Just learned that Who Do You Think You Are? has been cancelled by NBC

I’m apparently behind the times… I just saw a list of all the shows cancelled and as of May 14, 2012 Ancestry.com’s Who Do You Think You Are?, which has given Ancestry.com a major boost in sales for the past two years, is on it.

My hope is that Ancestry.com will find another station to aire Who Do You Think You Are? next fall because I think the show offers a wonderful opportunity to share history, and not just feature a “star’s” family history. That’s a nice hook, but I’ve been learning about cultures and aspects of history I’ve not been familiar with and figure that’s true for others (and kvelling when a story touches on my own ethnic background).

Now I can understand the ratings issue. There likely is a generational divide. My daughter isn’t interested in the show and I’ve got the genealogy bug bad. But this show tells history that surprises the guest star as well as the audience and teaches us that we can learn about our past and learn something from the experience.

I wish Who Do You Think You Are? luck in clearing this hurdle… because is this one of the reality shows out there that is worth it!

Getting past a Red Herring… helping a family make their Ellis Island Connection

This has been an interesting week… I’ve been researching finding a friend’s grandmother’s Ellis Island connection – a grandmother whose English name bears little resemblance to her Yiddish given name. To make matters more challenging, the family knew little, so I had to ask a number of question so I could pursue leads.

The big red herring was the “fact” that the grandmother arrived in 1913. I was able to ascertain that her grandmother had one sister and a number of brothers. The sister, though, lived across the street and her name was known. So, I did some research and confirmed the town the aunt lived in, then checked the 1930 Census.  The census provided a couple of key details. My friend’s great-grandfather was living with the family in 1930 and the year of her arrival in the United States was listed as 1909, not 1913.

I then did a search using the sister’s first name with the family name and got her grandmother arriving with her mother, and two little brothers, going to the family’s future home community.

Now my next challenge, I’m planning to write a fictionalized short story of my friend’s family’s immigration experience based on history and all the information found on the passenger manifest and that EllisIslandrecords.org provides through the research process, including details about the ship the family arrived on in 1909. Wish me luck!

– Barry

Tip of the Week… Review of Archives.com

This week I’ve done some research that needed some U.S. Census help… so I decided to check out Archives.com. Archives.com was established in 2009 and offers a 7-day free trial. It has vital records and promotes itself as a low cost option, but if you want to see past summaries you’ll pay extra. In my case, summaries are helpful, so I was hopeful.

Working from the information I had I went searching and found a 1930 Census record, but was hoping to be able to backtrack since the family members should have appeared on the 1920 Census. Then it occurred to me to cross check for census records I’d gotten years ago through an Ancestry.com free trial (yes, I can be a cheap researcher). I couldn’t find a single census records for family I’d researched easily on Ancestry.com.

So, I decide to try a broader search. What I thought was a bit funny is that I found my own marriage record, but couldn’t find that of my parents or grandparents, etc. I found my grandfather’s death record easily enough, so they had the Social Security Death Index (but that’s available online for free).

I did some researching today at the request for a friend and was able to pull census records on the grandfather they were interested in for 1900, 1920, and 1930, and a number of other records.

One thing I found that I don’t recall finding on Ancestry.com was newspaper extracts, which for an additional fee, you could read directly.

A challenge with a number of genealogy websites is their limited search features. It’s why I love Jewishgen.org so much, which allows phonetic searches of the Ellis Island Jewish immigrant records. To get around this problem on Ancestry.com over the years since Family Tree Maker is part of their corporate family now, I’ve gone in an temporarily mispelled family names to see what I could find… I know this isn’t as good as a soundex phonetic search option, but it can help and worked for me. But with Archives.com, I leery of the approach. When doing the search there’s a box that gives you the opportunity to state the name is an “exact spelling.” I can only assume that the results when you don’t check that are phonetic, but the results didn’t seem to bear that out.

All in all, I’m not going to go beyond the 7-day free trial. Ancestry.com is much better and worth the money, well, someday when I can afford it… Okay, that’s the downside. Then again, I can always do my research at a locale that has a membership, but that’s a tip for another day…

– Barry

@JewishGenealogy

Tip of the Week – check out Who Do You Think You Are this week…

Okay, I’ve tried to never miss an episode of  Who Do You Think You Are? since it first aired last year… and as a Jewish Genealogy tip of the week, I can’t help but plug the show which will feature Rashida Jone, daughter of Quincy Jones (who wrote the music behind Roots, which fanned the genealogy bug in so many). Rashida will explore her mother’s Ashkenazic heritage this week.

Here are details reprinted from a informative reminder from my local Jewish Genealogy Society…

“Who Do You Think You Are? will feature Rashida Jones this week. She is an American film and television actress, comic book author, screenwriter and occasional singer. She played Louisa Fenn onBoston Public and Karen Filippelli on The Office as well as roles in the films I Love You, Man, Our Idiot Brother and The Social Network. Jones also stars on the NBC comedy series Parks and Recreation as Ann Perkins.

Jones was born in Los Angeles, the younger daughter of media mogul, producer and musician Quincy Jones and actress Peggy Lipton. Her father’s ancestry is mostly African-American, as well as European. Her mother’s ancestry is Ashkenazi Jewish, and Jones attended Hebrew school. In this week’s episode, Rashida Jones uncovers her maternal family history from Manhattan to Eastern Europe and uncovers the answers to her grandmother’s missing years.”

Learn more at  http://www.nbc.com/who-do-you-think-you-are/video/rashida-jones/1398788

The show airs on Friday, May 4 at 8 PM. EST