Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter

New Genealogy Club in Southborough

Interested in researching your family tree? The Southborough, Massachusetts Public Library is now putting together a Genealogy Club. The club will be for people of all skill levels. The club will invite speakers to teach members about family heritage and the history of different cultures. Meetings will be in an informal, round-table format.

Canada's Portrait Gallery to Close

After years of halted attempts to find a permanent home, the Portrait Gallery of Canada is a gallery no more, shuffled Wednesday into the programs branch of Canada's national archives.

The move is part of a larger shakeup at Library and Archives Canada, the portrait gallery's parent institution, which will see the gallery lose its name – as well as the person who has shaped it for the past eight years.

Kings County, N.S. Historical Collection to Become a Public Searchable Database

Great progress is being made in the development of a searchable electronic database for an archival collection rich in King's County, Nova Scotia history - and you can help.

The collection was put together over many years by the late Kings County historian Leon Barron, and was donated to the Kings Historical Society by Barron’s wife, Mary, following his death. She said Leon would spend many hours in the Acadia University library conducting research.

Book Review: Census: The Expert Guide

Note: Census: The Expert Guide describes the census records of England, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland.

Peter Christian and David Annal have written what appears to be the definitive guide to U.K. census records. This 262-page book not only describes the contents of the U.K. census records, but also provides lots of hints on how to find the records of your ancestors. It also describes methods of searching census records on the various online web sites as well as on CD-ROM disks.

Cryptographic Tools To Keep You Hidden On Facebook

Facebook has a very active group of genealogists. I have written before about the online service's multiple security problems that expose your personal information to third parties. If you use Facebook, you might want to read Technology Review's story about several cryptographic tools that can be used to hide your activity on Facebook, from both untrusted users and from Facebook itself.

The article is available at http://www.technologyreview.com/web/23405.

Michigan Governor's Latest Executive Order is Now Online

UPDATE: The full text of Governor Jennifer Granholm's latest Executive Order EO 2009-43 may be found at her website, http://michigan.gov/gov/0,1607,7-168-21975-221451--,00.html.  The portions of greatest interest to us as genealogists is the second half of this document, Parts III and Part IV. Some of the wording seems to be vague.

(+) The Death of Microfilm

The following is a Plus Edition article, written by and copyright by Dick Eastman.

Genealogists love microfilm. Visit any genealogy library anywhere, and you will see genealogists in darkened rooms, hunched over microfilm viewers, trying to solve the puzzles of their family trees. I have taken several pictures of genealogists sitting at rows of microfilm readers. However, I suspect that within twenty years those pictures will become collectors' items, recalling an era that exists only as distant memories in the minds of "the old-timers." You see, microfilm and microfiche are about to disappear.

Latest News: Governor Amends Executive Order Concerning the Library of Michigan

If you have been following the news here and elsewhere, you know that Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm has ordered the closure of the Michigan State Library as a cost saving measure. Today the governor has issued a new executive order that amends her previous order. She now says that the state’s library and historical collections will be preserved when the Department of History, Arts and Libraries ceases to exist on October 1. However, the details are still fuzzy.

Georgia Non-Indexed Death Certificates, 1928-1930

The Georgia Archives has now placed the death certificate images for 1928 to 1930 online. The images are not yet indexed, however, and are awkward to use. As the web site states, "This Death Certificate search system is provided as an interim solution until the records for 1928-1930 can be indexed and added to the Death Certificate Collection. Many users have asked for these records, so we are providing them with scanned images of the original Vital Records index."

Update on NGS' UpFront Blog

As mentioned earlier, the National Genealogical Society has a brand new blog at http://upfront.ngsgenealogy.org. It will provide more content sooner, convenience, readability, reliability, and will also provide a comments section.

While not mentioned in the announcement, the same NGS blog also has an RSS feed that makes it very convenient to read the latest news in an RSS newsreader. The RSS newsfeed is available at http://upfront.ngsgenealogy.org/feeds/posts/default.

Early 19th Century Documents about Cherokee Lives to be Translated and Preserved

Documents describing tribal life among the Cherokee in their original homeland are being translated from an archaic German script thanks to funding from the tribe.

Hundreds of diaries, letters and other papers that recorded about 100 years of history between the Moravian missionaries and their Cherokee hosts are the only known account of daily life in the Indian nation before the U.S. government uprooted the tribe in 1838 from what is now North Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia.

Dover, NH Public Library Awarded Funds to Microfilm Newspapers

The Dover, New Hampshire Public Library has been awarded a $5,189 Conservation License Plate grant by the New Hampshire State Library for its project to microfilm, and thus preserve, historic New Hampshire newspapers. Money derived from the sale of special license plates in the state will be awarded to the library.

