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The New York Times has reported that Ancestry.com is in talks with private-equity firm Providence Equity Partners Inc. and other firms to be taken private.
DISCLAIMER: These rumors are just that: rumors and speculation. This certainly is not a "done deal" just yet.
With stable revenue and relatively lower valuation, Ancestry.com was “attractively priced,” Bank of America Corp. analysts said last month in a research report. The New York Times reported that the online genealogy website could be valued at more than $1.5 billion, based on current talks.
Last week, I wrote an article at http://goo.gl/a55eQ predicting FindMyPast's entry into the U.S. marketplace, to become a competitor of Ancestry.com and several other U.S.-based genealogy web sites. The first sentence of that article read, "The official announcement hasn't been made yet, but a beta version of findmypast.com's new International Records web site is now online and available."
The official announcement has now been released. Here are two press releases issued today by from FindMyPast. The second release concerns a bargain introductory price:
Findmypast.com launches into U.S. July 24; seeks to become go-to site for Americans of British and Irish ancestries
World’s second largest genealogy company takes on its biggest rival, with the help of 1,000 unique record collections and 75% annual growth
San Francisco, CA. July 24, 2012: Findmypast.com, a British-owned family history website, is launching into the growing U.S. genealogy market on July 24.
The following announcement was written by the Halsted Trust:
The Halsted Trust is delighted to announce that findmypast.co.uk have agreed to sponsor their forthcoming conference on migration, to, from and within the British Isles
"Exodus: Movement of the People" will take place from the 6th to 8th September 2013 at the Hinckley Island Hotel in Leicestershire. This major residential conference will give the genealogy community an opportunity to increase their knowledge on migration and network with other family historians. Full details of the programme will be announced in September.
The following announcement was written by FamilySearch:
FamilySearch added new searchable collections online this week for Nevada and South Africa plus additional free records for Austria, Chile, China, Czech Republic, Dominican Republic, Korea, Peru, Portugal, Spain, and the United States. Search these diverse collections and 2.8 billion other records for free at FamilySearch.org.
Searchable historic records are made available on FamilySearch.org through the help of thousands of volunteers from around the world. These volunteers transcribe (index) information from digital copies of handwritten records to make them easily searchable online. More volunteers are needed (particularly those who can read foreign languages) to keep pace with the large number of digital images being published online at FamilySearch.org. Learn more about volunteering to help provide free access to the world’s historic genealogical records online at FamilySearch.org.
I was fortunate this week that I was able to attend and make presentations at the Midwestern Roots 2012 Conference, presented by the Indiana Historical Society and held Friday and Saturday in Indianapolis. This was a first-class event.
Roughly 35 presentations and workshops were held over the two day conference. The opening session on Friday featured D. Joshua Taylor speaking on the future of genealogy research. He presented some surprising facts and statistics about the genealogists of today and then made projections about the future.
I have been traveling in the motor home for almost a week. I have charged several restaurant meals and campground fees and in-store purchases on my bank's debit card. I was a bit surprised today when my bank called my cell phone and told me there was possible fraudulent activity on my card. At first, I assumed the charges were legitimate as I had made charges in several states in the past six days. However, as the lady on the phone recited the charges to me, one jumped out at me as obviously bogus.
Thursday evening, someone charged a night's stay at a Motel 6 somewhere in Virginia. Not only have I not been in Virginia for a year or so, but, if I was, I would not have stayed in any motel. After all, I am traveling in a motor home and am carrying my own bedroom with me! I have no need of motels!
The lady at Bank of America kindly credited the charge to my account.
This sounds like a great idea. It starts tomorrow (July 23) so it is probably a bit too late to sign up for this year's session but you might ask if it will be repeated next year. I am writing about it simply because it sounds like a nifty idea that other genealogy societies might want to emulate.
The Jacksonville, Florida, Public Library will host Genealogy Summer Boot Camp at the Main Library this week in partnership with the Jacksonville Genealogical Society, Inc. Sponsors include the Friends of the Jacksonville Public Library, the Federation of Genealogical Societies, the National Institute for Genealogical Studies, and the State Archives of Florida.
Barnes & Noble has introduced Nook for Web, which lets users access new digital content as well as their previously purchased eBooks on all PC and Mac-supported Web browsers. No sign-in or software download is required for Nook for Web, which is hosted on Barnes and Noble's library sites. Now readers without a Nook eReader can browse, sample, or purchase the millions of titles in Barnes & Noble's range.
Among the useful features of Nook for Web is the ability to switch between reading a book between your Nook tablet and Nook for Web, with the service keeping track of your place in the book.
The official announcement hasn't been made yet, but a beta version of findmypast.com's new International Records web site is now online and available. The site presently includes international records from England, Ireland, Scotland, Australia and Wales with other countries expected in the future.
The new web site is available with an introductory offer for the World Subscription of $4.95/month (U.S. funds) instead of the normal $20.83/month. It is limited to a set number of early subscribers while the site is in beta but will be opened to everyone once the site completes the beta test period.
Lynn McCleary and other members of the Muscatine County Genealogical Society aren’t about to permit a brittle celluloid connection to Muscatine’s past to snap. 44 spools of Muscatine Journal microfilm, dating back to 1840, have been converted to digital versions for preservation purposes.
Microfilm, which is stored on spools that contain page after page of historical documents, is more prone to tear as it ages, said Bobby Fiedler, the library’s assistant director. “The microfilm is used a lot, and that’s when it starts to tear,” McCleary said. “Our concern is one day it will no longer be usable. It is a precious thing to have preserved.”
CeCe Moore has written a great overview about DNA testing for genealogy for anyone who is new to DNA. Hosted on Geni.com, the series of articles is designed to answer the most commonly-asked questions:
Do you have a general curiosity about genetic genealogy or is your focus more specific? Are you primarily interested in researching your surname?
Are there specific brick walls that you wish to target with the use of DNA testing?
How far back in your family tree are these brick walls?
What is the ancestral pattern back to these brick walls, i.e.- mother’s mother’s mother or father’s mother’s mother’s father?
Are you ready for a long-term project or do you desire quick answers?
Are there adoptions in your family tree that you would like to explore?
Is your primary interest receiving a percentage breakdown of your overall ancestral origins or “ethnicity”?
The following was written by FamilySearch International:
FamilySearch launched a historic partnership with the National Archives of Italy in December 2011 to digitally preserve and index its civil registration records (birth, marriage, and death) for all states from 1802 to 1940. Since the project launch more than 24 million images have been published, and 4 million names have been made searchable on FamilySearch.org.
But there are 115 million historic Italian documents with over 500 million names remaining to index and publish. Tens of thousands of volunteers are needed. To meet this opportunity, FamilySearch is requesting help from indexers and arbitrators who speak or read Italian or a closely related language, such as Spanish, or who are willing to learn a handful of simple Italian words and phrases to help facilitate the initiative.
Want to see if an relative of yours received an army medal for heroism? The Department of Defense will refuse to even look, claiming that all the records were consumed in a fire at a military personnel records center in St. Louis in 1973. There is but one problem with that story: one Viet Nam vet has already assembled what appears to be a nearly complete list from other records stored at the National Archives and Records Administration.
“That fire is the biggest dodge,” said Doug Sterner. “Anyone who says this can’t be done simply doesn’t have the will to do it.”
After a six-week stay at home, I am leaving in the morning. I am headed to genealogy conferences in Ohio and in Kentucky, to an airshow (the world's largest) in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, and then to Birmingham, Alabama to prepare for the FGS conference being held in a few weeks.
Hmmm... Alabama in August... this might be warm.
