That Genealogical Black Hole

It sucked me in again. I unraveled an especially tight knot and couldn't stop digging...sorry for the mixed metaphors. I think I found a crack in my genealogical brick wall. I'm still looking for some kind of corroboration to my theory, but I have high hopes.

I think I have figured out that brain fog makes me lean toward the research. To be honest, a lot of it is insanely tedious. Like plowing through pages of horrible handwritten lists of baptisms from the 1800's. In Latin. With creative spelling. And when my brain isn't firing on all burners, that's something I can do without thinking very hard. (Although it is very hard on the eyes.)

For some reason, I am especially susceptible to sinus infections in the winter. Maybe it's the dry air from the hot-air heat. And as I slowly sink into brain fog, that great time-sink of research drags me back in. I lose hours...sometimes whole days to skimming through newspapers from the 1880's or searching online for an image of a city a hundred years ago. Sigh.

So I'm a bit behind on the writing. And in consolation, I will leave you with a warning...

Don't leave your kitty in the sun too long...they melt.

Genealogical Rabbit Hole

It happened again. I meant to just look into one thing and suddenly I've lost the whole day.

Sometimes while tracking down stories of my ancestors I get so involved in chasing one more clue that I totally lose track of time.

A nibble on land records in the 1800s and a nibble in the newspapers and I'm gone for hours hunting down someone that might not even be related to me. And two days later I know their complete life story and it has no relation to my family at all.

I have a genealogical "brick wall". That's an ancestor I can't get past. I know the county in Ireland where he was born and a marriage record, so I should be happy with that, but I'm always trying to give it a nudge. He came over during the Potato Famine years and a lot of those records were lost.

It's frustrating because there is so much information available. And I am willing to page through old documents online, but they often don't have the dates I need.

Which leaves me behind on everything this week because I went a little overboard on the research.

Languages

As I do my genealogical research I am learning more about language. My father was born in Hungary. Their language is very complicated. I remember reading somewhere that language affects a person's world view. The Magyar language was that of nomads. I discovered when I was there that they had taken some Latin words for certain things like templom for church. It made sense to me that a nomadic people might not have words for things of permanence like buildings.

I was trying to translate some documents when I made another discovery. A lot of Hungarian names mean something. My own last name - szabo - means tailor. Almost all of the names I see in my father's village are either occupations or ethnicity. So there are Millers (Molnar), Carpenters (Acs), Cobblers (Varga), Blacksmiths (Kovacs), Germans (Nemet), Polish (Lengyel), Croatian (Horvat), and Friends (Barat). And of course the usual "son of" - Palfi, Simonfi, etc.

My grandmother's maiden name was Simonyai. I just learned recently that it meant she descended from people who came from Simonya, which is now Partizanske in Slovakia today, but was part of Hungary at one point.

When I wrote the first draft of Facade, (nearly 2 decades ago!) I threw in random names that I made up as I went. That was one of the criticisms I received - the names were too similar. For this rewrite, I took a good look at the names and made certain conventions by planet. If this one has a lot of double vowels, the next one shouldn't, and things of that sort. I already had a certain societal structure to each race so that attaching language restrictions felt right.

Now maybe I need to make some of those names mean something in their own languages. But maybe that's a rabbit hole I really shouldn't go down.

Looking back at 2014

Goodreads says that I read 19 books this year. I think I read more than that, but I've stopped reviewing the books I didn't like. I bought a couple of bundles this year that I still need to work my way through. But I also found some new favorite authors - Nathan Lowell, Chuck Wendig and Brian Staveley. I need to get back to reading more.

 

My computer died a horrible death in February and I bought a laptop to replace it. I was afraid that I would hate the keyboard, but luckily found one that is very comfortable. In fact, I think I type faster on it. So a happy ending there.

 

 

The garden did very well this year. Had a bumper crop of blueberries - almost 7lbs. I couldn't pick the last handful because of a yellow jacket nest under one bush. The veggie garden is now all raised beds. I think that's made a big difference. I'm still doing some rearranging, but I should have a couple more beds for next year.

 

I published Lethal Seasons in August. I sold a few copies. Buying ads does help sell the book. I started using a bit of marketing. And hopefully a few more people will hear about my books.

 

I've been working on Dark Deeds which will come out next month. In between, I've started rough drafts on Scattered Seeds with a May 2015 deadline.

