AI, Here I Come!

How many times have I started out a new year on this blog saying this is the year I'm going to write up the family history? Too many to count. And what have I got to show for it? Nothing. 

I'm not going to make that mistake this year! 

Instead, I'm going to venture down the road of... AI (artificial intelligence)! The techie part of me is so very curious about AI but I've struggled to figure out how and why I would use it in my everyday life. I've pretty much been sitting on the sidelines, reading about some people's "hits" using AI and some peoples "misses". My curiosity has been building. Earlier this month I took some online lessons via Roots Tech. That gave me some basic technical information to build on and some practical ideas to start with. 

I've been practicing, here and there. I've tried planning a vacation trip to Florida (miss), generating some images (hit), looking into some military history in Poland (hit), and looking up an old business in Detroit from the early 1900s (miss). I've had mixed results. I've tried a couple different platforms but not nearly all of the main ones. I have much yet to try and many platforms to test out. But I've gotten my feet wet. I'm not feeling intimidated anymore.

In regards to genealogy and family history, I have a few ideas about how I might use AI. 

• Perhaps I could use it to delve into Poland's history for a background on farming methods and crops from previous generations (I come from a long line of farmers). 
• Maybe I could use it to create an outline for a book. 
• It would be very helpful if I could get it to proofread and/or edit a draft of a book chapter. 
• Maybe it would generate an interesting way to weave together the family stories that I want to share. 
• I definitely think it would be helpful in analyzing old photographs. (I have a lot of those. ;-) 
• It would be fascinating if I could figure out a way to get it to look into some of the mysteries/questions that have plagued me from the beginning of my research. Maybe it would generate some theories I hadn't considered. 

AI could be just the catalyst I need to get myself writing again, if not about genealogy maybe about using AI. 

We'll see what develops...

A Dream Come True

It's been a long 5 years since I've updated this blog. I'm still alive and well and occasionally still working on my family history. Every now and then, when something interesting happens (like the publishing of the U.S. 1950 census😉), I do delve back into my research long enough to update the records in my Legacy database. And then I'm done for a while. 

Yesterday, I experienced another of those "something interesting happens" events.

Let me start by explaining that I had no birth records for either of my grandmothers. Grandma Carrie was born in Detroit, at home, at a time when it wasn't required to register the birth of a child in Michigan. I've searched high and low with the city, county, and state and there's no record for her. I do have her baptismal record, which gives her birth date, so I'm grateful to the Catholic church for that much. But I've given up on finding anything more "official" for her birth. 

Grandma Sophie was born in Poland. She was the second born of six children. Her older sister as well as her younger siblings were all born in Wojnicz, Poland. I have all of their birth/baptismal records as well as the marriage of the parents, their birth records, etc etc. I knew the date that Sophie was born from her immigration paperwork as well as from her marriage record here in Detroit. Everything listed Wojnicz, Poland as her place of birth.

I have looked at countless online data bases, wrote to the civil records office in Poland, wrote to the church where all her siblings were baptized, and searched the LDS films for that period of time in that parish and there is no record of her birth to be found. The LDS film photographs of the church registry book showed pages had been torn out for the time period she would have been born, but the diocesan copy was in tact. Still no Sophie to be found on or around her birthdate. 

A few weeks ago, before Christmas I think, a dear friend of mine, Valerie Koselka (President of the Polish Genealogical Society of Michigan), posted a link on Facebook for a new collection of Polish Church Records (on FamilySearch.org). Yesterday I finally got around to checking it out. And I found the elusive record I've been searching for since day one of my genealogy research back in 1995... a record of my Grandma Sophie's birth/baptism. Please clap your hands, raise a glass in toast, and dance the HAPPY DANCE with me!!! 😁😁😁

Years ago I'd given up on finding a record of Sophie's birth but I had a persistent daydream about one day entering her name online and finding that record. And that's exactly what happened. The record I found was just an index and the information for Sophie was a close match but not exact. There was a village name listed but it wasn't one I'd ever heard of. The village was near Wojnicz where all the other siblings were born, but it was in a different Gmina (administration district) with a different parish church. I had done a concentric search of villages with Wojnicz as the center but didn't come up with anything and finally gave up. I'd mostly searched villages south and west of Wojnicz, moving in the direction where Sophie's father's family was from. But I did search other villages around the area too. Wouldn't you know it...the village where she was born is northeast of Wojnicz just beyond where I'd searched.🙄 I guess I just gave up too soon. Anyway, last evening I ran over to my local Family History/LDS location and looked up the record and voila! Found it! 

