Member of ISOGG
Archive for October, 2010
News from around the web.
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I was surprised to get an announcement about a new collection of Civil War maps, charts and documents from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), but it actually makes perfect sense:
Under the auspices of the NOAA is the Office of the Coast Survey, which president
Thomas Jefferson established in 1807 to produce nautical charts that would provide
for maritime safety, defense and the establishment of national boundaries. By the
start of the Civil War, the Coast Survey was a leading scientific agency, charting
coastlines and determining land elevations. It still surveys coasts and produces nautical
charts today.
In honor of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War in 2011, NOAA has gathered materials
the Coast Survey prepared during the war years into a free,
online collection called Charting a More Perfect Union.
The collection, which will help you visualize terrain, ports, and coasts as they were
from 1861 to 1865, includes:
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394 maps and nautical charts used for naval campaigns, and troop movements and battles.
You can search the
maps by keyword(s), state or region, year or chart number. If you click Search
without entering terms, you’ll get a list of all the documents in the collection (not
in alphabetical or chronological order).
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the Coast Survey publication Notes on the Coast, which aided Union forces in planning
naval blockades. Browse
Notes on the Coast here.
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annual report summaries by war-era Coast Survey Superintendent Alexander Bache. Download
them by year using the links on the Charting
a More Perfect Union home page.
In your map search results, click to preview the map, such as this map of Atlanta,
in the site’s image viewer:
Links in your list of search results let you open a high-resolution version of the
map as a JPG or a MrSID (a kind of graphic file). A Cincinnati-area map I found opened
very slowly as a jpg, but it enlarged to incredible detail. You can right click (on
a PC) or control-click (on a Mac) and choose Save As to save the map to your computer.
Find
more Civil War resources in our Civil War genealogy toolkit.
Surname Forum Activity
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Grace Darling Epperson was the daughter of May Manley and William Benjamin Epperson.
Grace was born abt 1885.….in the 1900 census she was being raised by May’s mother Lavina in Persifer, Knox CO, Ill.
Grace married John Leu Nov 16, 1901. They had a daughter Jan 31, 1902 who died at 17 days. John and Grace were divorced March 1904, but Grace married William L Burris of Riverside, Iowa Sept 10, 1904.
Grace’s mother May remarried a Noah Buffington and died in Pueblo, CO in 1953. William Benjamin remarried Nellie Westfall and they had many children and he died in 1948 in Pueblo, CO.
Grace is not mentioned in obits for her mother (May Buffington) or her father William Benjamin Epperson.
If anyone knows what might have happened to Grace (and where her infant daughter is buried) I sure would like to hear from you.
Thanks a lot,
Anna
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Have you ever found a person in your tree and asked yourself “how are we related”? I know I have. In fact, many of you have asked for something that would help you easily find an answer to that question and we’ve listened.
We’ve just added a new feature in your Ancestry.com Member Tree that will allow you to view the relationship between you and a relative in your tree. You can access this new feature by going to any person’s profile page in your family tree and clicking “View relationship to me”. I decided to give it a try for my relative Braxton Cranford to see how he is related to me.
Once I clicked the link, a window appeared that returned how Braxton is related to me well as well as the trail of people who helped create the connection between us. It turns out that four people separate me and my great grand uncle Braxton. (I’ve blurred the names of my living relatives)
Now that I’ve selected to see how Braxton is related to me, I’ll be able to see that relationship displayed below his name on his profile page. I can also pull up the line of people that created the connection by clicking the “View relationship to me” link again.
Another noteworthy feature is that family members you’ve invited to your tree will see how they’re related to people in the shared tree. We calculate the relationship based on who “you” are in the tree which is sometimes different from the “home” person. If your relative looks at the tree and calculates a relationship, it will be based on who his relative is in the tree.
As I’ve used this new feature it’s been great to relate more directly to the people in my tree. Braxton isn’t just a name anymore; he’s my great grand uncle.
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Join Ancestry.com this weekend at the California Family History Expo. Attend classes, including our popular Best Strategies for Searching Ancestry.com, Getting the Most from Family Tree Maker, and Immigration and Emigration Records Online. Plus, stop by the Ancestry.com booth in the exhibit hall for hands-on advice from the Ancestry.com experts.
The California Family History Expo runs Friday, October 8 through Saturday, October 9 at the Alameda County Fairgrounds in Pleasanton, California. Learn more and register at http://fhexpos.com/expos.
See you there.
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We are aware of the issues with the US 1850 and 1860 census as well as the UK 1871 census producing strange results in search and having bad links in online trees.
We are working on resolving it as quickly as possible.
Thank you for your patience.
Update: The issue has been resolved, links and search on these data collections should be working normally now.
Anne Mitchell
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If you’ve always wanted help starting a family history book, this is the tool you’ve been waiting for. Family Tree Maker 2011 introduces Smart Stories™— a narrative tool that helps you quickly fill up those blank pages by letting you use facts, sources, and notes you’ve already entered in your tree. Simply drag-and-drop the text into a story. And best of all, Smart Stories are linked to your tree so if you find out that grandpa’s birth date is different than you thought, you can change the date in your tree and the text will be updated automatically.
Let’s take a closer look. You’ve already spent hours entering facts, recording notes, and sourcing documents. So why should you have to retype all this information again in your book? That’s where Smart Stories comes in. In the image below, I have selected the personal biography option. Family Tree Maker has gathered all the facts I’ve entered for my grandfather and combined it into a short narrative. I then dragged the text into my document and now I’ve got a great start on my book’s intro biography. Because each fact is created as a separate “field” I can delete facts I don’t want to include or even edit the narrative text.
You’ll notice that some text is highlighted. This indicates that the text is linked to my tree and will be updated automatically if I make any changes.
In addition to biographies, Smart Stories can be used to create timelines, add images, and include facts and their sources. The image below gives an example of the facts option. When you select a fact (in this case the birth fact) a list of text options appear below the facts list. You can add the the information as a sentence or just the data like a place or date.
Although I’ve just started using this tool, I can already see all sorts of possibilities. My first project is making a timeline about my grandfather’s life; it’s going quickly because the facts I’m using already have the appropriate sentences created for me. No need to type! And adding images has been simple because I can drag and drop the photos I’ve already added to my media collection.
Have any of you tried Smart Stories yet? If not, how do you think you’d use this tool?
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A friendly reader told us about another genealogy app for the iPhone called Traces,
which searches the databases at the FamilySearch beta site. beta.familysearch.org.
The reader (who’s not affiliated with the product other than using it) recommends
it as “far and away the best iPhone app … I’ve found to facilitate actual genealogy
research and database searching.” See
a list of iPhone/iTouch genealogy apps on the MobileGenealogy.com website.
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If you have Minnesota ancestors, you can use the index on the Minnesota
Official Marriage System website to search for marriage records. You’ll get the
names of the bride and groom, date, county and certificate number; and a link to order
a copy of the record. See
the County Index Dates page to find out which counties and dates are covered in the
index.
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The National Archives is holding a day-long symposium called The Civil War: Fresh
Perspectives on Saturday, Nov. 20, from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m, at its Washington, DC
headquarters. It’ll feature panel discussions related to themes from the archives’
special exhibit, Discovering the Civil War. Registration is required, along with a
fee of $50. Click
here to learn more and register.
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The National Genealogical Society has posted online video that shows you where Civil
War Pension files are stored at the National Archives (in an area is closed to the
general public) and lets you look inside a pension file with professional genealogist
John Humphrey. It’s
called Finding Your Family at the National Archives, and you can click here to watch
it.
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UK family history subscription website Findmypast.co.uk and FamilySearch are
beginning a project to digitize the Greater Manchester County Record Office’s cemetery
registers and institutional records (from gaols, schools and workhouses), which date
as far back as the 16th century. When the project is complete, you’ll be able to search
indexes free at FamilySearch. The indexed information will link to the records at
FindMyPast.co.uk, where you’ll be able to view the record images for a fee.
