holidays and life events mixed in with family history research and stories, then keep it that way. If your family history research is serious and features only the ancestors, facts, and figures, again, keep your content flow in that context.

As I go through the various examples of content you can publish on your family history site, you must first remember your goals, which serve to satisfy your needs, and second, consider the needs of your readers, the people who come to your site to get the news and information they need.

The Needs of the Readers

Family history blogs are different from typical blogs. The average personal blog is developed to serve the needs of the individual, the person who wants to have their say in the world publicly, sharing their insights, photographs, videos, lessons learned, dreams wished, and personal experiences. Businesses also have a self-serving focus, using blogs as content management systems to build up their online identity and spread the word about their business, products, and services.

Family history blogs are usually started with the desire to share genealogy stories and research for current and future generations. They tend to have a long term vision, understanding that while four people might be cheer-leading their efforts today, dozens, possibly hundreds of people might find value in the site 10, 20, maybe even 100 years from now.

This foresight might change what and how you produce content on your site.

What will your grandchild want to know about you and her ancestors by the time she’s your age? What information could you supply that would help her understand more about her mother and father, grandparents, and the path each ancestor took to culminate in her birth and upraising?

My own family history research has taught me much about who I am today because of the gene pool that combined to make me. I look back at my creative Knapp family and see the magic in storytelling techniques they passed down through the family line. On the Anderson side of the family I’ve found stoicism, the strength to endure and find solace in just getting through it. From the West family, a challenging family tree to research, I find adventure, travel, and risk taking, the willingness to jump off that cliff with little or no trust that you will survive on the other side, a characteristic thought foolish by many but one that gives me a new appreciation today.

With so much debate over nurture or nature with a mix of environmental influences as the building blocks of our personalities, I see that some of our innate talents may come from deeper roots. What part of those roots can you share with your future generations to help them better understand themselves?

Today, family researchers are not content with names, dates, and locations from family bibles. We want to know the people of our past.

Make a new list describing all the information you wish you had about your ancestors and relatives as you moved through your life. What benefit would it be now to know that 30% of your family died of the same cancer, or that three people within four generations of your family suffered from genetic mental illness?

Personally, I was always taught that our family didn’t live much past 50 as we’d seemed to lose so many too young, so I led my life fully knowing that I wouldn’t see much past that birthday. In my 40s, a renewed digging into my family history uncovered the majority of our family lives to be 90 plus. I was shocked and had to redesign my future plans.

Look to the positive things, too. The stability, the sturdy nature of your family, their ability to smile and share joy even after losing family members or suffering tradegy. Look at their artistic nature. Are there poets, painters, or performers in your family line?

Cousin Duke DesRochers showcases his amazing 'found art" sculptures at a gallery in Vancouver, Washington.

Preachers and sales persons are also artists in their own fashion, having a knack for connecting with people and convincing them to change their lives from buying a new vacuum to changing or reinforcing their beliefs.

What of these things would your readers and family want to know?

And what secrets?

Every family has secrets, public or private, little or great bits of shame created by themselves or forced upon them by others, often society. In today’s world where literally anything goes, these secrets are often not worthy of keeping private anymore, better viewed in the sunlight than the shadows.

While publishing humiliating or harmful content is bad manners and form, there are times when the secret is done being secret and worth sharing. Use your best judgement, but consider what such secrets mean when they are hidden so deeply they cause ripples for the next generations that follow without ever knowing the why.

There is so much you can publish on your family history blog. I have the stories and data on tens of thousands of people in my past to share, and so little information on over 95% of them. I can’t cover them all, but I can cover as many as possible and encourage other family members to add to the wealth that will eventually become meaningful to future generations.

What legacy of family history information do you want, and they need, left behind?

Coming Up Next

In the next article in this series on publishing family history content I’m going to explore the family tree, offering tips and techniques for publishing your own, and how to maximize web publishing, WordPress, and other genealogy services to integrate your family tree(s) into your family history blog.

GEDCOM, according to Wikipedia, is an acronym for GEnalogical Data COMmunication. It is a type of file used by genealogy programs as a standard for presenting family history facts in a text file easily read by other genealogy programs, websites, and services. It is used to pass family history research to and from computer programs, upload into family history trees and online services and apps, and to share among fellow researchers and family members.

Developed by the Church of Latter Day Saints, it is unique in today’s computer world. It is both proprietary and not. It’s referred to as “open de facto,” which doesn’t mean its open source, just open as a standard.

GEDCOM was developed for the public in 1984 and the latest update was in 1996 with version 5.5, and we’ve been locked into its limits ever since.

A standard was needed as genealogy software began to develop. Databases needed to be shared through exports and imports, thus a standard was developed with the Mormon Church taking the lead as they represented the largest demographic of users and consumers at the time.

As the demand grew for flexible and powerful genealogy software programs, people also demanded more data stored and transferred between programs such as religion, jobs, multiple spouses, step children, adoptions, foreign language characters, more events, personal and professional, and other historical data not represented or are hard to fit the square peg into the round hole with the current GEDCOM file structure.

