Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter

U.S. Department of the Interior Provides Information to Native Americans Tracing Their Ancestry

The U.S. Department of the Interior has a webpage dedicated to offering helpful tips and information on tracing Native American ancestry.

The Trace Indian Ancestry page has seven subsections including Ancestry, Genealogical Research, Enrollment Process, Benefits & Services Provided to American Indians and Alaska Natives, Cherokee Indian Ancestry, Dawes Rolls and Contacting a Tribal Entity – The BIA Tribal Leaders Directory.

Relative Finder Finds Relatives Among Your Mormon Facebook Friends

A new application only works on the new.FamilySearch.org web site. Access at this time is restricted to members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons) plus a very few others. However, access is expected to be open to everyone at some future, unspecified date.

Several BYU computer science major students and Professor Tom Sederberg have created a Relative Finder application that searches back an average of nine or ten generations to find your relatives. It can even show you your relationship to famous historical figures, such as the signers of the Declaration of the Independence, apostles, and prophets from the early days of the restored church, American presidents and many more.

Military Records Added to GenesReunited.co.uk

To coincide with the 97th anniversary of the outbreak of WW1, UK family history site Genes Reunited have released a variety of military records. The following announcement was written by Genes Reunited:

From today people interested in tracking down their ancestors from WW1 and the Second Anglo-Boer War 1899 - 1902 can visit www.genesreunited.co.uk and search the latest records listed below:

DNA Testing Guide for Genealogists and Adoptees

Richard Hill is the creator of the DNA-Testing-Adviser.com web site. He recently created a 12-page overview of DNA testing that may be of interest to genealogists and adoptees alike. The full title is "How to Identify Ancestors and Confirm Relationships through DNA Testing."

The booklet gives a short description of each of the four major types of DNA tests of interest to genealogists and adoptees and then provides a side-by-side comparison of each.

I found the booklet to be easy to read. That is, it is not full of medical and biological mumbo-jumbo that is common to other books about DNA. This won't help anyone who is already a DNA expert. However, if your are new to the subject and are trying to learn the basics, "How to Identify Ancestors and Confirm Relationships through DNA Testing" should give you a great start.

Ancestry.com Expands U.S. School Yearbook Collection

The following announcement was written by Ancestry.com:

Ancestry.com Expands U.S. School Yearbook Collection to Include More Than 150 Million Records of Relatives' School Days

Enhanced Collection Also Features Celebrity Yearbook Photo Gallery of Today's Stars Before They Were Famous

PROVO, UT, Aug 24, 2011 -- Ancestry.com, the world's largest online family history resource, today announced a massive expansion of the world's most extensive searchable collection of U.S. school yearbooks online. The company has added nearly 25,000 new yearbooks to the collection, which now totals over 35,000 and carries 155 million records encompassing the years 1884 to 2009. The U.S. Yearbook Collection includes close to seven million images from thousands of U.S. high schools, junior highs, academies, colleges and universities.

News from FamilySearch: Mexico Collections Account for 6 Million of 8 Million New Images

The following announcement was written by FamilySearch:

Mexico Collections Account for 6 Million of 8 Million New Images New Records From Belgium, England, Nicaragua, Peru, Russia 23 August 2011 Along with six million images added to Mexico collections at FamilySearch.org this week, additions were made to collections from six other countries. Browse through newly–added parish register records from Belgium and England, or the new collection of church book records from Russia. Additionally, new records from eight U.S. states: Maryland, Montana, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Vermont, and Virginia, are now available at FamilySearch.org.

New UK Genealogy Television Show: Guess The Relative

I wrote about this new television programme last April at http://goo.gl/2lZ0R and now the producers have issued an official press release. The following announcement was written by Dragonfly TV:

Dragonfly TV is making an exciting show featuring families, ancestors and long-lost relatives.

Do you think your family tree might have British roots? Would you like to travel to Britain to discover your living relatives?

Where is Your Family Photo Album?

