Author Archives: Donna Phillips

Let’s Talk About: Awesome Websites

by Donna Phillips

Few posts back I spotlighted Roxanne Low and her list of “Free Genealogy-Related Internet Sites.” Remember? Did you take time to looksee any of them?? Today I highlight some of those opportunities!

* www.abmc.gov  —  The American Battle Monuments Commission website features a database of nearly 218,000 American war dead from WWI and WWII who were buried in overseas cemeteries. The site also includes 94,000 more names commemorated on Tablets of the Missing.

* www.easycalculation.com  —  calculate how many years, months and days have elapsed between two dates. 

* www.deathindexes.com  —  A directory of links to websites with online death indexes, listed by state and county. (Get it? A listing of links to online death indexes!!!)

* www.genealogylinks.net  —  Over 50,000 links to resources in the US, the UK, Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. (If you’ve stuck with the “tried and true” websites, why? Why not try this?)

* https://gravelocator.com/va/gov  —  A VA site, updated daily, offers searches of veterans and their family members buried in most any military cemetery.

* https://glorecords.blm.gov  —  Use this site to search through more than 5,000,000 federal land title records (1788 to present). (Did your ancestor homestead or buy land from the federal government?)

* https://digital.newberry.org/ahcb  — The Newberry Library in Chicago website is one of the best places to trace shifting county lines and the records that went with them.

* www.usgs.gov/programs/national-geospatial-program/national-map  —  Looking for an obscure ancestral locale? This website offers help to finding that “old” place with the “new” name.

Let’s Talk About: Look Again at Castle Garden

by Donna Phillips

Before Ellis Island in New York harbor, there was Castle Garden. Let’s look again:

  • Castle Garden as immigrant station opened in 1855
  • Certainly there were immigrant arrivals prior to that year
  • What became Castle Garden was a military fort from 1808-1855
  • After Castle Garden closed as an immigrant station, it became an entertainment center

New York officials realized by 1819 that “immigration was anything but organized.” There were several proposals for a solution; that solution was to use Castle Garden. Remember it was first a military fort and then entertainment venue and did not become an immigrant arrival station until 1855. It opened on 3 August 1855. 

  • Roughly 2 out of every 3 immigrants to the U.S. between 1855 and 1890 (approximately 8.5 million people) passed through Castle Garden.
  • But the place was not really equipped to handle such crowds; “overcrowding and understaffing led to scenes of confusion and congestion that became infamous in their own right.” 
  • By the 1880s it was obvious that a new solution must be found.
  • After much verbal wrangling among New York politicians, the Federal Government had had enough and in February 1890 New York officials were told the news. 

Castle Garden officially closed its doors on 18 April 1890; in its final years, it processed 364,086 immigrants. By year’s end, the building was transferred back to the city. The Barge Office was used as the immigrant arrival center between 18 April 1890 and 31 Dec 1891 while construction on Ellis Island was complete. The new facility on Ellis Island began receiving immigrants on January 1, 1892. Over the next 62 years, more than 12 million immigrants would arrive in the U.S. via Ellis Island.
Where are the Castle Garden records?

  • Unfortunately, some of the CG records were lost in a fire that burned Ellis Island to the ground in 1897 but many still exist. 
  • Check with FamilySearch.org
  • Check with Ancestry.com

If you type: Castle Garden Immigration: A Genealogist’s Guide, by Katharine Andrew, offered free on the FamilyTree Magazine website, you’ll get all your Qs answered!

Let’s Talk About: Parade Floats

by Donna Phillips

Honest, this postcard shows “Our Baked Big Potato Float” that appeared in a Spokane parade; no date on the image. A baked potato float in a parade? How wild is that? And the big-hatted bakers walking alongside? And pulled by horses? And the railroad logo??

Thank you Google: “Parade floats were first introduced in the Middle Ages. Churches used pageant wagons as movable scenery for passion plays and craftsmen with artisan guilds built pageant wagons for their specified craft.”

I confess to you that when I asked Google for unique or weird or crazy parade floats I wasted too much time laughing at the images that Google shared. I dare you to try it for yourself!

How about these:

Thankfully, there are more beautiful parade floats than crazy ones:

Let’s Talk About: What’s New at FamilySearch

by Donna Phillips


Here is the latest news regarding FamilySearch which I learned during RootsTech 2025 presented by Todd Powell, Tree Product Manger:

  • FamilySearch has nearly 24 million monthly visits
  • 1.68 billion persons in Family Tree
  • 156 million persons added to Family Tree in 2024
  • “a person is never deleted for good!”
  • “FamilySearch is the largest linked tree as of 2024”
  • Nearly 20 million memories attached
  • Nearly 3.5 billion sources added (up 1 billion in 1 year)
  • Nearly 5.6 billion digital images
  • Nearly 700,000 digital books
  • Nearly 20 billion searchable names
  • Can search in 48 different languages (Arabic the latest)
  • Are 6580 FamilySearch centers in the world
  • The goal is to correctly/accurately identify each person
  • Striving to slow down inaccurate merging

Todd smiled and said, “As each of us improves the documentation for each ancestor or person in our tree, we can increase the odds of folks making goofy changes….that does drive us crazy!” And he explained that they’re really concerned about and working on fixing wrong matches and “people changing stuff without documentation.”


He ended his lively presentation with this:  “Quit complaining… learn to use the available tools to full advantage!!’ 

Let’s Talk About: FamilySearch Record Collections

by Donna Phillips

It’s back to learning time, back-to-school time, right? How about taking a deeper look at the Major Records Collections offered for free at FamilySearch.org?? Think you might oughta take a looksee??

