I just decided to post a short excerpt from the genealogy book I am writing about one aspect of my g-g-grandmother’s life.

Though, a bit of data and two photos first.

Irene Mary (Beckman) Seibert; born 28 November 1890 in Bowling Green, Kentucky and died 12 Aug 1985 in Akron, Ohio.

Irene with her two daughters, Dorothy Dixie “Dots” Seibert (on the left) and Thelma Corrinne Seibert (on the right), circa 1913:

Irene sometime between 1935 and 1940:

___________________________________________________________________________

Irene Seibert was one of seven women to organize the Akron’s Progressive Women’s Club. The other founders were Mrs. Thomas Basick, Mrs. Mary Quist, Mrs. Tessie Beacham, Mrs. William Kuchinsky, Mrs. John Matuska, and Mrs. Jennie Nixon.

A photo of five of the seven founders of the Akron Progressive Women’s Club. Standing, from left to right: Mrs. John Matuska and Mrs. Thomas Basick; Seated, from left to right: Irene Seibert, Mrs. William Kuchinsky, and Mrs. Jennie Nixon:

The club’s mission was to study city government and help inform it’s members about the current political issues of their city as well as of the nation, in order to prepare the women when it came time to vote. They had representatives attend City Council meetings as well as other community meetings and report back to the women’s club. Near election time, candidates were invited to their meetings to speak about their stance on issues. Mrs. Thomas Basick was quoted as saying, “Now we don’t just vote as our husbands tell us to. We think for ourselves.” One specific issue that they tried to fight was the Selective Service Act of 1940. When it was initally under consideration, they protested it by picketing outside the office of their congressman. Irene Seibert said, “If all the women were organized as we are, there wouldn’t be any war.” Mrs. Basick added, “The world would be a better place to live in.” The club also had lecturors speak to members about health issues such as birth control and sexually transmitted diseases (termed “social diseases” at the time). The club also stressed the idea of buying in union stores and asking for union clerks. They were also active in helping strikers. They would volunteer on the picket lines and even walk with the men in the lines to encourage them.

… and I wasn’t able to finish those six chapters like I had hoped I would. Boo!

I really just couldn’t help it though. I had a couple good days where I was happy with my progress, but most of the days I had this week were those where every time you turn around someone or something else more important needs your attention (e.g. my daughter) or you get stuck in a construction zone during rush hour or you have to wait in a doctor’s waiting room for almost two hours.

Actually, the two hours in the doctor’s office, while highly annoying, didn’t turn out to be that bad. I had the foresight to bring one of the outlined chapters of my genealogy with me to the doctor’s office, so I was able to do quite a bit with it. I couldn’t completely finish it, but it went from being mainly bare bones to only needing a little polishing once I got home. Pretty good if you ask me.

So, what’s this mean? In a nutshell… that I still have a lot to finish in the coming weeks. I’m still hopeful though. Not giving up yet. Now… back to work.

In the past week or two, I’ve come to the conclusion that I am not going to be able to complete my genealogy book in time for this year’s reunion. There is still way too much that I need to get done. But I still want to take something to the reunion for people to look at.

I wanted to have a professional looking book printed by lulu.com complete with charts, photos, index, full source citations, etc.

Now I’m thinking that I’ll skimp on a couple things and just have Kinko’s print it out for me, or even just print it out myself, since I could probably borrow my in-law’s spiral binder.

So, instead of worrying about getting everything done, I need to figure out what to concentrate on and what to put aside.

Obviously, the first thing I need to finish is the actual writing. I still have eight chapters to finish. That sounds daunting, but six of them are almost there. I can probably get all six of them done by the end of this week if I really buckle down. The other two will take longer to finish, but at least I’ve already done the outlines for them. The main thing is I just need to sit down and finish them instead of working on things (i.e. the book’s cover design) that are ridiculous to be thinking about when the text isn’t even finished.

Once the writing is done, I’ll make a couple charts. This should be easy. I can just have my computer program spit some out and I can include them as is. I won’t have to worry about how I can get them to fit on a 6×9 page, which has been the main reason I haven’t already worked on them. A few weeks ago I tried to make a chart that would fit in a 6×9 book, but it was incredibly difficult to get everything to fit and be legible (i.e. not incredibly tiny).

Then, I think I’ll finish editing the photos I want to include, but not worry about cropping/resizing them. I’ll just clean them up a bit by fixing the brightness/contrast, etc.

After that I think I’ll work on the sources. And by that I mean that I will fix the sources so that they are complete and in the correct format. I will make sure to have everything sourced when I am actually writing the text… it just won’t be pretty. For example, I’ll change

Newspaper clipping in Jacie’s scrapbook.

to

“S/Sgt. Linton “Buzz” Seibert,” News clipping from unknown newspaper, June 1945. Clipping in scrapbook of Jacqueline (Osborne) Cummings, Inherited 2007 by Jacqueline’s granddaughter Amanda (Stiver) Erickson. Note: There is a handwritten note below the clipping but it is illegible. It looks like it might say “Sunroco News.”

And, I think that’s probably all I’ll have time to do… if that.

