June 25, 2007

Friday I spent the morning searching the Akin line to try to answer a question that Akin historian, Larry Akin, asked me to help answer. Larry has a wonderful website on the Akin History (www.akinfamilyhistory.com) that he painstakingly put online a few years ago. We "collaborated" on some of the data, and even did research together in Albany, Quaker Hill, Hoosick Falls area, and Glens Falls, NY in 2002. I haven't really searched the US Census for Akin too much since they've become available online, I guess because I got so much information first hand during my "Vagabond Travels" of 2000-2002, especially in Chautauqua Co., NY. The picture on the right is of the land around the Akin lands in Pittstown Twp, Rensselaer County, NY in 2002.

Suprise for me later in the evening when I was searching for my Thornburgs when Larry Akin's website came up as a resource! The Akins and the Thornburgs are on opposite sides of my family tree. As I researched how Larry came to have Thornburghs on the Akin tree I stayed up until 4am. That is way too late, but very exciting to put puzzle pieces in place! It turns out his Ethan Akin III ancestor, in Iowa in 1882, married a granddaughter of Hannah Thornburg. Hannah may be the sister to my GGG-grandfather, Amos Thornburg. Extensive research has been done tracking Larry's Thornburg/Griffith family through the Midwest, through Virginia (West Virginia/Tennessee) and back to Ireland and Wales. I don't know if further research can really prove the relationship since Amos and Hannah were born before the US Revolution.....but I can't wait to contact Larry and see what we can find out. If that doesn't work, I do have Griffiths in Wales in the 1500's! To be continued!

Lucille, my traveling companion from the Adventurers' Club, just returned from her trip to Peru, Ecuador, Machu Pichu, the Amazon River, and the Galapagos. I relayed the procedure to send her passport in to get visas for our upcoming trip to China and Cambodia in September. She is really a world traveler and just put her photos on a slideshow on a photo website. They are wonderful. The last meeting of the club had, Thursday, was a nice presentation of traveling to Egypt. I was amazed at how close hotels and other buildings are now to the Pyramids.

I've downloaded 6 lectures from last year's Federation of Genealogical Societies in Boston to my computer from lulu.com (They are listed under "Talk Radio" ) then synched them to my iPod. They cost $1.99 each mp3 lecture and are certainly a savings over attending the conference in person. Since I will be going to this year's conference in Ft Wayne, Indiana, I decided to listen to some of the lectures that weren't offered or are repeats that I won't have a chance to attend do to conflicts in the schedule. I chose one lecture to download called "Pianos to Popcorn Makers-our ancestors inventions" ----- because I wanted to figure out how I can find the patent information for the inventions of my Grandfather, Alfred G. Hague. I know you can go to the US patent & Trademarks Office's online site, but you have to know the patent numbers, which I don't have.

Great Discovery!!!! Thanks to podcasts!
On my iPod today I listened to the lecture on Inventions and Patents and found that there are 50 libraries in the US designated "Patent & Trademark Depository Libraries " - they have indexes to the patent numbers by using the inventor's names. At home I found that the Hawaii State Library is one of the libraries. Since they didn't answer their phone, I continued looking online, and thought I'd click on to the Iowa State Library which also has the index by names. I figured I would visit Des Moines this August. Much to my surprise they are one of the only libraries that have a complete listing -online- of all the patents that have issued for their state - in this case Iowa inventors!!!!! How great is that?! I found ten inventions that my grandfather patented, and was able to access some of the drawings of these patents back at www.uspto.gov.

My grandfather did the drawings for his patent applications, and others where he worked at Orwig & Hague because he started out as a draftsman. One of his best inventions is a car dumping apparatus (to dump grain out of train cars-picture on left); some others are a trolley catcher, a needle to repair runs in knits; a caster, a culvert, a silo, and a photographic device (see upper right). It is really amazing to find out all of these inventions. I only had heard of the car dumping device when I interviewed my father many years ago. It was a good thing I did, or I never would have thought to look for patents that my grandfather made!

June 3, 2007

June is here and I am still working on figuring out which cord or cable goes with which electronic gadget. I've finally finished the first cut on the first three hours of the Mongolian adventure, and downloaded the 4th hour of videotape onto the hard drive, and backed it up to my external hard drive. I will have to begin editing that, then download hours 5 and 6 to finish with the video from Mongolia. The Adventurers' Club meeting was held at the Outrigger Canoe Club on Waikiki and the subject was about some of the cities of Europe. The presenters' photography was outstanding and the the food great. I'm editing my Mongolia tapes to do my own presentation in Feb 2008 for the Adventurers' Club.

I've spent some time getting involved with FamilyHistoryLiveOnline.com and have volunteered to give online genealogy classes and genealogy support. I've also connected up online with familyoralhistory.us which has a blog of Family Oral History Using Digital Tools. Susan Kitchens, the host, had a "scanfest" where we could connect using a download of "Gizmo" service. If what I'm saying doesn't make a lot of sense to the reader, well, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me sometimes, either.