  • US Census
    • 1790-1950 federal censuses
    • Various state censuses
  • US Vital Records
    • B-M-D indexes for many cities and states
    • Social Security Death Index
    • Find A Grave Index
    • BillionGraves Index
  • US Probates & Wills
    • Various state and county records
    • Freedman’s Bank records
  • US Military Records
    • WWI and WWII draft cards
    • WWII enlistment records
    • Civil War service and pension records
    • Revolutionary War pension and service records
  • Canadian Records
    • 1851-1911 censuses
    • Passenger lists
  • UK Records
    • B-M-D register indexes
    • 1841-1911 censuses
    • WWI service records
    • Outgoing passenger lists
  • Irish Records
    • Civil Registration indexes
    • Catholic parish registers
    • Valuation Office books
  • German Records
    • B-baptism-M-D records
    • Germans to America index
  • Mexican Records
    • Baptisms – M- D records
    • 1930 census
  • Immigration Records
    • LOTS of passenger lists
    • Border crossing records from Canada and Mexico
    • US passport applications
    • Naturalization records and indexes for various states and counties
  • Newspapers
    • Obituaries from GenealogyBank and various publications

Let’s Talk About: Back to School

by Donna Phillips


Honoring my “teacher” ancestors today.

On the left is Efa Hope Carr, 1889-1980. She was a primary school teacher in Nashville, Washington County, Illinois. She wanted to marry Melville Potter but they delayed their marriage because once married, and “being a woman of carnal knowledge” she could no longer be a teacher. Needing that money to start their lives, they waited a year but finally did marry in 1917. 

On the right is husband’s mother, Esther Mary Oswald, 1913-1998. She graduated from Cheney Normal School (now EWU) in 1930 and by age 18 was teaching in rural Newport, Washington. She remembered that some of the boys in her class were her same age. Still a teacher, she married Chuck Phillips in 1941. By start of the school year 1942 she was pregnant and assumed she’d have to quit teaching. But no, the war was on and too many male teachers had gone off to war, and, as she told me, “they said to just put on a smock and go to work.” So she did. 

WHAT a difference between then and now! First, a 4-year Bachelor’s Degree is needed to become a teacher (plus more schooling for higher education). And, according to Google:

Moral requirements for teachers today center on ethical conduct, professional responsibility, and fostering a positive learning environment. These include prioritizing student well-being, maintaining confidentiality, demonstrating respect and fairness, and upholding honesty and integrity in all interactions. Teachers also need to be competent, accountable, and committed to ongoing professional development. 

When my daughter, Jane, was in 5th grade, her young man teacher was Mr. Lannigan. He was married and they were expecting their first baby and Mr. Lannigan took the kids through all nine months of that journey. Jane loved it and never forgot Mr. Lannigan. 

Let’s Talk About: Pest Houses

by Donna Phillips

Perhaps an unfortunate ancestor spent time in a pest house? Why? What were “pest houses” anyway? (The above image spotlights a YouTube video.)
“Pest House,” is the sad term for an isolated hospital, often away from towns, often shoddily built and poorly maintained and the condition of those housed there was often quite awful. 


Back in the day, people with contagious or communicable diseases such as leprosy, TB, cholera, diphtheria, smallpox, typhus and many more, were shunted away from society for there was no effective treatment or cure. Such unfortunates were isolated until they either somehow recovered or died. “Municipalities in the day didn’t want to waste county money on caring for the walking dead.” (HereLiesAStory.com, 16 Jun 2023)


Arrival ocean ports often had quarantine areas…as did our own Washington:

(U.S. Marine Quarantine Hospital on Diamond Point, between Sequim and Port Townsend 1905.)


In the early 1900s, Spokane County had a “pest house” located in Riverside State Park, near the Bowl and Pitcher, to isolate those with contagious diseases.
Seattle’s “pest house” was on Beacon Hill, a location chosen “due to its proximity to a town dump and a gully used for waste disposal.” The description of this place reads like a horror movie script: “filthy floors, leaky roofs, lacking proper sanitation, totally dilapidated.” (The place was destroyed by fire in 1914 and the site became a golf course. HistoryLink.org, #2157.)
Blessedly, the need for such places disappeared with the advent of vaccines to cure many diseases. 

Do watch that YouTube video.

Let’s Talk About: An Ode to Glass

by Donna Phillips

 Disclaimer:  I snipped this from the James Bay Victoria Beacon newspaper in March 2025 when I visited Butchart Gardens. I thought it was SO GOOD that I had to share. Big thanks, Colin Couper.

Water is required to wipe away dirt, and to clean away the haze,

it only takes a little work and now I look on brighter days.

I can see right through you, I can see through your pane,

you’re really quite special, when we all can see again.

From in the house, you protect me, shield me from the rain and cold,

in the mirror you reflect my image that shows me getting old.

You can totally change my outlook, spectacles correct my outward vision,

You’re even on the Hubble telescope, where you’re grounded to precision.

Now you can hold your liquor, lots of whiskey, wine and beer,

you can be molded in beauty and can be made crystal clear.

You are strong but also you are brittle, both at the same time,

and your character can be shattered, broken at the scene of crime.

As a windshield on the open highway, you keep debris from our eyes,

and sadly, we take you for granted, no longer a bright surprise.

You are truly a unique specimen in society a needed touch of class,

so, to you we raise our drinking vessels as we thank, and toast you, Mr. Glass.