The Searing Family Blog

Thanksgiving seems an appropriate time to give thanks for and to both my own and the extended Searing family.   I hope you were all able to spend some time with family no matter if in person, by phone, or through emails.  A couple of new Searings have ‘checked in’ since my last admin post several months ago, and the membership in My Last Name is Searing on Facebook has added several new members as well.  I have added some more internet entries, and done some genealogy work on my own branch, which I will post here shortly.  Researching and plotting just the decendants from my own paternal great-grandfather Edward Searing was a lot of fun.  Most I knew or knew of…some I didn’t.  I’m going to continue trying for an occasional contact with them.  My brother Stan and I did go to a mini-family reunion in mid-October with cousins and decendants of my paternal grandfather.  I borrowed a lot of family photos and will see if I can post some on the blog.  We all had a lot of fun going over old family photos and papers we brought.   I highly recommend comparing notes/stories/pictures with siblings/aunts/uncles/cousins/parents…especially the latter.  I wish I had asked mine a lot more about family history and stories.  Watch this space…I’m going to try to post more frequent updates…and if you find us through searching the web, please comment on an article or ‘check in’ and let’s talk!  Dan

If it’s the end of the month it must be blog entry time! Again other Searings have contacted me with interesting information. More internet entries about Searings have appeared. And Summer’s over so it’s time to get new entries up and visible. So this month is a short entry on working the blog….and long entries of new materials! But my invitation stands…if you have Searing or Searing related news, stories, or genealogy, please contact me and let’s put it here for other Searings to see and share……..Dan

Tonight I have added a new feature: Searings on the Internet.  This category is designed to find and post publicly available news/feature articles that show up on the internet…thanks to a Google search for ‘Searings’.  I’ve been experimenting with the collection for a while, and will try to catch up with posts.  I will attempt to post enough information so readers can get the gist of the Searing mention, and search for the article themselves if they are interested in more details.  I would love to hear from the Searing subjects of the articles, and will try to find them if their emails are available.  If you know any of the persons mentioned, please have them contact me, if they wish.  I have been a little disappointed in not finding more Searing weddings, obits, and news articles.  Obviously most of the ‘finds’ are the word searing as a part of speech (see my page on that subject).  Again, the lack of stories may be because there aren’t that many of us going through important life events that are publicly reported.  As always, suggestions for stories, features, categories, etc., are welcome!

Great things have happened this month!  First, I (we) have been contacted by several other Searings: Laura Davenport (Searing was her paternal great grandmother’s maiden name, and the name is carried by several family members as a middle name); Debbie Major (married to Stanley Searing Major); Carol Rae Searing Sims (Eric Searing’s aunt, see Genealogy); and Mary Ann Searing, and her brother Bob (we ‘found’ each other through Facebook).  Please contact me if you would like their emails.  For privacy reasons at the moment I have decided not to post email addresses.   Each has been a delight to ‘talk’ with, and each has made a contribution to our Searing knowledge, especially Laura Davenport, who has done extensive genealogy work on Searings and branches!  Over the next few days I will be putting material up on the blog that has come from them.   Thanks to everybody, and when other Searings read this, please ‘check in’, as Carol said.  We want to hear from you.     Dan

I have added a new category, Searings in the Military.  The purpose is to identify and honor those Searings who have served in the military services of the United States or other countries as appropriate.  There is a lot of information available on the internet, but I welcome submissions, comments, or other information that we can use in this topic.  I decided to lead off with Jack Edward Searing, the only Searing to appear on the wall of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC., and thus, the only Searing killed in that conflict.  Maybe this carries special meaning for me because I served during these years, although not in a combat role. I would like to add as many Searings as possible to this category.  Obviously there may be some overlap, as one entry in Notable Searings also qualifies in the military category, although in a much older conflict!

Again I put out a call for Searings interested in doing and sharing information on genealogy and the categories listed……Dan

Regrettably, this entry is occasioned by a note from Eric Searing, one of our earliest correspondent/contributors that his father had passed away yesterday.  You can read about Burge, Jr’s accomplishments in several other blog entries…obviously an extremely talented person…the world will miss him.  Which leads me to a topic I have been thinking about for weeks as I fool with family tree information.  Where have all the Searings gone?  Every time I check one of the genealogy sites the Searing entries are years old, the email contacts outdated, the few questions that are there pertain to families who may have had a Searing in them at some distant point.  I know from Facebook that there are hundreds of Searings out there.  No one is interested in genealogy anymore?  Let’s go, folks!  Let’s start updating our entries and asking each other questions!!  Dan

Time flies, as we all know.  Finally posted an entry I’ve been working on for some time…examples of Searing as a part of speech….I’m sure there are more entries, and I will post if you will submit….but I got tired of collecting.  (The spacing is not how I would like it…items grouped by letter single spaced….but I need advice on how to fix it.)  My Google Alerts did turn up some other interesting Searing items that I will get posted.  I’ve also been working on family tree information and programs and will post results shortly.  Meanwhile, continue to check out the My Last Name is Searing on Facebook, as there are some new additions.   Dan

This past month has introduced us to Eric Searing, who provided great information, first on his father (see entry in Searing Artists), and on his family lineage for Genealogy.  This is great stuff and I am very pleased to ‘meet’ Eric through the internet.  Both Eric and Stan Searing in CA suggested LinkedIn as a great place to ‘troll for Searings’…so I will get on that as soon as I can.  I am still drafting my intro letter.  It has to be  good!  Jim Searing counseled patience on contacting other Searings, stressing that content was important to convince folks to keep checking back on both the blog and the Facebook group.  Good advice!  On a more personal note, my brother, Stan Searing of Paulding OH has just retired from his second career as Paulding County Executive (his first was as a school superintendent in OH) and I look forward to enlisting him to do some Searing research.  Congrats, bro!   Dan

Of notables, Facebook, and family trees.  A couple more ‘notables’ are up.  I can see this is going to need some organization.  Perhaps a modern/historical split? Or a grouping by occupation …artists/academics? We’ll see how future entries develop.

I am now a proud presence on Facebook, and its turned out to be a lot of fun.  Jim Searing has cataloged 138 Searings (and growing?  come on in, folks!).  I’m still contemplating how best to contact them.   The whole thing about  ‘walls’, ‘poking’, ‘status’ and profiles is still a little mysterious, but you can invest a lot or a little in the site, depending upon your inclinations.

I did do some family tree research over the holidays.  I really like a web site titled “Kindo”, and have experimented by starting on the building of my own family tree.  It seems easy to make entries,  clean and neat, but with the ability to add details.  I explored some others (which shall remain nameless, as I’m not in the business of rating these sites.)  I would like to hear of other experiences with ‘trees’.  Dan

Like lots of others I have read about Facebook as a social happening, but Jim Searing’s initial entry and our link to it (see the “About” page) have drawn me in. So I registered and am proceeding slowly in adding “friends’. I want to talk with Jim about his experiences so far, but a basic search turned up 130+ people with the last name of Searing. There may be lots more that I didn’t know how to turn up. They seem to come from all over the world, which is great. I figure a mass friendship invite would freak most of them out, so we will go slowly! And I have seen references to ‘facebook’ like sites for the older folks, so I want to explore that also. These social networking sites seem ideal for alerting people to the Searing blog and encouraging contributions….Dan