Waterways were an early form of highways; this meant getting in a boat to get from one place to another. Have you ever heard of an ancestor building a boat or paying to be transported down a river? One of my branch – the Brooks – apparently built a huge canoe that carried the family and their goods. Their boat building wasn’t that great because the canoe sank the first day out. Reading about this made me wonder if a “canoe” in the 1700s was the same as a canoe that we know as the family details all of the goods they were hauling. So I went out to (like you’ll do this week). I discovered that there was a type of canoe called a Montreal canoe that was 30-40 feet long. According to the website the canoe could hold: Sixty packages of merchandise and provisions weighing 90 to 100 lbs. each, placed on either side of the canoe to make a balanced load. Eight men. Each man was allowed one bag of personal belongings weighing 40 lbs. Total weight 8000 lbs or 4 tons. Figure Montreal Canoe, Wikipedia.org Project Forty-Three An Unusual Website Goal: Find and use a genealogy or history-related website that is new to you. As creatures of habit, we tend to visit the same websites over-and-over, delving into the depths of or . But how often have you cast a wider net? There is so much genealogy information online that it’s amazing. However, much of it has been posted by individuals and is not available
Project Fifty One-Name Study Goal: Search the Guild of One-Name Studies to see if a study has been done on one of your surnames. If not, find a surname-relevant site. The has long fascinated me. This organization researches all occurrences of a surname. As the site says, “Some ‘one-namers’ restrict their research geographically, perhaps to one country, but true one-namers collect all occurrences worldwide.” That means if I were to do a Hendrickson one-name study I’d be researching all occurrences of the Hendrickson surname, regardless of pedigree (the lines of descent). Currently there are over 2,500 surname studies with a further 6,000+ name variants. You can freely search the site to see if one of your surnames is a part of a one-name study. If one of your surnames isn’t registered, you can do so by joining the Guild. You can also read this to find out how to search the One-Name Studies using the FamilySearch.org website. You’ll need to join the Guild in order to access the records that members have posted. Here’s a sample of what you might expect to find. This one is for the surname Dashwood. Figure Surname Dashwood, Guild of One-Name Studies I’m also going to suggest checking to track down other people researching your surname; you may not find a one-name study but you’ll probably find another family researcher! Hint: If you don’t find your surname listed on a specific surname site in CyndisList, use the search box at the top right of the page. This will search the entire site rather than simply the Website Name.
8 – PHOTO HISTORIAN 9 - DIARY 10 - CEMETERY 11 - INTERVIEW 12 – DIGITAL PHOTOS 13- OUT-OF-PRINT 14 – FAMILY REUNION 15 – TWO FAMILIES 16 – DEATH RECORDS 17 – MEMORY GARDEN 18 - BIOGRAPHY 19 – PIONEER CERTIFICATE 20 – HOLIDAY TRADITION 21 – HISTORIC TREES 22 – MIGRATION ROUTES 23 - OUTLINE 24 - AUDIO 25 – FAMILY RECIPE 26 – PLACE HISTORY