Most of us have photo albums in our families. The albums typically are thick books with celluloid pages and contain photographs of the family over the years. Now here is a question: when was the last time you added a photograph to that album?

Today, we typically keep our pictures on our computers, or our phones; we display them on Facebook or some other networking site. We rarely print them out, even though the technology to print glossy photographs from our computers has been available for years. Instead, we trust them to technology and many people are not prepared to save the photos for decades. Today's photographs may be lost to our descendants.

Lord Coe’s Ancestor was a Sex Abuser of Slaves in Jamaica

The head of the London 2011 Olympics, Lord Sebastian Coe, has discovered that his ancestor sexually abused slaves in Jamaica and fathered a child as a result. Lord Coe discovered his shocking ancestral past when he took part in the BBC genealogy TV show, Who Do You Think You Are, which traces celebrities’ family trees. Lord Coe, who said he had no idea his roots lay in the Caribbean, accepted that his ancestor was 'not coming out of this as an Eton chorister.'

You can read this interesting story in an article by Steve Pope in The Voice at http://goo.gl/U3DZt

On the Road Again (for a Long Time)

I have always traveled frequently, but the next few weeks may turn out to be a new record for me. In short, I expect to be on the road a lot for the next three months. Some of the trips will be to attend genealogy conferences and seminars. I am speaking at several seminars and will be an observer at two or three others. My schedule is posted at http://www.eogn.com; look in the column to the right and scroll down a ways until you find Meet Dick Eastman in Person. I will also take several "mini vacations" along the way. Since I am already on the road, I find it easy to take a few days off and go sightseeing in many areas. However, the vacations are not listed in my public schedule on http://www.eogn.com.

I suspect there will be minimal impact to this newsletter. After all, I will be traveling with a 2½-pound laptop, a wi-fi connection, and a wide-area Sprint 4G wireless modem.

Searching Your Irish Roots Online

With over 70 million people around the world claiming Irish ancestry, there’s a chance that you have some Irish roots. Why not take look? Your Irish roots are only a click away.

Kate Hickey and Jordana Kozupsky have published a list of online genealogy sites that will help you connect with your Irish roots. You can find this useful list on IrishCentral.com at http://goo.gl/X4QEN

Reuniting Tornado Victims with Treasured Photos

Disasters are always difficult to handle, of course. When victims of fires, floods, tornadoes are asked about their losses, the first reaction often mentions the loss of family photographs. In May, Joplin, Missouri, was hit by a tornado that left 160 dead and obliterated a third of the city. Photographs and most everything else flew into the funnel cloud. Luckily, many photographs were recovered. However, how do you match photographs with their owners?

Days after the May 22 storm, Angela Walters, a genealogist in Oklahoma, noticed some of these photos on Facebook pages. Many listed bare-bones information: streets where the pictures were found, a contact phone number. Why not put all of them in one place, Walters thought, so their owners could find them? So many people had lost so much, surely they'd cherish any trace of their past.

Ooma Suffers Total, Global Outage

I have written several times about VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) telephone systems and their future prospects. I ripped out my old-fashioned telephone several years ago because of the high phone bills. Now I have two phones: a cell phone and a VoIP phone that connects through the Internet. I have been very pleased with the results but an incident this week shows that perhaps VoIP isn't ready for prime time usage just yet.

I have mentioned Ooma a couple of times. This cloud-based VoIP service is a bit expensive to purchase. However, once installed and running, Ooma provides unlimited free telephone calls to all U.S. phones and low-cost calls to any other phones worldwide. For many high-usage phone users, Ooma is a very cost-effective service.

This week, Ooma suffered a system outage. Everything. All Ooma phones were down.  Want support? You couldn't call Ooma's customer service department as the company uses its own product for telephone calls (naturally!) and all Ooma phone lines were down. Want to send an email message or check the company's web site for status information? Well, Ooma's email services and web servers also run on Ooma's network, which was down.  Ooma was incommunicado.

