Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter

Plymouth Prison Records Available

People researching their family history in Plymouth, England are now being offered the chance to find out if there were any felons in the family. The Plymouth and West Devon Record Office now has the records for Plymouth Prison, which used to occupy a site on Greenbank, next to the Workhouse.

Ged2Csv

Modern genealogy programs are marvelous monuments to the programmers' skills and arts. Today's family tree programs can record your data, sort and analyze in multiple ways, and then create a wide variety of reports. There must be more than 100 programmers writing genealogy programs today. With this many people "on the job," you would think that they thought of everything, right?

FBI Warns about fake Tsunami Relief Pleas

No genealogy information here but I think this bears repeating everywhere: Even in the face of terrible disasters such as the tsunami that hit South East Asia and Africa in late December, many are finding ways to take advantage of it and make money off of it. An example is fake web sites that claim to be non-profit charitable organizations that help out the victims when they really take all the money for themselves. Other instances are e-mails or web sites written by people who claim to be survivors of the disaster and are asking for help. The FBI warns that many of these are fake and recommends people to help only via known and reputable non-profit organizations.

Scottish Archives Unite for One-Stop Mega Archives

To meet the growing demand for genealogy information, three of Scotland's largest archives will join together to create the world's first one-stop personal history centre. The family records website Scotland's People, the National Archives of Scotland, and the Court of the Lord Lyon (which deals with Scottish heraldry and coats of arms) have begun to join millions of records in one digital archive.

Who's climbing your family tree?

Jack Murray has written an article about identity theft that every genealogist should read. His article is not a re-hash of the old wives' tale of "your identity can be stolen online."  Instead, he focuses on real-life scenarios: most identity theft happens in restaurants, grocery stores, gas stations and similar places where you personally hand over either a credit card or a personal check, along with identification such as a driver's license. You have just given the minimum wage employee on the other side of the counter all the information needed to impersonate you and to make charges in your name.

Genealogy Calculators

Here is a list of web sites that should be in the bookmarks of every genealogist:

Wade Boggs has Baseball in his Family Tree

Wade Boggs was overwhelmingly elected to baseball's Hall of Fame on Tuesday, and it figures. Baseball is in Boggs' blood; he's related to Abner Doubleday. After receiving the third-highest vote total in history, the 3,010-hit machine revealed he's a seventh-generation removed blood-related cousin of Doubleday, the alleged inventor of baseball.

Richard S. Lackey Scholarship

The Richard S. Lackey Scholarship is awarded to an experienced researcher employed in a paid or volunteer position, in the services of the genealogical community. The Scholarship awards $500, which will cover full tuition for the National Institute on Genealogical Research, attendance at the Alumni Association Dinner and will partly defray hotel and/or meal costs...

Digital Libraries - University of Michigan Digital Library Text Collection

The following article was written by and is copyright 2005 by Douglas Dunks:

Digital libraries are the most exciting thing I've seen in research since the invention of the Xerox® machine in 1964. In the researching of my ancestors, I turned up a treasure trove of data in minutes, which would have taken me months to find using traditional methods.

Adobe Acrobat Reader version 7.0 Released

The free Adobe Acrobat reader is one of the most popular programs around. Almost everyone seems to have downloaded it and installed it so that they can read PDF (Portable Document Format) files. Now Adobe has released a new version.

Married and died at ages 93 and 105

The following is unverified but it is interesting: The genealogical tables of the book "Kentucky Marriages, 1797-1865" reportedly state that that Moses Alexander, 93, married Frances Tompkins, 105, on June 11, 1831, in Bath, N.Y. It is also recorded that the newlyweds were both found dead in their bed the following morning.

Your Family History could land you on TV

The following is an announcement from History Detectives:

January 5 - Did your family make its mark on history? Your genealogy research could land you on History Detectives, the hit PBS program, produced by OPB TV, which returns for its third season this summer.

Arrests link Methamphetamines and Genealogy

This story was updated a few hours after the original posting.

I never thought I would read a story like the one that is in today's Salt Lake City Deseret News. Three men were arrested in connection with a drug investigation that involves customer records of Heritage Creations, a genealogy company that publishes Heritage Quest magazine and runs an active mail order business.

GenData Announces Collaboration with Amgen

Genetics and DNA continue to become more and more involved with genealogy. Here is an announcement from GenData Research Corporation showing their use of a genealogy database of Utah families:

Astri, My Astri: Norwegian Heritage Stories

This week I had a chance to read a book of Norwegian heritage stories. I must admit that my knowledge of Norwegian heritage is limited. However, I found the book to be enjoyable as well as educational.

A New and Different Search Engine

Most of us are familiar with search engines. We may use Google, Yahoo, AltaVista or any of the others. In fact, there are more than 400 search engines available free of charge on the web. So, does the world need other one?

History of the World

3050 BC: A Sumerian invents the wheel. Within a week, the idea is stolen and duplicated by other Sumerians, thus establishing the business code of ethics.

776 BC: World's first money appears in Persia. The world's first known counterfeiter appears the next day.

Open House at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City

The following brief announcement is from the staff of the Family History Library. I suspect further details will follow:

Westchester, NY County Archives Unveils New Website

Having added an FAQ section, a reference guide to the history of county government and a streamlined process for researching family histories, the Westchester County Archives expects that its rejuvenated website will continue to be a favorite for local history lovers.

Kudos for This Newsletter

My thanks to Sanford Gines Bowie for his kind words about this newsletter and also about the Encyclopedia of Genealogy. In his blog article "Raindrops on Roses," Sanford lists several of his favorite web sites, most of them genealogy-related. You may also be interested in Sanford's list of "what is good online" on GeneaBlogie.