Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter

1940 Census Project Indexing is now 75-Percent Complete

A report Friday by Dennis Brimhall, CEO of Family Search, said the volunteers indexing the 1940 U S Federal Census are well ahead of schedule. More than 137,000 volunteers are creating the indexes, with that number growing by nearly 1,000 indexers a day.

At last report:

On this Day in History: It Rained Frogs

White frogs fell on Mosley, a suburb of Birmingham, England, during a severe thunderstorm on the morning of June 30, 1892. The reason for this "rainstorm" is still unexplained, although 1892 was not the only time in history that frogs or fish fell from the skies.

The Tide of Canadian Immigration Captured in Silent Movies

Library and Archives Canada has released digitized silent movies of immigrants and the immigration facilities, filmed from 1919 to 1921. If your ancestors arrived in St. John, New Brunswick, you can see what they saw upon arrival at the Department of Colonization. Another film shows the Barnardo Orphanage in Peterborough, Ontario.

Other stories in the film include:

Weakley County, Tennessee, Archives to Move to a New Location

On Wednesday, members of the Weakley County Historical and Genealogical Society began to restore the archives that are currently stored in the Weakley County Courthouse basement. Once the records are restored, they will be transferred to a room allocated by the county in the old Dresden Elementary School.

Adobe Creative Cloud Now Available for Rent

If you use a number of Adobe products, a new service may appeal to you. Adobe is now offering Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Audition, Acrobat X Professional, Adobe Business Catalyst, Adobe Edge, Adobe Muse, Adobe Story Plus, Adobe Typekit, and the Adobe Touch Apps as a cloud-based service for a monthly fee. Adobe Digital Publishing Suite, Single Edition will also be added soon, allowing you to be able to deliver digital publications to the iPad. Desktop applications included with your monthly membership are available in both Macintosh OS and Windows versions.

One-room School Houses in Dodge County, Wisconsin Documented Online

At one time there were as many as 440 one-room schoolhouses throughout Dodge County. Lorraine Beal has documented more than one-third of those public school buildings and many of her findings are available online.

Beal has documented about 186 one-room schoolhouses she has located in Dodge County. For some of the structures, she obtained pictures of the buildings, some of the classes and even a few of the teachers. For other schools, she obtained a list of the teachers and even some report cards. All that information is available, through the assistance of Ken Riedl, on the Dodge/Jefferson Counties Genealogical Society website at http://www.dodgejeffgen.com/.

Is Your e-Book Spying on You?

I am a big fan of e-books and now I rarely read a book printed on paper. The past ten or fifteen books I have purchased were all published as e-books. However, a recent article by Alexandra Alter in the Wall Street Journal was a bit of a "wake up call." Alter says an estimated 40 million e-readers and 65 million tablets in use in the U.S. Alter then claims that Amazon, Apple, Google, and Barnes & Noble all can easily monitor your reading habits.

findmypast.co.uk Adds New Yorkshire Parish Records

4,625 new parish records for Yorkshire have recently been added to findmypast.co.uk. The Ryedale Family History Society provided findmypast.co.uk with these records, in association with the Federation of Family History Societies.

Records added include:

Type of records	Number of records	Date range	Coverage
Baptisms	2,176	1790-1886	Allerston, Birdsall, Rillington
Marriages	1,446	1754-1837	Allerston, Birdsall, Helmsley, Malton
Burials	1,003	1813-1888	Allerston, Birdsall, Lockton

brightsolid Wins Award for British Newspaper Archive Project

Dundee-based brightsolid’s work to digitise 40 million pages of historical newspapers has been recognised by ScotlandIS, the trade body for information and communications technologies (ICT) sector, as the most successful IT project of the year at the Digital Technology Awards Scotland. The award was made for brightsolid's mass digitisation project with the British Library.

Just months after the successful public launch of the British Newspaper Archive– which attracted more than a million searches on its first day - it has now been recognised by industry peers as a Scottish success story.

Ancestry.com Adds Six More Searchable States to the 1940 US Census

According to a note from Ancestry.com, the company will release six more fully indexed and searchable states to the 1940 U.S. Federal Census collection at midnight tonight (June 28). One problem: I am not sure what time zone "midnight" will be. I  suspect it will be midnight Mountain Daylight Savings Time but am not certain.

The six new states include (with corresponding record counts):

Pennsylvania - 9,900,180
Ohio - 6,907,612
Tennessee - 2,915,841
Virginia - 2,677,773
Colorado - 1,123,296
Vermont - 359,231

Follow-up: The Only Safe Storage is L.O.C.K.S.S.

On May 5, I published an article about the only safe way to make backups at http://goo.gl/XtEYA. In that article, I mentioned the legal problems of online file storage service Megaupload. The company provided file storage services and had a great method of allowing one user to share files with others. The problem was that Megaupload had both customers who used the service legally as well as some customers who used it illegally. Some unscrupulous users found that Megaupload was a great way to share movies, music, and other files that were protected by copyright.

