Archive for July, 2012

News from around the web.
Go to Source
—

Do they make ’em like that anymore?

That’s what I found myself asking as I read Ernest Borgnine’s biography last year while digging into a batch of U.S. Navy muster rolls.

Ernest Borgnine—still Ermes Effron Borgnino—wasn’t famous when he came to the United States from Italy with his mother in 1923 aboard the Dante Alighieri.

He wasn’t an immigrant, either, though his parents were. His father became a citizen in May of 1921.

But Ermes had been born in Connecticut in 1917. In 1920, his mother took him to Italy. The story is that Ermes’ parents had separated and then reconciled; though this isn’t the explanation Anne Borgnino offers in her passport application as she prepares to return in 1923. In an Affidavit to Explain Protracted Foreign Residence, she says that she came to Italy to visit family and could not return because she had to settle an estate after her mother died in 1921.

The passport application itself includes the date she entered the U.S., a physical description, a marriage certificate number, and a picture of Anne and little Ermes:

Meanwhile, Camillo Borgnino had been living, at least during the 1920 census, with his own parents:

Camillo appears to have been planning a visit to Italy himself; he applied for a passport of his own in 1921, with the stated intent of going to Italy.

Whatever the reason for the separation, by 1930, the family was living together back in New Haven.

In 1935, Ermes joined the Navy and in 1936 was serving aboard the U.S.S. Lamberton, where he continued until October 1941, when he appears on the list of changes for the crew.

Discharged in October, Borgnine re-entered the service following the attack on Pearl Harbor, and in March of 1942 he reappears on Navy muster rolls, this time aboard the Sylph.

And this is where the story gets remarkable. He gets home from the war, he’s done with the Navy, and the time comes to get a job. So his mother says, essentially, you like to clown around in front of people. Why don’t you go be an actor? And at 30 years old, with 10 years in the service and a war under his belt, and no prior experience or inclination, he goes ahead and does just that.

From there, his life does take a turn for the famous, with six decades as a working actor, an Academy Award, and a famously short-lived marriage to Ethel Merman—amongst several others of a longer duration.

But he never quite lost that blue-collar, everyman feel you have to think came from being himself for so long before he started a career of pretending to be somebody else.

News from around the web.
Go to Source
—

• British subscription genealogy site findmypast.co.uk announced it has added more than
  2.2 million records in the past month, including parish baptism, marriage and burial
  records collections dating back to 1568 for Wales, East London, Sheffield/Yorkshire,
  Kent, Lincolnshire, Plymouth and West Devon. Search
  the records at findmypast.co.uk.

• Lisa Louise Cooke, our friend at Genealogy Gems and the host of the free
  Family Tree Magazine podcast, has a snazzy new website at www.genealogygems.com.
  The home page has links to popular parts of the site (such as podcasts, videos, the
  blog) and to Genealogy Gems news and tips. And for those of you already dreading the
  Nov. 1, 2013 end of iGoogle, Lisa
  recommends a replacement for your iGoogle home page.

• The National Archives Southeast regional
  facility in Atlanta is planning an exhibit and workshop on Ellis Island immigration
  records. The Ellis Island: The Lost Mural exhibit opens July 21 with a replica of
  a 1938 Works Progress Administration mural from the Ellis Island immigrants’ dining
  hall, along with immigration documents and portraits of famous immigrants including
  Alfred Hitchcock, Greta Garbo, Alexander Graham Bell and others.

  A related genealogy records workshop with immigration records expert John Philip Colletta
  will be held Sat., Aug. 25, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The fee is $20; call (770) 968-2555
  if you’re interested in attending.

News from around the web.
Go to Source
—

Ancestry.com is opening the floodgates on its 1940 census indexing:
This morning, free, searchable 1940 census indexes for 15 more
states are available
at Ancestry.com. “We … are now very well ahead of schedule from our initial
completion predictions,” says spokesperson Matthew Deighton.

This makes 25 searchable states plus Washington DC on Ancestry.com. The 15 new states
are:

• Alabama
• Arizona
• California
• Georgia
• Hawaii
• Indiana
• Kansas
• Kentucky
• Michigan
• Montana
• Nebraska
• New Hampshire
• Oregon
• Washington
• Wisconsin

Already indexed at Ancestry.com were Colorado, Delaware, Maine, New York, Nevada,
Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia and Washington DC.

FamilySearch now has 31 searchable
states in its free index (which also is searchable via Archives.com and findmypast.com):
Those include all but three states west of the Mississippi River (indexes for Arkansas,
Missouri and Texas aren’t yet completed). Eastern states with indexes at FamilySearch
include Alabama, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Maine, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Rhode
Island, Vermont and Virginia.

Since MyHeritage released its 1940 census indexes
for Rhode Island and part of New York, we haven’t heard about any new states.

The 1940 census is free to search at all the sites hosting records.

News from around the web.
Go to Source
—

GeneTree, the genetic genealogy and family tree building site
Ancestry.com acquired earlier this year, will close. Customers
received e-mail notification to download DNA results and pedigree
before Jan. 1, 2013. 

An FAQ page on Ancestry.com contains instructions for customers to download
information from GeneTree and, if they want, upload
it to Ancestry.com (you can opt for a free guest account instead of a paid subscription).

If you’ve ordered a test from GeneTree or have questions about transferring your information
to Ancestry.com, see this
FAQ page on GeneTree.com.

As part of the deal, Ancestry.com also acquired the DNA assets of the Sorenson
Molecular Genealogy Foundation, which has collected DNA results and associated
family tree data for 12 years. The Y-DNA and mitochondrial DNA results databases on
the smgf.org  website will no longer be updated, but they’ll continue to be available.

