Mountain View Family History Spotlight
Finding Your Family History
Adding Living Relatives to Your Family Tree by Robert Cox, MVHA Vice President
Connecting with living relatives, particularly distant ones you have never met before, can add a new dimension to your family history research. While the facts gleaned from databases on Family Search or Ancestry are the bones of genealogical research, your living distant relatives can often share family stories and old photographs that are the flesh on those bones. Occasionally, they will provide the info to extend the part of the family tree you shared with them. And then there is the joy of sharing what you have found with them.
Public records are the best way to get started locating your distant living relatives. Here, the federal and state governments who create those records attempt to balance the public’ s desire to know with individual privacy. For this reason, each federal census is released only after 72 years. Birth, marriage, and death records are created by the states, and each state has its own rules on what is released and when. Most states do not release any information on minors. Texas, California, and Ohio make the most information available. Ancestry also includes information extracted from local public records, generally voter lists and property records, which can reveal a person’ s birth year, and sometimes month and day, if you know where the person was living at the time the record was created. Some states, like Florida, provide the date a living person was married, but do not provide the name of the spouse.
One of the best ways to link living people into your family tree is through obituaries. Starting in 2000, many people started posting obituaries online. After 2010, this practice became quite common. One web site, legacy. com, collects online obituaries which can be viewed by the public for free. Many obituaries contain a list of relatives of the deceased and whether the relative survives the deceased or proceeded him or her in death. Often the spouses and the locations where the surviving relatives live is given. Full names of children are usually included, sometimes the names of grandchildren. One sticking point is that a divorced spouse is rarely mentioned, so finding that spouse’ s name can be a challenge.
Beyond these standard records, there are search programs on the internet that can help. One of the easiest to use is White Pages, which, if you know a person’ s name and location, provides an estimate of the person’ s age and a few possible relatives. Sometimes it easy to guess whether the possible relative is a spouse, child, or parent by comparing the age of the possible relative with that of the person being searched. Beyond this, many people have Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn pages to which you can connect.
Mountain View Family History Spotlight
By Robert Cox The central theme of former Mayor Laura Macias’ s family history is family and close friends who become like family, community, and service to others.
Laura’ s paternal grandfather, Adalberto Anselmo Macias, was born in Zacatecas, Mexico. He immigrated to the USA in 1901. After spending some time in San Diego, he moved to Phoenix, Arizona. Adalberto’ s brother became a Franciscan priest. Because Adalberto was already 36 years old, his brother suggested that it was high time Adalberto get married and start a family. So, Adalberto was introduced to Catalina Gonzales, a 38-year-old lady who worked at the parish residence. They married in 1919 and had two sons: Joe, Laura’ s father, and Tony Macias.
Joe Macias as a medic in World War II
During World War II, Joe served overseas as an army medic and earned a Bronze Star. Laura’ s mother Lydia was the last of seventeen children born to Ignacio and Angelita Flores. Lydia was born two days before the 1929 stock market crash. She grew up in the Phoenix area living on the farms where her father was employed. But as the Great Depression wore on, their family relocated to southern California, in search of work.
After World War II, Lydia’ s family was able to return to Arizona. As the youngest daughter, Lydia took on the responsibility of caring for her aging parents. In 1951, she met Joe Macias at a dance at Immaculate Heart Church in downtown Phoenix. They married a few months later, and were blessed with five children: Laura, the only girl, and her four brothers: Albert, Steve, Tom, and Greg. Laura began her education in a Catholic school in Phoenix. Her family was active in the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul, and instilled in her the value of helping those less fortunate.
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Laura with her parents and brother Albert at the
Seattle World’ s Fair in 1962
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