The DAILY genealogy technology newsletter for genealogy
consumers, packed with straight talk - hold the sugar coating - whether
the vendors like it or not!
Here's the formula: become the featured guest on a popular genealogy program and then you can sell the rights to your autobiography for a cool £1 million (roughly $1.8 million U.S. dollars). Patsy Kensit has reportedly started negotiations to sell the rights to her autobiography for £1 million.
The actress attracted the attention of publishers after she appeared on BBC1's genealogy show Who Do You Think You Are? earlier this week. The program, which attracted 6.9 million viewers, investigated the Holby City star's villainous ancestry.
A recipe for Toxic Photo Soup: Layer 1,000 photos in a large, watertight plastic storage tub. Place high on basement shelving unit. Fail to notice small, leaky basement window nearby. Marinate, unattended, three to four years. Open and serve.
Yield: 1,000 blank sheets of sopping photo paper and four gallons of black, stinky, toxic rainwater-chemical soup.
That’s a recipe for disaster. And it’s exactly what happened to the entire photographic record of my wife’s college and med school years. To this day, I have no idea what she looked like back then. For all I know, she could have had an eye patch and a mohawk.
Thomas Irwin's ashes have rested in Section 4, Lot 18 at Allegheny Cemetery in Pittsbugh for 138 years, but people in the post office and federal courthouse are trying to connect a face with his name.
The third-floor hallway is lined with images of all but one of the 55 past and present Western District federal judges, from Nora Barry Fischer, appointed last year, to Jonathan Hoge Walker, the district's first judge, appointed in 1818.
Irwin is the only one missing.
In the space where his portrait should be hanging is a message that reads: "If you know my whereabouts, please contact the clerk of courts."
For the past few years, the annual conference of the Federation of Genealogy Societies has been the largest genealogy conference in North America. I have enjoyed attending this conference and I expect this year's event to be at least as good as the past few. This year's conference will be held in Philadelphia on September 3 through 6. You can read more about this year's conference at http://www.fgsconference.org.
Genealogists love to scan books and other old documents. Many of the books we scan are old, out of print, and sometimes fragile. Handling these documents requires techniques and perhaps hardware not needed with the scanning of modern books. If you contact most any book scanning service and ask them how they scan the books, most will reply, "First we cut off the bindings and then..."
You won't be doing that with any of my valuable books!
Researchers and scientists using specifically-developed forensic science techniques have finally identified an arm and hand found buried in an Alaskan glacier 60 years ago. It took nine years of cutting edge DNA and fingerprint research and genealogical studies to identify the remains of a Roanoke, Va., native. The 1948 plane crash killed all of its passengers – Merchant Marines returning from China. In 1999, the crash site was located within a glacier, and the preserved arm and hand were discovered. A fact sheet is available with more detailed information.
One man is busy digitizing out-of-print 78s. Cliff Bolling says, "There's a whole world of music that you don't hear anymore, and it's on 78 RPM records." He already has about 4,000 MP3s on his web site.
This article is being written in a hotel room in Indianapolis. Indiana. I'll be here for the next few days attending the Midwestern Roots 2008: Family History and Genealogy Conference.
This is shaping up to be a good conference. If you can be in Indianapolis on Friday and/or Saturday, you might want to drop in. Details may be found at http://www.indianahistory.org/midwesternroots/.
The mission of the Louisiana Creole Heritage Center is to promote, foster and engage in activities and endeavors that relate to Louisiana Creoles and their culture. It serves as an office of support to Louisiana and national Creole communities and organizations, offering advice and assistance in matters that affect Creoles. The Center also serves as a central clearinghouse/information bank for these communities and for those seeking knowledge, understanding and appreciation of Louisiana Creoles and their culture. It is located in Natchitoches, Louisiana.
Most accounts of the Revolutionary War give the impression that America's independence from Britain was won by brave white men, but Maurice A. Barboza wants to tell the rest of the story.
Mr. Barboza is trying to revive an effort that stalled three years ago due to fundraising and management problems to build the first monument on the Mall honoring black Colonial soldiers.
"They were Americans, and they should be honored," Mr. Barboza said. "They were founders of the country."
