The Shamrock Genealogist

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RootsTech is Almost Here!

It's T minus 27 days until RootsTech 2018! And of course I have been counting. It's the largest genealogy conference that I have ever been to. Last year was my first time and I can honestly say it was one of the most amazing experiences I ever had. It's such a lovely feeling to be surrounded by others that share your love (read addiction) of genealogy and to meet so many friends that I met online in Facebook groups and my #genchat and #iamnextgen friends. RootsTech was the first time I really took a solo vacation. To spend an entire week devoted to something I'm so passionate about. I feel like I've come a long way since I first started researching when I was 18 years old and just trying to learn more about my paternal grandmother. It feels fitting that I was just accepted to have my photo below displayed at the RootsTech Photo + Story Competition. This is my paternal grandmother who really inspired my start of genealogy - I feel her with me and I'm glad that ...

Protesting Runs in the Family

The art of protest and practicing civil disobedience is a trait that I have seen in many families, including mine. In particular several members of my family like to participate in marches. My father marched in Washington, D.C. during the Vietnam war. He was near peope that were tear gassed. You could say he was just another hippie but he didn't believe in the war. He reported for his medical physical and was one number away from being called up for the draft. During college I participated in several marches, including Take Back the Night as well as the March for Women's Lives in D.C. This is when I started to practice activism with the Women's Center at SUNY Oswego. These experiences truly changed my life as it gave me a voice to my experiences. When I was a young teenager I was involved in a very abusive relationship that nearly killed me. It has been hard to trust others with my story as not everyone believed me. That's why the #MeToo movement is so powerful and...

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words and is a Snapshot of Memories

Over the past week I have been re-examining and seeing out more pictures of my family and ancestors. I love to find documents detailing my ancestors' service in the military, when/whom they married, how many children they had. That doesn't compare to seeing a picture of a family member I never met or seeing a picture of a family member when they were about my age in the prime of their life, getting married and starting to have children. As I mentioned in my blog post last week I officially started doing genealogy when I was 18. That wasn't when I started to seek out family pictures. I was probably about 10 years old when I started digging through the photos that we had put in some photo boxes, not sorted, no names or dates on the back (with the exception of a few Polaroids and more recent photos where the date was time stamped - a great feature!). I would bug my mom and ask her "Who is that?" "What year/". I later invested in photo safe pens so I ...

What Was My Starting Point for Genealogy?

I'm participating in the 52Ancestors challenge issued by Amy Johnson Crow and the AncestorChallenge2018 issued by David Allen Lambert. Each involve hightlighting an ancestor in genealogy, which I will be blogging about and sharing via social media. The prompt for 52 Ancestors is "Start". I've decided to start with how I got started in genealogy, a question that I am asked frequently at conferences and other events. I want to say out loud no, I'm not a beginner. I've been researching for 15+ years. I just have a really young face. I first started researching my family history when I was 18 years old. I was a first year student who was taking a genetics course for my zoology major. One of our assignments was to build a family tree and conduct interviews with family members to obtain detailed medical history. It felt awkward to ask the females in our family when their last menstrual period was, how many pregnancies, how many miscarriages, etc. Really perso...

It's the Final Countdown (to 2017): A Year in Review

It's hard to believe that December 31st has finally arrived and it's the last day of 2017. I don't know about all of you but I feel that 2017 was a rollercoaster of a year. Here's some highlights for what happened in 2017 for the Shamrock Genealogist: DNA tested paternal uncle and father at AncestryDNA . Bonus was my maternal grandmother tested on her own at MyHeritage . Attended two genealogy conferences, RootsTech and NERGC, which were both firsts for me. Had proposals chosen to give lectures at Ontario Genealogy Society (OGS) Conference and Michigan in Perspective Local History Conference in 2018. Was accepted to be a social media ambassador for RootsTech 2018 (which resulted in free r egistration for RootsTech !) Assisted with social media publicity for OGS 2018 Bought the domain rights for this web site Visited the New England Genealogical History Society library (twice!) and the California State Archives Started a Facebook page for my bl...

Reclaiming Family Traditions

Tonight is the first night of Chanukah . In short it's a celebration of how the oil needed to heat the menorah of the Temple lasted eight days, when it should only have lasted one day. Growing up, I was raised to celebrate both Chanukah and Christmas. My mom was raised Jewish and my dad was raised Catholic and holidays were blended. My mom would make the potato latkes (pancakes). The menorah would be lit, with a new candle appearing each night until the final night when the entire menorah has candles. The menorah has candles added right to left but it's lit left to right. I was usually afraid of fire so my mom would take care of lighting the menorah. In some families it was the youngest child that would do the lighting. The menorah in my family was passed down, possibly from my great grandparents. I loved the menorah, it had such a bright bronze (almost gold) look. It played "Rock of Ages", like an old jewelry box tune. Since I moved out of my parents' house, ...