Member of ISOGG
Archive for September, 2010
News from around the web.
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Tomorrow, Sept. 25, is Museum Day, when participating museums across the country give
free admission to those with a Museum Day ticket (one ticket per household). Click
here to get your ticket and find a museum near you.
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The California Family History Expo is coming up Oct. 8-9 in Pleasanton, Calif. The
exhibit hall is free, but you must register ($65 in advance; $75 at the door) to attend
classes. Here’s a neat option for those who can’t go to the whole conference: If you’d
like to attend just a few classes, you can do so for $12 per class. Register
on the Family History Expos website.
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The FamilySearch Beta site has
added nearly 2 million new digital images of historical records this week from the
Dominican Republic, Italy, Jamaica, Spain, and the United States.
Note that not all of the new records are indexed yet, which means that
they’re not included in the search, so you may need to browse. Use the filters on
the left side of the Collection
List page to navigate to the country, then possibly the type of record and/or
province, then select the record set you want to browse.
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Starting Oct. 1, the Georgia
State Archives will change its research hours to Thursday through Saturday from
8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.—a move made necessary because of budget issues. You
can see the announcement on the archives’ home page.
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Does it feel like Ancestry.com’s been on a shopping spree, with this year’s acquisitions of Swedish
records site Genline, research
firm ProGenealogists, and
now iArchives, parent company of historical records subscription service Footnote?
iArchives started in 1994 and provides document
digitization services to libraries, universities, archives and newspapers across the
country. Footnote launched in January 2007 as a way to bring that content to home
users.
We suspect that even more than the Footnote website, Ancestry.com values the relationships
and contracts that iArchives has already established with record-holding institutions.
That would make it easier for Ancestry.com to negotiate content digitization agreements.
We love that when it launched, Footnote provided something different for genealogists
at a time when online genealogical innovation seemed to have stalled. Footnote’s search
interface, records viewer, social networking options and emphasis on history in addition
to genealogy still distinguish it from other genealogy database sites.
We just hope Footnote doesn’t turn into another Genealogy.com,
a site Ancestry.com purchased in 2003 and still maintains, but has allowed to languish
while it pours resources into the stronger Ancestry.com site. We’re also curious how
this acquisition will affect another Ancestry.com competitor, Archives.com,
which offers Footnote’s census indexes to its subscribers.
The genealogy of the genealogy industry does seem to always lead to Ancestry.com.
Rather than a long explanation, here’s a quick sketch of the acquisitions and major
content partnerships I could think of (Ancestry.com has formed content partnerships
with many organizations; I listed only two).
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I wanted to let you know about a new way to take Family Tree University courses that’s
now available at ShopFamilyTree.com:
Family
Tree University Independent Study Courses let you access all the course study
materials—syllabus, lessons, exercises and Reading Assignment articles from Family
Tree Magazine—on a CD or as a PDF download to go through at your own pace.
Available Independent Study Courses include:
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Find Your German Roots by James M. Beidler (CD or PDF
download) -
Google Tools for Genealogists by Lisa Louise Cooke (CD or PDF
download) -
Land Records 101 by Diana Crisman Smith (CD or PDF
download) -
Creating a Family History Book by Nancy Hendrickson (CD or PDF
download) -
Digital Photography Essentials by Nancy Hendrickson (CD or PDF
download)
All the courses were developed by genealogy experts (meet
the instructors here) and include examples of genealogy records; step-by-step
demos; links to related online content such as articles, videos and tutorials—everything
you need to improve your research skills and develop an in-depth understanding of
the topic.
So what’s the difference between Independent Study and regular Family Tree University
courses? Independent Study offers the expertise for you to use now or weeks from now,
as fast or slow as you’d like. Regular
Family Tree University courses cover the same topics with a bit more structure,
with a set four-week session and interaction with an instructor.
See
all the Family Tree University Independent Study Courses here. The PDF downloads
are available now; the CDs are available for pre-order with an estimated ship date
of Sept. 30.
News from around the web.
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Ancestry.com announced today it has
entered into an agreement to acquire iArchives,
Inc., and its subscription genealogy website Footnote.com.
The purchase price will be about $27 million in a mix of Ancestry.com stock, cash
and assumption of liabilities. The transaction, which will make iArchives a wholly
owned subsidiary of Ancestry.com, is expected to close early in the fourth quarter
of 2010. As part of the transaction, Ancestry.com expects to issue approximately a
million shares of common stock.
“This acquisition will provide the company with a complementary consumer brand, expanded
content offerings, and enhanced digitization and image-viewing technologies,” states
Ancestry.com’s announcement.
Here’s
the full announcement on Ancestry.com’s iArchives acquisition.
Update: See
our additional commentary on the acquisition here.
News from around the web.
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When you’re a family history newbie, the prospect of diving into your roots research can seem overwhelming.
We’ll help you get started with our free, two-week Family Tree University course called Discover
Your Family Tree: Genealogy for the Absolute Beginner.
This course, which begins Monday, Oct. 11, will start you on the fun and rewarding
journey of discovering your roots. You’ll learn how to begin, where to look for information
to extend your family tree, what to do with what you find and how to put it all together.
Family Tree Magazine publisher and editorial director Allison Stacy is the instructor.
Family Tree University courses are self-paced. You download each lesson (two for this
course; four for most others) and any accompanying articles and go through it at your
computer, or you can print the materials. Each lesson concludes with a quiz or exercise.
You’ll receive feedback from your instructor via e-mail, and you can communicate with
the instructor and your fellow students on a message board.
The next session of Family Tree University how-to genealogy courses begins Oct. 11. You
can see all the offerings on FamilyTreeUniversity.com.
News from around the web.
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On
the New York History blog today, I saw that the New York Historical Society has
digitized nearly 12,000 pages of materials documenting US slavery, the Atlantic slave
trade and the abolitionist movement.
The diaries, account books, letter books, ships’ logs, indentures, bills of sale,
personal papers and institutional records date form the 18th and 19th centuries, and
come from 14 collections. Among them are records of the New York Manumission Society
and African Free School, papers of the Boston anti-slavery activist Lysander Spooner,
records of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, and an account book of the slave
trading firm Bolton, Dickens & Co.
The materials aren’t searchable by name, but you
can browse them on the society’s website. Use the Quick navigation pull-down menu
to choose a collection, then a record image viewer will open in a new window.
News from around the web.
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Here in Family Tree Magazine’s hometown of Cincinnati, where the
population in 1900 was 60 percent German-Americans and a downtown neighborhood
is called Over the Rhine, Oktoberfest is a pretty big deal.
The oldest and biggest Oktoberfest, of course, starts in late September in Munich,
Germany—which is celebrating its 200th Oktoberfest this year.
Oct. 12, 1810, Crown Prince Ludwig (later King Ludwig I) and Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen
held a grand horse race in Munich to celebrate their wedding five days earlier. The
successful event was held again the next year and the next, and Germans—who continue
to claim the largest ancestor group in US censuses—brought the celebration to the
United States.
Cincinnati’s Oktoberfest includes the Chicken
Dance and plenty of goetta,
aka “Cincinnati Caviar.” Supposedly, ours is the largest celebration in the United
States. Other
Oktoberfests take place across the country in towns such as La Crosse, Wis.;
Fredericksburg, Texas; and Tulsa, Okla.
Here’s our article about how
a fellow Cincinnati genealogist unpuzzled surname variations to discover his German
roots.
Our German
Heritage Toolkit has helpful articles for you to explore your own German roots,
including
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a roundup
of German research websites, books and organizations -
how
to use Meyers-Orts- (a handbook for tracking down German villages) -
translations
of words you’ll see in German records
… and more. For extra assistance, you can download our research
guide to German ancestors, available from ShopFamilyTree.com or look into our Find
Your German Roots Family Tree University course.
Family
Tree Magazine Plus members with German roots can check out our online research
guides to Prussian
and Bavarian ancestors, and to Germanic
ancestors who lived outside of German borders.
News from around the web.
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I am excited to announce a new feature that we hope will make it a little easier for you to find more records about your ancestors. When you look at an index page for the “1900 US Federal Census” or the “World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918,” you may see a section on the right hand side called “Suggested Records”. If you see this, check out the other records in the list to see if you find new records about your ancestor.
When you are looking at an index page, we check to see if that record has been saved to any trees. If it has, we look and see if there are other records attached to those same nodes. If we find matches, we show them here. We hope this will help you find new records about your ancestors.
Right now, we are testing this feature so it is only on these two collections: “1900 US Federal Census” and the “World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918”. We plan to add this feature to more collections later.
We only show this if there are matches so, if you are looking at an index page that has not been saved to any trees, or if no one has saved any other records to those people in their trees, you may not see anything on the right hand column.
We hope this will help Ancestry members find more success in their family history search. Please try it out and let me know what you think.
Happy Hunting,
Brian Edwards
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We’re taking a short customer survey to get a better idea around your interested in Irish roots and family history. Do you have Irish ancestry? If you have a keen interest in Irish family history then let us know your thoughts by completing our survey.
Click here to begin. It should only take up to 15 minutes to complete the survey.
Note: This survey has both multiple choice and fill in the blank questions that each need to be completed in order to go to the next question. On fill in the blank questions, you’ll need to click on the blue box to enter your answer before hitting the “Next” button.
Thanks for your input.
UPDATE AS OF FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2010
Please note that this survey is now closed. We appreciate everyone that took the time to take the survey and look forward to digging into the feedback you provided.
News from around the web.
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This week, two databases—and 200 lives—went online as part of a special partnership between Ancestry.com and Library and Archives Canada to support the popular “Lest We Forget” educational initiative. This program helps students explore the lives of Canada’s soldiers and their sacrifices through selections from the service files of 200 veterans of the First or Second World War. Ancestry.com is making those files available online as Canada, Selected Service Records of Soldiers, 1914–1918, and Canada, Selected Service Records of War Dead, 1939–1945, to allow more students to participate in the program—and to let the rest of us remember men like Sergeant L. J. Patrick Lafleur.
In June 1940, 22-year-old Leonard James Patrick Lafleur of Montreal, Canada, worked as a fruit clerk for Steinberg’s, a retail grocery chain.
But he had bigger aspirations. Steinberg’s had promised to rehire him after his enlistment in the R.C.A.F., but Lafleur was hoping to turn his radio hobby into a career with a broadcasting company.
Lafleur stood a little under 5′ 10″, slender, with brown hair and blue eyes, and he had been only an average (71%) high school student. However, he impressed the R.C.A.F. with his “confident approach” and “upright carriage.”
The Air Force didn’t consider Lafleur officer material, but they did think he “would make an excellent Airgunner.”
By 1941, Lafleur appeared to be on his way, posted to a training depot in Toronto in the Royal Canadian Air Force Special Reserve as both an air gunner and a wireless operator. In June the next year, 1942, he made sergeant.
He was serving overseas in September when his plane took off on an anti-submarine sweep on the 12th. The aircraft made radio contact at 9:10 p.m., but afterward failed to return to base. Searchers later found a dinghy with the body of one of the crew and determined that the plane was probably “shot down in the vicinity of Land’s End.”
When I read the letter, I had to wonder if it was Sergeant Lafleur on the radio at 9:10, making his final broadcast.
You may not have a relative among the 200 soldiers in these First or Second World War collections, but trust me, they’re still worth a look.
Because the sacrifice is still worth remembering.