A QUARTERLY NEWSLETTER OF THE NANAIMO FAMILY HISTORY SOCIETY Fall 2010 ISSN 1185-166X (Print)/ISSN 1921-7889 (Online) Volume 31-3 The Four Stages of Life President’s Report September 2010 Well, another summer draws to a close. As the days get cooler and shorter there isn’t the guilt of sitting inside looking at difficult to read hand writing staring back at us from the most recent microfilm ordered in from Salt Lake City. Or, the hours spent pouring over letters or cert ificates you’ve received from distant relatives that might provide that nugget of information that will help you further your research. I spent the summer organizing and digitizing my many boxes of photos that have landed on my lap after Aunts and Uncles h ave passed away. I think the show “Hoarders” has prompted me to get more organized. Doing this made me take a closer look at what I had (many duplicates) and I have been able to identify many of the people in the photos. I was even able to confirm someone in a photo from 1905/1906 by finding out that the photographer lived in the same area as the person in the photo lived. It’s amazing what Google is able to help you find if you use the right combination of words in their Advanced Search. We’re back to ou r general meetings on the 3 rd Mondays of the month at Beban Park Social Center. The executive is hoping that someone will volunteer to be the Program Administrator who is responsible for finding our speakers for each meeting as well as advising the various media outlets of each meeting. This is not an Executive Position although that last eight or so years it has been a member of the Executive doing it. We are not looking for someone to fill in the Executive as this time. If anyone has an idea of someone they would like to year speak at our meetings, please let me know. In late June received our third year monies from the Gaming Grant that had been promised us. This money, $11,000.00/year pays for operating our Library on Victoria Ave. i.e. Ancestry subscription, purchasing books/microfilm, rent, power, cable and now property taxes. The province has made drastic cuts and shortened their list of who is eligible to receive money. I personally would be very surprised if we were to receive any further money from them. The money we have received will carry us through to summer 2011. After that, we will have to be very creative as to where we get our money to pay our operating expenses. I hope that this Fall brings many Ah-ha moments as well as a few Eurekas! Jocelyn Howat Nanaimo Street Names We have many unusual names of streets here in Nanaimo. Some were named in days of Frank Ney and some are named for Robin Hood, Knights of the Round Table and dragon slayers. We have quirky names that are named for unknown reasons. My favorites include: ♦Blue Girl Way (named after Frank Ney's boat) ♦Black Powder Trail (named after C.I.L. explosive plant - located in CILaire) ♦Tom's Turnabout ♦Galloway Gultch (a realtor) ♦Eyelash Drive ♦Forever Road ♦Lynn-la-ran Road ♦Buttertubs Drive ♦Giggleswick Place ♦Smokey Cresent (one of my favorites ) ♦Widgeon Place ♦Yellowbrick Road ♦Bullrush Place ♦Embarcadero Place (spanish for pier or wharf - where the explosives plant wharf was located) ♦Zorkin Road (a developer) AncesTree Newsletter Nanaimo Family History Society Fall 2010 V 31-3 2 ISSN 1185-166X (Print)/ISSN 1921-7889 (Online) Page 2 ♦Wakesiah Ave (named after 2nd name of the place we call Mt Benson) ♦Smugglers Hill ♦Stamp Way ♦Adam Grant Horne Lane (name is as long as the street - actually a laneway) ♦Azure Road ♦Bergen-Op-Zoom (a town in the Netherlands) ♦Bumble Bee Road ♦Garden Street (future development? - currently a swamp!) The area Frank Ney gave Dutch-origin street names to was called "Dutch Acres." Origin of Bergen-op-Zoom In Nanaimo, Bergen-op-zoom is in a subdivision with names such as Amsterdam, Tulip and Arnhem Terrace. Frank Ney served in the RAF and RCAF as a pilot during World War II. The naming of those streets was in memory of the Canadian involvement in Holland during the war. Located north of the Scheldt River near the Belgian border, Bergen-op-Zoom Canadian War Cemetery contains 968 Canadian graves, including 64 from the RCAF. Most of the soldiers buried here lost their lives in the fighting north of Antwerp during the Battle of the Scheldt, as the 2nd Canadian Infantry Division, with support from the 4th Canadian Armoured Division, worked to clear the right (north) bank of the Scheldt estuary of German forces. INQUERY FROM HOLLAND My name is Wim Schook , I live in The Netherlands and I’m looking for anything about my name SCHOOK . My pedigree is now going back to approx. 