Like so much in today’s technology, I like many assumed GEDCOM would be an evolving file format. It isn’t. Many attempts have been made to add new features and improve it, but nothing appears to have happened with it since 2001.

So I went digging.

What’s Happened to GEDCOM Standards?

In general, people are saying that the church and GEDCOM supporters have lost interest and the church has stepped down from GEDCOM development completely, leaving the format unattended and unsupported officially. My research shows this to be true with a variety of groups stepping forward to make their attempt to revise and update GEDCOM, but while proposals continue to be announced, no one group has stepped into the empty shoes left behind by the church.

In The Problem with GEDCOM, the podcast hosts talked about how GEDCOM works and its limitations, and whose working on improving it.

There are several groups working towards improving GEDCOM. Better GEDCOM (http://bettergedcom.wikispaces.com/) is an independent community working to build a better GEDCOM file specification that serves 21st century genealogists. Their website is actually a knowledgebase using the wiki format, along with discussions, to try and develop an agreed upon standard for the GEDCOM format. BetterGEDCOM is a great place to get the latest news on the issues involved with the GEDCOM file format and what the genealogy community is trying to do to fix the problems.

The International OpenGen Alliance (http://www.opengen.org/) is another community group made up of volunteers trying to develop a single standard for genealogy data exchange. OpenGen uses a Basecamp platform which requires a membership – the platform provides a space for discussions, file uploads and other tools to collaborate with others on the issues involved with improving the GEDCOM standard.

Genealogy programs have added their own file data formats and found ways to import and export between their various programs, and the GEDCOM file format, while still acceptable, is basically ignored and left locked in at version 5.5 as the “official” version. So genealogy developers run off on their merry way finding new ways to work around this.

I did more research and found some sites working on improving the GEDCOM data model. Unfortunately, most of these are set in walled garden style sites with little or no evidence of recent activity. They might be viable and highly active groups, but there is little I found to show for it. This could say more to their web development and design choices than organizational structure, but the family history fan club is hunting for activity and finding little visible.

Build a Better GEDCOM is a wiki site to coordinate efforts and volunteers to improve the file standard. According to the site, the group meets weekly, but there is no blog or information on updates or news. The most recent discussion is Model in the Future Directions Document from January 2011, which shows at least some activity.

International OpenGen Alliance is a membership organization that features semi-monthly meetings on creating an OpenGen data model. The last meeting was in March 2011 with no news on the next one. There’s a small note at the top that says the last update was February of this year. It does have some interesting recommendations for their Core Data Model for the OpenGen project, giving you a good visual flow of how all the genealogy data can come together, but I’d love to see more updated information and activity to know where this will is going.

In Is GEDCOM Dead?, an article originally published in Genealogical Computing and reprinted all over the web on genealogy sites, the author, Beau Sharbrough, looks towards a future that embraces XML formats, which is where GEDCOM data models are indeed headed, a form of micro-formats that create an HTML markup language feel to the data structure and model. While published in 2001, many still refer to it as a landmark article on the past and future of GEDCOM.

GEDCOM Explained, by Dick Eastman, highlights one of the major problems that led to the creation of GEDCOM and offers it as a reason why it’s so hard to create a format that can keep up with the rapid pace of software development.

You need to be aware that the creation of the GEDCOM standard was not a perfect implementation. For one thing, not all the data fields are specified precisely in the GEDCOM specifications. Next, not all the programmers of the various genealogy programs interpreted the specifications in exactly the same manner. For instance, your present genealogy program might be perfectly happy with a birth date listed as, “after 1847 but before 1852.” However, once that information is exported in a GEDCOM file and then imported into a different program, the birth date may say something else. Typically, it is simply left blank.

Another problem is that not all genealogy programs have the same ideas about databases. One program may have only one field for “occupation,” assuming that every person on the face of the earth never, ever changed careers. Another genealogy program may have the ability to record multiple occupations during the person’s lifetime. When transferring data via GEDCOM from the more powerful program to the simpler one, some of these occupations will be lost. These are a couple of simple examples; you can find numerous other inconsistencies when moving data between dissimilar programs.

At the end of the 2002 article, Eastman, a legend and genealogy master, commented on an article he wrote about the XML Version of GEDCOM, saying that he really didn’t think that the next version of GEDCOM would be approved soon, and it still lies dormant.

Sue Adams found the “Is GEDCOM Dead?” article recently and was also frustrated with the lack of development, which speaks loudly as to what most of us family history folks are thinking.

I commend the publication of the article because raising the issue with the genealogy public is long overdue. I believe that the antiquated GEDCOM is holding back the Genealogy world, as it is the underlying cause of data transfer and other problems. An analysis of the search terms recorded for this blog suggests that 30% of queries are about this and related issues, which if representative, should be a big wake-up call for commercial developers of genealogy software.

I think Sue speaks for me, as well.

While GEDCOM started out as a proprietary format, the genealogy community has take it on. We need one of these groups or someone new to take the reigns in being the visible proponent of this projects, helping us stay up-to-date, informed, and possibly consulted, or at the least invited to help in some way, even if it is spreading the word of mouth. Transparency is what I’m asking. Change has to come and we want to know what’s coming.

GEDCOM History

My research turned up some interesting articles and commentaries on the history of the GEDCOM standard.

• RootsWeb: TMG-L [TMG] "Event-oriented"
• GEDCOM Explained, by Dick Eastman
• COMMSOFT: The ROOTS Story

In The Peshtigo River, Marinette County’s Greatest Remaining Natural Resource was put together by Jim Frink on the High Falls Flowage site, a site about the lake and surrounding land and rivers, based upon a report in “The Water Powers of Wisconsin” by Leonard S. Smith, C. E. which was published by the State of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1908. The report was commissioned the state and the Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey. Frink excerpted the information about the Peshtigo River for his site, and I’ve highlighted a few bits that describe the river in context to the impact and influence it had on my Knapp family living in Taylor Rapids along the Peshtigo River.

As far as rivers go, the Peshtigo is neither very big or significant. In many places an average person can throw a stone across it. Its drainage area is listed as 1,123 square miles, which includes roughly half of Marinette county. Its total length is listed at 94 miles, or 80 miles the way the crow flies. It does have some unique features, however. One is that its drainage area only has an average width of 14 miles with no tributary streams of any great significance feeding it. Although its water has a rather dark color derived from its swampy sources, it seems to be relatively free of pollutants or contamination. This is probably because for most of its course the shoreline is forested and wild, while the only cities of any consequence are Peshtigo and possibly Crivitz which are located far downstream from the source. Another feature, which is very important is that in its 94 mile total length, there is a drop in elevation of 1,040 feet, or an average of over 11 feet per mile. This is the largest drop per mile of any major river system in Wisconsin, and provides for more and larger rapids than any other river in the state. This compares with an average of 5.1 feet per mile for the Wolf River, 6.7 feet for the Menominee, and 10.8 feet for the Oconto. All of these rivers contain stretches of rapids, but not to the extent of the Peshtigo. The upper two-thirds of the river flows through pre-Cambrian igneous rocks while the lower third basically has a sandstone and limestone base.

This rapid flow, the fact that the river is relatively shallow and meanders considerably in the first few miles must have ruled out the Peshtigo as a viable means of transportation for the early settlers. They undoubtedly considered it as a hindrance and just another natural barrier in the way as civilization moved inland. It is even questionable if the lumbermen truly found it to their liking for moving logs from the forests to the mills due to the many rapids which must have caused considerable jams and danger. Their history and adventures would make for an entirely different story, however.

Having survived the arrival of settlers, the logging industry, the building of dams and bridges and the Peshtigo Fire, the river flowed peacefully into the 20th century, still flowing relatively unchanged and performing the tasks which nature intended.

The report admitted that while it might be possible to consider dam sites along the river, it was recommended to not. In 1905, the Wisconsin government was working hard to electrify their entire state and dams were the number one source for electricity beyond coal plants. This caused them to initiate a survey of the river to test its worthiness for damming it. For the most part, it has remained pretty much as it was, especially in the area where my ancestors grew up.

Brothers Robert F. Knapp and Wayne Knapp have written extensively in published and unpublished stories about the “Old Peshtigo River” in stories such as Lunch On the River on Old Jim With Nonie and Wayne, Trapped On The Island, and poems like Early Memories of Taylor Rapids, Wisconsin, and The 1967 Trip Back to Taylor Rapids, Wisconsin, where my two great uncles revisited their former homestead. And there are more stories of Taylor Rapids and the Peshtigo River on the way as I edit them.

I don’t have many pictures of the river in my files, from the family or from my trip there, but I want to go back and photograph more of the river that served them during their many years there. So I needed some words to help me understand more about the importance of this river for my research. Robert and Wayne talk about how there was a loading ramp/doc for the logging camps that had been abandoned about the time they were entering their early teens, and how logs from there were then loaded up onto the train that took the logs from the camps into the bigger cities, mills, and beyond.

My ancestors lived very close to the land, so it’s important that I understand that land. For many researchers, the buildings, city, and its culture is their focal point for some of their family’s history, but for this group of logging folks, it’s the forest, lakes, rivers, and sand plains of northern Wisconsin. Through their stories and my understanding of the land, I get a better picture of how they lived.

Ms. Mitchell’s article cited stunning information such as:

If you have uncovered a direct ancestor belonging to one or more of the twenty-six families who rode on the Mayflower to America in 1620, there are several clubs which would be happy to hear from you, particularly the Society of Mayflower Descendants. Theoretically, some 30 million people should qualify for membership in this society. There are currently 27,000 members worldwide.

Really? I’m one of 30 million who can qualify as a descendant from the Mayflower? That’s just plain frightening.

