Archive for August, 2011

News from around the web.
Go to Source
—

Last week, Allison
fessed up about her so-far-untouched mountain of boxes inherited from her grandmother,
full of genealogy records, pictures and news clippings, with some nongenealogical
stuff thrown in for good measure.

 

A bunch of you chimed in with advice, encouragement and stories that’ll benefit other
overwhelmed family archivists. The gist of your advice is:

• Take your time. Baby steps!
  
• Sort by family, people or place.
  
• Digitize.
  
• Archival storage.
  
• Share.
  
• Consider donating what won’t be kept.

Here are some more details from your suggestions and stories. To read the full comments,
go to Allison’s
“Organizing Grandma’s Archive” blog post and click Comments at the bottom. 

• Claire suggested making an inventory of the items: “Tackle one box a week. Label the
  first box 1, the second 2, etc. Go through the contents and list everything in a notebook
  under the appropriate tab. For example, in the Anderson-Dugan tab, you might have:
  

John Dugan birth certificate, box 1

Photo of Anderson family reunion 1930, box 1

“At some later date you might relocate everything to a better storage system,” Claire
adds, “but at least for now you’ll know the contents of each box.”

• Joseph Martin would allow more time: “I count 15 boxes in your stack. Give yourself
  two months to sort and organize one box. In less than three years, you will be done.”

• Renee advises scheduling small chunks of time (30 to 50 minutes) a few times a week,
  so things don’t feel overwhelming. “I wouldn’t begin to move things around until you
  document how the documents appeared, since what folder they were in or what they were
  next to can have bearing on the meaning of the document. I would take photos of the
  box and each item in the box as you unpack them.”

She also recommends digitizing as you go. “If you re-create the folders and boxes
digitally, you’ll always know the exact order they arrived in. You can then tag them
or make digital copies and reorganize them according to your preference. It will make
you familiar with what’s there and you won’t have to reorganize the actual papers.
You can just store them (or toss, if needed) and work with the digital copies.” 

• Patti McElligott describes her system of 3-inch binders for each family name, with
  each family member on a tabbed index sheet. Paper records for each person go inside
  clear sheet protectors behind his or her tab.
  

Patti’s tip for labeling photos: “Take a stack, and anytime you are sitting
down, write on the back the who, what, where etc. There are pens made for this that
will not damage the pictures.”

• Cheryl Hughes was also left with an archive like Allison’s, but from several different
  relatives and families. She’s been working on it for 10 years. “I still get boxes,
  as I am thought of as the ‘picture person’ of all these families,” Cheryl says.
  

She separated papers from the pictures, and had some of the old photos
and tintypes restored and copied. “I am copying all pictures to CDs or SD cards and
having prints made to share with other family members … the originals are in safe,
acid free boxes, with copies in albums.” 

• Micki Gilmore’s inherited archive is smaller. “I plan to digitize. There are some
  great scanners out there,” she says, and plans to tackle one box at a time.

• Diane Hart has been digitizing photos all summer. “The photos are on discs, and then
  I view them on a slide show on my computer. They look so nice! … From photos I received
  from my 83-year-old aunt, I made a disc for her with a very nice identifying label,
  printed a thumbnail photo gallery of disc contents, and included my contact information.
  Then I drove miles to deliver this to her, and we watched the slideshow. She absolutely
  loved it! She is the only living child in my Dad’s family of 13.”

• S. Lantz is using Clooz software to
  keep track of her archive. “[It] allows you to tag names in your genealogy name list
  with each item (photos, census, documents, books, etc.). If you assign a unique number
  to each item, you can run an individual report that will list all of the items tied
  to that individual.” 

• Juanita Dean uses photo boxes and tabbed dividers to organize her photos by place,
  then event. “If you look at the photos yearly, put them in a larger box that is handy
  to share for reunions, otherwise use archival boxes to put them away.”

• I love Ardith Hale’s words: “The Chinese say you can move a mountain one spoonful
  at a time.” She advises Allison catalog and digitize, then sort.
  

“I have been given a huge store of pictures, which we went through with
my mother to assign names, then sort by family. Each family gets theirs. Older ones
are being digitized, copied and spread around so that hopefully somewhere there will
be a copy. Unidentifed ones are kept together in the hope that some reunion or gathering
can attach a name.”

• Shasta says “Take your time, think of a plan, and execute it slowly, a little bit
  at a time … I managed to scan our family photos by doing a few each day, a little
  extra when I had time.”

If you’re looking for more advice, the January
2011 Family Tree Magazine has Denise Levenick’s (she’s the
Family Curator blogger) guide to organizing a family archive like this one.

