The basic problem with old documents, especially those stored in low-humidity environments like an attic, is that the paper itself dries out and becomes brittle. Just opening a document or newspaper article can destroy it. Photos, in particular, should never be unfolded or uncurled without some TLC. And by TLC, I mean archival gloves at the very least, and the use of a do-it-yourself humidification chamber if you have any hope at all of salvaging something usable.

You can buy humidification chambers at archival supply stores, but who’s got one of those in the neighborhood? And besides, you’ll pay through the nose, i.e. several hundred dollars, for the privilege.

You can build your own humidification from basic plastic storage containers, light grids, and a few Tupperware containers. The chamber needs to be large enough to hold the documents in question, but those stackable containers we all hide our Christmas ornaments in should be about right (aprox. 2x2x3 feet with a lid).

Next, you’ll need a “shelf” on which to place the dehydrated pictures or documents. I prefer to use the plastic lighting grids you typically find covering fluorescent light fixtures set into the ceiling. These are available at most hardware or Home Depot/Lowes stores and can be cut to size roughly 18×28 inches. You might also use metal screen or “chicken wire” as long as it lies flat. The shelf should be a couple of inches narrower on each side than the chamber itself.

Next, set the “shelf” on four or five Tupperware containers in the bottom of the chamber. Any support will work, as long as its waterproof, because the last step is to pour 1-2 inches of water in the bottom of the chamber. NOTE: Find a suitable location where the humidification chamber might sit for a day or two before you pour any water. That’s how long the documents/chamber will have to sit without being bumped or jostled.

Finally, after pouring the water, making sure not to get any on the shelf itself, place your pictures or documents on the shelf just as you found them and carefully snap the lid on the chamber.

Monitor the progress every twelve hours or so until the documents once again become flexible, but never wet enough to feel wet. Rolled documents like maps will generally start to unroll on their own, but you want the paper flexible enough to flatten without breaking.

Once the papers are flexible enough to flatten, its best if you place them between two sheets of plotter paper and lay some books or a sheet of plexiglass on top to complete the flattening. Give it another 12-24 hours and voila! You’ve got something worth saving!

Now, if none of this makes any sense, you can watch a YouTube video of the whole process right here:

I know, I could’ve started with the video and saved all that reading, but what fun is that?

Happy salvaging!

So here’s the poop. Ancestry was really quick to deliver the DNA collection kit and I was quick to return it a little over three weeks ago. Lessee, by my calculations, that’s a results turnaround time of, oh, a little over three weeks.

When I logged on to see the HUNDREDS of potential matches a couple of days ago, there was… nothing. I resisted the urge to pick up the phone and scream bloody murder, knowing that science (and technology) doesn’t necessarily move at the speed of genealogy. Or maybe it does. At any rate, it takes a few days for the matches to start showing up.

Here’s where it gets interesting. Of the 250 potential matches that’ve turned up so far, only ONE is actually named “Leonard.” Given that I took a paternal DNA test, which only traces those genes that males pass to males, that’s an awful lot of unexplained “paternal events.” Then again, the results show that all of those events happened at least 60 generations (roughly 1500 years) ago.

Getting to the point now… the ONE result that was the closest match (we have all but one marker in common) is a gentleman that I actually traded email with last year. He and I have a Most Recent Common Ancestor (MRCA) nine generations ago. The test doesn’t tell us specifically who it was, but it means we’re probably connected through one of Benjamin Leonard’s sons.

I’ll let him decide if he wants to “out” himself to our little group here, but I can tell you there’s one WHALE of a story in his family’s fairly recent past. (No, not that kind of whale.)

He’s hit a brick wall and could use some help if you have any Leonard connections in the state of New York. For me, that’s a complete blind spot. I know there are/were Leonards there, but I’ve never had a reason to track them down. Now I do.

The only other match considered “close” by DNA standards is a gentleman who appears to be related via an ancestor fifteen generations back, which pre-dates Solomon, but not by very much. It might’ve been a great uncle or grandfather. I’m looking forward to comparing notes with that contributor.

None of this means there are no more Solomon descendants out there, it simply means there aren’t a lot of samples to compare. It also means I’m more closely related to all of you than to anyone involved in DNA testing at this point. Brad Leonard tells me there are a few more Solomon descendants over on that other DNA service, so I’ll be connecting with them in the coming weeks.

In other news, we made decent progress in untangling a BUNCH of Nancy Leonards this week, Allan and I are hot on the trail of the old Burt Bible (it may be hiding in Washington County), and I joined the New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS). All in all, not a bad week, I’d say. And if you have any ancestors or connections in the state of New York, speak now… or something bad will happen later.

Shirley Ellis and Laura Branigan notwithstanding, very few of us enjoy playing the name game that comes with researching multiple generations of ancestors with the same given names as their predecessors. Which William, which Silas, which Mary? Argh! Can’t you people come up with an original name?

The simple answer is, “Yes. Yes, they can.” (No offense, Barack.) Our ancestors, like you and I, were paying homage to their ancestors. In their case, by naming their children after them. And, in a round about sort of way, they may have offered us a bread crumb trail to earlier generations. In other words, there was method to their madness.

Any time I run into a brick wall, or maybe just puzzle over the identity of “Uncle Isaac,” I go back to a handy-dandy naming chart that explains the naming traditions of our English and Irish ancestors. And every once in a while, I could figure out someone’s mother or father by studying the names of their children.

These are not hard and fast rules, mind you, but very popular naming patterns between 1700-1875:

• The first son was often named after his father’s father.
• The first daughter was often named after her mother’s mother.
• The second son was often named after his mother’s father.
• The second daughter was often named after her father’s mother.
• The third son was often named after his father (contrary to modern conventions of naming a first son “junior.”)
• The third daughter was often named after her mother.
• The fourth son was frequently named after his father’s oldest brother (Uncle ____).
• The fourth daughter was frequently named after her mother’s oldest sister (Aunt ___).

If the pattern would result in duplicate names in the same family… for example, if both grandfathers had the same name, the parents would skip the second grandfather and move on to the next naming convention. Likewise if grandfather was an abusive, irresponsible drunk.

Mortality rates being what they were in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, parents were often faced with the death of a child in early life. In those cases, the child’s name might be reassigned to the next baby of the same gender. Some families went so far as to hold off on naming their children until they were two years old. These practices can lead to some incredibly confusing census reports.

There are other issues with nicknames, Baptismal, translated, and phonetic names… but I’ll save those for another day.

And none of this applies, of course, to people like George Foreman.

How-EV-er, I’ll also admit that when LNU (Last Name Unknown) becomes my most immediate obsession, I will go to any lengths to reach that OMG (Oh. My. God.) conclusion. So I’m willing to give social networking, aka Genealogy 2.0, a try.

I signed up for Facebook (rick(at)rickleonard.com), managed to shoot myself in the foot by having two accounts, got a bunch of Friend requests from people I don’t know, and discovered that Facebook has a metric buttload (technical term) of genealogy/family history/family tree apps. The disheartening part is that I can’t tell one from another and find absolutely NO references to the Leonard surname.

Now, I could be wrong (and it would be a first), but MySpace strikes me as Jr Hi 2.0 with background music, so I won’t go there. You guys go look and let me know if there’s anyone over the age of consent, ‘k?

Next, I headed over to MyHeritage.com, which has been around since Jesus was an intern (four years, Internet Time). I do a search for the Leonard surname and discover that no fewer than twenty-five Leonard Family groups have been created in just the past 30 days. Hm-m-m.

Geni.com is all about family, designed to give family members a place to collaborate on their family tree, family timeline, family news and calendars. I don’t know about you guys, but my immediate family already thinks I’m genealogically “teched.” Collaboration seems unlikely. MyFamily.com is yet another extension of the Ancestry.com empire and offers much of the same.

