The DAILY genealogy technology newsletter for genealogy
consumers, packed with straight talk - hold the sugar coating - whether
the vendors like it or not!
The following is a Plus Edition article written by and copyright by George G. Morgan.
I’ve recently become more interested in my family health history. There is a distinct likelihood of genetic health traits being perpetuated throughout descendants. I was told many years ago that male baldness was a trait passed down from the mother’s side of the family. My mother wasn’t bald, and so I pretty much ignored this piece of information. Yet, my older brother is definitely losing his hair. I also learned about hemophilia, the genetic disorder that impairs the body’s ability to control blood coagulation, and its presence in the descendants of Queen Victoria’s descendants. Friends have suffered from various types of cancer, only to learn that the specific type is prevalent in their family.
The California Digital Newspaper Collection offers over 200,000 pages of California newspapers spanning the years 1849-191l: the Alta California, 1849-1891; the San Francisco Call, 1893-1910; the Amador Ledger, 1900-1911; the Imperial Valley Press, 1901-1911; the Sacramento Record-Union, 1859-1890; and the Los Angeles Herald, 1905-1907. All the issues are available online and can be viewed on your computer.
Additional years are forthcoming, as are other early California newspapers: the Californian; the California Star; the California Star and Californian; the Sacramento Transcript; the Placer Times; and the Pacific Rural Press.
Here is a trick for anyone who uses Google's Gmail service:
Here's a method of creating unlimited virtual addresses to make it easier to sort mail and identify spam. For example, you can create a separate email address for each account you establish with an online merchant, such as amazon or ebay or ancestry.com. It even works for this newsletter. As long as you set up a "catchall" address with your email provider, all of these will be forwarded to your main account, and you can use your email client to sort and filter these as you see fit.
The Wall Street Journal has a great story that tells how genealogists can even save or prolong the lives of the people that mean the most: their loved ones.
The Cyclopedia of New Zealand was published in six volumes between 1897 and 1908 by the Cyclopedia Company Ltd. These books can provide a wealth of information to anyone researching New Zealand ancestry. They provide a lot of information about individuals and also are full of information about the areas in which your ancestors lived and provide much information about the lifestyles of everyday citizens.
Each volume deals with a region of New Zealand and includes information on local towns and districts, government departments, individuals, businesses, clubs and societies. Biographical entries frequently include the subject's date and place of birth, the name of the ship by which immigrants arrived, spouse's name, and the number and gender of children born to a couple. Volume One, which covers the Wellington Provincial District, also includes a history of colonial government in New Zealand, with portraits of Governors, politicians and state officials.
Work has started on the new cemetery at Fromelles, in northern France, which will provide a final resting place for around 400 British and Australian soldiers.
The troops died during the Battle of Fromelles in July 1916, with the bodies buried in a number of pits by the German army in the hours after the battle. In May 2008, after several years of painstaking research and investigation, five burial pits dating from the First World War were identified at Pheasant Wood, near Fromelles in northern France. The pits, which have lain undisturbed for more than 90 years, are believed to contain the remains of between 250 and 400 British and Australian soldiers, buried behind German lines after the Battle of Fromelles in July 1916.
The following announcement was written by the National Archives and Records Administration:
ST. LOUIS, June 12 -- The National Archives' National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) opened more than 6 million individual personnel files of former federal civilian employees from the mid-1800s through 1951. These records will be of special interest to genealogists, family members, researchers, sociologists, and historians.
Among the records are the files of prominent individuals who worked for the federal government, such as Walt Disney, Ansel Adams, Eliot Ness, Calvin Coolidge, J. Edgar Hoover, Gifford Pinchot, Walker Evans, and Albert Einstein.
The following is a Plus Edition article written by and copyright by Lloyd Bockstruck.
Guardianships, apprenticeships, adoptions, and bastardy bonds are four types of court records which can be used to demonstrate filiation, ascertain births, and identify maiden names. County, district, and state courts as well as private legislative acts constitute the primary source material that family historians have to examine in quest of the proverbial needle in the haystack. In the case of the latter, igniting the haystack and reducing the chaff to ashes makes the search much more likely to be successful. In the case of the former, published abstracts and on-line databases are the best tools for accessing the enormous amount of genealogical data. Ideally, abstracts of the records need to be compiled on a state-wide basis for the best results.
