Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter

NC Coastal History Center Receives Grant for Archivist

The Outer Banks History Center is a regional archives and research library administered by the North Carolina State Archives and located in Manteo, on historic Roanoke Island, North Carolina. Its holdings document the history, development and growth of the North Carolina coast.

Each year the Center responds to between 3,000 and 4,000 research requests from scholars, writers, historians, journalists, genealogists, the general public, and such national broadcast media as the History Channel, the Weather Channel, and National Public Radio.

Michael Jackson in the SSDI

Wow! That didn't take long. Tom Kemp points out that Michael Jackson's entry has already appeared in GenealogyBank's copy of the Social Security Death Index. Details may be found at http://bit.ly/15CeRV.

Governor Eliminates Michigan State Library

This could have a huge impact on genealogists researching Michigan ancestry. Gov. Jennifer Granholm has signed an executive order eliminating the Michigan Department of History, Arts and Libraries and eliminating about $2 million in associated, annual costs from the 2010 budget.

Locating the Graves of Revolutionary War Soldiers

Some members of the Ohio Genealogical Society are fanning across the state to document the graves of all Revolutionary War veterans in their counties.

The goal is to put together an accurate account of the men who helped create the United States, said Kelly Coghan Holderbaum, president of the group's Summit County chapter. About a dozen volunteers from her group are walking county cemeteries this summer.

Destroying a 1500-Year-Old Indian Mound to Build a Sam's Club

Sam's Club, a division of retail giant Wal-Mart, wants to build a new store in Oxford, Alabama and has purchased a site for a new store. The location of the store isn't much of a problem but the company wants to use a nearby 1500-year-old Indian mound as "fill" for the construction site.

The mound is the largest known structure of its kind in the state. Workers hired by the city carried dirt away from the site this week. The move has angered American Indians and others.

Historians and Genealogists Are Furious as The National Archives at Kew Cuts Opening Hours and Expert Jobs

In the 8 June 2009 newsletter, I speculated as to what sort of news would be announced as a rather mysterious meeting notice had been published by The National Archives of Great Britain. That article is still available at http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2009/06/changes-at-the-national-archives-at-kew.html.

The meetings were held and now we know the news. Sadly, the news is not good.

MyTwoCensus.com

Run by a team of professional political journalists, MyTwoCensus.com is the non-partisan watchdog of the 2010 Census. You won't find any information here about your family tree, but it makes for interesting reading. The web site is a blog that focuses on mis-management and the government's inability to spend $13 billion of taxpayer's money in an efficient manner.

MyTwoCensus.com may not contain genealogy information today, but it describes the processes by which data is being collected for future use by your descendants who want to learn about you!

Cemetery Workers Accused of Digging Up Graves, Reselling Plots

A sad story on CNN describes apparently illegal actions by cemetery workers in Alsip, Illinois, 20 miles south of Chicago. The crime was reported by the cemetery owners who became suspicious. At least four cemetery workers have been accused of digging up graves, dumping bodies, reselling the burial plots, and pocketing the cash.

Help Wanted: A Town Archivist for Wilbraham

Wilbraham, Massachusetts is looking for a town archivist. The  position that has been vacant since longtime town archivist Coralie M. Gray died in 2007.

The town archivist serves as a coordinator between local agencies which have care of historical materials and documents, such as the town clerk, the Wilbraham Public Library, the Atheneum Society and the Historical Commission.

Social Security Numbers: a Non-Issue

I have written before about the security of the Social Security Death Index and its use as a very effective tool to combat identity theft. Now several newsletter readers have written and have referred to a string of articles that have appeared in the past few days claiming that researchers have "cracked the code to Social Security Numbers" and can now guess your Social Security Number, or SSN.

A close examination of the articles show that the articles are VERY misleading. Let me use a stronger term: they are hogwash. I have a still stronger term in mind, but this is a family newsletter.

Nothing Lives Forever, Especially Newspapers

I always assumed that newspaper articles had an infinite lifetime. Anything printed in today's newspaper would be stored for some time in the newspaper's archives department as well as at local libraries. Eventually, those papers would be microfilmed and therefore preserved forever. Well, I once thought it was forever.

The world is changing.

Preventing Identity Theft with the SSDI

Identity theft is a major concern these days, as it should be. Many legislators seem to think that the problem can be solved by locking up all the birth, marriage, and death records, which, of course, has an impact on genealogists. The legislators apparently have never checked with the security experts who deal with identity theft every day, however. The security experts report that public domain records of birth, marriage, and death are rarely used by identity thieves. Instead, the thieves have easier methods.

