Archive for December, 2012

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We set some big goals for Nashville before we arrived here. Rob grew up listening to all types of country music so he was excited to experience downtown Nashville, the Grand Ole Opry and the Country Music Hall of Fame. Kathy had goals to find some really good southern barbeque and to dig into her family history to discover all she could about her Jolley line in preparation for our visit later in the week to Dresden, Tennessee. The kids had goals to keep up on their school schedules, eat as much junk food as they can get their hands on, and play at every playground they see.

One of the challenges of every stop we make is the decision of whether to stay at a campground or not. The kids love the amenities at the campgrounds and it is a great place to get things done like laundry and maintenance on the motorhome. However, we have to stick with our budget so we can’t stay at a campground every night. In Nashville we ended up staying half the nights in a campground and it worked out perfectly.

Just like everywhere else we have gone so far on our adventure, people see our motorhome or see our family of seven and they want to find out the WHO, WHAT, WHY, WHERE and HOW of our trip. The typical questions are about school for the kids and what I do for a living but they also want to tell us about their family history and often tell us about how they use Ancestry.com for their family history research. Yesterday at the Grand Ole Opry Kathy got to know a group of ladies on a tour. Before we knew it they were telling us all about themselves and their trip and asking Kathy all kinds of questions about our adventure. Audrey saw to it that they each received a gift from Ancestry.com and when we left they were excited to get to their computers so they could follow us along our journey. The great people we have met along the way has been one of the best parts of our adventure thus far. We love to hear the interesting and sometimes unbelievable family history stories people share with us. I am sure that by the time this adventure is over we will have enough material from all of these great people to write a book full of fascinating stories.

As far as our goals are concerned, we feel like Nashville was a big success. We hit most all of the sites we wanted to see and Kathy found some great information about the Jolley’s at the very cool Tennessee State Library and Archives building. And by the way, the staff there was awesome, they had some really nice displays on exhibit and the building is absolutely beautiful. It is located right across from the state capital building and if you are in Nashville any time soon we highly recommend stopping by and spending some time there. We also found it very helpful to have our tablet PC with us so we could cross reference our Ancestry.com app during our research. At this point we like to use the app on our iPad best to do our family history. It’s small enough to be compact and convenient but big enough to do just about everything we do on our PC and the app makes it easy to record info and grow our trees.

Next on our itinerary is a short stop in Dresden, Tennessee. We expect to connect with Kathy’s Jolley line and find out whatever we can about those who remained behind after Kathy’s 2nd great grandfather and his family moved to Illinois. Then we are headed down to Memphis and then on to Little Rock so until we blog again we’ll see you on the road.

Go see more of the Brown family and their adventures at http://www.ancestry.com/adventure

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• This week’s big news is MyHeritage’s
  acquisition of Geni. 

• Ancestry.com announces the launch of Newspapers.com,
  a new web site featuring more than 800 US newspapers dating from the late 1700s to
  the early 2000s. With more than 25 million pages, Newspapers.com offers historical
  and present-day newspapers ranging from The New York Times to small town and
  local newspapers.
  

The site’s search capabilities are specifically designed for newspapers,
enabling users to search by keywords, location, time period and newspaper name. A
one-year subscription to Newspapers.com is $79.95 for subscribers and $39.95 for Ancestry.com
or Fold3.com members.

There currently
are no plans to remove any newspaper content from Ancestry.com. Most of the newspapers
on the new site (more than 15 million of the 25 million pages) are not part
of Ancestry.com records. Ancestry.com is actively producing millions of new pages
per month from microfilm, and is working with newspaper publishers and microfilm owners
to increase the number of newspaper titles in its production pipeline for Newspapers.com.

• The National Genealogical Society has
  released its full 2013
  Family History Conference Program, available here. Registration for NGS’ 35th
  annual conference—May 8-11 in Las Vegas—opens Saturday, Dec. 1; to
  register online, visit the NGS website.

• The Federation of Genealogical Societies received
  a $250,000 donation from FamilySearch for
  its War of 1812 “Preserve the Pensions” Digitization Fund, designed to digitally preserve
  and index the War of 1812 pension and bounty land records.

• FamilySearch volunteers have currently made more
  than 249 million records searchable—over 92.5 million more than were published last
  year. To view a list of currently available indexing projects, visit
  the Family Search indexing updates page. 
  

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Is hard-to-buy-for Aunt Helen the repository for recipes, photo albums and keepsakes? Does Grandpa Joe archive all of your family’s facts and dates in his head—not to mention all those lesser-known scintillating tidbits? If you need holiday gift ideas for your genealogically inclined relatives, look no further!

Click here for
Family Tree Magazine’s 10 must-have items to help discover, preserve and celebrate
your family’s history, making you the family hero in the process. (And, you can always
get a gift for yourself and just wrap it for the big day!)

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MyHeritage, the popular online family history
network, announced today that it has acquired Geni.com,
a pioneer in collaborative family tree building with its focus on creating the World
Family Tree.

The acquisition extends MyHeritage’s network to 72 million registered users, 1.5 billion
profiles and 27 million family trees internationally.

Geni.com will continue to operate as a separate brand based out of its California
office, and the services of MyHeritage and Geni.com will initially run independently.
MyHeritage plans to give respective users the option to collaborate on family history
research by enabling two-way information flows between the sites.

Users of both sites will be able to discover relatives and new ancestral connections
through MyHeritage’s Smart Matching technology, which finds common matches between
family trees. In addition, MyHeritage will apply its recently launched Record Matching
technology—matching historical records such as birth, death, census and immigration
records—to individuals in Geni.com family trees.

In addition to its acquisition, MyHeritage also announced its $25 million funding
round to be used to boost growth of its historical content services and expand its
commercial operations worldwide.

UPDATED: Geni CEO Noah Tutak announces immediate benefits to Geni.com
users:

• Free unlimited profile adding—All users can add as many profiles as they’d
  like to their tree without upgrading to a paid account. There are no limits to the
  size of a user’s tree.
• Free Merging—All users can now merge duplicate profiles in their tree (privacy
  and permission rules still apply).
• Free relationship paths—Users can discover their relationship to historical
  figures and celebrities, and even distant relatives.
• Free family tree chart downloads—All users can now download a high-quality
  chart of their family tree to their computer at no charge. 
• No ads—Ads have been removed to provide users with a cleaner, less distracting
  interface.
• More privacy—Living people who have not joined Geni will become private and
  will not be searchable on Google.

 

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We know December can be a bit crazy, with all the shopping, caroling and decking the
halls. Find a moment of calm among the clatter by blocking out time for one—or both—of
Family Tree University’s December live webinars … and keep your genealogical research
on track.

 




State Genealogy Series

Kansas Genealogy
Crash Course: Find Your Sunflower State Ancestors

Searching for your Sunflower State ancestors? In the 19th century, this Midwest plot
of prairie was home to Native Americans and European settlers alike. If your ancestors
lived in the vicinity of Topeka, Wichita or Kansas City, let presenter Kathleen Reid
Rippel lead you to your roots.

Date: Thursday, Dec. 6, 2012
Time: 7pm EST/6pm CST/5pm MST/4pm PST
Duration: 1 hour
Price: $49.99 ($39.99 through tomorrow, Nov. 29)

What You’ll Learn:

• Fundamental Kansas history, from the Louisiana Purchase to the American Civil War
• State-specific tips for tracing American Indian, English, Spanish and African-American
  and other ethnic ancestors
• Key online sources for Kansas records
• Tricks for finding your roots from Topeka to Wichita, Dodge City to Kansas City
• PLUS: This webinar comes with two free downloads: a copy of our Kansas
  State Research Guide and our Kansas City Guide.

Register Here: Kansas
Genealogy Crash Course: Find Your Sunflower State Ancestors

Four Fun Factoids from Presenter Kathleen Reid Rippel:

• The Pikes Peak Gold Rush was actually in Kansas territory.
• The Kansas State Historical Society was created by newspapers editors in 1875. It’s
  no surprise, then, that Kansas is one of the best states for newspaper research.
• Kansas is one of the few states that regularly took a state census. These are still
  available and provide some extra information. The 1885 and 1895 schedules are especially
  helpful since the 1890 Federal census is not available.
• Even if your ancestors didn’t settle in Kansas, many researchers discover that their
  family members stayed for awhile, then returned home or went further west. Others
  passed through on major trails, including the Oregon Trail and the Santa Fe Trail.

Discover and Preserve Your Family History Series

Using
Criminal Court Records Webinar 

Sift through criminal case files to find your ancestors in criminal court records.
Judy Russell, The Legal Genealogist, will present the essential strategies for locating
your ancestors.

Date: Tuesday, Dec. 11, 2012
Time: 7pm EST/6pm CST/5pm MST/4pm PST
Duration: 1 hour
Price: $49.99 ($39.99 until Dec. 4)

What You’ll Learn:

• Explanation of the complaint and indictment process as it affected your ancestors
• The paper trail generated from arrests and gathering witnesses
• How to find records of pretrial and trial proceedings and what they can tell you about
  your ancestors
• How sentences—from the stocks to the penitentiary—were issued and documented
• PLUS: This webinar comes with a free PDF download: a copy of Court Orders,
  our guide to courthouse records.

Register Here: Using
Criminal Courts Webinar

Four Fun Factoids from Judy Russell, The Legal Genealogist:

• Americans love to trace their roots to the Mayflower. But the first convicted killer
  in America was John Billington, who arrived on (yep, you guess it) the Mayflower.
• Throughout history, the criminal law has treated women differently from men: in some
  cases, more leniently, in others, more harshly. Only a woman, for example, could be
  convicted of being a common scold.
• One of the biggest boosts to law enforcement was the development of photography. It
  made it more difficult for a bad guy to just change his name and move down the road.
  Many photographs exist from criminal cases starting in the late 1800s, and a fair
  number can be found online—and not just from the United States.
• From 1919-1933, large numbers of criminal prosecutions were for alcohol-related offenses,
  thanks to Prohibition. But Prohibition gave birth to a new type of crime, Organized
  Crime (with capital letters)—and an explosion of records, particularly at the federal
  level.

AND, A REMINDER …

Don’t miss out! Our one-week workshop, Using
Free Genealogy Websites, begins Friday and runs through Friday, Dec. 7. In just
one week, this Family Tree University workshop will teach you secrets for gleaning
more ancestral information from free sites and databases; for searching the web more
effectively; and for taking advantage of fantastic free tools you’re not already using. Click
here to register.

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The November 2012 Family
Tree Magazine podcast, hosted by Lisa Louise Cooke of Genealogy
Gems, celebrates family with a focus on digitizing your documents and photos,
including:

• Advice on scanning old family photos—from Family Curator Denise May Levenick, author
  of How
  to Archive Family Keepsakes: Learn How to Preserve Family Photos, Memorabilia &
  Genealogy Records

• How to use Facebook as a digital home for family history and photos, from Tyler Moss,
  online editor for Family Tree Magazine

• Tips for using digital photography to capture current family memories, as well as
  for preserving old documents and heirlooms, from Family
  Tree University’s Digital Photography Essentials course

• Recommendations for organizing and scanning your documents and photos from Family
  Tree Magazine publisher and editorial director Allison Dolan

You can listen to Family Tree Magazine‘s free genealogy podcast in iTunes or
on FamilyTreeMagazine.com.
Show notes are on FamilyTreeMagazine.com,
too.

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Hope you and yours had a lovely Thanksgiving!

Just want to make you aware of our Cyber
Monday Savings featuring extra savings on new live webinars, plus limited-quantity
value packs, available today only! And, if you didn’t get to shop our Thanksgiving
Week Sale, you’ve got until 11:59 pm. EST tonight to take advantage of the awesome
savings.

Help friends and family—and yourself!—dig deeper into ancestry at a great value, just
in time for the holidays!