Archive for April, 2011

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Just about everyone knows a family tale – but how many of us have discovered if the ones in our own family are true? That’s what actress Ashley Judd sets out to do on tonight’s season finale of Who Do You Think You Are? She starts with the story of an imprisoned Civil War veteran then moves back in time to uncover the details of her family’s very influential New England connection. Ancestry.com is a sponsor of the show. You can watch a preview at www.nbc.com/who-do-you-think-you-are. And be sure to visit www.ancestry.com/whodoyouthinkyouare for details about how you can dig into the truth behind your own family’s stories.

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Do you have a lot to say about Family Tree Maker? Then we want to hear from you. In May the National Genealogical Society Family History Conference is being held in Charleston, South Carolina. As part of the event, we will be having a focus group at 12:30 pm on Thursday, May 12th, to find out what you think about the product. If you are attending the conference and are interested in being considered as a participant in the discussion, please email us at conferences@ancestry.com and include this information:

• The version of Family Tree Maker you are currently using
• How long you’ve used Family Tree Maker
• Genealogy skill level: beginning, experienced, expert

We look forward to hearing from you!

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If you have ever stepped away from your family history for a few days or weeks, you know how hard it can be to come back and remember exactly what you were doing. So one feature I love in Family Tree Maker is the ability to review the people you’ve recently added or edited. To view your changes, go to the People workspace and click the History button under the Index. The last 200 individuals you’ve added to your tree or edited appear in the Index.

You can also see a summary of the changes you’ve made to each person. Simply hover the pointer over the individual you’re interested in and a pop-up shows what you’ve changed for the individual—and when.

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Kodak has sold assets of its microfilm products and equipment business to Eastman Park Micrographics. Kodak will continue supplying current microfilms, as well as to provide service and support for microfilm equipment and Eastman Park Micrographics will take over Kodak’s data conversion services business, which converts data between analog and digital formats. Read
more on Kodak.com.

The Cincinnati Railroad Club is digitizing its 70,000-item collection, a project estimated
to take three years to complete. Most non-copyrighted materials will be available
online, including geomapping of the library’s thousands of original photographs. Read
more on BizJournals.com.

Newport Beach Library is considering a revamp that would maintain the most of the
library’s current services, but ditch the books. The proposal is a reflection of the
economy and patron habits. Read
more on the LATimes.com.

The city of Chicago is relocating about 1,200 graves from the 161-year-old Bensenville
cemetery to expand O’Hare International Airport, but not without controversy. The
city hired a genealogist to track down the closest living relative for those currently
occupying the graves, but isn’t contacting every descendant, leaving some family members
in the dark about their ancestor’s final resting place. Read
more on the ChicagoTribune.com.

 
Season one of “Who Do You Think You Are?” is now available on DVD. Re-watch all your
favorite celebrities discover their roots on NBC’s family history hit. Read
more on BroadwayWorld.com.

If you missed any of the simulcast RootsTech conference sessions, you can now watch
them on-demand at RootsTech.org. Bonus video
interviews with conference speakers are now on the Genealogy
Gems YouTube channel.

 

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Footnote.com is offering free access to it’s
Civil War collection April 7 – 14, to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the war between
the states.

The subscription website has worked with the US National Archives to bring millions
of original records online for the first time. Researchers can access soldier records,
photographs, original war maps, pension files, court investigations, slave records,
Lincoln records and more from a one-stop search box.


Click here to search the Footnote.com Civil War database.

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Researchers with South Carolina roots have 500 years’ worth of records to explore.
We’ll show you how to navigate Palmetto State resources from early Colonial days to
the 20th century in our South
Carolina Genealogy Crash Course live webinar.

During our live webinars, audio is delivered over your telephone or computer speakers.
Power Point presentations and desktop or document sharing are presented over the Internet.
This is like a talk-radio program with visuals on the web. You’ll be able to have
a live Q&A chat with the speakers.

From the South Carolina webinar you’ll learn:
    •    Essential South Carolina history
    •    Details on vital records and immigration in
the state
    •    What ethnicity-based records your ancestor
may have left
    •    The best websites for South Carolina research

Registration for the live session includes:
    •    Participation in the live presentation and
Q&A session
    •    Unlimited access to the webinar recording
    •    PDF of the presentation slides for future reference

The webinar is April 20, 7 p.m. EST, and will run for one hour. If you register before
April 13, you’ll receive 20 percent off. Click
here to register for the South Carolina Genealogy Crash Course live webinar.

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In honor of the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War, each week we’re giving away Family
Tree Magazine‘s Life
in Civil War America book! Simply like Family
Tree Magazine on Facebook and share on our page a Civil War ancestor story
or a tidbit from our Life
in Civil War America webinar or Life in Civil War America book. You can
also enter by posting a comment on any Genealogy Insider post about Life in Civil
War America.

Each Friday in April, a winner will be chosen from that week’s comments and wall posts,
and they will be notified by an announcement on Family
Tree Magazine‘s Facebook page. The
four winners will each win the Life in Civil War America book. Check our Facebook
page and Genealogy Insider blog frequently for upcoming posts where we’ll comment
on and/or answer the questions we receive about Life in Civil War America.

The sweepstakes starts April 6, and runs through April 29.

Need
more details? Read the official rules here.

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To mark the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War, Ancestry.com is
opening up millions of Civil War records, including the 1860 and 1870 US censuses,
for free searches April 7 – 14.

The American
Civil War Research Database is Ancestry’s effort to compile and link all available
records of soldiers who fought in the Civil War. The collection contains state rosters,
pension records, regimental histories, photos and journals.

The database is divided into soldier records, regiment records, battle histories,
and officer records. By searching soldier records, you can discover the soldier’s
name, residence, date of entry, regiments, companies, rank, promotions, transfers,
events (such as POW, wounded, etc.) and how and where the soldier exited the military
(discharge, desertion, muster out, or death). Some states also include in their official
records a soldier’s birthplace, age at enlistment, occupation, and physical description.

Click here
to search Ancestry’s American Civil War Research Database.

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Food is a key ingredient in every family’s history: Dad’s Saturday morning pancakes, the marzipan Granny served every Christmas, your Sicilian great-great-grandmother’s spaghetti sauce recipe. And we want you to share your family’s food traditions with us.

Family Tree Books is collecting short essays for a book about real family recipes
and the memories that surround them. We’ll select eight submissions to feature in
the book based on these criteria:

• Submissions should be between 1,000 and 2,000 words.
• Essays should tell the story of a real tradition, including:

• What is the tradition?
• Who started it and when?
• What cultural or regional background does the dish or tradition represent? (for example,
  is it a US regional specialty or a product of your ancestry in Germany, Sweden, Mexico,
  etc.?)
• What does the tradition mean to you and your family?

• Submissions should include the recipe described in the story and a family photo—of
  the original chef, people described in the story or yourself. (Pictures of the dish
  itself may be submitted but likely will not be published.)

To enter: E-mail your essay to FTMedit@fwmedia.com with
the subject line Family Food Traditions no later than July 13, 2011. To be considered,
submissions must adhere to the following specifications:

• Essays must be in Microsoft Word (.DOC or .RTF) or plain-text format (.TXT). Do not
  paste your essay into the body of the email.
• Photos must be in JPG or TIFF format, with a resolution of 300 dpi or higher.
• Your name, mailing address, phone number and email address must be included in the
  email message and the essay document.

For full entry
details and official rules, click here.

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Spoiler Alert: If you don’t already know what happened during Gwyneth Paltrow’s
episode of “Who Do You Think You Are?” you are about to find out.

The daughter of actress Blythe Danner and producer/director Bruce Paltrow, Gwyneth
Paltrow has Hollywood roots. But the actress looked past her famous family to explore
her ancestors’ extraordinary stories during her episode of “Who Do You Think You Are?”

Gwyneth began by researching her mother’s side of the family at the New York Public
Library. She finds an obituary for her great-grandmother Ida May Danner, which lists
her parents as David and Isabel Stoute Yetter. Isabel’s death certificate indicates
her a full name is Rosamond Isabel Yetter, born in Barbados, West Indies, and she
worked as a domestic servant.

Using this information, Gwyneth finds Isabel and her sister Martha on a passenger
list for a commercial sailing ship traveling from Barbados to America. The pair are
the only two passengers on this voyage, somehow managing to travel on cargo ship instead
of a passenger ship. Isabel is age 18 when she immigrates to America.

Gwyneth then travels to Barbados to find out more about her great-great-grandmother
Isabel. At the department of archives, she searches baptismal records, discovering
Isabel’s father was a merchant clerk — a respectable middle class occupation. She
then searches a burial register, finding Isabel’s mother and father were both dead
by the time she was 13 years old. (For
more on searching vital records, see our on-demand webinar.)

During Isabel’s time in Barbados, females greatly outnumbered males, so marriage prospects
were very limited. Job opportunities were also in short supply for unmarried white
women because free black women in Barbados would work for lower wages. And without
family ties except each other, Gwenyth concludes the sisters moved to the United States
to see what opportunities awaited them there.

Gwyneth then researchers her paternal grandfather Arnold “Buster” Paltrow’s family.
Buster often spoke ill of his mother Ida Hymen Paltrow’s parenting skills, and she
seemingly exhibited signs of a severe depression. Gwyneth wanted to know more about
Ida and what may have caused her depression.

Ida attended Hunter College, known as Normal College in 1897 when she studied there.
The school was a teacher’s college, the top profession for a New York woman. Ida was
often absent, according to student registries, and she was discharged from the school
in 1898. Death certificates for Ida’s mother Rebecca Paltrow and Ida’s brother Samuel
Paltrow indicate Ida attended to them as they died months apart in 1897, explaining
her absences from college.

Gwyneth continues her search at the New York City Municipal Archives. The 1920 census
lists Ida’s family with the surname Paltrowitz. Ida’s oldest daughter Helen Paltrowitz,
who was 1 in the 1910 census, is not found in the 1920 census. Gwyneth then searches
death records, discovering Helen died at age 3 when she was run over by a wagon. Gwenyth
concludes these tragedies contributed to Ida’s depression.

Gwyneth then focus on one last ancestor, Ida’s husband Meyer Paltrowitz. She discovers
Meyer’s grandfather was Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch Pelterowicz, a master of Kabbalah, a set
of esoteric teachings meant to explain the relationship between an eternal and mysterious
creator and the mortal and finite universe. Books about Hirsch indicate he was regarded
as an extremely holy man and a miracle worker. (For
more on tracing Jewish roots, see our guide.)

“WDYTYA” airs Fridays at 8pm EST on NBC. Check the Genealogy Insider blog for a brief
recap of each episode.