Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter

(+) Along Those Lines... by George G. Morgan: Undigitized Federal Census Materials

The following is a Plus Edition article written by and copyright by George G. Morgan.

No genealogist would be surprised to hear that U.S. federal census records are the most-used records for U.S. family history research. Population schedules are a great source for determining the location of a family unit in each decade. Beginning in 1850, every name is listed on the population schedule, as is place of birth. Slave owners are listed, and slaves are enumerated by quantity, gender, and age on the 1850 and 1860 slave schedules. More information is included on subsequent censuses. The 1880 population schedule includes the relationship of individuals in the household to one another. The year of arrival in the United States and naturalization status are included on 1900 to 1930 population schedules. The details available on the census documents can be very helpful, even though many of the documents microfilmed by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) are transcriptions of the original enumeration sheets.

Last Titanic Survivor Dies at 97

The last survivor of the sinking of the Titanic has died aged 97. Millvina Dean was nine weeks old when the liner sank after hitting an iceberg in the early hours of 15 April 1912, on its maiden voyage from Southampton.

Her family had been traveling to America, where they hoped to start a new life and open a tobacconist's shop in Kansas. They traveled third class.

Canadian Books Available on www.ourroots.ca

Our Roots is a combination library, archive, museum and school all in one. The site contains the full text of thousands of Canadian local histories in French and English. On this site you can find the history of your small town, rural area, or large city, the Acadian migration to the Maritimes, Métis heroes, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police or the Irish at Grosse Isle, all in a matter of seconds,

Our Roots now has close to 5,500 digital texts with 1.3 million pages of facts about Canadians and Canada, and it is still growing. A national network of libraries, universities, colleges, archives, historical associations, businesses, and individuals have generously donated time and copyright permission to have their materials digitized.

Short Web Server Outage Today

The Standard Edition newsletter's web site at http://www.eogn.com was offline for about an hour today. Technically, the web server was up and running but the DNS (the address method that redirects you when you enter "www.eogn.com" into your web browser) was offline. That was caused by me as I was changing things around.

The Plus Edition web site at http://www.eogn.com/wp/ was unaffected.

I apologize for the inconvenience.

 - Dick Eastman

13th Century Document Found in Ontario

It's not exactly the Magna Carta, although it was penned around the same time, in similar Latin script, on English parchment. It's a simple document, in the legalese of the day, by which a low-to-middling noble named Robert de Clopton granted land to his son, William, in the 13th century.

Apart from its age, its most intriguing aspect is how it resurfaced all these years later: in a filing cabinet at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ont., during an office reorganization last summer.

Genealogical Library May Lack Funds To Buy Microfilm Reader

Steps to purchase a new microfilm reader/printer for the T. Elmer Cox Genealogical and Historical Library in Greenville, Tennessee may have to be delayed due to tightening budgets, officials say.

Don Miller, the reference librarian for the Cox Library, told members of the Greene County Records Commission during a brief meeting Thursday morning that the purchase of a new microfilm reader/printer may have to be put on hold temporarily because funding from the Greeneville government and the library may not be available at this time.

"Kidnapped Son" Found on Facebook

Switching to the good things that happen on social networking sites...

A mother has been reunited with her son, 27 years after she claims he was kidnapped, after her sister saw him on the social networking site Facebook.

Avril Grube, 62, who lives in Poole, Dorset, says she was given custody of her son Gavin Paros after her marriage to a Hungarian man broke down in 1982. His father, who died in 2006, had visiting rights but took him to Hungary and Ms Grube has not seen him since.

But Mr Paros, 29, met his mother this week after being found on Facebook.

(+) Casefile Clues by Michael John Neill: BLM Locality Searches

The following is a Plus Edition article written by and copyright by Michael John Neill.

Land records are a wonderful resource for those whose ancestors owned property. Land transfers between private citizens should have been recorded and filed at the local level (usually the county), and records of these transfers are public records. In addition to these local land records there are some land records that are federal records. Generally speaking, federal land records are those where property being transferred from the federal government into private ownership. This week we look at ways to search some of these federal land patents, which are housed on the Bureau of Land Management's website.

Bank Robber Arrested after Boasting of Crime on MySpace

This has nothing to do with genealogy but I thought it was interesting. It is also a sign of the times in which we live and illustrates the power and the privacy concerns of social networking sites.

According to a press release from the U.S. Department of Justice in Columbia, S.C., a man's message on his MySpace page helped authorities arrest him on bank robbery charges.

Joseph Wade Northington, 27, of Roanoke, Va., pleaded guilty Thursday in a Columbia, S.C., federal court to using a firearm during a violent crime.

9th Annual British Institute

The following announcement was written by the International Society for British Genealogy & Family History:

Offering Irish and English Research - The courses are taught by experts in their field of genealogy research.

The International Society for British Genealogy & Family History (ISBGFH) is sponsoring the ninth annual British Institute in Salt Lake City, October 5-9, 2009. The Institute will be held at the Crystal Inn, 230 West 500 South. Two courses will be taught by leading authorities:  David Rencher,CG,AG,FUGA and Barbara Baker,AG.

