The Curtis(s) Family

I have been busy this past month working on my lineage application to the Ohio Genealogy Society. I have an ancestor Harvey Andrew Curtis who fits all the requirements for the Settler and Builder Application. I must say I have been having a blast doing the research in locating documents to prove events. On our podcast Genealogy Happy Hour, Amy and I challenged each other to fill out an application after we did an episode on Lineage Societies. Off I went!

While doing the research I noticed that there are different spellings of the last name through the generations. Let's take his son Enos for example. Enos is listed on the death certificate as Enos Curtis with one "s" but the tombstone had Curtiss, two s's.  Who made that decision and why? Now from what I can see all of Enos children spell their name Curtiss. So somewhere it seems they added one.

I also learned how wonderful librarians in Ohio are and most of the county court clerks as well. I have found marriage records that no one has seen before in church registers. And let me just say thank heavens most of my ancestors on this line died in Michigan and Michigan has all the death certificates on http://seekingmichigan.org/. If you have ancestors up there in the north country you should check it out. After all this researching and meticulous documenting I am very ready to do another one. The hunt is on!

Podcasting

I have been busy these last few months recording a podcast with my friend Amy Lay, a professional genealogist, to help out those new family historians just getting started. We have had a blast learning how to do a podcast and actually getting it out there. Episodes 4 and 5, our latest efforts, are the best ones yet. They cover census records and cemetery research. The first ones are full of great information on pedigree charts and research logs then birth, marriage and death records. Not as casual as the last but like good wine we get better with time.

Speaking of wine, we call our podcast the Genealogy Happy Hour  and include a bottle of wine each episode. The last one on cemeteries was a bottle of Cabernet, see how the red wine fits into the cemetery research, and it has a beautiful stone angel on the label that looks like it could be on a headstone. It is Montes Alpha Cabernet. I should also say we are no wine experts by any stretch of the imagination. We just like it and like the labels. We also do not approve of drinking and researching. Drink afterwards because you will probably need it.

Check us out at http://www.genealogyhappyhour.com/