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The following announcement was written by Genes Reunited:
Video footage, pictures and mini-family tree help put New Zealand in touch with its history
Genes Reunited, New Zealand’s leading genealogy site, has launched a new version of its site for 2009 designed to make family history easy and accessible for people of all ages.
With contextual tips now placed around the site to highlight features and explain next steps, it’s never been simpler to find out where you come from. The new site also incorporates a mini-family tree on the homepage, making it easier to view and add family members.
In the November 19, 2008 newsletter, I wrote a brief article entitled, "Obama May Be Unable To Use BlackBerry at The White House." That article is still available at http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2008/11/obama-may-be-un.html. However, the news out of Washington indicates that Obama will keep his BlackBerry, but for personal use only.
The following is a Plus Edition article written by and copyright by Michael John Neill.
Intro
Many genealogists use maps with migration trails to understand how their ancestor might have gotten from point A to point B. Migration trail maps are helpful in some genealogical situations, particularly for relatives living in an unsettled, frontier area. While these maps are an excellent genealogical tool, they provide a limited view of the migration process and often do not show the greater forces at work causing our ancestors to move. Oftentimes an ancestor's migration was a person or a family moving in a flow from point A to point B. Sometimes that flow was a river and sometimes it was a trickle. Regardless of the size, discovering that larger flow and your ancestor's role in it may provide untold genealogical benefits.
The Muncie Public Library is planning to close two branches because it expects a big drop in funding as new statewide property tax caps take effect. Library Director Virginia Nilles said she expects that the Vivian Conley and Local History and Genealogy branches will close by June 1. Plans are to move materials from the genealogy facility to a neighboring downtown library, which will have its collections moved to other branches.
The following announcement was written by the New England Historic Genealogical Society:
Boston, MA & East Hartford, CT – January 22, 2009 – The New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) and the Connecticut Society of Genealogists (CSG) announce today the first phase of bringing the CSG’s flagship journal The Connecticut Nutmegger online as a searchable database, available to members on both organizations’ Websites.
The following announcement was written by the (U.S.)National Genealogical Society:
Would your society like to honor a genealogist whose exemplary work lives on today? Perhaps there was a notable genealogist in your state or county whose name should be memorialized in the NGS Hall of Fame.
If so, the National Genealogical Society would like to hear from you. NGS is seeking nominations from the entire genealogical community for persons whose achievements or contributions have made an impact on the field. This educational program increases appreciation of the high standards advocated and achieved by committed genealogists whose work paved the way for researchers today.
The following announcement was written by Ancestry.ca:
78,000 records of Canadian government employment from 1872-1900 highlight ‘then and now’ salaries
(Toronto, ON – January 22, 2009) Ancestry.ca, Canada’s leading online family history website, today launched online the fully indexed Canadian Civil Servants Lists of Canada, 1872-1900, which features more than 78,000 records of those employed in departments of the Canadian Government during the country’s early days of Confederation.
The Australasian Federation of Family History Organisations (AFFHO) has been holding a "Congress" for the past five days. The event was packed with presentations, seminars, dinners, a cocktail party, a Maori welcome, and more. However, nothing lasts forever. The Congress wound down on Tuesday afternoon with speeches and a very interesting Maori ceremony, although quite different from the one held at the opening. A bunch of smiling genealogists filed out of the FindMyPast Hall and began to make their way home.
I stayed at the conference site another night and took a tour of Auckland the next day that was sponsored by the Federation. I then obtained a rental car and am now beginning my driving tour of New Zealand. I'll be on the road for the next week, polishing my skills at driving on the left side of the road.
As I mentioned in another article, the Australasian Federation of Family History Organisations (AFFHO) "Congress" is now finished. I was fortunate enough to be able to attend this five-day event in Auckland, New Zealand, and must say that I learned a lot. In fact, I think there were a few lessons here for all genealogy conference organizers.
I have written before about the skyrocketing of attending genealogy conferences. It seems every year in the United States we hold national conferences in expensive convention centers with attendees staying at nearby hotels that charge exorbitant prices for rooms and meals and then pile on even more fees for parking, Internet access, and whatever else "the traffic will bear." The organizers in Auckland took a different approach, one that I think we all can learn from.
The following article was written by Lloyd Bockstruck:
Recently a genealogist shared with me her dilemma about locating documentary evidence of her ancestor’s military service. He was supposedly a veteran of the Mexican War with the surname Osborn, so she examined the index to Mexican War pension files in the National Archives in Washington, D.C. Staff at the archives had indexed the records in a card file, and the index had been microfilmed. Later, no less than three different genealogists transcribed and published the index in book form. At the time of the filming of the index, some cards had been pulled and re-filed in improper sequence. While there were no more than a dozen such examples of this type of error, it is a pitfall of which all genealogical researchers must be aware.
