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An article in the Corsicana (Texas) Daily Sun caught my eye. It seems that Gary Richards, who grew up in Corsicana but has lived in Louisiana for about 10 years, had a sad experience when he had to evacuate his house near Lake Ponchartrain, where the levee system failed during Hurricane Katrina.
Richards borrowed a friend’s car and had to leave his computers and many valuable genealogical items behind, hoping that the house would withstand storms as in the past. He headed to his parents' home in Corsicana and stayed there for some time. When he returned to his house in October, hoping for the best, there had been eight and one-half feet of water on his street and five feet of water in the house itself. Every stick of furniture had been destroyed, along with his 3,000 books.
Richards' computers were ruined although some of his genealogy records on paper were salvageable.
At the recent National History Show in London, I had a chance to talk with Roy Stockdill, editor of the Journal of One-Name Studies and an expert British genealogist. Roy is a prolific author, having written hundreds of articles for genealogy magazines. He also presents frequently at genealogy conferences. In this interview, he discusses a number of subjects, including how to find your ancestry on the Internet.
You can see this video by clicking on the link below:
The folks at Footnote.com have been holding members' meetings at various conventions and conferences around the country. Now they will hold one at the ALA Annual Conference in Washington D.C. on Saturday, June 23. If you are a Footnote.com user and are attending the ALA Conference or perhaps you live in the Washington D.C. area, you are invited to attend.
Researchers believe they may be able to use DNA to uncover the fate of the Lost Colony, which vanished shortly after more than 100 people settled on Roanoke Island in 1587.
Using genealogy, deeds, and historical narratives, researchers have compiled 168 surnames that could be connected to settlers in what is considered the first attempt by the English to colonize the New World. The team will try to trace the roots of individuals related to the colonists, to the area's 16th century American Indians, or to both.
I wrote before about the huge resources available at Google Books. You can find hundreds of thousands of books there, many of them with every word searchable. Amongst the hundreds of thousands of books, probably ten thousand of them are genealogy or local history books. I have had great luck downloading and saving entire books to my own hard drive.
Google generally makes available the full text of books in the public domain and limited portions of copyrighted books. In cases where the entire book is not available online, Google Books will tell you the location of the nearest library that has it on the shelves. You can read my earlier article at http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2006/10/full_text_genea.html.
I wrote last week: "Disk space is no longer much of an issue these days. Hard drives have become so cheap that we can almost ignore those problems." A newsletter reader sent an e-mail questioning that statement. His message was longer, but he basically asked, "Where can I find cheap disk drives?" He also said he wasn't prepared to open the case of his computer, bolt things in, and then hook up cables.
I took this as a bit of a personal challenge. Besides, I wanted another big disk drive for a backup project I had in mind. I decided to purchase a 500-gigabyte external disk drive. As it turned out, the price surprised me. It was even cheaper than I expected.
Microsoft's Internet Explorer is well known for having security problems. Click here to find a few hundred articles about the security issues: http://tinyurl.com/2bz5a4. According to some people, it is also a rather slow program.
I switched to Firefox a long time ago to avoid these problems while others prefer Opera. These are the two major alternative web browsers for Windows users. Of course, Macintosh users have Safari, which some people claim is the best web browser of all. Now Apple has announced that Safari will soon be available for Windows users.
As predicted in last week's newsletter, the National Archives has unveiled a handwritten note from President Abraham Lincoln. In it, Lincoln urges his generals to pursue Robert E. Lee's army after the battle of Gettysburg. They didn't -- and the war dragged on for two more years.
A New Scottish forensics centre is set to offer the public an opportunity to trace their genetic links in a move that could boost tourism. Based at Glasgow Caledonian University, the centre will be unique by teaming traditional family history search services with modern DNA genetic profiling technology to help people from around the world trace their Scottish roots.
Dr John Gow, director of the Centre for Forensic Investigation, said
that the DNA profiling service would encourage tourists to visit
Scotland.
I recently purchased a new digital camera that can create pictures of up to 8 megapixels. I love the quality of the photographs this camera gives. However, storing and sharing 8-megapixel images creates a few problems.
First of all, the file sizes are huge. Most of the pictures I take consume about 3 megabytes of disk space to store a single image. That's twice the size of a standard floppy disk just to store one picture! (Does anyone use floppy disks anymore?) Of course, there are no film developing costs; so, I click the shutter many, many times in hopes of obtaining the perfect picture. I may not save all of the photos, but I often keep two or three variations of everything I photograph. The result consumes many megabytes of disk space.
In the last article I described some of the millions of historical documents available on Footnote.com. These are available to you at very modest fees. This week I will describe the free services available on the same web site.
Story Pages consist of user-contributed images, text, and more. You can use Story Pages to track your research, make an online scrapbook, even multimedia scrapbooks, if you wish. Story Pages allow you to share photos and documents with friends and family, no matter where they are. You can showcase original documents that you have scanned. You can also invite other Footnote.com users to collaborate and contribute to your efforts. In fact, more than a few Story Pages already have been added to Footnote.com by local historical societies, family societies, and other single-purpose organizations.
Antiquus Morbus is a fascinating web site that provides definitions of archaic medical terms, along with their old and modern definitions. The primary focus of this web site is to help decipher the causes of death found on mortality lists, certificates of death, and church death records from the 19th century and earlier. It often can give insights to understanding your ancestor's life style and last days.
Did your ancestor ride a Harley? Actually, my Dad did back in the Thirties, years before I was born. Anyway, a company called "Final Ride Products" has released its first batch of mobile cremation/ memorial urns. I am not sure this is an appropriate article for a genealogy newsletter, but I found it to be interesting. Maybe you will too.
Final Ride funeral urns are a modern funeral item. These urns are not designed for use at a cemetery; they are mounted on a motorcycle. Final Ride urns are constructed to hold a generous amount of cremated remains or store personal items and act as a rolling memorial. The intent is that you can take some of the deceased's ashes with you wherever you ride. In short, he or she can still "ride along with you."
At the recent National History Show in London, I had a chance to talk with Chris Pomery, author of the book "DNA and Family History." Chris is one of the leading DNA experts who specialize in genealogy applications for DNA. He is also about to release a new book entitled "In the Genes."
You can see this video by clicking on the link below:
Many genealogists scan old photographs, touch them up in a photo editing program, and then print them on high quality ink-jet printers. There is but one problem: those printed pictures may disappear within a few years.
In testing, pictures printed on Epson's Stylus Photo 870 and 1270 dye-based printers were expected to last ten years. When the products went to market, users found that the colors in prints were changing drastically in as little as two months.
The Hewlett-Packard Photosmart 475, a dye printer that produces
snapshot-size photos, will produce photographs that are estimated to
last 82 years. No ink-jet printer will create "permanent" pictures.
If you write articles for magazines, you should be aware of some new restrictions. Two of the nation's most prestigious magazines have advised authors that they cannot accept articles written in Microsoft Word 2007, and I expect that more magazines will follow soon. There are two different problems involved.
Lots of new buzzwords are creeping into Internet-related vocabularies: Web 2.0, social networking sites, wikis, folksonomies, XML, and more. This week I thought I would write a mostly non-technical explanation of Web 2.0. I will do so from a genealogist's point of view. In short, I will try to answer the question, "What does Web 2.0 mean to genealogists?"
Men who delve into their family history by having their DNA analyzed may find more information than they expected. They may find out that they are infertile.
According to NewScientist.com, many companies offering genealogical testing screen male customers' DNA for a region of the Y chromosome called DYS464 that happens to be linked with infertility. If it is missing, it's odds-on that the customer is infertile.
Wikis are a natural tool for collaborative genealogy efforts and for thousands of other online tasks. Several genealogy wikis already exist and I am sure that we will see more in coming months. I have written before about wikis. However, a new 4-minute video does a great job of explaining the basics of a wiki.
The National Archives isn't saying much -- not yet, at least -- about a newly discovered Abraham Lincoln document that is being hailed by Archivist of the United States Allen Weinstein as a "significant find." The National Archives is being very quiet about the find, awaiting a public unveiling on Thursday. The assumption is that the document relates to the Civil War, as today's announcement mentions that Mr. Weinstein will be joined at the unveiling by Archivist Trevor Plante, a well-known specialist in Civil War materials.
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