Tag: Friday News

Articles/Stories of Interest

• “Baby Mohamed Clendennen: A Lesson in Creative Indexing” from On Granny’s Trail. A funny story and why it’s always important to check the original source before adding new information to our tree!
• “Genealogist, high school classmates team up to find missing woman’s family” – who knew genealogy could provide such a resource? Very neat story.
• “‘Gertie’s Babies,’ Sold at Birth, Use DNA to Unlock Secret Past”  –  A story about an interesting time in our history and how DNA is helping many people find their biological families.
• Looking for old family photos? Crestleaf gives 7 places where you can find some!
• Live near Chicago? The National Park Service is commemorating the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s funeral procession from D.C. to Springfield. There will be stops along the way besides Chicago! Check out the full article for more information.
• The idea of merging trees on Ancestry.com or other websites has always been met with a bit of healthy skepticism by many. But not all. And that can lead to some interesting results. Check out what one person discovered when researching Hillary Rodham Clinton’s family tree!
• Going to NGS?  Check out their mobile app for the conference! I used this last year and LOVED it! It was much easier to use when figuring out where I wanted to go next.
• New Jersey is going to allow adult adopted children request their non-certified original birth record come 2017. Check out more about what that all entails and who specifically can ask by reading about it here.

Webinars/Videos

• Have you ever used Gedmatch for DNA? It’s a great website and free to anyone who has taken a DNA test from any of the major companies. Check out a webinar on some basics of GEDmatch from Angie Bush here.
• Speaking of DNA and Angie Bush, she also did a short video on the FTDNA chromosome browser with Dear Myrtle, which you can find here.
• Ever wondered about why or how you should join a lineage society? AncestralFindings.com posted a short video on just that.
• Legacy Family Tree has a free webinar today, in a few short hours (2pm eastern). It’s called “Hookers, Crooks, and Kooks – Aunt Merle Didn’t Run a Boarding House” by Jana Sloan Broglin. Register here for free!

Resources

• FindMyPast has new records! Check out EOGN for last week’s additions and FindMyPast Fridays for this week’s additions (British newspapers, World War I records, wills index for Essex, and New South Wales records!).
• FamilySearch also added a number of records from the Czech Republic, Mexico, New Zealand, Ukraine, and the US. Check out a list here.

Happy first day of spring! Although we had a smattering of snow last night, our trees are beginning to bud and I have the beginnings of tulips coming up. My allergies are loving this! 🙂

If you are in the Northern Indiana area, the South Bend Area Genealogical Society is putting on their annual Michiana Genealogy Fair this Saturday from 9am-4pm! Harold Henderson will be the main speaker! Check out more information here.

I will also have a table set up where I will be doing a giveaway for a FREE 5-Hour research package! So stop on by!

Resources

• Do you have Swedish ancestry? ArkivDigital is having a free weekend this weekend! Check out more information here.
• SeekingMichigan.org new records! I posted about this on Tuesday as have numerous others, but in case you still haven’t heard there are now death certificates from 1921-1939 on SeekingMichigan.org. The indexes for death records from 1940-1952 will come out in a few weeks and they will be adding new certificate images as the privacy restrictions come off every year. Be aware that this news has caused their site to be flooded with viewers so it may be slow!
• Ohio is going to open their adoption records for those who were adopted from 1964- Sept 1996! Check out more in this article here.
• Sad news on EOGN. The Kansas Supreme Court has proposed restricted access to Kansas marriage records. You can read more here.
• Milford, Michigan now has their obituary index from 1929-1949 online. Check out more here.

Interesting Articles

• Tour a Jewish Cemetery in Poland by drone! Check out the video here and about the drone here.
• The Archivist of the US has challenged everyone to a transcription challenge! See more about it here and here.
• Do you have photographs that are just too much to keep? There is a project called THTK (short for “Too Hard To Keep”) run by the photographer Jason Lazarus. He takes photos that people would rather not have anymore and instead of destroying them, he places them in an online repository. You can read more about the project here.
• Crestleaf shared an article on how to use your Facebook photos to tell a story on Crestleaf. Check out the article here.
• Going to the Annual Southern California Genealogy Jamboree? Applications are not being accepted for the 2015 Suzanne Winsor Freeman Student Genealogy Grant! See more here.

Videos/Webinars

• TapGenes was a semi-finalist in the RootsTech Innovator Challenge. I find the idea to be rather interesting and I’ll be curious to see how it all pans out once it’s up and running. If you’re curious, check out the video here that explains what TapGenes hopes to do.
• Christa Cowen (the Barefoot Genealogist) shared a video about the Ancestry shakey leafs and how to go beyond them in this 30 minute video.
• She also shared another 34 minute video on doing genealogy on a budget which you can check out here.
• And just one more from Christa Cowen about documenting your research (23 minute video). Check it out!
• Interested in using Evernote for genealogy? Check out a short video from Lisa Louise Cooke on using Evernote here.

Happy weekend everyone!

RootsTech!

• The lovely people at RootsTech have made a some of their sessions live for people to stream online, for FREE – seriously, you can’t beat that people! Keep in mind that the sessions times are in MST! Click here for the streaming video and here for the schedule. Enjoy 🙂
• Family History Discover Center was announced at RootsTech (I am very sad I can’t be there!). This looks like an incredibly neat place to bring your whole family, including young ones, to learn about your family history. It looks like a lot of fun and it seems very interactive! Check out more information here or read about one blogger’s tour through the center here.

Resources

• The Daughters of the American Revolution made an amazing announcement! Previously with DAR, you could purchase record copies from someone’s application, which states what records someone used for their application. BUT, you couldn’t see the actual documents. Until now! Now, you can get the record copies AND the supporting documents for only $30!  This is wonderful news! I used it already and got to see copies of pages from a family Bible that I’m not sure still exists. Wonderful!
• NGS’s UpFront with NGS posted some new (to me anyway) websites that are FREE! Check out the list here.
• Check out the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services History and Genealogy webinars page for their schedule through May. It goes over the program and lets people know how to find and receive records of their immigrant ancestors and more!
• DNAeXplained – Genetic Genealogy – this is one of my favorite DNA blogs and recently she posted about Autosomal DNA tests and their pros and cons.  She covers the biggest companies (23andMe, Ancestry, and FamilyTreeDNA) and goes over each. If you’re thinking of getting this test done, this is a good read!
• The Society of Genealogists (in Britain) announced that a bill has passed that will bring down the price on vital records for England and Wales. You can read more about that here.
• FindMyPast.com has announced a couple of things this past week. They have partnered with FamilyTreeDNA and will be offering DNA testing services to FindMyPast members. They have also partnered with the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society.
• Interested in Irish genealogy? Donna Moughty, a professional genealogist who specializes in Irish genealogy, is setting up a research trip to Dublin this October and possibly to Belfast as well. Go here for more information!

Interesting Stories

• This is quite an amazing story of a woman who discovered her grandfather was a Nazi – and a rather well known one at that. She wrote a book about it and NPR shared her story here.
• This story has been floating around quite a bit, but do you have a plan for your online accounts after you die? Facebook now has an option for you or you could always leave something in your will.
• Going along that same idea, what do you do with all of your genealogy work after you die? Especially if no one in the family wants it? Dick Eastman wrote an article about where to donate records so they are available to everyone.
• With it being Black History Month, there are a number of stories coming up on African American ancestry, including stories on passing. This article discusses how one woman, Anita Florence Hemmings, passed as white while in Vassar college in the late 1890’s.