Carolyn L. Barkley has written an interesting article about wikis for genealogy. She describes the purposes of wikis and then mentions several genealogy wikis. She first mentions the Encyclopedia of Genealogy (which is sponsored by this newsletter) and then goes on to describe at length both WeRelate.org and the FamilySearch wiki, a “free online encyclopedia of genealogy information.”
Ireland's leading genealogical magazine has praised Limerick City Council's decision to become the first local authority to put its burial records online. And 'Ireland's Genealogical Gazette' believes it will help bring more tourists into the city.
Writing in the latest Windows Secrets newsletter, security expert Susan Bradley describes the latest Windows malware (malevolent software) floating around the Internet. Many well-known and popular web sites have become infected and they spread the infection to any Windows PC that visits the site using Internet Explorer and some out-of-date software.
I didn't see any genealogy-related web sites mentioned in Susan's list but I'd still suggest caution. Susan lists ColdwellBanker.com, Variety.com, and Tennis.com as web sites that are infected or have been infected in the past.
GEDitCOM II is a new genealogy application for Macintosh OS X that sets the standard for Macintosh ease-of-use editing of genealogy files, for customization of the user experience, and for power features allowing the greatest access to your genealogical data.
GEDitCOM II is a rewritten version of GEDitCOM using Apple's Cocoa environment. It will greatly exceed user-interface features of GEDitCOM. It will retain the philosophy of GEDitCOM to be a customizable genealogy application for editing and viewing GEDCOM genealogy files. Users of GEDitCOM, should find GEDitCOM II easy to use.
Cook County (Illinois) Clerk David Orr's new genealogy web site has won a 2009 Achievement Award from the National Association of Counties, NACO announced today. The program entitled "Piecing Together the Past: Clerk David Orr's Genealogy Online" was selected as an example of an "effective and creative program" in the 40th year of the Achievement Awards.
CookCountyGenealogy.com, launched July 2, 2008, allows visitors to conduct free searches of birth, marriage and death indexes dating to 1872. Once a document is located, genealogists can download a high-resolution scan of the original for a $15 fee.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the security vulnerabilities in all versions of Adobe Acrobat Reader. That article is still available at http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2009/04/update-time-to-get-rid-of-adobe-reader.html. Acrobat Reader is widely used on Windows, Macintosh, and Linux systems to read and print files that are independent of the operating system. Millions of PDF files are found on the Internet, including many genealogy-related documents.
Now Adobe has released a new version that supposedly fixes the security problems. I downloaded the new version on one of my Macintosh systems today and found the installation was simple.
This will be a shock for some of Tom Jones' fans: the world famous singer hailed as a Welsh icon, is actually three-quarters English.
The shocking news arrived with the launch of the Welsh 1911 census records earlier this week. The Times, The Mirror, the Daily Star, the Daily Express, The Sun, The Daily Telegraph and Hello! magazine were quick to publish the story, announcing three of Jones’s grandparents hail from the West Country, not Wales.
The following announcement was written by The Generations Network, parent company of Ancestry.ca:
An estimated half of all Canadians will have an ancestor in the historical censuses / one in four Canadians cannot trace roots back beyond their grandparents
Matt Rutherford has been a reference librarian in local and family history at the Newberry since 2004. He is well known in genealogy circles in an around Chicago.
Access to Footnote.com might now be available for free at your local library. The following announcement was written by EBSCO Publishing:
EBSCO Publishing Becomes Worldwide Library Distributor of Footnote™ Historical Digital Archive and Genealogy Database
IPSWICH, Mass.--EBSCO Publishing (EBSCO) and Footnote have announced a distribution deal making EBSCO the exclusive worldwide distributor of Footnote.com for libraries and institutions. Footnote.com combines original historical documents and personal histories, creating a unique historical and genealogical resource.
The following announcement was written by FamilySearch:
Four pre-1900 censuses available for free online TORONTO—FamilySearch, in partnership with Ancestry.ca and the Libraries and Archives Canada (LAC), announced today the addition of the 1851, 1861, and 1871 Canada Census indexes to its online collection. The new indexes can be searched for free at FamilySearch.org (click Search Records, and then click Record Search pilot). FamilySearch published the 1881 Canada Census previously online and plans to add the 1891 Canada Census shortly.
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