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Archive for October, 2011
News from around the web.
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Have you always wanted to ask a family history expert a question about your own genealogy research? Now’s your chance! Join family history expert Juliana Smith in an Ancestry.com TweetChat. Using TweetChat, Juliana will answer questions about how to successfully discover your family history both in real time and from previously submitted questions. All you need is a Twitter account to participate. If you aren’t on Twitter yet, then be sure to join at www.twitter.com and direct your questions to the hashtag #acomchat to participate in the chat!
Join the chat room on Twitter here
**What is a hashtag you ask? A hashtag is a “group” designation on Twitter. People search on Twitter by typing in an abbreviated name with number sign #acomchat or #familyhistory among many other topics to see what people are posting on those subjects.
This TweetChat will take place on Thursday, October 27, (at 8PM EDT/5PM PDT) using the #acomchat hashtag. You can RSVP for the event on Facebook, and we’ll be sending out reminders via Facebook and Twitter leading up to the event Thursday evening.
Juliana Smith is an expert on the topic of genealogy and family history and has been an editor of Ancestry.com newsletters for more than 13 years. She is also the current editor of the Ancestry Weekly Discovery. She also wrote the “Computers and Technology” chapter in The Source: A Guidebook to American Genealogy, rev. 3rd edition and presents free webinars that are available in the Ancestry.com Learning Center.
To keep the questions to the most relevant possible, Juliana recommends submitting around the following topics:
– Search tips for Ancestry.com
– Problem-solving strategies
– Tips for finding ancestors in specific collections
– How to use historical details to liven up your family tree
**How Do You Participate?
On the day of the event, go to www.tweetchat.com/room/acomchat to follow the #acomchat and log-in to TweetChat from your personal Twitter account. During the event, you can follow the discussion, contribute questions, and submit your own comments by using the same hashtag. Please send a message to @ancestrydotcom during the conversation with any technical issues you may have.
**How to submit your questions in advance of the TweetChat:
- Follow Ancestry.com on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/ancestrydotcom)
- You can then send us an @ reply with your question and include the hashtag (#acomchat) in the message to make sure we know to include it in our list of questions
- Or, after you receive a message confirming that we’re following you too please visit our Twitter page at www.twitter.com/ancestrydotcom and click on the mail icon to send us a private / direct message with your question
To submit your questions during the TweetChat, please send a tweet to Ancestry.com on Twitter (www.twitter.com/ancestrydotcom) using the hashtag #acomchat in your post.
**How do I use Twitter?
If you haven’t used Twitter before, it’s easy to get started. Just visit www.twitter.com and create a user name and a password. You will also need to submit an active email address. Your user name will be the name associated with you on Twitter. Just like Ancestry.com is twitter.com/ancestrydotcom, you may be twitter.com/nickcifuentes. After that, sign into your Twitter account, go to www.twitter.com/ancestrydotcom and click “Follow” to get “tweets” aka messages, within 140 characters each, from Ancestry.com. You can “reply all” to a message by clicking “retweet” so that people following you can see a message you want to share with them or write one yourself, within 140 characters per message.
**What is a TweetChat?
A TweetChat is merely the online forum in which a conversation occurs and their proceedings are posted for reading or engagement. TweetChat.com (www.tweetchat.com) is the online platform that allows anyone with a Twitter handle / account to log-in to TweetChat and enter a hashtag to follow an entire conversation on one screen.
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Join Ancestry’s own barefoot genealogist, Crista Cowan, as she shows you the answer to this week’s question: How can I use a death record to learn more about my ancestor’s life?
The event will be happening today @ 1 pm EST (10 am PST).
The broadcast will be aired on the Ancestry.com Livestream channel, as well as from our Livestream Tab on Facebook.
And if you can’t make it? Don’t worry, you’ll be able to watch the event recording right after it’s over on the Ancestry.com Facebook page.
About our experts:
Crista Cowan has been with Ancestry.com since 2004; her interest in family history, however, reaches all the way back to childhood. Send Crista questions for future events at ask@ancestry.com.
Watch the Livestream broadcast below:
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Over the years, we have received requests to include some charting features that were available in Family Tree Maker 2006/version 16. In Family Tree Maker 2012 we’re brought back two of them: direct-line descendant charts and generation labels.
Direct-line Descendant Charts
In recent versions of Family Tree Maker, the descendant chart showed all of an individual’s descendants. With only one or two generations, this chart can get quite large and difficult to understand. Now you have a simple alternative. You can create descendant chart that shows the direct-line relationship between two people you select.
Generation Labels
Another option available in 2012 is generation labels, which identify the relationship between the primary person in the chart and other family members (such as parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents). These labels appear above chart columns and help you identify relationships in a glance.
