The DAILY genealogy technology newsletter for genealogy
consumers, packed with straight talk - hold the sugar coating - whether
the vendors like it or not!
It's Christmastime, and I suspect someone is asking, "What would you like for Christmas?" I'd suggest the answer might be, "A digital camera!"
Of course, a digital camera is always great for taking family photographs. Millions of people do that every day. However, for the genealogist, a camera can serve as a multi-purpose tool. It's even better than a Swiss Army Knife!
My favorite use of a camera is for snapping pictures in a cemetery. It serves as an automated notebook, recording the transcriptions. However, even better, the resulting images serve as source citations for the records you keep. I cannot think of a better source citation than an image of the words that were etched in stone. Of course, you will want to record the date, too. This is easy to do with most digital cameras that will optionally record the date and time on every picture taken.
Peter Craig passed away Thursday, November 26, 2009. He was both a Fellow of the American Society of Genealogists and a Fellow of The Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania. A brilliant genealogist, he was a friend to many, a prolific author on the Swedish Colonial Period in the Delaware Valley, and will be greatly missed.
FindMyPast.com has announced the completion of the online version of
the UK census. Now that the 1851 census is complete, you now have
access to every record from every England and Wales census between 1841
and 1911. FindMyPast.com is the only site where you can search the
complete 1841-1911 census collection.
The following announcement was written by the producer of the GENP genealogy software:
Melbourne, Australia
We are pleased to announce that GENP version 3 has been released.
GENP is a consumer orientated product which will also appeal to the serious genealogist.
Existing abilities are - multi media, multiple databases, multiple users, grouping of databases, multi lingual. Link your data from one database to another. "Link don't merge" - keep your data separate.
The (Fort Wayne) Journal Gazette has an interesting article about the local library. Indeed, visitors from all over the country visit the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne to use its excellent genealogy collection. It is believed to be the second-largest genealogy collection in the United States with more than 350,000 printed volumes and 513,000 items of microfilm and microfiche. According to the Journal Gazette, some patrons are using the library without visiting the library.
This sounds like a great program, one that should interest all genealogy societies. The following was written by the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania:
The Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania is hosting “The Virtual Society in Action” on Friday, December 11, 2009, Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.
Attention Genealogical and Historical Societies in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic States ...and anyone with an interest in society activities for the twenty-first century and ways to use social networking tools to deliver service.
The Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania and its Partners Program cordially invites you to attend the 2009 Pennsylvania Partnership Summit, “The Virtual Society,” an all-day program focused on ways societies can add to their Internet presence to increase society outreach. No matter whether you are active with a genealogical society or a group in another field, the program will address ways to better function in the electronic age. Sessions will address society activities and ways to use social networking tools to deliver service.
The following is a Plus Edition article, written by and copyright by Dick Eastman.
NOTE: The following article has nothing to do with genealogy. However, it is an interest of mine and I thought I would share it with others.
In a list of jokes that is floating around the Internet, one caught my eye: "You have a list of 15 phone numbers to reach your family of 4." Indeed, that is a problem for many people. Do you have a home phone and a cell phone and an office phone and perhaps a VoIP computer phone? If so, how do people find you? Do they have to go through a list of phone numbers to track you down?
I used to have that problem. I used to tell people, "Before 8:00 AM call me at home. From 8:00 AM to 8:45, call me on my cell phone. From 9:00 to 5:00, call me at the office. From 5:00 PM to 5:45, call me...". Well, you get the idea. And, of course, there was a completely different set of instructions for weekends.
I had the pleasure of knowing Dick Pence for more than twenty-five years. He not only was an expert genealogist, he also was always very kind and amiable. He continually helped newcomers.
Dick Pence passed away last Sunday from a heart attack.
I cannot guess how many genealogists he helped over the years. I know that he helped me. Many of us benefited from his knowledge and especially from his wry sense of humor. Dick was quite the storyteller and many of us well remember his talk about "two longs and a short." (It was a reference to telephones before the invention of dial phones.)
In the November 06, 2009 newsletter, I reported that "Tulare City Manager Darrel Pyle said he and his staff are working to find a new home for the Sequoia Genealogical Society's records collection, which won't make the crosstown trip to the new library building." However, the Tulare City Council is now questioning the decision.
A study session and a public hearing on the matter are scheduled Tuesday. At issue is where the genealogy collection, which is now housed in the Tulare Public Library, will go once the new library at Cross Avenue and M Street opens in June.
