Saturday, January 31, 2015

Unknown Engelmanns

Unknown Engelmann's From North Dakota

Friday, November 23, 2012

Percy's Rule the World

Working on getting as many single royal, ducal, princely, and noble families into my Family Tree Maker File.  I've concluded one thing, the Percy Family that gives us the current Duke of the Northumberlands rule the world.  They not only give us the Alnwick Castle (which if you're a Harry Potter Fan was Hogwarts in the first film) and Pippa Middleton's boyfriend, they give us the Queen Elizabeth II of England, King Juan Carlos of Spain, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, Queen Margarethe II of Denmark, King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden, King Harald V of Norway, and King Albert II of Belgium, among others.  :)  See Percy's rule the world!

Thursday, November 3, 2011

You know what...

You know what's fun about plugging in Royal Genealogies? It's seeing how the current Royal Families evolved over the years...

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Blog #94 Legacy

A poem about my family’s faith (2007)

Grandpa Robert climbed in a window

To preach his first Sunday sermon!

Although he came in a different way,

The congregation said,

“Next time use the door!”

When eighteen miles is a great distance,

“Too much for the horses, they need a rest!”

No love was lost when,

The Priest slapped a grown man,

Over spilled holy water…oh my!

So in eighteen hundred and sixty four,

The Hoffman women were gathered plus four men,

To establish a church on the wide and open prairie,

To summon all to answer Christ’s call,

To preserve their faith for more generations.

My grandma Minnie is of sterling stock,

Among the few Baptists from Poland,

Who come to this place,

She married Catholic who languished,

But her children knew her faith.

You see Grandpa Fred was no slouch,

He stepped up when the minister was out,

“I just talked,” he said, “and not preached.”

Uncle Dave was more of the preaching sort,

Telling people of the Christian Destiny.

His father named Dave, the grandson of two preachers,

The one who used windows, the other the door,

Who instilled the values of faith,

While having his own so great,

Meetings were held in his house to pass the Good News.

Four families, one faith,

Who keep it passing,

From generation to generation,

A great history and legacy,

Yet Christ’s work isn’t done.

Tags: Poetry, Hannah Cutter, David Breese, Fred Hoffman, Minnie Kobus, Polish Baptist

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Royals, Royals, Royals

How Many Names do YOU have in your Family Tree Maker File?
I'd really like to thank cousin Lucy Cuthbert (current Duke of Northumberland's niece) for marrying into the Saudi Royal Family, it helped me add 200 names to my family tree. I'm trying to add as many royal, princely, and noble families into my Family Tree Maker File. I'm done with the Belgians and have 75-90% of the other royal houses done. I now have 30,000 names in my family tree.

Yes, I continue to do work on my lines (mainly the Breese's) but after a while you come to a brick wall and you need to take a break...and wait for more information to get digitized. So I've been adding royals and famous people to the family tree. It's been a fun experience.

Things I've Learned:
There's plenty of Uncle-Niece Marriages between families. (EWWW!)
You can see the progression of countries.
You can end an empire through the marriage bed. (hmmm, I can see why the Byzantine Empire fell)
All Royal, Princely, Ducal, and Noble families are related some way.

Later.

Thursday, August 4, 2011

#93 Surname Resources

A New Direction

I thought this week, I’d thought I share websites that I use for the surnames that I research. First Surname will the Breese Family. Warning, this is not a complete list of Breese Websites. These websites are not presented in any particular order and I will try to include some little blurb about the site.

www.breeseusa.org this website has not been updated since 2004, but it is a start for Breese research. This site perpetuates the story that there were four Breese brothers who came to America and that one of the brothers was the ancestor of Samuel Finley Breese Morse.

www.genforum.genealogy.com/breese/ I usually hit up the forums to see if anyone is looking for the Breese’s I’m looking for. More often than not, I have to post something announcing what I’m looking for. This is the genealogy.com Breese forum. I do not usually use this message board for Breese research.

