Yesterday I wrote a short post about Google's announcement of a new service called Knol. I also said I looked for, but didn't find a genealogy Knol. Well, Keith at Geni.com just published the first genealogy Knol. The article is a very well written introduction to genealogy including links to resources a beginner could use to get started. I'm hoping more genealogists start Knols and write about some of their more interesting ancestors, or about some of their more frustrating research problems.
I've never been a big fan of the whole social networking direction the genealogy business is going towards. I felt this way because my focus is on developing the stories of my ancestors rather than building family trees. After I wrote my post on Facebook a few days ago, my mind may be changing...ever so slightly. I received an email from a cousin in Colorado who helps me with my paternal (Italian) research. She was curious about the name "Fragale" popping up occasionally in our research and remembered there was a family with that name who were close friends to my grandparents when they lived in the coal mining towns north of Denver. This family was so close that one of them became my cousin's godmother. I figured if we could get in touch with members of this family we may be able to learn stories about our own family.
Once I got this info from my cousin I went to work. I found my cousin's godmother in the social security death index and with her date of birth, I begin working backwards. I found the family in the 1930 census and now had names of everyone plus tentative immigration dates. The 1920 census had the family living in Lafayette, Colorado - actually they were only two census pages away from my grandparent's family (by the way, I found this family using Ancestry.com's New Search and had no problems). I didn't have quite so much luck on immigration documents, but I mapped out a plan to look further for them this weekend.
It occurred to me this morning that working backwards like this, while fun, was moving me further away from the goal I was seeking - finding living people who can tell us about our family. I did a quick search for the name on Facebook and found dozens - I will have to weed my way through to select some potential candidates for contact. Who knows, maybe I'll get lucky.
Lots of new things going on in genealogy...guess I should be a bit more open minded.
Lisa,
I agree, people "our age" do rely on email and I do like the privacy it affords. Everything is just too public on Facebook and that will take a little getting used too. I'm going to keep using it and see what happend.
Thanks visiting and for commenting.
Tim
Posted by: Tim Agazio | July 25, 2008 at 03:50 PM
Hi Tim, I imagine that having a less common surname lends itself to connecting up with others at Facebook. A name like COOKE doesn't produce much contact. I joined Facebook last year and it was very quiet, and then about a month ago an explosion of genealogists joining. I think I heard something about Paul Allen blogging about it so that may have sparked it.
I enjoy seeing who's out there, but otherwise I don't think we're all real clear on how we'll benefit. Like most my age, I depend on email for communication. They are private, and folks "our age" (40 and over) check it pretty reliably. But the under twenty somethings have no problem with holding all their conversations on Facebook for the world to see. My kids rarely use email. And further inquiry leads me to think their other primary use is following musical bands. Not quite our focus :-) Will be interesting to see what genealogists do with it. Groups seem to be one highlight. I checked out Knols after your blog...hhmmm....Keep up the interesting posts. Lisa
Posted by: Lisa Louise cooke | July 25, 2008 at 12:11 PM