Monday, April 20, 2015

Grandma Has Some Secrets

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles
at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The talented cast members of Studio C have given us another funny comedy sketch to enjoy.



Fellow family historians will no doubt appreciate the fact that these youngsters want to learn about their Grandma's life. What they are about to find out however, is that Grandma has some surprising secrets from her past.

Click play and have fun getting to know Grandma.

To watch more comedy sketches by Studio C, check out their YouTube channel by clicking HERE.

Thanks for stopping by!

Jana
 
© 2015 Copyright by Jana Last, All Rights Reserved

Friday, April 17, 2015

Follow Friday ~ Fab Finds for April 17, 2015


A Note to my wonderful readers: I'm sorry, but Fab Finds will be going on another hiatus. My schedule is filled with many things in the coming weeks including family activities, church responsibilities, and final preparations for the class I'm teaching at our local Family Discovery Day in May. So, Fab Finds will be on hiatus for the next three or four weeks. If my schedule allows, Fab Finds will return on May 15. Otherwise, it will resume on May 22. Thank you!

My Fab Finds for this week are (in no particular order)
  1. SlideShare helps cure my genealogy conference envy… a wee bit by Gail Dever, author of Genealogy à la carte
  2. Grave Collectors: It’s a Numbers Game by Terri O’Connell, author of Finding Our Ancestors
  3. The Day Grandpa Hijacked the Car by Michelle Ganus Taggart, author of A Southern Sleuth
  4. Thursday's Tip: Resource Wrap Up for Researching Your Deaf Ancestors and Relatives by Miriam J. Robbins, author of AnceStories: The Stories of My Ancestors
  5. Ancestry Academy Launched Today AND MyHeritage Adds "Discoveries" to Your Family Tree by Randy Seaver, author of Genea-Musings
  6. Orphan Trains A Missed Part Of My American History by Jenna Mills, author of Desperately Seeking Surnames
  7. How'd She Do That?! : Screenshot of a Census by Amie Bowser Tennant, author of My Kith N Kin
  8. Researching Mortuary or Funeral Home Records AND More Irish Genealogy Resources by James Tanner, author of Genealogy's Star
  9. Shhh! A Secret list of Reasons to Attend Your Local Genealogy Conference by Heather Wilkinson Rojo, author of Nutfield Genealogy
  10. A Marital Union at the Dawn of the Civil War by Patricia Desmond Biallas, author of GeneaJourneys
  11. Finding A Family Hero – An Obscure Canadian Database You Might Not Have Used But Should by Ian Hadden, author of Ian Hadden's Family History
  12.  Guest Blogger: Beginning Your Tennessee Research by Amie Bowser Tennant, guest blogger at Lisa Lisson
  13. This Is How They Trip You Up by Ellie, author of Ellie's Ancestors
  14. Free Civil War Genealogy Records on Fold3 Through April 30 by Diane Haddad – Genealogy Insider for Family Tree Magazine Blog
  15. KINDLE-ING GENEALOGY: AT THE CEMETERY by Bill West, author of West in New England
  16. I Had An "I'm A Dummy Moment" by Andrea Kelleher, author of How Did I Get Here? My Amazing Genealogy Journey
  17. Three Generations in My Family Wrote to the Same Cemetery by Barbara Poole, author of Life From The Roots
  18. Quickest digitizing set-up ever by Pat Richley-Erickson, author of DearMyrtle

The 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Challenge by Amy Johnson Crow, author of No Story Too Small -

This week's "May I Introduce To You" Interview on GeneaBloggers.com

New Blog Discoveries

In Case You Missed Them….My Contributions to the Blogosphere This Week

Jana's Genealogy and Family History Blog
Jana's Place

Thanks for reading!

Jana
 
© 2015 Copyright by Jana Last, All Rights Reserved

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

My Blog Book is Here!

In a previous post I told you about my blog book project that I had been working on. Well, I finished my blog book, ordered it, and it has already arrived! It came even sooner than the estimated delivery date. And I am so pleased with the way it turned out. Blurb.com did a fantastic job.

Here are a few photos of my completed book.

Front Cover


Open Book


Back Cover


I'm thinking of writing a blog post about the process of creating this book. But, that may have to wait a while because of my busy schedule at the moment. I still need to finish my presentation for the class I'm teaching at our local Family Discovery Day in May. I'm happy to say that I was able to finish and turn in my syllabus by the deadline.

In addition to photos of my book, I also thought I'd share the preview of my book from Blurb.com.

Thanks for reading!

