Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter

Ethics in Publishing Family Histories

Under U.S. copyright laws, facts cannot be copyrighted. Recent legal opinion has even decided that certain compilations of facts, such as telephone directories, are not subject to copyright.

But what about compiled genealogies? What can I include in a published genealogy without infringing on someone else’s rights? And what rights do I have to the compilations I produce?

(+) Genealogy on Second Life: Fantasy or Reality?

Second Life (abbreviated as SL) is an Internet-based virtual world. In other words, it is an online game in which players can become whatever they wish: wizards, soldiers, storytellers or… genealogists? I have been told there is a genealogy section in Second Life, so I decided to check it out.

Second Life is a 3-D virtual world built and owned by its residents. As you enter this virtual "online world," you'll find people, entertainment, experiences, and opportunity. Once you've explored a bit, perhaps you'll find a perfect parcel of land to build your own house or business. You will get to know your neighbors, and you can participate in both local and distant events. You will even find a marketplace where you can buy or sell virtual goods.

Should we call it "genealogy" or "family history?"

James M. Beidler has an interesting article in the Lebanon Daily News  concerning the proper label for those of us who research our family trees. He writes:

Especially in the last few decades as ancestor hunting has become a mass sport, so to say, there has been a debate inside and outside the so-called genealogical community (that is, professionals, societies, libraries and other organizations) on what we should call ourselves.

Cremation Ashes Used in Pencils

I must admit this idea doesn't appeal to me. However, some people apparently approve. It seems that the portraits of deceased people that an Edmonton company is selling to their loved ones boast a uniquely personal touch. Each pencil sketch has a little something of the subject in it -- namely a tablespoon-sized portion of their cremated ashes.

(+) Genealogy Myths: Real, Fool's Gold, or Both?

Family stories are a wonderful thing. They often give you insights into the lives of your ancestors. However, beware! Not all family stories are true. Many such stories are fictional. Yet, even the stories that are either entirely or part fiction may contain clues to facts.  Good genealogical practice requires that we admit the fiction. But the next step the genealogist takes separates art from science. Before we discard these stories altogether, we need to mine them for nuggets of truth. Let's look at a few of the more common "family legends" to see which ones you can mine for real gold.

Myth #1: Our family name was changed at Ellis Island.

Problems at Hotmail

I have been pulling my (thinning) hair out in recent months, dealing with spam filters. I send thousands of newsletters to subscribers as e-mail messages; yet, many of them do not arrive in the recipients' in-boxes. The problem revolves around a handful of e-mail providers. Indeed, most mail servers will accept and deliver this newsletter to subscribers, but a handful do not. The errant mail servers delete these newsletters in the spam filters.

Hotmail has been one of the "problem children" for some time. In fact, the problem has become worse in recent weeks: subscribers using a Hotmail address no longer receive this newsletter in e-mail although most other people do. Now a controlled test by publishing site HubPages.com proves the problem. In fact, Hubpages.com found that the problem is even bigger than anyone suspected.

Mysterious Messages Appear in Nova Scotia Cemeteries

NovaNewsNow.com has an interesting story and video about the mysterious deeds of an unknown  genealogist in Kings County, Nova Scotia. It seems that someone is typing short genealogical reports of deceased individuals, including census citations and other genealogical facts. The information is then placed in plastic sleeves and attached to sticks inserted in the ground adjacent to the tombstones of the individuals named. Visitors to the cemetery can easily read the information contained in the weatherproof sleeves.

This year, messages have appeared in the Elm Grove Cemetery in Steam Mill; the Oak Grove and St. Joseph's cemeteries in Kentville; and the Cambridge, Billtown, Lakeview, Centreville and old Wolfville cemeteries.

Norwegian-Americans to meet in Onalaska, Wisconsin

Three Norwegian-American organizations will meet on August 1-4 to learn more about Norwegian culture and spirit at the Tre Lag Stevne (gathering) in Onalaska. The event is sponsored by Gudbrandsdalslaget, Nord Hedmark og Hedemarken Lag, and Trønderlag of America. Theme for the stevne, which will be held at the Stoney Creek Inn & Conference Center, is “Norwegians on the Move — Rivers, Roads & Rails”

The event is open to the public. There is a registration fee. Advance registration for meals and tours is required. You can learn more at http://www.nhohlag.org/images/2007/07TreLagPrgm.pdf.

