Genealogy is a hobby: Clay Aiken is a passion.

In the Beginning….

How do you start searching for ancestors you don’t even know you had?

Easy. Start with what you know. Get out a notebook and start writing down everything you can about your relatives, beginning with yourself.

When and where were you born? Who are your parents? What about siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Grandparents. Great Aunts, uncles, and those cousins that belie definition – first cousin once removed; second cousin twice removed, etc.

It’s essential to write down every relative you can think of when starting out. Then add in details for that relative. For example, start with your mother. What was her name before she married? When and where was she born? Do you know her parents’ names? Do you know her grandparents’ names? When did she marry (or not) your father? Where? Who are the other children from that marriage/relationship? Has she passed away? Is so, where and when.

Record all the little details that you can think of or have heard as family stories. You never know when they might turn out to be a valuable clue if you hit the proverbial brick wall. (And you probably will at some point.)

I’ll give you an example.

I was searching for my husband’s ancestors on his mother’s side. He never knew his grandmother for she died when his mother was 12 years old. And I never had much chance to know my husband’s mother since she died early in our marriage. Thus I didn’t have many details about my mother-in-law’s relatives.

One day my sister-in-law and I were chatting about my husband’s family, and she happened to mention that my husband's mother had told her the middle name of her mother – my husband’s grandmother. The middle name was the clue I needed to continue my search – it was a family name of yet another section of the family that I had known nothing about. Eureka!

Which brings up another point. Talk to family members. Especially the oldest ones. They will often have information that you weren't aware of. If you do have an opportunity to talk to the oldest members of your family, bring a tape recorder with you and tape the conversation. It will not only be a good oral history for others in your family, it will be a good resource for you to return to as you may overlook significant details in the beginning.

Once you have recorded everything you can think of about all of the family members you know, you'll see where you need to fill in gaps.

WHAT those gaps are will dictate to some extent what types of records you research. In general, besides the census records that I talked about in the last blog, there are many other types of records that are often available either on line or in person.

For instance, death records are a valuable source of information, and their public availability varies by state and country. Some states like Missouri have death records on line. Others require you to request the record in person or by mail. Older records may not have as much information as newer ones but could be available online whereas newer records may not.

Here is an example of a death record for one of my husband’s ancestors that I was able to obtain online from the Missouri site.

From this record you can see that it contains the name of the deceased, the date of birth, the date of death, the age at death, the cause of death, marital status, the place, name of mother, name of father, her parents’ birthplaces, the informant (the person who gave the death cert information), the undertaker and the place of burial.

This particular record was another Eureka! moment for me. The deceased on this record is the great great aunt of my husband, and I had been looking for her mother’s name (my husband’s great great great grandmother) for ages with no luck. From census information, I did know that the family lived in Missouri. Just by chance I decided to key this gg aunt’s information to the Missouri Death Records site and there I found it. Another piece to the puzzle.

In the beginning you won’t have a lot of information, but as you get further and further into your research, you’ll begin to accumulate piles of material, so it’s a good idea to organize your research from the start. One thing that I found really helpful was to keep a big spiral bound notebook with me whenever I went record hunting. I would jot down anything I found in that book, in no particular organized way. Then I would go through it and transfer the germane stuff into my genealogy software program. That method works well for me, but you might want to do something different. That’s great. Whatever floats your boat. And I’ll be talking about genealogy software in another blog.

Next time I’ll talk about census records, but until then, get busy and record those relatives. Make sure to write down everywhere they might have lived, the timeframes, and especially where they might have died.

And until next time, here’s your homework assignment. Research the places where your relatives lived to see what vital records (birth, death, marriage) they have online. And if they are not available online, find out how to obtain copies from them. A good way to start searching it to google the name of the place (city, state, province, country, etc) and the phrase vital records. That's all the help I'm going to give you right now. Let's see how well you do.

Happy searching!

You Can Never Get Enough Clay Aiken…..

Since he appeared on Amercian Idol in 2003, Clay Aiken has toured 6 times:

• the American Idol tour in the summer of 2003;
• a co-headlining tour with Kelly Clarkson in the Spring of 2004;
• his first solo tour in the summer of 2004;
• his first Christmas tour named the Joyful Noise Tour in Nov/Dec 2004;
• his Juke Box Tour in the summer of 2005;
• and his second Christmas tour (Joyful Noise II) in Nov/Dec 2005.

I’ve attended four of those tours resulting in 20 concerts, 9 of them for the Juke Box Tour alone.

Most people meeting me for the first time think I’m a pretty normal person until I tell them how many Clay Aiken concerts I’ve been to. Although I don’t usually volunteer that information upfront – “Hello, I’m MommaJudy and I’ve been to 20 Clay Aiken concerts” – inevitably it comes up.

I like to watch people’s reactions when it does. Eyes go wide. Jaws drop open. They start to back away like they have just come face to face with a lunatic.

Eventually they recover, and the first question out of their mouths is why? They can see attending one concert in a series, but multiples? How can you go to the same concert over and over again they inquire, eyebrows arching while shaking their heads in disbelief.

Easy.

Every Clay Aiken concert is different. It’s an event. You never, and I mean never, know what you are going to get from the man. He has split second comedic timing, can think on his feet, and has a finely honed sense of humor. He likes experimenting musically, and often changes up the arrangements to songs, or adds new ones. Between numbers he often banters with the audience, his backup singers, or the band, and that can lead to anything. Watch this exchange with an enthusiastic audience member during the 2005 Juke Box Tour at Meadowbrook NH. (Video taken by me.)

During his last two summer tours, he had an audience participation segment where he brought a member of the audience onstage, either to sing with him or dance. These moments were not only hilarious, but often precious. Take a look at this clip of Clay performing a duet with 4 year old Brianna in Raleigh, NC during the last show of his 2004 Solo Tour. (Video courtesy of Spotlightlover.)

No matter how many times he has sung a song, there is still a chance that he will forget the lyrics, mess them up, or kick in the Aiken Random Lyric Generator to make up his own. The 3rd show of the 2005 Joyful Noise Christmas Tour in NYC is a prime example. He was singing The First Noel and screwed up the verses. He recovered and added some dramatic vocal soaring to either cover up or make up for the mistake. At the end of the song he knew the audience knew that he had messed up. He cracked himself up and nearly busted a gut trying to hold back his laughter. The audience roared and gave him a standing ovation. Watch the video of the end of that song. (Video clip taken by SecretlyLovesClay)

And then there are the moments that are truly priceless and one of a kind. The night in Raleigh NC during the JNT 05 was one of those moments when he sang a "one time only" special Bluegrass Christmas song to his grandfather, who was in the audience that night, and who suffers from Alzheimer’s Disease. (Video courtesy of Aflack.)

But mostly I go to multiple concerts because that man can SAAAAANNG!

Seriously. He can sing the shiznit out of anything. And when you combine his incredible vocal talent with his onstage charisma and command of the audience, once is never enough.