Jana

© 2015 Copyright by Jana Last, All Rights Reserved

Monday, April 13, 2015

Crestleaf.com’s Guess My Family Heritage Blogathon Contest

Crestleaf.com is hosting a contest. It's super easy and there are prizes involved, so yay!

Participants are invited to share a family photo and then ask their readers to reference the photo and guess the family's heritage.

I tried to find a photo that I haven't shared on my blog before. I found one, and here it is.


Photo courtesy of my 2nd cousin Jordan


So...any guesses about this family's heritage? If so, please leave them in the comments below.

If you'd like to participate in this contest, please click HERE to find out more about it.

Thanks for reading!

Jana 

© 2015 Copyright by Jana Last, All Rights Reserved

Friday, April 10, 2015

Follow Friday ~ Fab Finds for April 10, 2015


Hello my wonderful readers! As promised, Fab Finds is back from its two-week hiatus. I was able to finish and order my blog book by the March 31st deadline so I could take advantage of the 20% off sale. My book has already arrived and I'm very pleased with it. Blurb did a great job. I was also able to complete my syllabus for the upcoming class I'm teaching at our local Family Discovery Day in May.

This week's Fab Finds post contains blog posts from previous weeks as well as from this week.

My Fab Finds for this week are (in no particular order)
  1. Tuesday's Tip: Finding Deaf Ancestors and Relatives in Schools for the Deaf Historical Records AND Tuesday's Tip: Locating Deaf Ancestors and Relatives in Other Major Record Groups by Miriam J. Robbins, author of AnceStories: The Stories of My Ancestors
  2. Enter to Win! Guess My Family Heritage Blogathon Contest AND 13 Popular Vintage Toys Baby Boomers Probably Didn’t Know Began with Their Generation by Crestleaf Blog
  3. 7 Places to Find Photographs of Your Ancestors Lisa Lisson for Crestleaf Blog
  4. Using old postcards as research….. by Simon Last, author of Charnwood Genealogy
  5. The "When I Was Young" Geneameme by Alona, author of Lonetester HQ
  6. I Have a Complaint Concerning Many Genealogists by Dick Eastman, author of Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter
  7. Guest Blogger: Researching Your South Carolina Genealogy by Cheryl Hudson Passey, guest blogger for Lisa Lisson
  8. AncestryDNA Launches New Ancestor Discoveries AND Introducing Thomas MacEntee, Guest Genealogist by Lorine McGinnis Schulze, author of The Olive Tree Genealogy
  9. H is for Household Examination Records by Tessa Keough, author of The Keough Corner
  10. Free OCR for Family History Images by Fran Kitto, author of TravelGenee
  11. Tuesday's Tip: DNA webinars from FTDNA by Nichelle Barra, author of Copper Leaf Genealogy
  12. Sticky Fingers by Michelle Ganus Taggart, author of A Southern Sleuth
  13. Putting a Face on Your Ancestors by Marian Pierre-Louis for Legacy Family Tree News
  14. When it is the 150th anniversary of the Civil War and you discover that your ancestors' unit served at Gettysburg by Lisa, author of Small-leaved Shamrock
  15. Geneabloggers at Congress – Reflections by Jill Ball, author of GeniAus
  16. Dissecting AncestryDNA Circles and New Ancestors by Roberta Estes, author of DNAeXplained – Genetic Genealogy
  17. If I had to start again, this is what I would do. by Lynn Palermo, author of The Armchair Genealogist
  18. Join in! Arbor Day: It’s All about Trees! by Colleen G. Brown Pasquale, author of Leaves & Branches
  19. Things I Learned By Participating in the Genealogy Do-Over by Dawn Kogutkiewicz, author of Dawning Genealogy
  20. Announcing Cycle 2 of the Genealogy Do-Over AND MooseRoots Added as Blog Resource at GeneaBloggers by Thomas MacEntee, author of GeneaBloggers
  21. Resurrecting a Genealogy Forum by Jacqi Stevens, author of A Family Tapestry
  22. We Are Getting a New Blog! by Ohio History Connection Collections Blog
  23. HIDDEN GEMS IN NEWSPAPERS - I HIT THE JACKPOT ON THIS WEBSITE AND THE CIVIL WAR–HOW OUR COUNTRY DEALT WITH THE AFTERMATH by Diane Gould Hall, author of MICHIGAN FAMILY TRAILS
  24. Destination America: Your Immigrant Ancestor’s Arrival in U.S. Ports by Juliana Szucs for Ancestry.com Blog

NOTEI want to let you all know about a very difficult and heartbreaking situation that one of our fellow genealogy bloggers and her family are facing right now. Cheri explains it in her post:
A GoFundMe account has been set up for Cheri and her family. Several genealogy bloggers have shared this on Facebook. If you can help at all, it would be wonderful and very much appreciated. Thank you!