Feel free to keep sharing your stories about sorting through family collections—we
love to hear ‘em.

News from around the web.
Go to Source
—

Workers at Gettysburg National
Military Park last week were cutting up a fallen oak tree on Culp’s Hill, a key
location in the 1863 Battle of Gettysburg, when they hit 148-year-old bullets.

Battlefield trees like this one, still bearing scars and bullet wounds, are called
Civil War witness trees. (Another kind of witness tree is found in public land states—a
surveyor would blaze a tree near a section corner
as evidence of the section boundaries.)

I hadn’t heard the term until I read
about the Gettysburg discovery, and it makes perfect sense: Eyewitnesses are long
gone, but these trees stood on the battlefields when our ancestors dug trenches, reloaded
guns, charged the other side, were injured and died.

Many witness trees are famous and were captured in contemporary drawings or Mathew
Brady’s photographs, for example:

• Burnside Bridge Sycamore at Antietam, Md.
  
• Appomattox Courthouse Pin Oak in Virginia
  
• Copse of White Oaks near Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg, Pa.
  
• Southern Magnolias at Andersonville, Ga.

You can see photos
of these and other trees at The Bivouac website. 

Sections of the Culp’s Hill tree with bullets will be displayed in a museum at Gettysburg. The
Gettysburg Daily blog has posts about witness trees, with lots of photos and directions
for finding them.

Here are some Civil War resources from Family Tree Magazine:

• Civil
  War Genealogy Toolkit: Free article with websites, books and organizations for
  tracing Civil War ancestors
  
• Life
  in Civil War America free webinar with the author of the book Life
  in Civil War America 
• Articles
  and books on Civil War research available through ShopFamilyTree.com
  

News from around the web.
Go to Source
—

If you have Illinois ancestors, here’s an important acronym to know:

IRAD

It stands for Illinois
Regional Archives Depository, a statewide records management system that divides
the state into seven regions and helps you access genealogical records. 

IRAD is just one of the Illinois resources Thomas MacEntee will introduce you to in
our Illinois
Genealogy Crash Course webinar, Wednesday, Sept. 21, at 7 p.m. Eastern (6 Central,
5 Mountain, 4 Pacific). 

MacEntee, a Chicagoan, creator of the GeneaBloggers website,
and author of the November
2011 Family Tree Magazine Chicago research guide, will cover important
Illinois history, including migration patterns:

“From 1800 to 1840, many migrated to southern Illinois from Kentucky, Tennessee, the
Carolinas and Virginia,” he says. “After 1830, they came to central Illinois from
Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania. The period from 1840 to 1920 saw a flow of immigrants
to the Chicago area. A great migration of African-Americans from the South to Chicago
and other northern cities took place from 1920 to 1970.”

You’ll also get information on essential Illinois records, including the marriage
return, and other websites where you can do research on ancestors from the Land of
Lincoln.

Be sure to take advantage of our Early Bird special, which saves you $10 off your Illinois
Genealogy Crash Course webinar registration.

Surname Forum Activity
———————-

Please go to www.munnellysofcountymayo.com for details. We’re hoping to have a reunion in Mayo, Ire the summer of 2012 – but it depends on how much interest there is. Please share this web site with anyone who might be interested. Help spread the word! (Please respond on the web site – not to this thread).
Kathy
Go to Source

Surname Forum Activity
———————-

from www.familytreeDNA.com

************************************************

We are pleased to announce the launch of a new feature we hope will benefit your projects: Y-DNA “Third Party” uploads.

This will allow for the upload of 33 and 46-marker Y-DNA test results from Ancestry, GeneTree and Sorensen’s SMGF. This was a natural development since the necessary tools were created to import the DNA Heritage database after they ceased operations. While the DNA Heritage transfer is free of charge as a result of that acquisition, we will be charging a nominal fee of $19 per person to import third party results into Family Tree DNA. This $19 fee will be credited to customers who order upgrades or add-ons.

For an additional $39, customers who transfer their third party results will also have additional markers tested so that they can receive matches to Family Tree DNA’s 25 or 37-marker level, ancestral origins, and other features of the personal page.

Please forward the following link to those who may be interested in ordering the Third Party transfer:

http://www.familytreedna.com/landing/ydna-transfer.aspx

What do you get when you transfer third party results?

The $19 fee will provide the customer with a Family Tree DNA personal page which will allow them to join Family Tree DNA projects freely. This means results will be available to the administrator and included on the project’s public page for comparison with other project members.

