Member of ISOGG
Archive for May, 2012
News from around the web.
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On Friday’s final episode of the NBC genealogy show “Who
Do You Think You Are?” TV chef Paula Deen crisscrossed
the state of Georgia tracing her maternal roots.
Deen’s parents died when she was a young woman, so not much family information had
made its way to her. The show focused on her third-great-grandfather John Batts, a
slaveowning planter and member of the Georgia legislature from 1857 to 1860.
Batts’ son William (brother to Deen’s great-great-grandmother Eliza Batts) fought
for the confederates in the 12th Georgia regiment during the Civil War. The Georgia
Archives actually had letters he’d written home, as well as letters from his commanding
officer. These missives gave Deen an intimate view into William’s experiences and
his family’s reaction after he was killed in action.
At Fold3—the first time I can remember this subscription
site being shown on WDYTYA?—Deen finds John Batts’ application for a pardon from the
US government. Most of the South was covered by President
Andrew Johnson’s blanket pardon, but wealthy planters like Batts had to swear
loyalty and provide documentation they’d freed their slaves.
Tax records at Emory University show John Batts’ fate. Things went downhill for the
family after an economic depression in 1873. Deen and a researcher note declining
values of John’s personal and real estate until 1879, when the records show all zeros.
A newspaper article reveals that John, sadly, had committed suicide.
Although “Who
Do You Think You Are?” won’t be returning next season, GeneaBloggers
reports that for the first time this season, the episode came in first for viewership
in its time slot and was the third-most-watched show for the evening.
These two short videos show research not included in Friday’s episode, about Deen’s
fifth-great-grandfather Joel Walker, an early Georgia settler in the Savannah area.
You
can watch the full episode about Paula Deen’s family history journey here.
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Maine, 1940. Before lobster had settled firmly into the position of high-priced delicacy. Before the eastern-most state had realized the impact World War II would have on its shipbuilding industry. Before there was a Stephen King to tell wonderfully creepy fictional tales about the place. That was Maine 72 years ago.
And as of last night, you can search for the state’s residents by name during that moment in time in the just-launched 1940 U.S. census index for Maine on Ancestry.com.
Adding Maine to our list of fully indexed, fully searchable locations brings us up to four: Maine, Nevada, District of Columbia and Delaware. Search for resident by name to find your own family’s Maine relations. Or look for famous Mainers including future actress Linda Lavin (a toddler at the time) and Leon Bean (better known as L.L.), who’s listed as the president of a sporting goods company. Or browse through the town of Strong, Maine to see how many residents made toothpicks for a living. It was big business back in Maine in the day – and for many years to come.
If Maine isn’t at the top of your wish list of states to search, take note: more states are on deck with indexes coming very soon. And the entire 1940 U.S. Federal Census will be fully indexed and fully searchable on Ancestry.com long before the end of the year. Plus you can browse through every 1940 census image, regardless of state or territory, already on Ancestry.com. Start browsing and searching now.
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Paula Deen’s great-great-great-grandfather lived through slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction just as much as Jefferson Davis and Ulysses S. Grant did. While most of our ancestors aren’t mentioned in history books, this fact is one more reason for us to look back and stake our personal claim to events that shaped the world. Learn more about what Deen discovered when she found her family’s place in historic events on the season finale of Who Do You Think You Are? airing tonight at 8/7c on NBC. Ancestry.com is a sponsor of the show.
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A free update for Family Tree Maker 2012 (Windows) is now available. It contains a number of improvements and fixes of reported issues including:
- Improvements to TreeSync performance and stability
- Added support for media, notes, and sources during file merges
- Improved handling of media during Web merges
- Bug fixes for tasks, media items, and window resizing issues (on computers running Windows 7)
When you open Family Tree Maker, you should be notified that an update is available. If this doesn’t happen, please visit the KnowledgeBase for instructions on manually downloading and installing the update.
New Features
This update includes a variety of new features and even a new report.
Merge for Duplicate Facts
If you have multiple versions of the same fact, you can merge them together.
New Source Templates
Source templates for the 1940 U.S. census have been added and there is improved support for city directories.
More Support for Blended Families
When you add a spouse for an individual, now you can indicate whether he or she is also the parent of the individual’s children.
Charts
In a relationship chart, an individual’s father and mother will both be included at the top of the page; shortened place names can be used; and, fonts are resized automatically so text won’t be cut off.
Reports
- Family View Report – This new report lets you display an individual’s ancestors, spouse, and children together (similar to the Family View in the People workspace).
- Calendars – You can change the font size for events.
- Data Errors Report – A new option lets you include only preferred facts.
- Documented Facts Report – New options let you include or exclude source citation notes and include only preferred facts.
- Family Group Sheet – An image that is linked to an individual can be displayed at the top of the report. Also, spacing and labels have been improved.
- Individual Report – A new note indicates when a couple has no children together. Also, there are new options that let you include an individual’s life span in the summary and add the summary to all pages.
- Media Item Report – A new option lets you include or exclude notes and links.
- Media Usage Report – A new option lets you include captions, dates, descriptions, categories, and notes. Also, media images are resized based on amount of descriptive info that is included.
- Notes Report – Notes can flow across page breaks.
- Photo Album – Improved spacing when including dates and descriptions.
- Undocumented Facts Report – A new option lets you include only preferred facts.
- Improved speed when generating reports that include notes and/or sources.
- Saved charts and reports are listed alphabetically.
- The person you’re currently viewing will be selected now when you open the Filter Individuals list.
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Join Ancestry.com for two FREE online classes this week beginning tonight at 8 p.m. ET as Crista Cowan walks you through her go-to tips for success in Ready, Set, Go – Family History How-To Everyone Should Know.
Then join us again on Thursday, May 17 at 8pm ET as Juliana Szucs Smith presents Get More Clues from a Census Record.
Both classes are absolutely free but registration before each event is required (bonus: when you register, you’ll get an email reminder about the presentation as well as an email informing you when the class is available for viewing online after the presentation airs – even if you weren’t able to attend the live broadcast). You can register for a class by selecting its name above.
And be sure to stick around until the end. Both Juliana and Crista will pick a handful of questions from the audience and give you their spot-on answers.
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Subscription genealogy site Ancestry.com announced
that its 1940 census index for
the state of Maine is now searchable free on the site. The site also has 1940 census
indexes for Delaware, the District of Columbia and Nevada.
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In addition to its six state indexes for the 1940 census (Colorado, Delaware, Kansas,
Oregon, Vermont, Virginia), the free FamilySearch.org has
added online records for Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic,
England, France, Germany, Hungary, Indonesia, Italy, Netherlands, Peru, Poland, Portugal,
South Africa, Spain, Sweden, United States, Venezuela and Wales.
US records come from Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Indiana, Iowa,
Maine, Maryland, Montana, New York, Ohio, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia and Washington. You
can see all the new or updated collections and link to them here.
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The Southern California
Genealogy Jamboree is coming up June 8-10 at the Los Angeles Marriott Burbank
Airport Hotel. Besides the classes and the free exhibit hall, highlights include one-on-one
consultations with members of the Southern California Chapter of the Association for
Professional Genealogists, three-hour Genealogy World roundtable discussions and a
DNA Interest Group that can help you interpret genetic genealogy test results.
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The National Genealogical Society (NGS) has
announced that the 2013 NGS Family History Conference, will take place in Las Vegas,
Nevada, May 8–11. The conference hotel and venue will be the LVH−Las
Vegas Hotel & Casino (formerly the Las Vegas Hilton). Online conference registration
isn’t yet open.
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So you’ve got an Ancestry.com subscription, but
you have a nagging suspicion that you’re not getting your money’s worth. You might
still be missing that breakthrough genealogy record, or you could be frustrated by
the sea of search results you get—some clearly not even close to being your ancestor.
Or maybe you’re thinking about investing in an Ancestry.com subscription and wondering
if it’ll be worth it.
Our May 23 webinar will answer your questions and help you get the most out of your
Ancestry.com membership. It’s called Your
Unofficial Guide to Ancestry.com: Tips, Hints and Hacks for Finding Your Ancestors.
(Family Tree Magazine isn’t affiliated with Ancestry.com, so this webinar won’t
be a commercial.)
The webinar will cover:
- How to efficiently navigate Ancestry.com
- Tricks for finding the record collections you need
- Search tips for locating hard-to-find ancestors in Ancestry.com databases
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Things Ancestry.com doesn’t tell you (like the limitations of its collections and
how many freebies are on the site)
The Your
Unofficial Guide to Ancestry.com webinar takes place May 23 at 8 p.m. Eastern
(that’s 7 p.m. Central, 6 p.m. Mountain and 5 p.m. Pacific). It’s presented by David
A. Fryxell, a veteran genealogist and a Family Tree
Magazine contributing editor.
We’ll help you start finding the genealogy answers you need in the world’s largest
genealogy database website. Register for Your
Unofficial Guide to Ancestry.com now to take advantage of our $10 off early bird
special!
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Do You Think You Are?” is
also the series finale, at least on NBC. In the show, chef
Paula Deen learns about her family history in the Deep South. She discovers a
senator, slave owners and family letters. Here’s a short preview:
Watch the show at 8 p.m. ET/7 CT on NBC.
Sunday at 8 p.m. on PBS’ “Finding
Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates Jr.” actors Michelle
Rodriguez and Adrian
Grenier and author/journalist Linda
Chavez explore their Latino roots. All share Spanish colonial roots, yet
they self-identify differently differently: as American Indian, Puerto Rican, Dominican
or simply Latino.
Here’s a video preview of Rodriguez’s discoveries.
Watch Michelle
Rodriguez’s Puerto Rican Roots on PBS. See more from Finding
Your Roots.
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Were your ancestors among the millions who claimed
federal lands under the Homestead
Act of 1862?
We’re coming up on the 150th anniversary of this groundbreaking (pun intended) legislation
that accelerated the country’s westward expansion. Look for opportunities to learn
more about your homesteading ancestors.
President Lincoln signed the Homestead Act into law on May 20, 1862. Beginning Jan.
1, 1863, a homesteader could receive up to 160 acres of public
domain land by applying for a claim (which required a filing fee), improving the
land, living on it for five years, and then filing for a patent.
Anyone who was 21 or older or the head of a family—women, immigrants and freed slaves
included—who’d never taken up arms against the US government could file an application
to claim land.
The first person to claim land under the act was Union Army scout Daniel
Freeman on Jan. 1, 1863. The story is he’d met some officials of the local land
office at a New Year’s Eve party and convinced them to open the office shortly after
midnight so he could file his claim before reporting for duty.
Homesteading ended in 1976 in most of the United States and 1986 in Alaska. The last
claimant under the act applied for 80 acres on Alaska’s Stony River and received his
deed until 1988.
Only about 40 percent of those who ever filed completed the application process and
received land titles. More than 2 million homesteads were granted, according
to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Between 1862 and 1934, 10 percent of land
in the United States was privatized under the act.
Use these links to research your ancestor’s homesteading experience:
General Land Office
Records Online
The BLM’s General Land Office (GLO) was charged with overseeing the homestead application
process. It’s free to search for and view more than 5 million federal land patents
issued since 1820. (If your ancestor applied for a homestead but never received title
to his or her land, there won’t be a record here.) You’ll also find a reference center
with a land records glossary, FAQ and more.
Using
Land Patents
This free FamilyTreeMagazine.com article has tips for using the GLO online records
website.
Nebraska
Homestead Records
Fold3 is digitizing the National Archives‘ homestead
records for Nebraska. You can search the collection, which is 39 percent complete,
for free. The files, from the Records
of the Bureau of Land Management, consist of final certificates, applications
with land descriptions, affidavits showing proof of citizenship and more. And here’s
a video about the homestead records digitization project.
Homestead
National Monument of America
This national monument near Beatrice, Neb., explains the Homestead Act and its impact
on the United States. Click the History and Culture link to learn more about the act,
see its text, view maps, “meet” well-known homesteaders and more.
BLM:
Commemorating 150 Years of The Homestead Act
This BLM site has a Homestead Act timeline; videos about historic homesteads, building
a frontier home and more; and a Q&A.
National
Archives: Ingalls Homestead Records
This article from the National Archives’ Prologue magazine
(Winter 2003 issue) discusses my favorite homesteaders—the Ingallses and Wilders of Little
House on the Prairie fame—and shows portions of the families’ homestead records.
Family Tree Magazine resources to help you
research your ancestors’ land records (whether federal records such as land entry
case files or local records such as deeds) include:
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Research
Strategies: Using Land Records, a Family
Tree Magazine article digital download from ShopFamilyTree.com -
Land
Records Research Value Pack, a discounted package deal in ShopFamilyTree.com
that includes the above Using Land Records article, our Land Records 101 Independent
Study Course and two video classes on platting your ancestors’ property. -
Land
Records 101: Using Deeds, Plats, Patents and More, an instructor-led Family
Tree University course that shows you how to do genealogy research in all types of
land records
News from around the web.
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Known for her Southern cooking and hospitality, celebrity chef Paula Deen searched for more information about her Southern roots on the season finale of Who Do You Think You Are? Better still, Deen picked up a new skill along the way – she found out just what you have to do to turn records and history into a family’s personal story.
Here’s how it happened: Deen was trying to reconstruct an ancestor’s life following the Civil War. So she turned to tax records from the 1870s. Individually those records didn’t seem to say much. But once Deen created a handwritten grid, the tax information began to tell a story. Noting the number of hired hands, acres and value of the land and personal estate over the years, Deen saw a rapid financial decline in 1874. Plotting her ancestor’s fortunes against what was going on in the U.S. at the time, it was apparent that his financial situation took a drastic downturn during the country’s depression.
But Deen didn’t dwell on the negative. Instead she chose to draw strength from these past events and look to the future. It’s a lesson for everyone who dives into their family history – learn from it and grow.
Ancestry.com is a sponsor of Who Do You Think You Are? Missed the episode? Watch it online here.