GenealogyWise.com is the latest entry in the social genealogy sweepstakes. A subsidiary of FamilyLink.com, GenealogyWise claims to have 3,000 users and 10,000 entries since it opened its doors… yesterday! And again, the idea is share, share, share. I have no idea how the masses are supposed to find each other when there are literally hundreds, maybe thousands of individual groups purportedly researching the same basic thing.

All that said… If ya can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, I always say. The GenealogyWise group “Descendants of Solomon Leonard” is up and operating at http://www.genealogywise.com/group/descendantsofsolomonleonard .

So how ’bout you? Got any great Genealogy 2.0 suggestions?

First off, you all know that the DNA “science” we see on the sixteen versions of CSI/Law and Order is mostly crap, right? You won’t get your results in half an hour, they won’t tell you whodunnit, and the chances of finding a long-lost relative are practically nil. What you might discover, is whether you and another donor might have a common ancestor.

One thing TV gets right once in a while, is the fact that DNA results are only useful if you have something with which to compare them. Find someone with similar genes, and you might be able to determine your Most Recent Common Ancestor (MRCA). And in order to do that, the two of you have to do the research! No such thing as a free lunch, right?

I won’t go into the dirty details of genes, genomes, haplogroups and markers… except to say there are basically three types of DNA tests. One compares male genes to male genes, another compares female to female or male, and a third ignores gender altogether and compares ethnic markers for a really big picture. The more markers you test for, the more expensive the test… individually priced for your convenience.

The Y-DNA test only applies to males, since they’re the only ones blessed with a Y chromosome. In this case, us guys can compare genes to any other male, preferably someone with the same surname. (There’s a measurement joke in there, and I’m just going to leave it.) If there are similarities, the test will estimate how far back we have to go to find a common ancestor. It’s usually accurate within a generation or two, but can’t indicate specifically who the ancestor might be. So we’re back to research again.

The mtDNA or Mitochondrial DNA test is the female equivalent of the Y-DNA test, with a twist. Mothers, you see, contribute Mitochondrial DNA to their offspring, both male AND female. The twist is this… ONLY females can pass it along to the next generation. Therefore, an mtDNA test on ME would confirm my mother’s identity (assuming I had her sample, too), but the same test performed on my son would provide NO indication who either of his grandmothers were. The same test done on two women could tell them if they are related, but because ALL women pass along their mtDNA, the estimate of Most Recent Common Ancestor could be off by a thousand years! Crap. Back to the research.

Last but not least, autosomal DNA tests compare non-sex chromosomes to look for ethnic similarities. I already know my ancestors originated in northern Europe, so it probably wouldn’t tell me much else.

So here’s the deal… if you’re primarily tracing one surname, Y-DNA is the way to go. Ladies, you’ll have to ask your father or brother to contribute for you. If we compare two men with the same surname, assumed to be closely related, and they do NOT match… we have what’s euphemistically called “a non-paternal event.” *snicker* It happens, and not that infrequently.

No such complications with the mtDNA test, unless there was a serious mistake at the hospital. We can trace a whole long line of grandmothers with mtDNA, but the test can’t tell us their order of birth. Damn. Back to the research again.

The jury is still out on autosomal DNA tests, but the bottom line is, it’ll cost you a bundle to find out your grandmother was one-sixteenth Cherokee and even then it won’t tell you which grandmother.

I’m running long and I apologize, but it’s a complex decision, whether to test or not. And I haven’t even touched on privacy concerns, lab credibility, or competing companies. There are essentially two major players in the DNA-genealogy field right now. Family Tree DNA got the jump on Ancestry.com DNA by a couple of years and therefore has a slightly larger database with which to compare. Ancestry.com is cutting prices and I suspect the two companies will be head-to-head in very short order.

Will I contribute? Probably. We’ll see. I’m leaning toward Ancestry’s $79 Y-DNA test. Unless, of course, Family Tree wants to make me a better offer.