Lite Melite

an occasional genealogy blog

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“FIRST UNIT OF TELEPHONE OPERATORS FOR SERVICE IN FRANCE. These 29 young women have command of both the French and English languages, and have been recruited from all parts of the country. They constitute the first group of 33 telephone operators to be sent to France. They were attached to the Signal Corps and occupied a unique position in the American military organization…” Mar. 2, 1918

File Unit: Women’s Activities - Industry - Army Telephone Operators, 1917 - 1918. Series: American Unofficial Collection of World War I Photographs, 1917 - 1918. Record Group 165: Records of the War Department General and Special Staffs, 1860 - 1952

During World War I, over 400 women were enrolled in the U.S. Army Signal Corps to operate telephone* switchboards in France.  Despite the sometimes hazardous conditions of their service, they were denied veterans status after the war ended.  It would take 60 years until a bill was signed by President Carter granting them veterans status in 1978.

Read more about the “Hello Girls” at The Hello Girls Finally Get Paid.

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Legacy Family Tree Webinars : Find Your Roots in German Farm Histories

Coming up on the last chance to watch Gail Blankenau’s webinar on German farm histories without a membership! I have at least 3 different family groups that were German-speaking, so I’m sure the knowledge from this webinar will be useful to me.

Two things that I thought were pretty interesting observations--German farmers had a rather different experience than American farmers. Gail pointed out that unlike the possibly far-flung rural American farmers with their sprawling acres, their German equivalents tended to be more compact and much closer to a village, which was extremely important in their culture. And second, that while the proportion of Germans who were farmers of course declined over the years, nevertheless quite a lot of the German immigrants to the US were and remained farmers.

Anyway, if you’ve got German ancestry, or want to learn some about their farms, I’d recommend it. It gives a great overview of the importance and role of the farm, and of the kinds of records that give you a picture of that crucial part of these people’s lives.

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Serendipity is watching a webinar on post office records, and then finding out the next day that your third-great grandfather worked for the post office.

Now if only it had been one day before, not one day after!

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The good news: I might have just lucked into bringing two boxes’ worth (!!!) of papers into my document collection.

The less-good news: I literally just ordered the small box of sheet protectors only a few days ago, because, “Ehhhh, I won’t need very many for awhile.”

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Yeeeaaahhh, so, here’s what I’ve been doing for the past, um, how many days? Well, I had twelve boxes (twelve days of Christmas!) to open, and there’s five left, so that’s my indication of the passage of time.

I did not remember to order those additional sheet protectors yet.

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UNLV's Neon in Nevada — the Silver Bell Wedding Chapel in the 80s

One of many, many wedding chapels in Vegas. My parents were married here (by someone who looked like Wolfman Jack!), but the chapel burned down shortly before their divorce. How's that for a bad omen?

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Just registered for my first genealogical event! There is also a session on German records, and I think I’ve got one German branch on each side, so that’ll be helpful later. Will definitely take loads of notes. I’m so excited!

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A Brief Look at African American Soldiers in the Great War

By Matthew Margis

When the United States declared war on Germany in April 1917, President Woodrow Wilson undertook a massive propaganda campaign to expand support for the war.  He declared that, America would help make the world “safe for democracy.”  Democracy though, eluded an entire segment of American society who struggled with the realities of Jim Crow laws, legal segregation, and general racist attitudes.  African American citizens across the nation—especially in the American South—had little access to high-paying jobs, educational opportunities, and suffered from disenfranchisement.  Throughout American history, the military served as a prism through which to view larger social concepts, and the First World War was no exception.  The Marine Corps excluded blacks entirely, the Navy restricted their service to menial roles as cooks and stewards, and the Army remained racially segregated.[1]   Despite this, many black men remained eager to reinforce their status as American citizens and fight for their country—hoping this would translate to broader social equality.  By war’s end, roughly 370,000 African Americans served in some capacity…

Read more about the African American contribution to World War I at A Brief Look at African American Soldiers in the Great War | The Unwritten Record

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on the genealogical agenda

Currently, I’m trying to work on, well, strengthening the fundamentals. Good filing, storage, and digitizing practices for my physical documents. A sensible structure for my many digital genealogy-related files. Reading up on methodology. Figuring out the software I’m using and the workflow I prefer. Tentatively branching out to exploring the local community.

