5 TV Shows That Teach Us About Genealogy

We’ve all watched and enjoyed specific television shows dedicated to genealogical audiences, such as “Who Do You Think You Are?” and “Genealogy Roadshow”. But are you learning about genealogy from other TV shows?

 

“Catfish”

The investigation phase of each episode is filled with techniques to search the internet and social media for a person’s real identity and location. You may have had an ancestor who used aliases or whose images might be clues.

 

“The Curse of Oak Island”

Family stories can turn into treasure hunts.

There is always a grain of truth in the stories that are handed down. It may take a lot of digging to find the truth. As a metaphor for the search for ancestors, the number of pits promise riches but yield conflicting clues.

 

“The Big Bang Theory”

No ancestor was an island. Each person is surrounded by family, neighbors, and a community.

Neighbors like Penny remind us that sometimes our ancestors did not travel far to find spouses. Coworkers can become part of a family of choice. Those non-blood relatives may have pictures you have never seen and stories about your ancestors you have never heard.

 

“Myth Busters”

Make a hypothesis! Assemble all possible information you can. Then test it, to see if it is: busted, confirmed, or plausible. Modify your hypothesis as necessary.

 

“The Lone Ranger” and reruns of other favorite shows

Are any of the shows that you enjoyed as a child rerun on television? Watching them may be a pleasant enough experience on its own. When you watch them, they may trigger memories of times and places. Those memories are great to capture. But a deep memory may also be the key you that unlocks a clue to solve one a pesky family mystery.

Researching Your Wisconsin WWI Ancestors

When you are researching Wisconsin WWI soldiers, you can use the Wisconsin Veterans Museum’s World War I Database at the Wisconsin Veteran’s Museum website.

 

 

You can search by Name, City, County, Unit, or Branch, or any combination. Wildcard characters do not appear to be supported, but entering parts of the last name did return some results. For example, entering “Back” in the last name field returned last names like “Backes”, but also names like “Alaback” that have the “back” somewhere in the last name. Be sure to  remember to try alternate spellings of the names.

Usually I search for members of the 51st Pioneer Infantry, using the terms: 51st Pioneer. The database returned two members.

 

 

Click on the Request Info link to request or share information about the veteran with the Museum.

 

This database has enough flexibility to help research whole families, and whole cities or towns.

Digital Maryland

If you are researching Maryland ancestors, Digital Maryland may be a destination on the web for you.

The mission of Digital Maryland is “to facilitate the digitization and digital exhibition of the historical and cultural documents, images, audio and video held by Maryland institutions.”

It’s like having a catalog to what is digitally available in Maryland. There are great treasures like maps, city directories, and photos. Clicking on the links will take you to the digitized collections, hosted on the institutions’ websites, or to information about the collection. Since this is database covers so many other databases, it can be a bit challenging.

You can search for topics you are researching or check out the list of digital collections,

I searched using the term:

map

returned a variety of maps from Maryland, and the surrounding area, draw in many years. There were also maps from around the world.

Fields on the left of the search results will let you fine tune your search.

Hover over the thumbnail image or the title to see a popup window with information about the item. Click on the thumbnail image or the title to navigate to the item itself.

After you search, make sure that you are starting a new search, selected from the dropdown menu for “within results”. Otherwise your search will be limited to results within the previous search results.

When you are on a page containing search results, the default mode for searching appears to be “within results”

From the Advanced Search page, you can specify that you are searching “All Collections”, or limit the search by selecting specific collections.

Take some time to try searching for places, names, and other genealogical important data in Digital Maryland.

 

Researching Missouri WWI Ancestors

As you may know from my lectures and book, it is important to find your WWI ancestor’s military organization. An online way to find out about your Missouri WWI Ancestors is to search the Missouri Digital Heritage website.

 

When you are ready to search, Click on “Search the Soldier’s Records Database”, Scroll down to the search boxes or click here.

There are records from many conflicts, from the War of 1812 to WWI. You can leave the selection at All.

Be sure to enter the name as: Last Name, First Name

PVT Acie Sparkman was from Missouri, he was with Ambulance Company 40 at Camp Wadsworth, SC, then served with the 51st Pioneer Infantry Co. L. He died overseas. I entered:

Sparkman, Acie

And selected “All Service Records”

There was only one record returned.

Click on “View Details”.

Researching Indiana WWI Ancestors

As you may know from my lectures and book, it is important to find your WWI ancestor’s military organization. An online way to find out about your Indiana WWI Ancestors is to check the Indiana United States Veterans of the Great War I.

It is worth reading the home page about Indiana in the Great War. (Beware of the links on the right side of the page; they take you to other websites.) The links on the left are to WWI topics, which include information gathered from oral interviews conducted with Indiana WWI veterans.

In addition to searching for the veteran’s service summary as described below, remember to search the website for your ancestor. There is a search box on the left menu, but I had better luck using Google. I searched for the ancestor name and used the site specifier, for example:

“Ernest Franklin Hess” site:www.wwvets.com

When you are ready to search for your Indiana WWI veteran, click on the search button on the home page, or go here.

You will need to use both a Last Name and a First Name for a search. I was not able to use a wildcard for the first name.

Searching for John Smith returned surnames that are Smith and begin with Smith

Clicking on the first result gave me a service summary.

I searched for a different name in the database:  McMahon, James. All three of the detailed results showed: “Listed in the Indiana War Memorials records having served in WWI”, which does not provide much help to a researcher.

The sources used to compile the database can be found here.