Postcards from the past: the Gustafson-Van Wert Family pt. 1

 There is something truly special about reading the handwriting of your ancestors. 100 years ago they carefully inked a name or a word, and now you are once again reading that same word in the same writing. Even more spectacular is reading postcards from your ancestors. Each one is a memento of a story, a voice from the past. I was lucky enough to receive a box of postcards from my Great Uncle Everette Van Wert a year or so ago. Below is the first installment of some of the specimens from the box collection.

Postcard to Frances from her Father (Date Unknown)

Relations to me:

Frances Gustafson: Great Grandma

Papa/ F. O. W. Gustafson: 2nd great grandpa

The text of the postcard is in half English half Swedish and reads the following:

Dear Frances, How are you? 

We will stay in Pueblo till Thursday morning. Brandelle(?) kommer icke hit. Hälsa allesammans. Har din mormor kommit till dig? (illegible sentence) 

Pueblo Colo. 

August 21st 9:15 am 

din papa

The fully translated  version looks something like this:

Dear Frances, How are you? 

We will stay in Pueblo till Thursday morning. Brandelle(?) will not come here. Greet everyone for me. Has your grandmother come to you? (illegible sentence) 

Pueblo Colo. 

August 21st 9:15 am 

your papa

A look in Grandma Joan's Baby Book

Over the past few years, it has become my job and passion to preserve and find all the fascinating history, stories, and photographs from my family's past. A few months ago I was ecstatic to receive a box of memories from my grandma Joan Van Wert, within which I was happy to find a collection of photographs bound lovingly in a book by my grandma's mother, Frances Gustafson-Van Wert. This post contains all of these photos as well as descriptions and some labels of who appears inside them.

People featured and their relationship to me, as well as a numerical identifier which is used to identify them alongside their name in the photograph descriptions:

