Letter to Jay Liberacki
From Steven L. Berg
23 May 2010

23 May 2010

Dear Jay:

I apologize for the delay in wishing you a happy birthday. However, I had a very rough semester because I was sick so often. I believe I e-mailed you about that. It was nothing serious; just a series of common illnesses that came one after the other. I also had two thumb drives crash which also made life difficult. Fortunately, I am very good at backing up information.

Rachel Liberacki came from a family that was social prominent enough to have a significant written record. I have good documentation to trace the family back to the 17th century where there are connections to King Philip (the Grand Sachem of the Wampanoag Confederacy), the Battle of Lexington, Plymouth Colony, and so forth. I have begun sending stories of the family out to her children and grandchildren; even more than the one I e-mailed to you.

I have not told many people this yet, but I believe that I have documentation tracing the family back to the tenth century. However, I have not yet taken the time to verify the material I have found. Google Books has been a very valuable research tool and I have downloaded more books than it has been possible for me to read.

Last week, I turned my attention to some of the Liberacki relatives who remain in Poland. I discovered that neither you nor my mother had entered most of them into Family Tree Maker and so I am not sure how the relationships work.

Now that I am comfortable with the translation programs, I plan to write to the Polish relatives to ask them for genealogical information. I have addresses for several in addition to Sr. Maria.

Last night, I finished merging the documents I have already scanned (except for census records) with the individual entries in Family Tree Maker. In the process, I transferred the data from those documents into the program.

My mother recorded much of her data in the notes section of Family Tree Maker. Instead of following her lead, I am entering data as "Facts." I also discovered that for almost all of the facts you can list (1) date, (2) place, and (3) description even if description is not included in the default settings. For place, I am only using the geographic location (e.g. city, state). Whereas my mother might list the place as "Unionville High School," I am listing "Unionville, Tuscola, Michigan, USA" as the place and including the high school as part of the description.

Goodbye for now. And, again, I am sorry that your birthday greetings are delayed.

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Steven L. Berg, PhD
steve@stevenlberg.info

Last updated on 11 April 2011.