The owner of Megaupload protested that the company was doing everything legally even though admittedly a small percentage of Megaupload's customers were performing illegal file swapping on the service. Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom (an obvious pseudonym) compared his company to the telephone companies: the service was legal even if some customers found ways to use it for illegal purposes.

Man Sentenced 7 Years in Prison for Stealing Rare Historical Documents

Sixty-four-year-old Barry Landau said nothing as he left court sentenced to seven years in prison for his role in the theft of more than 4,000 rare historical documents written by Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Franklin, Karl Marx and Franklin D. Roosevelt, among others.

“Mr. Landau was masquerading as a presidential historian when in reality he was a con artist who had gained people’s trust and then steal their property,” U.S. attorney Rod Rosenstein said.

You can read more in an article from WJZ television at http://goo.gl/0nduQ.

1940 U.S. Census Records for California Now Searchable by Name

The following announcement was written by the 1940 U.S. Census Community Project:

Free Searchable Index of 1940 U.S. Census Records Nearly Complete Thanks to 130,000 Volunteers Participating in Largest National Service Project of its Kind

SALT LAKE CITY, Jun 28, 2012 -- The 1940 U.S. Census Community Project announced today that the entire set of 1940 U.S. census records for California can now be searched by name. Thanks to the efforts of more than 130,000 volunteers, more than 105 million names from the 1940 U.S. census have been indexed with complete records for 29 states now available to the public on Archives.com, FamilySearch.org and findmypast.com. Additionally, ProQuest plans to make the records available in more than 7,000 public and academic libraries nationwide in the coming months through Heritage Quest and the name index will also be available through the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) soon. The national service project, the first and largest of its kind, is fast approaching the completion of a fully searchable name index of 1940 U.S. census records.

FGS 2012 Conference to be Held in Birmingham, Alabama

The annual conference of the Federation of Genealogical Societies is one of the larger genealogy gatherings of the year in North America. The next conference will be held from August 29 - September 1, 2012 in Birmingham, Alabama. Here's my weather prediction for those days: it will be hot and humid. Of course, that's a safe prediction for Alabama in August!

This year's conference, co-sponsored by the Alabama Genealogical Society, will have a theme of Indians, Squatters, Settlers and Soldiers in the "Old Southwest."

Rob G. Healey, R.I.P.

The friends of Rob G. Healey will be saddened to hear of his passing. An active genealogist, Rob was best known as one of the Contributors/Developers working on the GRAMPS software project for Linux, Windows, and Macintosh. He lived in Buckley, Washington.

More information, including a message from Rob's wife Michelle, may be found on his Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/rob.g.healey?sk=wall

Free Access to more than 40 Million Select Canadian Records on Ancestry.ca Until July 2nd

In celebration of Canada Day, Ancestry.ca is offering a way to discover ancestors who helped turn a country into a home.


Access to records across some of Ancestry.ca's most popular Canadian collections - Immigration, Military, Census, and Vital records - can reveal the birthplace of an ancestor, their military rank, an occupation, and even the household income of a family.

Google Glasses are Real and are Available For Order Now

I wrote about Google Glasses recently, at http://goo.gl/UHwl4 and at http://goo.gl/M6rV6. Today, Google Founder Sergey Brin appeared on-stage at the Google I/O conference wearing a pair of Google Glasses and announced that they are available for order beginning now.

Mugshots of the Worst Criminals of the 1870s

I bet they didn't teach you about this in high school history classes. Those classes focused on the noble gentry, the generals, the politicians, and other upstanding individuals. However, one has to wonder what life was like for our ancestors. You know... the everyday folks.

The CBS News web site gives an insight to some of the less-than-noble people of the time. All the photos are of juveniles convicted of crimes in Newcastle, England from 1871 to 1873. Hardened criminals or not, these pictures probably are typical for children of the time, including your ancestors and mine.

The picture above is of 11-year-old Ellen Woodman who was ordered to do 7 days hard labor after being convicted of stealing iron

Google Unveils the Nexus 7 Tablet Computer for $199

I have written several times lately about the phenomenal growth of tablet computers and e-readers. That growth continues. At today's Google I/O conference in San Francisco, the company announced a new device that is part e-reader and part computer, to be called Nexus 7. The number 7 in the name apparently refers to the 7-inch, 1280 x 800 HD display screen.

The Nexus 7 is available for pre-order now via Google Play for only $199 with 8 gigabytes of memory or $249 with 16 gigabytes, and will ship in mid-July to customers in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Australia. Buyers will get a $25 credit to spend in Google Play, and the tablet will come pre-loaded with one movie, one book, and several magazines.

Virtual Pin Map on uencounter.me Releases New Features

I first mentioned Virtual Pin Map a few weeks ago at http://goo.gl/hc9QP. At that time, the company introduced a new, although rather simplistic, ability to pin locations where family members have been born, lived, worked, and died in addition to marking other major milestones in a family’s lineage. Apparently, usage from genealogists has since spiked.

Today, the company announced as new upgrade with several new features. The one that interested me concerns genealogy. Quoting from today's announcement: