The Searing Family Blog

Summers over.  Time to catch up with the blog.  Not a lot has happened..we’ve had a few Searings on eBay, some have shown up on various internet Google Alerts, some genealogy events have arisen, and most gratifying to me….some folks have sent me material to post on the blog.  Twitter Searings continue to grow, and there are even more Searings on Facebook, although the Searing group, My Last Name is Searing, continues to need some support!  So keep checking out and submitting the news.  I continue to look forward to Searings ‘checking in’!  See the About page for my email address.

Great fun tonight.  Kovels Komments for May 20, 2009, (an ezine published by Ralph and Terry Kovel on antiques and collectibles) ran a piece on the missing head of a statute of President James Garfield on the Hiram College campus.  This reminded me of a family story about Edward Searing.  I posted a comment on the Kovel’s blog about my family story.  The comment is below.   “James is not the only missing former college president. Relatives have long searched for the bust of Edward Searing, President of the then Mankato Normal School (now part of the Univ of MN system)from 1880 to 1898. The bust was reportedly stolen from the campus decades ago, and was never recovered. A reward for its safe return or purchase with no questions asked could be arranged by contacting me through the blog.searingfamily.com.” For years my Aunt Bea asked me to recover poor Edward.  There was a sighting in an antique shop in South Carolina, but nothing came of it.  It still would be fun to find it! 

More Searings are showing up on Twitter, but there are also many, many more on Facebook.  A quick search said there were 500 listings for Searing.  Having searched some of these, its obvious some are duplicates, some are nick names, and there is one group, My Last Name is Searing.  It has held steady at about 37 members.  Jim Searing, the founder, said he didn’t have much luck recruting.  I think I will start sending out friend messages in hopes of rounding up a few more of our kin.  I noticed there was also a MOYER group, with over 70 names.  That is also a family name of mine, as my brother’s middle name is Moyer, but its a maternal connection.  Any suggestions on Facebook recruiting?  Send them in!          Dan

In all the right places.  There are 30 Searings on Twitter (including myself).  I have tried to ‘follow’ them all, but two are ‘pending’  (I think meaning they have to approve of me).  I laughed at Twitter at first, thinking it was just a place to list what you had for breakfast (and other things!).  But I kept reading about it and decided to try it just to form my own opinion…(a novel idea in the social network age, I know…:).  And, thousands if not millions of us must have thought the same thing, as its ‘members’ are exploding.  I have found some interesting topics and people and issues to follow, and been followed by a few obviously national advertising types…but also by friends, family, and other Searings.  It is still fun to make contact with other people of the same name, to see what they are doing, what they are thinking, and what their lives are like.  I did start a Searing Twitter group, but it isn’t very active….maybe I can rejuvinate it now that we have 30 Searings who are tweeting (that still sounds hokey!)  But that is a topic for another posting.  Hey, if you aren’t on Twitter yet, give it a try….Dan

Tonight I finally posted the Searings on the Internet – January 2009.  Only two more months to get caught up in this category.  My methodology is to set up a Google Alert for as many permutations for ‘Searing’ as I can think of, as in: Searing family, Searing author, Searing funeral.  And let it bring internet entries to me.  I’m not sure how well the Alerts work, but it will find my blog entries within a day or two of my entries.  Very few of the ‘finds’ are about Searings…most are deleted by me because they are about searing as an adjective or noun (once I got enough entries for my Searing as a Part of Speech page..see the Pages list).  Then I research the entries, checking the sites, finding the date and reporter if its from a paper and edit the text, trying to provide enough information so a reader can find the entry on the internet.  I write or place the text in a Google Doc, and copy it to the blog space.  I’m certainly not adept at entering/editing text!  But it seems to work.  Why?  Because I like to see what Searings are up to, and I am still amazed at the power of the internet to provide a wellspring of information about our family members.     Dan

Time flies…but we all know that. In many ways that is the human condition.  Is that why some of us like genealogy?  To extend our reach?  Tonight I was browsing ‘my’ Searing family tree on ancestry.com and marveling that Searings have been kicking around since at least the 1500’s.  I say ‘my’ because all the work on the tree has been done and generously shared by Laura Davenport.  If you want access, write me and I’ll ask her.  She saved me literally years of work.   Also tonight, looking at the blog and my limited recent entries, I’m going to change directions a bit.  Instead of infrequent ‘Blogging the Blog’ entries by me, I going to try a regular blog…making more frequent entries about what I’m trying to add value to what I still hope will be a Web based touchstone for Searings.  Please check back!    Dan