They Added Their Own Memories to Family History Booklet!

For Thanksgiving, I gave two relatives a bite-sized family history booklet (below) about a favorite in-law. 

On the last page, I left a lot of blank space and wrote: Please add your own memories here.

Happily, my relatives were inspired to share their own memories of her. In fact, each wrote a jam-packed page of emotional notes about this much-loved ancestor. 

Seeing how excited they were to share what they remembered, I decided to reprint.

Now this family history booklet is a bit longer, with several pages devoted to memories. I interspersed a few sepia photos to break up the blocks of text and inject a touch of color at the end.

Affordable ($22 for two spiral-bound booklets) and ready for my relatives to take home when they visit for the holidays.

What I learned: The booklet has become a treasure-trove of personal memories of someone special. These reminiscences will live on along with the genealogical background info, to be passed down in print to future generations.

Book Review: "Ultimate Guide to Mastering FamilySearch"

 

Truly, this book is the ultimate guide to mastering FamilySearch.com!

Even genealogy researchers who have been using the free FamilySearch site for a long time will find valuable tips and tricks in this brand-new book. 

The author is Dana Ann Palmer, who has years of experience working with FamilySearch and also has been teaching people how to use the site for quite a while.

The 226-page book, just published by the Genealogical Publishing Company, covers the entire range of tools available on the free FamilySearch site, soup to nuts. 

Check out this robust table of contents, with my notation about "memories" being a great place to post bite-sized ancestor bios. 😉

Chapter 4 is of particular interest to me, because I'm still learning my way around the newish full-text search part of FamilySearch. Already I've discovered some fabulous records and with Dana's help, I expect to find out even more about ancestors via full-text search.

Not only does Dana offer an incredible variety of excellent suggestions, she shows the reader step-by-step what to do in color, which allows us to follow along and see everything very clearly. 

On the page shown here, the red arrows identify where to search in each case. The blue box labeled "apply" is exactly as it would appear on my screen as I conduct my own search. So useful, especially since the book is 8.5 inches x 11 inches, large enough to clearly read even the tiny type.

Hardly a day goes by when I don't use FamilySearch, because it's free and because it has a wealth of information from worldwide sources. I'm delighted to have Dana Ann Palmer as my guide to being more efficient and more effective in using FamilySearch.   

I would like to see a slightly more detailed index, but that's just my preference. Really, I can't say enough good things about this terrific new book. 

Note: I received a complimentary copy of this book for review purposes but the opinions in this post are entirely my own. 

Ancestry Wrapped: 70 Uploaded Items to Share

Ancestry.com has begun giving members a summary of their stats for the year, sort of similar to what Spotify Wrapped does for its listeners. 

Among the stats for me in 2025, this one jumped out: I uploaded 70 items to share with other researchers and relatives.

Most of these uploads were birth, marriage, and death certificates I downloaded from the New York City Municipal Archives Historical Vital Records databases. The vast majority of my ancestors came through Ellis Island and Castle Garden, often staying in the Big Apple to work, raise a family, and live out their lives.

My research was super-charged this year when the New York City Muni Archives finally introduced indexes to free (uncertified) digitized vital records. 

So when I'm looking at an ancestor who lived in New York City and I don't have all of their original vital records, I click over to the Muni site and try to locate a birth, marriage, or death record. Then I download the record and upload it to Ancestry, attaching it to the pertinent people on my family tree.

A great deal of info is on these documents: names of the ancestor, ancestor's parents, dates and places, and more. Scans of originals and in color too.

Importantly, these documents serve as proof of what I assert on my family tree. If, for example, someone wants to see why I named "X maiden name" as the mother of Y, they can look at the original birth record scan I uploaded. The Genealogical Proof Standard in action!

These uploads are also my way of showing appreciation for the kindness of relatives and family historians who added vital records scans to their family trees in the past.

Adventures in Ordering an Alien Registration AR-2

Inspired by a wonderful blog post written by Nancy Gilbride Casey, I decided to email the US National Archives (NARA) to order an Alien Registration Form (AR-2) just before Thanksgiving. 

According to NARA, the Alien Registration Program registered more than 5.6 million noncitizens between August 1, 1940, and March 31, 1944. If you, like Nancy and me, have an immigrant ancestor who was not naturalized at that point, maybe your ancestor will also have registered using the AR-2 form.

To learn more about the AR-2 and the ordering process, please read the NARA info on this page.

Why order AR-2?

Nancy's post and the NARA website show why an AR-2 can be a valuable document for genealogical purposes. Above, a sample page from an AR-2 form taken from NARA's info page. 

The form asks for current name and other names used by the noncitizen, as well as address, birth date and place, marital status, physical characteristics, date and place of arrival in America, occupation, employer, organizations involved with, military service if any, other close relatives living in America, and more!