http://boards.rootsweb.com/surnames.breese/mb.ashx - This is the Breese surname forum I prefer using the rootsweb.com message boards. I don’t know why. This is the Breese forum from rootsweb.com in partnership with Ancestry.com. I’ve met so many people through this website and I hope that in the future someone will find what I’ve written and will help me out.

www.iment.com/maida/familytree/breese/breesegen.htm this is the Breese page for the Sidney Breese line, the ancestor of Samuel Finley Breese Morse. There is one famous Breese featured on the page and that is Kidder Randolph Breese, however the authors of the site do not have him connecting to anyone in their family.

http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/b/r/e/Sue-A-Breese/index.html this is another Breese line -Moses Breese, and if you’re descended from them this is the site for you. There is a new theory that Moses Breese is descended from Cornelius Breese the brother of John Breese.

http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~knorthup/Webpage/Atlanta/index.html This web page is done by another branch of the John Brees family. She ties to include a little something on each of John Brees and Dorothy Riggs’s sons Kari also posed the book her uncle wrote about the Breese Family.

http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/k/r/o/Lori-M-Krout/TREE/index.html - Lori Breese Krout’s Breese site is more than ten years old, but you can get a start here. It mainly focuses on John R. Breese’s son Silas Gildersleeve Breese. Lori has done a ton of work over the years on Breese genealogy.

http://www.breesegenealogy.com/Breese_Genealogy/Home.html - This is Lori Krout’s new Breese website. It’s not completely done yet, but I thought I’d give her a shout out. It is very well done and mainly focuses on her line as a start, but she does eventually want to have a little something on each line.

Well these are a few websites that can be used for Breese Genealogy Research. This by no means is complete, but it is a start. If you have any suggestions for Breese websites please post them! If I get enough, I can post another list of Breese genealogy websites.

Tags: Breese, Genealogy

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

#92 Facebook-We Don’t Need No Stinking Facebook!

Using social networking and Google to find cousins

With the rise of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Myspace, genealogist are not immune to the changes that Internet has brought. So what is a genealogist to do to help with the changes? This is another brainstorming session on how to use each of these mediums.

Facebook

A ton of people have joined Facebook. Through the many years I since I have joined Facebook, I have discovered a lot of cousins. In fact a lot of my friends are my cousins. There are also plenty of genealogy groups that cover a variety of topics out there you can join, like Genea-bloggers, International Genealogy, British Genealogy, etc.

Individual families also have their genealogy groups so that people that have the same surnames or the descendants of those surnames. I run two genealogy groups for the Breese Family and the Cutter Family. So far the Breese Genealogy Group is much bigger than the Cutter Genealogy Group. I joined the Pierce Group, Hoffman Club, Pierson Family, Jackson Family, and the Engelmann Family genealogy groups.

Also on Facebook you can post photos and videos of your family to share with only your friends. I have a tribute to my grandparents on the site that only my friends can see.

YouTube

With Picasa or Windows Photo Story, you can put together slick slide shows with your family photos. Both are slideshow programs. You can create your slide show through Power Point and save the show as a .GIF file and import the slides into Picassa or Windows Photo Story to create a movie.

There is a warning with Picasa though, if you operate with Windows XP, you need to open the files with Windows Media and not any other program otherwise you get a serious error and have to restart your computer. After the fifth attempt of trying to watch the video, I figured that out and will pass along that advice.

Twitter

On Twitter, you can update what you’re researching for the day and let people know of your latest discoveries. You can also check out when other people post their latest blogs. The beauty of Twitter you can blog your Tweets from everyone so only people you approve of can follow you.

MySpace

MySpace, I haven’t been on my MySpace page in a while, but you can blog on MySpace and create photo albums of your family. Like Twitter you can also set it up so where only people you approve of can see your Myspace page.

This is a short post, hopefully giving my readers ideas on what to do with the social networking sites. If not, oh well, but I hope that you will consider hooking up with a social networking site to spread the word about your family. Maybe one day, a relative will see you on Facebook and contact you. A genealogist needs to use all avenues in order to make the connections and social networking is one of them!

Tags: Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube