Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter

Upcoming Events

The Upcoming Events section of this newsletter is published as a newsletter article once per month, usually in the first week of the month. However, you can also view the latest list of events at any time by clicking on "Upcoming Events" in the Navigation menu near the upper right corner of the page at http://www.eogn.com.

Each event is listed with the name, location and dates. Click on the name to see the details, including a link to the event's web page or to an e-mail address of someone who will provide still more information. The EOGN list of Upcoming Events is also available as an RSS newsfeed at http://www.trumba.com/calendars/eogns_calendar.rss.

If you would like to have your event added to this list, please send the information to meetings@eogn.com. We will publish the name of the event, the city and state/province/country where it is to be held, a very brief description and a web page URL or e-mail address to be used to obtain full details.

NOTE: We compile the list once a month. If you wait until the last minute to send the notice of your event, it might not make it into this month's listings.

Dick Eastman Joins Familybuilder Advisory Board

At last! I can now talk and write about this. I am delighted to accept a position on the Advisory Board of Familybuilder™, a software company that builds genealogy and family-oriented applications for online social networks. The company’s flagship product, Family Tree, is the first genealogy application to be introduced on Facebook, Bebo, MySpace, and Hi5.

I suspect that most genealogists have not yet heard of Familybuilder. In fact, I had not heard of the company a few months ago. However, when I discovered this online service, I was impressed. I believe that social networking sites will be the "next big thing" in online genealogy. I am delighted to have a small role in guiding that growth.

Important Announcement for Genealogist Enthusiasts on Facebook

The following was written by FamilyBuilder:

Recently, activities from individuals seeking to explore and expand their family genealogy on Facebook have been met with negative reactions from Facebook corporate and have had their Facebook accounts suspended.

The latest incident involved Rodrigo Sepúlveda Schulz who was accused of breaching Facebook's Terms of Service by apparently emailing his family members found on Facebook, and directing them to a third-party web site outside Facebook.com.   You can read about this incident on Rodrigo's blog:  http://rodrigo.typepad.com/english/2008/04/facebook-has-di.html.  There is also a growing reaction to this incident on Twitter from Robert Scoble, also once suspended by Facebook, among others.

DNA Links 17 Living People to Man Found in Glacier

Here's a fascinating family tree! Scientists have found a direct link between the frozen remains of a man found in a glacier in northern British Columbia, Canada and 17 people living in British Columbia, Yukon and Alaska. The news came at a symposium in Victoria this past weekend, focusiang on Kwaday Dan Ts'inchi', an aboriginal man whose remains were found in 1999 by hunters in Tatshenshini-Alsek Park, which is in the traditional territory of the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations.

Kwaday Dan Ts'inchi' means Long Ago Person Found, and he's believed to have died some time between the years 1670 and 1850. His remains were revealed after a glacier started to recede.

Since the discovery, scientists have been studying all facets of the man, including his clothes, tools, migratory patterns, even the contents of his stomach. But it's the DNA link to living people that has created the biggest stir.

Hebert’s Careful Louisiana Work to be Preserved

Writing in the 2theadvocate.com web site, Damon Veach has penned a glowing tribute to the late Rev. Donald J. Hebert. Hebert was an outstanding genealogical preservationist. He is responsible for the publication of many records about the southwest Louisiana area, especially Catholic Church records.

Old Bailey Files Are Now Online

Files never before available to the public are now online. Transcripts of 210,000 trials from across four centuries are now available.

The site is the largest single source of searchable information about everyday British lives and behavior ever published, said co-director Professor Tim Hitchcock. 'Besides the desperate drama of crimes punished, the proceedings give us a new and remarkable access to the everyday. History is full of information about kings and queens and wars, but there isn't much that tells us about the everyday life of ordinary people.'

The web site contains the transcripts of every trial heard at the Old Bailey from 1674 to 1913, a total of more than 210,000 criminal trials. Sadly, it includes the biographical details of around 3,000 men and women executed at Tyburn.

(+) “Demystifying the Family Stories” by George G. Morgan

“Pass it down!” You remember that phrase from your early school years. Someone would hand you a note and ask you to pass it to another person so that it finally reached the addressee at the end of the row of students. That was a reasonably reliable communication system unless, of course, the teacher caught on and intercepted the message. If the message was delivered, at least it contained the original words. Another way of communicating with fellow students was by passing a spoken (or whispered) message down the line. This method is fraught with problems because, as everyone who has ever played the game of “Telephone” knows, the message has been altered by multiple repetitions. Sometimes the end product is nothing like the original.

The family stories and traditions that have been passed down to us through the generations are also susceptible to changes through their having been communicated from person to person. Every family has stories that have been embellished and whose details may have been “stretched”. What do you know to be true and what do you doubt? Some research is needed if you are to ferret out the truth, and then it is possible that you may never find the answers you seek. Let me share some of my family’s myths with you.

On the Road Again, This Time to London

I am headed out again this week. This time it is for an international trip. I will attend the annual Who Do You Think You Are? LIVE! show in London, England. The name of that show is a mouthful, so I'll abbreviate it as WDYTYAL.

I was at this show last year and was impressed to see nearly 15,000 genealogists and history buffs at one three-day event. In fact, you can see the video that I created (with a lot of assistance from Roots Television) at http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2007/05/national_histor.html. This year's show promises to be bigger and probably better.

Who Do You Think You Are? LIVE! is sponsored by Ancestry.co.uk and is also supported by The Times Archive. It will be held May 2nd through 4th in the Grand Hall, Olympia, Kensington.

(+) Storing Data For the Next 1,000 Years

I have written before about the issues that genealogists, historians, and others face when trying to save information for hundreds of years. Floppy disks, CD-ROM disks, hard drives and most other technologies have a life expectancy of twenty-five years or so. USB jump drives probably won't even last that long. The paper most of us use today contains acids and probably will not last 100 years. Even worse, the laser toner and the inkjet inks in common use today will fade long before the passage of 100 years; so, our descendants may inherit blank pieces of paper.

Even microfilm will be unusable within a few years. To be sure, the films will last up to 300 years or so if they are never used (scratched). However, manufacturers of microfilm readers and cameras are now disappearing. You probably will not be able to purchase microfilm equipment 25 years from now.

The Care and Feeding of Flash Drives

It's official: the floppy drive is dead. Dell and a plethora of other PC manufacturers have simply stopped including floppy disk drives, thanks in no small part to the smaller, lighter, and faster USB flash drive that can carry over 1,000 times the standard 3.5" floppy.

In a recent conversation with a newsletter subscriber, I casually mentioned flash drives. These devices are also known as jump drives, thumb drives, USB drives, and probably a few other names as well. The subscriber mentioned that she had purchased a flash drive but didn't know how to use it. This article is for her and probably for a lot of other people who also have not yet used one of these great devices. I am also including information about programs and advanced uses that may be news even for experienced flash drive users.

First of all, flash drives/jump drives/thumb drives are not drives at all. So much for accuracy in naming! These pocket-sized devices contain a tiny circuit board, some amount of flash memory, and some supporting electronics. Flash memory is noted for its storage capabilities; when you turn the power off, the stored data does not disappear. It has been saved in the flash memory. You later can re-apply power and all the data will still be available, identical to what it was when the power was turned off.