 

Although I haven't sold many books this year, I managed to sell 3 times the number of the year before. A lovely increment, even though it's still miniscule.

 

 

In September, I went up to Kingston, NY to visit relatives and research my roots. All of my Irish relatives settled there. The photo is of the Hudson River from Rhinebeck, which is on the other side. Kingston is a working town. My ancestors worked in the shirt factory or the cigar factory, cutting bluestone for sidewalks, for the railroad or on the river. The next generation had some policeman, nurses and teachers. Kingston is still very much a working class town struggling to come out of the recession. It was very good to see that town and walk around it.



All in all a good year - travel, relatives, reading, writing and gardening. Here's hoping for to surpass it all in the coming year!

Roadtrip!

I'm off to Boston tomorrow for my nephew's wedding. Not sure how it is possible that he is old enough to get married, but apparently he is. I felt the same way when he graduated college. That's the amazing thing about kids - they keep getting older. I don't.

After the wedding, I am driving to Kingston, NY with my sister. We will reconnect with a few living relatives while I do some genealogy research. Oddly enough, all of my Irish relatives settled there after they came over. And so did a few German relatives through marriage.

My great-great-grandfather came over from County Roscommon in Ireland. His name was James Fitzgerald. And there is my "brick wall" relative, as we hobbyists like to call them. No middle name that I can find and no town of birth. I narrowed it down to 46 families in the county. I may have to wait till I can afford a trip over there to continue that research. Or spend a lot of money, which I don't have right now.

I am hoping to find a few clues in Kingston. The relatives who still live there might have pictures or documents tucked away somewhere. I've got my fingers crossed.

Dark Deeds is resting while the 1st reader is working through it. I've started outlining the 2nd book in the Changed World series. The working title for now will be Scattered Seeds. I've got a lot of ideas for it. And I think I may need to do some research for a couple parts. However, I don't think I will be doing much writing over the next week. I worked hard to get Dark Deeds done on time, so I feel that I deserve this little break. Yay! (Besides, it was on the schedule)

How is your September shaping up? Is it as busy as mine is turning out to be? School, weddings, writings, new books?

Ancestor's stories

As I am searching through records for my Hungarian relatives, all sorts of stories suggest themselves.

I had a marriage record that gave me a whole scenario. He was 18, she was 17. His job was listed as day laborer, hers as servant. Young kids in love, working hard. What could their dreams have been?

My grandmother's sister had 6 children. Or I should say that I found 6 records of birth with her listed as the mother. Then I found 5 records of death. Only one child survived. One child lasted a day, one lasted 10 months. I found it incredibly sad to post each death. So when I found the only surviving child's marriage record, I was so happy. Not only did he manage to survive to adulthood, he married and would probably start making grandkids.

I found a female relative that married late in life and the age difference was big - 30 years. She was in her forties and he was in his seventies. His occupation was listed as land owner. A step up from all the farmers in my family. She gave him one child. He died ten years after the marriage. Bet that was an interesting decade.

A cousin named Mihaly (Michael) married and had a son named Mihaly. The boy was born a few months after his father died fighting in WWI. The son died in WWII. His death was posted many years after the fact, cause of death roughly translated as "Disappeared in Russia".

The names make me wonder. I would say there must be some superstitions or traditions about using the same names. My relatives only seem to use 3-4 male or female names. The family tree software keeps asking me if I'm loading the same person over again. Each family names the kids after the parents and grandparents. So I end up with a Jozsef son of Jozsef who is also a son of Jozsef and on and on.

The other habit that seemed a bit morbid is reusing names. Very often I will find 2 children with the same name in the same family. That lets me know the first one died. It seems odd to me to name a child the same as a dead sibling. But perhaps it is to honor them. It has me coming up with all sorts of scenarios that need stories of their own. Are they names of saints? Or locals of authority? Considered safe or lucky?

The more I dig, the more questions I have. And the more stories present themselves

Updates on all fronts

First of all...

Our little orphan is thriving. And still trying to help me write. Some days she can be quite a challenge.

The garden is slowly coming back into order. I think it will take me every warm day over the winter to reclaim a garden from the chaos out there now. I've got wild berry bushes taking over the hill, walnut trees that I think the squirrels plant and weeds, weeds, weeds. A lot of work to get done over the next 4-5 months.

My dabbling in genealogy has become obsessive. I have to say that having access to all the information on the Internet is amazing. And the information slowly builds a picture. In some cases tracking one person will give me answers to other questions - like when a son marries and the mother-in-law lives with them. That is one of the only ways to track down a maiden name.

The last census released is from 1940. After that I have to rely on less reliable sources...like Facebook. Although, I have to say that some of the census information is a mess. One bad entry was that the Reis family was listed as Rice. Luckily I had all the names and ages of the kids and wife already, so I knew it was them. Or another time when a Katherine (or Catherine or Kathryn) was listed as Ratherine. It does take some digging. And I am really enjoying it.

My writing has stuttered and stalled around the genealogy. I have not been keeping to my schedule. Maybe it's the change of season, but I just didn't have the energy for it. I have made better progress this past week. And I plan to get back to my schedule of writing every day.

Computer Overload

I got a new computer.

I transferred all the files myself. I am extremely proud of myself for getting that done. Even though it took me two days and a whole lotta grief. I'm still loading odds and ends that I forgot about, like bookmarks.

The new computer has new software. With a learning curve. Things are not where I expect them to be. Some things are gone completely, I think, maybe, but I'm still looking. My picture viewer is different. My Outlook is a monster. I started using Chrome and that's all new too. Sigh.

In other news...

Bertie likes houseplants

Bertie still likes to help me work

Bertie likes to hide.

The black hole of family research continues to eat away my time. I find myself cruising through old newspapers reading stories over 100 years old. It's amazing what you can find. I have discovered that many of my relatives were entrepreneurs. There were a bunch of businesses started - a marble (stone not toy) company, a grocery store, jewelry store and an excavation equipment company.

The search for the relative that came over from Ireland has skidded to a halt. I may need to pay for some of that information, so I've put it on the back burner.

October has been an odd month. I didn't get a lot of writing done, but what I did was more in the way of outlining. It is helping me to see some holes that need fixing. New characters are cropping up and new settings. I'm still putting the pieces together. But I feel like I'm making some progress.

Catching Up

It's a rainy day, perfect for catching up with myself.

I haven't worked on End of the Lines all week. I've been listening to the audiobook recordings for Unintended Consequences. I have to say that hearing it in someone else's voice has me finding all sorts of things to fix. I may have rushed that one a little. I wanted it out of my brain. Other than typos, I don't think I will do any other fixing. I will just acknowledge them as a lesson and move on.

Hopefully, that audiobook will be available by mid-November.

I am still losing way too much time to the genealogy black hole. I am so excited to have found the LDS website. They had Hungarian Baptismal records through 1895, which was very helpful. I found a lot of relatives in there. Now I just need something a little more recent. The language is a barrier. Although Google Translate has worked well enough.

The Irish side isn't faring as well. All civil records were burned up in a fire in the 1920's (I think). That only leaves the parish records. I'm trying to narrow down a town in County Roscommon, but it's a big county.

I won't even mention the garden, which is an absolute jungle at this point.

And the new kitten is doing very well. Although she is still way too rambunctious and bite-y.

So you can see I've had a lot of distractions this month. I am hoping to get back on track with myself this week. I need to allocate time for things and stick to it. Lately I have been sliding past self-imposed deadlines and putting off things that need to be done.

Like getting a hair cut. Which I will do today.

Down the genealogy rabbit hole

This picture was taken at Maroon Lake in Colorado while I was there for my nephew's wedding in June of 2011.

Family.

Seems I have a lot of it. I got bit by the genealogy bug when I saw a free tree-building website. Who knew it was going to result in so many hours in lists and census pages? I am totally sucked in by the search.

My mother's side of the family came from Ireland, 1851, I think. They settled in upstate NY. Luckily they all stayed put and the local paper took note of everything - births, deaths and marriages. Now I need to jump over to Ireland and see if I can trace the family there. I think I have found the great-great-grandfather that came over. Luckily he was a mason, because his last name is insanely common.

My father's side is both harder and easier. He was born in Hungary. I know the village and my grandmother's maiden name. The big problem is that I don't speak Hungarian. And wow is that a hard language. The other problem, their village is tiny. I have doubts about finding any census information. Many records were lost in the wars over there. And I have lost touch with relatives, which were all my grandmother's siblings. Most likely all dead now.

But it is a merry chase trying to find this aunt or that great-uncle and they did what for a living? Amazing. I have had to limit my time because once I start digging, I lose hours!