Process for searching and ordering

For an excellent, detailed tutorial, see the Allen County Public Library's Genealogical Center's video here.

I checked Ancestry's collection of alien registrations here and discovered a number of ancestors had filed AR-2 forms. Here's NARA's search page and be sure to check the FAQs if this is your first search. You need the A-file number of your ancestor to make your request.

After finding my great aunt Jennie Salkowitz in the database, I followed the instructions to email an inquiry, as follows:

Greetings! I would like to order the Alien Registration Form of:

    Name: Jennie Salkowitz [female]

    Country of birth: Russia

    Date of birth: 1888

    A-file number: A4_41071

    Registration place: Bronx, New York

I then wrote that I would like NARA to quote me the fee or bill me so I could pay for non-certified pdf copies. I included my full mailing address, phone number, and email (vital to be able to receive response).

UPDATE: Quote received today! 

Because Nancy received her response within days, I was hopeful that maybe I would have a similar experience. 

Hours after I published this blog post, I heard from the National Archives that they confirmed the availability of my great aunt's AR-2 file. The response quoted a price of $20 and explained exactly how to place the actual order with my payment, to complete the transaction. 

NARA notes a response time of 1-2 weeks for the file I just ordered, with a possible delay due to the holiday season.

If all goes well, I'll blog again soon about what I learned from great aunt Jennie's AR-2 form. And of course I'll begin submitting additional requests.

Remembering Vesta, AKA Mrs Byron Wood

On this day in 1892, Vesta Maude (or Maud) Craft was born in Huntington, West Virginia to farmer Oliver Craft and his wife, Mary Gilmore Craft. On June 4, 1914, she married my husband's 1c1r, Byron Thomas Wood (1891-1968). Byron and Vesta Maude had ten children together, although two sadly died in infancy.

Over the years, Vesta was mentioned in the local newspaper (The Daily Sentinel-Tribune of Bowling Green, Ohio) a few times...as Mrs. Husband's Name, which I know was the custom of the day. Her given name was not written in the newspaper.

In 1929, Mrs. Byron T. Wood won a $10 prize in a kitchen inspection contest that looked at improvements such as new pressure cookers (her category). It was Vesta.

When Vesta died in 1949, her obituary (excerpt at top) read: Mrs. Byron Wood Rites Saturday. In four paragraphs, Vesta's given name was not written in the newspaper. Not once.

Yet her married daughters were listed as survivors, with their given names and married surnames. On the other hand, her three surviving sisters were listed as Mrs. Husband's Name.

Was Vesta named for the Roman goddess of home, hearth, and family? I don't know, but today I'm remembering the Wood family's only woman named Vesta.

"Written" is this week's #52Ancestors genealogy prompt from Amy Johnson Crow.

Happy Birthday to Mom and Auntie

On December 4, 1919, my grandmother and grandfather were quite surprised by the arrival of twin daughters, my Auntie Dorothy and my Mom, Daisy. 

Here's an old photo of Dorothy Schwartz, 1919-2001 and Daisy Schwartz Burk, 1919-1981. 

They look very cute holding hands, and of course their proud mother dressed them identically.

Very likely this photo was taken a couple of years earlier than 1927.

I had some fun with this photo, first colorizing it using MyHeritage's excellent photo enhancement tools. At left is the result. 

I have no reference for whether the colorizing is accurate, but my guess is their hats matched the coats and were either light brown or grey. 

Lilac hats, as colorized, would have been cute too. And oh those clunky shoes.

--

Then I used the iColoring site to turn the black-and-white original photo into a pencil sketch, for free. The result is at bottom of this post. I especially like this version for an ancestor coloring book! In fact, I already sent the page to my niece for her two little ones to color.

Thinking of Mom and Auntie with much love on this 106th anniversary of their birth in the Bronx, New York.

PS: Dorothy was 5 minutes older than Daisy 😉

Searching Reclaim the Records' New York State Death Index

Hooray for Reclaim the Records, which has once again, through legal cases and perseverance, forced the public disclosure of vital records that should be public. This time, the result is the disclosure of millions of historical death records from New York State, covering the years 1880 to 2017.

Our friends at Reclaim the Records created an innovative, easy-to-search website that also functions very well with natural language search queries. Here's the link to this new site.

Above, a screen shot of the home page, showing suggested natural language search queries. I tried this search: "Ruth Markell died in New Rochelle in 1941," referring to a 1c1r who died young. I have her obit but not her death cert. 

In a split second, I got a result. And when I clicked on that Ruth Markell result, I got a bit more detail PLUS an unusually helpful bonus: "People with the surname ____ who died nearby." Above, an excerpt from the bonus, showing this little girl's brothers, who both died in New Rochelle, New York in the 1970s. 

Do give this new database a try if you have New York State ancestors who died between 1880 and 2017. Thank you very much to Reclaim the Records!