Alenjes Publishing was founded 20 April 2007 in Naperville, Illinois when the Give Your Family A Gift That Money Can't Buy booklet was turned into a book.
The Goal of Alenjes was and still is to
Develop and distribute publications & information that encourages and helps people to preserve and share their family's history.
Give Your Family A Gift That Money Can't Buy - booklet, books, and programs
Jeff Bockman's articles at Genealogy According to Jeff
Provide online access to records, family archives, and other information.
Stari trg ob Kolpi Slovenia Church Records
WWI & Camp American in Is-sur-Tille, France
(Letters, marriage records, 100th commemoration)Family Cemeteries
A Novel Approach to Research - Fortunes & Misfortunes
What's New
August 2021 -
Google required a complete change to the site - it should work better on a phone and tablet.
Some old items were deleted or combined into other pages.
All of the WWI letters, visits, and photos were consolidated into a group.
Please let me know if any links do not work.
I will try and get all of the Slovenian records converted and uploaded along with some helpful research tips.
Give Your Family A Gift That Money Can't Buy
Record & Preserve Your Family's History 5th Edition 2013
ISBN 978-1-933194-88-X
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012954733
Published by Family Roots Publishing LLC in a joint venture
Give Your Family A Gift That Money Can't Buy encourages everyone, especially senior citizens to preserve their family's history. It is also the perfect starting point for anyone wishing to research his or her family's history.
This revised 64 page edition has an expanded Research Section and includes three new articles:
Didn't Find it in the Index? - Helpful hints for searching both online websites and reference materials
Genealogy Travel - More than just records with examples of "Walking in my ancestor's footsteps"
Case Study: Finding Alvar - A not so great Dane - the 22 year search for my grandfather.
Stari trg ob Kolpi, Slovenia Records
Status Animarum Parish Records of St. Jozef in Stari Trg ob Kolpi
See Locations for a list of villages and towns.
Links to Online Parish Birth, Marriage & Death Records
Church Cemetery - Photographs
Basic School Records (Osnovna Šola)
List of students born between 1879 and 1887 - Helps to find the town & house
World War I & My Grandfather
My Grandfather John Gault Stevenson along with a friend Paul Henderson volunteered for the Ordinance Division
A photograph taken in Washington DC after training, probably in November 1917
Fortunately there was a list of their names on the back.
Included were my grandfather John G. Stevenson and Paul Henderson.
John Gault Stevenson sent many letters home from France during WWI.
See Letters for the latest letters and military orders
Many of the letters were written from Is-sur-Tille where he was based for two months of training. It was one of the major supply bases (ammunition and bread) during the war.
He was then transferred to Tours and then on to St. Nazaire.
My visits to France to Walk in His Footsteps
In 2011 and 2012 we visited Is-sur-Tille to see the sites that he wrote about.
In 2017 I was invited by the city for the 100th anniversary of the construction of the camp.
Is-sur-Tille Commemoration of the American Camp Williams on 24 Sept 2017
A list of the servicemen who married French girls.
Family Cemeteries
Family Cemeteries range from well-kept and documented to dilapidated and undocumented. Questions about ownership and public access are often factors on their upkeep. Some have been turned over to local government while some have just been transferred to the new owners when the property is sold. Once the property is no longer owned by the family the care usually deteriorates.
A Novel Approach to Research
When there are large gaps in your research try to think about what might have happened during that period. Look at what other people were doing during that period in that location, especially your ancestor's neighbors, business associates, witnesses on marriage or land records. Come up with assumptions about their activities and then try to prove or disprove them.
Several years ago I was planning on writing a historical fiction about my great-grandparents in Nicaragua. They had a banana plantation and supposedly lost business to the United Fruit Company and were supposedly killed by the US Marines during one of the revolutions. My grandfather Alvar survived and was supposedly educated in Germany. He then tried to get the property back before coming to Chicago and getting married and having a family.
After a lot of research but also a lot of procrastination I posted the following on my website to hopefully get me going.
A book project under development - It will be a combination of family history and historical fiction.
This started with the family history research of my great-grandfather Theodore Bockman's life in Bluefields & Rama, Central America (Now Nicaragua).
It shows how local history events can impact a person and his family. The lives of his extended family and some of the people that he worked or interacted with are also detailed.
Two things came out of this posting.
I was contacted by several Danish historians who were working on the Danes that went to Nicaragua. Together we proved that my Great Grandmother Alva was the sister of two of the people that they were researching.
Another historian help me find out that my Great Grandfather died of Malaria in what is now Bocus del Toro Panama (then Columbia).
These were two very interesting people that I was able to collaborate with and then I eventually had the chance to meet both of them.
Unfortunately the more that I researched, the more I "filled in some of the gaps" however I also disproved many of the "more interesting parts of my historical fiction novel." The truth got in the way of a good story.
The United Fruit Company was not in existence in that area.
They had left what is now Nicaragua when the political situation was changing and long before any US military activities.