Getting documentation for my immediate family, and using this group, which I know very well, to practice doing the important stuff has been hugely helpful. It gives me practice in properly analyzing evidence and citing my sources. It gives me a little example database to work with, so that I have real use cases, and I’m not just trying to figure out in theory what will work for me. It’s small enough that I can decide to completely change my approach several times, like if when I decide I don’t like my filing system or how I dealt with some citations, because it’s not too much bother to redo. (I learn something with every do-over!) And finally, when I’m done tinkering around and ready to move forward with research again (census images are calling to me...), I’ll have a very firm anchor point at the root of my tree.

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The good news: I might have just lucked into bringing two boxes’ worth (!!!) of papers into my document collection.

The less-good news: I literally just ordered the small box of sheet protectors only a few days ago, because, “Ehhhh, I won’t need very many for awhile.”

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Using genealogy to find your trans-cestors

My grandpa does genealogy for fun and he just emailed me about my great grandmother’s great-great-granduncle who was born Sally Strout in Maine, 1791-1871. He identified as male rather than female and went to the lawmakers of Maine to ask them to recognize him as male, allow him a name change and to be allowed to marry a woman. This caused a lot of hoopla since that just wasn’t done at the time, but in the end Albion Peter Strout got his name change and gender recognition, and legally married a lady, Mary Dorsett, on August 31st 1835. He was well thought of by his peers and owned a tavern and sawmill in Buxton, Maine.

We have ALWAYS existed and the historical records are there to prove it. Genealogy is a great resource for learning about our trans ancestors (and LGBTQ+ too!) and it should be used to its fullest potential. Now I know I have a confirmed trans guy related to me who lived 200 years ago and not only had the respect of his town but even got the law on his side in a time when people like him weren’t taken seriously!! Dig around and see what you find about your own family history. Even if you hate your family that’s living, you may find some amazing and inspirational relatives who have passed on.

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This is a ridiculously cool find. I’d be so proud to discover someone like Albion Peter Strout in my family!

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about

Around October of 2017, I started up with genealogy.

Well, actually, I did take an interest before then, as a kid. I eagerly printed out the emails my grandmother sent me of the family history work that had been done and carried them around in my school folders next to things like homework assignments and handouts. When visiting my other set of grandparents, where I got to take a look at a family tree, I discovered just how frustrating it can be to try to draw a legible family tree on one sheet of paper in an impromptu manner. But while I was interested, it was mostly something others did and I got to hear about—I had no ability to really pursue it myself.

Last autumn, though, I got a DNA test, lost my third grandparent, attended a family wedding where I realized again that I didn’t know anyone, and took up genealogy. That’s a pretty quick way to summarize what precipitated this. I spent a couple weeks with almost no information to go on (having lost access to most of what had been known), and then spent a couple months, once the Smart Matches started flying in, gleefully adding anything and everything to my tree. It was fun! But I decided at the beginning of this year to tackle it the right way, and have been slowly improving my methods and doing mountains of reading.

The online genealogy community has been an immeasurable help to me since 2018 began, pointing me towards things I didn’t even know to ask for and setting me on the right track without even speaking directly to me. While I know a blog on Tumblr is a little less conventional among said community, I’d like to start recording some of my thoughts, trials, and tribulations. I’m not great at regular upkeep for a blog—I’ll admit that upfront. Sometimes just responding to an email chain for two consecutive days takes more out of me than I’d care to admit. But something light like Tumblr feels to me like it can take more minimal care and feeding, the patch of moss in the plant kingdom of blogging platforms. So here we are.

Welcome!