National Archives Employees Prepare Civil War Documents

The National Archives' Atlanta-area facility has, for several years, kept documents from the Civil War era, ranging from Ku Klux Klan founder Nathan Bedford Forrest's bankruptcy papers, to oaths of allegiance in which former Confederate soldiers promised to not rebel against the United States again.

But, according to archives employees, the documents were scattered across the many types of files at the facility. There has not been a large, focused concentration of the documents - until now.

Groundbreaking Held For New Ohio Genealogical Society Library

The Ohio Genealogical Society dreamed it, planned it and thanks to donors a new 18,000 square-foot library will be built on Ohio 97 Bellville.

A groundbreaking ceremony was Friday on an eight-acre site of land, donated to the society by James and Marjorie Gorman for the new Samuel D. Islay Library of the Genealogical Society.

My Visit to Chelmsford

If you are in or near Chelmsford, Massachusetts, you might want to stop in at the monthly meeting of the Chelmsford Genealogy Club next Tuesday (June 2). It will start at 7:00 PM at the Chelmsford Library, located inside the "traffic circle" in the middle of town.

I will be there as I am the guest speaker for the evening. I'll be talking about "Genealogy Searches on Google." This will be a "how to" presentation that shows how to use everyone's favorite search engine more effectively. It will cover search methods that are not well-known and will also describe how to isolate newly-added information so that you do not need to uncover the same material time and time again.

I'd love to meet newsletter readers as well as the regular attendees of the Chelmsford Genealogy Club.

(+) Lloyd’s Library by Lloyd Bockstruck: Court Minutes, Records, and Abstracts

The following is a Plus Edition article written by and copyright by Lloyd Bockstruck.

Vital statistics are the very first records genealogists seek out. When they do not exist, genealogists have to work their way down the ladder of source material. For some genealogists, consulting probate records for clues pertaining to filiation and the reconstitution of pedigrees offers the next best choice. Deeds might be the next logical record group to explore. If these record groups fail to yield the solution to a genealogical problem, genealogists out of desperation resort to searching the court records themselves. Order books, minute books, and loose papers are terribly time consuming to search, but they deserve being put at the apex of original source material.

Google's Wave

Google has unveiled a distributed, peer-to-peer collaboration and conversation platform called Wave. Several newsletter readers have written to suggest that the Wave may offer tremendous potential for genealogy projects, especially for group efforts when multiple people are working towards a common goal. This could be as informal as two cousins cooperating with their research efforts or as formal as a one-name society or a family society of 50 people or more working to document everyone of a particular surname or documenting all the descendants of a common ancestor.

Click on the thumbnail image to the left to see a larger image of a typical (non-genealogy) Wave.

National Archives Continues Year-Long 75th Anniversary Celebration

The following announcement was written by the National Archives and Records Administration:

WASHINGTON, May 28 -- The National Archives continues its 75th Anniversary celebration in June with special lectures, programs, and films. These events are free and open to the public and will be held in the National Archives Building in Washington, DC, located on the National Mall at Constitution Ave. between 7th and 9th Streets, NW. National Archives summer exhibit hours are 10 a.m.-7 p.m., through Labor Day.

St. Louis Opens Civil War Era Court Documents

The St. Louis circuit clerk's office has unlocked never-before told stories of looting, betrayal and slavery in the years following the Civil War. Now these rare documents, unearthed during a 10-year preservation project, will be available to anyone who wants to read about how Missourians attempted to bring law and order after the chaos of war. If you had ancestors living in the area after the Civil War, you may be able to find information about them that was never available before.

Government Wrestles With Social Media Records Retention Policies

Quoting from an article by J. Nicholas Hoover published in InformationWeek:

"The National Archives is trying to navigate complex regulations that require capturing and storing all sorts of content in the age of social media, cloud computing, and seemingly endless storage.

DNA Study to Identify World War II Marine Buried in China?

New England Cable News has an interesting story about the use of both genealogy and DNA to be used to identify the remains of a World War II U.S. Marine who is believed to be buried in Manchuria, the northeastern corner of China.

Sgt. William Lynch of Dorchester, Massachusetts disappeared in World War II when his unit surrendered to the Japanese. He was known to be a prisoner of war but his family never heard from him again. Of the 1,500 US Marines captured together, Sgt. Lynch is the only one who has not been identified and his fate is not known.

Roots Television Releases Another Video in the Down Under Series: A Soldier's Story

Roots Television has released several  "Down Under" videos. I wrote recently about Roots Television's "Down Under Utah: Icelandic Minister." Now the company has added a anotehr "Down Under" video: Down Under Utah: A Soldier's Story.

In this latest video, genealogists Kory Meyerink and Nancy NeSmith explore the touching story of a soldier buried in Spanish Fork City Cemetery in Utah. The video follows Kory and Nancy as they research the soldier's life to find more about him and his family.