52 Ancestors Week 35: Unforgettable

From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 35's theme is "Unforgettable." Family history is about remembering. Who or what in your family is unforgettable? What have you discovered in your research surprised you that it was forgotten? What are you doing to make sure your discoveries aren't forgotten?

I wonder if the symbolism for this header is too on the nose. ;)

It's an interesting coincidence that this prompt came up today because this morning my mother showed me a treasure trove of photos my grandfather sent her back in the mid 2000s. I quickly went to work scanning them all because that is the best way to make sure that the pictures aren't forgotten. Makes sense, right? You want to preserve all of the pictures you have ever gotten. Even in digital form.

Today, I figured I'd take everyone through a step by step process of what I do after I scan a picture. Are you ready? Here goes!

1. Scan the photo.

The Felker clan circa the 1930s.

Okay. That one is obvious. You scan a photo and make sure you have it aligned perfectly. I can't tell you how many times I've had a crooked image in a scanner. This happened a lot to me when  I was a comic reviewer and I needed to make sure that the comic I was scanning was aligned with a little arrow in my scanner. It's honestly easier to get the images digitally from Comixology or even ComicVine. But, you can't argue with the results a GOOD scanner will give you. Look at this picture of the Felker clan! Pretty snazzy, huh?

2. Open the photo in your favorite paint program and check things out.

The next thing you'll want to do is open the photo in your favorite paint program. Some people use the default program that came with Windows or Mac. Some people use Adobe software. I use the program I use to make my Starbolts webcomic. The program is called paint.net and it's completely free to use. I highly recommend it if you're on a budget!

Once the picture is open, feel free to edit any and all imperfections you can. These could range from nicks on the picture to even ink spots. Somehow a lot of my family's really old photos like the one I shared today have ink spots. It's so weird. But, they can be easily removed.

Removing them can be a little tricky. What I like to do is select a color near the imperfection using the color select tool and fill it all in. Then I select the area I edited and blur it a little so that it looks neat.

If the picture is too dark or bright, you can simply play with the contrast tools and edit as you see fit.

3. Posting online.

Once the photograph is edited, you can do many things. Save it to an external hard drive or post it online. Either way, it will help make certain that this picture is never lost if your main hard drive crashes. It's always a good idea to change out the hard drive every few years, anyway. Save everything to a flash drive and you're good.

What if you want to share it with the world? Well, that's where several websites come into play. I post the pictures on the major genealogy websites like Ancestry, geni, Familysearch, MyHeritage and WikiTree. Ancestry, Familysearch and Myheritage all give you an option of labeling the photos. WikiTree adds in an option to link the photo to a person's profile. Like this one: Here's Austin Felker's profile on Wikitree: https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Felker-441

If you click on one of the photos on WikiTree, you'll see more information on the photo including who all has been tagged. There's also an option to list who is who when you update a photo. You can also post it in the site's genealogist to genealogist forum.

Speaking of labeling things, that brings me to....

4. Labeling.

If you're fortunate to know who is who in the photograph, then the best thing to do is to make a copy of our scan here and then label everyone for your own records. Use the typing option on your paint program and just type in who is who if it's a large group like the Felker clan picture is. I would use red to make it stand out better.

5. Other methods of preservation

You don't have to do all of this with just photos of course. Printing out valuable documents is always an option. I've got a few folders full of documents from both sides of the family carefully tucked away in a safe box. As a comic collector, I know how important it is to keep things in "near mint" condition. So, I keep things in boxes where I know they'll be dry and away from the elements. Just make sure you have the space for everything!!

You also have the option of preserving a physical copy of a photo by creating a duplicate. To accomplish this, you can scan and edit the photo and print it on glossy paper. The photo would be just like it's brand new. I haven't exactly tried it, yet. But, there's no reason why it can't work. You would just need to make sure you have ink.

I've actually done this with a few classic comic book covers so it looked like I had really old comics on my set for my webseries. Naturally, I used Amazing Fantasy #15, the first appearance of Spider-Man. =) Because I TOTALLY have a mint copy of a 60k comic from 1962. Totally! (Yeah, right.)

These are just a few ways to make certain your photos and other genealogical information is not forgotten. I also have many trees on many websites to make sure it isn't lost. WikiTree's main gimmick is to be a repository for everyone's' trees and to make sure it's never lost. Same deal with Geni and FamilySearch. The websites aren't going away and posting information online is incredibly beneficial.  So, if you have a tree online I suggest you share it. If not? Make one. It's a great way to preserve information. And hey....it makes for great cousin bait!

See ya next time!

52 Ancestors Week 34: Chosen Family

From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 34's theme is "Chosen Family." Family isn't always related by blood. Adoptions, step-children, foster children, and special friends of the family can be just as much "family" as those who share DNA. (I think I was 10 before I realized that my Uncle Bob and Aunt Mabel weren't actually related to us.) This is the week to highlight one of their stories.

