Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter

LostCousins Offers Special Credit over Holidays

The folks at LostCousins have sent the following announcement:

Until January 4, 2010 anyone with an ancestor who was recorded on the 1881 British Census can get a free one-year subscription to LostCousins worth 10 pounds (around $16) by entering PROJECT1881 in the offer codes box at the foot of the registration page. (Note: offer applies to new registrations only)

Amazon Sells More Ebooks On Christmas Than Real Books

The technology age that many of us have been predicting is now upon us. Amazon reports that, for the first time ever, they sold more ebooks on one day than real books.

In a press release that seems designed to advertise the Amazon Kindle, the company reports that the Kindle Store now includes over 390,000 books and the largest selection of the most popular books people want to read, including New York Times bestsellers and new releases.

Rhode Island Cemeteries Master Name Database Index Online

The Rhode Island Historical Cemeteries Transcription Project was begun by genealogists in 1990 with the goal of entering all known transcriptions of cemeteries in Rhode Island into a database, then sending volunteers into the field with a printout to see which stones were still there and whether they were correctly transcribed. The cemeteries and the listings are primarily 1647-1900.

You can now search the Rhode Island Historical Cemetery Database Index for an ancestor buried anywhere in the state. The pre-20th century data is over 95% complete. The earliest gravestone in the database is 1647 for John Coggeshall, Sr., president of the colony of Rhode Island. Books have now been published for ten of the 39 towns and more are planned. These books document many gravestones never previously recorded.

Les Filles du Roi

If you have French-Canadian ancestry, you probably have encountered the term "Filles du Roi" at some point in your genealogy research. Millions of today's Canadians and Americans can find one or more of the Filles du Roi in the family tree. I thought I would explain the term this week and also provide some historical background information.

The French term "Filles du Roi" translates literally as "the daughters of the King." Between 700 and perhaps 1,000 young, single women traveled to Quebec City, Trois Rivières, and Montréal from 1663 to 1673 as a part of a program managed by the Jesuits and funded by King Louis XIV.

Get Rid of the Windows Bloat

Did you receive a new Windows PC for Christmas? Enjoy it! There's nothing like a fresh computer. Most new computers are much faster than the systems they replace and also, in the case of Windows, a new computer is the fastest it will ever be. A brand-new Windows computer is free from an overloaded system tray, bloated application installs, and disorganized file structures, right?

Unfortunately that's not always the case. A lot of machines ship with a whole lot of pre-installed software that you didn't ask for and surely don't want. Even worse, many of those unwanted programs load into memory at boot time and then soak up precious processor time forever. Why would you have a program that slows down your computer when you don't ever plan to use that program?

There is a simple answer: uninstall each such program. This should delete the programs and speed up your computer as the undesired programs are no longer wasting processor time. However, when you attempt to uninstall Windows programs, you often find that it is not as simple as you expected.

Do Your Ancestors Make You Look Fat?

We inherited our genes from our ancestors. In turn, our genes control most everything in our bodies. Our ancestors gave us our eye color, our hair color, our crooked teeth, and much more. They also gave us a predisposition to diabetes, cancer, obesity, and other diseases. Now a fitness expert says that we can reprogram many of those genes and do so in a pleasant manner.

Mark Sisson says that we need to throw out many of our beliefs about fitness and diet and go back to the diets of our ancestors in order to improve our health. In this case, he says to ignore the diets of our recent ancestors and return to those of millions of years ago - diets that defined our genes and shaped who we are and what foods our bodies need. Sisson suggests we seek the robust health of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. He also points out that the diet he advocates is much more enjoyable for most of us than the diets we have been told to follow in the past fifty years or so.

Book Scanning the Easy Way

I have written before about book scanners. They are divided into two basic designs: they are either huge mechanical monstrosities that turn pages automatically or else they are small and simple devices that scan bound books manually. The Plustek OpticBook A300 falls into the latter category: small and easy to operate.

The Plustek OpticBook A300 scans thick books without unbinding or dismantling them, so it is a perfect solution for genealogists, libraries, schools, graphic designers, publishing companies, hospitals, law firms and financial institutions.

Plustek has a video that illustrates the OpticBook A300 in operation and shows why it is superior to the flat bed scanners you find at the local computer store. Note that the OpticBook A300 scans right to the center of the binding, something that is difficult to do with most other flatbed scanners.

Did Alcohol Cause Civilization?

US archaeologist Patrick McGovern thinks our Neolithic ancestors turned to agriculture so they could be sure of alcohol. The expert on identifying traces of alcohol in prehistoric sites reckons the thirst for a brew was enough of an incentive to start growing crops.

McGovern speculates that a prehistoric human picked up some dropped fruit from the ground and popped it unsuspectingly into his or her mouth. The first effect was nothing more than an agreeably bittersweet flavor spreading across the palate. But as alcohol entered the bloodstream, the brain started sending out a new message -- whatever that was, I want more of it!

RedLaser for the iPhone

This article has nothing to do with genealogy, but it is one of the most useful programs I own, so I thought I would write about it.

Do you own an Apple iPhone? If so, get RedLaser. It costs $1.99, and it more than paid for itself the first time I used it. I have now saved perhaps $100 in the past few weeks because of this program.

RedLaser converts your iPhone into an indispensable shopping companion. Have you ever seen a store employee in a grocery store or major chain store scanning product bar codes? Now you can do the same thing: you use the iPhone's built-in camera to scan the bar code on almost any product available for sale.

Now, here is the best part: Unlike the store employee who is using a handheld scanner, your iPhone will immediately connect to RedLaser's servers on the Internet and look for a better price, either online, by mailorder, or in any local store that has its catalog online.  To find local store prices, RedLaser uses the iPhone's internal GPS to determine your longitude and latitude and then looks for stores within a few miles of your present location.

The program uses the Internet to pull down a list of prices so you can see if you’re getting a good deal. You can scan a bar code, and RedLaser will then display a list of stores with better prices within two or three seconds.

Update: Best Free Anti-Virus Software

I have written several times about free anti-virus programs for Windows. If you are using a Windows computer, don't even think about using it without an anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-rootkit, and anti-Trojan program installed, along with the latest updates for that program!

In the October 1, 2009 newsletter, I described a brand-new free anti-virus program that had just been released by Microsoft. When describing Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE), I wrote, "I don't have a virus testing lab so I cannot vouch for its performance." Now someone else with a virus testing laboratory has tested it and gave Microsoft Security Essentials a top rating for malware removal as well as their best ranking in a performance test as well.

Free Access to WorldVitalRecords over Christmas

WorldVitalRecords.com is providing free access to all the company's databases until December 28. The information required to access the Free Site promotion is First and Last Name, Email Address, Password and Phone Number.  The company will not ask for a credit card number to initiate free access.

Further information may be found at http://www.worldvitalrecords.com/email/promotional/WVRGift/xmas_lp_free.html.

Christmas in a New Light

From Wired.com:

In 1882, an inventive New Yorker finds a brilliant application for electric lights and becomes the first person to use them as Christmas tree decorations.

Edward H. Johnson, who toiled for Thomas Edison’s Illumination Company and later became a company vice president, used 80 small red, white and blue electric bulbs, strung together along a single power cord, to light the Christmas tree in his New York home. Some sources credit Edison himself with being the first to use electric lights as Christmas decorations, when he strung them around his laboratory in 1880.

Sticking them on the tree was Johnson’s idea, though. It was a mere three years after Edison had demonstrated that light bulbs were practical at all.

The idea of replacing the Christmas tree’s traditional wax candles — which had been around since the mid-17th century — with electric lights didn’t, umm, catch fire right away. Although the stringed lights enjoyed a vogue with the wealthy and were being mass-produced as early as 1890, they didn’t become popular in humbler homes until a couple of decades into the 20th century.

You can read more at http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2009/12/1222johnson-creates-christmas-lights.

Parker County, Texas Hangings Focus of New Book

Did your ancestor suddenly disappear from the records? Perhaps he is listed in this new book. Jean Bennett, the genealogy librarian for the Weatherford (Texas) Public Library, has recently published a book highlighting hangings in and around Parker County dating back to the mid 1800s.

The book, Twisting in the Wind: Springtown Hangings of the Hill Women and Other North Texas Hangings, features 15 stories of hangings in Parker County and surrounding areas.

The $99 Netbook Computer

It's a bit late for Christmas, but a new netbook (small laptop computer) is available now for $99. I suspect this will become a VERY popular item!