The Wisconsin Historical Society recently put more than 80 standard county histories online. The collection totals about 56,000 pages and is being enthusiastically welcomed by genealogists, local historians, archivists and public librarians. These books typically were published 1880-1920 and contain several hundred pages filled with pioneer recollections and other local data that was not recorded anywhere else.
Most of these volumes are several hundred pages long and include detailed accounts of individual cities, townships and villages, as well as biographical sketches of prominent residents.
I have written a number of times about the struggles of libraries to provide services to their patrons in this age of digital media. Now the theme of the 2010 national librarians' conference, sponsored by the University of Oklahoma Libraries, will be "Climbing Out of the Box: Repackaging Libraries for Survival."
Archeologists in Cupids, Newfoundland, have unearthed the remains of a stone wall that may have housed cannons to defend Canada's first English settlement, established on the shore of Conception Bay in 1610. The newly discovered remains suggest the wall might have housed seaward-facing cannons to ward off attackers in the early 1600s, an era when rival fishermen from France, Spain and Portugal -- as well as the notorious English pirate Peter Easton -- sometimes menaced the fledgling coastal community.
Like the traces of earliest French settlements at St. Croix Island off New Brunswick's southern coast (1604) and at Quebec City (1608), the archeological finds at Cupids represent the beginnings of a permanent European presence in the northern half of the New World.
Newsletter reader Jim Warren sent a note with a link to a news story and then a comment of his own: "Here's another perfect example of the important message you preach of why backups of everything are so important."
The story he referred to says, "A Menlo Park (California) man is pleading for the return of his family history, after burglars on Tuesday stole five fireproof document safes full of birth certificates, marriage licenses, photographs and other records of his ancestors, carefully collected over his entire lifetime.
"Irvin Chambers, a 61-year-old lifelong resident of the Peninsula, said the thieves probably thought the safes contained valuables when they stole them sometime around 8:30 a.m. Tuesday from his home.
A half-way house for those convicted of drug and alcohol convictions
is now using inmates to recover records of those buried in unmarked
graves at the Sullivan County Farm. Counselor Sara Poisson says, "The
men here, they're young, primarily here for drug offenses either sales
or possession violation of probation and they're kind of at a
crossroads right now. Either this is an opportunity to get your life in
order or just to keep coming back on the merry-go-round."
The graves are part of a turn-of-the-century cemetery lying just across
the road from the county farm. The burial grounds are divided into two
parts. The front contains remains of prominent families, the great
granite headstones still pristine and proper despite time. They are
buried by family. But behind those stones lie the remains of the poor,
dropped at the farm for infirmity, poverty, insanity, unwed pregnancy,
stealing bread, being an orphan, sometimes just a hernia, back when the
farm was the county almshouse.
Writing in the FamilySearch Labs blog, Ray Madsen describes a newly-added feature:
You may have noticed the Community Trees link that showed up on the FamilySearch Labs home page a few weeks ago. If you’re into family history you’ll probably want to check it out. The Community Trees project allows FamilySearch to publish lineage-linked genealogies that cover a specific place and time. These trees are a genealogists dream. If you’re lucky enough to be doing research in an area covered by one of these trees you’ve just struck it rich. Each tree is searchable with views of individuals, families, ancestors and descendants. They can be printed and usually can be downloaded in GEDCOM format (sometimes licensing requirements don’t allow us to offer GEDCOM downloads). Best of all, each tree is linked to all of the supporting sources.
The Mid-Michigan Genealogical Society has published a book with an unusual title: Shopkeepers, Soldiers, Statesmen and One Naked Lady. William A. Atkinson, a historian and co-editor of the book, said readers will find short histories on “old Lansing families, but not well published families.” “These are names that are not on the tips of everyone’s tongues,” he said.
Eighteen people worked in multiple teams to create the combination of 31 family and organizational (two churches, one sanatorium and the Daughters of the American Revolution are also detailed) histories.
The wedding records of more than 10,000 couples who eloped to Scotland to get married in the 18th and 19th century are set to be published online on Ancestry.co.uk. Gretna Green became a popular venue for weddings in the 18th century.
The town became a popular venue after the Marriage Act of 1754 in England, outlawing marriages without parental consent if either party was under 21. Many younger couples simply traveled over the border to Scotland, which had more lenient laws. Gretna Green became the most popular spot for couples who eloped.
The UK National Archives at Kew, Richmond, Surrey, England will be closed for the annual stocktaking efforts on Friday 4 December to Monday 7 December. Over Christmas and the New Year, The National Archives will be closed from Christmas Eve to Monday 28 December 2009 and from New Year’s Day and 2 January 2010. All dates are inclusive.
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