GoFundMe Account link ~ The Passey's need your love!

The 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Challenge by Amy Johnson Crow, author of No Story Too Small -

"May I Introduce To You" Interview from March 23, 2015

New Blog Discoveries

In Case You Missed Them….My Contributions to the Blogosphere This Week

Jana's Genealogy and Family History Blog
Jana's Place

Thanks for reading!

Jana

© 2015 Copyright by Jana Last, All Rights Reserved

Monday, April 6, 2015

My 3rd Blogiversary!

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles
at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Yesterday, April 5, 2015, was my blog's 3rd blogiversary. I can't believe I began this blog three whole years ago! Where has the time gone?

FIRST THINGS FIRST

First of all, I would like to thank all of my wonderful readers for following along with me in my family history research. I appreciate you reading my blog posts. I also appreciate your comments and sharing my blog posts on various social media sites. Thank you!

YEAR IN REVIEW

 A lot has happened since April 5, 2014. I shared some of these events here on my blog.

On August 12, 2014 I announced the exciting news that I became part of the new "May I Introduce To You" (MIITY) team at GeneaBloggers. We have a fabulous team and it's wonderful working with them. Thomas MacEntee introduced the new team members on his GeneaBloggers website.

On September 3, 2014, I shared the wonderful reason I added another name to my genealogy database. Our second-oldest son got married to a beautiful young woman. She's awesome and we're so happy she's now part of our family.

On November 3, 2014, I told you about the fabulous surprise I received in an email. A gentleman named Carl found me because I'm a contributor on Find A Grave. He had a copy of a letter written by my paternal 2nd great-grandfather, Iver Iverson, who served in the U.S. Civil War. Carl shared that letter with me, and I shared it in my blog post.

On January 5, 2015, I shared the reason I added a sweet little leaf to our family tree. My husband and I became grandparents for the first time in November 2014. Our daughter and son-in-law welcomed a sweet little baby boy into their family. He's so adorable!

On January 26, 2015, I shared the exciting news about a new cousin connection. This cousin lives in Brazil and is a very close cousin that our family knew nothing about until he contacted me.

On January 13, 2015, I told you about how my blog and I were mentioned and quoted in an article on the FamilySearch Blog. I was so surprised by this and still am. It also turns out that this same article was published in an article in The Church News  on January 16, 2015 on lds.org.

On March 31, 2015, I ordered my first blog book for this blog. I got an email today saying that it has shipped! Yay! The book covers the first three months of my blog: April - June 2012. I wrote about my blog book and shared some pages from when my book was a work in progress in my blog post Fab Finds on a Brief Hiatus.

STATISTICS

As I've done with previous Blogiversary posts, I'm sharing some of my blog stats again this year. I'm only sharing the stats from Google Analytics though. These statistics are for the year April 5, 2014 - April 5, 2015.

Acquisition Section

These are the Sources/Medium Traffic Charts. According to Google Analytics, this tells me the following:

"Source/Medium describes where your traffic comes from. The Source is the place users are before seeing your content, like a search engine or another website. The Medium describes how users arrived at your content."





This is the Referral Traffic Chart. According to Google Analytics, this tells me the following:

"The sources which referred traffic. Includes sources identified via utm_source."



It's so interesting to me that Pinterest is one of the leading referring sites for my blog. If you haven't used Pinterest yet for your genealogy blog, I highly recommend you give it a try.

Audience Section

Did you know that Google Analytics can even tell you the top ten browsers your readers use? I found this information in the Technology section.




And from the Mobile section, here are the top ten mobile devices used by my readers.


Thank you again to my family, friends, fellow genealogy bloggers, and anyone else who takes the time to read my blog posts, leave comments, and share my posts on social media. I appreciate it so very much.

Thanks for reading!

Jana

© 2015 Copyright by Jana Last, All Rights Reserved

Saturday, April 4, 2015

He Lives ~ Happy Easter

As Easter approaches, I'd like to share this very special video with you. It's called He Lives - Celebrate Easter Because Jesus Christ Lives. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.




I'm so grateful for Jesus Christ. I know He is our Savior and Redeemer. I'm thankful for His kindness, mercy and love. And I'm grateful for His atoning sacrifice and for the Resurrection.

I'd like to wish all of you a very Happy Easter.

Jana
 
© 2015 Copyright by Jana Last, All Rights Reserved