BS: Family stories/trees with Mudcat help

Subject: BS: Family stories/trees with Mudcat help
From: Joybell
Date: 20 Mar 08 - 08:52 PM

It just came to me after reading Mo the caller's thread about help with a family tree.
Are there other Mudcatters here who might be willing to share information about nearby places that relate to other Mudcatter's families?
For example looking up gravestones, addresses of old buildings -- things like that. This idea already exists within other forums but it's here we spend our time and it's here we have such wonderful friends.

My great-great grandmother came from a street that still has many of it's old buildings -- in Newtownards, Ireland. I can't afford the cost of research in Ireland but I'd be very happy to photograph buildings, graves and maybe do "look-ups" in my own area in exchange. We wouldn't be able to do direct exchanges but the help would all go around. We might even be able to exchange say -- a CD for a photo.
Just a thought. Anyone interested?
Cheers, Joy

Subject: RE: BS: Family stories/trees with Mudcat help
From: katlaughing
Date: 21 Mar 08 - 12:36 AM

Yes,great idea! Now, if I can think of something where there may be a Mudcatter and if I am close to anything I could look up for others. I'd be delighted to help.

Otherwise, I do have ancestry.com subscription until the end of the month, if anyone needs a quick lookup or two.

Subject: RE: BS: Family stories/trees with Mudcat help
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 21 Mar 08 - 01:13 AM

There is a website that I think is free, and that recruits volunteer local cemetary lookups. I think it's called something like "Find a Grave" (but so far as I know is US only(?)).

Lin corresponded with them a few months ago and got on a mailing list, but at the time we didn't manage to get out and others filled requests we knew about for our local area.

The sun has gone down, so it's safe for her to come out of the darkened bedroom. I've made an initial attempt at resuscitation, and maybe she can slither out to find her link so it can be posted before the sun comes out again.

John

Subject: RE: BS: Family stories/trees with Mudcat help
From: Lin in Kansas
Date: 21 Mar 08 - 01:40 AM

OK, I've slithered (thank you, dear, for the lovely visual), and here's a link to Find A Grave: Click. As far as I'm aware, it is just U.S. cemeteries, but I haven't done any searches anywhere else. They are strictly a volunteer organization, and you can make requests for gravestone/graveyard photographs--or there may already be one on the site somewhere. They claim to list 21 million grave records!

Some of the individual states (Missouri comes to mind because I've used their information) have records on their GenWeb sites as well. Here's the U.S. GenWeb's site: Click

Hope this helps. I'm off to do some more ancestor searching.

Lin

Subject: RE: BS: Family stories/trees with Mudcat help
From: Joybell
Date: 21 Mar 08 - 07:13 AM

I have seen some of those sites but I like to hang around here at Mudcat.

Here are my offers. I'm able to photograph places in Central and Western Victoria, Australia. Lots of people came to the goldfields here including many Americans. I have some info. on traveling entertainers, during the 19th century, in these areas too. English and American.
Cheers, Joy

Subject: RE: BS: Family stories/trees with Mudcat help
From: GUEST,Dani
Date: 21 Mar 08 - 07:40 AM

I like the idea!

I'd help in NC, and someday when I get back to my own research, I'll definitely post here; hadn't thought of it before. Thanks!

Dani

Subject: RE: BS: Family stories/trees with Mudcat help
From: open mike
Date: 21 Mar 08 - 01:13 PM

There is an organization called "Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness"
in which people trade info--I am a member and have looked up graves
and family tree info around northern california. Others have offered
me pix and info from Pennsylvania and other places. There are a few
folks on here involved in genealogy searches, and it would be great to
exchange info. I am trying to find info for another catter, Frug, whose ancestors were in Lowell MA. My people came from Sweden, Denmark and Schleiswig/Holstein which was alternately Danish and German depending on where the border-line was drawn that year.

Subject: RE: BS: Family stories/trees with Mudcat help
From: Joybell
Date: 21 Mar 08 - 05:29 PM

I've considered joining "Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness". Now there's a great name.
I thought I'd have little to offer being in a place where so many of us came here around the same time. We're all Cousins. We nearly all have Cornish connections and so few relatives stayed behind. I'd probably only be able to help people researching family-tree branches. I thought I'd have more to offer here on Mudcat where we needn't restrict our kindnesses to geanealogical matters.

Thank you all for the links, though. I'm sure others will find them very useful.
Cheers, Joy

Subject: RE: BS: Family stories/trees with Mudcat help
From: open mike
Date: 21 Mar 08 - 06:28 PM

the name is from a book by Anne Herbert
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_act_of_kindness
http://www.actsofkindness.org/

Subject: RE: BS: Family stories/trees with Mudcat help
From: open mike
Date: 21 Mar 08 - 06:57 PM

maybe we mudcats will find that WE are all cousins!

Subject: RE: BS: Family stories/trees with Mudcat help
From: Gulliver
Date: 21 Mar 08 - 07:06 PM

I'd be prepared to cover Dublin and other places in Ireland. I've already carried out lots of familiy searches over the past few years, mainly in Dublin, Dundalk, Carlow/Offaly. However, I'd need to have my expenses covered (official things like photocopies of entries in the birth/marriage/death registers cost 4 Euros a pop, or 2 Euros for an individual search, etc.). If interested PM me. Don

Subject: RE: BS: Family stories/trees with Mudcat help
From: katlaughing
Date: 21 Mar 08 - 10:10 PM

I'd love to somehow find a link to my great-greatgrandmother Gordon in Nova Scotia to a physican who, family lore says, was shanghaied from Northern Ireland and who "jumped ship" at Nova Scotia where he presumably fathered my gggrandma. BUT, I've cousins to find and contact to see what they may have as the Gordon name was passed down through their ranks more than my dad's.

Most states have a page of lookup volunteers connected to the genweb thing which Lin mentioned. Colorado also has one where you can list the names you are looking for, with your contact info.

Subject: RE: BS: Family stories/trees with Mudcat help
From: Janie
Date: 21 Mar 08 - 11:12 PM

I'm pretty unreliable because present circumstances always seem to be pretty chaotic and urgent, but "if I can get my act together and circumstances permit" I'm good for Orange, Durham and Alamance Co., NC, southwest (the coalfields) West Virgina and Kanawha and Putman Counties of WV. Pass through the I-77 corridor of southwest Virginia often on my way home to WV and could stop along the way also.

Janie

Subject: RE: BS: Family stories/trees with Mudcat help
From: Joybell
Date: 22 Mar 08 - 06:59 PM

I think this might be fun. I'd be quite happy about paying costs to a Mudcatter. Seems less complicated.
All cousins, we Mudcats? Yes that would be a hoot.
Cheers, Joy