The Japanese military attack on the Pearl Harbor naval base in Hawaii on Dec. 7, 1941, thrust the United States into WWII. It wasn’t long after that, Australia and New Zealand found themselves also under threat of Japanese attacks. While the majority of Australia’s soldiers fought alongside the British Royal Army against the Germans in the Middle East and Africa, the Japanese made their way through South Asia and South Pacific with little resistance. It was then that Australia and the United States joined forces to stop their military expansion.

At that time, my grandfather was working in Wahoo, Neb., on the construction of an Air Force base when he was sent his order to report for induction on October 5, 1942. Robert was enlisted as a private in the 32nd “Red Arrow: Infantry Division, where he served with the 128th regiment, company G. Following his entry into service he was sent to Fort Leavenworth, Kan. Robert and the rest of his company worked with the prisoners held there before being given orders to go to Alaska. But the men who boarded the plane to Alaska, who were supplied with winter clothing, found themselves being welcomed by the heat of an Australian summer.

They spent the next few days sweating in their winter clothing until they were issued new attire. While in Australia, my grandfather attended a six-week Radio Operators School in Brisbane before attending a six-week Demolition School in New Guinea. After three months in the Army, he was promoted to Staff Sergeant, and spent a total of 38 months in Australia, New Guinea, Goodenough Islands, Leyte and Luzon.

Robert eventually found himself in charge of a rifle platoon, and was given a battlefield commission of lieutenant after several others had been killed. But the Japanese military were not the only thing our soldiers were up against. Besides months of bitter jungle fighting, they had to contend with an unfamiliar land, severe weather and disease.  Some days were spent battling heat, humidity and insects, and ended with them sleeping on the rocks of dry riverbeds. Other days they faced heavy rain, and were forced to eat, sleep and survive in knee-high mud. Most of those who weren’t killed or wounded in combat suffered from disease. Robert himself suffered from jungle rot, malaria and dengue fever.

Each time our men would emerge from the jungle – after weeks or months of warfare and harsh terrain – my grandfather said you could see a bit of fear in the new soldiers arriving for duty. Clean-shaven men in uniforms, fresh from basic training were met by men like my grandfather who had grown a full red beard, and wore torn and dirty uniforms. After what my grandfather’s men experienced in the jungle, they felt lucky just to have escaped death once more.

Robert was indeed lucky, even though he was wounded more than once. He was shot once in the chin by a sniper who was perched up in a tree, shot a second time in the ankle and was hit in the knee with shrapnel. Before being sent to Australia to recover, he spent some time in the field hospitals to heal. While there, he refused to give up his gun because Japanese soldiers often entered field hospitals at night, killing wounded soldiers as they slept.

Following a few nights in a field hospital, like most injured soldiers, my grandfather was flown to Australia to recover. Australian families took in wounded soldiers like my grandfather who no longer needed 24-hour hospital care, but still needed time to recover. These families helped make room in the hospitals for others who were just brought in. And it was only recently that my grandmother revealed that Robert stayed with such a local family for six months. They looked after him until he was medically ready to return to battle.

Now, as I vacation in Townsville, I can’t help but wonder if my grandfather ever visited here himself. There is actually a good possibility of it; Townsville had several American hospitals and was a major staging point for battles. About 50,000 American and Australian troops passed through Townsville during WWII. Today, old buildings, airfields and memorials serve as a reminder of the battles in the South Pacific – and to those who were lost.

I think the thing that initially surprised me the most was seeing how many memorials dedicated to American soldiers there are here. I am thousands of miles from home, in another country, and the sacrifices of our men and women are still being memorialized

This is actually my second visit to Australia, and I am reminded why my grandfather loved it so much. He spoke highly of the bravery shown by Australia’s soldiers, the kindness of her people, and the beauty of her lands. He had always wanted to bring my grandmother to Australia for a vacation, but unfortunately, never had the chance. Robert Henry Williams was 85-years-old when he died on March 18, 2006, after an eight-year battle with Alzheimer’s disease.

Although my grandfather was haunted by the things he saw during war, and the things he had to do to stay alive during his service, I never really knew that young soldier who had to survive in a foreign land for 38 months. The man I knew was a funny man who was patient and crazy about his wife. The man I knew was a kind man, who worked hard to provide for a family he adored. The man I knew was like a second father who taught me so much, and the best friend a kid could ask for.

That is something we should all try to keep in mind this Memorial Day and every day. Our service members are normal men and women tasked with an extraordinary job of protecting our freedoms and fighting for our nation. They are parents, siblings, spouses, friends – and heroes. Let us be grateful for their countless sacrifices, and for the time we spend with them.

By Kris Williams
Twitter: @KrisWilliams81

Tun Tavern, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

This morning we released an update to the U.S. Marine Corps Muster Rolls.  This collection, covering the years 1798 to 1958, now contains over 39 million records.

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What Is A Muster Roll

Muster rolls are lists, usually prepared twice a month, that list the names of those assigned to a specific military unit.  Rolls were made at the time a unit was created (muster-in rolls), when a unit was reorganized, when two or more units were merged, and when a unit was disbanded (muster-out rolls).  Names that appear on a muster roll indicate that the person was present or accounted for on a given date, at which time a review of the troops and an inspection of their weapons and accoutrements was conducted.  The muster rolls were also used as a basis for paying those engaged in military service.

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What Will I Learn From A Muster Roll

From the muster rolls you can discover your ancestor’s enlistment date, duty stations, military occupational specialty, service number and ranks.  I have seen notations of illness, injury and death.  Also included in this collection are unit diaries and personnel rosters that contain notes about disciplinary actions, temporary duty, and other happenings.

Can you see the notations of death and injury?

Do you want to track your ancestor’s military service from enlistment to discharge?  Are you looking to learn more about more than 20,000 women who joined the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve during World War II?  Or, are you trying to satisfy your curiosity about military history?  No matter what your reason, this collection holds some great records for you.

And, just in time for Memorial Day, this muster rolls database can now be searched as part of our larger collection of military records.

Until next time – Have fun climbing your family tree!

Ancestry.com Searches: A Behind the Scenes Look, presented by John Bacus
Wednesday, 23 May 2012, 8 PM ET

Learn how search at Ancestry.com works AND get an inside view of tricks you’ll need to take full advantage of its power. John Bacus, Ancestry.com Search Product Manager, walks you through the tech side and presents you with plenty of tips, advice and even a few workarounds—all of which will help you make your next search at Ancestry.com more effective, productive, and better than ever.

John is a Principal Product Manager at Ancestry.com, where he is responsible for the core search features of the site, such as search forms and search results. Prior to his time at Ancestry.com, he held search-related product management roles at AltaVista and eBay. John’s interest in genealogy was first piqued with the family history his grandparents put together when he was a child, and has enjoyed validating and building upon the research they did with two curious minds, some spare time, and a motor home.
Click here to register. 

Common Surnames: Finding Your Smith, presented by Juliana Smith
Thursday, 24 May 2012, 3 PM ET
Despite his common moniker, your ancestor was unique. Get the tools and tips you need to find your ancestors with common surnames in this free one-hour class with Juliana Smith. In this class you’ll learn how to craft the best search on Ancestry.com, and how to save your findings in a way that makes it easy to pick your family out of the crowd.

Juliana has been working for Ancestry.com for just shy of 14 years and began her family history journey trolling through microfilms at the tender age of 11 with her mother. She is a certificate holder in the Boston University Genealogical Research program, and wrote the “Computers and Technology” chapter of The Source: A Guidebook of American Genealogy. Her favorite part of family history is discovering the stories in the records of her ancestors.
Click here to register.

Forward thinking: Tracing the children of your ancestors. And their children… presented by Crista Cowan
Friday, 25 May 2012, 1 PM ET
Are you stuck in your march back through time identifying ancestors? Turn around. Revitalize your research. Rekindle your desire to continue with some success. Descendancy research utilizes much of the same methodology as ancestral research but can lead to a whole new way of looking at your genealogy. Often it can lead to discovery of cousins who have missing pieces of the puzzle needed to complete your picture of common ancestors.

Crista Cowan has been doing genealogy since she was a child and has been an Ancestry.com employee since 2004. Known as the Barefoot Genealogist, Crista brings her passion for family history into her presentations and provides common sense solutions for the challenges we face in the search for our ancestors.
Click here to register.

All events will be archived, and if you register, you’ll get an email from us alerting you when the archived version becomes available to view at your convenience.

Knowing all of this I asked myself, “How much can the test really tell me?” Through all that I have found on my own, I figured my ethnicity would mainly originate on the British Isles with a small percentage of Italian. That was not the case.

What were my results?

According to my DNA, I am 53% Scandinavian, 37% Southern European, 8% British Isles and there was a small 2% that was marked “Uncertain.” I was confused.

Scandinavian? Where the hell did that come from? What I thought would be my largest ethnic percentage ended up ranking third?

The results made me question what else I could learn about my family through my results and AncestryDNA. To get a better understanding, I took a look at how the test worked.

AncestryDNA uses a new DNA technology called autosomal testing. The main differences between this new technology and previous tests used are that autosomal testing examines a much larger portion of your DNA and it covers both the maternal and paternal sides of your family. Previous tests only cover one or the other and a significantly smaller portion of your DNA. So, with the help of expert population geneticists and molecular biologists, autosomal testing gives us genealogy nuts a bigger and more complete picture of our family in one DNA test.

Not only was I surprised by how convenient and easy it was to take this test, I am now excited by the other features AncestryDNA offers to make further use of my results. With my results, I got a list of matches that show me other AncestryDNA users who I may be related to based on our DNA.

With a subscription to Ancestry.com, you are able to reach out to that match and work together to figure out your common link. To make the search easier, the site even provides you and your match with a list of shared surnames from your trees. I have already reached out to one of my matches and I’m excited to start working with him to learn more about my family! Another feature I love is their interactive map, which pinpoints places of birth for everyone you have entered on your tree. It is pretty fascinating when you can see where all of your known ancestors had to travel from for you to be here. It has also made me more curious to find out the reasons behind their moves.

Now that I have my results, and have gone through all the features and have a better understanding of how the test works, I’ve learned to look at the bigger picture. All this time I had viewed my ethnicity as based strictly off of the countries my family came to the United States from, without putting much thought into where their ancestors originated. Being marked 53% Scandinavian by my DNA, I realize that my family tree will eventually lead me back to Norway, Sweden or Denmark.

Taking the history of those locations into account, this possibly brings my family back to Viking times. Vikings were known as merchants, explorers and feared as violent pillagers by coastal towns. Being well-traveled explorers, their adventures took them to nearby England, Ireland and Scotland as well as several other far off lands to establish villages. Knowing this, I am now able to see how Scandinavian descent may have dominated my results.

I can honestly say I am very happy with my decision to try AncestryDNA and am excited to see where this new information takes me! Not only has it given me some insight to my family’s past it is giving me the ability to reach out to others who may share it. The best part is that over time, my list of matches will only continue to grow as more people take the test. Who knows, after taking the AncestryDNA test you could find yourself trading family notes with a long lost cousin and ghost hunter.

Contributed by Kris Williams, Genealogist & star of SyFy’s Ghost Hunters International 

Twitter: @KrisWilliams81

Here’s how it happened: Deen was trying to reconstruct an ancestor’s life following the Civil War. So she turned to tax records from the 1870s. Individually those records didn’t seem to say much. But once Deen created a handwritten grid, the tax information began to tell a story. Noting the number of hired hands, acres and value of the land and personal estate over the years, Deen saw a rapid financial decline in 1874. Plotting her ancestor’s fortunes against what was going on in the U.S. at the time, it was apparent that his financial situation took a drastic downturn during the country’s depression.

But Deen didn’t dwell on the negative. Instead she chose to draw strength from these past events and look to the future. It’s a lesson for everyone who dives into their family history – learn from it and grow.
Ancestry.com is a sponsor of Who Do You Think You Are? Missed the episode? Watch it online here.

And as of last night, you can search for the state’s residents by name during that moment in time in the just-launched 1940 U.S. census index for Maine on Ancestry.com.

Adding Maine to our list of fully indexed, fully searchable locations brings us up to four: Maine, Nevada, District of Columbia and Delaware. Search for resident by name to find your own family’s Maine relations. Or look for famous Mainers including future actress Linda Lavin (a toddler at the time) and Leon Bean (better known as L.L.), who’s listed as the president of a sporting goods company. Or browse through the town of Strong, Maine to see how many residents made toothpicks for a living. It was big business back in Maine in the day – and for many years to come.

If Maine isn’t at the top of your wish list of states to search, take note: more states are on deck with indexes coming very soon. And the entire 1940 U.S. Federal Census will be fully indexed and fully searchable on Ancestry.com long before the end of the year. Plus you can browse through every 1940 census image, regardless of state or territory, already on Ancestry.com. Start browsing and searching now.

• Improvements to TreeSync performance and stability
• Added support for media, notes, and sources during file merges
• Improved handling of media during Web merges
• Bug fixes for tasks, media items, and window resizing issues (on computers running Windows 7)

When you open Family Tree Maker, you should be notified that an update is available. If this doesn’t happen, please visit the KnowledgeBase for instructions on manually downloading and installing the update.

New Features

This update includes a variety of new features and even a new report.

Merge for Duplicate Facts

If you have multiple versions of the same fact, you can merge them together.

New Source Templates

Source templates for the 1940 U.S. census have been added and there is improved support for city directories.

More Support for Blended Families

When you add a spouse for an individual, now you can indicate whether he or she is also the parent of the individual’s children.

Charts

In a relationship chart, an individual’s father and mother will both be included at the top of the page; shortened place names can be used; and, fonts are resized automatically so text won’t be cut off.

Reports

• Family View Report – This new report lets you display an individual’s ancestors, spouse, and children together (similar to the Family View in the People workspace).

• Calendars – You can change the font size for events.

• Data Errors Report – A new option lets you include only preferred facts.

• Documented Facts Report – New options let you include or exclude source citation notes and include only preferred facts.

• Family Group Sheet – An image that is linked to an individual can be displayed at the top of the report. Also, spacing and labels have been improved.

• Individual Report – A new note indicates when a couple has no children together. Also, there are new options that let you include an individual’s life span in the summary and add the summary to all pages.

• Media Item Report – A new option lets you include or exclude notes and links.

• Media Usage Report – A new option lets you include captions, dates, descriptions, categories, and notes. Also, media images are resized based on amount of descriptive info that is included.

• Notes Report – Notes can flow across page breaks.

• Photo Album – Improved spacing when including dates and descriptions.

• Undocumented Facts Report – A new option lets you include only preferred facts.

• Improved speed when generating reports that include notes and/or sources.

• Saved charts and reports are listed alphabetically.

• The person you’re currently viewing will be selected now when you open the Filter Individuals list.

Then join us again on Thursday, May 17 at 8pm ET as Juliana Szucs Smith presents Get More Clues from a Census Record.

Both classes are absolutely free but registration before each event is required (bonus: when you register, you’ll get an email reminder about the presentation as well as an email informing you when the class is available for viewing online after the presentation airs – even if you weren’t able to attend the live broadcast). You can register for a class by selecting its name above.

And be sure to stick around until the end. Both Juliana and Crista will pick a handful of questions from the audience and give you their spot-on answers.

Events and decisions in a single family member’s life can have long-term effects, sometimes affecting family for countless decades. And the outcomes can be good or bad. A decision to immigrate to a new country may bring with it opportunities not available back home. The loss of a job can be the trigger that launches a small, family-run business. Learning more about the stories of family members provides insight into the people they became. It may even shed a bit of light on who we are today, too.