By Karyl Hubbard
Special to Okanogan Living
Genealogy, also known as family history, has become, since the advent of the Internet, a very popular hobby and an interesting way to spend long winter afternoons.
I prefer to call it “family history” as genealogy sounds like you’re limited to names, dates and places.
I’ve loved some of the stories I’ve learned about my ancestors and distant relatives over the 80 years I’ve been doing this.
I’ve found a number of family secrets, a couple of major scandals and just plain fun items like wedding stories and elopements in old newspapers, now online; and have written them in book form to pass on down to my descendants, which they seem to be really pleased—and amused — to get.
It’s fun to know that your ancestors were real people with real joys and real problems.
Getting started
Getting started is easy. Always start with what you know. Your own name, birth date and place, date and place of marriage, spouses name and their birth date and place.
You can get handy forms, free from familysearch.com, which is the LDS church’s web site. They have all the basic forms (family group sheets, etc) along with oodles of information, all free of charge. I highly recommend signing up for an account there.
You can also get local help from the very knowledgeable folks at the Okanogan Genealogical Society (ocgs@okanogangenealogy.com).
They are all local with an immense amount of knowledge and a great library located at the Okanogan County Historical Society, 1410 N. Second Ave., Okanogan.
You can also buy a membership to an online tree or buy a copy of Family Tree Maker to keep your information on your computer, for instance.
Either one will guide you through the process of entering information, or you can search the web for free forms. I do recommend a computer program to keep track of it all!
Family Tree Maker is my preferred choice but the The National Genealogical Society and Ancestry.com both have a number available.
So now you have forms. Add your parents and all their basic information. Make sure you have the sources for your information.
In the case of yourself or your parents “personal knowledge” will do, for all others you need to verify with a legal record, a published genealogy, a newspaper article or other reliable information. Double check sources on trees found on line. Make sure their information is correct. And the fun begins.
The fun begins
We used to have to write a letter, enclose a small check and send it off to the courthouse where you think grandpa might have lived.
In this digital age, you’ll find much of it already online.
Washington, for instance, has records online at washingtonstatearchives.wa.gov/search.
And there are many sites with newspapers digitized. You may have to check several to find the one you want, or it may not have been digitized yet, but it’s amazing how many there are.
The Library of Congress has oodles (chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/newspapers). Their site is a bit difficult to navigate, but they go back a couple of centuries and have papers from small towns. The site is constantly being upgraded.
There are also a number of my favorites: genealogybank.com, newspapers.com, newspaper
archives.com, for instance.
Another fun one to look at is findagrave.com, which has cemeteries with pictures of tomb-stones from all over the world. And its counterpart, BillionGraves.com, which also has many ceme-tery list-ings. Most of these have a small charge—you can buy a monthly or annual subscription.
Cemeteries hold information
I still love to browse cemeteries when I see one.
Okanogan county is full of interesting ones. And you never know when you’ll add to your family story.
I visited Gypsum Hill cemetery in Salina, Kans., one time to pay my respects to some great-great ancestors. The office was open and when I asked, checked their records. Mostly very common causes of death, but one said “gunshot wound!” Hmm—my ears perked up and I spent the next couple of days looking into the story of a distant cousin who got a bit drunk one night and decided to rob a wealthy old bachelor. Bachelor and cousin fired their guns, both died and the two remaining culprits decided to cover up the crime by burning the house down with the two dead men in it.
Many years later I found the son of the dead cousin in Arizona. He’d been raised by his grand-parents and the two of us talked non-stop for an informative afternoon. It’s that kind of story that keeps me hooked on family history.
You never know what you’ll find or how many new friends you’ll make.
Just recently, after 25 years in Omak and 30 more in Spokane, I found that one line of my father’s were miners who went from Michigan to Colorado to Spokane and that a couple of the boys ended up in what are now ghost towns in Okanogan County —Torodo and Ruby!
A good excuse to travel and stop in small towns with historical societies and cemeteries, with your new list of ancestors in hand come warmer weather. Happy hunting! ♦
COPYRIGHT 2025 © HIRES ENTERTAINMENT LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THIS MATERIAL MAY NOT BE PUBLISHED, BROADCAST, REWRITTEN OR REDISTRIBUTED.
Comments