1475. The reason I write to you is that I discovered that in Lantzville, Nanaimo there is a Schook Rd . You will understand that I’m very curious to know who was this Schook that has a road named after him. Until now I have not been very successful in finding out this even I asked not only the City of Nanaimo and many people over there (yes, I even have visited this road). Is it possible for you to publish my request, so as many people as possible could read it, including maybe that only person that surely knows who that Schook was and can tell me more about him. I’m interested in receiving your answer and I hope that this action will finally give me the result I’m hoping on. Kind regards, Wim Schook Zoetermeer The Netherlands [email protected] AncesTree Newsletter Nanaimo Family History Society Fall 2010 V 31-3 3 ISSN 1185-166X (Print)/ISSN 1921-7889 (Online) Page 3 Google is the search engine of choice for most genealogists Google is the search engine of choice for most genealogists I know, due to its ability to return relevant search results for genealogy and surname queries and its huge index. Google is much more than just a tool for finding Web sites, however, and most people surfing for information on their ancestors barely scratch the surface of its full potential. If you know what you are doing, you can use Google to search within Web sites, locate photos of your ancestors, bring back dead sites, and track down missing relatives. Learn how to Google as you've never Googled before: 1. Search With a Focus Google has four important ground rules that you need to know for focused results: Use a plus sign before words which are absolutely critical to your search. Example: powell +wills Use a minus sign before words that you want to be excluded from the search. This is especially useful when searching for a surname with a common usage such as rice or one which is shared with a famous celebrity such as Harrison Ford (i.e. you would enter your search as ford - harrison to exclude results with the word 'harrison'). Use quotation marks around any two word or greater phrase to find results where the words appear together exactly as you have entered them. This is especially useful when searching for proper names (i.e. a search for thomas jefferson will bring up pages with thomas smith and bill jefferson , while searching for "thomas jefferson" will only bring up pages with the name thomas jefferson included as a phrase. Use OR to retrieve search results that match any one of a number of words. The default operation for Google is to return results that match ALL search terms, so by linking your terms with OR you can achieve a bit more flexibility (ie smith genealogy OR cemetery ) To get really fancy you can combine these options together to achieve truly focused search results. For example, crisp +surname -apple genealogy OR +will OR "family tree" will return sites with the terms smith AND surname , combined with either genealogy, will , or the phrase family tree . Plus you won't retrieve any pages talking about " apple crisp !" I only recommend limiting your searches to this extent for common surnames, however. Otherwise you may just find yourself missing some good sites! 2. Search Without Stops Stop words are small, common words that many search engines ignore, or don't stop for, when searching for documents that match your query. This is because these words are either too common to generate meaningful results (i.e. where, how, about... or are parts of speech like conjunctions, prepositions and adverbs (i.e. and, if, be, the...). Google tells you when it's ignoring a stop word by displaying details on the results page below the search box (i.e. "about" is a very common word and was not included in your search). There are times when searching that you will not want Google to exclude these stop words. For example, will is considered a stop word by Google, which can mess up your search results if you are searching for the will of a specific ancestor. To get around this you can either force Google to include a stop word in your search by putting a "+" sign in front of it or by enclosing your phrase of two or more words in quotation marks (i.e. "about genealogy" or "will rogers"). AncesTree Newsletter Nanaimo Family History Society Fall 2010 V 31-3 4 ISSN 1185-166X (Print)/ISSN 1921-7889 (Online) Page 4 3.