Archive for August, 2011

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Many of you may remember Ancestry.com’s “True Irish Roots” sweepstakes held this past March to help celebrate the release of our Irish Collection. The contest featured a grand prize trip to Ireland for two, where the winner would spend a week exploring the Emerald Isle’s finest sites including Blarney Castle and the Aran Islands.

Contest winner Michael Hanlon recently returned from his adventure and sent us a recap along with some of his amazing photography from the trip.

“We have returned from one of the greatest Irish vacations anyone could possibly have and I wanted to share our trip with you.  I wanted to really let you know how great this win was for my wife and I, as a person, am usually not lucky enough to win a trip like this in their lifetime, but I did!”

Michael flew from his home in Sacramento, California to Dublin, Ireland and hit the road straight to Waterford Castle. From there trip highlights included falling in love with the town of Adare, a stop at Killarny, Ross Castle, a visit to the Cliffs of Moher, Ashford Castle, and of course Dublin.

Images from Michael’s trip can be found at http://bit.ly/q8Qfxb; and we must say that he’s an outstanding photographer, so have a look and enjoy!

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The big news this week, of course, was Footnote’s
new military focus and name change to Fold3, the free
1940 census images and index to hit Ancestry.com mid-April 2012, and the hullabaloo
at Geni.com. Among this week’s other happenings:

• The thousands of new record images at FamilySearch.org this week include testaments
  (wills) from Cádiz, Spain; US military records for Louisiana and Washington; and North
  Carolina estate files. The collections for Canada, Italy and Poland also were updated. Here’s
  the announcement from FamilySearch, with links to the updated collections. 

• The Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS)
  has a free
  mobile app for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. You can use it to access information
  on FGS news and events (such as the conference
  coming up Sept. 7-10, in Springfield, Ill.), FGS Radio, the Voice FGS blog, and
  webinars. You also can interact with other users via Facebook, Twitter and e-mail.

• By the way, tomorrow, Aug. 20 is the last day to register
  online for the above-mentioned FGS conference, add luncheons and dinner
  events to your registration, or purchase a printed syllabus.
  

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The subscription genealogy website formerly known as Footnote.com will
now be called Fold3.

Ancestry.com,
which acquired
the site along with its parent company, iArchives, last year, is rebranding it
with the new name and a new focus on military-related content.

Historical military records have always been one of the site’s strengths. The name
Fold3 refers to the third fold of a flag in a traditional flag-folding ceremony, which
is said to represent the sacrifices of military veterans.

Military records currently on Fold3 come from the Revolutionary War, War of 1812,
Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Vietnam War and others.

“We have already begun expanding Fold3’s robust military collection to include new
pension application files and draft cards,” says Brian Hansen, Fold3 general manager.

Don’t worry—Footnote.com’s nonmilitary records, such as city directories, naturalization
documents, the Pennsylvania Archives collection and more, will remain on Fold3. Ancestry.com
spokesperson Heather Erickson tells me they’ll be in an “Other Collections” category.

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We’re super excited about the start of our Summer
2011 Virtual Conference tomorrow! But that means it’s your last chance to register.
And you can save 20 percent by entering code FTU0811 at registration.

Seven reasons to register:

• You can improve your genealogy skills by taking 15 video classes (see
  the conference program here)  

• Your all-access pass lets you download the videos to watch again later (or see them
  for the first time if you missed one), as well as download PDFs of the presentation
  slides

• Join live chats with your instructors (see
  the chat schedule here). And I hope to meet you in the chat with Family Tree
  Magazine editors Friday at noon.

• Tour the virtual exhibit hall (answer quiz questions to be entered into prize drawings).

• You’ll get a virtual swag bag of freebies from ShopFamilyTree.com

• Log in any time during the conference to watch classes or chat (9 am Friday, Aug.
  19, to 11:59 pm Sunday, Aug. 21)

• Participate from anywhere you can access the internet

Learn
more about the Summer 2011 Virtual Conference and register here.

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Subscription genealogy website Ancestry.com has
decided to make the 1940 census images and index—which will be on the site after the
1940 census is opened next year for research—free to search and view through 2013.

That’ll be more than 3.8 million images with 130 million records. Even better, they’ll
be indexed by 45 fields, meaning you’ll be able to search on the name, street address,
county, state, parents’ birthplaces and more.

The records won’t be on Ancestry.com right when the census is released April 2, 2012.
Ancestry.com’s press release says they’ll commence “streaming onto the website in
mid-April 2012.”

Can’t wait until mid-April? The record images will be available first on the National
Archives’ website, but they won’t be searchable right away by name. Click
here to see our post about finding your ancestors’ 1940 census enumeration district.

Get help with your census research—including preparing for the release of the 1940
census records—in the May
2010 Family Tree Magazine.

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I realized how important old newspapers are to genealogy when I stumbled across this
1924 article about my grandfather on GenealogyBank:

What a find! The article has so much “what was he like?” detail that I wouldn’t have
found elsewhere. So I wanted to share some resources from contributing editor Rick
Crume’s November
2011 Family Tree Magazine cover story on researching ancestors in online
newspapers. 

In the article, Rick provides a chart with the essentials on 15 large online historical
newspaper collections—some free, some by subscription or with society memberships,
some available through libraries—including:

• 19th
  Century US Newspapers
  
• Accessible Archives 
• Ancestry.com
  
• Chronicling America 
• Early American Newspapers, Series 1, 1690-1876
• Footnote.com
• GenealogyBank 
• Google News and News
  Archive 
• New York Times Archive 
• NewspaperArchive 
• Old Fulton NY Post Cards  
• Paper of Record  
• Proquest Archiver 
  
• SmallTownPapers 
• World Vital Records 

He also notes where the sites’ collections overlap, and offers some advice on finding
other, smaller collections of newspapers:

• Your public library might provide online access to newspaper databases or have historical
  papers on microfilm. Check at the reference desk.

• Portals that can link you to more online newspaper archives include Cyndi’s
  List, Free Newspaper
  Archives, Online
  Historical Newspapers and XooxleAnswers:
  Newspaper Archives.
  

• Search the Library of Congress Chronicling
  America newspaper directory for microfilmed papers you can order via interlibrary
  loan.

• Surf websites
  of state archives for their newspaper holdings, which may be available for loan
  to your local library.

The November
2011 Family Tree Magazine also has articles on using published family histories,
researching English roots, finding cultural and ethnic heritage organizations, tracing
ancestors in Chicago and Portland, Ore., using Mocavo.com and more. The issue hits
newsstands next week, but you
can order it now from ShopFamilyTree.com. 

For even more help finding ancestors in old newspapers, check out Family
Tree University’s Newspaper Research 101 class.

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Geni, a world family tree site where users can build family trees by creating profiles
for relatives and ancestors, has made big changes to what paid and free members can
do on the site.

In
this blog post Aug. 11, Geni announced that free, “Non-Pro” members can no longer
add new profiles to the “historical” tree (any public part of the Geni tree) or merge
profiles. Free members still can add to their private trees.

Geni Pro subscribers, who pay $4.95 per month for a one-year membership, now “have
full permission to add on to, edit, and merge profiles in the historical parts of
the tree,” according to the blog post.

Pro users also can search through all the 110 million public profiles on Geni to find
relatives to add to their trees. Free members can search and find only their close
relatives in the historical tree, as well as profiles they added and profiles they
follow.

“Close relatives” means 4th cousins and closer, as well as third-great-grandparents
and closer. In-laws are included.

“I’d like to make it clear that Basic (free) users did not lose their ability to view
or edit any profiles as part of these changes,” says Geni CEO Noah Tutak. “In fact,
we did not change view or edit permissions at all. What we did is align permissions
in the historical, public sections of the tree, beyond close relatives.”

But comments on Geni’s
blog post are largely negative. A common theme: Many members, some of whom have
added hundreds or thousands of profiles to the site, feel Geni is cutting them off
(without advance notice, according to the comments) after encouraging them for years
to build its historical tree.

“Losing control” of their public data strikes fear in the hearts of genealogists.
They don’t like to idea of others merging their ancestors without having to compare
notes first. They have visions of mistaken merges and incorrect names and dates replicating
themselves across the internet.

Tutak thinks Geni’s changes will reduce such errors. “These changes were designed
to restrict merging to a smaller group of more engaged users, with the goal of increasing
data quality,” Tutak says. “If a merge is made in error, the same set of tools are
available now as in the past to correct mistakes. In the near future, we’ll provide
even more robust tools to undo merges that will make correcting these mistakes, which
are extremely infrequent, even easier”

Several Pro users commented that they’ll no longer be able to entice relatives—who
aren’t likely to purchase Pro subscriptions—to collaborate on building their family
trees.

“A member with a free account can build out a large enough tree to get a good feel
for the quality of Geni’s tools and decide whether or not they would like to use Geni
for their entire tree,” says Tutak.

“The number of users contributing to the world [public] family tree is a small percentage
of our overall user base, and so far we haven’t seen a slowdown in the growth of the
tree due to these changes.”

Family tree sites have struggled for years with how to build accurate trees that are
large enough to attract additional contributions—that’s why we’re still waiting for
the trees feature on the new FamilySearch.org to be publicly available. Skewing benefits
toward paying users—who, theoretically, are more heavily invested and knowledgeable—is
one approach. It’s also likely to anger free members. Many comments on Geni’s blog
predict that the site won’t survive this change.

You can read genealogists’ opinions on the changes at Genea-Musings 
and Dear
Myrtle. 

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Three months ago, Ancestry.com and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum launched the World Memory Project. Since that time almost 2000 community contributors have indexed over 395,000 records across 15 different record collections.  These records contain information about victims and survivors of the Holocaust and Nazi-era persecution.

We are proud to announce that this generous community completed indexing of the first of these collections in just 20 days.

USHMM: Munich, Germany, Displaced Jewish Children at the Ulm Children’s Home, 1945-1948

Following the surrender of the Nazis during World War II the Central Historical Commission of the Central Committee of Liberated Jews in the U.S. Zone, Munich (CHC) collected information about some of the child Holocaust survivors in the Displaced Persons camps.  This particular database is an extracted index of CHC questionnaires created when Jewish children were brought to the Children’s Home in Ulm, Germany.  The children range in age from four to nineteen and were asked about their lives during the Nazi rule, the fate of their families, their journey to Ulm postwar, and their desired immigration location.

There were only about 325 questionnaires indexed as part of this collection.  But, as you can see, we captured each person listed, creating an index with information about more than 2700 individual family members.

This week that index was published on Ancestry.com making these records freely available for anyone to search.  Images of the original questionnaires, some with photos, can be obtained directly from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum using these ordering instructions.

We invite you to join us and participate in the World Memory Project where you can help make these victims’ records freely searchable online and restore the identities of people the Nazis tried to erase from history.  Even a few minutes of your time can create a chance for family connections that transcend war and time.

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• Congratulations to Lisa Louise Cooke, podcaster and blogger at Genealogy
  Gems (and Family
  Tree Magazine podcast host). Appadvice.com named
  Lisa’s Genealogy Gems Podcast app a must-have in the Hobby
  category of its AppList. Appadvice.com reviewers called it “a great resource for
  both amateur and professional Genealogists … The interface is easy to use and the
  type and controls are larger, making this application ideal even for older users.”

The Genealogy Gems podcast app features streaming of the Genealogy Gems podcast, plus
show notes and bonus material. It’s available for the iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad (at
the iTunes store) and Android phone (in the Marketplace).

• FamilySearch added 4.3 million record images
  this week, nearly half of those to its Hungary Civil Registration, 1895–1980, collection
  (my
  husband is a quarter Hungarian, so this moves up his tree a few notches on my
  to-do list).
  

Other new records come from Austria, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Panama, and
the US. Note these record images aren’t yet indexed, so you’ll need to browse them. See
the updated collections and link to them from here.

• The California Genealogical Society and Ancestry.com are
  putting on an Ancestry Day Nov. 5 in San Francisco. It’ll include classes, Ancestry.com
  experts to answer your questions and one-on-one consultations with genealogists. The
  early bird price ends Oct. 5. You
  can register here. 

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Confederate States Brig. Gen. Benjamin McCulloch, having won a victory Aug. 10, 1861,
at Wilson’s Creek, Mo., issued a proclamation
to the people of Missouri Aug. 12. He asked them to pick a side. “Missouri must
now take her position, be it North or South,” he wrote. 

Missouri, a border state, supplied troops (nearly 110,000 to the North and 40,000
to the South) and equipment to both sides. Separate state governments represented
each side during the war, and both the Union and Confederacy considered Missouri theirs.

Initially, Missouri tried to stay neutral by remaining in the Union but not contributing
men or supplies. After Wilson’s Creek, Union Gen. John C. Fremont imposed martial
law, but the remnants of the elected government voted to secede.

The state suffered from its own internal war, in addition to the larger one. “Conflict
in Missouri was characterized by savage guerilla warfare that led to the destruction
of entire towns,” writes Michael O. Varhola in Life
in Civil War America. 

Learn more about Missouri in the Civil War in Varhola’s book and at
the state’s sesquicentennial website.

Also, the free Missouri Digital Heritage (one of our 101
Best Websites for genealogy) has a Civil
War section with several collections of digitized records, newspapers and research
guides that’ll help you trace ancestors of the era and walk in their shoes.

See
Missouri research resources at ShopFamilyTree.com here. 

Get research guidance for Civil War service members from Missouri and elsewhere in
our Family Tree University course Civil
War Research: Find Your Ancestors in the War Between the States, with instructor
Diana Crisman Smith. The next session starts Aug. 29. (You can use code FTU0811 to
get 20 percent off tuition.)