National Genealogy Hall of Fame – Just learned this from National Genealogical Society’s newsletter. So well deserved for everything Donn Devine did for the genealogical community! I well remember him being one of the first pros who recognized the potential in genetic genealogy, and even that was just a sliver of all he contributed.

Also delighted to see Randy Seaver (Geneaholic) receive an award for his pioneering and enduring blog that covers every genealogical topic imaginable!

Image: screenshot of Historic Irish counties (johngrenham.com)

The post Genealogy Roundup, June 3 appeared first on Megan Smolenyak.

Understanding Reclaim the Records – An Interview with Brooke Schreier-Ganz and Alec Ferretti – Podcast for those who want to learn more about Reclaim the Records, a #genealogy hero!

Honored to have researched 1776 heroes’ families as of the 250th anniversary of America, the country they gave their lives to defend. These are the men who have been identified since last Memorial Day. #NoManLeftBehind

Photo Credits: rychlepozicky.com under Creative Commons license and University of Michigan SEAS under Creative Commons license

The post Genealogy Roundup, May 27 appeared first on Megan Smolenyak.

In the critically acclaimed series Mad Men, Don Draper’s true origins were something of a mystery until he was revealed to be Richard “Dick” Whitman, a fellow who had assumed the identity of an officer he had served with in the Korean War. The origins of Jon Hamm, who portrayed Draper (and now Andrew “Coop” Cooper in Your Friends & Neighbors), are less mysterious, but there’s little floating in the google-sphere beyond his Missouri birth.

St. Louis, it turns out, has played a central role in his family history with several generations parked there, but there’s more to the story, including strong women, immigrant struggles, and Mormonism.

• As you might expect for someone with solid St. Louis roots, Jon Hamm has German heritage.Roughly three-eighths of his family tree traces back to the fatherland, but he’s equally English and one-quarter Irish.

• Among Hamm’s ancestral surnames are Burch, Garner, Flynn, Gutmann, Hall, Hamilton, Hartley, Hines, Kohlhaas, Kolb, Lockett, Magner, Murphy, Quinn, Sargent, Schmidt, Sullivan, and Taschner, so those sharing one or more of these names could be cousins of some sort.

• His German surname of Hamm was introduced into America by the 1858 arrival of a father and son, Julius and Joseph, who would eventually become his 2^nd and 3^rd great-grandfathers. Though there were some who came earlier as well as a few stragglers, 1849-1869 marks his immigration sweet-spot with over half of his family branches arriving during that period.

• While many of his ancestors called Missouri home, he also has roots in Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland, Minnesota, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Utah.Overseas, Berslem, Staffordshire and Wakefield, West Yorkshire in England and the Irish counties of Cork and Down can claim a piece of his past.

• It must have been quite a shock when one of his great-grandfathers died of carbon monoxide poisoning while working on a car in his garage. Though this ancestor’s life was tragically truncated, his widow would go on to live to the age of 101.

• Mention almost any type of employment and someone in Hamm’s family has done it.Among their occupations are butcher, seaman in the Navy, railroad engineer, potter, solicitor (drayage), packer in auto supply, driver, grocer, farmer, brick layer/stone mason, fireman on a steam railroad, paper carrier, and saloon keeper.

• About a quarter of Hamm’s immigrant ancestors came to America to follow the Mormon faith with some making their own Trip to Bountiful. This part of his heritage might have had a more profound effect on his life if his direct ancestors hadn’t already married and settled in St. Louis before most of their parents and siblings moved on to Utah.

• It’s a good thing that the Hartley was a sturdy ship because six of his future ancestors – two great-great-grandmothers named Sarah and their respective parents – all arrived in New Orleans after a seven week journey on it in 1849. The son of one Sarah would eventually marry the daughter of the other Sarah, linking these one-time shipmates as family forever.

• The women in Hamm’s family had to be strong, especially the three who were left widowed with children shortly after arriving from either England or Ireland. The most extreme case is that of a 3^rd great-grandmother named Hannah who, after having lost a child she gave birth to while at sea, made it to St. Louis with her husband and five surviving children, only to watch her husband succumb to disease several days later.

• My guess is that Irish ancestor, Michael Magner, exhibited some of the confidence and charm of Don Draper to win the hand of his future wife Abby, the only female in a household that included half a dozen unrelated men.

Originally published on HuffingtonPost, 08 April 2013.

