I’m taking a break from writing – or thinking – about the series of articles I want to post concerning Death, Dying and Wading into the Legal System. There are other things to write about for the time being.

New Geneablogger stuff – I guess I’m a little behind the times (please read: too busy dealing with personal issues) to realize that Thomas MacEntee of Destination: Austin Family (and other great blogs) fame, has been hard at work on the GeneaBloggers blog/website. There’s a wealth of great information and a list of ALL of the Geneabloggers! It’s been around for several months so if you’ve been a little busy or preoccupied (like me!) – go check it out and bookmark it! I think it’s great that each week, new geneablogs are mentioned.

There’s also a new Social Networking site “just for genealogists” – GenealogyWise. Several of the geneabloggers have hopped on the new bandwagon in town – so far not many have abandoned Facebook. Are you on GenealogyWise? I haven’t signed up yet. For the time being, I have way too much on my plate to try to keep up with another network! Perhaps sometime in the future.

Another item I wanted to mention was the recent SoCal Jamboree that was attended by many of the geneabloggers – especially those who live in the Southern California region.  To read more about this event (sounds like it was quite a party!) – head over to Southern California Genealogical Society 40th Annual Jamboree. Then check other geneabloggers postings to read about all the good stuff they learned, the new friends they made, how they met their “idol”, and see all the great photos! I’ve enjoyed the Jamboree vicariously – since I’m not in Southern California and not able to participate in person!

Elyse Doerflinger has pondered why Genealogy Societies Need to Look Torward the Future over at Elyse’s Genealogy Blog. Wonderful content and she’s received tons of comments! Have I mentioned that Elyse is one of our “younger” sisters in the geneablogger world? She has an excellent perspective on so many issues!

Don’t forget to participate in several of the upcoming Carnivals and prompts! If you have writer’s block – or just keep bumping into that genealogical brick wall and need a break – these are wonderful ways to get inspired.

I posted a few days ago about my new found cousin, Julie Cahill Tarr, of GenBlog. Today my other new found cousin, Becky Wiseman of Kinexxions posted her line back to Richard Treat – our common ancestor.

When I first entered the genea-blogging world back in the early spring, little did I realize that some of the people who I met in this wonderful community would turn out to be distant relatives – not to mention blogging friends. On GenBlog, Julie writes that she

. . . started this blog to share my genealogy research with others. Mini-bios of family members is my main focus. However, I also plan to share research challenges and successes, hint and tips I learn along the way, and participate in various carnivals and memes to add variety.

Julie is researching and preserving the past of the Cahill, Miller, McMahon, Rottman, Stoffel, Wach, & Webster families (and over 1,000 other twigs)! She is also the owner of Design Write Communications in Central Illinois.

Becky considers herself a GeneaHistorian and is a native Hoosier (which is great since a lot of my ancestors on my maternal grandparents side lived in Indiana!). She served in the U.S. Navy and also writes Whitley County Kinexxions. Becky’s web site is Kinexxions – Kin Connections. Her blog states:

Kinexxions will be presenting the History and Heritage of my ancestors and their kin, many of whom settled in the Northern Indiana counties of Elkhart, Kosciusko, and Whitley.

Maybe I’m a little biased, especially now that we are “kin”, but I urge you to go check out Julie’s and Becky’s sites and blogs. Two very talented ladies that I’m proud to call my cousins!

Last week, I posted this post about finding new cousins and included my line back to Richard Treat. Yesterday, Julie Cahill Tarr of GenBlog posted Found Cousins that included her line back to our shared ancestor. So if you are curious just how we are related, go check out Julie’s post! Perhaps you too are one of our distant cousins!

Earlier today I became a member of the Association of Graveyard Rabbits!  I will post a link to my Graveyard Rabbit blog on the right.  Soon I will begin posting about Cemeteries, Tombstones, and Burial Customs in South Denton County (Texas).  I hope you’ll stop by and perhaps leave a comment or two!  Please find me also at Graveyard Rabbit of South Denton County!

Thanks to the genea-blogger meme that was started a few days ago as well as the “Dare to Comment” Challenge, I’ve had comments from some genea-bloggers that are new to me!  I’m adding them (and some others that I have failed to add before now!) to my blogroll over on the right and I urge you to go visit their blogs if you haven’t already!

I’ll be adding:

1. Genealogy Traces written by Judy Shubert
2. Heritage Happens written by Mysteri
3. Apple’s Tree written by Apple
4. DearMYRTLE’s Genealogy Blog written by DearMYRTLE
5. The Educated Genealogist written by Sheri Fenley
6. Sandusky History written by the Sandusky (Ohio) Library
7. Jessica’s Genejournal written by Jessica Oswalt
8. Elyse’s Genealogy Blog written by Elyse Doerflinger

What new blogs have you stumbled across recently?

Tomorrow is Blog Action Day with the theme of “Poverty”. Please click the link in order to go to the web site. There will be links to many blogs – not just genealogy. I urge you to go read the posts to see what everyone’s saying!

Earlier this week, Dick Eastman announced on Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter that the Washington State Digital Archives contain 74 million records that can be accessed online. You can read about the announcement here.

On Thursday, I received an email from a gal that I’ve corresponded with (as we both share ancestors in our Maple/Fuller line) from Coshocton, Ohio. She forwarded information from the Ohio Civil War list on Rootsweb that Evendon.com now has several records and books that can be searched.

Yesterday, Terry Thornton of Hill Country of Monroe County reminded me that Google Books is a very valuable resource. I’ve used it for awhile now and concur with Terry! If you haven’t searched this site for any resources related to your ancestry, I urge you to give it a try! Thanks, Terry, for the reminder about this site!