Yay and thank you to my friend Valerie for posting that link!👏 Yay and thank you to the folks from the LDS who photographed and indexed the Polish church records! 👏 And yay and thank you to any/all of my friends who are reading this post! 👏 Don't give up the search!!!

Oh, and here's the link for that Polish church record collection:

https://www.familysearch.org/search/collection/4135958?fbclid=IwAR2eleYQjnrkSDailZQPviVqdmL8nknps_1I23wvTd_jFAA3YzYQNlgL1PU

Good luck!

New Year 2018, Looking Back and Looking Forward

Every now and then it's a good idea to take a step back and look at where you're at relative to where you've been and where you want to be. The beginning of a new year is a popular time to do that. With that in mind, here's my take on where I'm at regarding my genealogy...

My goal last year was to write up a family history and I chose my Mizera family line to start with. My intentions were good. I thought I had a good plan although I didn't get far before the plan fell apart. I tried to construct a new plan but that didn't work either. Then I got distracted with other things and never got back to trying to write up the family history.

I did add some names to my family history database last year, some from the Mizera line and some from the Lisowski line. I found some new (to me) sources for information about the lives and times of my families in Poland. And I hired some Polish researchers to help me with finding records and translating them. So that's all good. I helped some friends research their families too. I feel good about that. So I did have some accomplishments last year to further my genealogical journey.

So that's where I'm at looking back on my genealogy-related activities in the past year. Very recently, I came to the realization that I'm not really interested/motivated in writing up my family history. That was a bit of an eye opener for me. I enjoyed writing in the past. I have written two NANOWRIMO novellas, and I've written blog posts about my genealogy, digital scrapbooking, and photography for several years. I remember the writing process to be quite enjoyable to me. But somewhere along the way I lost interest in writing. I used to think of creative writing as one of my hobbies. I don't anymore. It may well be that I just have too many "balls in the air" so to speak. When I make choices of what to do with my hobby time, I never choose genealogy-related writing anymore. Notice I said "genealogy-related" writing. I still write every day but it's rarely about genealogy.

The most recent hobby I've picked up was bullet journaling. I've been doing that for about 15 months now. It's not creative writing the way I do it, it's more like a combination to-do list, planner, tracker, and diary. And the diary entries are most often about the activities of the day. I do spend a good bit of time decorating the pages of my journal (yep, this is old school journaling with pen and paper, not digital) and in that way it's been a good creative outlet for me. But, it takes up a good bit of my hobby time. And it's not genealogy related.

And then there's my painting. The amount of time I put into painting hasn't been as much as I would have liked either. Whenever you try to learn something new you need to apply yourself... practice, practice, practice. I need more practice time painting if I'm going to improve. But the more hobby time I spend painting, the less time I have for genealogy research or writing. It's always a trade off.

The one hobby that I have spent what I consider a fair amount of time on this past year is my photography. I've worked at it and I've improved as a result. I'm happy about that! My photography isn't in any way genealogy-related. It does get me up and moving; most often outdoors, in nature. And that's good for my creativity, my mood, my spirit, and my mind. So it's all good.

So that pretty much sums up a review of all my hobbies over the past year. Going forward, I need to find a way to manage my time better, I guess. I want to do it all but then there's the grocery shopping, house cleaning, bill paying, tax return preparation, vacation planning, house projects (for 2 houses) to manage, etc. And that stuff has a way of interfering with my hobby time all too often, LOL!

Looking forward to 2018, I don't have any specific goals for my genealogy hobby time. I want to continue my research... that's the most fun part of genealogy for me. It's like solving puzzles and I love puzzles. Organizing what I've already found is boring. Writing up the family history doesn't sound like fun anymore. Just an obligation. Quite frankly, I'd rather be painting, or photographing extreme weather, wildlife, beautiful landscapes, butterflies and flowers. But I'm not giving up on my genealogy hobby altogether. I can't see myself ever doing that.