The post 10 Things You Didn’t Know about Jon Hamm’s Roots appeared first on Megan Smolenyak.

Ancient DNA and 23andMe Are Rewriting the Story of Some of America’s Earliest Colonists – cool application of genetic genealogy

Why Rob McElhenney Changed His Name to ‘Rob Mac’ – Wrexham Owner’s Decision Explained – Oh, no! Wrexham partners with Ancestry and Rob McElhenney (aka Rob Mac) is still spreading the name-changed-at-Ellis-Island myth. Mind you, I love Wrexham, but c’mon!

Photo by Stephen Walker on Unsplash

The post Genealogy Roundup, May 20 appeared first on Megan Smolenyak.

These Rare Italian Surnames Are on the Verge of Extinction – I’ve always found the extinction of surnames fascinating, but please, someone rescue these Italian ones!

Old’aVista – Wanna time travel online? Check out Old’aVista.

Photo by A Perry on Unsplash

The post Genealogy Roundup, May 13 appeared first on Megan Smolenyak.

Henry Johnson (World War I soldier) – So frustrating! I researched (William) Henry Johnson, a WWI hero, for his posthumous Medal of Honor award in 2015. Someone emailed today saying Ancestry told them they were a cousin. I checked. There are 25 trees for this man on Ancestry and ALL of them are wrong. ALL have an incorrect spouse and parents.

Marleka Identity Labs – I can’t believe that what I’m about to share is a thing, but there’s now a company focused specifically on analyzing *Rusyn* DNA! Yes, really!

Here’s a portion of my Dad’s results (and FYI – he’s got pan-Rusyn roots that include villages in present-day Slovakia, Ukraine and Poland).

They have an excellent website that explains everything you need to know (and will even offer some Rusyn merch soon ).

Photo by: PhilipRomanoPhoto, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The post Genealogy Roundup, May 6 appeared first on Megan Smolenyak.

Aisne-Marne Cemetery caretaker and me as a youngster

I was born into an American military family stationed in France, and as the first child of young parents (20 and 24 at the time of my arrival), had the good fortune of being carted along on a number of European adventures during my toddler years. My father, George C. Smolenyak, was an avid photographer, and like some at the time, had a preference for slides over pictures. As a result, assorted moments from my earliest years have been preserved in these miniature transparencies.

My father was a meticulous man with a remarkable memory, so could easily rattle off locations and other specifics decades after the fact — details which inevitably matched the labels he had recorded on the slides’ edges when he first created them. Dad had a few favorites he enjoyed telling stories about, such as my first encounter with snow in the Pyrenees or that time I kept everyone in a small hotel awake with my bawling, but there was one in particular he told repeatedly.

His tidy script notes that it was the “American caretaker, Belleau Woods Cemetery, France” and the slide shows this man bending over to chat with 18-month-old me. I’m clutching a branch he had apparently just handed over.

Dad’s caption on the slide

Time and time again, Dad explained that this gentleman was an American soldier who had served in World War I, stayed in France and married a local woman, and worked at Aisne-Marne Cemetery where 2,289 Americans are buried. When my father asked him while he had remained in France, he responded simply, “To take care of my buddies.”

This moment-in-time has always been special to me — partly due to Dad’s vignette and the snippet of my history it holds, but also because it foreshadows my later experience. I’ve spent years working with the U.S. Army assisting with the on-going effort to identify our soldiers who are still unaccounted for from past conflicts ranging from World War I to Vietnam. As it happens, I recently reached a random but timely milestone of having researched 1776 soldiers as of this year, America’s 250th anniversary. In my mind, this snapshot captures the instant this amiable veteran had just passed the baton so I could one day also help take care of his buddies.

For this reason, it has tormented me that I didn’t know who this man was. I asked Dad several times hoping that his impressive memory would suddenly toss out a name, but no such luck. But I’m a professional genealogist. I should be able to unearth his name, right?

It wasn’t for lack of trying, but as those who are familiar with American records know, our twentieth century military personnel records are sketchy at best since so many went up in flames (or were swamped by water) in a 1973 fire. So how could I find him? All I knew was that he had served in WWI, married a French woman, worked at this cemetery, and was still there in the 1960s. Where to start?

Then it occurred to me. What about those record sets for Americans living abroad? Ancestry doesn’t make them prominent, but if you search their catalog for relevant collections, you’ll pop up several including the following:

U.S., Consular Reports of Marriages, 1910–1949

U.S., Consular Posts, Emergency Passport Applications, 1915–1926

U.S., Consular Registration Certificates, 1907–1918

U.S., Consular Reports of Births, 1910–1949

U.S., Consular Registration Applications, 1916–1925

U.S., Reports of Deaths of American Citizens Abroad, 1835–1974

U.S., Registration Certificates — Widows, Divorced Women, & Minors, 1907–1914

I didn’t have a name, but did I perhaps have enough other information to ferret him out? I took a dive leaving the name fields blank and entering “Aisne” and “Belleau” instead in location and keyword fields. Most came up empty, but I eventually got some hits with the 1910–1949 birth index. Seven children had been born to six couples in the relevant vicinity and time frame. Of course, I didn’t know for sure that my mystery man had any children, but it seemed a reasonable possibility, so now it was a matter of narrowing the field.

I researched each of the six men. Not surprisingly, all had married French women, but a couple had birth dates that suggested they were too old to be the fellow I was seeking. Another struck me as unlikely as he was a naturalized American citizen from Romania, and my father, hailing from a Slavic family himself would have inevitably remarked on the man’s origins and accent. But all this was a bit speculative. Fortunately, I was able to eliminate several because U.S. records showed that they had moved back to the States well before the 1960s. I was soon down to two. What could I use as a tie-breaker? Maybe passport photos? Yes! Both had photos taken in the 1920s. One of them was almost bald even as a young man, so it had to be the other one.

I was now looking at Charles William Anderson along with his wife and daughter. After all this time, I finally knew his name, and it made me smile to have spotted him with his own toddler.

Passport photos as seen on Ancestry

I’ll detour for a moment for those who might be new to research to mention that it’s often worth checking whether a particular resource is available in more than one site as a quick look into FamilySearch’s full-text collection turned up a much cleaner version of this same image.

Same photos as seen in FamilySearch’s full-text collection

I was confident I had the right man, but genealogists can never get enough substantiation, so the final leg of my research was tracing his family forward and reaching out to his descendants. One of them — surprised, but pleased to be contacted out of the blue — responded and confirmed that the man in the slide was indeed Charles W. Anderson, a fellow she recalled as her kindly grandfather.

It had taken much longer than I would have wished, but my own unknown soldier now has a name. If Dad were still with us, today would have been his 90th birthday, and while he’s not here to tell, I’d like to think that somehow he and Charles know. Happy birthday, Dad, and thanks for indulging this one-time toddler, Charles.

Note: While I occasionally use AI for image-generation, all my articles are written by me and AI images will be identified as such.

The post Identifying the Mystery Man in My Baby Photo appeared first on Megan Smolenyak.

Rob Mac travels back to the 1700s for Ancestry.com commercial – So here’s a partnership I didn’t see coming: Ancestry and Wrexham AFC.

The Quest for Annie Moore of Ellis Island – Kind words from Mags Gaulden for “The Quest for Annie Moore of Ellis Island.”

Photo by danyl russo on Unsplash

The post Genealogy Roundup, April 29 appeared first on Megan Smolenyak.

Searching for Sisters: A Guide to Researching Catholic Nuns in the United States – All genealogists with any Catholic heritage will want to swallow this book as soon as possible. In “Searching for Sisters,” Sunny McClellan Morton unlocks the key to the long-neglected treasure trove of records pertaining to sisters and nuns. You’ll learn how to find and request them, what to expect, and how to use what you’ve discovered to both tell their stories and push your family’s research forward. A handful of case studies walk you through the process and reveal the kind of gems that can be uncovered. Add it to your library today!

80 million people globally claim Irish ancestry – why the release of 1926 Irish census records is so momentous – Countdown!

Photo Credit: Public Domain

The post Genealogy Roundup, April 22 appeared first on Megan Smolenyak.

How Artemis 2 commander Reid Wiseman saved the mission’s moon mascot: ‘It’s hard not to love this little guy. I can’t let Rise out of my sight’ – This has nothing to do with #genealogy, but I can’t resist sharing it.

Glencastle Irish Dancers performing Annie Moore – Could not love this more! Look what Annie Moore of Ellis Island inspired! And how talented are these young dancers?!

Virtual Reading Room at the Library of Virginia – Very cool!

Idris Elba thought he knew who he was… – Idris Elba reacts to his DNA test results.

The post Genealogy Roundup, April 15 appeared first on Megan Smolenyak.