Passing It On

Once mighty railroads likely played a role in your family history

Nobody cares about the railroads anymore.

– Harry Nilsson

When Harry crooned that catchy tune 40 years ago, he accurately summed up the attitudes of most Americans, who were abandoning railroads in favor of air travel and auto travel on the expanding Interstate highway system at a dizzying pace. Without the emergence of Amtrak in 1971, passenger rail service may have disappeared altogether.

A couple of unrelated incidents got me thinking about trains recently.

The first was a newspaper story about possibly linking Des Moines, Iowa, and Chicago, Illinois, with a high speed rail line. While that’s big news today, it wasn’t all that long ago that you could go just about anywhere from Des Moines by rail.

The second incident occurred at a social function where a friend noted that his grandparents emigrated from Italy around 1900, settling in Michigan. “I wonder if they went from New York to Michigan by train?” he asked.

Probably. My grandparents traveled from New York to Iowa by train after their arrival from Denmark in 1920. In the earlier part of the 20th century, most Americans took the train if they were traveling a considerable distance. Trains were still the backbone of America’s economic culture during World War II, funneling troops and goods into the war efforts from across the country to each coast.

The demise of passenger rail service was relatively swift after the war and many young people today have no idea what it was like to take a vacation by rail. You probably have train stories in your family history. Digging them out will be doubly significant if America experiences a significant passenger rail revival.

Writing prompt of the day: What’s your favorite memory of traveling by rail? If you don’t have one, ask somebody who does.

Author Larry Lehmer's book about Dick Clark and American Bandstand --  Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll --is available from Sunbury Press. His book about the last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- The Day the Music Died -- is available at Amazon.

Flickr photo of Silver Meteor Observation Lounge in 1962 courtesy of hdport.

Facebook launches Facebook for dead people … really

 I suppose Facebook for dead people was inevitable. Now it’s a reality.

Kudos to Randy Seaver for tipping me off to the new Facebook application, I Remember. The Facebook folks have hooked up with Footnote to create the app which aims “to preserve, honor and share the memories of those important people in your life that have passed away.”

It’s pretty cool and it comes at an appropriate time – when many Internet users are finally embracing social media and at the beginning of Personal History Month, a time to reflect on one’s own family history. I’ve started my first I Remember page, for my mother, Elsie Lehmer.

Much like a regular Facebook account, I Remember offers a home page (or Wall) that offers basic biographical information, room for a photo of the person being honored and a “news feed” of comments from other Facebook users.

Click on the info tab and you get a nifty timeline showing big events that happened during that person’s lifetime. The timeline is expandable and will accept links to stories you provide that are dated. There’s a photos tab and a “Remembered By” tab that is similar to the Friends tab in the regular Facebook.

Any Facebook (or presumably Footnote) user has access to the honored person’s page and may add information, photos or stories. I Remember is just the latest entry in the social media genealogy genre, joining sites like Geni and We Relate, but the first to carry the huge startup momentum that Facebook and Footnote bring to it.

Blogger Kirsten at A Grain of Salt was prescient enough in February to write about how great it would be to have a Facebook for our ancestors. While the new Facebook-Footnote collaboration takes us just half the way to establishing a true conversation, that’s as close as we can reasonably ever expect to get.

Writing prompt for the day: Which of your ancestors would you most like to have as a Facebook friend? Write about why you would pick that person.

Author Larry Lehmer's book about Dick Clark and American Bandstand --  Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll --is available from Sunbury Press. His book about the last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- The Day the Music Died -- is available at Amazon.

Photo: Elsie & Jack Lehmer with dog Stubbs in 1944. (W.B. Lehmer collection)

 

Do you want that history in digital or paper?

Here’s the problem in a nutshell: we live in a digital age, our ancestors did not.

If you don’t recognize the problem, you obviously have never inherited 47 boxes of family history, books and journals like Martha did, as related in the Internet-Genealogy Blog. Or faced a space crunch such as the one that drove famed genealogy blogger Dick Eastman scrambling to his scanner.

It’s hard, if not impossible, for anyone to escape the effects of the digital world. Even though many of us still don’t have computers in our homes, more and more companies and government agencies are requiring electronic filing of claims and reports. I’ve still got phonograph records that have yet to be digitized so they can be heard through digital media.

Martha seems to be taking control of her family history windfall, but I’ll bet many of you are just putting it off, letting boxes of potentially vital family information sit neglected, waiting for that moment of inspiration that will finally get you to peek inside. Truth is, the longer they sit, the more boxes you’ll add to the pile and, the bigger the pile, the more intimidating it becomes and the less likely it is that you’ll do anything about it.

As Eastman writes, he has a high-tech office that he keeps upgrading, generally with smaller, more efficient replacements. While you would think this would help create space, quite the contrary seems to be true. He’s started dismantling books and magazines and scanning them into a digital format. His goal is to do at least 50 pages a day.

The problem remains: do we digitize the paper records of our ancestors or do we print our digital records to match theirs? I believe we’ll continue to be “mixed families” where documents are concerned. We’ll keep the paper we value in that format and digitize the rest. And, if you come into possession of 47 boxes of family history stuff, my advice is to go through it right away. Toss what you don’t need, sell things of value that you don’t want and keep for yourself or distribute to others the rest. Digitize what you can; organize and file away the rest.

Writing prompt of the day: Make a list of the location(s) of all your important family history information and make certain that others in your household know about the list and what you want done with the information after you die.

Author Larry Lehmer's book about Dick Clark and American Bandstand --  Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll --is available from Sunbury Press. His book about the last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- The Day the Music Died -- is available at Amazon.

Flickr photo courtesy of adamquirm.

Good news from the cemetery beat

I’ve had cemeteries on my mind lately. By the end of the month, you probably will, too.

With Memorial Day just over three weeks away, I’ve noticed some interesting cemetery-related blog posts recently. Time to share.

The first to catch my eye via the Cedar Rapids Gazette was the discovery of a long-lost tombstone a full state away. Julie Bissell Tupker of Marion, Iowa, had been unsuccessfully searching for information about relatives of her great-grandfather, Richard P. Bissell, for some time. In Joliet, Ill., Gina Wysocki had been searching for a long-lost cemetery.

Wysocki’s quest was fulfilled in March 2008 when workers installing a playground in Joliet, Ill., dug up a pair of old tombstones.  One belonged to Jenete Bissell, Richard’s sister, who died at less than 2 years on March 2, 1852, during a cholera outbreak. An Internet search eventually connected the two and Jenette’s tombstone is headed to Iowa.

The second post to get my attention came from The Wandering Genealogist, who wrote about the “family history researcher who has helped get the grave of a murdered policeman restored, 140 years ago today. The twist to the story is that it was her 3x great uncle William Pullin who was responsible for the murder. “

Many early Americans were buried in family plots on farms rather than in more-organized church or town cemeteries. Fortunately, this site lets you search for family cemeteries by surname. If you’re doing any cemetery research as part of your family history project, here are some tips to make your excursion more fruitful.

Writing prompt of the day: Do you know where your relatives are buried? Have you written this information down for future generations?

Author Larry Lehmer's book about Dick Clark and American Bandstand --  Bandstandland: How Dancing Teenagers Took Over America and Dick Clark Took Over Rock & Roll --is available from Sunbury Press. His book about the last tour of Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens -- The Day the Music Died -- is available at Amazon.

Photo: Leo Kastl grave marker, Omaha, Neb. (L.W. Lehmer collection)