I'm entertaining a dream of one day merging all of my hobbies together... that would require a trip to Poland, so I'll have to overcome my resistance to flying. But I'd love to photograph and journal about the beautiful churches where my ancestors were baptized, married, and buried and the prayer/adoration chapels along the roads to the villages where my ancestors toiled in the soil to put food on the table and a roof over their heads. I'd love to see the parks, the country fields of wheat, the train stations, the castles, the museums, the amber beaches, the snow-covered mountain ranges, the folk art and the folk. My folk. My people. And then come home and paint it all! And then I'd like to put together a photo book of the trip as a companion piece to the family history that I will no doubt be motivated to write after experiencing all that inspiring stuff, LOL! That's my dream. Some day, but not likely in 2018.

11 Year Blogoversary and DNA Results

Today is the anniversary date for Creative Gene. It's been 11 years since I first began blogging. The last few years have had very few posts, but in spite of how it may have appeared to my readers, it was always alive in my heart.

I have done a bit of reflecting lately on my years of blogging. The inspiration for that came from my friend Barbara Poole's blog, Life From The Roots. My experience has been similar to hers in some ways but very different in others. For instance, she started out blogging only about genealogy and more recently added other topics... and lots of her wonderful photography! I would say things went just the opposite for me.

I started Creative Gene as a blog for all of my creative pursuits, especially creative writing, but then I had to eliminate everything but genealogy to be taken seriously on the topic. Heck, in the early days I couldn't get listed on Cyndi's List because my blog apparently seemed more "personal" than "genealogy". And so I created separate blogs for my photography and digital scrapbooking and even started a blog for one line of my family intending to create additional ones for other lines (thankfully, that never happened).

In the early days, I was still trying to figure things out. When I started writing blog posts on genealogy there weren't many role models for me to follow. I was only able to find a handful of others writing blog posts about genealogy back then and they didn't seem to be experts on the subject either. ;-) So I found myself in uncharted waters and had to figure things out as I went along.

I made my share of "mistakes", like including too many other topics in a "genealogy blog". It wasn't important to me to be known as a "genealogy blog" except that search engine listings were hard to come by back then. The more you used a particular word in blog posts the higher your ranking on Google was for that topic. (Their algorithms were more primitive back then. ;-) And being a web site designer, that was very important to me.

In later years, the multiple blogs I'd created and the need to post to them with some frequency to maintain a search engine ranking, became impossible to continue. Just not enough hours in a day.

But Creative Gene lived on while the others faded away. Of course, Creative Gene was helped along by the Carnival of Genealogy. Oh what a brilliant idea I had with that! I found so many like-minded (genealogy-minded) souls, who later became friends, with that writing project. Those were the good old days.

Today is a different day and time. I'm a different person. I continue to develop myself and my hobbies beyond genealogy, though I'll always feel a passion for it. I'm happy to currently be focused on organizing and writing about my family history instead of focusing on researching my genealogy and blogging about it. But on this, the 11th anniversary of Creative Gene, I'm still here keeping it alive and well.

Thanks to all who've followed me along the way. You've made it fun! And a special thank you to all the blogging friends I've made along the way. You've enriched my life in so many ways. I value your friendship.

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And to end this post I'm going to shift gears in a different direction. I got my autosomal DNA test results the other day, and my brother's too. No big surprises but definitely one little one.

My ethnic makeup:
European: 96% (90% Eastern European (Poland); 6% Western and Central European (Germany/France/Switzerland)
Central/South Asian: 4% (This is "the little surprise" because the map shows this to be roughly in the area of Afghanistan... didn't see that one coming ;-)

My brother's ethnic makeup:
European: 100% (95% Eastern European (Poland); 5% Southern European (Southern Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece)

I've been on vacation for the past couple of weeks so I haven't put any time into my plan for organizing and writing my family history. Hopefully, I'll accomplish more in the next month.

