My mother's philosophy was that you shouldn't save those nice dishes for a special occasion or keep them packed up somewhere safe - get them out and enjoy them! That's what there for after all. So this past nothing-special Saturday, I had a glass of wine (picture for proof of use) in my grandmother's (Betty Jane Tam Bash) etched wine glasses.

These glasses are so thin and delicate but so wonderful to handle. The etching is hard to see; the photo with the shadow provides the best design viewing option. What makes these perfect for a "Fingertip Friday" is that you can really feel the etching as you hold the glass.

Not only are these glasses priceless heirlooms that I love to use, they are special because she and my grandfather drove from Florida to Houston to hand deliver these to me. I don't think bringing me the glasses was the whole reason for the trip. The fact that just a few months before I'd given birth to their first great-grandchild was the real pull! That trip was all the more meaningful because my grandfather passed away a few months later.

So "break" out that nice crystal (or glass) and have a glass of wine. Just remember to wash them first - wow does that stuff get dusty!

When I look around my house, I'm comforted by being surrounded by the stuff of my ancestors. Books, dishes, furniture, even junk I can't get rid of because it belonged to a loved one - all of this is special to me. I used to fantasize about just backing my house up to the Antiques Roadshow and letting them appraise everything in it! In reality I'd likely just have one huge bill for house transportation. It's not that what I have is worth much monetarily; it's like our kids artwork, special because we love who made it.

I hang my kids "art" all over the house, and my bookcases are stuffed with the stuff my family before me passed down. I have a particularly large number of things because my brother (God bless him) always says, "Well, it should stay in the family..." knowing full well that I will cave and take it. I might get back at him by sending family "gifts" to my nephew so it can "stay in the family." Never to young for a guilt trip, never too old to get back at a sibling ;)

Anyway, I'd like to share my special heirlooms with you through a weekly blog segment I call "Fingertip Friday." Each week I'll post a new story behind one of my treasures that's literally at my fingertips. I'd love to hear what your favorite hand-me-downs are as well. Pictures welcome!

A recent article has been making the rounds on twitter that supports the notion that there should be some sort of "research license" for people who dare to dabble in genealogy. Here's the opening thought:

The biggest, of the many problems I find with this, is that we were once all joy riders. I don't know one genealogist who started out because they didn't love researching their own family and - whether Ancestry existed at the time or not - left a few messes behind.

Genealogy is messy, and that's okay. Actually it's great! If we waited until everything was proven we would never actually publish anything. Take a lesson from the history books. We are only sure about something until more evidence is uncovered. Just look at the author's definition of "Proof":

If I knew how to spell a wrong-answer-buzzer-sound I would enter it here. The term "correctly interpreted" is ridiculous. How many times do we have to relearn that the past can be interpreted many, many different ways. That what we think has been proven often gets unproven with new information.

I shudder to think about what kind of research standards would be required by people of this mindset. I'd rather have everyone so in love with genealogy that they are desperately, messily trying to find ancestors than to have people turned off by the notion that only a few qualified people can do it correctly. My vote - anyone who is even slightly interested in genealogy, get out there and mess it up!

I was so excited when the 1940 census was released earlier this year.  My true genealogy geek came out as I counted down the days - of course it was a little anti-climatic. There was a lot of indexing to be done. And I did it, and loved it. In a relatively short period of time all 50 states were up and searchable. What took months to build up, took less than an afternoon to tear through. I searched for every relative that had a reasonable chance of being alive (just born or not quite dead) by 1940. And I found most of them with an odd exception - THE ONE DARN FAMILY I WANTED TO FIND!

My grandparents (Holly & Howard Dunaway) were no where to be found. I was looking forward to this census because it was the first one where they would have been a married couple and my great-grandmother Elizabeth Dunaway was living with them, she would die a few years later.  I had no clue they would be hard to find. I knew they were in Texas, I knew my great-grandmother was still alive, although a widow, I knew my grandmother was either pregnant with or had just had my uncle. Yet - nothing, zippo. I was very bummed.

So, not to be defeated, I turned to my grandfather's trusty autobiography. The 50 page, hand-written text from about 1995 cracks me up! He has great stories from his childhood and writes such interesting things about his grandparents and school years up to college. The last page is literally - I got married, got a job, moved a lot, had two kids, now I have some grandkids. Ok, then! Let's not waste time on messy details. I did love that man!

Moved a lot he did. The beginning of his autobiography contains a chronology from birth (1909) to "present" day (1995). A subset of that chronology is "Moves During First 8 Years of Marriage". My grandfather worked for Humble Oil in Geophysics. While I'm sure it's not a record, they moved 23 times in those 8 years; 5 times in 1940 alone. All from small town to small town in Texas. No wonder the census taker couldn't find them. I have this vision of the tired government worker deciding to stop for the evening with the intention of getting to that last house on the block the next day - only to come back and find they had moved. That would be my family, one step ahead of the Man!

So alas, I have no record of Holly and Howard in 1940, but that's okay, I have many, many more records and memories to keep me company. Good luck finding your loved ones in 1940.

For those of you who follow my Unclaimed Ancestors site, you know of my love of class photos. This is a beautiful picture of the 1933 class from Pontiac High School in Pontiac, Michigan. Luckily for the relatives of these high schoolers, the 1933 Pontiac year book is already on Ancestry.com so these pictures are available now. This is only slightly selfishly heartbreaking for me as I do love doing the research on class photos. 

It's particularly interesting for me to look lat these faces of high school graduates almost 80 years ago - my son starts high school next year and we are in a furious pace of looking at and applying to schools. We are going through a process that these young people probably never had to endure. There was likely one high school to choose from; and in 1933 there may not have been many who were hoping to go to college the following year. My grandfather, who had graduated from college a few years prior would have been train hoping the the mid-west about this time as there was no work to be found for him. 

There's something fascinating about a group of people brought together by location and birth year, if nothing else. How vastly different their lives probably turned out - especially for the 3 young black women in the group. What did their fate hold in the depression? I can see that I'm convincing myself to do a little research after all ;)