Cluster Research Works - the FAN Prinicple breaks down brick walls.

 I made a page at WikiTree for my 1864 Oregon Trail Ancestors -- and included all the Family, Associates, and Neighbors that I knew. After running out of leads about the journey on my ancestors, I started in on their "FAN club". I found two obituaries of people on the Oregon Trail with my ancestors, which have thrown light on the journey. Lucinda Ridgeway  was a young woman at the beginning of her Oregon Trail journey with her parents and siblings. She met and married her husband, Caleb Harnett, about half-way through the trip. They finished the journey to Oregon and raised a family of thirteen children in the Willamette Valley, Oregon. You can read the obituaries on her profile at WikiTree.

Yesterday was Thanksgiving, a day the pioneers also celebrated.

 They were thankful for what we might consider basic necessities: warm dry shelter, food on the table at mealtime, shoes on their feet and a warm coat in winter, and work to earn their daily bread. 

After crossing the Great Plains and skirting the Rocky Mountains, the Oregon Trail Pioneers arrived at... practically nothing. Nothing that was like a town back east, nothing that was easily bought at a store, and nothing on the land they came for, except the trees and grass and bushes. They would have to build a house if they wanted shelter, would have to plant a garden if they wanted food. They were farmers, used to hard work, but starting from nothing at all was.... hard.

They built barns to house their cows, steers and horses, and built fences around the pastures to keep them safe. They built the most rudimentary cabins for shelter in the first year, while they had so much work to do immediately on the farm. Some would fail due to ill health or lack of preparation. Some would simply lose heart at the immensity of the work ahead of them, and go back east. The rest would stay and work and prosper. Many who now live in Oregon, Washington and Idaho are descendants of those pioneers who made the great trek along the Oregon Trail. It defined a generation. "Have you seen the elephant?" was their way of putting the trip in perspective -- it was as rare and huge and unimaginable as - an elephant!

Sooner or Later, we have to Pay Attention

to the technical aspects of genealogy in this age of computers. Without the marvels of digitized records and high capacity micro chips, we could not build our large collections of family, loaded with citations and images. All this simply leads up to stability: making sure our records are complete, accurate, safe and accessible. 

I'm spending the last two weeks of November and the first two weeks of December in a class, "Mastering Family Tree Maker". It includes fun things that are not difficult once they're explained, like color coding for the tree and index. It also includes hard things that I don't consider fun, like doing GEDCOM uploads to my database.

Benefits outweigh difficulties: I will be able to print beautiful charts, to print timelines and make a book of ancestors. I'll have everyone in one tree for looking up their facts and images.

I remind myself to have patience.

So has anyone been reading "The Brazen Overlanders of 1845"?

 I have been taking a quick look between homework... I found out WHY there was the rush to land in Oregon. I found what the pioneers were doing a year before they left, to prepare for the journey. I discovered something that rather surprised me -- the wagons were all inspected by the trail masters before they left! To make sure people were bringing what was necessary, to make sure they weren't bringing anything that would be a burden or even a liability (whisky or guns to trade to the Indians). The survival of all depended on the preparation each one made, to be ready to take care of themselves, and feed their families, repair the wagon if necessary (wheels and other things did break).

It was not just an enthusiastic but unprepared group of people leaving for the Oregon Trail -- it was a group of determined, well prepared people who would be able to succor each other in an emergency, but not create needless demands for help along the way.

Explorers leaving Victorian England for a year in Africa couldn't have been more serious or detailed in their preparations, than those overlanders. A lesson to me (maybe to all of us) to be ready for whatever life may throw at you.

Music to match today's blog.  Chapters, by Southern Raised, their original lyrics - worth considering.

Pandababy is going to a class beginning today through Dec 11th, and...

these four weeks may have fewer postings here on Pandababy. The class is on "Mastering Family Tree Maker". I have used Family Tree Maker for years, including its amazing 'sync' feature, but have not been able to take advantage of other technical features. The class, sponsored by Family Tree University, costs $$$, and I plan to be present for all of it.

Now is a good time to review what you may have missed -- this blog goes back to 2007.

It is also a good time to consider what you can add to our digital family tree, whether at WikiTree.com, or FamilySearch.org, or Ancestry.com. Do you have any good pictures you could upload? Or any special family stories you could write down and share?

Maybe there is a podcast or two, or a class, that you want to take. American Ancestors has a treasure trove of seminars, and so does Ancestry, as well as Family Tree University and shorter freebies in the magazine. Some of these are free, some are inexpensive and others cost $$$ - but are worth it.

Don't forget to read the featured book from this blog yesterday. The Brazen Overlanders of 1845 is the best I've seen for explaining the driving forces behind the Oregon Trail immigration. 

The Real, the True, the Raw Story of the Oregon Trail:

Pandababy has published many snippets and/or watered-down versions of the Oregon Trail Journey, as told in various books, newspapers and diaries. I do not look to shock modern sensibilities with what our ancestors endured. However, it is an excellent reality check to get at least for once, a true picture of what they endured. Now, you can read for yourself what "it was really like".

This book is free to download as a pdf, or read online (I recommend the pdf).

The Brazen Overlanders of 1845, by Donna M. Wojcik

This is the best adventure I can send to you tonight. I hope you will enjoy it.