Progress is Slow

Good news! I did find those Slownik Geograficzny entries I was looking for! Yeah!

I've also been able to find some family information on a website I visited. By Googling "Wojnicz", one town my Mizera family is from, I found a link to Nekropole.info. I'd heard of the site before but hadn't made the effort to check it out. It turns out that it has the burials listed for the Wojnicz Municipal Cemetery. I was able to find the death date for one of my grandmother's brother's. Yeah! And I may have found the death year for her other brother too but I need to have that confirmed by another source to be sure. No luck finding the death date for grandma's sister yet. And it looks like if her parents were buried there, they aren't anymore.

More good news. I received some information from the Wojnicz parish priest via the genealogist I'd contacted in Poland. I was sent copies of the birth/baptism register entries for one of my grandmother's brothers and her sister. I already had these images from LDS films, BUT, these same entries from the priest had notations of their marriages including the names of their spouses. Yeah! Sort of. Because they aren't marriage records, they don't have all the regular details you would expect to find on a marriage record from the 1920s and 1930s... like the names of the parents of the bride and groom, their ages, addresses, witnesses, etc. So I have some information but not enough info for me to be able to trace the spouse's ancestral lines. :-( Oh well, I am still hopeful that the genealogist I hired will be able to find the actual marriage records for me. Until then, I'm grateful for the progress made. :-)

And one stellar bit of good luck to add! In going through my brother's old slides (taken during the years he was in Vietnam), we came across a family photo taken when he was home on leave. It's a picture of my whole family, both of my parents, my two brothers, and me. What's the big deal, you wonder? It's the only one I've ever seen of all of us in the same room at the same time. I know. Sad, right? Well, mom was almost exclusively the picture-taker and she didn't have a camera with a timer. So she was never in the family pictures, not that there were all that many pictures taken of family events. I screamed and jumped for joy when I saw the slide photo. I didn't think to take a picture of the projected image at the time but my brother was kind enough to do the slide show again and that time I had my camera with me. It will take a LOT of work in Photoshop to make a decent photo from that projected imaged but it's all I have to work with and I'm so very happy to have it. One day my brother may get around to having his slides scanned but that's not in his plans in the near future.

And the last good bit of info I acquired this past month was my Aunt Helen's marriage record from a trial subscription to FindMyPast.com. My mom told me that her sister eloped to Ohio when she got married (1940) but until now I wasn't able to find a record of her marriage. I have it now! Yeah!

The bad news is, this is about all I can say about my genealogy endeavors for the past month. I wasn't able to put in time getting more comfortable with Scrivener. I fear that I will have forgotten what I learned by the time I get it fired up again. And I haven't made any progress in searching my hard drives.

I got sidetracked with Bullet Journaling (BuJo) and that took up the time I might have spent in Scrivener. Let me say a few words about BuJo. I'm excited about the idea of it but the real world practice of it has left me a bit underwhelmed. I created a personal BuJo, tracking my meals, sleep, steps, mood, general health and including task lists and a calendar for future endeavors. It all looks good on paper but I find myself repeatedly recording the same things over and over again (I already track much of this digitally in phone apps). To me, redundancy means wasted time. If I eliminate the stuff I'm already tracking digitally all I'm left with is a standard journal of daily thoughts and activities. Not that that's a bad thing, but I don't find it necessary. And my days are full enough of necessities (my To-Do List) that I already struggle to find time for my painting, photography, and genealogy. Much as I'd like to add daily journaling, it just isn't in the cards right now. I may try to keep it going through October (in a modified version) because I have some exciting personal stuff coming up then but I'm thinking after that I'll let it go in favor of a genealogy BuJo to help me stay on top of my genealogy-oriented organization/research/family-history-writing prep.

I will be spending much of October doing non-genealogy related things so I've not made up specific goals for the month. I'll just have to fit time in here and there as I can. But, I did send in my DNA test kit, and gave my brother his test kit. So I may see some kind of results from those in October. Hope so!

Till next time!

The Plan's Beginnings

It's been roughly a month since my last blog post. I thought I'd update the status of my family history writing project over the last 30 days.

1. With loads of help from my genealogy friends on Facebook, I made the decision to write about my Mizera family line first. That was a big hurdle/decision and one I'm feeling good to have made. 
2. I've made a sincere effort to learn my way around Scrivener. I started with the "Quick Start" video tutorials first and once I felt comfortable with those basics I made my way through the rest of the video tutorials. I have not "memorized" everything about the program but have familiarized myself with much of it. I think that is satisfactory for now. 
3. I started assembling some online information about my grandmother's ancestral village in Scrivener. I'm still a little unsure about how to use (where to put) info that I'm collecting. But, I'm moving ahead and will adjust the way I'm doing things as necessary. 
4. I met with a friend who gave me the name of a researcher who lives in the area of my Mizera ancestral village (Wojnicz). I contacted that individual by email and he indicated that he would need to write a letter to the local parish to obtain the records I was interested in. We are waiting to hear back from that parish to see if they will allow him access to their records. The records I'm hoping to get are: the marriage records for 3 of my grandmother's siblings, their death records as well, and the birth records of any/all of their children. 
5. I was able to structure my genealogy time one week out of the last four. It was a bit more difficult than I thought it would be to plan the time and stick to the plan. 

My goals for the next month are:

1. Continue to collect information about Wojnicz and assemble it in Scrivener. I'll need to practice importing digital photos, text, and web pages. 
2. Start combing through my hard drives for the vital records and digital photos of my Mizera family. Finding them will be a chore since I haven't consolidated my data files over the years... some are here, some are there, etc. 
3. Start looking for printed photos, handwritten letters, and email regarding my Mizera family. I know that stuff is around here somewhere...
4. Continue to familiarize myself with Scrivener. Watching a few more videos wouldn't hurt.
5. Hopefully move forward with getting those vital records from the parish in Wojnicz. 
6. Structure my time and make genealogy a priority.

And now I'm off to find those Slownik Geograficzny entries I translated a while back... where the heck did I put those anyway??? Wish me luck!

A Plan for Writing a Family History

The time has come to begin the process of writing my family history. The Polish government archives' online project hasn't gotten but a few of my family's vital records posted online (which is what I've been waiting on) but I'm feeling the urge to move forward with my writing anyway. I can always hold up after the first drafts are written (before editing) and wait for more records to come online at that point. No reason to keep procrastinating before even starting, eh?

To begin a project of this size I need a plan and here's what I've come up with.

I'm thinking I'll devote 2 afternoons a week, for six months (Aug.1, 2016 - Jan. 31, 2017) to organizing my my genealogy information for one of my family lines (which line is yet to be determined) and getting familiar with Scrivener software. Then, for the month of February 2017, I'll join the Family History Writing Challenge and see if I can't get the first draft of one family line written in 28 days. I participated in NaNoWriMo a couple times several years ago and really enjoyed the camaraderie and motivating tips I received. I'm hoping the Family History Writing Challenge will do the same for me.

If this plan works, I could have the first draft of the history of one line of my family written early next year. Yeah! I don't know if this is a good plan, a realistic plan, or even a lousy plan, but it's a plan. And that's what I'm starting with.

My big decision at this point is which of my 4 grandparents' lines to write about first. I can make a case for any of the 4 but no case is stronger than any other. Should I tackle the family line I have the most info on first and get that out of the way? Or perhaps I should write about the family line I have the least info on because it would be the easiest to do and good practice for the other lines... Maybe I should write the histories in the order I researched/discovered the family lines. Or maybe I should just go with my gut. Checking gut... Nope. That won't work. My gut has absolutely nothing to say on the matter. ;-)

What do you think? Have you written your family histories? How did you decide which line to write about first? Are you glad you did it that way? What advice do you have for me?

Software Complicating My Life!

The last couple of weeks didn't go exactly as I'd planned. I did get to my local FHC to look at films. I didn't find what I was looking for but at least I know that the films I'd previously put on indefinite status are still there. :-) And I got to spend some time with my best genealogy pal in the process. Bonus! :-)

I didn't get to my scanning. I didn't get any more Słownik Geograficzny entries translated. However, I did continue my correspondence with one of my "cousins". Unfortunately, we aren't cousins by blood but I'm more convinced than ever that we are connected by marriages. Let's put it this way, I can attach her name to my family tree but Legacy says we aren't related. Anyway, we've been sharing information, stories and documents. Thus far, she's shared more with me than I with her but I'm hoping that will reverse soon. It's been fun!