Why Join a Hereditary or Ethnic Society?

The article from Ancestry.com and Terry and Jim Willard of the PBS Ancestors series lists the reasons why you should join an ethnic or hereditary society. Key reasons were:

• To better understand a group’s unique research conventions and characterizations to further your own research.
• Access to invaluable and unique research libraries and collections.
• Membership benefits such as training, workshops, classes, and other educational activities.
• Networking with those familiar in that aspect of your family’s history.
• Access to research guides and instructions to help you dig deeper.
• A deeper understanding of your family’s history, culture, geography, political situations, and the events within their time period.
• A chance for travel, opening up doors to people and resources in locations where language and cultural barriers might close those doors.
• To preserve history for future generations. By keeping these societies and their collections subsidized, and maybe adding your own research to theirs, you help future generations learn more about their own ethnic past.

Hereditary societies are supposed to be in the Hereditary Society Blue Book which is available on sale often for under $25, a small price to pay for access to a variety of communities that can help you connect with your past as well as uncover more about your family’s history with documentation and historical records and research. I’ve found that some of these societies have been more helpful in painting a picture of the life and times of my family than any other records I can dig up. They are invaluable resources, whether you join as a member or not.

The Federation of Genealogical Societies is key organization in the United States designed to support and connect genealogical, historical, and hereditary societies together, providing education, data, research, and access to experts across the industry. Their Society Hall page offers a way to search directly for the society you may need.

Lists of Hereditary Society Lists

I’ve put together a short list of groups offering their own hereditary society lists to help you track down your own, and further on in this article, I’ve listed a few that I might be eligible to join. While the Hereditary Society Blue Book is really your best and most thorough starting point, these may help. Unfortunately, most of these lists have not been updated and you will find many links to dead or inactive sites. Still, these help you track down the specific names of the societies associated with your family lineage, and a quick search through Google often turned up an updated link, so use these as guides.

Some hereditary society lists are organized by the founding year of the organization, not the year(s) associated with the event or reason for their founding. For instance, the General Society of Mayflower Descendants is listed under 1897, not 1620.

• List of hereditary and lineage organizations – Wikipedia
• Hereditary Society Blue Book General List from the Historic Trust (outdated)
• Plymouth County Societies, Libraries and Museums
• Hereditary Societies – Genealogy of Africa and the African Diaspora
• Cyndi’s List – Societies & Groups – Lineage
• Genealogical Societies – dynastree
• Hereditary Societies | Facebook
• Genealogy.com – Lineages of Hereditary Society Members, 1600s-1900s
• The Hereditary Society Community(no links just list as organization was founded)
• Judson Connection – Hereditary Societies
• Hereditary Societies
• U. S. Lineage Societies for Men and Women: Descent from Kings, Clergy, Doctors, Huguenots and Quakers – Suite101.com

Some hereditary societies are fairly open, but others are strict on membership qualifications. As an example, in 2006, The Genealogue featured the world’s most exclusive hereditary society:

The Grand Dames of the American Colonies became the world’s most exclusive hereditary society on Friday when its only two members, Lillian Walthrup and Gladys Drew, amended the organization’s charter to exclude even themselves from membership.

“The amendment passed without objection,” says Mrs. Drew, a retired librarian now living in Fort Myers, Florida. “As soon as we’d voted, we escorted each other from the room. Needless to say, tears were shed.”

It seems that the society founded in 1856 by the wives of Know-Nothing politicians unable to campaign with their political husbands decided to create an organization that welcomed only the “right kind of people.” A review of their original charter in 2006 brought forth a ruling that required members to produce evidence that their immigrant ancestors entered the United States legally. To the same of the two remaining members, neither could. So in keeping with the integrity of their own membership rules, they banished themselves from the group. That’s a serious commitment. Unfortunately, the zero remaining members of the society have not opened membership.

While silly, if you are serious about joining some of these societies, bring substantial proof of supporting bloodline evidence.

Hereditary and Ethnic Societies for My Family

I dug through a ton of sites to find some of the societies that might play a role in my family’s history, and ones that I might consider joining in order to further my own research. I’ve included a few others that looked interesting, like the Order of Descendants of Pirates and Privateers. You never know where your family history research path could take you.