In fact, at this price, don't expect a powerful computer. This one really is a "bottom of the line" system. It won't even run Windows XP.

The Cherrypal Africa has a 400 MHz processor, 256 megabytes of RAM memory, a 2 gigabyte flash memory "hard drive" (very fast and no moving parts), a 7-inch screen with 800 by 480 pixels, USB 1.1 and 2.0 ports, SecureDigital card support, and it runs either Linux or Windows CE operating systems. A web browser, word processor program, spreadsheet program, and more are included at no extra charge. It should get about 4 hours of use on the lithium battery. It is small enough to slip into an overcoat pocket.

The Impenetrable Jungle of Osama bin Laden's Family Tree

The Times Online has an interesting article about Osama bin Laden's ancestry. I found it interesting not only because of how many descendants his father had, but also because it gives a glimpse into the lifestyles of a culture that is foreign to me.

Mohammed bin Laden, Osama’s father and the family patriarch, has about 600 descendants. He was an illiterate bricklayer from Yemen who emigrated to Saudi Arabia, won favor with the royal family and was rewarded with vast and lucrative contracts to renovate the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, build highways and construct mosques. The bin Ladens prospered mightily and were dubbed the Rockefellers of the Middle East.

When he was not making money, Mohammed multiplied. He had as many as 22 wives, and by the time of his death in 1967, he had fathered 54 children — give or take a few.

(+) How to Install Multiple Operating Systems on One Computer - Part #2

The following is a Plus Edition article, written by and copyright by Dick Eastman. Please do not forward this article to others without the author's permission. This is Part #2 of a two-part series. Part #1 is available at: http://eogn.com/wp/?p=7606.

NOTE: In Part #1 of this article, I gave an overview of virtualization and told why it is useful for genealogists and others to install such software on their desktop or laptop systems. In this second, and last, part of the article, I will describe the many products available today and give a brief description of each.

If you presently have a Windows System

Internet Explorer 8 Bug

A half dozen or so newsletter readers have reported that they cannot read this newsletter online. I suspect there are more readers with the same problem. In every case, those who reported the problem were using Internet Explorer 8. I have a bit of advice for those readers: "Don't use Internet Explorer 8!"

In fact, Microsoft won't call it a bug but the company does admit that many sites that work perfectly in Internet Explorer 7 will not display properly in Internet Explorer 8, unless you use Microsoft's "workaround." When Microsoft upgraded to Internet Explorer 8, they broke something that used to work properly in Internet Explorer 7. The same sites also will display properly in Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari, and other web browsers.  If that's not a bug, I don't know what is.

ZDnet has compiled a list of 2,400 major web sites that cannot be displayed properly in Internet Explorer 8. You can see the list at http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=2072 (and that list is growing as more web sites are discovered). Yet, every one of those sites displays properly in Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera, and even in Internet Explorer 7.

Luckily, Microsoft has produced an easy fix.

25 Percent of Aussies Descended from Royalty

Australians might be known for having a convict past but almost a quarter were descended from English aristocracy or a famous historical figure, a survey has found.

The new research, commissioned by family history website Ancestry.com.au, surveyed more than 1000 Australians who researched their family history. It found that 23 per cent were descended from convicts; 17 per cent from soldiers or military men; 13 per cent from a famous historical figure; 12.5 per cent from someone rich and 11 per cent from English aristocracy.

Strange Names

Megan Smolenyak has written an article for The Huffington Post about unusual names found in census and other records. Gift King, Pilot Light, and Giggle Davis are just a few of the names, along with Square Sleigh, Square Wheat and Square Kitchen.

Helen Sclair, R.I.P.

Helen Sclair's address during the last years of her life will remain unchanged into eternity. A recognized authority on cemeteries and burial practices, Mrs. Sclair lived in a house on the grounds of Bohemian National Cemetery on Chicago's Northwest Side since about 2001. Her cremated remains will rest not far away under a granite stone bearing the inscription, "The Cemetery Lady, An Advocate for the Dead."

Mrs. Sclair, 78, died of cardiac arrest on Wednesday, Dec. 16, in the Harmony Healthcare and Rehab Center in Chicago, where she had been recovering from surgery, said her daughter, Lu Helen Sclair.