• Allen, Carolyn, (1st Cousin 2x Removed) (P1)
• Allen, Marion Blanch (1st Cousin 2x Removed) (P2)
• Anderson, Evert (Unknown Relation) (P3)
• Anderson, Maria (Unknown Relation) (P4)
• Arnette, Judy (No Relation) (P5)
• Arnette, Mrs. (No Relation) (P6)
• Bengtson, Don (Nephew of Husband of 2nd Great Aunt) (P7)
• Bengtson, Gilbert Eddie (Husband of Sister-in-law of 2nd Great Aunt) (P8)
• Bengtson, John (Nephew of Husband of 2nd Great Aunt) (P9)
• Boddie, Laura Linda John (Wife of Great Uncle) (P10)
• Burbank, Judy (No Relation) (P11)
• Case, Lainey Virginia (1st Cousin 2x Removed) (P12)
• Collins, Barry (No Relation) (P13)
• Ekeberg, Blanche Aurora (2nd Great Grandma) (P14)
• Falagrady, Nancy (Wife of Great Uncle) (P15)
• Folansbee, Sharon (No Relation) (P16)
• Folansbee, Mrs. (No Relation) (P17)
• Gardner, Janet (No Relation) (P18)
• Gardner, Mrs. (No Relation) (P19)
• Goedert, Marcia (No Relation) (P20)
• Goldberg, Carole (No Relation) (P21)
• Gustafson, Alva Ruth Elizabeth (2nd Great Aunt) (P22)
• Gustafson, Ann Ester Dorothea (2nd Great Aunt) (P23)
• Gustafson, Faith Elaine (2nd Great Aunt) (P24)
• Gustafson, Florence Evangeline (2nd Great Aunt) (P25)
• Gustafson, Frances Elsie Caroline (Great Grandma) (P26)
• Gustafson, Frans Oscar Wilhelm (2nd Great Grandpa) (P27)
• Gustafson, Frans Von (1st Cousin 2x Removed) (P28)
• Gustafson, Gretchen (1st Cousin 2x Removed) (P29)
• Gustafson, Ingrid L. (1st Cousin 2x Removed) (P30)
• Gustafson, Paul Oscar Emanuel (2nd Great Uncle) (P31)
• Gustafson, Thure (1st Cousin 2x Removed) (P32)
• Johnson, Peggy (No Relation) (P33)
• K., Clair (No Relation) (P34)
• Larsdotter, Malena Wilhelmina (3rd Great Grandma) (P35)
• Leaf, Kitty Belle (No Relation) (P36)
• Lipnick, Michael (No Relation) (P37)
• Magners, Melvin (Husband of 1st Cousin 2x Removed) (P38)
• Male, Marie (P39)
• Male, Susan Huskin (3rd Great Grandma) (P40)
• Neff, ? (No Relation) (P41)
• Neff, Mrs. (No Relation) (P42)
• O., Donna (No Relation) (P43)
• Osborne, Jessica (Wife of 2nd Great Uncle) (P44)
• Rudd, John (Husband of 1st Cousin 2x Removed) (P45)
• Segerhammar, Carl William (Husband of 2nd Great Aunt) (P46)
• Segerhammar, Karen Elizabeth Segerhammer (1st Cousin 2x Removed) (P47)
• Segerhammar, Kathleen (1st Cousin 2x Removed) (P48)
• Segerhammar, Kathryn (1st Cousin 2x Removed) (P49)
• Segerhammar, Margaret Irene (Sister-In-Law of 2nd Great Aunt) (P50)
• Segerhammar, Paul Kempton (1st Cousin 2x Removed) (P51)
• Shue, Glen M. (2nd Cousin 3x Removed) (P52)
• Smith, Carrie Blanch (2nd Great Grandma) (P53)
• Stafford, Susan (No Relation) (P54)
• Tilton, Roberta (No Relation) (P55)
• Van Wert, Barry (1st Cousin 2x Removed) (P56)
• Van Wert, Beverly Ann (1st Cousin 2x Removed) (P57)
• Van Wert, Everette Clayton (Great Uncle) (P58)
• Van Wert, Forrest Richard (1st Cousin 2x Removed) (P59)
• Van Wert, Harold Benson (3rd Great Uncle) (P60)
• Van Wert, James Cordell (Great Uncle) (P61)
• Van Wert, Joan Elaine (Grandma) (P62)
• Van Wert, Reuben Everette (Great Grandpa) (P63)
• Van Wert, Ruth (2nd Great Aunt) (P64)
• W., Jimmie (No Relation) (P65)
• Waldmann, Eric Eugene (1st Cousin 2x Removed) (P66)
• Waldmann, Eugene John (Husband of 2nd Great Aunt) (P67)
• Waldmann, Sonja C. (1st Cousin 2x Removed) (P68)
• Wikgren, John Arthur (Husband of 2nd Great Aunt) (P69)
• ?, Jackie (P70)
• ?, Kay (P71)
• ?, Penny (P72)

 Pictured above are the identical Segerhammar twins in 2nd grade at the age of 7 yrs in Longmont, Colorado with their mother Ruth. From left to right those shown in the image are Kathleen Segerhammar (P48), Alva Ruth Elizabeth Gustafson-Segerhammar (P22), and Kathryn Segerhammar (P49).

A Tool to Change the Way You Conduct Collateral Research (Census2Ged v2.1)

Table of Contents

1. Links 

2. Introduction

3. Wait, What is Collateral Research?

4. So, How Does Census2Ged Help With Collateral Research?

5. Installing Census2Ged

6. Prerequisites
7. Using Census2Ged
     a. Gedcom Name
     b. Country
     c. Census Year
     d. Sourcing
     e. Source List Name
     f. Everything Else in Sourcing
     g. United States Tags
     h. Swedish Household Examinations
     I. Swedish Household Examination Tags
8. Cleaning Up the Final Gedcoms

Links

1. Like Census2Ged? Consider sending a couple dollars to my PayPal to support its continued development: https://www.paypal.me/ReneeSchmidt

2. Census2Ged on Github: https://github.com/xXReneeXx/Census2Ged

3. Download Census2Ged: https://github.com/xXReneeXx/Census2Ged/releases/tag/v2.2

4. Join the Census2Ged user group on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1386416641488942/

Introduction

Eleven months ago I published version 1.0 of my software, Census2Ged. It was buggy, had no customizability, and had an appearance reminiscent of the dark days where graphic design and software had an oppositional relationship.