• Society of the Cincinnati
• Order of Indian Wars of the United States
• Sons of Union Veterans of the Civil War
• Daughters of Union Veterans of the Civil War 1861-1865
• Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States
• DOLLUS – Dames of the Loyal Legion of the United States – Female Descendants of Union Officers
• Aztec Club of 1847
• Society of California Pioneers
• National Society Colonial Dames XVII Century
• Swedish Colonial Society
• National Society Daughters of the American Revolution
• Daughters of Union Veterans of the Civil War
• National Society Descendants of Early Quakers
• Flagon and Trencher
• Holland Society of New York
• United Daughters of the Confederacy
• Baronial Order of the Magna Charta
• Military Society of the War of 1812
• Naval Order of the United States
• National Society of the Colonial Dames of America
• National Society Children of the American Colonists
• Norwegian-American Bygdelagenes Fellesraad
• Roglandslag – A bygdelag of the descendents of Rogaland, Norway
• Daughters of Norway
• Sons of Norway
• Order of Descendants of Pirates and Privateers
• 1889 National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution
• Sons of Confederate Veterans
• Saint George’s Society of New York
• General Society of Mayflower Descendants
• National Society United States Daughters of 1812
• Sons and Daughters of Oregon Pioneers

I’m not talking about comment spam. That’s a different subject. I’m also not talking about those strange people who leave comments about looking for their birth parent or odd ball comments that offer you no information and are clearly unrelated to anything you are covering. These are people who clearly need help, and you’re not the right source. If you are, if you have an expert site on helping people find their birth parents, let me know so I can send these people to you!

I’m talking about the comments from people desperate to get help in tracking down their relatives posting comments about their families on your family history site, families not related to yours, or in any way associated with what you are researching or writing about. They are stuck, naive or truly ignorant and think that a shotgun approach is the best way to get help for their family members.

A week ago, I was contacted by a family history blogger wracked with guilt about the vast number of unrelated family comments she was getting on her blog. It didn’t help that she had a Smith line in her family, but that was only a single person and not a direct line ancestor, not that those leaving all the comments about their Smith families cared about that. She wanted to know what to do. She wanted to help them, as others had helped her during her research.

For the first year of her blog, she did help them, digging into her own research that she’d collected along family lines that ended up not being right, and sharing her own research sources to give them possible answers on their family questions.

“I’m spending what little time I had on my own family research on theirs. I don’t want to be mean but I have to say no. How do I say no to these people? I was once like them, desperate for help with no where to turn.” She was near to tears on the phone. “It’s wearing me out and I’m starting to dread going to my own blog!”

After a hiatus on my own family history blog, I came back to hundreds of unrelated comments I had to plow through and clean out, so I understand her quandary and dread of facing such comments, especially when the motivation to dig back into my past was reinvigorated. So what do you do?

Decide Your Family History Site Purpose and Path

Everyone who takes to the web to share their family history research makes a choice. There are three standard choices:

1. Share your family’s history.
2. Share lessons learned in researching family history.
3. Or a mix of both, share your expertise in family history research while sharing your family’s history.

I choose the latter since education is always a priority for me, but few have time to do both.

If your site’s purpose is to share what you know about your family and encourage more research into your family lines, then helping others with unrelated family searches is not inline with your purpose.

If your site’s purpose is to share your experience, knowledge and experiences learned along the way to uncovering your own family history, then it could be that helping these people is right up your alley and part of your site’s purpose.

If your site is a mix, then you have to set boundaries, limits to what you will and will not do with both sides of your content. If you have the time and will to help them with their research, go for it. Announce it everywhere on your site and enjoy the process. If you don’t, like me, and have barely enough time to keep up with the research you do have, then let them know what your limits and guidelines are when it comes to off-topic family help.

How to Handle Unrelated Family Questions

Here are some tips to help you handle those unrelated family questions on your site to help relieve you of the guilt and obligation, and to speed up the process of managing your comment queue.

Have a Strong Comments Policy

To begin with, you must have a strong comment policy. In it, you must define what is acceptable and unacceptable as a comment, and the actions you are perfectly within your right to take when a comment does not meet those standards.

Think this out. Consider your site’s purpose and intent. Will you allow unrelated family comments on your blog? If so, are you willing to help them in their search? If the answer is yes, then say so, but also describe what that responsibility involves. Is it limited to you responding with, “I wish I could help but these are not members of my family line,” or more like offering recommendations and resources for tracking down their family?

Know that if you allow their comments, people searching for those family members may stumble upon your site and their comment during their search. This does two things. It dilutes your own indexed search keywords and causes hope where there is none.

Unrelated keyword searches can bring people to your site thinking they’ve found an answer, when they’ve only found an inquiry – and a dead end. If they think the questioner could be a family member, they might add their comment asking to contact the person who left the original comment. Now, you become the networker, connecting B to A and hoping they find a relation. While this is brilliant, it adds more work to the process and dilutes your own content even more.

If you use a Subscribe to Comments WordPress Plugin, and the commenter enabled this option when they left a comment, when the second commenter responded, an email notification would be sent out, alerting them to a comment on that post, and maybe they might return to follow up on the discussion on your blog with hope. Again, that would be dilution and require some perfect steps on the path to make that happen, and it could involve a lot more work with little gain on your part.

If you really can’t support those efforts, and you sincerely don’t have time to help these people out nor interest in diluting your content, then put a notice on your comments that all unrelated family questions may result in the deletion of their comment. Say it nicely and clearly to set your boundaries while encouraging people to look elsewhere. While it sounds mean, it’s actually a good thing as they know not to waste their time and effort on a site that has no possibility of really uncovering that lost stone.

