Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak's Roots World

Family Tree Mockumentary Coming to HBO on May 12th!

More episode-specific information available here.

Genealogy Round Up, April 18

Heading to Iowa (virtually), Michigan and Nevada in next few weeks. Please join me to talk genealogy (and tell your friends!)!
Calendar of Speaking Engagements - Genealogy and History Interviews and Lectures - Megan Smolenyak

Seriously? There's an app for that?
How a genealogy project unintentionally produced an incest avoidance app

May 12th!
Watch: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at 'Family Tree' Offers a Better Sense of the Christopher Guest HBO.

Seton Shields Genealogical Grant Awarded to Du Quoin Historic Preservation Committee

Congratulations to our most recent Seton Shields Genealogical Grant recipient!

The Du Quoin Historic Preservation Committee was established in Du Quoin, IL in 2005 to encourage local homeowners and business owners to improve upon and/or renovate their properties in the name of historical significance. The organization showcases homes and shops, and through this exposure, they are preserving the genealogy of the town through its people, business owners, and those who have helped to place their imprint on the community. The grant award will be used to toward a project to have the 1953 Centennial edition of the Du Quoin Evening Call reprinted to celebrate the town's 100th anniverary this year. The 60-page newspaper includes biographies, human interest stories, and pictures of the community.

You can apply for a grant here.

KIP FORBES & JEFFREY GURAL JOIN STATUE OF LIBERTY-ELLIS ISLAND FOUNDATION BOARD

NEW YORK, NY (April 11, 2013) -- The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, Inc. announced today that Christopher “Kip” Forbes of the Forbes publishing family and real estate magnate Jeffrey Gural have joined its Board of Directors.

Mr. Forbes is currently Vice Chairman of Forbes Media LLC and serves on several boards. He and his family were honored with the 2008 Ellis Island Family Heritage Award in the field of Business in tribute to his grandfather B. C. Forbes, who immigrated to America in 1904 and founded Forbes Magazine 13 years later. Since 2009 the Forbes Family has annually underwritten the B. C. Forbes Peopling of America Award which recognizes individuals who have immigrated to America and made a major contribution to the American experience. A magna cum laude graduate of Princeton, Mr. Forbes was promoted to the rank of Officier of the Legion of Honour by the French government in November 2011.

Mr. Gural is Chairman of Newmark Grubb Knight Frank, which currently manages approximately one hundred fifty buildings in the Metropolitan area, of which Mr. Gural has an ownership interest in forty-one of them. He sits on many corporate and non-profit boards, including The Real Estate Board of New York and the Eldridge Street Synagogue. Mr. Gural is a major owner and breeder of Standardbred racehorses and has recently become the lessee of the Meadowlands Racetrack, the leading Standardbred track in North America. He and his family underwrote an Ellis Island Museum gallery in memory of his great-grandfather, Jacob Rabinowitz, a Russian immigrant and founder of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS).

“We are so honored and pleased to have Messrs. Forbes and Gural join our Board of Directors at this important and challenging time in our history,” said Stephen A. Briganti, Foundation President and CEO. “As we work with the National Park Service to rebuild in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, we continue construction of the second phase of The Peopling of America® Center, a major expansion of the Ellis Island Immigration Museum which will explore immigration in the post-Ellis Island Era, right up to the present. We welcome their guidance and support as we work toward the completion of this and future projects.”

The Foundation’s full board list is available at http://www.ellisisland.org/EIinfo/board.asp.

About The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, Inc.

The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, Inc. is a non-profit organization founded in 1982 to raise funds for and oversee the historic restorations of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, working in partnership with the National Park Service/U.S. Department of the Interior. Its endowment has funded over 200 projects at the islands.

Smolenyak Classic: Finding Knute Rockne in the Ellis Island Database

So why am I calling this a "Smolenyak Classic"? Well, it dawned on me recently that I have written hundreds, if not thousands, of articles and blog posts over the years, and the Internet being what it is, some of them are still out there, while others aren't. I had been toying with the idea of re-posting some of them as Classics, and received the final nudge I needed in the form of an email from a fellow working on a book about Knute Rockne. He could find a reference to one of my articles, but not the article itself. So here it is -- the first of my "classics." This one first appeared in April 2004, and while much has changed, it's remarkable how much is still relevant.

