Zoom

 Anybody interested in participating in occasional Zoom family history meetings?

Zoom is an app that you can download for free, the Zoom client.  It allows you to sign in to a Zoom meeting that somebody sets up.

When my father was in the veterans' home, they set up Zoom meetings so I could talk to him.  You see and hear each other, and everyone else who's there.  It's not like chat where you have to go back and forth.  It's like being in the same room.

It takes a little getting used to; there are audio and video controls to set.  You can mute you microphone.  You have to get the Zoom meeting link from whoever is setting up the session unless it's a regularly scheduled meeting, then you just have to start up the Zoom app and sign in.

In any case, having just responded to a couple of people on Facebook, after they posted a response to something I posted earlier, it occurred to me that, if people are interested in exchanging family history information in real time, on Zoom, we can do that and I'd love that.

I will set up a new Zoom account for this purpose.  Email me at familytracker@yahoo.com if you're interested and I'll schedule a Zoom meeting.

Let me know.  Thank you.

                     

Family history research can be emotional

 I'm working on a profile in WikiTree now that has really touched me. I had adopted the abandoned profile a few months ago because the surname is Platner and I have Platners in my family tree. The information already in the profile had originally been uploaded from a GEDCOM file so had mostly unsourced information. 

 As I researched him at Ancestry, I noticed that there might be a photo of him so I looked and there I saw, clearly, a man used up by life: a thin, gaunt face with sunken cheeks and an obvious goiter. We don't use photos without permission or links to them or that we own. I thought I can't use this photo; he makes me feel sad. 

Looking around, I saw a link to a possible story about him so I clicked on the link. Someone who had worked for him as a kid had written a short paragraph about a boy who had been kicked out, by his father, at age 14, abandoned, who grew into a man who was a farmer and local inventor, who had 2 farms and 120 dairy cows, married and had at least 6 children. 

So, the photo showed the face of a man who'd had a hard life but who built a good life for himself and his family. I am moved by the photo and the story. I've contacted the person who posted both to Ancestry for permission to use both in my profile of Glenn Platner of Iowa. Time will tell if his Platner family and mine are connected.

I started researching family history out of curiosity; to find out more about some family legends.

But, over these decades, I've come to think of it as a way to honor my ancestors and acquaint other family members with them and their lives.

                       

Why are so many people descended from royalty?

 Just checking connections at WikiTree this morning, I found quite a few members of royalty in the list of people I'm supposed descended from.  Well, first of all, I haven't found those connections, so I'm not entirely convinced.  If I follow a single line back to that supposed ancestor, I find a lot of breaks in the line; lots of assumptions and guesses that so-and-so was the father of so-and-so.  It's interesting to see the possibility but I haven't accepted it completely.

But, as I looked up a couple of people I'm supposedly descended from, I wondered:  Why are so many people descended from royalty?  After all, there were only a handful of royals, initially.  They didn't all run around the countryside impregnating women; although, apparently, some of them did.

One reason, of course, is that people see and believe what they want to see and believe and have embellished their family tree with royal ancestors.  If they could they would claim descent from fairy princesses.

But, one reason is that royalty had to substantiate their royalty through descendancy and through genealogical trees.  They kept records of their families.  Here, I have to say that those family trees wee often embellished and falsified as well.  Watch the historical movies where there were conflicts over who was the legitimate heir to a throne.

The point is that they kept records.  In the meantime, commoners had enough to do just to stay alive; with hunger and wars.  None of them could read or write.  Babies were born at home.  Masses of people, through centuries, lived and died and only their immediate families knew or cared.

So, the reason so many people seemed to be descended from royalty is because many of us; probably most of us; can't find our ancestors because there were no records of them.  Sad but true.