And if you who use Family Search Labs, you’ll notice that many more records have been added. Earlier this week, the site was updated and two databases – Ohio Death Records and Freedman’s Bank Records – weren’t there! They were back online Friday. Apparently, according to a response I received from my feedback email, there had been some problems with the records that needed to be fixed.

Since I’m impartial to family/social networking sites, I guess I’ll be contacted by all of them to promote their sites. I received a comment from D. Sharma from MyHeritage who mentions: We’ve some unique features like photo-tagging and apart from that some other nice things.

So if you are looking for this type of website, please check it out.  Their privacy policy is about the same as the others on the internet – just be cautious about private information.

Again – I am not pro or con – just wanted to alert you that this site was out there in case you are interested.

Each day I check my blog stats to see how many views my blog has had as well as the way folks found me.  I thought it would be interesting to post the statistics for my blog.

Busiest Day: Sep. 2 with 156 hits

People have found me by using these search terms:

• branches in genealogy
• great great aunt
• friday september 5th television
• games geography facebook
• double cousins
• chase thomas noonan
• television
• “brown county, ohio” germans
• first name last name in u.s patterns
• who is my neice? geniology
• charles house son of james house marriag
• christening gown storage box
• freaky friday soundtrack blog
• basketball traits

Posts that have received the most traffic include:

• About Page (114 views)
• Unusual Photos (96 views)
• Surname Page (93 views)

My most active posts include:

• Disecting Obituaries (45 view)
• To Share, Show & Explain – Carnival of Genealogy 54th Edition (39 views)
• The Case of Chase – 33 views

Regular Stats

• 4 pages
• 134 posts
• 23 categories
• 257 tags
• 109 comments

Who Is Referring Me?

• Roots Reading
• Hill Country of Monroe County
• Cow Hampshire
• Creative Gene
• Jessica’s Geneajournal
• Blogfinder
• Adsense
• My genealogy website All My Branches
• Blogger
• Genea-musings

These were in the last day or two.  I’ve received many people finding me through many of my fellow genea-bloggers.

So my question – how do you find me?  Leave me a comment and let me know!  I want to make sure to visit your blog or web site!

Thanks to Randy over at Genea-Musings, several of the genea-bloggers are flocking to How Many of Me to find out how many people in the United States have our name.  That started me thinking about the naming patterns within my ancestry and family. 

Donna Przecha has an article at Genealogy.com on the Importance of Given Names. Donna writes, “You will often see the same names used over and over again in families. While certain names are popular in different areas in different times in history, the repetition could represent a pattern.”  She writes of English naming patterns of which son is named after the father’s father, the mother’s father, the father, or father’s & mother’s brother(s), and the same with the daughters being named after grandmother’s, mother, and aunts.

Many have noticed as they are inputting names into Gedcom files, that there may be several generations of sons who carry on either a given name or middle name.  So I thought I’d go through my list to see what I could find.

The furthest ancestor in my Amore line is William Amore.  He has 6 descendents who share his name.

• His son (my great-grandfather) – William Henry Amore
• His grandson, (my grandfather) – William Lloyd Amore
• His great-grandson, (my uncle) – William Gail Amore
• His 2nd great-grandson, (my first cousin) – William V. Amore, Sr.
• Another 2nd great-grandson – William C. Amore
• His 3rd great-grandson, (my first cousin once removed) – William V. Amore, Jr.

The House line has several William’s (12 – first names)

• Born 1642
• Born 1672
• Born abt. 1684
• Born 1713
• Born 1744
• Born 1781
• Born 1813
• Born 1840
• Born 1853
• Born 1871
• Born 1946

Middle name of William:

• Fredrick William House - born 1878

James’ (first / middle)

• My great-grandfather – James Emory House
• His son – James Wilbur House
• His grandsons – Welby James House & my dad (whose middle name is James)
• His great-grandsons – both named James Amore
• His 2nd great-grandson – my son James S.
• A 3rd great-granddaughter – Jamie

In my maternal Johnson line there are many men with the first name of James who descended from my 3rd great-grandfather, Jacob Johnson:

• his son (my 2nd great-grandfather), James Wilson Johnson
• his great-grandsons, James Bertram Johnson, James Wilson Shively, James Madison Shively, James Leroy Delawter
• his 3rd great-grandsons, (my brother) James Amore, A. James Hastings, James Shively
• his 4th great-grandson (my son), James S.

And also descended from Jacob with the middle name of James:

• his son, John James Johnson
• his 3rd great-grandson, E. James Pratt

I plugged the names into the How Many of Me website and came up with this:

• William Amore - there are 3,749,171 people in the U.S. with that first name.  There are 2,379 people in the U.S. with that last name.  There are 29 people with that exact first and last name.
• James House – there are 5,076,176 people with that first name.  With the last name, there are 51,860 people.  There are 863 people with that same name. 
• James Johnson – with the last name there are 2,470,975 people.  There are 41,117 people with the same name.
• William House – There are 637 people with that same name.

Statistically:

• James is the #1 most popular first name.
• Johnson is the #2 most popular last name.
• William is the #6 most popular first name.

Oh, and how did my name rank?  There are 282,179 people with the same first name (on a personal note: I’d like to know where all these people are!).  There are 5,613 with the same last name (and if they are from Missouri – probably related!).  There are only 5 of us with the same first and last name.  Have you played?

Quite possibly you may be able to discover the name of that brick wall ancestor, if you analyze the naming patterns throughout the generations.