I Am Your Audience

I am your audience.





There have been a lot of posts swirling lately about the makeup of the online genealogy world:

• snobs
• professionals
• followers
• community
• newbies

In other words, the online genealogy world seems a lot like high school. There are the Big Men/Women On Campus. There are the popular, insulated cliques. There are the smart, nerdy kids. There's the new kid.

And then there's everyone else. Like me.

I have been working for 20+ years on my family history. My big overarching reason is because I love the Thrill Of The Chase. I have really good detective skills, which I use for both my own benefit and for a few friends and for the few I've voluntarily helped online.

But what I really wish for is to connect with cousins and those with similar research sensibilities - cemetery appreciation, location expertise, people who interact. I want to find blogs with interesting content. I'm good at finding information. What I seek is people to talk to about the information. You know, people who don't give you that "glassy-eyed stare" when you launch into a family story ;)

I totally understand that high school would be boring if we were all the same. I am fully aware that what I blog about or the family information I post to my website is not going to interest most of the people out there. And I'm fine with that.

I am primarily interested in the Midwest and New England, Quebec, Germany, Ireland, Scotland, England and Denmark. I love old cemeteries. I am interested in hearing about new databases in those areas.

So a wish, rather than a resolution, is to seek out some mutually enjoyable genealogy relationships this year.

I am your audience and you are mine.

© 2013 Sally Knudsen

Surname Saturday - Dork and Kopkau

My great-great-grandparents were Otto Carl Dork and Wilhelmina "Minnie" Kopkau. They were both born in West Prussia and came to America in the 1870's and 1880's. They, and many other Evangelical Lutherans from the area, settled in Lansing, Ingham County, Michigan.

The spelling variations are numerous:

• Dork
• Doerk
• Derk
• Durk
• Dirk
• Duerk
• Durke

• Kopkau
• Kopkaw
• Kopka
• Cupkaw
• Cupke

The Kopkau's were listed as Hopkau on their passenger list, so finding them was a challenge!

Here are links to their villages of Charlottenwerder and Peterkau in present-day Poland.

Have a connection? Let me know!

© 2012 Sally Knudsen

Get With It!

New Year's Eve is fast approaching and with it the time-honored tradition of making resolutions.

Haha!

But seriously, it is a good idea to formulate some ideas and improvements for 2013. This is especially important for me and my genealogy.

I tried writing down some goals and ideas last year [see post] and it worked...a little. I didn't really refer back to the post so much as carried it around in my brain labeled "for future use". I'm still not sure when that future is...

I have been slowly working on my webpages [see here...if you dare!]. I'd like to get those synced up and tweaked in a way I can be happy with.

I did pretty well with this blog and content last year. I created 108 posts, being most faithful to "Tombstone Tuesday". I sure hope you like gravestones, because I've still got a whole lotta photos to post! I'd like to have a little more focus on my blog content. Maybe mini-biographies of ancestors and their locations? How about my kids' running photos? No? I digress.

I acquired some more technology in 2012 that I need to put to better use in 2013. My fancy new PDF scanner has only been used a couple times. THAT has to be remedied!

My filing pile is a little bit smaller, so that's good. My workspace situation has not changed, but there's not a whole lot I can do about that, short of winning the lottery and building a dedicated genealogy room.

I will never be one to write a list and check it every month. Just putting pen to paper, er, fingers to keyboard will at least keep my ideas outside my brain.

For now, I will just keep plugging along, and get distracted by a surname or a new database and run off to check it out, and...enjoy 2013! I hope you do, too.

© 2012 Sally Knudsen

Tombstone Tuesday - Scotland to Braidwood

Oakwood Cemetery in Braidwood, Will County, Illinois, is the burial place of many Scottish immigrants who came to work in the local mines. Several gravestones are engraved with the country and even town of birth. My own Kerr family came to Braidwood from Kilbirnie, Ayr, Scotland, as did their in-laws, the Allen's. I often wonder if these families knew each other in the mining communities of Scotland before they came to the US.

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© 2012 Sally Knudsen

Surname Saturday - Dork

One of my maternal lines is Dork - really. My great grandmother Lucy who, as a kid, I always thought was Lucille but is really Louise, was born Louise Wilhelmina Dork in Lansing, Ingham, Michigan in 1895. She is of full German descent, and more specifically, from a tiny village in Kreis Rosenberg in the eastern edge of West Prussia. It took me a long, long time to pinpoint her family, but it became a wonderful case study in my personal genealogy lessons.

Lucy's father, Otto Carl Dork, came to Michigan as a child in 1882 with his mother, grandmother, and siblings on the ship Braunschweig (see, really German!). They settled immediately in central Lansing, among many other Prussian families.

The surname itself has many iterations, which I suspect vary due to spelling and pronunciation differences from the German language. I've seen:

• Dork
• Doerk
• Dorke
• Derk
• Durk

I tend to stick with "Doerk" in my database, only because that seems to be the most encompassing spelling. My intuition is that it was spelled D-o-e-r-k and pronounced "Derk" but in America with the "o" first, just became "Dork".

Of course "Dork" has an unlikable connotation in today's society. My own children are at least vaguely familiar with their backgrounds and know that there is a Dork lineage. I tell them that if anyone ever calls you a dork, you can reply, "Yes I am"!

reprinted from 9 June 2012

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© 2012 Sally Knudsen

Wordless Wednesday - Diamond Mine Disaster of 1883

Read articles about the mine and disaster:

List of Victims

Mine opens up

Encyclopedia of Chicago History

© 2012 Sally Knudsen

Tombstone Tuesday - Scenes of Oakwood

Oakwood Cemetery in Custer Township, outside the city of Braidwood, Will County, Illinois, is a scenic country cemetery. It is the home of many Scottish and English immigrants who came to work in the coal mines of 1870's Illinois.

 grave of original miner James Braidwood

many lots still have concrete borders intact

moonrise

oaks, sand and scrub cactus all in Illinois

 

beautiful scroll knot atop gravestone

sunset

© 2012 Sally Knudsen