Once August 9, 2008 (the date of the reunion) has come and gone, I will be able to relax a bit and not worry about this book so much. I have spent almost every second of my free time (as well as a bit of “work” time) of the past year working on this book and I will be glad to have some time to breathe. By August 8, 2009 (the expected date of next year’s reunion), I will have had plenty time to complete the book the way I really want it.

I’ve never viewed myself as a feminist, but this morning when I read Larry Lehmer’s blog post “Think it’s a man’s world? Think again,” I was immediately annoyed by his ending statement:

A world without men will do much more than upset the genealogical order of mankind. Car oil will go unchanged, bugs will go unkilled, sports will go unwatched and Viagra will go untaken.

As if women can’t be mechanics, touch insects, or be athletes. (I’ll ignore the Viagra comment.)

Then I thought about it some more. Playing the Devil’s advocate, and agreeing with him that women can’t do any of those things…

If those are the only things we lose if men weren’t around: non-electric cars, a world where insects are killed just for living near us, and where regularly scheduled programs are preempted in order to view people kicking/hitting/throwing a ball/puck around (okay, so I am one of those women who think sports are highly overrated), then I can’t say we do need men around.

On a different, but slightly related, note…

I’ve been reading some of Richard Scarry’s stories to my daughter recently, and I noticed a character named Frances. She is a female rabbit that is the town’s mechanic, fixing everyone else’s broken items. I keep waiting for a comedic point in the story that shows she isn’t as capable as we thought she was, and she needs a “man’s” help, but that never happens (at least in the stories I’ve read). That’s nice. It’s not often that I see a children’s book with a female character doing a “man’s job” and being successful. Especially when that book was written when I was a child.

Script Frenzy 2008 is now officially over. A big congrats to all those people who finished their script!

I didn’t get much done on the script project I mentioned earlier, but I’m happy with what I did do. Unlike the past times I’ve tried to write this story, I finally got across what I’ve always wanted to, at least in the part that I’ve written. Even though Script Frenzy is over I plan to continue working on it in the coming months.

For those curious, the story is a loose fictionalization of how Indians kidnapped Phoebe Tucker-Cunningham and murdered her children, her time with the Indians up until the time she was ransomed by Simon Girty, and her husband’s three year search for her. My daughter is descended from Phoebe Tucker and Thomas Cunningham. She is their 6th great-granddaughter:

1 Thomas CUNNINGHAM
+ Phoebe TUCKER
    2 Sira Leah CUNNINGHAM
    + Benjamin HARDMAN
        3 Thomas HARDMAN
        + Sarah FLING
            4 Henry Green HARDMAN
            + Florinda Alice WOODFORD
                5 Walter William HARDMAN
                + Ermal Jane VANHORN
                    6 Living HARDMAN
                    + Paul Emerson WOLF(E)
                        7 Mother-in-law
                        + Father-in-law
                            8 Husband
                            + Me
                                9 Daughter

I haven’t posted anything for a while, but not for a lack of doing anything. I’m currently writing a pretty big blog post that I will post on Thursday and I’m getting dangerously behind on my genealogy book (what’s new?), so I’ve been working my butt off to get it back on track. Hopefully I can get at least three more chapters completely finished by the end of this weekend. They are on track to be finished, but the way things are going, something will likely pop up.

Also, many other personal and family things have happened recently and I’m just a little overwhelmed at the moment. I don’t want to go into details, but these things might change my whole outlook on life (in a good way), and thereby change the frequency of my blog posting. When I started this blog I hoped to post something at least every other day, but right now, I’m thinking that I will be happy if I end up posting something once a week.

Miscellaneous things:

We all went outside today and while daughter played in the yard, Joe and I did some much needed landscaping. I fought with a bunch of grape vines that were trying to kill our dogwood tree. I’ve cut down those damn vines every year, but they still keep coming back. And they grow so fast. The tree has already lost a pretty significant limb from the vine’s strangle hold. We also removed 5 (or 6?) pine trees from the edge of our property. They were getting way too big and invading our neighbor’s yard. I’m surprised no one had complained about them yet. We still have a couple more trees that need removed. One, a mulberry, is actually starting to grow around the neighbor’s fence. Tomorrow’s task will be bundling the branches to go out with the trash. That’s not gonna be fun.

I think our daughter is having a growth spurt. The past few days she’s actually eating (she’s really picky about her food) and sleeping about 16 hours each day. Normally she only sleeps 10-13 hours each day.

I just know there’s more I want to say, but I probably won’t remember it until I post this. It always happens like that, right?

Oh yeah… I’ve been trying to pare down my Hiveminder tasks for a long time now and nothing has really worked, but tonight I think I really did some good work on that front. Very few of my tasks have set due dates so I wasn’t putting anything in the due date field, but I think without the due date field filled in it really limits the site’s usage. I also don’t think I was using the “hide until” field properly either, but now I think I should only have 5 or so tasks popping up instead of the 1-2 pages of stuff like before. There’s nothing so frustrating as something I have to organize everyday that is supposed to help me stay organized. We’ll see in the next few days if I’ve fixed it.