Text Boxes
A new feature in 2012 is the ability to personalize charts by adding your own free-form text boxes. Write a story about the individual, add a caption to a family photo, or include information that doesn’t fit elsewhere on the chart.
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Family Tree Magazine and Family Tree University are celebrating Family History
Month by giving away great genealogy supplies all month long!
Each day at 4 pm ET (3 CT, 2 MT, 1 PT), we’ll announce the winner of that day’s giveaway.
Plus, each daily prize will be on sale for a fantastic price.
Today’s giveaway is the Digitize Your Family Photos Value Pack, a collection
of digital downloads that’ll help you build a digital archive of your family’s cherished
memories.
And the lucky winner is … Sandra Goodwin!
And here’s today’s Daily Deal: Just for today, we’ve slashed the price of the Digitize
Your Family Photos Value Pack (our most popular value pack) to $49.99, plus you’ll
get the Digitize Your Genealogy Documents video class free!
The deal is good only today, Oct. 28.
The daily giveaway for tomorrow, Oct. 29, is another popular collection: our Organize
Your Family History Value Pack. Click
here to sign up now on our Daily Deal & Giveaway page! (Even if you signed
up for a previous giveaway, sign up again to get in the running for this one.)
Then just come back here tomorrow at 4 pm ET to see if you’ve won (and check out the
next deal). Good luck!
News from around the web.
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The Genealogists for
Families project, coordinated by genealogists Judy Webster and Joan Miller,
uses the microfunding website Kiva.org to
make small loans to those in need around the world. Borrowers use the funds for businesses
that support their families, for example, a man in Rwanda used a Kiva loan to buy
raw materials to expand his carpentry business. So far, Genealogists
for Families has made 61 loans totaling $1,525. To get involved, sign
up with Kiva. You can lend as little as $25. As the loan is repaid, you can lend
to someone else.
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Did your relative die in service to the Prussian army during World War I? The Prussian
Army Project database at Genoroots lets you search 100,000 names (and growing)
on the Deutsche Verlustlisten—the list of the army’s personnel losses during
World War I. Go
here to search.
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The Genealogical Society of Ireland and the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland are
working together on a DNA project to learn more about the Irish population.
Coordinators will collect DNA samples and genealogical information from participants.
Participants won’t receive results unless important health information is discovered. You’ll
find more details in this article on TheJournal.ie.
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The Federation of Genealogical Societies is offering two
new benefits to member societies: a website review and a newsletter review (whether
print or digital). Evaluations may include suggestions on improving design, layout,
ease of use, content and more. See
the FGS Voice blog for more information.
News from around the web.
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Family Tree Magazine and Family Tree University are celebrating Family History
Month by giving away great genealogy supplies all month long!
Each day at 4 pm ET (3 CT, 2 MT, 1 PT), we’ll announce the winner of that day’s giveaway.
Plus, each daily prize will be on sale for a fantastic price.
Today’s giveaway is any November or December Family
Tree University course. Want to learn
how to trace your German ancestors? Find a soldier
in the Civil War? Figure out how to get
your research organized?
Well, if you’re Linda Donham, you can do any of the above, or take
one of our other course offerings. Congratulations!
Here’s today’s deal: Register for any Family Tree University November or December
class and get $40 off. Build A+ research skills from the comfort of home!
Check out the classes here and use
offer code FHMDD to get the deal. The code is good today only, Oct. 27
The daily giveaway for tomorrow, Oct. 28, is our Digitize Your Family Photos Value
Pack. This collection of digital downloads will help you build a digital archive
of your family’s cherished memories.
Click here to sign
up now on our Daily Deal & Giveaway page! (Even if you signed up for a previous
giveaway, sign up again to get in the running for this one.)
Then just come back here tomorrow at 4 pm ET to see if you’ve won (and check out the
next deal). Good luck!
News from around the web.
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A free iPhone app released today from memory-sharing site 1000memories makes
your phone work like a scanner.
The Shoebox scanning app helps
you digitize, organize and share collections of photos from the past.
You use the camera on your iPhone to snap a picture of a photo. Shoebox auto-detects
the edges of the photo, then crops and straightens it. You can add information such
as dates, names, and locations, then upload the photo as a JPG to 1000memories.com.
There, you can be organize and share your pictures.
Of course, the quality of Shoebox “scans” depends on the phone’s camera. If you have
the latest iPhone, the 4S,
your digitized Shoebox photos will be on par with what you’d produce with a typical
desktop scanner, 1000memories cofounder Jonathan Good told me. The 4S has an 8.0 MP
sensor for high-resolution mobile scans, as well as an improved f2.4 lens for quality
lower-light scans.
Good says he also gets excellent results using his iPhone 4. The app is compatible
with all previous iPhone models, as well as the iPad.
An Android version is coming soon, Good added (to the delight of this Android user).
