My third great grandfather, Samuel William Settles | GenQuestDiary

My third great grandfather, Samuel William Settles | GenQuestDiary

Here's another one of my blogs; sometimes I use a blog to try and work things out on paper; rewriting your research as a narrative gives you a great setting for doing just that.  Of course, some software programs will do that for you, but you usually can save that as a document and edit it.

Ancestry.com will also "write your story for you", in the sense that they take all of the information you have put in, including facts generated by the documentation you've added in the process of utilizing the web site.

But, I promise you, whichever method you use to accomplish this, telling a story about your ancestor isn't just a tool for reviewing the research you've done, it's the end result of what we want to accomplish.  All the charts and research and relationships have to come together on a stage, on the stage of life.  I can look now at my blog about Samuel W. Settles and see, already, that I am not there, yet.  It lacks a lot!  So, back to the drawing board, folks.  I'm hoping I can pull out a rabbit or two and get a better grip on who great great great grandpa was.

West Florida Genealogical Society March Meeting

West Florida Genealogical Society

"Understanding Your Y-DNA" will be presented by Bert Outlaw, President of the West Florida [Pensacola] Society.  The program will cover:

• Short Tandem Repeats
• Most Recent Common Ancestor
• Y-markers
• What is a match?
• Time to Most Recent Common Ancestor
• Using Ancestry.com and/or FamilyTreeDna.com and comparing results from different companies.

 Regular Meetings are open to the public and free of charge.  Meetings are held on the first Saturday of the month (except July) at 10a.m. at the West Florida Genealogy Library, 5740 N. 9th Ave., Pensacola, Florida.

RootsWeb's WorldConnect Project: RootsWeb's WorldConnect Project Global Search

RootsWeb's WorldConnect Project: RootsWeb's WorldConnect Project Global Search

Look for your surname here.

Old Ships A

Old Ships A

Guess which of these ships is the one that my mother's uncle served on in the War (World War II)?!  Because I was able to access a document at FamilySearch that gave the ship's name and had my relative as serving on that ship, my daughter was able to locate this site, which indeed does have the ship's image.

Census Online - Okaloosa Co., Florida Census Records - 7 Links

Census Online - Okaloosa Co., Florida Census Records - 7 Links

I found the information for my ancestor in the 1935 Florida State Census at FamilySearch, then clicked on "About this Collection" in the box where the image should have been.  

That took me to the FamilySearch Wiki, then at the bottom of that article was "related websites"--okay, it wasn't all the way to the bottom of the page.  It actually followed the "Known Issues with this Collection"  I clicked on the link and voila!  Up popped the Census Online page.  Cool, huh?

Actually, the link didn't provide the images for the 1935 Census for Okaloosa County; I went back to FamilySearch Wiki and accessed a link close to the top of the article on the topic. The link was right under the little inset box with the FamilySearch Logo; it said "Access the Records" and then there is a little link, 1935 Florida State Census.  This leads to a form at FamilySearch's "Search the 1935 Florida State Census", where you can search for anyone and everyone that should be in that census.  However, I was looking for an image of the actual page.  Unfortunately, or fortunately with limitations, I found---again at the bottom of that page, the information I was seeking:

View Images in this Collection Browse through 36,019 image

Source Information

"Florida, State Census, 1935." Index and images. FamilySearch. https://familysearch.org : accessed 2014.