______________________________

Update:

ALL my time spent on Hiveminder last night might have been for naught.  I forgot to change the “heads up” entry to 0 instead of 1, so I still have quite a few items on my to-do list that I don’t want to see yet.  Now I need to go back in at some point and change them all to 0.  Boo. 

For those who know me well, you know that I’ve been working on a “genealogy book” for a few months now. I haven’t elaborated on what exactly that means, so I will talk about it here.

I’ve been working on my family’s genealogy for a long time now, and I’ve always wanted to write a book about my ancestors. I initially thought I’d write an “All my ancestors” book that would cover everyone in my family tree. I quickly realized, however, that this type of project would not only never get finished due to the sheer volume of information I have, but only a couple people would ever be interested in it, mainly myself and my children.

So, I’ve decided, for now, to write only about one branch of my family tree, the Seibert family, which covers all the ancestors of my maternal great-grandmother. The Seibert family holds a reunion each year, so I gathered info and photos from the family at the 2007 reunion and I’ve been working on compiling it for this year’s reunion.

Writing this book has actually helped me break through a lot of brick walls on this line of the family. I initially thought that I would only be able to go back so far, but since starting the writing of this book, I’ve discovered two more sets of parents and I’ve also found information that helps to substantiate or refute family lore that I had just assumed would never be answered.

I am very happy I’ve been able to find all of this info, however, the scope of the book has also grown quite considerably because of it, which might be a problem. At this point, I have much of the book already written in some form or another, but only three chapters are completely finished and there are eight more to finish, not to mention I still have to create the index, fix the source citations that LaTex (my typesetting program) screwed up, and edit photos/maps/charts to be the right size for the book. I still have so much to do that I don’t know if I’ll get it all done in time for the reunion this summer.

Another problem I’ve found, that I didn’t anticipate, is that I occasionally need to get away from the book for a few days and that just puts me farther behind schedule. I absolutely LOVE every aspect of genealogy, (Except maybe the hours I spend at the library or similar archives. I wish it were ALL online.) so I figured I wouldn’t mind spending most of my free time working on it. However, I’ve found that even I have limits to how much genealogy I can take.

If I don’t finish it by the 2008 reunion, it won’t be the end of the world. I’ll just end up finishing it for the 2009 reunion instead, but I did sort of promise it would be done and I would feel bad about not having come through. I’ll think about that later if it comes to that. I hope it doesn’t.

For those who want more details about what it will cover, this is the current Table of Contents (Each chapter will cover the people named in the chapter title as well as each of their children.) In parentheses, I’ve noted some of the info to be covered:

Ancestors and Descendants of Freidrich William Seibert (1889-1949) and Irene Mary Beckman (1890-1985)

Part 1: Ancestors of Freidrich William Seibert

Chapter 1. Valentine Frey and Katherina Knoerr (Will cover family lore dealing with wine making and being a “millionaire”)

Chapter 2. Jacob Seibert and Malinda Frey (Will cover involvement with the Masons and the Knights of Pythias and community service in Louisville, Kentucky)

Part 2: Ancestors of Irene Mary Beckman

Chapter 3. Moritz Sermersheim and Cacilia Berger (Will cover info on Waghurst, Baden, Germany)

Chapter 4. Charles Rix and Maria Anna Sermersheim (Will cover desertion, the battle of Vicksburg, aftermath of Civil war, and what it was like to apply for a pension)

Chapter 5. Herman Peter Beckmann and Katherina M. Stroemsdoerfer

Chapter 6. John Herman Beckman and Drusilla Irene Rix (Will briefly cover WWI)

Part 3: Freidrich William Seibert and Irene Mary Beckman and their Descendants

Chapter 7. Freidrich William Seibert and Irene Mary Beckman (Will cover union organization in Akron and Barberton, Ohio and political activity in the Communist party)

Chapter 8. Thelma Corrine Seibert (My great-grandmother; will cover her life as a civil rights lawyer who was involved with the Communist part)

Chapter 9. Dorothy Dixie “Dots” Seibert

Chapter 10. Linton Frederick “Buzz” Seibert (Will cover the “Battle Axe Regiment” in WWII: Saarbrucken, Spicheren, and earning a Purple Heart)

Chapter 11. John Rix “Babe” Siebert (Will briefly cover WWII, stationed in Australia)

Appendix A: Theobald Seibert and Catherine Kintzer (Probable parents of Jacob Seibert; Will cover info on Wolfersweiler area of Oldenburg, Germany)

Appendix B: Explanations of trades/occupations (Will cover cabinetmakers, patternmakers, carriagesmiths, coopers, among others)

Appendix C: Explanations of diseases/causes of death (Will cover mainly different cardiovascular diseases, but also Bright’s disease)

Once this book is done, and I’ve had enough time to fully recover from writing it, I plan to switch to another branch of the family and write about that one. However, as of right now, I’m not sure which branch I want to work on. It’s been so long since I’ve looked at any other part of my family tree that I really don’t know which one would be the best to attack. Having said that, I think I’ll probably lean toward my grandfather’s family regardless. My grandfather has such a wealth of knowledge regarding the family that it just makes sense to tap that resource before I no longer can.