GeneaBabble

If you’re not on Facebook yet, you should be. It’s a great way to keep in contact with friends and family. It’s also a great way to connect with people you haven’t seen in years.

After you open an account you should fill out various information about yourself. Facebook has a “People You May Know” feature which uses some of this information to find… well, people you may know! For instance, after I added my high school it showed me a list of long lost classmates.

You can also search for people by name, e-mail, school, place of employment, etc. Once you start finding people you know you should look at the list of their friends. You will very likely find even more people from your past. I’ve managed to come across cousins and other people from my past who I lost touch with years ago (although, as of this writing, I still haven’t contacted them - I’m awkward like that).

One excellent feature is that it allows people to enter former names. This is a great help when you’re looking for a woman that may have been married since you lost touch. I have noticed that most women seem to fill this out, but your mileage may vary.

Give it a try. Keep looking around and once you find people start asking questions. You may just find that cousin you haven’t seen since childhood who has that one missing piece of information on your grandfather that you’ve been searching for, or perhaps it may facilitate a family reunion.

I was just discussing cousin relationships on Twitter and came across this page that explains them very nicely with graphic examples. Simple stuff once you figure it out!

When I first started reading this article I imagined someone running around his backyard with a shovel digging for bones. That’s not exactly the case here, but if you’ve ever watched If Walls Could Talk then you know that gravestones are often found on private property. I’ve often wondered if it’s legal to dig up private cemeteries on your own property. I suppose it varies by jurisdiction. Honestly, I don’t care enough to actually look it up - I just needed something to write about.

Note that I do not condone digging up graves, even if it is your grandmother!

Does anyone happen to have any pics of strange doodlings or “notes” on tax maps or other drawings relevant to genealogy? I remember seeing a lake or some other feature drawn as a dog on a tax map in Trumbull County, OH, and some other oddities when I worked for a land surveyor. I wish I had saved copies of them. If anyone runs across such things let me know!

Well, here’s an article that claims that Obama may boost interest in genealogy, at least in Switzerland. I’ve noticed that my entry on Obama’s ancestors has had more comments than anything else on this blog. In fact, 8 comments is a lot for any genealogy blog it seems. What’s the deal? I guess genealogy isn’t (usually) controversial enough to cause people to comment. That’s fine with me!