A genealogy television program in the U.K. has become one of the more popular television programs in that country. In fact, "Who Do You Think You Are?" has also spun off a magazine, computer software, and an annual conference in London that attracts nearly 15,000 attendees. Some American genealogists have wondered, "When we will get a similar program?"
This week sees the start of the fifth series of the BBC's Who Do You Think You Are?. This popular genealogy television program features both celebrities and genealogy. It has proven to be quite a hit.
The following is a Plus Edition article written by George G. Morgan:
One of the first things that a genealogist or family historian learns is that the spellings of names is never an exact thing. I always tell researchers to learn how to mis-spell your ancestors’ names because, heaven knows, they and their contemporaries did it all the time!
In recent weeks, I have published a number of articles about the ancestry of Barack Obama and John McCain. I find it fascinating that such articles bring out the worst in people.
A number of readers have posted comments at the end of those articles. Normally, I enjoy reading such comments. However, I have been surprised at the number of derogatory comments that have been posted.
Gordon A. Watts, co-chair of the Canada Census Committee, recently pointed out that Senator Lorna Milne has written a book about her efforts to regain public access to historic census records that genealogists and historians believed they should have. Senator Milne waged a seven-year effort, culminating in the passage of Bill S-18. "Deeply Rooted" takes readers through the winding road that it took to overcome all the obstacles that were thrown in the way.
NOTE: This article has nothing to do with genealogy, other than perhaps providing a cheap method for you to call your distant relatives. However, I have written before about Skype and thought I would offer one more article describing its uses.
I love Skype! Instead of placing calls over standard telephone lines, this VoIP (Voice over IP) telephone service works by placing the calls over almost any broadband Internet connection.
The best part of all is the price of calls: calling anyone else who uses Skype is always free of charge, even if that person is located in another part of the world. Unlimited calls to standard telephones anywhere in North America cost $3.00 a month. (Skype's competitors typically charge $15 to $30 a month for the same thing.) Overseas calls are also cheap: I can call telephones in England or New Zealand or even China for two cents a minute. Calls to Mexico are two or three cents a minute, depending upon the Mexican area code being called. Calls to other countries typically cost two to perhaps five cents per minute. Calls to some third-world countries or to tiny islands in the South Pacific can cost more. The rates are always a fraction of what traditional telephone companies charge. The complete list of call rates may be found at http://www.skype.com/prices/callrates.
Mic Barnette is conducting a project for possible future publication. The project attempts to identify all Free People of Color who lived in Texas prior to the Civil War and any Free Person of Color born in Texas who lived outside Texas prior to the Civil War. To date there are approximately 250 families in and outside Texas with about 150 different surnames identified.The project is not a study of slaves emancipated as a result of the Civil War in 1865.
I have written a number of times about the growing popularity of eBooks (books published in electronic format). Now Millennia Corporation is poised to become a major supplier of genealogy eBooks, thanks to a new agreement with Genealogical Publishing Company. The result should be genealogy books available much more easily than ever before and at lower prices. I believe this is great news for genealogists.
Here is a new announcement written by Millennia Corporation, the publishers of Legacy Family Tree:
Legacy Family Tree teams with Genealogical Publishing Company to release popular How-To books in downloadable, electronic format for the first time
SURPRISE, Arizona - Millennia Corporation, publisher of the popular family history software Legacy Family Tree, announced today that it is teaming with Genealogical Publishing Company to provide broader access to popular How-To books.
The old joke goes something like this: If you want your family tree traced, all you have to do is run for President. That is certainly true in this year's campaign. We are seeing almost daily news releases about the candidates' ancestors and extended cousin. This time there is a suggestion that perhaps Barack Obama should add an apostrophe to his last name: "O'bama." His Irish roots have now been traced back to the 17th century, and there is even circumstantial evidence that his ancestors hailed from Cashel, the seat of the High Kings of Ireland.
The following announcement was written by Eneclann Ltd., the leading publisher of Irish records:
Here's the formula: become the featured guest on a popular genealogy program and then you can sell the rights to your autobiography for a cool £1 million (roughly $1.8 million U.S. dollars). Patsy Kensit has reportedly started negotiations to sell the rights to her autobiography for £1 million.
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