So think about what you will allow and won’t, the technical steps to make these things happen, and the responsibility, and liability, that comes with your decisions. Then write it out clearly in your comments policy, either in a brief statement near your comment box or via a link from a statement there, and in your footer.

While this won’t stop people from commenting or encourage them to comment more, it’s something you can point to if they come asking why you deleted or edited their comment, and it sets the ground rules for everyone.

Put Warnings in the Comment Box.

In the comment box area, put a link to your comment policy and outline what you will and won’t allow, including whether or not you welcome comments from non-family researchers.

As I’m not a professional genealogist, and barely have time to handle my own huge family history research, I’ve posted the following at the top of the comments form:

Please do not post requests for help researching family members that are not directly related to mine. Please seek the help of a professional genealogy from organizations such as the Association of Professional Genealogists.

This makes it clear that I’m not open to helping non-relatives, and gives them a resource to get the help they need.

Direct Them to the Right Resources When Possible

I have an Anderson line in my family. Within the United States, it’s a direct path that is well known now from their arrival in the late 1800s from Norway to Wisconsin and direct to me. When researching some of the extended family, I often run across the same Anderson name, like Anders Anderson and John Anderson, but they aren’t my Andersons. I keep those links in my research and add a reference note at the bottom of articles researching that particular Anderson, giving readers other resources to maybe help them find their John or Anders Anderson. For an example, see the bottom of this article on Otto Anderson (1870-1916), which might help people find their Otto which isn’t my Otto…though I’m still looking for more information on his son, Otto.

As you are doing your research, keep track of any similar names you run across within the same time period. This helps you as a reference to avoid tracking down those unrelated branches in your own research, and you can quickly create a list in your articles to help others having similar issues.

Consider creating a Page on your site for these unrelated (but could have been) family lines and refer people to it. This might help them track down similar names that could uncover more of their lineage.

Be Fearless with the Delete Key.

Honestly, be fearless with the delete key. Be brave. You can do it!

If these unrelated family comments annoy you or clog up your comment queue, kill them off. Comments are content and you control all the content on your site. Edit them or delete them. Don’t waste your time when you have so little to spend on your own.

Learn How to Comment Yourself.

Are you going around leaving comments on blogs about family members that have no connection to your own? Are you one of the desperate commentators? Think about it. We all get stuck and think there might be some connection when there isn’t. I’ve dug around on sites talking about family history research specializing in a place my family spent a lot of time. I want to know if they maybe stumbled upon my family member, as I’m sure you have. Sometimes we get desperate and the shotgun approach is worth considering.

This is normal, but begin the process by learning how to comment so you can be a better commenter. Set an example for others to follow and your fellow family history researchers will adore you.

Provide concise, helpful information. They don’t need your life story, nor the story of the life of your ancestor. They also don’t need the story of how hard your search has been. They need facts and numbers if they are to help you.

This is not an appropriate comment:

I was searching all over and didn’t know where to turn, so I came here hoping you might be able to help me. Maybe you have stumbled across my family in your own research, or you know where to turn to give me the help I need, because I’m desperate. I’ve looked through Ancestry, Family History, visited the Mormon Church, drove through the town, went to the library, searched the Internet, and that brings me to you. I need help and I don’t know what to do next.

See, my family arrived in the 1800s on the east coast and then traveled south and then landed north in Michigan, and then moved to Wisconsin, North Dakota for a couple years for reasons I don’t know yet but my great uncle was born there, they moved back to Wisconsin. Why they traveled all over and kept coming back to Wisconsin, I’ll never know, but maybe you do.

I’ve got a ton of names and places, but right now I’m looking for John Anderson. I found him on the census report for Lessor in the county of Shawano in Wisconsin. I have no idea what they were doing there but I really need to find them and I’m lost. Can you help me? Have you stumbled across that name in your research?

I get things like that every week. They take me a long time to read as I hope for some connection to my family, the key reason I blog about my family history, and bore me before I get to the end of the first sentence. Here’s the better request.

I’ve come to a dead end on searching for John F. Anderson (May 1850-Dec 1920) born in Norway and died in Lessor, county of Shawano, Wisconsin. I found him living in Lessor in the 1880 census three names down from your family’s name and thought they might be neighbors. I know you are researching that area and thought you could possibly help me. Thank you.

Boom, we have a connection, an incentive for helping, didn’t waste time, and a chance to build a link that might open doors on both sides if they were indeed neighbors. Pictures of each others’ family at church or local events, maybe the family was close, or helped them out in some way, or maybe they are listed in diaries or family history notes. Who knows, but in a few words, the likelihood of actually getting a response is greatly increased over the former vague, rambling, and useless comment.

Turn Comments Off.

While I do not normally recommend this, if you really don’t want interactivity on your family history site, or if the ration to legitimate comments to crap is out of proportion, either work harder to create more interactive styled content which encourages comments, or direct them to your contact form and close off comments.

It’s a desperate act, but if you are overwhelmed with unrelated and spam comments, turn off comments. Have a clearly indicated Contact Form and let all communication pass through there. There is no sin in shutting off the comment box, as long as you continue to allow those with the keys to your family’s mysteries an access point.

Which Solution Works for You?

Remember that your family history site is for the benefit of you and your family. Anything that gets in the way of your research and enthusiasm for family history needs to go. Say bye-bye to time wasters and focus all your energy into doing what gives you all the joy.

My friend? She employed a combination of these tips. She wrote up a strong comments policy and including a link in the comment box area that said she would no longer be able to accept comments from unrelated family lines. She then went through her comments queue and deleted all unrelated family inquiries. She found that she was too quickly found in search engines by those unrelated family names. Her passion to help others convinced her that leading them astray was not helpful.

She also dug through her records and found good resources for family names and research that are not her lines and created a resource page to help direct others to what could be better help than she could give them on a case by case basis.

A few months later I called her to check in and she was much calmer. “I no longer face my family blog with dread. I’m enjoying it again, spending more time on my own family line and uncovering a lot more precious gems. If I find a trail that goes nowhere, I add it to the dead-end resource page in the hopes that others will benefit, and according to the comments on that page and not the rest of my site, it’s working. I get the joy of helping without wearing myself out, and clean house at the same time.”

Maybe with these guidelines you will find that renewed energy and overcome at least one of the many battles facing family history bloggers.

Part of the wonderment of digging into your family history is widening your vision of who you are and where you are from.

I’m working on my book, Home Is Where Lorelle Is, and the subject of “home” is a constant theme. From the moment we left Marysville, Washington, to venture out on the road full-time in a recreational vehicle for what was supposed to be a year which became 16, the question of home has plagued us and fascinated us.

As we traveled, people would ask us where home was. For us, it was an ever changing answer. There is a the place where you were born, the place you grew up, the place you married and possibly raised children, the place your parents call home or reside, the place you spent the most time in your life, the place from which your ancestors came just before arriving here, or even further back, your heritage claim, the place you were the happiest, or where you’ve established residency. Living on the road, we had the places we were born, where we lived before we hit the road, and where we had just traveled from to get to this spot.

For others, it was also an evolving concept. One elderly woman we met in Florida was thrilled to see our Washington State license plates on our truck. “I’m from Washington, too!”

Washington could have been just where we registered the vehicle, but it was the place I called home, even though my husband was born and raised in Oklahoma, and the place he calls “home” as in where are your roots. Not wanting to complicate the answer or start a major discussion, he smiled and asked her what part of Washington.

“Near Tacoma somewhere. I was born there and my family left when I was three years old, and I’ve never been back. But I call it home.”

While we think of modern life as filled with migration, moving easily across the country from job to job, climate to climate, or to be with family, we think of our life as fairly mobile, and the lives of our ancestors as static. As we research them, we expect to find them born in one place, marrying there or nearby, and living their entire existence in a single place, bound to it by history, culture, and time.

Yet, in many ways, our ancestors were more mobile than we are. Some of my family history traveled and lived in three or more countries and several states twixt birth and death, not mentioning vacations, war, and military service. Just because a family member came over the sea from England doesn’t mean that England was their “home.” It could have been a stop on their from elsewhere, residing there long enough to find money and passage to cross over.

I’ve spent a bit of time in Hawaii where people introduce themselves by their ancestry, “I’m two quarters Japanese, a quarter French, and a quarter Korean.” Their ancestry is clearly defined two to three or more generations back, even though the modern culture of Hawaii is more and more mixed. They are proud of those roots and connections with their history, whether or not the family member was born in China or elsewhere, traveled to Japan for twenty or thirty years before arriving on Hawaiian shores, they are strongly tied to those historical connections.

I recently reminded my husband that his first ancestor to the new world, Arnold VanFossen, made one or more trips to Ohio from Holland before buying the property and returning home to fetch family members. “No! How could he have made that trip more than once?”

As I research my family, when I fun across a census locking a family member to a time and place, I have to remember it is transient. Like me, they could have been just there for a story while during the time of the census, then moved on. If I find a birth or death certificate, I must remember that while they may have started or ended their life in this spot, what brought their family or themselves to this spot might be the more interesting part of their life story and history.

The example in the original question gave a possible example which explains the confusion over the taxonomy:

How would I represent the fact that a person is “roman-catholic”

RELI roman-catholic
RELI rÃmisch-katholisch
RELI roemisch-katholisch
RELI RK
RELI RC

Very good point. But one that is more complex that it may first appear.

The biggest problem GEDCOM files will have with such specific taxonomy examples is the use of character entities like the à which is might not recognize during the import/exporting process by genealogy software programs.

The issue of standardized values, such as grouping and sorting all Roman Catholics and Mormons together in your database program, makes this even more complex since Catholics may be listed as Catholic, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Assyrian, Chaldean Syrian, Byzantine, and so on. All come under “Catholic” but you’d have to program the computer to recognize each of these as “Catholic” even if they don’t have the word in the tag.