The $58 fee ($19 transfer fee + $39 for the added markers to Family Tree DNA’s 25 or 37-marker level) will include the same features provided to Family Tree DNA customers in their personal pages.

For any additional questions related to Third Party transfer, please refer to our FAQ section for help.

*****************************************************

Let me know if anyone has any questions.

Marianne Manley Granoff
Volunteer Project Administrator
Munley / Manley Surname Project
granoff@zianet.com
Go to Source

Surname Forum Activity
———————-

Please go to www.munnellysofcountymayo.com for more details. We’re hoping for a reunion in Mayo, Ire the summer of 2012 – but it depends on how much interest there is. Please share this web site to anyone who might be interested. Help spread the word!
Kathy Manley Short
Please respond at the above site – not on this thread. Thanks
Go to Source

Surname Forum Activity
———————-

Go to Source

News from around the web.
Go to Source
—

I love hearing about people’s research success stories. What I didn’t realize is how much so many of you do, too. But after reading all of the comments asking us to bring back the member stories we formerly featured in our newsletter, I now know better.

While we work on a permanent place to showcase these fantastic stories (featuring one per month never seems enough to me), we’ll continue featuring them in our newsletter. You’ll find this month’s in our Tips and Tools section – appropriate since one of the best ways to learn about using Ancestry.com is to find out from other people who do, too.

About last month’s naming survey: we’re combing through the great write-in candidates as well as the top vote-getter (it’s still a surprise) before we make the final announcement. Expect to see our newsletter’s new name front and center in the September 2011 issue. And be sure to answer this month’s short survey about what you want to see more of in this newsletter. You’ll find a link to the survey in the Your Turn section.

That brings me to my next point: please keep sharing your opinions. I personally received thousands of emails after the July issue of our newsletter – so many that I’m still trying to wade through them all. That, however, is a good problem because each note contained a valuable suggestion for a way we could make the newsletter and Ancestry.com serve you even better. So continue sending me your feedback, comments, stories and suggestions. You can reach me directly at jeanie@ancestry.com.

News from around the web.
Go to Source
—

• Genealogist Michael Hait has started the Ancestry
  Errors Wiki to keep track of the site’s “errors in imaging, programming or organization.”
  For example, one contributor noted that on Ancestry.com, “In the 1840 U. S. federal
  census, the city of Lexington, Fayette County, Kentucky, is incorrectly listed in
  Edmonson County, Ky.”

You can search the wiki or use a drop-down menu to find errors by state. Have you
discovered such an error? Click
here for instructions on adding a page to the wiki.

• Ancestry.ca now includes UK Railway Employment Records, 1833 – 1963, a collection
  containing the employment-related records of British railway workers dating back to
  the early 19th century. These records from the British national archives give employee
  names, home station, date of birth, information on their career progression, salary
  increases, rewards, conduct, and notes from superiors. Search
  the database here. 

• Switzerland genetics company iGENEA reconstructed
  Egyptian pharaoh King Tutankhamun’s (aka King Tut) DNA profile based on a 2009
  study of his DNA. The company determined King Tut belonged to the Y chromosome haplogroup
  R1b1a2, the most common Y-chromosome haplogroup in Western Europe—meaning half of
  all men in Europe are related to him.
  

But less than 1 percent of Egypt’s modern-day residents belong to this
haplogroup, according to iGENEA, and it’s unknown how King Tut’s ancestors got to
Egypt. The company is hoping its search for King Tut’s closest living male relatives
will lead to an answer. If you order
a test from iGENEA and match King Tut on 16 markers, the site promises your money
back and a free upgrade. 

• The 31st annual International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS)
  conference starts next Sunday, Aug. 14, in Washington, DC. Online registration is
  closed, but you can register on-site. Click here
  for more information. 

News from around the web.
Go to Source
—

Speaking of organization challenges, in the November 2011 issue, I ask for readers’ help with a dilemma: how to sort and store the genealogy archive my grandmother passed on to me. I’m not one to make a mountain out of a molehill … But this actually resembles a mountain:

For her part, Grandma did manage to loosely organize the collection into boxes for
specific relatives or branches of the family.

She also sorted scores of family letters into binders.

Still, some material isn’t sorted or labeled. Along with the treasures are random
non-genealogy-related items that need to be weeded out. And none of it is stored in
what you could call an archivally friendly manner.

I’ll admit the prospect of reorganizing and digitizing this mountain of memories has
overwhelmed me. So I’ll pose the same question to all of you family and professional
archivists out there: What’s your advice for making this project manageable?

Can’t wait to hear your suggestions.