Census2Ged 1.0

I am happy to announce that those days of visual and operational vulgarity are now over, thanks to the advent of the latest version, Census2Ged v2.1.

Census2Ged 2.1

The functional differences between v2.1 and all previous ones are massive, and the program will change the ease of conducting collateral research for all who use it.

Laughs From the Past: 100 Year Old Humorous Quips

Often when I am perusing old newspapers I come across some rather interesting sections devoted to satisfying the distinctive brand of humor characterizing the tastes of the century to which they belong. In my time traveling adventures, I have discovered specimens representing everything from the dry and crass to the strange and sickly sweet. I have included a sampling of some of these below ordered chronologically.

June 23rd 1853 Wayne County Herald
Awkward Dance—Forward two—and hit
your partner in the bread basket; dos-a-dos—
turn to the right and kick your partner on the shins;
 shassey all—promenade to the left, and
accidentally knock down two attendants carrying
refreshments.

June 23rd 1853 Wayne County Herald
A western editor says he heard a young
lady at the table ask for “hen fruit”—meaning
eggs.

Using FTDNA's API: Commands and Explanations

After hearing from all of you, I am now fairly certain that anyone is, in fact, allowed to access FTDNA's family finder API. And, as a bonus, I learned some new things about how APIs function in websites as well (special thanks for that goes to the anonymous commenter on the previous post). The question that remains is whether or not programmatically accessing it is against FTDNA's terms of use, and if anyone knows anything about that I'd be very happy to hear it, as I can think of a few things I want to try doing with the API and my best friend, python.

Anyways, this new post will go over the ways you can use the API and the different requests you can send to it. It's not all-inclusive and only includes the things I thought were important/most useful.

Please note, this post will include a lot of technical words without a lot of detailed explanation. If you just want to try it out for yourself simply click one of the links in the post to see the match data after signing into ftdna in your web browser.

How to Send GET Requests (In General)

There are two ways you can send Requests. The first is to just put the URL in your browser and the 2nd is to use Postman. For the most part, I use because making requests in it is faster and its easier to change parameters, however, I will use my browser in this tutorial because that will make it easier to collapse things/ limit the amount of censoring I have to do.

Match Lists

Basic Match List

The JSON Data for the Basic Match List

To return the information for your first 9 matches in JSON format (the same number as you would normally see on the screen) Use the following url:

https://www.familytreedna.com/my/family-finder-api/matches?

Full Match List

You'll notice that the first line of JSON data returned by the last command has the total count of matches you have. You can use this number or any number larger than it in the url to print out that number of matches. In the url set page=1 (to start on your first page of matches) and set pageSize=numberofmatches. Here is an example url:

https://www.familytreedna.com/my/family-finder-api/matches?page=1&pageSize=4000

Using FTDNA's API

Edit 1 5/11/2018: Note that this does not mean anything bad for you at all and you can continue using ftdna as normal, it's a fantastic site. Also, there is a possibility that the information I was sent regarding who was supposed to be able to use the API could have been incorrect, see the comments section for an interesting discussion on that. I think that the big takeaway from this post should be if you want to use the API for your company it is worth checking in with ftdna to ensure you have permission to do so.

Edit 2 5/11/2018: I have been looking into it more, and I believe that this is not in fact an issue at all which I am very happy about. I am still confused about why ftdna told me otherwise, and it may be that you are technically still not supposed to use it, but I'm really not sure at this time. Special thanks to the anonymous commenter for clearing things up!

Note: I actually wrote this all the way back on March 12th. I had notified FTDNA of the fact that their API was accessible by the public even before that. I am publishing this now because I feel it is my right/duty. They made the decision not to fix it or notify the public that they can use the API, so I think that somebody should. I'm hoping that this post will perhaps raise awareness about this and make FTDNA make a definitive choice about whether they want their API to be publicly available (which I personally think would be fantastic).

Purpose

This document will serve to explain the process through which I found a security vulnerability in the FTDNA web API, as well as the process I went through in reporting said vulnerability and what I would have done differently if given the chance.

Definitions

Some company names and terms used in this document will undoubtedly be unfamiliar to those reading it. This section will serve to clarify said terms.

