The DAILY genealogy technology newsletter for genealogy
consumers, packed with straight talk - hold the sugar coating - whether
the vendors like it or not!
I bet these folks now wish they had digitized their archives and stored multiple copies in multiple locations: a fire in Kellogg, Idaho at The Shoshone News Press Thursday morning destroyed the southwest corner of the building, although not the rest of the building's contents. The building housed 70 to 80 years of daily news archives. The fire chief reported the office "had a lot of newspaper so there was a lot of combustible material."
Claire Bettag sent the following note: I am posting this message on behalf of a colleague, Augusta Elmwood, who lives in New Orleans.
She recently found a document and would like to find the right home for it. Augusta describes it as a "Sale/Grant of Crown Land document (Canada, PQ) for 200 acres of land, dated 8 July 1891, in favor of John Egerty, Jr of the township of Wolfestown, county of Wolfe." The document is about 14" x 18" with a big green paper seal on the left side, where it is attached by three small tacks (starting to rust) to a piece of dowel (looks hand-carved). The back side has an abstract of the transaction in the center. It looks like it was once folded up.
Gregg Grunow, a senior librarian who heads up the Virginiana Room at the Main Street Library in Newport News, has been scanning and posting historic documents to the city's website, including postcards and maps from the 1700s to the 1920s. Some examples are maps from the 18th century and land deeds signed by Collis P. Huntington, the railroad magnate who helped develop Newport News and its shipyard.
Soon to be posted are World War I-era photographs depicting life at U.S. Army Camp Morrison in what is now Newport News, and soldiers returning from the war under the Victory Arch.
Mark Tucker writes on this ThinkGenealogy blog: "I am excited to announce what might be the very first genealogy app for the soon-to-be released Windows Phone 7. It is a graphical cousin calculator that can determine the relationship between two individuals by knowing the relationship of each to their closest common ancestor. With just a few taps and drags, you can determine the relationship of any two people."
There seem to be lots of stories like this in the news lately. Zillah, Washington police are investigating the theft of an old burial book and other items from the maintenance office at the city cemetery.
Public Works Director Tim Tilley says duplicate cemetery records of most burials are kept at City Hall, but the old cemetery book dating to the 1920s was one of a kind. He says it held information about how people died and was useful tool for families researching genealogy.
If you know of any articles that should be published in this newsletter, any future genealogy events that should be listed in the calendar, or any other information that you think I should know, please send it to me. I use an online "ticketing system" on this web site that has proven to be much more reliable than email. Items sent to me via the online support ticketing system never get blocked by spam filters.
To contact me for any reason, look in the menus to the far right of this web page, scroll down a bit and click on "Contact Dick Eastman." That will take you to a web page that shows how to send a message to me and also lists my telephone numbers and FAX number. (Does anyone still use FAX? I haven't received a FAX in six months or more.)
Bill McGrath sent word of a major project that will interest anyone with ancestors in the Troy, New York area. Bill writes:
THE TROY NEWSPAPER PROJECT
A multi volume Index of Death and Marriage Records transcribed from various Troy, NY newspapers
In 1935, the Philip Schuyler Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), located in Troy, New York, documented the death and marriage records that were printed in various Troy newspapers during the years 1812 to 1885.
This is just a "heads up" announcement that I might not be posting any newsletter articles for the next day or two. I'll be busy.
Tonight I am in a gorgeous resort and conference center near Camden, Maine. Tomorrow, I'll be attending and making presentations at the Maine Genealogical Society's Annual Conference. (See my earlier "Maine Genealogical Society Annual Conference" article at http://tinyurl.com/23br2op.)
Five days ago, I mentioned that Internet Explorer version 9 beta 1 is now available. (See http://tinyurl.com/26kd2ou.) Microsoft now reports that the new version was downloaded two million times in the first two days and has maintained a steady rate of downloads since.
The IE9 beta site itself has received more than nine million visitors. By contrast, only 1.3 million users downloaded Internet Explorer 8 in its first two days of availability.
The new version fixes a number of bugs, including one that affects the display pages here on www.eogn.com. It also shows a simpler, more streamlined user interface and reportedly runs faster than version 8.
Want to place your family tree on the wall in a place of honor in your home? Writing in Babble.com, Michelle Horton shows pictures of several blank charts where you fill in the information. I think you will agree these are not your run-of-the-mill charts.
Click on the image to the right to see a larger picture.
The Deseret News web site has an article this morning about Utah's original 1895 constitution that is now available to the public on the Web. While that is interesting, what really caught my eye was a quote later in the article:
Joyce Ogburn, dean of the Marriott Library and university librarian, said, "The role of libraries has changed considerably over the past several years. No longer are we simply repositories for books; we are now digitizing, creating scholarship, and collaborating with other organizations to preserve some of our most treasured items."
Take 10 carrier pigeons, strap each one with a 30 gigabyte USB keys and then race them against a typical rural Internet connection starting from a Yorkshire farm in the United Kingdom. Who do you think will win? Well, I’ll tell you. The pigeons reached their destination, 120 miles away, in an hour and fifteen minutes. The Internet? It hadn’t even delivered a quarter of the 300 gigabyte video file.
This was done for fun, but it was also to make a serious point. Outside of major cities, Internet connectivity is still awful. But I bet you already knew that.
Arjun Jain, a sophomore at Ludlowe High School in Fairfield, Connecticut and an Eagle Scout with Troop 199 of Fairfield, worked closely during the summer of 2010 with Fairfield Museum and History Center Genealogist, Roderick Mackenzie, to complete his Eagle honor project –immortalizing the Fairfield East Cemetery on the Old Post Road. To meet the necessary criteria, Jain combined his interests in computers and history, spending long hours to meticulously note grave inscriptions and create a working database.
The intense field work, supervised by MacKenzie, involved a team of volunteer family members, friends and scouts, noting grave inscriptions, checking over the work with meticulous care. Jain adapted an existing database to fit his parameters. “With this database anyone can search for a family member’s gravestone and be pointed to the location of the correct headstone,” Jain said.
“The overall project doesn’t stop with this single database. The Fairfield Museum and History Center is planning to obtain similarly created databases of other historical cemeteries and combine them to make one publicly accessible database of Fairfield and the surrounding areas. We have one of the most extensive databases for genealogy in the state.”
The following announcement was written by Library and Archives Canada:
Ottawa, September 23, 2010 - Library and Archives Canada (LAC) is pleased to announce the launch of a new online database, “Upper Canada Land Petitions (1763–-1865).”
Through this online database, researchers can access more than 77,000 references to petitions for grants or leases of land created by individuals who lived in present-day Ontario between 1763 and 1865.
The following announcement was written by Family History Expos:
Learn the Tech to Trace Your Roots, California Family History Expo
Learn the tech to trace your roots at the California Family History Expo, October 8-9 at the Alameda County Fairgrounds, 4501 Pleasanton Avenue, Pleasanton, California.
Our elected officials are always looking out for our best interests, right? In 1930, the U.S. Senate actually banned dial telephones in the Senate's offices and talked about extending the ban to all of Washington, D.C. The reason? The all-knowledgeable senators felt that they shouldn't be performing the work of a telephone operator.
iArchives is the parent company of Footnote.com, a company mentioned many times in past newsletters. Today, the company announced its sale to genealogy powerhouse Ancestry.com. The sales price was $27 million in a mix of cash, stock, and assumption of liabilities.
I don't think anyone who has been watching genealogy businesses will be too surprised by this acquisition. Several people have been predicting it for a long time. The announcement is so new that it is not yet mentioned on the Footnote.com web site. I suspect that will change later today.
The following was written by Ancestry.com:
ANCESTRY.COM INC. TO ACQUIRE IARCHIVES
Leading Brand for American Historical Content
PROVO, Utah, September 23, 2010 – Ancestry.com Inc. (Nasdaq: ACOM) announced today it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire iArchives, Inc. and its branded Web site, Footnote.com, a leading American History Web site, for approximately $27 million in a mix of Ancestry.com stock, cash and assumption of liabilities. This acquisition will provide the company with a complementary consumer brand, expanded content offerings, and enhanced digitization and image-viewing technologies.
The following announcement was written by Thomas MacEntee of High-Definition Genealogy:
Win Two Free Admission Tickets Valued at $150 US
September 21, 2010 – Chicago, IL. GeneaBloggers, the genealogy community’s resource for genealogy bloggers, is happy to announce the California Family History Expo contest running from September 21, 2010 through September 24, 2010.
Mystery surrounds thirteen gravestones found in an abandoned home in Omaha, Nebraska. The men named on the gravestones were military veterans, some dating to the Civil War. All served and died near Knoxville, Tennessee, some 900 miles from Nebraska where they were found.
A mammoth survey of graveyards currently underway in Inishowen to map the names and burial places of the peninsula's deceased will be a "huge boost" to local genealogy. The indepth graveyard index is being compiled by Irish Graveyard Surveyors Ltd., (IGS Ltd.,) and the company claims the project will bring a massive historical and genealogical boost to the area.
The two men have already surveyed thousands of graves around the peninsula including Iskaheen, Muff and Drung as well as Bocan, Culdaff and Ballybrack, Greencastle. The company aims to survey every grave in Ireland over the coming years.
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