22 January 2009

The First Happy Dance

 I got started in genealogy during a college geography project.  We had multiple options for the project and my mom encouraged me to pick the genealogy project. We set down at the computer and started trying to find information on her paternal grandparetns, Charles Vernon Albea & Auline (Witt) Albea Wilson.  

We didn't know much about the family and knew even less about genealogy!  We found our way to rootsweb.com and from there to ancestry.com.  We searched for CV & Auline, but came up empty.  They should have appeared on the 1930 census, but we couldn't find them.  We searched for their oldest child, Frances "Tootsie" Albea.  No go.  Finally, we searched for my grandfather, Roy.  Jackpot!

albea_roy_1930

We were so excited!  There was my grandfather, as a four year old boy, listed on the 1930 census.  We didn't jump, but there was hugging involved.  I think I bugged all of my friends about the find for days!

And we also saw why we couldn't search out the other family members.  Charles Vernon was Verna, Auline was Aulin and Frances was Ninola.  We had just gotten started and didn't know how to use wildcards or search for middle names.  Needless to say, this find taught us a lot and started an obsession.

4 comments:

Greta Koehl said...

Addictive, isn't it? I think once you've done that first happy dance, there's no turning back.

Taylorstales-Genealogy said...

I agree with Greta. Congratulations on your first genealogy dance. I am sure it was the first of many reasons to celebrate. Discovering where we came from, well it's magic! Thanks for sharing!

wendy said...

And it seems once we learn these little "tricks" like using middle names or wildcard characters, we often find more records out there! Congratulations & thanks for sharing!

Evelyn Yvonne Theriault said...

Re: name changes - my ethnic background is Acadian/French Canadian and I have a lot of fun in the American census with anglicizations, translations and phonetic spellings. Here's an example: French surname Hebert (pronounced with a silent H, rhymes with bear) found in the USA 1880 census as Hey bare!
Evelyn in Montreal

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