New Year Traditions

As genealogists,we should be documenting all sorts of family traditions, including your New Year's Celebration traditions.

The top four traditions are ones my family follows. Which of these does your family do?

• Eat pork on New Year's Day - because pigs root forward and are a symbol of prosperity. Turns out this tradition, and the following one, come from my German ancestors.
• Eating sauerkraut or cabbage on New Year's Day.
• Making a loud noise at midnight - this can be firing off fireworks, guns, or more recently, blowing a horn.
• Watching the ball drop at Time's Square. New York City started this tradition in 1907 and now it is televised throughout the country.
• Singing of Auld Lang Syne - covered in this blog POST.
• Watching the Rose Bowl Parade.
• Watching the various football games.
• Attend a HUGE New Year's Eve party where everyone gets drunk and...
• Kisses someone.
• Corned beef and cabbage on New Year's Day.
• Eating fish on New Years Eve - my Sicilian relatives used to do this one.



Hoppin John, a dish featuring black-eyed peas a
popular New Year's tradition in the American South.
Photo courtesy of Wikipedia Commons

• Eating black-eyed peas, popular in the American south.
• In some Latin American countries, the color of your undergarments influence your new year. Red will bring love and romance, white leads to peace and harmony, green will ensure health and well being, and gold brings wealth.
• Setting off fireworks, comes to us from China, the birthplace of fireworks.
• In the Philippines, circles represent prosperity, so many people will wear polka dots and jangle the round coins in their pockets.
• In Japan, the Buddhist temples strike their gongs 108 times to expel 108 types of human weaknesses.

• In Swiss  homes, dollops of whipped cream or ice cream are dropped on the floor to symbolize the richness in the new year.
• Become introspective about how the last year went and make resolutions for the new year.
• In Spain, eat 12 grapes to ensure 12 months of good luck.



Ryoanji, temple bell, Kyoto City, Japan
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

• In Denmark, old plates and glasses are smashed against the doors of friends and relatives houses.

Please share your unique New Year's traditions in the comments section below...






SOURCES:
"New Year's traditions explained" USA Today, published 25 Dec 2013.
"New Year Traditions from Around the World" by Victoria Doudera, Old Farmer's Almanac.
"Auld Lang Syne and other New Year's Customs" by Borgna Brunner, Two Blonds Blog, published December 27, 2007. 
"World's Strangest New Year Traditions" Travel and Leisure, published November 15, 2013.
"New Year's Eve (Silvester)" GermanFoodGuide.com  

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!

Whatever holiday you celebrate this season, enjoy your time with family!

What To Buy Your Favorite Genealogist This Holiday Season!

The holidays are upon us once again! Are you having trouble finding that perfect gift for your favorite genealogist? Or are you considering beginning your own research and want to give your friends and family members some gift ideas? Well, I have done a little research and found a few items you might want to purchase.

DNA tests!

The topic of the nightly news and so many commercials! I received a DNA test last year for Christmas and I have to say, it was pretty cool. This time of year many of the companies are selling the tests at a lowered holiday price. However, beware there are some subtle differences in the tests offered, so make sure you do a little research.
You can check out the website, Smarter Hobby. They did some tests and here are their results:


If you do not know the difference between YDNA and mtDNA or know the meaning of "autosomal", you might want to visit the Smarter Hobby site: https://www.smarterhobby.com/genealogy/best-dna-test/  It does a good job defining these terms and giving a more in depth report on each of the company's tests. 

Books

Here are some great books which will either help a person get started or help with ongoing research:







Tips & for the Family Historian – by Elizabeth Shown Mills (this book is recommended by Kathy)

"Whether you are a researcher in need of inspiration, or a speaker or writer in search of a zinger to punctuate your thoughts."

  

The Researcher's Guide to American Genealogy 4th Edition  – by Val D Greenwood 

 It teaches the basics of doing genealogy research and where to find the necessary records. This is helpful for a new genealogists, because it shows not all records are available online.

The Family Tree Cemetery Field Guide: How to Find, Record, and Preserve Your Ancestors' Graves by Joy Neighbors

The title is self-explanatory. It is a great addition to a genealogists library. Sometimes it is the only resource for birth and death dates.

Evidence Explained:  Citing History Sources from Cyberspace 3rd Edition Revised – by Elizabeth Shown Mills

This is an exceptional gift and any genealogist would love to get it! This book helps cite all different types of sources, which is necessary to validate research. 

Organize Your Genealogy: Strategies and Solutions for Every Researcher  - by Drew Smith

Does your researcher (or you) have piles of paper and research everywhere!? This book will help organize all of the information collected and show you different ways to keep the resources and data safe and easily accessible.

   

The Genealogy Do-Over Workbook by Thomas MacEntee

This book is for someone who has been researching and collecting information for a few years and has hit a "brick wall".  The author has an outline you can follow which helps you organize and rethink the resources you have already found. It will help in jump starting your research. 

  Software 

Many genealogist would like a software program to help them organize research and resources.  I  found a website which gives a Top Ten Review of the different software programs available. I like this site because you can also visit the software company's website to view and explore the different programs. The site is called "Top Ten Reviews" and it reviews all types of technology and software. You can check it out with this link: http://www.toptenreviews.com/software/home/best-genealogy-software/

Scanners

Scanners are for the genealogist who travels to courthouses and archives, but doesn't want to spend an arm and a leg on copies or their phone doesn't take very good photographs. 