I've been using Legacy Family Tree software as my primary database for some time now (10+ years). A while back, when they released their mobile apps, I purchased Roots Magic.  I really only used it to give myself access to my genealogy on my iPad and cell phone. Meanwhile, I've been waiting patiently for Legacy to create and share their own mobile apps. But I'm guessing at this point that's not going to happen. I've been considering switching over to Roots Magic as my primary database since they seem to be moving forward in a direction I can appreciate and find beneficial. Then the "working relationship" with Ancestry.com happened and that made me reconsider again. My concern was about Roots Magic's mobile apps. Would they continue to support them and improve them now that their software will sync with Ancestry.com trees? It could be a cost savings move to discontinue their apps and instead offer mobile access via Ancestry.com trees. Perish the thought! I expressed my concern in the Roots Magic forum and was reassured that the mobile apps are here to stay. Yay! :-) I was so pleased to hear that that I'm planning to purchase the newest version of Roots Magic just to support the company.

And just as I'd gotten that bit of genealogy-related software decision making dealt with, Google dropped a bomb on my world. They've chosen to discontinue improving and supporting Picasa. They haven't added any new features in quite a while now and you know how that goes... if you're not moving forward you're falling behind. And Google isn't one to fall behind on something they value. So in a way, I guess I suspected something like this would happen. I can't begin to put into words how bummed I am about this. Those who know me know that photography is an essential part of my being. And Picasa has been my go-to software for tagging and organizing my photos and scans for years and years and years. I'm must admit, I'm secretly hoping that Google will sell off Picasa to another company the way Ancestry.com did with Family Tree Maker. I know it's not likely to happen but I'm not ready to give up hope! (I'm still hurting from Google's decision to discontinue Reader a while back and I still haven't found a replacement feed reader I like!)

I spent much of the past weekend looking for a tagging and organizing software product. The Adobe products (Lightroom and Photoshop Element's Organizer) have to be eliminated from consideration because their tags are proprietary. They can only be seen within Adobe products. Unfortunately, the same is true for the Corel software products. :-((((( I downloaded and tried out a few others but each was either too complex or too simplistic. Yah, I know. Just call me Goldilocks. ;-) As this new week begins, I still haven't found a good substitute software. I'm open to suggestions/recommendations if you have any!

Well, so one thing led to another. In the course of my tagging software quest I came to the realization that I wouldn't have to be so dependent on tags if my digital file system was better organized. This isn't really a revelation to me. I've known it for some time. Like most people starting out, I had no idea my genealogy research would result in my needing multiple hard drives to store all the documents, scans, email, and photos I've accumulated. I've been telling myself for years that I need to organize all that "stuff" better but what fun is that when I can be moving my research forward, lol! And honestly, backups have become a nightmare with some stuff on this external hard drive and some stuff on that one. I really, really need to organize and consolidate. I just don't want to be bothered with it. :-P

I know that having all my digital genealogy files organized will help me gather the info I need to write my family histories. And I'm determined to move forward with that writing project later this year. So I'm going to bite the bullet and focus on organizing all my digital genealogy "stuff" now. I don't have a specific goal for this next week other than to get started with the organizing, keep looking for a photo/document tagging product, and get over to the Detroit Public Library to do some research this weekend.

Till next week!

Another Week

Last week was a good week. It was a productive week too. I completed the Słownik entries for my Mizera family villages. :-) I feel like I did some of these translations years ago but who knows where they are now, or what format they may have been saved in. I searched my hard drive before I started on these translations last month but I could only make guesses as to what I might have called the folder(s) I stored the previous translations in. And my guesses were not fruitful. So the attempted translations will continue, but not this week.