Family can be whatever you'd like it to be. For many people family could be a group of friends who you share a connection with. Blood doesn't always make one a family and it's especially true in my case. Over the years, my brother and I have had many people who we've called "aunts" or "uncles" in our lives even though they weren't related to us. Usually they were friends of our parents. Ironically, one such friend has the last name "Coppola" and my 2x great-grandmother was a Coppola. Funny how that worked out, right?  And to this day I'm still very good friends with their kids who are around the same age as me. Still not related!! That Coppola family came from Sicily and mine did not. "Coppola" is a VERY common last name, guys! Not as common as Tedesco!

My brother and Aunt Mimi!

While most of our "aunts" and "uncles" were of Italian descent, one couple took care of my brother and I when we were very young and were always there to talk to us or tell a story as we got older. Their names were Peter and Mary Matorian and were of Armenian descent.

Peter and Mary lived around the corner from my father's dental practice and very close to the junior high I attended in the early '90s. But, I'm getting ahead of myself. How did my family meet the couple? Well....

My parents were friends with their niece, Judy. Her aunt Mary was taking care of Judy's young sons, Brian and Kevin. My mother was pregnant with my brother at the time and the couple offered to babysit him as well after he was born. My parents both had full-time jobs in the medical field and agreed to have the couple look after Jim. I came along two years later and the rest, as they say, is history!

Aunt Mimi (She liked to be called that.) and Uncle Pete were both born in the early 1900s and came from really big Armenian families. She loved to cook a variety of Arabic and Greek dishes for Jim and I and It's honestly amazing that we never filled out our clothing if you know what I mean. Growing up she made the following dishes:

No two grape-leaves recipe are the same!

* Grape-leaves
* Kibbie
* Kaftka
* star shaped cookies that were essentially 99% LARD. (You can feel the heart attack coming can't you?)

Here's the thing about the grape leaves. They were so good and basically melted in your mouth. You take ground lamb. Put parsley and rice into the mix. Wrap them up in grape leaves and serve. Pure. Bliss.

The Matorians had a grape plant or two in their yard and I think the freshness of the leaves is what made the grape-leaves so good. Ever since they both passed away, my brother and I have tried and failed to find a place which had grape-leaves like how she made them. One place came close! SO CLOSE!

Nothing will ever compare to her grape-leaves. We were spoiled rotten. I'll be the first to admit it right here on the Internet. We had the best grape-leaves in the world and we were spoiled!

While Aunt Mimi was a great chef and amazing person to talk family history with, uncle Pete was always willing to take my brother and I everywhere we wanted to go. It didn't matter because he'd always call it "The cleaners". He called it that because his wallet would be cleaned out. Get it? HAHAHA! He enjoyed taking us for a ride in his very old green Ford....which had no seat-belts. Gotta love child safety in the '80s!!

Pete's family had a farm in town and he'd often tell Jim and I the history of Salem, New Hampshire. Unedited. He had books about the town's history and was always happy to talk about it with anyone who'd listen. His family's farm (Which is still technically in operation) would take goods up the main through-way in Salem to cities as far away as Lawrence. Naturally, I would often ask questions and he'd go into great detail about everything! Meanwhile Uncle Pete would have something he liked to call "A lousy Uncle Pete sandwich". You take wonder bread, a slice of ham and another piece of wonder bread and there's your lousy Uncle Pete sandwich.

Aunt Mimi and Uncle Pete did do a lot of stuff for us like cooking and taking us wherever we wanted to go. They were always good to talk to. As Jim and I got older, we still visited them on a semi regular basis. In fact, I would walk from the school to their house after cross country practice. It was close by and once I got there, I'd call and tell my parents where I was.  And by the time my mother came to pick me up, I'd have a box of grape-leaves to take home for dinner!! =)

Uncle Pete in the 1920 US census!

This was just a snippet of the kind of people they were. Aunt Mimi and Uncle Pete were always warm, caring, funny and great people in general. They both passed away while I was in college in the late '90s and early 2000 respectively. Once I got into genealogy, one of the first things I did was look for them in the US census. I found quite a bit about Uncle Pete and a little about Aunt Mimi. I still need to find more. I haven't even made profiles for them on WikiTree. Yet. I promise I will get around to it!

There's a lot more I can say and I think this blog is at a decent length already. To this day, I am grateful to Aunt Mimi and Uncle Pete for not just looking after my brother and I. But, for being essentially a second set of grandparents who watched us grow up.  They saw us graduate high school in the '90s and I like to think that they're still watching over us. You never know. Through them, I got an appreciation of great food, local history and even cheesy daytime soap operas. Aunt Mimi was always quick to tell me who the "stinker" was!