Then there is the issue, as another person brought up, of the ancestor being baptized in one religion, marrying under another religion, converting to a different religion, or changing religions due to marriage or other reasons. If there is only one tag for religion, how do you associate it with the religious changes a person might make in their lifetime?

In GEDCOM, the tag or token is standardized, but the information within the tag isn’t always as standardized. The problem isn’t in the tag but the information the tag holds.

The best recommendation the team came up with, and I agree, is to maintain your own standardized references. If you want to separate Roman Catholics from Eastern Orthodox Catholics in your family tree, label them accordingly. If not, then keep the reference as simple as possible by calling them Catholic.

One interesting note in the discussion was the fact that the:

…Handbook of Religious Denominations in the United States, edition of 1985 from Abingdon Press. It lists over 225 denominations from 22 years ago; who knows how many there are now! Think of how many “non-denominational” churches have sprung since then, each of which would probably insist on being included. And that’s just the United States. I’m sure there would be thousands and thousands if the whole world were included.

Another adds:

…there were over 70,000 Australians who listed their religion as Jedi in the 2001 census.

You can see how this religious thing has gotten totally out of control, making our job as family history researchers and preservers much more difficult.

In his recent picture book Hanukkah at Valley Forge, Stephen Krensky gives a main source for his story of Gen. George Washington learning about that Jewish festival, and that book in turn cites as its main source a rabbi’s sermon from 1955. Then, as I discussed yesterday, the trail goes cold.

But Rabbi David Hollander isn’t the only person who’s talked or written about Washington meeting a Jewish soldier at Valley Forge. The web has captured several other examples-so many, in fact, that it’s possible to triangulate among those versions to find the details they share, which hint at a common source. I think that internal evidence points to an oral tradition that started sometime in the mid-20th century and then spread among rabbis and Jewish writers, details changing along the way.

As J.L. Bell explains, tracking down this kind of information into hard cold facts is very difficult. If it were a current day event, then there would be living witnesses, but researching a past event means digging into written accounts from the time period, as well as photographs and records.

This is a great example of the depth researchers of history go to find out the truth behind the legends. And teaches us more about how we need to be more thorough when researching our own family stories and history.

Bell covers more of this in Seeing Fiction as Fact.

Rather than exchanging photos, music and cellphone numbers, as many of the 100 million members of MySpace.com do, participants in Ms. Wong’s online community share Y-DNA markers and mtDNA Haplogroups.

The neuroscientist is president and chief executive officer of Genetrack Biolabs Inc., one of the country’s largest DNA testing labs. Recently the Vancouver company broadened its focus beyond paternity suits and other legal testing to capitalize on the emerging field of genetic genealogy.

With a swab of the mouth and access to Genetrack’s site DNAancestryproject.com, clients can trace their lineage for possible connections to famous figures of the past, such as Marie Antoinette, whose DNA has been preserved in a locket of her hair.

The farther back in time, the wider the family connections. For example, researchers have found that one in five men in the northwest of Ireland carry the DNA of the great Irish king Niall Noigiallach, who ruled in the early 5th century. And they estimate that 2 per cent of New York’s European males today also share the royal chromosome.

Turning back the clock to prehistoric times, the website lets participants track the migratory paths their distant ancestors took out of Africa and even connect with people of related groups today.

Amazing. We spend time researching our family history through our blogs and genealogy discussion groups, but imagine a social networking group whose sole purpose to to connect you with your DNA relatives.

The idea behind Genetrack and DNAancestryproject.com is to help those researching their family history through their DNA find common ground and make connections beyond the gene pool. According to the company president, Ms. Wong: “Everybody in the project is connected to everyone else.” Which makes this social networking project even more amazing and wide spread.

Genetrack’s DNA testing kit has been sold online, but just recently started appearing in a few retail sale in stores in Canada, the US, and other places in the world. According to Genetrack, it is most popular for the 47-54 year old age group, but many young people are starting to get into digging into their past. I’d love to walk into a store and buy a DNA testing kit, wouldn’t you?

What makes this new social networking trend fascinating is the new relationships that could form because of this. The concept of “family” has been changing for a long time in the United States and elsewhere as we move farther apart from our blood relatives and turn friends into “family members”.

DNA social networking groups could reverse that trend, turning strangers into blood relatives, allowing us to meet up with family members long separated by time and distance.

In my own family history research, I’ve been able to make connections with long lost family members through genealogy research and resources online, meeting in person family descendants from the 17th and 18th century. I’ve only recently started exploring my own DNA history and expect to make contact with family members separated even farther back.

Each person I connect with brings with them some history and information about their family’s lives as well as their own that helps me fill in the missing puzzle pieces of my own. Answers from the past often help answer questions in the present.

DNA social networking is destined to become a powerful Web 2.0 type force on the web. Would you participate? How would you use such a social networking service? How would it benefit you?