My Longest Unbroken Line of Ancestral Gravestones

     This week, Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings challenges us to post about our longest unbroken line of ancestral gravestones.  How far back can we go and do we have photos.

     I have to think about this for a second. I know it's not my direct maternal line or it's offshoots: my Great-Grandmother Ruby Waters Huyler does not have a headstone.  Other lines have much older headstones, but have missing generations in between. Some have memorial markers, but not actual gravestones. So, what's the longest line?

     It's a tie! Both my Albea and Powell (via Craft) lines have graves with known locations and markers.  Both lines go back to my 5x Great-Grandparents. On the Albea line, that's Thomas Albea who was born in 1778 and died in 1844. On the Powell line, that William R Powell who was born in 1772 and died in 1847.

     I visited the graves of all but one of these ancestors. Wiley Powell died in Virginia during the Civil War and was buried at a veterans cemetery there. A FindAGrave volunteer kindly sent me a photo.

Roy Albea (and Betty Huyler)	Thomas Craft (and Sarah Britt)
C Vernon Albea  (& Auline Witt Albea Wilson)	BE Craft (and Ruth Evans)
William Albea (& Nina Sprouse)	Effie Powell (and G "Bob"Craft)
Thomas Albea	John Powell (and Emma Taylor)
Tilman Albea (and Julia Glaze)	Wiley Powell (and Mariah Adkins)
Thomas Albea (and Rachel Johnson)	William R Powell (and Sarah Franklin)

Two Degrees of Genealogical Separation

     I'm a little late on this, but yesterday's 'Saturday Night Genealogy Fun' theme was 'Two Degrees of Seperation.' The challenge was to see how far back you can connect with an ancestor by just two degrees, as in "you knew an ancestor, who knew another ancestor."

     I only met one of my Great-Grandparents, Ruth Evans Craft, who lived from 1902 to 1999. I believe that I only met her once or twice as a very young child, and I have only a vague memory of it: a little gray-haired lady in a wheel chair between picnic tables.  A few years ago I saw this photo, which matched my memory exactly. It was actually a kinda eerie find actually...

     So, I knew my Great-Grandmother, Ruth Evans Craft. She lived in Elbert and Hart Counties where her family had lived for generations, so she almost certainly knew any of her ancestors who were alive when she was. This would include her Great-Grandparents, her mother's mother's parents, Lewis McCurley and his wife Nancy Shiflet. Lewis lived from 1838 to 1910 and Nancy lived from 1834 to 1911.

     In two degrees of separations, I connect with my four times Great-Grandparents.

SNGF: Present Photo Challenge

     This week's Genea Musings' Saturday Night Genealogy Fun spotlights the photo challenge at the Family Curator blog (details here). The challenge is to take a photo in the "Dear Photograph" or "Looking into the Past" style.

     I've actually done this before and blogged about it here. The finished photo can be very striking, though it can take a while to find the right photo and to get the technique right. You want to do this with a photo that has people and is in a distinct location. All of the photos I've done so far happen to be of people posing in cemeteries.

     Here's another photo that I've done, but hadn't posted. This is my Grandfather and Great-Uncle Bill visiting my Great-Grandmother Auline's grave in Westview Cemetery in Atlanta, cir 1980.

     This photo is somewhat nostalgic, as my grandfather has now passed away.  He's buried in this plot now, but this photo makes it seem as if he's still here.

     This photo's composition is just about perfect, but the arm (my sister's) isn't in the best place, as it blocks most of the left side of the photo.  I do like how you can see my car in the background, which helps to show the modern timeframe.

How Many Surnames (SNGF)

     From Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings: How many surnames are in your family tree?

     This is an easy number to find in Reunion. On the file menu select "List" and click on "Last Names," choosing "All People." This will pop up a new window that details your surnames.

     I have 555 unique surnames in my family tree of 3148 people (an average of 5.6 people per surname). Of course, it's counting surname variations as different names (ex. Utz / Ouzts). My top surname is actually "Unknown," with 194 instances. Everyone in my tree has a surname, so if I don't know it, they are "Unknown."  Ignoring that, here are my surname stats:

Surname	Usage
Craft	129
Albea	99
Ouzts	87
White	80
Smith	56
Hyler	55
Belk	54
Taylor	52
Boatright	52
Quattlebaum	51

SNGF - Timeline Charts

This week's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun "mission" is to create a timeline chart using our genealogy software.

Personally, I really enjoy the weeks when the ideas force us to explore our genealogy software. I've looked at the timeline chart function in my software program (Reunion) before, but never spent any time figuring out how to really do anything with it. So, I decided to explore my software's timeline functionality and make a five generation timeline chart.

It's an easy process. First, mark everyone that you want to show up in your chart. This just means that you click a little box on each person's page. Next, go to "Create" on the file menu and select "Timeline Chart." Everyone is automatically sorted by birth, but you can sort by death, age, etc. I very easily changed the colors of each person to match others in their generation. Next, I added "Perspective Events" that I had previously loaded into the software (see how to do that here). In this case, I chose US Presidents. I expanded the chart a bit and moved some of the presidents over a tad to make them all fit. To save this chart, simply "Save As," just as with most any other document.

I ended up with a chart that very nicely shows five generations of my family. You can see that the first person, William Britt, was considerably older than others of that generation. Otherwise everyone else just sorta flows, with small gaps to indicate generational changes.

SNGF - Birthday Calendar

This week's SNGF is to make a calendar showing all of our ancestor's birthdays using our genealogy software.

In reunion, you can create a calendar list of certain events. Simply select "List" from the file menu, and then chose "Calendar..." From here, decide which event you'd like to list: births, deaths, marriages, emigrations, censuses, etc. It does not appear that all events can me made into one calendar list. Next, designate the time span the the folks that you want showing up (all, marked, living). Once the list is created, columns can be added or removed. For example, I can add an age column. Finally, decide the output of the file: text or web file. The file will be a list only and is not available in a "wall calendar" format.

To the left I have an image of the birthday calendar list as it appears in reunion, before being sent to a file. Those with January birthdays with no specific date are listed first, followed by a chronological list of everyone else.

I see that today there are four birthdays in my family tree. The "closest" relative is my half-brother's Great-Grandmother, Evie Williams Belk. Yesterday was my Great-Grandmother's birthday.

SNGF - Wish List

For tonight's SNGF, we've been asked to give a genealogy database that we'd like to see made available online.

For myself, I'd love to see the Elberton Star and Hartwell Sun newspapers go online. These newspapers cover neighboring Elbert and Hart Counties, GA from the late 1800s on. These newspapers have been microfilmed and can be accessed (that I know of) in their native counties. I do not see them available through family history libraries (but I could be searching wrong?). I've had helpful volunteers look up obituaries from these newspapers for me, but I don't want to burden volunteers with hundreds of look-up requests. If these two newspapers went online, it would be a goldmine for me.

SNGF - Look-a-likes

For this week's fun, Randy has given us a mission to use myheritage.com's facial recognition tools to see what famous folks we look like. I decided to use what is possibly my most very favorite of all my family photos, one of my Grandmama, Betty Huyler Albea.

I'm not sure why I love this photo so much. I never though of my grandmama as she appears in this photo. Here she is absolutely gorgeous in a very classic way. As a child, I never thought of her in terms of "pretty" - she was just grandmama. But now I can see her when she was young and see that she was beautiful.

She's also rather young in this photo, but is dressed up with makeup and stylish hair. I assume that this photo was taken after she was married (age 15). I know she once got in trouble with her grandmother Lou for wearing nail polish, so I don't think the lipstick would have gone over well either.

Also, I'm drawn in by the expression on her face. It's an expression that seems older than she is. She didn't have it easy as a child and was always a very practical, tell it like it is, don't ignore it because it's not happy, sort of person.

Also, she didn't like having her photo taken, so this is the only real portrait (non-snapshot) of her as an adult.

But I digress, the mission was to find famous folks who look like our photo. So, here she is (I think these are pretty good picks).

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Create A Bumper Sticker

A fun one this week from Genea-Musings - create some Genealogy Bumber Stickers. Here are mine (using redkid.net to generate the images)

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Top 10 Sites

Another Fun Saturday Night over at the Genea-Musings Blog. This week: Top Ten list of Favorite Genealogy Web Sites.

1. Ancestry.com
2. Footnote.com
3. FindAGrave.com
4. Georgia Virtual Vault
5. GA USGenWeb Archives Project
6. SC Dept. of Archives and History
7. FamilySearch.org
8. GenForum
9. GenealogyBank.com
10. Cyndi's List

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - genealogy space

Another fun blog prompt from over at Genea-Musings. This weeks' challenge: show off your genealogy space.

First is my computer area. I have a laptop that is where I do all of my work. It's currently sitting at the end of the kitchen table. Most all of my physical files are also stored on my computer.

Most of my other items are stored on a shelf in my bedroom. Yes, just one shelf. I'm very much a computer person and don't keep too many physical documents unless they are originals. My collection of books is very limited, but I hope to expand it. I try to back up my digital files in multiple places to make up for lack of a paper trail.

(click to see larger, with notes)

I also have one other shelf, filled with photo albums and a few year books. These are the albums of my grandparents, with my personal photos elsewhere.

In general, I'm very happy with my space. It's a little spread out and I honestly have photos and documents in other places as well that need to be organized. For example, all of my maternal grandparents legal documents are in a cabinet in the living room. Half of that is old bank statements, duplicate legal documents and greeting cards that can be thrown out. It's just a matter of getting around to it...