The DAILY genealogy technology newsletter for genealogy
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The following announcement was written by The Generation Network, parent company of Ancestry.ca:
More than 1.6 million names indexed of immigrants who moved across the U.S. border to Canada
(Toronto, ON – April 22, 2009) Ancestry.ca, Canada’s leading family history website, today launched online the indexed and fully searchable Border Crossings: From U.S. to Canada, 1908-1935, which contains more than 1.6 million names from border crossing documents captured at almost 200 entry points over a 27-year period.
The following is a Plus Edition article written by and copyright by Michael John Neill.
Tracking the entire family is excellent genealogical advice. Sometimes it is easier said than done, especially when the ancestor was married three times, had children over a twenty-year time span, and moved from place to place. Keeping the various relatives, in-laws, and step-relatives straight is a never-ending yet important struggle. To find the "desired" person, many times it is necessary to research the extended family as well in hopes that they left behind clues about the person for whom I am actually searching.
Not long ago we released MacFamilyTree 5.4 with many improvements and a lot of new features. But MacFamilyTree 5.5 raises the bar even higher. Ever wanted to know who governed a country at the time of your great great grandmother? MacFamilyTree's brand new History Database allows you to view every person or family event in a greater historical context: Browse hundreds of predefined entries; or add your own data of global and regional relevance. Our sample events are fully-localized and integrate with Wikipedia.org, your own entries may easily be linked to Web URLs, too.
But MacFamilyTree 5.5 Public Beta delivers even more improvements: Users with huge family trees will appreciate MacFamilyTree's completely rewritten genealogy database technology. GEDCOM import, as well as viewing and editing of information in your family tree is much faster now.
Sad news: "The public is no longer permitted to look at the birth and death indexes at the New York City Department of Health."
The following was written by Jan Meisels Allen who has given permission to distribute it elsewhere:
The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) has restricted access to the indices for vital records (birth, death) effective April 8, 2009. Only authorized personnel are now permitted to research the indices.
I have a rather old Windows XP computer sitting on my desk. I purchased it six or seven years ago when a 3.0-gigahertz Pentium IV processor and 512 megabytes of memory was considered to be state-of-the-art. That's a rather modest system by today's standards, but the hardware wasn't the problem.
Over the years, the system began to run slower and slower. I frequently installed new programs, many of which became the subjects of software reviews in this newsletter. I later deleted some of the programs and kept others. Little by little, the system kept getting slower and slower. About two years ago, it got so slow that simply booting up required several minutes. Clicking on any icon meant a wait of thirty seconds or longer before anything happened on the screen.
I tried a couple of different utilities that claimed to be able to speed up your computer. They made little difference.
Grupo Genealógico Nuestros Ranchos Genealogy Group is for serious genealogists actively searching for lineages in the states of Jalisco, Zacatecas and Aguascalientes of Mexico. The site has recently been relaunched. The Grupo Genealógico Nuestros Ranchos Genealogy Group includes a searchable database of members' GEDCOM files, historical maps, useful research resources and a batch number database of LDS films for the region.
The following announcement was written by FamilySearch:
SALT LAKE CITY—FamilySearch expanded its Knowles Collection—a free popular database of Jewish records hailing from the British Isles. The collection builds upon work commenced by the late Isobel Mordy—a well-known historian of the Jews of the British Isles.
Mordy was a retired mathematician and used a complex code to link Jewish United Kingdom families in her research. Her work yielded 8,000 names and has been very popular for Jewish family history researchers with British ancestry.
The following is a Plus Edition article written by and copyright by George G. Morgan.
Some of us who have been “online” since the early days will remember the Bulletin Board Services, also known by the acronym of BBS. In the 1980s, we had to connect to each BBS, one at a time, using what we considered breakneck speeds of the 1200 or 2400 baud dial-up modems; 4800 and 9600 baud modems were staggeringly fast! We eagerly sought local access telephone numbers so as not to incur expensive long distance charges. There were a few genealogy BBSes maintained by hobbyists whom we referred to as sysops (system operators). We would connect our modem with our computer and then plug into the telephone line. The modem would dial the access number, the modems at both ends would squeal in multiple tones as they synchronized their communications, and then the session would (hopefully) begin.
Perhaps 800 to 1,000 genealogists will gather this week in Manchester, New Hampshire, for NERGC. That's the New England Regional Genealogical Conference. Operating with a theme of Discovering Family Treasures, this conference will probably be the largest genealogy conference of the year to be held in the northeastern United States.
The New England Regional Genealogical Conference is sponsored by a consortium of more than twenty genealogy societies. With this much expertise and manpower to draw on, you know these folks can put on a first-class conference! They have done so in the past, and I suspect this year's conference will be at least as good as the past events.
I wish to advise you of my retirement as the Librarian and Archivist of Canada effective April 24th 2009. Although retiring, I will continue to be active as I fulfill my mandate as President of the International Council of Archives, and work on projects of interest to libraries and archives.
The powerful Habsburg dynasty ruled Spain and its empire from 1516 to 1700 but when King Charles II died in 1700 without any children from his two marriages, the male line died out and the French Bourbon dynasty came to power in Spain.
Using genealogical information for Charles II and 3,000 of his relatives and ancestors across 16 generations, Gonzalo Alvarez and colleagues at the University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain have provided genetic evidence to support the historical evidence that the high frequency of inbreeding (mating between closely related individuals) within the dynasty was a major cause for the extinction of its male line.
Starting July 1, patrons of the Bridgeport, Connecticut Public Library system's main Burroughs and Saden Library will have only three days a week to use the Historical Collection, a reduction from the current five days a week. The collection, on the third floor, is a repository for photos, old city directories and other records and genealogy research materials. It also sponsors exhibits and programs such as genealogy classes and memoir writing.
Now this is serious genealogy! A retired secretary and her husband have built miniature models of her ancestors' homes after chronicling 500 years of family history. Peggy and Peter Newman, both 77, have traced buildings linked to 13 generations of relatives since they began researching the project 25 years ago.
Painstakingly carved by hand, each of the 14 houses and other buildings took six months to construct.
Ten years ago, the U.S. census enumerators carried paper maps to make sure each resident was counted. The maps were 3 feet wide and were unwieldy, to say the least. This year's census takers will carry something a bit more compact: a handheld GPS. Every single housing unit will be defined by its latitude and longitude.
The Morgan County Archives will receive a grant to help with its efforts to preserve historical documents. The archives is receiving the maximum award, $3,000, from the Alabama Historical Records Advistory Board.
Insurance companies in Maryland must compile information on policies
sold to slave owners before 1865 under a new state law. The reports
will be kept in an archive at the University of Maryland School of Law
in Baltimore and published on the state Insurance Department Web site,
The Baltimore Sun reported. Students at the law school developed the
idea for the law.
The Keller Citizen newspaper's web site has an interesting article about 40 unmarked graves found at the cemetery of one of the first organized churches in Tarrant County, Texas. The story by Sarah Junek provides a bit of history about the church, the cemetery, the local community, and the on-going efforts to identify the graves. If you have ancestors in Tarrant County, you will want to read this article.
The following announcement was written by the Guild of One-Name Studies:
The Guild of One-Name Studies is delighted to announce the completion of a thorough update of their website dedicated to one-name studies – www.one-name.org, which went live on 29th March 2009.
The following is a Plus Edition article written by and copyright by Lloyd Bockstruck.
Family historians have recognized the importance of birth, death, marriage, and divorce records for genealogical research. They are not the only ones, however, who need such records. Applying for a driving license or a U.S. passport, proof of identity, heirship cases, and obtaining a Social Security number are some of the other situations involving the need for copies of vital statistics.
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