Hurley's World

In celebration of my birthday, I've added a new game to the line up, Jewel Miner. A continuation of the Gold Miner family, this game involves the Gold Miner's niece, Julie, in her very own matching game. Enjoy!

Much of my father's side of the family is very hard to research. A multitude of reasons exist for this state of affairs, but the main reasons are these: New York did not keep vital records until the 1880s and many of the family members were very poor.

One of the most interesting brickwalls, though, is my great-great-grandfather, John W Rhodes, of Plattekill, Ulster County, New York. After finding my great-grandmother, Irene Rhodes, in the 1880 census, I traced her father, John W, through the census years. One pattern stood out to me, John always lived near or with Jonah and Abigail Rhodes. I assumed that these two might be his parents but I did not have proof of this relationship since before 1880 the federal census did not specify relationships between members of a household and he did not live with them in 1880.

For some reason, I could not get the installed search engine to work correctly with my site. Since I've been adding a bunch of information to the site and not all of it is displayed on the front page, I thought I would add the Google Search form to my site. It can be found at the top of the right hand navigation column. If you want to search this site, be sure to choose the tracy.hurleyit.com radio button. I hope you find it useful.

In a recent Genealogy Guys podcast, their guests, Gary and Diana Crisman Smith, mentioned keeping a website log of the sites you visit with notes so that you can remember where specific information came from and to identify sites to revisit at a future date. I definitely recommend the practice and, in fact, have started doing it myself using my del.icio.us account.

For those of you who have not heard of del.icio.us before, it's a site that allows users to create an online bookmark of sites they visit. Since the bookmarks are online, they can be accessed from any computer connected to the Internet. In addition to the url, a user can keep add a site title, notes about the site, and give the site tags, or keywords, which can be used to group sites together. For instance, you may want to tag all genealogy related sites with the keyword genealogy and then all family name sites with the family name as a keyword. The site will also automatically add the date on which you added the site to your bookmarks.

Because I could not find detailed instructions on how to set up the LG VX8100 cell phone with BitPim on a Mac running Panther, I decided to write down what I did here. Use these instructions at your own risk. I am not responsible for any damage that occurs to your phone or computer as a result of following these instructions.

Download and Install BitPim

I downloaded version 0.7.36 from here: BitPim v.0.7.36

Enable Bluetooth on your computer

Go to System Preferences -> Bluetooth -> Settings. If Bluetooth is currently off, turn it on by clicking in the button.

So my dad and I downloaded the Skype client and I have to say, pretty impressive. It was better than my cell phone and given the sad state of my land line, a ton better than it. I'm tempted to buy a bluetooth headset at this point and a SkypeIn phone number.

So Fred and I went and got our new phones today. I've been a Verizon Wireless customer now for over 4 years. Today we got two LG VX8100 phones. The big reason we got these particular phones is because they are camera phones and they are bluetooth enabled.

While it did take me a while to figure it out, I did get my phone to connect to my computer using a program called BitPim. While I've stopped playing with it so it can charge, I've been able to upload my own ring tone, Mary Mac by Carbon Leaf and updated a few items in the contact list.

I know I am a little late in publishing this, but I am asking everyone who can help to please do so. The devastation caused by Katrina is unfathomable to most of us who did not witness it firsthand. As the media is fond of saying, we are looking at a situation where over 1 million Americans will be refugees in their own country for weeks if not months. While it's hard to see past the images available online and on the TV, the impact is going to be far reaching and widespread.

In addition, during the time period that these people are unable to return home, they will most likely be living in shelters constructed and run by government agencies and nonprofits such as the Red Cross. Those nonprofits will likely be pulling trained volunteers from other areas of the country to run these shelters and to tend to the needs of the refugees. I saw on at least one news report that some of these organizations are asking people across the nation to volunteer in their own communities to free up the trained volunteers who are desperately needed in the affected areas.

I went to an excellent lecture yesterday concerning researching Newfoundland ancestors. My husband's grandmother's family is pretty much all from Newfoundland and I haven't made much headway with her family. The lecture further strengthened my opinion that in order to unlock the mysteries of her family, I will have to go there. Her parents are Newman Eddy and Louise A. Reid. They were married in Massachusetts and had a number of children. Newman's parents are Thomas Eddy and Caroline Diamonds and we believe that he was born 19 November 1886 in Sibley's Cove, Newfoundland. Louise's parents were James Reid and Emma Critch and we believe that she may have been born in St. John's, Newfoundland. Her parents were James Reid and Emma Critch. James' family may be James Reid and Louisa Pelley, both of Hant's Harbor. I found a baptism for a James Batrick Reid online that seems to match with the information I have for him. Emma's parents were James Critch and [unknown first name] Evans.

For those who don't know or haven't guessed yet, I'm pretty into genealogy research and I have been researching both my husband's and my own family for a few years now. When I first started doing the research, I asked him and members of his family what they knew. One of the more interesting ones members was a woman by the name of Catherine Borden who married Charles Davis Belcher and is my husband's great-great-grandmother. Family history had it that she was related to the infamous Lizzie Borden. Of course, my first reaction upon hearing that was to ask if there was any proof and there wasn't. So I figured that while I would remember that tantilizing tidbit, I was a long way from proving or disproving it.