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There’s more for those with UK roots: Old-maps.co.uk has
added 60 more years of town plans and other maps to its collection, which now covers
1850 to 1996. In addition, new spy maps produced by the Russian military from 1950
to 1997 cover 16,000 sq km of the UK, including 103 major towns and cities. You can
search and browse maps for free and purchase printed or downloadable PDF versions.
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We’re so happy our three 2011 desktop calendars are available for pre-order at ShopFamilyTree.com, that we’re giving away one of each. Those include …
… the 2011
Genealogy Desktop Calendar, full of beautiful ancestor photos from Family Tree
Magazine readers.
… the 2011
Civil War Desk Calendar, with historical photos of readers’ Civil War ancestors,
as well as camp life and other scenes, plus facts from our forthcoming book Life
in Civil War America.
… the 2011
Grave Humor Desk Calendar, featuring the adorable skull people from the Grave
Humor book illustrator Marc McChesney.
So how can you win a calendar?? Just click Comments at the end of this post and add
a comment answering this question:
What’s one thing on your genealogy to-do list for 2011?
At 10 a.m. Eastern time on Tuesday morning, Oct. 12, we’ll draw three winners—one
for each calendar—from the folks who comment. We’ll announce the winners’ names in
a post on Tuesday, so you’ll need to visit
the Genealogy Insider blog Tuesday to see if it’s you!
PS: If
you’d like info on how to Comment on Genealogy Insider blog posts, please click here.
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This week, FamilySearch published its first digital Chinese collection, along with
additional digital image collections from Belgium, Germany, Guatemala, Mexico, Netherlands,
Philippines and Puerto Rico.
Note that the indexes are still being created for these records, meaning you can’t
yet search them by typing in a name. Instead, you view them as you would microfilm,
by browsing the record images for the place and/or time period when you think your
ancestor’s record was created.
You can view these records on the FamilySearch
Beta site.
To find the database you want to browse, first scroll down and click the region under
Browse by Location. For German collections, for example, click Europe.
Then you can use the Place filters on the left to home in on the place you need.
If you clicked the Germany filter, you’ll see seven German databases. The one with
the “Browse images” link is the just-added database.
FamilySearch also added 20 million more records to the Civil War, Revolutionary War,
and the 1851 England and Wales census collections. The Civil War collection lets you
search an index, and links you to the subscription website Footnote to
view the record. You’ll need a subscription to see it. The 1851 English and Welsh
census collection employs a similar arrangement with subscription site FindMyPast.co.uk.
As a side note, if you click the Getting Started link from the FamilySearch
Beta home page, you’ll see links to some pretty family trees you can download,
then print and fill out.
News from around the web.
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If Family History Month has you thinking about expanding your own genealogy knowledge,
it’s a great time to sign up for a Family
Tree University course. The spooky October session begins Monday the 11th, and
we’ve got three new courses for you—one of them is free! Read on for the whole course
catalog.
NEW THIS MONTH:
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Death
Records 101: Find What Your Ancestors Left Behind: Learn what your ancestors’
deaths can tell you about their lives. This course teaches you how to use death certificates,
wills, obituaries funeral home records and other related sources to further your research. -
Cemetery
Research 101: Dig Up Your Family History:We’ll get you excited about exploring
your ancestors’ final resting places and give you tips on how to read tombstones,
decipher plot maps and keep your research organized. -
Discover
Your Family Tree: Genealogy for the Absolute Beginner: This FREE two-week
sampler course will start you on the fun and rewarding journey of discovering your
roots.
MORE CLASSES AVAILABLE IN OCTOBER:
Strategies:
Ethnic ancestors:
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Find
Your German Roots -
Finding
African-American Ancestors in Newspapers -
Trace
Your Polish Roots -
Tracing
Immigrants -
Finding
Your Ancestral Village
Records and sources:
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Newspaper
Research 101: Find Your Ancestors in American News Sources -
US
Military Records -
Exploring
City Directories -
Land
Records 101
Sharing history: