Have you ever walked in a park somewhere and seen benches with a (usually) metal plate attached to it, and an inscription of some sort? It prompts one to go closer and see what it says. Bench dedications are a great way to honor, memorialize and pay tribute to family or friends. Or perhaps to a group or an organization. It is not free of charge of course, for it costs to make the plate and attach it to the bench, but mainly it is a form of supporting the park or wherever the bench is situated. Continue reading

As you start researching into your family history, you quite soon come to realize the vastness of the task. The numbers keep doubling up as we move backwards in time. Starting with two parents, we would end up literally with thousands of forefathers and -mothers. But luckily we never need to deal with all of that data as most of us know only of a few generations backwards. Nevertheless, let’s look at some of these figures. Continue reading

There is an online service that this site has found very helpful, but which many of you might be pretty unfamiliar with. Namely Find a Grave. With literally millions of cemetary records! Now, some of you might find it distasteful and/or uninteresting to even write/read about this, but the fact is that we all die, and the millions of people who have died before us have left a mark of some sort behind them - memories, inventions, books written, companies started, places named after them - descendants born. Continue reading

Millions of people all over the world get the genealogy bug sooner or later, mostly later, in their lives. Luckily, these days when you want to know more about your family history, there are all kinds of online resources available. You always start small, but pretty soon realize how much information there is to both hold and have. It requires navigating the multigenerational web of births, and via marriages names change which complicates the search, and migrations to other countries add their own flavor to the quest. Continue reading

If you hadn’t figured it out yet, this site is basically offering to be a platform for genealogy. The groundwork is gradually being done to become just that, so that people like yourself could attach some of their own data in these pages. The data or information is never anything that could harm you or the members of your family, whether living or dead, for all that is needed here is what you see being repeated in every single year file: name, place and date of birth, main occupation or what the person in question was mainly known for, and also the possible date of death. Continue reading

When we get older, we tend to appreciate old folks more. Not necessarily because we ourselves are getting older and can easier identify with them, no. But because they may not be there anymore to tell their stories, and we realize what we’ve missed. The missed opportunities to just having them around, and having them tell their stories. About themselves, about our parents, about our family history. Who else is gonna do that but they? Continue reading

Yet another new series is emerging here in Journeys of Life: Ancestor Day. You do know that you can always add your ancestors here in the year files - providing harmless information concerning really nobody but you and your family, yet enriching this site at the same time? Now you also have an opportunity to write a little story of any of your ancestors. The length of these stories is something you decide yourself, as long as they remain tactful and historically as correct as possible. Continue reading

As a courtesy to our readers, Journeys of Life provides a service that might interest some of you. In addition to being able to list your own birth data here, you are allowed to add your ancestors as well. But as you present their name and birth data (as fully as possible), please tell us also their main profession or what they mainly were known for. Also you could give some of the historical background to shed some more light. Continue reading