The DAILY genealogy technology newsletter for genealogy
consumers, packed with straight talk - hold the sugar coating - whether
the vendors like it or not!
The millions of genealogy records now available online are a huge help to genealogists. We all can now sit at home and use our computers to search records that only a decade ago were often unavailable to us. Only ten years ago, we had to travel to distant repositories to find many of these records in person or on microfilm, often expending a lot of time and effort. Even then, many of the records had not been indexed a decade ago. Today's new computerized indexes have made the records better and easier to use.
This article is being written in a hotel room in London, England, just a few steps from St. Paul's Cathedral. I attended the Family History Show in Westminster all day Saturday and must say that I enjoyed it. I believe that several thousand other genealogists also enjoyed this annual event.
A few hours prior to this year's Family History Show, the Society of Genealogists in London launched a newly redesigned web site. It is at the same address as the old site but presents an all-new "look and feel."
ProQuest is the company that supplies several of the major U.S. genealogy databases at HeritageQuest Online. The available online databases include images of all U.S. census records, more than 25,000 local and family history books with every word indexed, Revolutionary War pension records, Freedman's Bank records and more.
The company recently discovered accounting inaccuracies and notified its shareholders that it will be restating its financial results from 1999 to today.
Have you had a bad experience with AOL blocking some of the e-mail messages that you wanted to receive? That experience could be with this newsletter or with any other wanted e-mail messages that you wish to receive but have been blocked by AOL.
Next, would you be willing to speak with a newspaper reporter about your experience with AOL blocking desirable messages?
Do not be surprised if some of the newsletter articles are delayed in the next week or so. I may be a bit busy.
This week I am traveling to London, England, to attend the annual Society of Genealogists' Family History Fair on April 29. I have attended this event several times in years past and have always enjoyed it. The Family History Fair always attracts several thousand attendees - not bad for a one-day event!
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.
The Genealogical Forum of Oregon has placed a marriage index on its web site, listing marriages in Multnomah County from 1855 through 1904. Every marriage is included in the index twice, so you can search for either the groom or the bride.
Genealogists often scan old family photographs. Once digitized, it is easy to use these photographs in any number of ways. For instance, I carry a few hundred photographs with me most everywhere I go. Luckily, I can easily carry thousands of old family photographs inside my shirt-pocket.
Genealogists traveling to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City will now have one less hotel to choose from. The lowest-priced hotel in the area, the Travelodge Salt Lake City Temple Square, apparently will close.
Without a local history museum, Houston has lacked a place to bring together the city's documents and artifacts - until now. A new kind of exhibit is in the works: a digital museum, intended to make historical resources more accessible.
Gary Boyd Roberts has done it again. That is, he has produced a voluminous work crammed with more facts and citations per square inch of printed text than almost any other book I have seen. This new book contains 861 pages of documented source citations listing all known information about tens of thousands of descendants of European royalty, namely the descendants that moved to the New World in Colonial days.
It took them nearly 170 years, but two men have paid off their great-great-great uncle's debt in Yellville, Arkansas.
Their ancestor, Archibald Yell, told leaders of Shawneetown, Ark., that he would give them $50 if they named the town after him. They did, and Shawneetown became Yellville. But Yell never paid.
Many genealogists are familiar with the online guide called Cyndi's List at http://www.cyndislist.com but how many have heard of Linkpendium?
Cyndi's List organizes more than 250,000 genealogy and history web sites into an easily researched database. Linkpendium has links to more than 2 million genealogy web sites.
Members of 12.7 million Canadian households will be filling out census forms on Tuesday, May 16, 2006. For the first time, Canadian census forms may be filled out on the Internet, at http://www.census2006.ca. However, Statistics Canada will also accept forms filled out the old-fashioned way: on paper.
One issue that is upsetting to genealogists is the option to keep one's information private forever. Canadian census data usually is locked up for 92 years. This means that data from this year's census should be made public in the year 2098.
The Internal Revenue Service is planning to increase fees to any non-profit organization seeking to form or convert to 501c3 status. Genealogy societies in the U.S. typically file as 501c3 organizations. The application fee to become such a tax-exempt organization will double from $150 to $300 on July 1, 2006.
Genealogists often seek records from the federal government. It seems humorous, but many of these requests currently go to the Department of Homeland Security. Technically, the requests in question are routed to one agency within the Department, the office of "U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services" or USCIS.
Ancestry.co.uk / Ancestry.com has now placed the entire 1841 censuses for England, Wales, Isle of Man and the Channel Islands online. This is in addition to all the other census records of 1851 through 1901.
I attended my first national genealogy conference in 1988. The following year, I paid for an exhibitor's booth at my second conference. Since then, I have worked in exhibitors' booths (the British call them "stalls") at many of the major genealogy conferences and will have booths at three more conferences this year. Along the way, I have learned that having a booth at a conference is expensive!
Family Historian is one of the most popular, if not THE most popular, genealogy program in the United Kingdom. It is also popular in Australia and New Zealand but has never gained as much acceptance in North America. I am not sure why, as it is a great program.
Family Historian produced by Calico Pie has always been known as a full-featured genealogy program for use on Windows. Now a brand-new update has been released.
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