U.K. Office for National Statistics to Vacate Offices

The following announcement was written by Maggie Loughran, Administrator of the Federation of Family History Societies and is published here with her permission:

ONS TO VACATE GROUND FLOOR FRC BY 31 OCTOBER 2007

At the Family Records Centre User Consultative Group Meeting today at the Family Records Centre (FRC) Myddelton Street, London, the Federation of Family History Societies representatives (Maureen Bullows and Geoff Riggs) were extremely disturbed to be informed that the Office for National Statistics (ONS) will vacate the ground floor at the FRC by 31 October 2007.

Who Lived in My House Before Me?

Have you ever wondered, "Who was the original owner of my house? When was my house built? What is the history of my house?" A new web site plans to help.

ThatsMyOldHouse.com is a web site where such stories can be shared or searched. The site is looking for stories about all houses, whether historic or not. Quoting the web site:

Think of your childhood home...  Did you have unforgettable slumber parties in the basement or maybe you learned to ride your bike on the sidewalk out front? Do you still drive by your old place and say That's My Old House?

What about the house you are in now? Are you starting a family or adding on to the house? Are you restoring it back to its original era? How many members of your family reside there, what is your favorite gathering place in the house and why?

Yes, you have a story to tell and we want to hear it.

Time Magazine Lists Mozy.com in Top 50 Websites

I have written before about Mozy.com. It is an excellent off-site backup service for Windows XP and Macintosh OS X computers. Of course, frequent backups are critical to all genealogists, as well as to most other computer users. Everyone needs to make backups, and off-site backups are even better than something stored beside your computer.

Mozy.com is one of the best bargains around, storing up to two gigabytes of files free of charge. That's enough for a GEDCOM file of a few million individuals or for a few thousand scanned images, depending upon the compression method used. If you need more space, Mozy.com offers unlimited storage space for $4.95 a month. All backups are made across the Internet whenever your computer is online. You can read my earlier articles about Mozy at http://tinyurl.com/3bgre5.

Footnote Member Meeting in Fort Wayne

Do you use Footnote.com? Even occasionally? Did you find things you liked? Perhaps even more important, did you find things that you didn't like? If so, the senior management of the company wants to talk with you!

The Footnote.com Users' Group meeting will be held in Fort Wayne, Indiana during the upcoming Federation of Genealogical Societies' annual conference. If you are attending the conference or if you will be in the Fort Wayne area, this is an opportunity for you to learn more about the site and to offer your suggestions. I'll also be at this meeting and look forward to meeting newsletter readers and others there.

Map Your Ancestors on a Google Map

One of the coolest Web 2.0 applications I know is MapYourAncestors.com. The site will convert a list of your ancestors' birth, marriage, death, and other locations to points on a map. The service will then plot those points on a Google Map. In fact, it will even accept pictures, if you have them, and show them as thumbnail images on the displayed maps. Information can be displayed on maps, on satellite images, or as traditional pedigree charts.  Best of all, the site will even accept data from the Mormons' web site at www.FamilySearch.org and from the big web site at www.Ancestry.com.

The results are displayed on your computer's screen. You can optionally use the standard Windows and Macintosh screen capture commands to copy-and-paste the maps into your word processor, genealogy program, or any other program.

Lower Canada Land Petitions Database Now Online

The following announcement was written by Library and Archives Canada:

Library and Archives Canada is pleased to announce the release of a new database for Lower Canada Land Petitions.  When New France became a British colony in 1763, the land system changed. New lands were now granted as part of townships instead of seigneuries. Many early settlers, both military and civilian, submitted petitions to the Governor to obtain Crown land.

This Newsletter's Outage

If you have been reading the news, you may have read about a power outage in San Francisco yesterday. The outage began around 1:50 PM Pacific Daylight Time and affected many web sites, including Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter, Craigslist, Technorati, Yelp, hi5, and several others.

NOTE: The outage did not impact the entire www.eogn.com web site, only the section that contains the newsletter articles. This web site is divided into three different sections and is actually hosted on three different servers in three different locations. Only the one section that is hosted in San Francisco was out of operation yesterday.

Power was restored a few hours later and the newsletter was back in operation a short time after that. However, the hosting service did have to resort to a recent backup copy of the newsletter. No articles were lost but I believe several comments entered by readers may have been lost.

If you entered comments in the past 12 or 18 hours and do not see them today, please enter your comments again. They will become visible immediately this time.

I apologize for the inconvenience.

- Dick Eastman

Ancestry.Ca Launches Online Collection of Records of Australia’s Convicted “founding Fathers”

The following announcement was written by The Generations Network, Inc., the parent company of Ancestry.ca and of Ancestry.com:

80 Years of 18th- and 19th-Century Australian Convict Records Reveal the Not-So-Criminal Crimes of Those Banished to the Land Down Under; British Transportation Practice Has Roots in North America

PROVO, UTAH – July 25, 2007 – Stealing sheep or wool or cloth in 18th- and 19th-century England could land you a minimum seven-year sentence at an Australian penal colony, according to Ancestry.ca’s newest online collection of Australian convicts records. For those interested in uncovering the criminal ancestors lurking in their past, the largest Canadian family history website today released the largest collection of Australian convict records, indexed and searchable online for the first time. Records detail the some 165,000 convicts transported to Australia from 1788 to 1868.

New Collection of Claims by Early American Citizens

The following announcement was written by Archive CD Books USA:

Columbia, Maryland – 23 July 2007 -- Archive CD Books USA announces the availability of a major new resource for those who are researching their early-American family histories.  The “Digested Summary and Alphabetical List of Private Claims Which Have Been Presented to the House of Representatives” represents nearly one hundred years of claims by citizens of the United States to their government for reimbursement for property or expenses.

Referencing approximately 100,000 names, this unique collection spans the period 1789-1882 and includes petitions for a wide variety of personal reimbursements, most notably in relation to the acts of the government during the Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Mexican-American War, the Civil War, and various Indian engagements.  Barbara Vines Little, Genealogical Consultant for Archive CD Books USA, noted that the collection contains claims for “restitution for property lost, damaged or destroyed due to government actions (or inaction); bounty land; land titles; patent extensions; payment for services rendered; and a myriad of other personal items that its citizens wanted the government to fix.”

Archdiocese of Boston Archives to Close During Relocation

According to an article in The Pilot, a newspaper published by the Archdiocese of Boston, the archives of the Archdiocese of Boston will suspend research services during the archdiocese's relocation to Braintree. The archives will close Sept. 3, 2007 and will not re-open until fall 2008. The archives intend to answer as many requests as possible that are received prior to Sept. 3. However, genealogical and historical requests received after that date will not be answered until the fall of 2008.

(+) Backing Up Your Web Site: Priceless

Tens of thousands of genealogists own personal web sites that display the information they wish to make public to the world. With today's technology, very little computer expertise is required to create a web site. You can find a wide variety of software tools to easily create and maintain a personal web site. Some of those tools will keep copies of everything on your own computer's hard drive while others do not. If your tool of choice does not keep a local copy, ask yourself one question:

"What happens when the web server has a problem?"

Whether you own a genealogy web site or any other sort of web site, you always need to make sure your site is backed up.

Surfing at 20 Megabits/Second

I gave in, and I'm glad of it. I have received dozens of Verizon FIOS ads in the mail in recent months. Verizon apparently installed high-speed fiber optic cabling on my street some time ago and has been conducting carpet-bombing advertising in the neighborhood ever since. I received at least one such ad in the "snail mail" each week. The company offers very high-speed Internet connections for $29.99 a month, less than what I have been paying for a cable modem broadband connection. 

I was generally happy with the cable modem broadband connection I already had. I realized that Verizon was a few dollars cheaper, but why change something that is working? I always threw the Verizon ads in the trash, as I do with most other ads.

A few weeks ago, however, I had a reason to examine the offers a bit more closely. A Verizon saleslady asked to visit the house personally to explain the differences of fiber optic Internet and telephone coverage. Once she arrived, she pointed out some things that I had not noticed in the ads. (Admittedly, I had only glanced at the printed ads.) She left with a signed agreement, and a Verizon technician installed the fiber optic connection into the house this week. After he worked in the basement for about an hour, I now surf the web at 20 megabits per second. Wahoo! Even better, my total costs actually dropped by $30.00 a month.

I should have paid more attention to those ads; I wasted several hundred dollars by delaying this decision!