Sunday's Obituary - Dora Lyons Schwemm

Mrs. Dora Ella Schwemm, 65 a resident at 213 West Main Street, Barrington for many years died Monday at the home of her son, Kenneth Schwemm in Fox River Grove following an extended illness. She suffered from a diabetic condition.

Dora Ellen Lyons was born May 4, 1883, at Pilot Knob, WI. On July 26, 1905 she was married to August Schwemm of Barrington in Chicago where the couple lived for five years prior to settling in Barrington. Mr. Schwemm died Oct. 6, 1943.

Mrs. Schwemm was a member of the Barrington Methodist Church and its women's organizations.

Funeral Services will be held at 2:00 this Thursday afternoon at the Barrington Methodist Church with Dr. Bertram G. Swaney officiating.

Until the funeral time the body rests at the funeral home at 149 West Main Street. Miss Olive Dobson will be the soloist and the following will serve as pallbearers: Arthur Waggoner, Henry Kincaid, Warren Schumacher, Henry ReDeadt, James Fraye, and Herbert Landwer. Burial will be in the Evergreen Cemetery.


Barrington Courier - April 1949

Dora and August were married July 26, 1905

OneNote, FindAGrave and Debby

Living in Florida is wonderful even when it rains and rains and rains. 

Tropical Storm Debby decided to stall over the Gulf of Mexico last weekend and provided Florida with a little rain. Ok, a lot of rain. My pond rose over 18 inches in 24 hours - that is a lot of rain.

So with it raining outside I decided to revisit some cemetery pages I had scanned during my last visit to the Family History Center in Salt Lake City. Over the years I have done a lot of research on some distant cousins of my husband's great great grandparents from Juneau County Wisconsin. The cemetery books for the county were at the library so I scanned every page that held a possible relative. The rain gave me a great reason to sit on the couch and figure out if all those Howlands and Delaps were related to the Horton line I was researching.

Find A Grave

I started my search with FindAGrave.com to see who may or may not be listed. I was quite happy to find that a volunteer named Kari had created memorials for many of 'my people'. I started checking them off and sending messages with additonal information for the memorials. Soon Kari and I were emailing each other and she transferred the memorials to me.

For the rest of the weekend I was happily highlighting and checking off folks from my cemetery pages. I also found that unfortunately I missed a few people. I should have scanned the whole book!

Newspaper Archive

My next stop was NewspaperArchive.com to see if I could find some obituaries or news articles to help me verify some relationships. During my research on FindAGrave I found some of the DeLap's spelled the name DeLapp.

As I was browsing and finding interesting newspaper articles I started to become frustrated. I had paper and tabs open all over and nothing was organized!

A Little Background

I work in the software / IT industry. Back in the early 1980's I was the 'youngster' at work. Now in 2012 I am almost old enough to be the grandmother of the developers at work. While I do feel 'out of it' at times there is a HUGE upside. They keep me up to date Social Media and Productivity Tools.

This has meant that I embraced and used Twitter, QR codes, Blogs and Facebook in my daily life and my genealogy research before a lot of my peers.  Currently I am learning to embrace OneNote. My understanding is that it is used in college to take notes and organize papers and projects. At work we use it to track our customer projects notes and meetings.

Mmmmm maybe I could use OneNote to organize all this information on the DeLaps and Howlands!

OneNote

OneNote is part of the Microsoft Home and Student Suite that also includes Word, Excel and PowerPoint. This is one of the most affordable bundles Microsoft offers and usually goes on sale in August (just in time for school).

After reading the introduction page and studying the examples in OneNote it became clear how I could organize my past and current research on the DeLap family.

As you can see below I create a NoteBook named DeLap and then across the top I have tabs representing each type of research I need to organize.







Within the Cemetery Records tab I have created a page named for each member of the DeLap family on that page for easy reference.

Everything was coming together, except I had found newspaper articles that I needed to do some research on. How was I going to handle them?



Clipping Tool

I found another really cool feature in OneNote. While you are browsing the Internet all you have to do is press the Windows Key and S on your computer and a clipping tool appears that allows you to frame the part of the page you want to add to OneNote.

As you can see below it also provides the URL and a timestamp. All the clippings go to an "UnFiled" note page that you can then move to the appropriate Notebook.

Conclusion

While I still have a lot to learn about OneNote I am very happy that Tropical Storm Debby gave me the time and patience to work with OneNote.

If you want to know more about OneNote here is a link to some videos on YouTube.

A similar app to OneNote that is free is Evernote. I really do not know the pros and cons of each, but if you do not have OneNote you might want to check out Evernote.

Take Care,
Pattie

My pond - Morning of June 25







Sunday's Obituary - William Henry Howland

William Henry Howland was the son of John and Mary (nee COLLINS) Howland. He was born April 18, 1861 in Clifton, WI and died at the home of his son in law and daughter Mr. and Mrs. T.W. Barrett of Camp Douglas on December 29, 1940.

He was united in marriage at New Lisbon, Juneau, Co., WI, on July 18, 1886 to Mary Jane Horton, who preceded him in death on Feb. 12, 1937. To this union was born 13 children, 4 of whom died in infancy and are buried in the New Lisbon, WI cemetery.

