Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter

National Archives Maintains Tight Security

Picture this: a person must show a photo ID, obtain a researcher ID card, and fill out a form telling what they're interested in looking at and the reason. Pens are forbidden, pencils provided. Each scribbled piece of paper is checked and then stamped. Cell phones and jackets go into lockers. Prying eyes make sure nothing precious walks off.

Does this sound like a military base? No, it is the U.S. National Archives.

Relating to Kerry, Bush

Carol Beggy & Mark Shanahan wrote a column in today's Boston Globe that starts with:

FAMILY TIES For all their differences on the issues, George W. Bush and John Kerry have one thing in common -- blue blood.

How to Find Past Newsletter Articles

This newsletter has been published every week for more than eight years. All of the Standard Edition articles are still available online. However, the recent change to the new blog format has now created two different locations in which to find past articles.

43 Million Americans Claim German Ancestry

The following is an announcement from the U.S. Census Bureau Public Information Office:

Nearly 43 million people, about 1-in-6 U.S. residents, identified their ancestry as German in Census 2000, the Census Bureau reported today. Other large ancestry groups were Irish (30.5 million), African-American (24.9 million), English (24.5 million) and Mexican (18.4 million).

Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild

The Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild is one of the niftiest online collective efforts underway today. This group of volunteers is dedicated to the task of making the search for our ancestors’ immigration easier. The Guild is working to produce online ships’ passenger lists. Many people who are researching family trees find it difficult to leave their homes and find this information on microfilm. The Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild is transcribing the lists into online listings.

Archaeologists Find 300-Year-Old Wine Cellar

Eight glass bottles recently unearthed may have been the wine cellar of a house dating from the close of the 1600s in Jamestown, Virginia. In fact, archaeologists suspect that the bottles belonged to Francis Nicholson, the Virginia governor who served from 1698 into the early 1700s and moved the capital from Jamestown, inland to Williamsburg. An "FN" seal on one bottle indicates that the bottle may have been in his wine cellar or perhaps the wine cellar of someone who received the bottle as a gift from Nicholson.

New Addition to Newsletter: Other Genealogy News

For more than eight years I have been writing newsletter articles about genealogy software, Web sites, conventions, current events, and other topics that I found interesting. Thanks to the new blog format for this newsletter, I can now offer double or triple the amount of genealogy news every week.

PathWiz! 3.1

© Mark Lang, BA (Computer Science)

NOTE: This article is written by guest author Mark Lang in Australia. The article is copyright by the author and cannot be republished elsewhere without his permission.

If you are one of the many users of The Master Genealogist (TMG), you will (or may already) want to know about another third-party software utility that has become available. This full version has a number of features not active in the freeware version, which has been available for a few months. I had no trouble downloading or installing the program. The installation was totally automated, and I let it install into the default location.

The Petworth Project

The following is an announcement from the Petworth Emigration Project:

The Petworth Project website has added a new page: "Post-1837 Emigrants." Our site and our books have been devoted to emigrants from southeastern England who arrived in Upper Canada between 1832 and 1837 on Petworth-chartered ships. However, the Petworth Emigration Committee was still active after 1837 to a lesser degree, and numerous families sailed with their assistance up to 1850.

NEHGS and Otherdays.com Announce Partnership

This was mentioned earlier in this newsletter at http://eogn.typepad.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2004/07/nehgs_members_g.html. Now the New England Historic Genealogical Society has issued an official announcement:

Members of the New England Historic Genealogical Society with Irish roots now have an additional online option to help them explore their heritage. NEHGS and Otherdays.com have teamed up to allow NEHGS members access to the unique content of Otherdays.com at no extra charge.

Phyllis Bowers D'Autrechy, R.I.P.

Phyllis Bowers D'Autrechy, 71, died Tuesday in Venice, Fla.

Mrs. D'Autrechy, formerly of Pennington, New Jersey, was a former sixth-grade teacher in the Riverton and Hopewell Valley Regional School districts and retired as the archivist for Hunterdon County. She was active in many genealogical and historical societies and served as a founder and charter member of the Hopewell Valley Historical Society and a trustee of the Hunterdon County Historical Society.

American Civil War Photographs Online Catalog

The Special Collections Branch of the U.S. Army Military History Institute has an online catalog of thousands of Civil War photographs. You can search the catalog by name or by town, state, regiment, or almost anything else you can think of. If a photograph has been catalogued with that word, you will find a listing for it.

USA Today: Bloggers to Join the Mainstream at Conventions

NOTE: This article contains no genealogy-related information.

Most people are still struggling with the concept of a "blog" and yet USA Today reports that the concept is supplementing and perhaps even replacing conventional journalism in some arenas. In a nod to the changing ways that news is delivered, ''bloggers'' -- writers who post their work directly on the Web -- also have been credentialed as journalists. They'll be joining the hoards of newspaper, magazine, TV and radio reporters who cover Democrats in Boston the last week in July and then Republicans in New York in August.

DOD Will Preserve Veterans’ Personnel Files

U.S. government officials have decided to preserve the personnel files of every military member since 1885, and to allow public access to such records 62 years after official discharge or separation.

Library of Virginia Will Reopen on Mondays

It seems that we constantly hear of cutbacks in services and hours of operation in libraries, archives, societies and other places of interest to genealogists. That's why it is refreshing to read that Virginia State Librarian Nolan T. Yelich is now planning to return the library to operation six days per week.

ProQuest and Ancestry.com Agreement Announced

The following is an announcement from ProQuest, the company that produces HeritageQuest Online:

To All,

We're pleased to announce that ProQuest and MyFamily.com are working together to distribute a new genealogy database, Ancestry Library Edition. It will replace and supercede AncestryPlus from Gale Group.

e-Memories On The Web

The following is an announcement from C I Host. See my comments at the end:

FORT WORTH, Texas, July 13 -- C I Host, a global leader in Web hosting and software development, today announced it will give away the equivalent of a space shuttle cargo bay of "virtual film" so that all digital photographers can try out the 2005 version of e-Memories On The Web.

Lot planned for home being checked as old cemetery site

If you have ancestors buried in Finksburg, Maryland, you will be interested in a story in the Baltimore Sun newspaper. I suspect the Historical Society of Carroll County and the Coalition to Protect Maryland Burial Sites would also like to talk to you about any records of burials that you might have.

You can read the story at http://www.baltimoresun.com/business/realestate/bal-ca.cemetery13jul13,0,3817568.story?coll=bal-realestate-headlines-1

International (Surname) Family Yearbook from MORPHCORP

NOTE: This is an updated version of a story I wrote a couple of years ago. The company described apparently is still very active, according to reports received in e-mail. It seems appropriate to republish this information now.

A company in Colorado has been selling "family yearbooks" for years. They send advertisements for the "International [Surname] Family Yearbook" or similar titles. In this case, substitute your last name in place of "[Surname]." For instance, an advertisement sent to a person named Smith would be advertising "The Smith Family Yearbook" while someone named Clark would receive an advertisement for "The Clark Family Yearbook."

Update: Everton's

On July 8, I published an e-mail from a former editor of Everton's Newsline describing a new publication she is creating and the reasons why. That fueled some discussion about Everton's in the comments section of this newsletter's blog.

Tonight Holly T. Hansen, Vice President for Family History at Everton Publishers, Inc. posted the following message on this newsletter's blog: