Thursday, May 17, 2012

I Just Joined History Pin

There is a fairly new site called HistoryPin that allows you to pin your photos to a map and create collections.

I put a pin icon on the top right of the page and then used their code to put a widget on the bottom of this page that shows a few things. So far I only have a couple of photos. But you can click on them and read the story which is the description I added. 

The map is a little slow to come up on the blog widget, it is faster on the site.

Here is what it looks like down way down on the bottom of this blog after I clicked on the photo and the map.


Since most of my Kansas relatives all lived in Parsons for many years, I thought this would be a great location to use this. 

I plan to put a photo where each of the family homes were per the census data I have. I think it will be really fun to see how close everyone really lived in Kansas.

I was hoping to join with other family members but it looks like you can only see your own stuff on your own map. But each member can publish a collection, so that will be interesting to see grow.

Scroll down now to the bottom and check it out. You might be happy you did.

If you are using it, please leave me a comment. Maybe we can inspire each other.

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

A Genealogy Healing

Many of us know that divorce is hard on our children. Without going into my personal details, I can share that my kids lost their father to cancer when one was in elementary school and the other in Jr. High school.

I just recently finished scanning a bunch of their father's photos and couple of their grandparents and great grandparents. I put them on my family history photo blog and then sent both the kids a message on Facebook that the photos were up.

The kids (now adults) were thrilled to see the photos and I wrote a little bit about their father's life. My son asked me to see if I could find some data on a particular subject so I started searching.

This is where the surprise happened.

You see, we did not know what happened to their father because of the divorce, his family never let us know where the ashes went. We heard several stories and one family member said they went to find him at a cemetery and they could not. So we just figured we would never know.

While searching on Ancestry a hint came up on their father's name. I clicked on it and lo and behold it was a Findagrave link! 

It turned out to be the great grandfather of the kids and there was more than one photo attached. Scrolling through the photos, THERE IT WAS!  The headstone for my kid's father!! 

I quickly got in touch of the kids, they were so happy and relieved to know where he is now. After that I left a message for the wonderful person who added him into Findagrave.

It feels so great to solve a family mystery and make my kids recover a part of them that was missing.