Updates and Ready for the New Year

Most of my followers read my blog for just one reason: to find information regarding their own family history. This post is simply to update you on my situation and when you can expect to hear more about the family history interests that brought you to me in the first place.

Since my post regarding Grave’s disease a couple of years ago, I have undergone radiation therapy to shut down my thyroid. Living without a thyroid requires daily synthetic replacement. In the past couple of months I have suffered from hypothyroid symptoms that severely affect my general mental alertness. It is difficult to focus, stay awake, and remain pain and symptom free if I sit at the computer for more than just a few minutes. Hence my recent post regarding tennis elbow  (just one symptom of the larger disorder). To make my long story short, I have been back to the doctor and am having my medication adjusted. In the meantime, my blog has suffered.

Please accept my sincere apologies. Many of the posts I had planned for the past few weeks just haven’t happened. I do expect my blog to return to normal function as my body responds accordingly. So here is what you can expect over the next few weeks and into the new year:

• An introduction to my new friend from Austria, Ruth Contreras. She was just as anxious to find me as I have been anxious to find family members in Austria. We are both very grateful to have found each other. Ruth’s project, a recovery of pre-holocaust Jewish families from the Bucklige Welt region in Austria is a very exciting development.

  

• Another Cousin Connection to Kwiatkowski brothers living in Hawaii, along with their holiday traditions.
• My very first ancestor landing page featuring my great-great grandfather, Rudolf Abeles from Austria. My grandmother was very close to him, and even lived with him in Pitten during his later years where she attended primary school and helped him with daily tasks. We believe he lived to be 99 years old!
• An exploration of Sephardic Jews in Europe, and how one particular Sephardic family ended up in Austtria. (My mother always said she would take a hard look into the mirror looking for evidence of her Spanish heritage).
• My second ancestor landing page featuring Aucke Wykoff. He was a Colonel in the American Revolution, and was credited with saving the life of a fellow POW in the infamous New York Sugar House Prison. The man he saved was more than just a friend, he was a member of the family.
• An exploration of life in the Sugar House prison and how Aucke Wykoff was related to Toby Polhemus.
• In the next year, I’ll be updating and revisiting the life of Mary Davis Skeen, the woman who started my journey to learn more about Plain

  

  City Utah’s Pioneer History, and the inspiration for this website.

• A deeper look into the people and events that make up this place that is my new home. I’ll begin with a close look at the historical “Slave Fences” of Kentucky and the efforts to preserve them. I see evidence of this Irish stonecraft everywhere around here.

In the meantime, I have discovered some exciting information about Family History in Kentucky. I was able to visit the public library for the first time yesterday, and found some amazing help for family historians. There is tons of information available through their resources, and I want to showcase their upcoming Tuesday afternoon online events from 3-4 pm Eastern Standard Time:

• Dec. 5: 3G2 Glitter, Glue, and Genealogy, TOO!

• Dec. 12: Explain it Like I’m five: What is a “Christmas Pickle”? 

• Dec. 19: Christmas on Madison Tour

• Dec. 26: TIL Genealogy (Using Northern Kentucky’s church index database)

P.S. You don’t need to have a library card or even live in Kentucky for these online events.  To view online, tune into @KentonLibrary on Periscope (available on your smartphone or tablet), or at periscope.tv/kentonlibrary. Dec. 5 and 12 events look like they’d be interesting for people everywhere, especially those with German and/or Christian backgrounds.