“The popularity of the iPhone camera has proven that people want something that’s
quick, accessible, and easy to share,” says 1000memories’ other cofounder, Rudy Adler.
“For us, that’s what providing a social mobile scanner is about – making it as easy
as possible for people to get their photo collections digitized and shared with the
people they care about.”
It’ll certainly make scanning a box of photos quicker, and it’ll be easier to digitize
photos in your relatives’ possession—no need to persuade Aunt Bertha to let you cart
her precious album home.
Note that the app outputs a JPG file, but the TIF format, which creates uncompressed
files, is the most
widely used type of file for digital master photos. That lack of compression is
also why TIF files are large and impractical for electronic sharing. So you may want
to create TIF backups of important pictures.
Go here to learn more about
Shoebox and download it.
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Genealogy’s two biggest record sites announced additions to their respective collections.
Here are the details:
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Subscription site Ancestry.com
added
53 million new US birth, marriage and death records from 23
states dating as far back as the 1600s.
The records come from state and local archives, county offices and newspapers.
Subscribers can search Ancestry.com’s vital records collection at www.ancestry.com/vitals.
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The free FamilySearch.org added a variety of
records from the California, Iowa, and Texas in the United States, as well as Canada,
Chile, the Czech Republic, Guam, Hungary, Japan and Wales.
Go
here to view the new FamilySearch records and link to each one. Remember, where
you see a “0″ in the Records column and a number in the “Images” column, you’re looking
at a collection that hasn’t yet been indexed. In that case, rather than type in a
name to search, you’ll need to browse through the record images in that collection.
News from around the web.
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Family Tree Magazine and Family Tree University are celebrating Family History
Month by giving away great genealogy supplies all month long!
Each day at 4 pm ET (3 CT, 2 MT, 1 PT), we’ll announce the winner of that day’s giveaway.
Plus, each daily prize will be on sale for a fantastic price.
Today’s giveaway is our new book Family History Detective: A Step-by-Step Guide
to Investigating Your Family History by Desmond Walls Allen. It’s an excellent
guide for someone’s who’s starting genealogy research.
And the winner is … Joyce Skidmore of Fairfax, Va. Congratulations!
Here’s the deal: Preorder Family History Detective for $13.99 and get Family
Tree University’s Discover Your Family Tree independent study class free! That’s
two great beginner tools for the price of one. It’s good through the end of today,
Oct. 26.
The daily giveaway for tomorrow, Oct. 27, is any November or December Family Tree
University course. Click
here to sign up now on our Daily Deal & Giveaway page! (Even if you signed
up for a previous giveaway, sign up again to be in the running for this one.)
Then just come back here tomorrow at 4 pm ET to see if you’ve won (and check out the
next deal). Good luck!
News from around the web.
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Did you know October is German American Heritage Month, Italian American Heritage
Month and Polish American Heritage Month? That’s right. The month is almost
over (that was fast!), but we can’t let it go by without sharing resources to help
you trace these heritages. Here are some of our favorite online articles, sites and
resources:
German
People with German heritage make up the largest ancestry group in the United States, according
to the 2000 US census. I’m part of this statistic, at one-half German.
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Tips
for using the Meyers Orts- und Verkehrs-Lexikon des Deutschen Reiches,
which German genealogy expert James M. Beidler calls the “seminal handbook for tracking
down German villages” -
Family
Tree Magazine’s German genealogy glossary - German Genealogy Home Page
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Surviving passenger departure
records from the port of Bremen -
German
records on FamilySearch.org -
Beidler’s German
Genealogy 201 Family Tree University course
Italian
Those with Italian heritage make up the seventh largest ancestry group in the United
States, with 15.6 million Americans claiming Italian roots in the 2000 US census.
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Italian
genealogy records at a glance -
Finding
Italian military records - Italian Genealogical Group
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Ancestry.com’s
Italian records (includes recently released civil registrations and a free index
to Palermo birth records) -
Italian
records on FamilySearch.org -
Family
Tree Magazine Italian Genealogy Guide digital download, available in ShopFamilyTree.com
Polish
If you have Polish ancestors, you share heritage with 9 million Americans and are
part of the country’s eighth largest ancestry group.
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Polish
Genealogy Terms -
Tracing
Polish town-name changes -
Federation of East European Family History Societies’ Poland
Genealogy Resources - Polish Genealogical Society of America
- PolishRoots.org
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Poland,
Roman Catholic Church Books, 1600-1950 on FamilySearch -
Family
Tree Magazine Polish Genealogy Guide digital download from ShopFamilyTree.com
Hispanic Heritage Month (celebrating the ancestry of another big US heritage
group) spanned part of this month, too, ending Oct. 15. You
can see Hispanic heritage tips and resources in this blog post.