Last month, I had the pleasure of attending the annual Ellis Island Family Heritage Awards where they honor Ellis Island immigrants and their descendants. This year’s ceremony paid tribute to Martin Scorsese, Paul Tagliabue, Knute Rockne, Robert Rubin, and Dr. Harold Varmus – and under the new “Peopling of America Award” (for immigrants who came through other ports) – I.M. Pei.

Where’s Knute?

Honorees are presented an elaborately framed copy of their ancestor’s passenger arrival record, and while I was at the event, I learned that the manifest that included famed football coach, Knute Rockne, had been particularly difficult to find. He had apparently come to the U.S. from Norway as a youngster, but his name – like those of many of our ancestors – had been a difficult one to locate.

Always up for a challenge, I decided to have a go at finding the record myself, and I discovered that he was indeed remarkably well-hidden in the database. In fact, his situation involved several of the unexpected twists that can occur in the Ellis Island database (EIDB), so I decided to share my search tactics to illustrate how to ferret out your more elusive ancestors.

Data Gathering

Before attempting a search in the database itself, I wanted to equip myself with a few details, so I began by surfing the Internet using google. By doing so, I learned that:

the original form of Rockne was Rokne
Knute was an Americanized version of Knut
Knute had come here in roughly 1893 with his mother
he was from Voss, Norway
he was about five years old when he came
his father, Lars, had come in 1891 in preparation for the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair and sent for his family after
the family had settled in Chicago

This initial scouting was the equivalent of talking with older relatives, had I been researching my own ancestors. I had a lot to start with, but hoping to squeeze out a few more bits and pieces of data, I decided to search for the family in census records. It took a little effort, but by focusing on Chicago and playing with variations of first and last names, ages, and other details, I found them in the 1900, 1910, 1920 and 1930 census records. From inspecting these images, I was able to learn that:

Knute’s father, Lars, went by the name Louis in the U.S.
his mother’s name was Martha and she was born around 1859
he had a sister Annie who was born around 1884 in Norway

I was also able to confirm the arrival year of 1893 as this was the date consistently given in these records. To see them for yourself, just search on “Louis Rokne” at Genealogy.com (for the 1900 and 1910) and “Martha Rockne” at Ancestry.com (for the 1920 and 1930).

Database Diving

With all this information assembled, it was time to go to the EIDB. Recognizing that I was dealing with a lot of variables – not the least of which was that Scandinavian names come in both farm and patronymic varieties – I decided to use Steve Morse’s search forms (www.stevemorse.org). I chose his short form (gray) form because I find it to be the most helpful for names that are prone to misspelling (2013 note: I use his gold form for almost all searches now). And since Knut is one of those names that seems to confound many databases, I opted to center my efforts on his mother, Martha. While I could have played with any combination of selection criteria, I made my first attempt with this trio:

first name starts with or is: Mart (I wanted to be sure to find her even if she had come as the old country version of Marta)
town names starts with or is: Voss
year of arrival is between: 1893-1893

Up popped two hits, one of which was for Martha Pedersen Rohne, age 34, with a residence of Vosservanger. The age was right and I could easily see Rokne being interpreted as Rohne, so this sounded very promising. I clicked on the “scanned manifest” option, but couldn’t find Martha on the manifest that appeared. I realized then that I was dealing with a mislinked image. Having encountered this situation before, I knew that the image was probably in the EIDB, but that I would have to do a little more work to locate it. I began by noting a couple of details from the text information above the image: the May 30, 1893 arrival date and line number 597.

Missing Manifests

Armed with these bits of data, I returned to Steve Morse’s site and chose his missing manifests form, designed for just these situations. Toward the left of the screen, I entered the date I had just copied and hit the “display” button. This brought me to the opening page of the microfilm that contains the arrivals for May 27-June 5, 1893.

Doing a little mental math, I realized that I was looking for a ship that had arrived about four days into this ten-day period – or about 40% of the way through the roll. Of course, this was only an approximation as many ships could have arrived on one day and only one or two on others, but I used this as a rough estimate of how far to jump into the roll. On the right of the screen, I could see that there were a total of 717 frames (essentially the same as pages), so I calculated 40% of 717 and went directly to page 286 by entering that number in the field called “frame” near the center of the screen.

286 proved to be the first page for a ship that arrived on May 31^st, so I knew I had gone too far. I went back to page 250 and noticed I was looking at distinctly Scandinavian names, so I thought I might be in the right neighborhood. Inspecting the left-hand column, I saw that the page contained listings for 216-272. I knew from a few minutes earlier when I had scribbled down details from the text data in the EIDB that the record I wanted was on line 597, so I used the +1 navigation key to move forward through the pages. My anticipation increased as I arrived at page 257 and scanned down for line 597.

There she was: Martha Pedersen Rohne (and yes, it looked like Rohne). Better yet, she was traveling with Anna Larsdatter Rohne (age 8) and Knud Larsen Rohne (age 4). The names and ages all fit, Anna and “Knud” were the children of a Lars, and their intended destination was Illinois. I knew I had the right family.

Where There’s a Will . . .

Looking at the record, I wondered why had Knute been so difficult to locate. After all, “Knud Rokne” isn’t that far off from the actual Knut Rokne. Playing with possibilities, I discovered that the transcriber had missed the ditto marks under Rohne in the mother’s name, so the future football coach had been hiding under the name of Knud Larsen. Had you thought to look under that name, there were 95 candidates to explore. Even then, when you picked the right one and clicked to see the manifest, you would have been taken to the arrival for a different ship. Fortunately, even with obstacles like these, there’s almost always a way to find your ancestors in this amazing database, so if Grandpa has eluded you so far, I hope you’ll give it another try!

Seton Shields Genealogical Grant Awarded to Girl Museum

Congratulations to our most recent Seton Shields Genealogical Grant recipient!

Girl Museum is a completely virtual museum that focuses on research and exhibitions about girl culture from across time and space. They recently started the Heirloom Project, which is an opportunity for girls to investigate their own families to find out more about their genealogy and histories through interviews and researching old photographs, artifacts and heirlooms. Girls will submit their discoveries to Girl Museum and become part of a large exhibition that will go online at the end of 2013. The grant award will be used toward the creation of a downloadable PDF guide, several how-to videos and online support for participants.

You can apply for a grant here.

Genealogy Round Up, March 7

For those who watched the Annie Moore webinar yesterday, here's a link to the first part of the Annie Moore movie, "From Cork to New York," made by the students I mentioned. You can find the rest of it in the same channel.
annie moore, From Cork to New York part 1

A chance to help make history!
"Revolutionary Voices": A Last Muster Film by Maureen Taylor & Verissima Productions

Happy News - New Mexico Man Leaves Millions for Whoever Can Find It

Pls join me 3/14 in NYC to talk about Annie Moore of Ellis Island!
NYU > Ireland House > Spring 2013 Events Calendar

This is cool! Irish America has a digitized version of the current issue online. I don't think there's a quick way to get there, so you'll need to page through (which is recommended anyway!), but the interview they did with me starts on p. 52.
Irish America February / March 2013

160 Seton Shields Genealogy Grants and counting!
Seton Shields Genealogical Research Grants - Apply for a grant - Current Grants Awarded

LOVE these Irish charms! Have about half a dozen.
Liam Shard Jewelry | Product Categories Archive | Irish Pieces

Letter to Ireland Answered -- 28 Years Later

In case you haven't heard yet, it's a bargain!
Legacy Family Tree Webinars

Have to grab this issue! Understand I'm in there talking about genealogy 101 and the 5 cover articles are all about roots journeys!
The Road to Discovering Your Roots

Seton Shields Genealogical Grant Awarded to Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective

Congratulations to our most recent Seton Shields Genealogical Grant recipient!

Maureen Taylor, The Photo Detective, has spent ten years journeying through databases, private collections, and museum holdings to find as many photos from the Revolutionary War Generation as possible. So far, she has located over 200 of these images, and some of them are profiled in The Last Muster: Images of the Revolution (Kent State University Press, 2009) and The Last Muster: Faces of the Revolution (in press, 2013). Maureen is now partnering with award-winning Verissima Productions of Cambridge, MA to bring the photos, and the stories behind them, to film. In order to produce and distribute “Revolutionary Voices” they are raising a total of $225,000.

This month's grant award was made in the form of a pledge for this project on Kickstarter. Please consider making a pledge to help get this wonderful project off the ground!

You can apply for a grant here.