The newspapers to be preserved, all published in Dover, include The Morning Star from 1826 to 1833, The Dover Daily Republican from 1880 to 1891, and The State Press/The Press from 1876 to 1880.

brightsolid Awarded Contract to Manage ScotlandsPeople Web Site

This appears to be an announcement of a renewal of an existing contract. The following announcement was written by brightsolid:

Online publisher brightsolid wins new deal to manage ScotlandsPeople online family history service

Online publisher brightsolid has won a three-year deal to manage the hugely-successful family history site, www.ScotlandsPeople.gov.uk.

The site, with almost one million registered users and growing currently by more than 10,000 per month, is run in partnership with the General Register Office for Scotland (GROS). The contract, awarded by competitive tender, will run for three years from September 2010.

Still More About the Library of Michigan Effort

The support efforts to save the Library of Michigan are snowballing. The Michigan Genealogical Council has a great deal of information about the situation, along with suggestions for what YOU can do to help.

The Council strongly urges every Michigan resident to write to their representative and at least one person on the Juciciary Committee. Their names are listed on the Michigan Genealogical Council web site.

Library of Michigan Petition Update

The following article was written by Fred Moss of the NGS/FGS Records Preservation and Access Committee (RPAC). This is similar to the earlier announcement only this newly-updated version offers a lot more details:

Library of Michigan—RPAC launches petition drive
September 6th, 2009
Fred Moss

Within the genealogical community, the Library of Michigan has long been recognized as one of the premier state libraries in the country.

The cohesive Library of Michigan collection with over 180 years of Michigan history, literature and culture records and reflects the lives of not only those who remained to raise their families within the state but of millions more whose migration to other parts of the country left their footprints in the soil and records generated by their passage. Visitors come from all across the country to research at the Library of Michigan.

Alaska State Archives Building to Re-open Tuesday

The Alaska State Archives has been closed since August 17, when rainwater entered the building through the roof during repairs. A contractor was repairing the roof at the State Archives in Juneau when the temporary waterproofing system failed and water entered the records vault.

About 1,000 boxes of documents were subjected to water in varying degrees. Some audiotapes, maps and blueprints also were affected. The materials range from territorial days to the present.

San Antonio Library's Texana Room to be Closed or Reduced?

The San Antonio (Texas) Public Library has a whole room dedicated to San Antonio and Texas history and genealogy. If the proposed city budget passes Sept. 17, Texana/Genealogy is going on the chopping block. Service hours are to be cut from 72 to 40 hours a week, and two full-time librarian positions — 40 percent of the department's staff — are to be eliminated. Besides reduced hours, that means Texana won't be able to offer as many genealogy and research classes. Nobody expects the volume of queries to drop off, so it also means that it will be a lot harder to keep up with requests from the public.

You can read the details in an article by Paula Allen in the MySanAntonio web site at http://www.mysanantonio.com/opinion/columnists/paula_allen/57604487.html.

Your Help Is Needed: Save the Library of Michigan

If you have been reading the news in this newsletter and elsewhere, you probably already know of the threats to move, reduce, and/or close the Library of Michigan. Many genealogists have already protested and those protests are growing louder.

In meetings held during the Federation of Genealogical Societies/ Arkansas Genealogical Society Annual Conference in Little Rock this past week, the Records Preservation and Access Committee (a joint committee of the Federation of Genealogical Societies and the National Genealogical Society) has initiated a petition drive in support of the Library of Michigan.

NGS Launches UpFront Blog

The following announcement was written by the (U.S.) National Genealogical Society although I did add my own comment at the end:

The National Genealogical Society is pleased to announce the launch of UpFront with NGS in blog format. “Blog” is short for “web log,” an Internet communications tool that has been growing rapidly in recent years. This format will extend all the conveniences of a blog to UpFront readers. Here are some of the major advantages:

Genealogy Myths: Real, Fool’s Gold, or Both?

Family stories are a wonderful thing. They often give you insights into the lives of your ancestors. However, beware! Not all family stories are true. Many such stories are fictional. Yet, even the stories that are either entirely or part fiction may contain clues to facts.  Good genealogical practice requires that we admit the fiction. But the next step the genealogist takes separates art from science. Before we discard these stories altogether, we need to mine them for nuggets of truth. Let’s look at a few of the more common “family legends” to see which ones you can mine for real gold.

Myth #1: Our name was changed at Ellis Island.