The following announcement was written by the New England Historic Genealogical Society:
Boston, MA – January 2009 – New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) announces the addition of 5 million names to its databases during 2008 to help its more than 23,000 members around the country with their family history research.
The new data includes more than 1 million new Massachusetts records and more than 3 million records to the Social Security Death Index database.
The following article was written by Michael John Neill:
On the surface, city directories may not seem to contain much information. After all, they usually only provide the names of heads of households. They also do not provide the details typically obtained from census records taken during the same time period. Directories are especially key for urban researchers and provide details about individuals in off-census years. Ignoring them because they seem tedious, repetitive, and dull may leave gaps in your research.
Charles River Ventures, a Waltham, Massachusetts venture capital firm, has added to its existing investment in California-based Geni Inc., a private genealogy website, with a $5 million Series C funding round, according to published reports.
Charles River Ventures was joined in the Series C funding by fellow return backer Founders Fund of San Francisco, website PE Hub reports.
Founded in 2006, Geni had raised $11.5 million before the most recent financing round.
The club that Barack Obama now joins has traditionally been far more exclusive than just all white and all male. There has never been an Italian, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Russian, Greek, Spaniard, or Hispanic elected to the White House. No descendent of the great waves of immigration from southern and eastern Europe that washed over this country in the 19th century has ever made it. Nor has anyone of Swedish, Danish, or Norwegian descent ever been elected.
My father was born on 17 December 1909 in North Carolina. This was in the years prior to the state’s requirement that all births be recorded on a birth certificate. It was not until 1974 that he began the process of preparing to apply for the Social Security retirement benefits. He was required to provide a birth certificate or a minimum of three alternate proofs of his date of birth. When he told my mother and me, I began suggesting other types of records he might be able to use. Since my Grandmother Morgan had introduced me to our Revolutionary War ancestry over a decade before, I had become an avid family historian. Our local public librarian was a member of the local chapter of the D.A.R., and she introduced me to many records types and research principles. As a result, my father was not surprised that I had suggestions for different items he might locate and use as alternative proofs of his date and place of birth.
The Indiana Genealogical Society is looking for someone to fill the position of editor of the IGS Newsletter, which is published 6 times a year. The editor would be responsible for compiling each issue, editing it for grammar, typos and clarity, and exporting it to PDF for inclusion on the IGS website. This is a paid position and experience working with Adobe Acrobat software is expected.
If you have been reading this newsletter in the past few days, you already know that I am attending and speaking at the Australasian Federation of Family History Societies Congress on Genealogy and Heraldry being held in Auckland, New Zealand. The Congress continued today with four to five simultaneous tracks of presentations most all day. One thing caught my eye today as a technological marvel and greatly impressed me. I would suggest that future conference organizers worldwide should consider doing the same on occasion.
"Mary L. B." has placed an interesting article on the EOGN Discussion Forum that I wish all genealogy newcomers would read. Entitled, "Pitfalls That Can Create Brick Walls or Cause You to Claim the Wrong Ancestors," Mary details several bits of "misinformation" that most of us struggled with when we first started.
This article comes to you from the Australasian Federation of Family History Organisation's (AFFHO) Congress being held this week in Auckland, New Zealand. The opening ceremonies kicked off yesterday evening at the Auckland War Memorial Museum. Launching this kickoff was a traditional Maori powhiri, and I must say that I was very impressed.
The word "powhiri" is new to my vocabulary. As I understand it, a powhiri is a Maori welcoming ceremony. The Maori are the native people of New Zealand. It is interesting that New Zealand is considered to be a "new country," having been settled by Europeans only in the early to mid 1800s. Even the native people are rather latecomers by the standards of "native peoples." The first Maori are believed to have arrived on New Zealand shores only about 900 years ago.
Boy, the time does fly! Thirteen years have slipped by in almost the blink of an eye. It seems like only yesterday that I sent my first e-mail newsletter to about 100 people, mostly members of CompuServe's Genealogy Forums. None of them knew in advance that the newsletter would arrive; I simply mailed it to people who I thought might be interested. In 1996 nobody objected to receiving unsolicited bulk mail; the phrase "spam mail" had not yet been invented. I shudder to think of doing the same thing in today's Internet environment.
In that first newsletter on January 15, 1996, I wrote:
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