Sunday, May 30, 2010

AnceStories: The Stories of My Ancestors: Genealogical.com Offers 25% Discount on Any Book or CD During Memorial Day Weekend

AnceStories: The Stories of My Ancestors: Genealogical.com Offers 25% Discount on Any Book or CD During Memorial Day Weekend

Check out this post to get special code for 25% off sale at Genealogical Publishing Company for Memorial Weekend. Hurray before it's too late!!

How to Cite a Funeral Card | Destination: Austin Family - StumbleUpon

How to Cite a Funeral Card | Destination: Austin Family - StumbleUpon

Check out this blog post from Thomas MacEntee. Very helpful information about citing unusual items.

Genea-Musings: Saturday Night Genealogy Fun- your Relationship Calculator

Here's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun from Randy Seaver. Give it a try. You can post your findings are a post here or as a comment to this post or a comment of Randy's site. I'll post mine later.

Have Fun

Genea-Musings: Saturday Night Genealogy Fun- your Relationship Calculator


Saturday, May 29, 2010


Saturday Night Genealogy Fun- your Relationship Calculator

Hey genealogy buffs - it's Saturday Night, time for more Genealogy Fun!

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (come on, don't be a party pooper...) is:

1) Open up the genealogy software program of your choice.

2) Think about two special people in your family tree (your parents? your spouse? a famous person? a distant cousin? yourself?).

3) Use the Relationship Calculator in the software to determine the relationship between the two special people. If you don't know where to find the Relationship Calculator, go to the Help button and find out. Follow the directions!

4) Tell us about it in a blog post on your own blog, in a comment to this post on my blog, or in a Note or comment on Facebook.

Saturday, May 29, 2010

Nationwide Gravesite Locator

Nationwide Gravesite Locator

In honor of Memorial Day. If you're looking for a military grave, check out this site. This is for veterans & family buried in military cemeteries or with government grave markers.

Friday, May 28, 2010

Unexpected Genealogy Superheroes - Family Tree Magazine

This interesting article from Family Tree Magazine:

Unexpected Genealogy Superheroes - Family Tree Magazine


5/28/2010
Without these folks, priceless historical records would've been lost.
While doing research for a book in Arcadia Publishing’s Images of America series, author Daniel J. Burns, a Duquesne, Pa., police officer with a passion for history, was approached by a man who’d retired from a local steel mill.
Some years ago, the man had heard that the complex—now closed and all but abandoned—was scheduled for demolition. Although he was physically handicapped, he decided to explore the mill offices before the bulldozers arrived. In a drawer of an old desk, he found two large photo albums filled with dozens of surprisingly high-quality 8x10 photographs of the mill taken just after the turn of the 20th century. All had complete descriptions and were dated from 1914 to 1918. When he gave the books to Burns, he said that he was “happy to finally find someone who appreciated their true value.”
Burns also did some rescuing of his own. One day at the police station, Burns was talking to the city’s maintenance man as he dumped a box of old city hall files into the outside dumpster. At the top of the trash pile was a torn photo (above). After cleaning up the photo, Burns realized it was a treasure. “The photo, taken in 1909, showed the Duquesne Police Department, posing proudly in front of city hall in their uniforms, brass buttons and all,” Burns says. “It’s the only local photograph known of its kind.”

From the August 2010 Family Tree Magazine

Thursday, May 27, 2010

Genea-Musings: Military Records on WorldVitalRecords.com FREE from 27 May to 1 June

Randy Seaver posted the following on his Genea-Musing blog.
To go to his blog and read the whole press release, click here:

Genea-Musings: Military Records on WorldVitalRecords.com FREE from 27 May to 1 June: "Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Military Records on WorldVitalRecords.com FREE from 27 May to 1 June
Gena Philibert Ortega sent this press release along:

------------------------

WorldVitalRecords.com Invites Family Historians to Honor Their Veteran Ancestors by Researching Military Records

To help families discover their ancestors WorldVitalRecords provides free access to U.S. Military Databases"

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

EGS June Newsletter

I just finished reading the June newsletter. What a interesting issue!! Some great articles!! Be sure to read it all!

Great job, Sara. Thanks so much.

While I'm at it, here's a reminder about the June morning meeting coming up next Tuesday. We'll have a panel sharing some tips and information gleaned from recent conferences they have attended.

Hope to see you there or, as my brother would say, "Hope to see all y'all there!"

Saturday, May 22, 2010

Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog: Sepiatown!

Check this out. An opportunity to add historical pictures (even those you may own) to an online map for all to view! If you have MidWestern ancestors, you might want to follow this blog, too:

Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog: Sepiatown!: "Saturday, May 22, 2010
Sepiatown!
SepiaTown: From Here to Then is a mapped photo collection, open to additions -- a cool idea without much Midwest coverage yet. (Search on 'Chicago' and start zooming out, and you will see some.) Can you help add to this would-be 'world-wide window on the past'? With good citations too?