From the SMGF.org statement:

News from around the web.
Go to Source
—

Are you researching genealogy in Iceland?I saw on the National Genealogical Society’s UpFront
blog that the Iceland National
Archives has put an index to many censuses online (and the site is available in English).

You currently can search censuses for 1703, 1835, 1840, 1845, 1850, 1855, 1860, 1870,
1890, 1901 and 1910.

Censuses for 1762, 1801, 1816 and 1880 will be added soon. And according to the website,

digital
images of selected censuses from the 18th and 19th centuries will be added when they
become available.

The basic search lets you search one or more censuses on the name, household position,
farm/house name, parish or county. The advanced search lets you search on a combination
of these, plus age and sex.

In your search results, click on a person’s name to see details such as sex, age,
marital status, household position, religion and place of birth. Click in the Farm/House
column for that person to see a list of everyone in the household.

The information from the census is in Icelandic, of course. I used Google
Translate to get a translation for household position terms. That column seems
to be roughly equivalent to US censuses’ relationship to the head of household (such
as “wife,” “child”) or occupation (such as “farmer,” “maid”).

The site also has population statistics
from Iceland’s censuses and interesting historical
information about censuses there.

If you do happen to have ancestors from Iceland, you’ll find more resources for researching
them on our International
Genealogy Passport CD, which compiles helpful genealogy websites, publications
and organizations from nearly every nation on earth.

News from around the web.
Go to Source
—

Are you
researching (or hoping to research) the genealogy of your Tar Heel State ancestors? 

North Carolina is rich with vital records and other resources to leaf out your family
tree, but it also comes with some genealogical challenges—early headright patents,
the Granville District, a highly mobile population, a shifting crazy quilt of counties
and the fluid border with Virginia.

All this and more will become clear during our North
Carolina Genealogy Crash Course webinar, Monday, July 30 at 7 p.m. Eastern Time
(6 Central, 5 Mountain, 4 Pacific).

Genealogy expert and Family Tree Magazine founding editor David A. Fryxell
will present

• Essential
  North Carolina history
• Details
  on where to find vital, land, immigration and other records for the state
• What
  ethnicity-based records your North Carolina ancestor may have left
• The best
  websites and offline resources for North Carolina research

Attendees
receive special access to view the webinar again as often as they like, plus a PDF
of the presentation slides for future reference. And as a bonus, webinar registrants
will also get our North Carolina Research Guide.

Register now to save $10 with our early bird special! Learn more about the North
Carolina Genealogy Crash Course in ShopFamilyTree.com.

Surname Forum Activity
———————-

I only have a litle bit of information on them and mainly on George as he is related to me. So, if you would like, I can share his information with you? Please contact me at:
bhdjkelley@gmail.com

Hope I have what you need,

Jan Kelley
Go to Source

Surname Forum Activity
———————-

Elmer was my grandfathers brother… Harold Manley. I went their, aunt arlie and uncle elmers house when I was a young girl

Marsha
Go to Source

News from around the web.
Go to Source
—

My heart fell this morning when I heard the news that the beloved actor, Andy Griffith, had passed. Through the cold Chicago winters, and hot summers as well, my sisters and I would park in front of the TV when the The Andy Griffith Show would come on.  Decades later, I remember telling my daughter to turn off the TV to get to sleep for school as she begged for one more half hour because Andy was on. I usually gave her that half hour.

The Andy Griffith Show had a kind of timeless humor. For a brief time we are transported to that little town in North Carolina, where the characters welcome us to a simpler time. We can be guaranteed a few laughs and the world rights itself in a half hour. Is it any wonder we’re still drawn to it?

The series incorporated many of Andy Griffith’s memories of his home town of Mount Airy, North Carolina. That’s where we find Andy living with his parents, Carl and Geneva Griffith in the 1930  and 1940  U.S. federal censuses.

Like his character, he came from humble roots. His father worked in a furniture factory, as a laborer in 1930 and band saw operator in 1940. His salary of $850 per year was enough that the family owned their home at 197 Haymore Street in Mount Airy.

By 1940, Andy’s six years in school had already eclipsed the education levels of both of his parents, and he would go on to finish high school in Mount Airy. Five days before his eighteenth birthday, on 2 June 1944, he registered for the World War II draft.

Having just graduated from high school at the time of the draft, he doesn’t have a job at the time, but soon he was off to college where he was active in music and drama. His yearbook shows he was president of the Men’s Glee Club in 1947 at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.

He was also a member of the musical fraternity, Phi Mu Alpha at UNC.

His education and talent in music, comedy and drama paid dividends that will benefit generations to come. Andy Griffith made us feel like he was our next door neighbor and we could sit down with him and forget about the troubles in the world.  His legacy is the smile that comes to our lips we recall a more innocent time – a time when humor was less about shock value and more about uplifting our spirits.

News from around the web.
Go to Source
—

What is the number one resource for using “cluster genealogy” (that
is, investigating your ancestors’ family, associates and neighbors)
to get information on your ancestors?

Find out in this quick video preview of our upcoming webinar Using
Cluster and Collateral Searches to Beat Brick Walls, with genealogy expert Thomas
MacEntee.

To learn more strategies for doing cluster genealogy research, register
for the Cluster and Collateral Searches webinar.

It’s scheduled for next Thursday, July 12, at 7 p.m. Eastern Time (6 Central, 5 Mountain,
4 Pacific). You still have time to save $10 with our early bird price!