Archaeologists Comb Newly-discovered Civil War POW Camp

Camp Lawton was a Confederate camp that imprisoned about 10,000 Union soldiers after it opened in October 1864 to replace the infamous Andersonville prison. It was open only about six weeks before Sherman's army arrived and burned it during his march from Atlanta to Savannah.

The soldiers and prisoners abandoned the camp in a hurry, after being rousted out in the middle of the night and loaded onto trains. As a result, they didn't have much time to pack and load everything. They mostly grabbed what the could and abandoned the rest. 150 years later, archaeologists are finding all sorts of historical items at the newly-discovered site, including rings, buckles, coins and other keepsakes as well as a lot more.

Stolen Lincoln Documents Recovered by National Archives

A recent article in the Los Angeles Times describes how stolen documents signed by Abraham Lincoln have been recovered. What interested me was the conjecture on how the documents may have been stolen, perhaps 50 years ago, or even longer.

You can read the article by Richard Simon at http://goo.gl/5LLvR.

Footnote.com Announces New Focus on Historical U.S. Military Records and Changes Name to Fold3

I expected to see some changes after Footnote.com was acquired by Ancestry.com. The new emphasis on U.S. Military records certainly seems logical. I must admit, however, that the name change was unexpected. It strikes me as a more meaningful name for military records than does "Footnote."

The following announcement was written by Fold3, formerly known as Footnote.com, a division of Ancestry.com:

Footnote.com Announces New Focus on Historical U.S. Military Records and Changes Name to Fold3
 
New Brand will Honor and Remember those who have Served
 
LINDON, UTAH -- (August 18, 2011) – Footnote.com, a premier destination for discovering family history records, today announced it will now focus primarily on offering the finest and most comprehensive collection of U.S. Military records available on the internet.  The site gathers the most valuable U.S. military records, photos and stories to help family historians and others discover and share the memories of those who served.

Geni Announces New Public Access

Geni has announced a new public (which means it will be free for most users) access method. The Geni Public Access program is geared towards institutions like public libraries or genealogical societies that provide access to computers connected to the Internet.  The Geni Public Access program does NOT offer all the capabilities of a paid, personal account, however.

You can read more about the Geni Public Access program at http://www.geni.com/corp/geni-public-access-program/

Skype WiFi is now Available at 1 Million Hotspots Worldwide

I have written several times about Skype and also about wi-fi networks for travelers. Now the two are available together.

The old Skype Access application has been re-written and updated, and the name has also been changed. Now known as Skype WiFi, the application is available for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch as well as for Windows and Macintosh laptop computers, and it brings wi-fi access (for a fee) to one million wi-fi locations worldwide. The application is not limited to Skype. While you can use Skype WiFi to make low-cost phone calls, you can also use it to provide full Internet access for any Windows, Macintosh, iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch application, including web browsers, email, and thousands of other applications as well.

You can sign up for the Skype WiFi service at any time. You must first have a (free) Skype account with Skype Credit.

1940 U.S. Census to be Free on Ancestry.com

Great news in this announcement written by Ancestry.com:

PROVO, UTAH (August 17, 2011) - Ancestry.com, the world’s largest online family history resource, today announced that both the images and indexes to the 1940 U.S. Federal Census will be made free to search, browse, and explore in the United States when this important collection commences streaming onto the website in mid-April 2012.
 
When complete, more than 3.8 million original document images containing 130 million plus records will be available to search by more than 45 fields, including name, gender, race, street address, county and state, and parents’ places of birth. It will be Ancestry.com’s most comprehensively indexed set of historical records to date.

Three Million Crime, Court And Convict Records to be Digitised at the UK's National Archives

The U.K. National Archives' crime, courts and convicts collection is to be transcribed, digitised and published online by brightsolid, following an open tender process.

Comprising bound volumes and loose papers dating from 1782 onwards, this vast collection includes records from the Home Office, Prison Commission, Metropolitan Police, Central Criminal Court and the Admiralty.