How OneNote Can Help You Transcribe Documents

OneNote is my program of choice for transcribing newspapers. It's OCR tools, instant copy paste photo insertion, and flexible formatting functionalities make it a breeze to transcribe documents in no time at all. This post will take you through my transcription workflow, allowing you to just as easily transcribe your source material in a matter of minutes.

What is OCR and Why Should You Use It?

OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition. A character is a single letter within a word. OCR programs will 'look' at an image and identify the characters inside, allowing you to copy and paste text from an image. Using OCR programs will make transcribing go much quicker since the computer does most of the work, allowing you to spend more of your time researching and making discoveries.

1. Insert Your Source Image into One Note

There are lots of ways you can do this, but I will just show an example of one. Much of the time I am not transcribing a full image, but just a portion of one. Thus I usually only want to import a portion of an image into One Note. Windows operating system has a nice little tool called 'snipping tool' which will capture just a section of your screen for you, which is exactly what we need.

For my main image, I will use page 40 from the 1931 Bethany Daisy, my largest currently ongoing transcription project. Here is the image if you wish to follow along:

Page 40 of the Bethany Daisy

\

1931 Bethany Daisy: The Junior Class pt. 1 (pg. 38-39)

This is part one of the Junior class photos and part five of my ongoing series of pictures and transcriptions of the 1931 Bethany Daisy that belonged to my great grandma Frances Elsie Caroline Gustafson.

Junior Class History

JUNIOR CLASS HISTORY 

ON SEPTEMBER 5, 1928, there arrived on the campus of 

Bethany College a group of bashful, bewildered seekers of 

higher knowledge. After wandering through dark halls, climbing 

numerous stairways, and peering into a seemingly endless number 

of vacant rooms, we were finally directed to the library to go through 

the tedious process of enrolling. 

The next event was to appear before the august Miss Magnusson 

for our entrance examinations; everyone seemed to survive. Then 

we were received with malicious joy by the "Ruf Nex" and upper- 

classmen who for a few weeks would not let us forget that we were 

Freshmen. 

But it was not long until we became accustomed to the life at 

college including the visits to the dining hall during chapel exercises, 

cutting all unnecessary classes, and the duty of visiting the college 

library either with a studious intent or merely with the motive of 

creating some hilarity among the more studious upperclassmen. 

Our career as a class during the Freshmen and Sophomore years 

has been, with the exception of an occasional party, rather unevent- 

ful. However, as a Junior class, we are interested in publishing the 

best annual in the history of Bethany and also in entertaining the 

Seniors at the annual Junior-Senior banquet. 

Variety is recognized as the spice of life, and we endeavor as a 

class to follow this axiom. We range in mental ability from Lucille 

Holmberg to—no fair to tell a class secret; in height from Carl 

Larson to—we'll let you decide that; in athletic ability from Kenneth 

Monson, basket ball player de luxe to Floyd Peterson, "champion 

sleeper" ; and in musical ability from Pete Moline, whistler, to Harold 

Carlson, chief of the fourth-floor warblers. 

But from the beginning we have been imbued with the Bethany 

spirit and our loyalty has been shown by the number from our class 

who have been on forensic teams, athletic teams, and numerous other 

campus organizations. 

Now we are nearing the close of our third year in the halls of 

Bethany, and may we fully realize that from Bethany we receive the 

influence that is moulding our lives and characters and may we 

realize these benefits and express by our future lives in service to 

humanity our true esteem of the ideals given to us at Bethany.

Lets Talk Metadata

Metadata is one of the most valuable tools you can use to organize all the photos and documents you have accumulated through your genealogy work. You can have an easily searchable folder of photos named with random strings of characters so long as you have written quality metadata to go with them. Do I recommend naming all of your files randomly and putting them in the same folder? Absolutely not, but the point is that metadata is incredibly powerful and in this post, I will tell you everything you need to know to get started with using it.

What is Metadata?

Viewing the Metadata of a File

Opening a 1949 Remembrance Book pt. 1

About the Book

When rifling through my grandpa Schmidt's box of family heirlooms and photographs, I had the good fortune of coming upon a book. Inscribed on the cover were the words "remembrance book", and inside I found a trove of loose letters of condolences, telegrams, and funeral documents. Contained within the pages I was also pleased to find a wealth of genealogical information concerning John Bernard Dwyer, my third great uncle. Seeing as John died in 1949, it is reasonable to assume that nearly everything contained within the book is from around the 1940s - 50s. The contents of the book, both in the loose and bound portions, primarily concern the portions of my family bearing the last names "Burnes" and "Dwyer". The Burnes and Dwyer families were of Irish descent and resided primarily in Minnesota.

Loose Papers

As mentioned previously, the book has bound pages stocked with information as well as miscellaneous loose documents concerning members of the family beyond John Bernard Dwyer. This post will detail the contents of the latter, while a future post will show the contents of the former.

Photo of John Bernard Dwyer

John Bernard Dwyer

A remembrance book would not be complete without a photograph of the deceased you wish to remember. The above is a photograph of John Bernard Dwyer.

I'm Officially 18 Years Old

Today's post will be a little different from most of my other ones. It is scheduled to post as exactly 7:50 pm EST on March 17th of 2018, my 18th birthday (and, of course, St. Patricks Day). So I thought I'd share a bit about what other familial events occurred on this day, certain aspects of myself which I have found other ancestors share, as well as a bit about these past 18 years.

On This Day In Family History

My birthday is by no means the only one in my family to occur on this March 17th. Here are some of the known births, marriages, etc. which also occurred on St. Patricks Day. 

1. March 17th, 1854, My 3rd great grandpa Henry Patrick Dwyer is born in Illinois, USA
2. March 17th, 1857, My 3rd great grandpa William Franklin Byers is born in Illinois, USA
3. March 17th, 1861, The husband of my 2nd great-grandaunt, Joseph M. Belina is born in Dlouhá Trebová, Lanškroun, Bohemia, Czechoslovakia
4. March 17th, 1872, My 2nd great-granduncle Gustaf Albert Teodor Gustafson is born in Adelöv, Jönköping, Sweden
5. March 17th, 1893, The wife of my 2nd great-granduncle Wilma A. Laughrey is born in Mitchell, Kansas, USA
6. March 17th, 1901, My 2nd great-granduncle William Benson Van Wert is born in Beach Lake, Wayne, Pennsylvania,USA
7. March 17th, 1917, My 2nd great-grandaunt, Effie Eleanor Ekeberg marries Gustav Reginald Freedlund in the Swedish Evangelical Church of Aurora, Illinois, USA
8. March 17th, 2000, My twin sister, Nicole Caroline Schmidt, and I, Renée Joanne Schmidt, were born. 

The Family's Twins

No, the Fact the Younger Generations Aren't Learning Cursive Doesn't Mean the End of Genealogy

Facebook is one of the most valuable resources any genealogist can have in their arsenal. So, naturally, I am a part of many genealogy-related groups on facebook. Normally they are very helpful, giving new insights into how a person should approach research as well as perspectives on the genealogy world as a whole. However, on occasion, these groups will have posts addressing the rest of the members as a whole to share their opinions on the topic of "the younger generations".

As a note, this post is not meant to demonize anybody or to rant without offering any solutions. Rather I'd like to open up discussion about how best to approach concerns as well as give suggestions on how to include the "younger generations" in such discussions. It is also not meant to take a swing at "how can we get kids into genealogy" queries because those are not only important but also include the kids and young adults in the discussion, instead of alienating them by saying some aspect of how they grew up is a problem. Who knows, maybe we can even come to view each other as more than just pre-internet and post-internet and recognize each other for the superb genealogists we all are. First, though I'd like to address some gripes.

Gripes

Cursive Handwriting

This is probably one of the ones that I see the most. Yes, it's true. They don't teach cursive in USA schools anymore. Before anyone dies from the horror of such a proposition, let me provide my perspective.

I actually was taught cursive in school, I had about a year of cursive instruction in 2nd grade, but I'm going to let you in on a little secret: I haven't written in cursive since that year. Despite this, I actually have no problems reading cursive documents. Well, I take that back. When I first started doing genealogy I had some difficulty with the old scripts. Luckily, there is a special skill that all humans have; the ability to learn. Since I already spoke English, the transition came pretty fast. And, contrary to popular belief, it's not difficult to read cursive even if you haven't had instruction. Most of the letters are exactly the same, just with connections drawn between.