First, most ID theft begins at home. A high percentage of identity theft is perpetrated by someone who is personally acquainted with the victim and often is related to the victim. The Better Business Bureau found half of identity thieves caught in 2004 were family members, friends, in-home employees, or neighbors of their victims.

Next, almost no identity theft occurs because of Internet searches. In fact, frequent use of the Internet by consumers can REDUCE identity theft. Javelin Strategy & Research conducted a study by interviewing identity theft victims. The company found that most instances of identity fraud occur through traditional channels and are paper-based, not Internet-based.

Historic Burial Ground in Connecticut Gets New Life

It may be more than a hundred years after their deaths, but the founding families in Easton, Connecticut are getting renewed attention. The names read like a who's who from the town's early history: Bradley, Wakeman, Fanton, Hill, Wheeler, Nichols, Burr and many, many more. Those are the names etched on marble, granite and other stones marking the graves of these longtime families in the 1.25-acre Center Street Cemetery, which dates back to the 19th century, on Black Rock Turnpike.

TGN (Ancestry.com) Partners With MyLife.com

The Generations Network (TGN) is the parent company of Ancestry.com and several other web sites. The company has now partnered with MyLife.com, an online "people search" service. The announcement is full of highly-positive, "forward looking" statements but I was interested in the words "enhance the people search experience for consumers." It sounds like some new services will soon be available for Ancestry.com subscribers. I do assume that MyLife finds living people, not deceased ancestors.

Perhaps the most telling was the last paragraph that describes some of TGN's "numbers," especially: "Ancestry.com users have created 10 million family trees containing 1 billion profiles and 20 million photographs and stories."

Here is the announcement in full:

Index of Hubbard County, Minnesota's Oldest, Largest Cemetery is Now Complete

Indexing of Park Rapids’ Greenwood Cemetery’s headstones – from 1892 to the present – is now complete and the information accessible on a Web site. Greenwood Cemetery is the culmination of a countywide cataloging project that began in 1990, Marion Town spearheading the initiative. (Lakeport Cemetery’s index is complete, but is yet to be added to the site.)

Genealogist Darryl Hensel began work on the Greenwood project in 2000 and last year, Beth Waller and Rod Nordberg volunteered time for its completion.

US Cities May Be Bulldozed in Order to Survive

This radical proposal may have a huge impact on historic landmarks and other sites. The Telegraph reports that dozens of US cities may have entire neighborhoods bulldozed as part of drastic "shrink to survive" proposals being considered to tackle economic decline.

The government is looking at expanding a pioneering scheme in Flint, Michigan, one of the poorest US cities, which involves razing entire districts and returning the land to nature. Unemployment is now approaching 20 per cent in Flint and the total population has almost halved to 110,000. Local politicians believe the city must contract by as much as 40 per cent, concentrating the dwindling population and local services into a more viable area.

FBI Seeks Owners Of Stolen Artwork

I have written several times about William M.V. Kingsland, a well-known New York City genealogist. You can read my earlier articles here,  here and here. It seems that Mr. Kingsland was more than a genealogist; he was also an art thief. Now the FBI is trying to find the rightful owners.

William Kingsland was not even his given name — he was born Melvyn Kohn and spent his early years in the Bronx before legally changing his name to Kingsland. He thought it had a more literary sound to it and would help him gain acceptance among Manhattan's upper crust.

On a bizarre side note, a mover hired by the public administrator's office to transport the contents of Kingsland's apartment to a warehouse was charged with stealing two Picasso sketches, each valued at approximately $30,000. And, it turns out that was not the first time those two sketches had been stolen…sometime before they ended up in Kingsland's collection they were stolen from a New York art gallery around 1967.

Ontario's Archives Relocated to a Safe Place

Ontario's provincial archive, which was deteriorating because of poor storage conditions downtown, is now safe in a state-of-the-art facility at York University. The long-awaited facility, which officially opened yesterday, is being leased by the province for $5.3 million a year and will house a $400 million treasure that dates back to 1729.

Obama's Records to be Measured in Petabytes

And you think YOU have record keeping problems!

Paul Bedard, writing in Washington Whispers, notes that the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration has to copy, sort, file, and organize a huge collection of presidential records, most of which are electronic.

Nine Years of Genealogy Grants

Nine years ago -- back in May 2000 -- Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak started the Honoring Our Ancestors Grants Program.  It's a modest program run and funded by Megan with the help of her good-natured husband, Brian.  The only requirement is that the grants be for some sort of genealogically-oriented initiative.