I also spent about an hour every day checking out my ancestral villages in Poland via Google Street View. It is so fun to drive the country roads through Poland and pass through the villages that have only been dots on maps and descriptive entries in a language I don't speak before this. As I "drove" the streets I noticed that most of the images were taken in 2012 and 2013. I'm happy with that. I don't care that they aren't more current. What is a bummer though is that several of my ancestor's villages were not "filmed" by Google. It happens that they were the smallest of villages not particularly near a bigger town and not on a major road. The folks at Google probably didn't feel the need to drive all those extra miles for villages too small to have a stop light or even a stop sign. I can't help but hope they will film them the next time they send their cars out to film the roads, villages, town, and cities of Poland. Please Google! Please!

Of course as I was "driving", I couldn't help but wonder which parcels of property were owned/farmed by my ancestors. I'm certain the current house numbers don't correspond with the house numbers shown on the vital records of my relatives from 100-200 years ago. That got me thinking about how I could get that information. I got a tip from one of my best genealogy pals about online options for historical plat maps. I checked out the sites but no luck for any of my ancestor's villages. So then I thought about consulting a library local to the villages I wanted information on. I got on the internet and did some searching and found a library that looked promising. I sent off an email with fingers crossed and hoped that they could tell me where I could find historical plat maps for the area. It's been 7 days and no response. I also did a Google search for what I wanted with no expectation of actually finding anything. But much to my surprise I hit the jackpot! Sort of. I found a printed book of plat maps for the tiny villages I was interested in for the time period I cared about via World Cat. But, (you just new there had to be a "but" didn't you?) only 5 listed copies in the world, 2 in Poland, 2 in Germany, and one at Stanford University in California. I decided to try to request an inter-library loan through my local library. I filled out the request and got an email back the following day saying they couldn't find a copy available for loan. So I'm guessing that copy in the Stanford library was "reference" material. :-(  I have no plans to visit California anytime soon, and I can't really ask a genealogy volunteer to photograph an entire 258 page book for me, so I guess I'm out of luck.

On a better note, I heard from two "cousins" previously unknown to me in the last couple of weeks. They both contacted me regarding information they found on this blog. One of the many benefits of blogging! :-) One I have determined to be a 3rd cousin of mine via my paternal grandfather's line, and the other I would be related to by marriage via my paternal grandmother's line if we can in fact establish a connection. We're working on that. And that's a fun thing! I haven't had many (any) opportunities to collaborate with other genealogists on my family lines. :-)

So that's where I'm at as this first week of February begins. My plan for this week is to visit my local Family History Center to view whatever films might be available to aid my research for my Mizera, Lasky, and Lipa lines.

Lost in Translation

Another week and more translations done. :-)

I finished up the translations of my Lisowski family and have started on my Mizera family. I identified 8 villages/towns to translate the Słownik entries for and attempted 3 of the smaller ones.

The Lisowski village entries were from the Russian partition and if I thought those were a challenge (they were!) they were nothing compared to the Mizera village entries from the Austrian partition. I've not been able to make a complete translation of any of the Mizera villages so far. There are many, many terms that aren't listed on any of the keys/guides I'm using and Google Translate can't deal with them either. Sometimes I can make a guess by the context and content of other words but too often I'm just coming up blank. :-(  I'm going to continue to do what I can but I may have to consider asking someone who knows the language to help me out. They're not much good to me if I can only translate every other word, lol!

I made an interesting discovery in the few Mizera village translations I worked on. These villages are each between 1-2 miles apart. The other villages in the area seem to be similar distances apart. That's much closer proximity than I thought. What does that mean in terms of my research? I probably should be looking at villages further out for the individual records I'm missing, because "further out" still isn't all that far away.

I did a quick "drive-by" of some of the villages using Google Street View. What a thrill that was! I love technology. Now if I could just figure out how the old house numbers relate to the current street addresses I could visit some of the old family farms. How cool would that be???!!!

I intend to check out the films available at my local Family History Center to see if there are any on indefinite loan that might include those "further out" villages. I've checked online but no luck there. I think once I finish the Mizera village translations I may take a break and move on to another tedious but necessary project... scanning.

My goal for the next week is to attempt to complete translating the Mizera village entries.