Archive for October, 2011

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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 pm Central, 3 pm MT, 1 pm Pacific), we’ll announce the winner
of that day’s giveaway and reveal the next day’s giveaway. Plus, for that day, each
daily prize will be on sale for a fantastic price.

The winner of today’s giveaway, The Family Tree Problem Solver book, is Pamla
Hendrickson.

And now for the deal: You can get this classic genealogy guide today for $12.99, half
off the retail price. This
price is good until midnight ET today, Oct. 15. Click
here to buy now.

The daily giveaway for tomorrow, Oct. 16, is Finding the Civil War in Your Family
Album. In this book, Photo Detective Maureen A. Taylor helps you date, identify
and preserve portraits and pictures taken in the Civil War Era. Click
here to sign up now on our Daily Deal & Giveaway page. (Note: Even if you
signed up for a previous giveaway, sign up again to put yourself in the running for
this one.)

Then just come back here tomorrow at 4 pm ET to see if you’ve won. Good luck!

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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 Crista Cowan in an Ancestry.com TweetChat. Using TweetChat, Crista 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!

**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 6, (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 for the next couple days leading up to the event Thursday evening.

Crista Cowan is a professional genealogist and currently serves as the Community Alliance Manager for the Ancestry World Archives Project. Since starting with Ancestry.com in 2004, Crista has taught countless family history classes and online webinars, written articles for Ancestry.com publications and the Ancestry.com blog and has held the positions of European content acquisition manager and indexing manager.

To keep the questions to the most relevant possible, Crista 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:

1. Follow Ancestry.com on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/ancestrydotcom)
2. 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
3. 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.

News from around the web.
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Family Tree Magazine and Family Tree University are celebrating Family History
Month in October by giving away great genealogy supplies all month long!

Here’s how it works: Each day at 4 pm ET, 3 pm Central, 3 pm MT and 1 pm Pacific,
we’ll announce the winner of that day’s giveaway and reveal the next day’s giveaway.

Each daily prize also will be on sale at ShopFamilyTree.com for that day only—so if
you don’t get the giveaway, you can still snatch up a fantastic deal on tools to advance
your research!

The winner of today’s giveaway, our Military Research Guide CD, is Jacqueline
Case of Kellyville, Okla.

Do you have military ancestors? The Military Research CD special price of $10 (down
from $19.99!) is good until midnight ET today, Oct. 7. Click
here to buy it now.

The daily giveaway for tomorrow, Oct. 8, is our Family Tree Essentials CD! Click
here to sign up now on our Daily Deal & Giveaway page. (Note: Even if you
signed up for a previous giveaway, sign up again to put yourself in the running for
this one.)

News from around the web.
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• EntertainmentWeekly.com
  is reporting that actors Marisa Tomei, Martin Sheen and Blair Underwood will appear
  on NBC’s celebrity genealogy series “Who Do You Think You Are?” in 2012. Other
  featured celebrities will be announced later. Read
  more on EntertainmentWeekly.com.

• GeneTree is having a sale on genetic genealogy
  tests to mark Family History Month. The Y
  DNA 46 marker test costs $99  and the mitochondrial
  DNA test costs $129 (the regular price for these tests is $179). The sale runs
  through Oct. 11.

• New records on FamilySearch this week include five million civil registration
  images from the Philippines from 1945 to 1980, plus records from Austria, Belgium,
  Czech Republic, Italy and Spain.
  

US additions include Sebastian County, Ark., births and deaths; San Mateo
County, Calif. Italian cemetery records; Florida Confederate veterans and widows pension
applications; Clark County, Idaho, records; Indiana marriages; North Carolina estate
files; Columbia County, Ore., records; and Utah probate records. Remember that not
all collections are indexed yet, so you may need to browse record images by date or
place.

Go
here to see details on the additions and link to each updated collection.

• This one’s for anyone who has worn or is planning to wear a wedding gown: The Wedding
  Gown Project is sponsoring a writing competition for stories about buying,
  making, fitting, wearing, storing or passing down your wedding dress. The deadline
  is Nov. 30, and three cash prizes will be awarded. Author and documentarian Donna
  Guthrie will compile the stories for a documentary in 2012. See The
  WeddingGownProject.com for entry details.

News from around the web.
Go to Source
—

Family Tree Magazine and Family Tree University are celebrating Family History
Month in October by giving away great genealogy supplies all month long!

Here’s how it works: Each day at 4 pm ET, 3 pm Central, 3 pm MT and 1 pm Pacific,
we’ll announce the winner of that day’s giveaway and reveal the next day’s giveaway.

Each daily prize also will be on sale at ShopFamilyTree.com for that day only—so if
you don’t get the giveaway, you can still snatch up a fantastic deal on tools to advance
your research!

The winner of today’s giveaway, a registration for our Oct. 25 Google+ webinar,
is Karis Brown.

Want to participate in the webinar on furthering your research by using Google+ (it
includes 30 days of support from the presenter!)?

The special price of just $29.99—that’s $10 off the early-bird rate—is good
until midnight ET today, Oct. 6. Click
here to register now for the Google+ webinar.

The daily giveaway for tomorrow, Oct. 7, is our Military Research Guide CD! Click
here to sign up now on our Daily Deal & Giveaway page. (Note: Even if you
signed up for a previous giveaway, sign up again to put yourself in the running for
this one.)

Then just come back here tomorrow at 4 pm ET to see if you’ve won. Good luck!

News from around the web.
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Ancestry.com is celebrating the website’s 15th anniversary with 15
days of free genealogy databases and giveaways. 

A new database will be free each day, and stay free through Oct. 15. So far, you can
search for free:

• Social Security Death Index (also free elsewhere online, including FamilySearch and RootsWeb)
  
• Griffith’s Valuation, 1848-1864, an important resource for Ireland
  
• California Marriage Index, 1960-1985
  
• WWI Personnel Rosters, 1914–1918, from Bavaria, Germany (records are in German)
  
• 1920 US Census
  
• Australian Electoral Rolls, 1903–1954

You also can enter to win daily prizes from Ancestry.com, culminating in a grand prize
trip behind the scenes of the NBC show “Who
Do You Think You Are?”

Go here to see Ancestry.com’s daily
free databases and enter the sweepstakes.

News from around the web.
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Hee, hee. I was searching Ancestry.com birth
records for one of my Frost relatives, and I found this record for an unrelated person:

Must be a transcription error, I thought. But here’s the original record:

Sure looks like Icy Frost to me. I suppose this little one’s name could be Joy, what
with the similarities between the clerk’s capital Js and Is. Elsewhere on this birth
registry, I found a James:

   

and the surname Isaacs:

What do you think? There are more genealogy giggles—these, from censuses—in the November
2011 Family Tree Magazine Everything’s Relative column. If you’ll be in
charge of naming a baby soon and want to know what to avoid, this
book might be for you.

News from around the web.
Go to Source
—

Family Tree Magazine and Family Tree University are celebrating Family History
Month in October by giving away great genealogy supplies all month long!

Here’s how it works: Each day at 4 pm ET, 3 pm Central, 3 pm MT and 1 pm Pacific,
we’ll announce the winner of that day’s giveaway and reveal the next day’s giveaway.

Each daily prize also will be on sale at ShopFamilyTree.com for that day only—so if
you don’t get the giveaway, you can still snatch up a fantastic deal on tools to advance
your research!

The winner of today’s giveaway, our Family Tree Pocket Reference book, is Mary
Roddy of Seattle.

Want to buy the Family Tree Pocket Reference? Get this little book for a big
deal—just $7.99 (regularly $14.99). The special price is good until midnight
ET today, Oct 5. Click
here to buy now.

The daily deal and giveaway for tomorrow, Oct. 6, is registration for our Google+
for Genealogists webinar, scheduled for Oct. 25!

This one-hour live online seminar will show you secrets to using Google+, and includes
30 days of personal tech support from the instructor. Click
here to sign up now on our Daily Deal & Giveaway page. (Note: Even if you
signed up for a previous giveaway, sign up again to put yourself in the running for
this one.)

Then just come back here tomorrow at 4 pm ET to see if you’ve won. Good luck!

News from around the web.
Go to Source
—

You’ve been checking out our Family
History Month Daily Deal & Giveaway news (five down, 26 to go!), but I wanted
to tell you about two more special happenings this month:

• Our free
  60-minute webinar Start Writing Your Life Stories with Sunny Jane Morton, author
  of the book My
  Life & Times: A Guided Journal For Collecting Your Stories, takes place Thursday,
  Oct. 13 at 1 pm Eastern Time (noon CT, 11 am MT, 10 am PT).
  

Sunny will share tips and ideas for capturing the stories of a lifetime—your
own or those of a loved one. Click
here to sign up for this webinar. 

• Update: Our free webinar, Be
  a Family History Detective: Secrets to Starting Your Genealogy, with Desmond Walls
  Allen, author of the book Family
  History Detective, is scheduled for Oct. 26 at 1 pm Eastern Time (noon CT, 11
  am MT, 10 am PT). 

Allen will share essential advice for getting your family history search
off the ground. Click
here to sign up.

News from around the web.
Go to Source
—

Family Tree Magazine and Family Tree University are celebrating Family History
Month in October by giving away great genealogy supplies all month long!

Here’s how it works: Each day at 4 pm ET, 3 pm Central, 3 pm MT and 1 pm Pacific,
we’ll announce the winner of that day’s giveaway and reveal the next day’s giveaway.

Each daily prize also will be on sale at ShopFamilyTree.com for
that day only—so if you don’t get the giveaway, you can still snatch up a fantastic
deal on tools to advance your research!

The winner of today’s giveaway, the International Genealogy Passport CD, is Cynthis
Mason of Meyersdale, Pa. Congratulations!

Want to buy the International Genealogy Passport? The special price is good until
midnight ET today, Oct. 4. Click
here to buy now.

The daily giveaway for tomorrow, Oct. 5, is our Family Tree Pocket Reference book! Click
here to sign up now on our Daily Deal & Giveaway page. (Note: Even if you
signed up for a previous giveaway, sign up again to put yourself in the running for
this one.)

Then just come back here tomorrow at 4 pm ET to see if you’ve won. Good luck!