Surviving are the following children: Mrs. Eva Hodges, Camp Douglas, WI; Mrs Nora Hyde, WI Rapids; Mrs. Mae Schwan, Iron Ridge; Mrs Myrtle Wagner, New Lisbon; Mrs. Jessie Man, Cleveland, OH; Charles of WI Rapids; Mrs Irma Barrett, Camp Douglas; Mrs Caroline Martin and John of New Lisbon; also 1 sisiter, Mrs. Susan Prothero, Kimberly, Idaho; 27 grandchildren and 14 great grandchildren.

Spend Less and See More with Webinars

Every year there are local, state and national genealogy seminars. Some are a few hours or over a weekend and others span the days before or after a weekend. Depending on where you live, your budget and level of expertise it can be hard to decide where to spend your money.

Most of us have a limited amount of money to spend on our genealogy reserach let alone educating ourselves. Everyone can use a refresher course on mining census records and then there is that brickwall that we are trying to break down.  So, how do we decide or justify a trip across the state or across the United States? Maybe the answer is right in your own home.

Webinars

In today's world and economy it is becoming harder and harder for people to travel for business or pleasure. This has made conference calls, podcasts and training over the Internet essential to everyday life. As hobbyists we are benefitting from all the tools that businesses have had to introduce to make their lives and bottom line more profitable. One of the greatest byproducts is the Webinar.

What is a webinar?  It is a live lecture or class that you attend via your computer. Sometimes the webinar is saved as a video presentation that can be watched on-demand.

Today you can decide if you want to attend a conference and incur all the related costs or do you want to spend your money more wisely? How about tailoring an 'At Home' conference to your research needs or technology advancement?  Sound impossible?  Keep reading.

Create Your Own Genealogy Seminar
Step 1

Genealogy webinars are offered from a variety of organizations on a wide variety of subjects. Most are free at the time of the event and in some cases a small membership fee makes all past webinars available on demand. The great thing is if you find the subject or speaker boring or not what you expected you can simply quit watching.

If you think you would miss the interaction with other genealogists, put together a seminar at your house! Select the topics that you and a friend(s) want to learn more about, set a date and a genealogy seminar in your living room!  Displaying the webinar or video on a large screen televison will make it even more like a seminar.  Plus if it is a recording you can stop and start it at any time so you can take notes or discuss it with your friends.

Step 2

Now it is time to select the topics for your own personal seminar. It's a big wide Internet world out there so here are a few places to start:

• Illinois State Genealogical Society
• Webinars are FREE on the day of the presentation
• $35 membership makes past webinars available on demand
• RootTech 2012
  • There are 19 FREE videos from the January Conference
  • Speakers Include: D. Joshua Taylor, Thomas MacEntee, Lisa Louise Cooke and others 
  Friends of the National Archives-Southeast Region
• Webinars are FREE on the day of the presentation and for 10 days after
• $25 membership makes past webinars and handouts available on demand
• Genealogy Gems YouTube Channel
• Lisa Louise Cooke has a variety of FREE videos ranging from 3 - 15 minutes covering
• Blogging
• Interviews with well known genealogy speakers
• Heritage crafts to help involve the entire family
• Southern California Genealogical Society
• Webinars are FREE on the day of the presentation
• $35 membership makes past webinars available on demand
•  Ancestry.com
• Ancestry has FREE videos on their website - membership not required
• Other Ancestry videos
• Live Stream - Featuring the Barefoot Genealogist
• YouTube - Some different content than their website
• Legacy Family Tree Webinars
• Webinars are FREE on the day of the presentation and for a period of days after
• Available for purchase on CD for 9.95 after free time period
• Family Tree Magazine University
• One Week Workshop - July 7-15 for $119.95 (w/promo code FTU0612 it is $99.95)
• Eight presentations are included
• All are downloadable for repeat viewing

Step 3

Once you look over the available webinars it is time to come up with your budget. Depending on which webinars you are interested in you could pay nothing or as little as $35. If the time of the webinars is not convenient you might want to consider becoming a member of the site/society.

I think you will find that it is still much less expensive than gas, hotel, meals and registration fees. And, you can tailor it to your educational needs and interests.

Seminars or Webinars

I am not saying not to support your local or state genealogical society seminars. I am trying to offer an alternative. Seminars allow us to interact with fellow genealogists, share stories and feel like our hobby isn't unusual or morbid. There are others who are also 'looking for dead people'!

However, for those of us that work it is not always easy to get time off or if we do not work we have other family responsibilities. Webinars allow us to schedule our genealogy around our life.
Another advantage is being able to watch a webinar on a research topic that does not pertain to your research but you find interesting.

An example would be "Online Resources for Colonial America" by Josh Taylor in November for the Southern California Genealogical Society. While I have do not have ancestors in that period of time I would attend to learn more it just in case. Plus I love listening to Josh, he is a great speaker / teacher.

I hope this helps your continuing genealogical education. Please let me know if you find these sites helpful or if you find other webinars you would like to share.

Take Care,
Pattie