Some letters written in Kurrentschrift (source)

A Comparison of FTDNA and MyHeritage Results Between Grandchild and Grandparents

The real value of DNA testing lies in the matches. DNA has done so many spectacular things for me, from solving a case of false parentage to revealing new photos of my relatives. However, one can not deny the novelty that comes with the ethnicity results.

It's important to remember that ethnicity results are not everything, and definitely not 100% accurate. They are usually fairly accurate on the continental level, but it's hard to distinguish Swedish from English, for instance. However, I thought it might be interesting to compare the ethnicity percentages yielded by different companies. I have tested myself, all four of my grandparents, and some great uncles and aunts. This post will compare not only ethnicity but also match counts.

My FTDNA Results

Main Ethnicities

My FTDNA Main Ethnicity Results

Part 1:The Complete Guide to Deciphering Kurrentschrift (For Non-German Speakers)

Oftentimes the most difficult task for anyone researching their German ancestors is navigating Kurrentschrift.

Kurrentschrift is an old German script which fell out of use after 1941. Although the script is quite beautiful, it can be very difficult to read when first starting out (and for some time after as well). This is the first post in a series which will (hopefully) teach you everything you need to know to start deciphering these texts. It's important to note that these will only give you a jump start. You will be able to (hopefully) read most of your records after working through the steps I outline, however it will take a lot of time at first to read each one. Speed comes with a combination of time and recognition, both of which mean you have to practice. Keep at it though, with each record you transcribe your time spent will decrease exponentially. Personally, transcribing records written in Kurrentschrift (as long as the handwriting isn't smudged or cramped) now takes only a few more minutes than transcribing English records.

Now with that in mind, let's get started!

Using Schrift Generator

Hopefully, the future sections of this series will help you to read your documents in Kurrentschrift relatively well without the use of technology. However, no one can deny the value of having a bit of help here and there. That's where the Schrift Generator comes in handy. The Schrift Generator  allows you to type out anything you want and display how it would look when written in a variety of Fraktur, Sütterlin, and Kurrent fonts. 

The User Interface

The page is in German, but it's relatively easy to use. If you scroll down, you should see an entry field that looks something like this:

The text entry field in Schrift Generator

This is where you type the words you wish to display in German Script.

Dissection of an Early German/Pomeranian Birth Record

German birth records and the information they contain vary from location to location. For the longest time, it was incredibly difficult for me to extract information from my German family's records since I don't speak German. However, in my research, I have noticed some common patterns and formats that most records seem to follow, which has drastically changed my experience. Please note that this will display documents nearly exclusively from Pomerania, Germany. However, most of the information should remain relevant to records from other areas. The main document I will be using (at first) is the birth record of my 5th great uncle, Carl Friedrich Warner, shown below.

The Birth Record of Carl Friedrich Warner in Pomerania (entry number 2)

Visualizing Shared Events in Your Tree

When I conduct collateral research, I like to add neighbors, friends, and possible relatives directly to my family file, linking them together using shared events. This increases the chance that I will accidentally happen across a family member, while also giving me an idea of their stance within the community. I decided to figure out how to display shared events in a way that I could see all the connections I'd established for a person with a single click. I found a completely free solution and will explain in the rest of this post what that solution was. These network graphs were the result of my efforts.

Network graph of all the people in my file based on their shared events

Filtered view within the network graph of just one person in my file and their connections

How to Manually Transfer Your Sources From Ancestry.com to Your Genealogy Program (Quickly)

It's been many months since I first decided that I wanted to manually transfer my sources from Ancestry.com to my genealogy program of choice, Legacy family tree. When I first started my transferring, Family Tree Maker was still actively supporting transfers of information from Ancestry.com to their program and now RootsMagic has introduced support. Yet, I still decided to manually transfer. There were quite a few reasons for my decision to manually reenter the information, but I'll just list the main ones:

1. Ancestry.com has abysmal sources for a lot of their documents in my opinion. In most cases the only halfway decent ones are censuses, and oftentimes I will find the auto-sourcing they do has incorrect values for fields like page numbers.
2. I want everything in my local tree to be as accurate as possible. When I first started working on my tree I was, let's face it, not especially concerned with accuracy. By going through each record individually I can check each record individually.
3. I can save source images to my local file. These aren't for anything other than my own personal reference, as it is not at all legal or encouraged to distribute these images (they are the property of ancestry), but if I ever need to cancel my subscription I can still glean information from them.
4. My tree on ancestry is not mine. I collaborate on it with my great uncle Van Wert (who did extensive work even before records were available online!). So even if I wanted to I wouldn't be able to download everything (which worked out for me in the end). 
5. Name recognition. When you force yourself to really read the records, you will begin to see the same names over and over. Name recognition has been crucial for me in finding immigrant ancestors, as its not abnormal for the names you see over and over to be family from overseas.

The Sock That Changed History: The Story of Isaac Van Wart and the Three Captors

A lithograph of the capture of Major John André (source)

The date was September 23rd, 1780, five years after the first shot of the Revolutionary War was fired [2]. The British spy Major John André, donning plain, unassuming clothes and responding to the fake name 'John Anderson', passed on horseback through Westchester County, New York [3] while carrying on his person a number of papers including lists and sketches of the American site at West Point. These papers were intended to play a crucial role in Benedict Arnold's, the American traitor, planned surrender at West Point. [4].

Origin Story: The Schmidt Family of Goldbeck, Pomerania

 Map of Kreis Saatzig in Pomerania (source)

Today's origin story will deal with the hometown of  my Schmidt family. As far back as records for the area were recorded, my Schmidt family can be found in Goldbeck, Kries Saatzig, Pomerania, Prussia, now known as Sulino, Stargardzki, Zachodniopomorskie, Poland . This post will detail the history of Goldbeck. While it was difficult to find much about the area, I did manage to find enough to paint a general picture of some of the critical points in its history. The descriptions of Goldbeck will stop after 1945, as that is when it became part of Poland.

Biography: Christian Friedrich Wilhelm Schmidt (3gg)

This is the biography of my immigrant ancestor, my 3rd great grandpa Christian Friedrich Wilhelm Schmidt.

Christian Friedrich Wilhelm Schmidt (who more commonly went by 'Wilhelm' or 'William') was born on the 18th of February, 1857 in Goldbeck, Pommern, Germany to his father, a farmer also named Christian Friedrich Wilhelm Schmidt, and his mother Dorothea Louisa Zabel. He was baptized into the Lutheran church there on the 28th of February, 1857. He was the 2nd child of his parents, who would have 3 more children before his father's death on the 27th of February, 1864 at the young age of  39. His mother remarried to Michael Heidemann and had a total of 6 more children by him.

A Progress Update on Census2Ged

I am not quite ready for a release yet, but the next release of my free program, census2ged, will have insane amounts of new functionality added. Since I'm so excited that it's starting to look like a real program, I thought I'd share some of what's to come.

If you'd like to read my previous posts about the program (which I programmed in python and have made available to anyone for free) you can check out the following links:

https://famgenealogy.blogspot.com/2017/09/census2ged-my-new-program.html
My first post about it. It goes over the basics and the functionality included in the first release.

https://famgenealogy.blogspot.com/2017/10/census2ged-20.html
My second post which details the new things I added in the second release.

Anyways, let's get to it! And, if you have any suggestions of things I should add before the actual release just let me know in the comments!

New and Improved GUI

That's right, it no longer has only two input fields!

Okay, so it still looks a little like the neglected lovechild of 90's design and Windows Vista, but we can ignore that for now. 

Database Statistics Made Easy (Using Gigatrees and Other Programs)

I've been getting pretty lucky with school lately. Today (1/4/2018 that is) school was canceled due to "unsafe wind chills" and tomorrow it will be canceled for the same reasons. The benefits of the lack of school days were numerous, most notably my paper one on "German and Italian Expansion" was delayed (History and English are my weakest subjects believe it or not) and I was able to investigate the different ways I could take statistics in my database in Legacy Family Tree. 

A few of the statistics I am now tracking