Update

I've been pretty quiet lately.  That isn't to say that I haven't been up to anything Family Tree-wise!  There are plenty of irons in the fire, but that is pretty typical of the ADHD mind.  I've started referring to non-ADHD people as CV (for Conventional Thinkers) and ADHD as Holistic thinkers.  It's funny in my head.

What have I been doing?  I have spent the last few evenings (after the kids are in bed) volunteering my time to keying information for Ancestry.com.  They allow you to download a program that has a list of projects, you choose your project (categorized by original language, ease of data entry, number of images, etc) and you download a group of images that have been scanned from somewhere in the world.  You then look at the images and enter in the names, dates, etc (that is based on what info they are looking for from each specific image) so that it is easily searchable by people like me when they look for "Lutjens" or "Comstock" etc.  I have a couple of emotionally tough projects that I've chosen to help out on.  The first is a list of prisoner records for the Lagenstein (sp?) Concentration Camp which was a work camp, mostly for political prisoners from what I can find, that branched from the Buchenwald camp.  Each 'record' was handwritten on a cigarette carton and had a code for the person's Nationality, their Prisoner number, the date they arrived, Name, Birth date, work assignment (most likely what they did before they got to the camp, not what they did IN the camp), prison section and if there was a cross at the bottom of the card and a date it was that person's death date.  If instead of a cross it said "Flucht" and a date, that meant that the prisoner escaped.  Every time I saw "Flucht" I was yelling my mind "RUN! RUN! GET AWAY! RUN!"  Death dates from March and April of 1945 were especially hard since the camp was liberated by the 8th Armored Division in April 1945. 

I also helped with a list of Jews who had their German Nationality stripped by the Nazi Regime.  It's all so fucking ridiculous.  Stupid fucking nazi's.  Sorry for the french, but damn, what a bunch of lame, stupid, retarded fucking douche bags.  I shouldn't say that; to use those words is an insult to the lame, the stupid and the retarded.  It's even an insult to Douche bags.

Pretty intense, eh?

Well, I also have my family tree software now.  Awesome!!!!  I've been playing around with it, it is just different enough from the website to create a learning curve.  So that is pretty much why there hasn't been much 'news' or interesting facts.  I'm back 26 generations on mom's side, through the Field name.  That makes it about 1086 in England.

More to come soon!

Uncle Frank to Susan: You sure do cause a lot of problems, don't you?

I called Uncle Frank today and wanted to know why Grandmother Lutjens' gravestone shows "Lorenz" spelled "Lorentz" (with a T).  He didn't call me a liar, he just said he didn't believe me.  (Inside joke between me n D).  So, I grabbed the Laptop and looked again at the Headstone.  I was like, Frank, I'm looking at it right now, it's spelled with a 'T'.   Nothing else I have found show the name spelled with a T, even her memorial service pamphlet has it with a T.  Frank's response?  I don't know! What the hell.  LOL.  I told him he was supposed to know these things and I told him we may need to bring some putty with us next year and fill in the T. 

Grasping at straws again

Today I sent a message to someone on ancestry who had information on Carl Lutjens, one of Uncle Ben's sons, on their tree.  I asked her if she was familiar enough, or if she knew anyone familiar enough, with the Ben's kids to look at some of the 'unkown' pictures we have that we think are Ben's kids.  She may not, as it looks like her grandmother was married to Carl later in life, his second marriage and her third marriage.  They were in their 60's when the marriage took place.  We'll see if I get any response, but I thought it was worth a try.

Military Records

So, looking at the records available, our Great-Great-Great Grandfather Henry Comstock was a Civil War Veteran.  He found in the Union Army out of Indiana.  Henry was the father of Ralph Comstock -- Paw Paw's dad.