Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter

John Prescott's Welsh Secret Revealed

It seems that former Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, John Prescott, has some skeletons in the family closet, skeletons he didn't know about until discovered by a genealogist who was researching background material for the filming a show for BBC Wales.

The politician was told his great-great-grandmother had borne four children by her own father, a miner in North Wales.

17th Century Parish Record from a Powys Church is Found

A rare piece of 17th Century church history which was feared lost in Powys, Wales has been found - nearly 75 years later. The register from the parish of Llandeilo Graban, near Builth Wells, went missing in 1935, and mysteriously turned up in the Midlands.

Dating from 1669 to 1812, it has been handed to Powys council's archives department for safekeeping. The log of births, marriages and deaths is in a poor condition, but the council said it would place the details online.

What Was Your Ancestor's Property Worth?

Genealogists often find references to money in old deeds and other documents. Even U.S. census records frequently recorded estimates of a person's real estate. The naturally question is, "I wonder what that would equal in today's dollars?" There is a web site that can answer this question.

Federal Grant to Help Digitize Lincoln Collection

A $50,000 federal grant will help digitize manuscripts in the Lincoln Collection housed in Fort Wayne, Indiana at the Allen County Public Library.

Library genealogy manager Curt Witcher says the library board accepted the library services and technology grant Tuesday and is now awaiting the Indiana State Library's final approval.

NGS President to Testify About NARA

The following is a letter written by Claire Bettag. She asks that it be distributed widely:

We are pleased that Jan Alpert, President of NGS, will be testifying at the previously announced hearing next week (16 December) on Capitol Hill related to the National Archives. This may well be the first time a member of the genealogical community has been invited to offer testimony at an oversight hearing.

Ancestry.com Launches Enhanced U.S. Census Collection

The following announcement was written by Ancestry.com:

In a survey last year, top on the wish list of Ancestry.com members was improved images for U.S. Federal Censuses, one of the richest sources of information for family history searches. Improving this collection has been a top priority at Ancestry.com throughout 2009.

Today we’ve launched enhancements for six U.S. Census collections – in addition to the improvements on six censuses released a few months ago. In all, we’ve gone through more than 200 million records to improve images and many indexes.

Work From Home Scams

This has nothing to do with genealogy. However, it is an important topic and one that I think should be widely distributed to computer users everywhere. Please feel free to pass this on to anyone that you think will benefit.

Have you seen those ads for various "work from home" offers? Many of them show a smiling man or woman leaning up against a luxury automobile, often parked in front of a mansion. Other, similar ads show people relaxing on a yacht while others simply show pictures of stacks of twenty dollar bills. The insinuation is that you can also have money, automobiles, mansions, and yachts if you sign up for this "deal." One problem, almost all of these offers are scams, designed to get your money.

Perhaps the most insidious are the ads promising that you can make a lot of money by posting information on Google. One problem: it doesn't work that way.

Follow-Up: Paying Very High Fees for Cemetery Records

I wrote about the high prices quoted by the Hollywood Memorial Park and Cemetery in Union, New Jersey when a woman seeking cause of death information contacted the cemetery, asking for information about 12 relatives buried there. The story received a lot of publicity, including this newsletter and a lot of newspapers.

The owners of the cemetery apparently are sensitive to the "black eye" received. I noticed this new press release that was issued today:

Review and Reader Discount: British Newspapers Online

Pam Cerutti has published a review of the popular the British Newspapers web site. Pam writes:

Made available by Gale, part of Cengage Learning, The British Library and the Joint Information Systems Committee, the British Newspapers website at http://newspapers.bl.uk provides lots of information to help put into timely context ancestors who lived in England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales during a 100-year span. It has fully searchable newspapers as well as a timeline of major events, articles about aspects of life in those times, and articles about both people in the news and the newspapers themselves. A good amount of information is available for free; however, views of most full newspaper articles are offered by purchase of a modestly-priced pass for either 24 hours or 7 days.

Dick Pence's Memorial Service

As I reported last week, Dick Pence passed away on November 22. I received a very nice note from his widow, Ellyn. She has read all the comments appended to the end of that article and wishes to thank everyone for their kind thoughts.

Ellyn also informed me that the memorial service arrangements have been made and all the genealogists who knew Dick and perhaps worked with him are invited. The memorial service will be held Saturday, January 9, from 2 to 4 PM at the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association Conference Center, 4301 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, VA 22203.

Click here to see the location. Once you are viewing the map, click on DIRECTIONS and enter your own address to obtain driving directions to the memorial service location.

Memorial contributions can be made to the Frederick HS Alumni Association Scholarship Fund, P.O. Box 544, Frederick, SD 57441.

Early New Brunswick Historical Documents Placed Online

Thanks to a $120,000 federal grant, the New Brunswick Provincial Archives website now contains an additional 65,000 provincial government documents, including the records from the New Brunswick legislative assembly from 1786 to 1833.

Provincial archivist Marion Beyea said digitizing and loading thousands of pages of original documents to the website will be a boon to history students, researchers, writers and New Brunswickers who want to trace their family roots.

Ancestry.ca Places Bavarian Personnel Rosters, 1914-1918 Online

The following announcement was written by Ancestry.ca:

(TORONTO – December 8, 2009) In a world-first, Ancestry.ca, Canada’s leading family history website, has commenced the online launch of the Bavarian WWI Personnel Rosters, 1914-1918, a comprehensive collection of First World War German service records.

The records now online detail the full military careers of 1.5 million Bavarian soldiers who fought during the First World War, including then 25-year-old volunteer Lance Corporal Adolf Hitler, considered today as one of the most evil men in history.

Although unification in 1871 brought together the four kingdoms known as Bavaria, Prussia, Saxony and Wurttemberg into one modern German state, each retained its own military until the end of the First World War. These records list soldiers from the Bavarian Regiment of the German Army.

Carry a Scanner in Your Pocket

Genealogists love scanners. We use them to digitize photos and documents. Find a picture of your great-grandparents? Scan it. How about the immigration document you found at the archives? Scan it. You may not know it, but you may already have a decent scanner in your pocket.

Technically, the typical desktop scanner is really a camera. A somewhat specialized camera, to be sure, but a camera nonetheless. In fact, many people don't use scanners at all. They simply use a good-quality digital camera. Now, thanks to some software, you can use your Apple iPhone camera as a scanner.

Scanner Pro 1.2 is the latest version of a popular iPhone application which transforms the device into portable scanner. You can snap a picture of a document or of an old picture, and Scanner Pro then converts the image to a PDF file in the same manner as a scanner.

The product becomes a bit more interesting when it is used in conjunction with two other products produced by other companies: Dropbox and Print n Share from EuroSmartz.

Free My PDF

Once upon a time, PDF files were considered to be "secure." That is, back in "the good old days," an Adobe Acrobat PDF file could not be converted to any other format. Lots of vendors published in PDF format as a simple method of protecting their content from being stolen. While anyone could copy the PDF file itself, those files could not be converted to Word or any other format.

Of course, those days are gone. Now any number of utility programs are available that will convert PDF documents to Word or text or to any of a number of other formats. However, the PDF format itself has become more sophisticated, now allowing for files to be encrypted or for certain capabilities to be restricted, such as disabling copying or printing. Indeed, many of the CDs I have reviewed in past newsletters cannot be printed, and the copy-and-paste functionality has often been disabled.

Now a new online service removes those restrictions in an ever escalating cat-and-mouse game.

Grant Helps Preserve Mason County, Kentucky's Old Records

Mason County Clerk Frances Cotterill and her staff are sorting through history with the help of a $10,000 grant that's enabling them to preserve records dating back to 1789. The documents that have been kept at the old Mason County courthouse in northern Kentucky include settlement reports, deeds and county court records.

Paying Very High Fees for Cemetery Records

According to an article in the NJ.com web site, Deborah Cogill needs to find out about her ancestry. In her case, it is not a simple genealogy study. It is about her health, possibly life or death.

Cogill was recently diagnosed with epilepsy. While talking to her doctors about how genetics may play a part, she recalled that some of her older relatives also suffered from epileptic seizures. Her doctor advised finding information about these other relatives so as to better diagnose her own problems.

GENEii Family History Writing Contest - Deadline December 31, 2009

The following announcement was written by the Southern California Genealogical Society:

The Southern California Genealogical Society sponsors one of the very few writing contests designed specifically for family historians. The GENEii Family History Writers Contest, now in its tenth year, offers cash prizes in two categories:

Footnote.com Honors WWII Veterans with the First-Ever Interactive Pearl Harbor Memorial

The following announcement was written by Footnote.com:

-Footnote.com Opens Their WWII Collection Free To The Public During December-

Lindon, UT – December 7, 2009 – In honor of Pearl Harbor Day, Footnote.com announced today that they will make the largest interactive WWII collection on the web including the Interactive USS Arizona Memorial free to the public during December.  Featuring over 10 million records, documents and photos from the National Archives, this collection helps family members and historians better understand the people and events of WWII.

(+) A Fourth Way to Run Windows Programs on Your Macintosh

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

I use a Macintosh computer most of the time, but I also recognize that the more popular genealogy programs are written for Windows. To be sure, there are some good Macintosh genealogy programs, and I have reviewed several of them in past newsletters. However, most computer “experts” will claim that Windows users have a wider variety of genealogy programs from which to choose.

Actually, I could argue the opposite. In fact, I will contend that Macintosh users have the widest variety of genealogy programs to choose from. Anyone using a modern Intel Macintosh computer manufactured in the past two or three years can run all the Macintosh genealogy programs as well as all of today's Windows genealogy programs and even Linux genealogy programs. Try that on your Windows computer! Yes, Macintosh users have a wider variety of genealogy programs to choose from than do Windows users. All they need is a modern Macintosh laptop or desktop system with the Macintosh operating system, appropriate virtualization software, and a copy of Windows.

Footnote, Census, and FamilySearch

Beau Sharbrough has published an interesting article on his blog. He offers thoughts about the mushrooming business of providing images of U.S. census records online. Of course, HeritageQuest Online and Ancestry.com have been doing this for years. Access to these images has always been expensive. HeritageQuest Online offers the images only through libraries and the fee charged to each library is substantial. Ancestry.com provides similar images to the general public although at rather high fees.