Posted by Harold at 4:55 AM

Genea-Musings: Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- The Time Capsule

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun from Randy Seaver. Now this looks like a good time!! Let's give it a try and post some results on the EGS blog.

Genea-Musings: Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- The Time Capsule: "Saturday, May 22, 2010
Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- The Time Capsule
Hey genea-fanatics, it's Saturday Night, time for more Genealogy Fun!

Your mission, should you deign to accept it (come on, it's fun!), is to:

1) Go to the dMarie Time Capsule Website - http://dmarie.com/timecap/

2) Select a date in your family history that you want to know about. You might pick a birth date or wedding date of your parents or grandparents.

3) Enter the date into the search form, and select the news, songs, toys, books and other things that you want to feature.

4) Share the date, why you picked it, and the results of your Time Capsule study on your own blog, in a comment to this post, or in a comment or post on Facebook."

New Genealogy Records - GenealogyInTime.com

From Genealogyintime.com weekly newsletter:

New Genealogy Records - GenealogyInTime.com: "US – The David Rumsey Map Collection has added 764 new maps online to complement the some 20,000 maps and images already on the website. New maps are added online on a regular basis (the entire offline collection consists of over 150,000 maps). Most of the maps are of America. All the maps are high resolution and users can zoom in and out on various parts of the map. A great resource for genealogists. Access is free. Below is a sample image of part of a map of Philadelphia from 1860. [Link]"

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Source Citation Trick: Embed Citation in Image Properties | Destination: Austin Family - StumbleUpon

Great tip from Thomas MacEntee. Add source citation directly to digital images! Check it out!!

"I wanted to share one trick that I've developed in citing my sources and linking the digital images for those citations. In summary, it involves editing the metadata comments of the image and adding the source citation. This way, if I share the image with a fellow researcher, they can get the source citation automatically and I don't need to send it separately or my entire research log."

Source Citation Trick: Embed Citation in Image Properties | Destination: Austin Family - StumbleUpon




EGS May Evening Meeting

Be sure to come to the evening meeting this month. Our own Lynda DeGroot will present "How to hire a professional genealogist". Lynda has been working as a professional genealogist for several years. Her expertise in the area will surely help us decide when and why we might need a professional's assistance in our research.


See you there!!

Thinking of you

I have just reviewed our events from the EGS website. There is a good variety of programs planned. As always Becky keeps us up to date with the computer interest group. If you are not participating you are missing a lot of good stuff and interesting people. If you have a specific interest that is not being addressed let someone on the board know about what it is that interests you. We will check it out and find an person with expertise in that area. Don't forget what a great resource Bill and GBPL are to our community. Also do not forget how valuable you are in your genealogy quest. Take and label pictures, document your family history and write your story for your descendants. Someday you will be an ancestor. This will be a way of leaving your imprint and touching the future.

Saturday, May 15, 2010

Great Britain Map Tool

If you have ancestors/family from Great Britain, check out the cool new tool created by Genealogy In Time Newsletter of May 15, 2010. Here's their description and link:


Cool New Genealogy Tool
 
We have created a fun, interactive map of 1940 Great Britain.  It was created from detailed survey maps from the 1920s to 1940. You can use it to find your ancestor's home town.  What is neat about this tool is that it overlays a modern map of the UK. You can use this tool to compare how the region looked in 1940 at the beginning of the Second World War to how it looks today! {Click here to access this cool genealogy tool}


Friday, May 14, 2010

Place Name Searches in FHL Online Catalogue

Donna Pointkouski who write the blog Past is Prologue has an interesting article titled: 

Research Tip: Searching for Towns in the FHL Catalog.


Click on the link to check it out.

Thursday, May 13, 2010

EGS CIG May Meeting Update

Due to the nasty weather last night and this morning, our attendance was down a bit for the Computer Interest Group. However, the interest was in great form.
Judy Van Dusen showed us many of the different options on Find a Grave, looking at both the Famous and those not famous. Then, I went through the process of submitting information and pictures to the site. Hopefully, everyone learned something (I know I did) and will use this site in the future.

Next month we'll be talking about many of the various sites for Illinois research.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

EGS CIG May Meeting

Hoping to see a good group at the Computer Interest Group Tomorrow. We'll be discussing the website Find A Grave. If it's new to you, why not click on the link and check it out?
I'm happy about the topic because it caused me to get involved and add a few people. Lots more to go but it's a valuable and useful site for genealogists.

Have a good day!

Thursday, May 6, 2010

Historical Newspapers Free

Check out this Dear Myrtle blog post for information regard free access to Footnote's historical newspapers for the month of May - http://blog.dearmyrtle.com/2010/05/footnote-open-access-to-newspaper.html.

Free is always a great price!!