Epson WorkForce DS-30 Portable Document & Image Scanner

The above scanner or a scanner similar to this, is a little pricey. Somewhere around $120. This device will scan larger documents (8 1/2 x 14) and photos.  Once the item is scanned it can be sent to an email or online cloud service. It has correction tools that can edit the images, auto-size documents, enhance text quality and correct image skew. It is lightweight and can be taken anywhere.

VuPoint Magic Wand Wireless Portable Scanner

The VuPoint Magic Wand scanner (or one like it) is also handy to have. You slide the "wand" over the document or page you want to scan. It saves the image on a memory card and then you can download the image to your computer or device. It is small and light and easy to take with you anywhere. I have one and I take it so I can scan documents and resources without damaging them. I do recommend practicing before you use it for research. You want your images to be clear and if you don't slide the wand just right, the images can be blurry.

  

Family History Kit

This is a good DIY project which you can make more personal. Buy a fun bag and fill it with items that will help a person do research. Here are a few ideas:

Notebooks

• Pens & Pencils
• Sticky notes
• Paperclips or binder clips (you can buy these in multiple colors)
• Binders with page dividers
• Magnifying glass (one with a light is cool)
• Couple of candy bars or nutritious granola bars - sometimes we lose track of time and miss lunch.

Just For Fun

If you want to buy a whimsical gift, you will find some at the Café Express website, http://www.cafepress.com/+genealogy+gifts


Here are a few ideas:

 

Mouse Pad



I could have listed hundreds of ideas, since I have a long list of my own, but I tried to show you some good, basic items. Have fun shopping! Happy Holidays!

A Big Thanks to Kathy Petras for allowing me to once again be a guest blogger on her wonderful blog! - Lisa Rienerth 

Kinship: It's All Relative

My own family research was prompted in part by trying to figure out just how I was related to Aunt Gini (my Mom's First Cousin.) And part of that quest, is figuring out just what we call these relationships. Parents, brothers, sisters, grandparent relationships are pretty straight forward. But what about all those cousins and in-laws. And what about "removes"??? How do we best define those relationships?

Because this is a question that comes up frequently when working with library/genealogy patrons, I thought we should take a look at the book that has all the answers: Kinship; It's All Relative by Jackie Smith Arnold. I have been using this resource for years and have my own copy at home.

This second edition was published in 2012. The book is available on Amazon

 and is on the shelves in the Franklin Sylvester Room at the Medina Library.

The book is only about 144 pages long, but packs a lot into those pages. Some of its highlights are:

• On overview of U.S. marriage laws. How old do you have to be? How closely related you can't be. Which states accept common-law or live-in marriages.
• Definitions of families.
• Grandparents visitation rights table and resource list.
• How names are passed on.
• Medical aspects of inheritance.
• NEW! In the back there is a chapter on same-sex marriages.

But my favorite features are the charts that help make sense out of complicated relationships. And these are what I refer patrons to all the time.

Do you want to know how closely you are related to someone? The following chart is called a Consanguity Chart. It specifically shows how closely you are related by blood:

This chart shows how closely related your are. For example, you
are just as closely related to your children as you are to your
parents. You share 50% of your DNA with them.

The above chart includes nieces and nephews.


But this is the chart that I use and refer library patrons to most frequently:

This chart helps ferret out your relationship to cousins, first cousins, second cousins once-removed etc.  I will fill it in to show you some examples. This is from my MASON family. Only the first names are given.

From this we can tell that John Sherwood and Mag/Ruth are siblings, children of John Dana.
Charlie and Jack are first cousins. Though Jack's biological mother was Mag, he was adopted by her sister, Ruth. Rose and Ruth are second cousins, and so forth, as shown in the chart.

But what relationship is Charlie to Josh, or Ruth to Stella?

To determine that, we look at Josh's direct line ancestor who is directly across from Charlie. In this example that would be Jack. That gives us the degree of cousin - First Cousins.  But Josh and Charlie are not of the same generation. We have to count how many generations apart they are to get the "removes". They are three generations apart so that makes them first cousins, three times removed.

Can you figure out the relationship between Ruth (daughter of Jack) and Stella?

The book also explains what happens when siblings from one family marry siblings from another family. They are double first cousins. For example, John Sherwood from the chart above married Dorothy Pauline. Her brother, Floyd, married Rosie, sister to John Sherwood. There isn't a good chart for this one in the book.

John Sherwood ← sibling → Rose Kathleen

     married                                 married

Dorothy Pauline ← sibling → Floyd Ernest

But I did find this one online:

Genealogy Pages by Paul Stoneburner

Using the example from above:

Charlie, Dixie and Loretta are double first cousins
and share as much DNA as siblings.
This does NOT make them siblings, though.

If you have a relationship not described above, check the book!

NEW TO THE MEDINA LIBRARY SHELVES!

Brand new to the Medina Library and still shelved with the NEW non-fiction is this book from Jonathan Scott, A Dictionary of Family History The Genealogists' ABC. This British publication offers insight into how British research differs from US research - starting with the lingo!

I have already used resources listed within to gain further insight into my TAGG/HEIGHTON families. Using the index at the Northamptonshire Archives, Heritage and History, I have discovered that William TAGG was apprenticed to a brushmaker. That is the occupation William followed when he emigrate to the US. And both Jeffrey and Joseph HEIGHTON took on apprentices for their blacksmith shops!

Anyone with British ancestry will want to check this one out!