I'll be traveling in the motor home and towing a Mini-Cooper behind. I'll stay in various RV campgrounds along the way. I should be on the road for about two months although I will make a quick airline trip home for some family commitments for a few days in mid-August. (I'll leave the motor home in a storage facility in Alabama during that time.)
The following is a Plus Edition article written by and copyright by Dick Eastman.
I have written often (see http://goo.gl/OZTXr) about the advantages of storing some of your backups off-site in "the cloud." Computer experts will tell you that everyone needs to make backups, and at least one copy of each backup needs to be stored "off site" where it is safe from local disasters such as house fires, burst water pipes, and similar in-home disasters. Storing some of your backups on Mozy, BackBlaze, Carbonite, Dropbox, Amazon S3, or other backup services is a great idea. However, most of these services provide only a limited amount of free storage space in their cloud (typically 2 to 5 gigabytes) and then charge you if you need more space. If you have a lot of data to back up, the charges can add up quickly. There is a cheaper method of accomplishing the same thing: you create your own off-site backup servers. Luckily, this is easy to do and, with a few pointers, is rather inexpensive. This article will supply those pointers.
Another advantage of this type of backup is that it lets you access your backed up files from anywhere you have an Internet connection. If you need a file from home, you can connect to the Internet from the office, from a hotel room, or from most any public library and retrieve whatever you need from your own server. You can even retrieve files by using an iPhone or an Android smartphone. Likewise, you can also save newly-created files from your laptop to your server in the cloud so that those files are available in the future from anyplace you can access the Internet. If you own multiple computers, you can back up all of them.
I well remember the day that I lost about 100 ancestors. It could happen to you.
In my case, early in my genealogy endeavors, I was adding information about “new” ancestors in great haste. Well, they weren't really new; they had always been my ancestors, but their names were new to me in those days. I'd find a new ancestor, record his or her information, then move on and find the parents. In the early days of my genealogy searches, it was easy to add new ancestors. After all, everyone has thousands of ancestors and, when you are new to the game, the records can be easy to find. This is especially true for French-Canadian genealogy as the Catholic Church did a great job of recording almost every christening and marriage and most funerals, usually including the name of the parents in each record. Those records are easy to find on microfilms and in printed books and, in recent years, in online databases.
As a genealogy newcomer, however, I didn't know about the need for double and triple-checking for accuracy.
Here is a fascinating view into the inhumanity of slavery. Jordan Anderson was a former slave who was freed from a Tennessee plantation by Union troops in 1864 and spent his remaining 40 years in Ohio. He lived quietly and likely would have been forgotten, if not for a remarkable letter to his former master published in a Cincinnati newspaper shortly after the Civil War.
Treasured as a social document, praised as a masterpiece of satire, Anderson's letter has been anthologized and published all over the world. Historians teach it, and the letter turns up occasionally on a blog or on Facebook. Humorist Andy Borowitz read the letter recently and called it, in an email to The Associated Press, "something Twain would have been proud to have written."
This letter is described in an article by Allen G. Breed and Hillel Italie in an Associated Press article available at http://goo.gl/erJjQ.
Cathy Tyree was on the hunt for an old couch when she stumbled across something incredible at an antique shop in Richmond, Virginia. Tyree had been in the store for only 15 minutes when she discovered a lost picture of her deceased father among the glassware, furniture and old books.
When Tyree lost her home in a foreclosure a few years ago, her father's trunk -- filled with family photos -- was auctioned off. Now she scours antique stores in Richmond, hoping to find more photos of her family.
Obviously, this is one isolated case but hundreds, perhaps thousands, of others also search for old photos. Perhaps you can help if you find old photos for sale.
This morning Ancestry.com added 15 more states to the 1940 US Census database. The following states are now available free of charge at http://www.ancestry.com/1940-census:
Archives.com and other community project partners recently announced the release of the California 1940 census index. The company wanted to showcase California in 1940, and demonstrate all of the interesting facts that can be found, by putting together this neat infographic:
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