Yay DNA!

When ancestry.com announced their new AncestryDNA project, naturally I jumped on it.  As soon as I possibly could, I put my name on the waiting list, and promptly put it out of my mind so that I wouldn't drive myself crazy.  I knew there was a waiting list and that it was probably miles long, so I did not expect to get my invitation for a while.

Well it finally happened.  As a birthday gift, my parents and sister went in together and were going to give me 6 months of my ancestry.com subscription.  Not long after that, I got my invitation, so instead, my gift went toward the cost of the DNA test, and I paid the difference.  Less than a week later, my little kit arrived at my house!

My husband, who doesn't really get my obsession with "dead people," found it funny that I was so excited about "spitting in a tube."  But I was SO excited!

The nifty little box that came in the mail.

This is SO exciting!

Much more simple than I imagined.  Inside the box was a small plastic container.  The right side (or bottom, in this picture) held the instructions, and was a flap that opened.  On the inside of the flap was a padded envelope that you use to mail the sample back to them, and the code that you use to activate your kit online.

Simple, but thorough instructions.

Inside the plastic container was a biohazard labeled bag for the "specimen" to go in.  I never really thought about saliva being a biohazardous substance, but I guess in today's world, anything is possible.

I was a little concerned at first that I would have to fill up this whole tube.  That would require quite a bit of spit!  But what you can't really see from this picture is that there is a little "stopper" about where that white sticker starts.  So it really didn't take much spit at all.

That lid hanging off to the left was filled with a blue liquid that, upon closing, would be released into the tube. The information said that it would "stabilize" the DNA in my saliva.  They must already know something about my family if they think my DNA is unstable...  Either that or saliva has explosive tendencies we were never informed of in public schools.  What is this, nitroglycerin?

Post-spit (not that y'all wanted to see that), and post-blue stuff.  Then you remove that nifty "funnel" and secure the screw-cap onto the tube and shake.  Because that unstable DNA needs to be shaken within an inch of its life...  That sounds like a great idea...

And thus, the stabilized DNA (aka spit n' blue stuff) creates lots of bubbles and gets deposited inside the biohazard bag.  I tell ya, it's enough to make you wonder what's going on inside your mouth...

Securely packaged, the specimen bag with biohazardous saliva inside is inserted into the padded envelope and mailed back to be analyzed.

The entire process has moved along fairly quickly.  Much faster than I expected, in fact.  I don't remember what day I put my name on the waiting list, but I got my invitation on August 28.  I ordered my kit 4 days later, on September 1.  After 4 more days, it shipped on September 5, and arrived at my house on September 10.  I completed it and mailed it back on September 11, and they received it on September 14.  My results were emailed to me on September 26, and I will share those soon. :-)

1940 Census = Exciting!

It has become a running joke in my immediate family that I am officially a geneageek.  Here's why:  They think I rarely get excited.  That's not entirely true.  I get excited, I just am not very good at showing excitement.  So a few weeks before the 1940 census was released, I'm riding with my sister somewhere and we're talking, and I make the comment "I'm so excited!  The 1940 census will be out soon!"  She thought this was super funny, and so now it's kind of a running joke that you had to be there for.  I guess the only things that really excite me these days are "super boring census records" and creepy cemeteries.

Well, as soon as this census came out, I immediately started browsing the Grayson County, VA section of the census to find the CREED family: John Roby, Gladys, Cornelia, Bobby, and Curtis.  No luck.  I searched the entire county and they were nowhere to be found.  Their known friends and relatives were still in Grayson, so why weren't they?  "Where on earth did this family go?" I asked myself.  But I decided to be patient.  Ancestry.com (to the rescue!) was in the process of indexing anyway, so it would only be a matter of time until they completed VA.

And they have. :-)  And I have found the CREED family!  Apparently they moved to Sulphur Springs at some point in the 1930s, most likely due to Gladys' bout with Tuberculosis and subsequent stay at the Catawba Sanatorium.  I think it says something for the love between them that the family moved closer to the sanatorium.  I don't know why exactly, but I didn't expect that.  I sure wish Mr. Roby was still around to talk to about all of this.  I would love to hear his story... and hers... and theirs.

Update:
After looking closer at the census, apparently this is still before Gladys was out of commission with Tuberculosis.  As of the census, she and Roby were both working in the local mill.  Interesting... :-)

Breakthrough!

Finally!  After over 5 years of researching, I finally found records for my great-grandmother, Mary Tee OAKLEY!

Mistress Mary has been quite the contrary genealogical hermit over the years.  I've looked in so many places, but there is something you have to understand about all of this.  The surname OAKLEY is rampant in Person County, NC, which is the county where I live, and where many of my CHAMBERS ancestors were residing.  You see, Mary Tee OAKLEY married into the CHAMBERS family of Person County, and lived a large part of her life there as well.  My dilemma was that I had nothing to go by other than her name and the family she married into.  As common as the name Mary is in... well... every town, the name OAKLEY is extremely common in the area where she lived, so it was difficult to know just who she belonged to before she married the CHAMBERS.

Thanks to my mother, I had a second married name and rough estimate of the year of her death, which I promptly added to Mary's profile on my ancestry.com tree.  For a long time this turned up nothing.  But suddenly, with an exciting development of my acquiring a 14-day free trial, I got a chance to look again.  Lo and behold, there sat a quivering leaf on Ms. Mary.  Imagine my joy to discover that there was a death certificate I'd never seen before!  I now have parents for Mary, as well as a location of her burial and the name of the funeral home where she'd been prepared for burial.

It's not a large amount of information, but it is a start!  From this information I will be able to find census records and many other things that will help me discover who my OAKLEY ancestors were. :-)  A whole new world of possibilities just opened up!

Organize It!

For the longest time, I've been wanting a good, reliable system for organizing all of my research.  I've finally decided that if I'm going to ever have any real organization, I just have to do it as best I can and then improve on my method until I have it exactly how I want it and so that it will work for me.  There are plenty of suggestions out there for how to organize your genealogy research, but I really think you have to pick whatever suits you and your style of research best.

So I'm getting started, and though I doubt I have any readers, at least this will help me to keep track of my organizing process!  I have been thinking for the longest time that I'd like to use a filing system, but I really don't have the space or the money for a big filing cabinet.  I'm sure many people have success with digital storage, but I like to have a physical, tangible something also.  So I settled with binders to start with.  The binder I started with was great, but after a while it started wearing out, and as my 'evidence' grew, I decided it was time to expand.  Now I have a binder for my maternal side, and one for my paternal side.

An advantage to using a binder system is that it's extremely portable.  If I want to carry along my research to a family function, I just grab the right binder and go!  Since I like the binder system, now I need an organization method within my binders.  Here's a list of the kinds of records I keep in each binder:

Ancestral / Pedigree Charts

The most basic form of recording a family tree, the ancestral chart is the best thing for a quick reference.  This is especially handy when you're trying to share or gather information from other family members.  One thing you might discover if you spend much time seriously researching your family history, is that very few people really care about all of the discoveries we family detectives are amazed by.  They just want to know family names, if there was anyone famous or in the military, or where your ancestors originated from.  Every now and then you may run across someone who is genuinely interested, but everyone's fascination is going to start with the basic info you will record on an ancestral chart: names, birth dates and locations, possibly marriage dates, and death dates and locations.  These are easy to find.  Just type in 'ancestral chart' in a search engine and you'll find one. For sure, any genealogy software will have a chart you can either print out and fill in by hand, or one you can print with all your information (so far as you have entered) already on it.

Individual Profile Sheet

This is something I decided I wanted to have in my binders.  I didn't go looking for one, and for all I know, there may be something like this out there already.  My home-made profile sheet is one to be printed and filled out by hand, as it is a sort of quick-facts sheet and also a checklist.  Basic vital information is listed at the top of the page, including the individual's relationship to me.  In the middle is a list of records that I have come to derive most of my researching from, or just would like to have.  It also provides me a quick reference to see what kind of sources I have on a person at a glance.  Then at the bottom I left some lines for miscellaneous notes that I come across while researching.  In case, for example, I run across conflicting information or a different date in some way.  If I can figure out how, I will see if I can't put a PDF of this sheet on here in case anyone would like to have something like it for their organizing.

Maps

I am fortunate that my ancestors, thus far, have not done a lot of relocating to distant places.  In fact, one branch of my family has lived in the same county as I do for several generations.  I haven't progressed much farther back than 6 generations or so, but most of my ancestors have been from the same few states - NC, SC and VA, depending on which side.  On my mother's side, they are NC and SC, so in the maternal side binder, I have a county map of both of these states.  The same on my paternal side, which are NC and VA, I have a county map of those two as well.  This is just my personal preference, because I like to have an idea of the areas they lived in.  It helps me to also know what places are close enough by that maybe I could take a day trip to do research.

Copies of Records

Behind each individual profile sheet, I put the copies of records specific to that person.  This, of course, means there is a lot of paper taking up space in my binders right now.  Since I don't need 6 copies of the same page for a census record, I am thinking that I will have a separate binder for census records and use it as a reference instead.  It might be a good idea for me to make a spreadsheet or form of some kind to record the information from all the census records on one sheet to keep with the profile sheet.  Information like education and employment might be something I'd like to have on hand with the other information.  I guess I'll add that to my 'to do' list.

If by some slim chance someone actually does read this post, any organization tips from your experiences would be appreciated!