In the end, they were just two of the wonderful people in our lives and I miss them even twenty years since their passing. They were warm, caring and great people. Nothing else can really be said.

See ya next time!

52 Ancestors Week 33: Troublemaker

 From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 33's theme is "Troublemaker." There's one in every family. If you don't want to write about a literal troublemaker, how about an ancestor who has been troublesome to research?



On my mother's side of the tree, I've had a few ancestors of mine who have been a bit troublesome to research. It wasn't that they were brick walls or anything. However, some ancestors such as Sarah Currey and Mary Abbott DEFINITELY fit the bill! Amy's right. Researching women in the family tree is no easy task. I would talk about them. However, I have something else planned! Did you know that someone can be both a troublemaker AND troublesome to research?

Jeremiah Felker and Elizabeth Fellows

It's true! I've talked about this guy quite a few times in the blogs. In fact, he probably will show up later and will keep showing up until the end of time. His name is Elias Felker and he was my 4x great-grandfather. Here are the cliff-notes about his life to help you get started:

* He and Martha Smart conceived a child out of wedlock as both cheated on their spouses. That child was Jeremiah Felker, my 3x great-grandfather.

* Elias had a paternity suit filed against him by Martha's father, Jeremiah Smart.

He definitely fits the definition of troublemaker. But, you know there's two sides to every story. We don't know what really happened in the 1800s and what the real circumstances were unless I were to get the actual court records or somehow discover time travel. That would be so cool. Brick walls would become obsolete.

Okay. So, you understand why this guy may have been a bit of a troublemaker, right? He cheated on his wife, Polly Brock and seemed to be a wee bit of a scoundrel....and not the Han Solo kind. What makes him so hard to research?

Elias's marriage to Polly.

Well, there's no real birth record for him for one. At least none that I can find on my own. Check his WikiTree page. I have him born around 1800 because I'm honestly not sure. The earliest record I have for him is his 1820 marriage record to Polly. Though, he MAY have served in the War of 1812. I am iffy about that. VERY iffy. Skeptical Chris is very skeptical.

For a while, Elias was a bit of a brick wall because I couldn't find anything about him. I had thought he was some random guy who had a fling with Martha and disappeared into the night. That was certainly how one of my DNA matches described his life. He came into town, cheated on his wife and supposedly died in 1844.

We found his death certificate and even a page on Find a Grave. In total, I have about twenty-two sources linked to him and none of them directly say who his parents were. Various censuses like the 1840 had him living alone in Epping, New Hampshire. It was weird that I could only find assorted odds and ends about this guy's life. I thought I'd never find his parents and that was it.

I then asked my friends on WikiTree for help and my friend, Laura made it a mission to help me in any way possible. Seriously, she was amazing. She looked up various people with the name "Elias Felker" and reported back what she found in censuses.

Around that time, I happened to find Jeremiah's death certificate in Haverhill. That's when I found something kind of shocking!

The man listed as his father wasn't his father!!

Jeremiah died in 1918 and on his death certificate a man named Joseph Felker was listed instead of Elias. I said to Laura that this was odd. Elias should have been listed along with his mother, Martha. I asked her if there was a mistake and if Joseph was actually Jeremiah's grandfather.

We did some digging and found a Joseph Felker living in Barrington, New Hampshire in the 1800 census. And check this out. Elias was ALSO living in Barrington, NH in 1800. That, my friends, is a smoking gun. Actually, it was more like a fire alarm. But, why argue over metaphors?

We had to make sure that there were no other Felkers in the town at the time and there wasn't any as far as we could see. To further cement this, Ancestry.com rolled out Thrulines which show how you may be connected to a DNA match.


Thrulines are only as good as other peoples' trees and are good research guides. They'd be better served by combining DNA information and traditional genealogy. In my case, they've been decent up to about the 5th great-grandparent level. That's where things tend to get a little dicey for me.

That said, I checked out my mother's Thrulines for Joseph Felker and she has a 5th cousin once removed who shares 14 centimorgans with her. He apparently comes from one of Elias's brothers. More research is needed. However, DNA does not lie.

The Thrulines wasn't what sealed the deal for me, anyway. What really drove the point home were the traditional genealogical finds. The census reports, the few Felker families in Barrington, NH and other small bits of information served as concrete proof that Joseph was Elias's father. I honestly hated jumping through hoops trying to find his father, who by the way ended up being a soldier of the American Revolution! The DAR record doesn't show Elias.

I forget what gave me the conclusion that Joseph WAS Elias's father. But, I do have to thank and give a HUGE shout-out to WikiTree's Laura Bozzay for helping me build this tree and figure this guy out. I couldn't have done it without her. It just goes to show that two heads are better than one and when you have a genealogical puzzle sometimes an extra pair of eyes is something we all need.

I just wish I had to go through so many hoops to get information on him. That's life, I guess. See ya next time!