Today I was searching on Ancestry.com for Howard Blanding (picture on left) my "3rd cousin once removed" on my Blanding side, of Erie County, NY, and lately living in Florida. He has given me a lot of information about his line in New York, we have a common ancestor in Ebenezer Blanding II, whose father was in the US Revolution. I found his Carey family in all the census back to 1850 and it was quite a challenge with different spellings and different transcribers' interpretations of the name they saw. I didn't find the link back to Ireland for the Carey's, but at least I may have shed a little bit of new light on the Careys. Picture of Howard's grandfather on right - Samuel Love Carey.

Yesterday I drove up to Waipahu, about 45 minutes away, and participated in the Genealogy Workshop at Hawaii's Plantation Village. The village is a wonderful collection of authentic homes and other buildings from the collection of various cultures that lived on the sugar plantations. This day was a chance for different cultures to get help with genealogy: Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Filipino, Hawaiian, Okinawan, Portuguese and our table from the Honolulu County Genealogy Society. It was a fun event and we helped quite a few people. One Japanese-American woman, (and her mother -- both born in Hawaii), didn't know that her mother, was born on the island of Kauai, until we had her fill out a pedigree chart! I think she got the message that she should find out about her 92 yr old mother's life before it is too late.

I've got one month left at home before I fly out to Arizona, Utah, Indiana and Iowa. I bet I won't feel very prepared for the trip by the time comes to leave.

May 5, 2007

A most interesting morning today - I sat in on a "Pajama" conference - for the Family History Live Online's monthly conference - the "Online Family History Fair." It was on online conference - just like at a regular conference that you attend, for lots of money. With this situation, I downloaded the ReGL viewer from www.familyhistoryliveonline.com then tried to follow the directions to sign up for the class, etc. It was not easy, nor really simple. Or maybe I made it more difficult than it should be. But finally I was able to get squared away a couple days ahead. Then this morning at 5 am when the conference started (8am mountain time), I was still sleeping, of course. Well, I signed in at about 8 a.m. and found "Dear Myrt" discussing "Blogging: Getting the Word Out" presentation. Every 45 minutes there was a guest speaker and then a vendor followed talking about their wares. Also on the schedule was Robert Larson on Ancestry.com; Gena Ortega on Cemeteries & Their Secrets; and Amy Anderson on Basic PAF. Vendors were on "Footnote" and "US GenWeb." There were onthers earlier in the morning that I missed. There were up to 50 registrants who signed on, around the US and also Karin in Sweden. They noted I was signed in from Hawaii. We could type questions or comments as the lecture progressed and we heard them respond. We watched the computer screen as the speakers put up various images. It was really fantastic! I even recorded one of the presenters on my iPod! I can see that this is the beginning of a new wave of at-home conferences. I'm sure they won't all be free like this was, in the future, but I'm sure they will be popular. Also at the familyhiltoryliveonline website, they offer free online genealogy support classes and free genealogy classes according to a weekly schedule. I'm going to try to drop in on some of these groups this week.

The Hawaii State Legislature has finally finished it's last session for the year, Thursday was called "Sine Die" which is Latin, I guess, for "it's all over" -- for better or worse, and I suspect the latter. But there were some good bills to come out of it, I'm sure. Now, that I won't be down at the Capitol running around or typing the captions on the bottom of the TV screen. I work with CapitolTV which televises live hearings and sessions at the Legislature for the local Community Access Television, Olelo, and also live streaming on the internet. Now, I guess I'll have more time for -- guess what --? Genealogy and the Gym. Mostly genealogy! But for awhile I will still be doing some of the graphics for television of the Honolulu City Council meetings. In this photo I am at the computer, while Randy is at the Director's place in the middle, and Ed is doing remote cameras. This is in the City Hall which is called "Honolulu Hale" for a live city council meeting.

Another interesting night, Thursday, at the Adventurers' Club. This time at the Waialae Country Club, at a beautiful locale on the beach. My friends, Carolyn and Don Yacoe presented their film on "The Drum and The Mask: Time of the Tumbuan" from New Guinea. I'd seen it a few years ago, but it was even better than I'd remembered.

Friday I was so happy to attend the Nisei Veterans Endowed Forum Series, Universal Values for a Democratic Society "One Ocean, One People" with keynote speaker Nainoa Thompson. Nainoa was just back from sailing from Hawai'i on the Hokule'a voyaging canoe which has just arrived in Japan, still making stops at various ports. As usual his talk was riveting and very inspiring. I am sure it was especially inspiring to the 28 high school students who were honored for their award winning essays on values. See the websites: http://pvs.kcc.hawaii.edu for the Hokule'a's home website; and to see the weblog of the long voyage to Micronesia and Japan as it is occurring now go to http://pvshawaii.squarespace.com . Here, on the right, is a photo of the Hokule'a in Hawaii, probably taken by Monte Costa.

It was Recycling day at the Hui Nalu Canoe Club today. A chance to get rid of stuff. I found 13 pair of shoes I could finally part with! I'm sure the recyclers were looking for copper and other metals, and others were there for the cans and plastic bottles - Hawaii has a 5 cent deposit on them. A good portion of the scrap/recycle value of everything is donated to the Canoe Club. Goodwill was there too.