• Jul26

    All the Way to America: The Story of a Big Italian Family and a Little Shovel

    Anyone who has spent time reading or watching television with young children over the last several years has likely encountered some of Dan Yaccarino’s work – Oswald the Octopus probably being his most well known work.

    Well, for the young and not yet budding genealogist he’s written a very nice book called “All the Way to America: The Story of a Big Italian Family and a Little Shovel.” My wife and kids found it in our library this week, and my 4 year old daughter and I enjoyed reading about the story of his family. Starting with his great-grandfather’s emigration from Italy all the way down to his family today, my daughter had fun following the changes in people and the handoff of the little shovel to each generation. Our 8 year old dove right in on his own and took his time with it as well.

    The story is simply told and his drawing is always soothing – I highly recommend it!
    You can view one of his videos on the book below and see more at the Yaccarino Studio.

  • Jul18

    Update: 11 APR 2016: I have updated this Excel file to fix some formula errors and automate the coloring of the pie charts. See more info in the More Ancestry Pie blog post!

    After seeing a post online recently about creating a pie chart for of one’s ancestry, I thought it might be fun to create a spreadsheet that could calculate someone’s ancestry percentages by country and create a set of pie charts that mimics a standard ancestor chart.

    I’ve created an Excel 2007 spreadsheet that does just that. It may still need some tweaking, but I like the cleaner look of my latest version better than the previous one. (I found that including names above all of the charts made it too congested and hard to read.)

    Ancestry Pie: Excel sheet capture
    All one has to to in this spreadsheet is enter a their family’s names, an applicable list of ancestral countries and then the ancestry percentages for each GG-Grandparent. (An example is at left.)

    After entering the GG-Grandparent’s ancestry, everyone else’s is calculated from those and a group of pie charts is created on a separate sheet.

    Ancestry Pie: Charts
    I welcome any ideas and suggestions for improvement – I can’t promise any support, especially if it is used with versions of Excel older than 2007, but I’ll do my best to take a look.

    Also included in the spreadsheet is a separate worksheet with additional notes and some slightly more detailed info on how to enter your data. (If anyone knows how to get Excel NOT to put data labels for 0.00% data without actually deleting the label, please tell me!)

    It can be downloaded from my Downloads page. Be sure to look for the latest info and updates on the post  More Ancestry Pie.

    Note: I updated the Excel spreadsheet on 11 Oct 2011 to with the following:

    • An additional country column for families with up to 10 different ancestral countries
    • Added a 3rd sheet that shows just the pie charts for Parents and Child, all with percentage labels
    • Cleaned up some more formatting
  • Jun16

    Google has added a new Search By Image function to their standard images search that looks like it will give good old Tineye Reverse Image Search a run for their money.

  • Jun15

    Patently on a Roll

    Posted in: Fun

    Holder for Toilet Paper Patent 741,988

    In my regular searches for Tierneys in New York in the late 1800s and early 1900s I stumbled upon this tidbit.

    Apparently a circa 1903 John J. Tierney patented this wonderful design for an updated toilet paper holder.

    I do not know of any familial connection, but if I find one I’M GONNA BE RICH!

    Ah, probably not.

    You may read the full and complete patent here, if you are in need of some reading material. Ahem.

  • Jun13

    Simanek Family Photo - Předmíř, Czechoslovakia

    Simanek Family Home in Předmíř. Rear row: Antonin, Vaclav, Marie (my Babi), Bozena, Joseph. Front row: Rose, Mother Bozena, Jaroslav, Father Vaclav, Jan

    This is a photo of my great-grandparents Bozena and Vaclav Simanek and their children at their home in Předmíř, Czechoslovakia, circa 1915 (give or take a few years.) My grandmother Marie (known as Babi to us grandkids) is the oldest, standing in the rear row, center.

    I have seen this photo several times over the years, but it was not until I scanned it that I realized all of the children were holding lilacs. Many years after she had emigrated to New York, Babi had planted several lilac bushes at their summer bungalow in upstate New York. They are one of my favorite flowers in both appearance and scent – we planted some Japanese lilacs in our yard that I look forward to each spring.

    I suppose that love of lilacs may go further back than I realized.