Digging Up the Past Together

News from the FGS conference: The Federation of Genealogical Societies, a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation headquartered in Austin, Texas, announces the re-launch today of the popular Society Hall at its website at www.fgs.org. Society Hall is an informational database accessible on the Internet that can be used to locate FGS member organizations in the U.S. and abroad. This includes genealogical societies, historical societies, family associations, libraries, archives, and genealogical vendors serving the genealogical community. Thousands of people searching for information about these organizations visit Society Hall each month. Every FGS Member society has a Society Hall listing at www.fgs.org/societyhall that it... Dick Eastman

Print this article out and save it someplace. I have no idea why, but many of the words used in researching your family tree are difficult to spell. I constantly see spelling errors in messages posted on various genealogy web sites. When someone misspells a word, it feels like they are shouting, "I don't know what I'm doing!" Here are a few words to memorize: Genealogy - No, it is not spelled “geneology” nor is it spelled in the manner I often see: “geneaology.” That last word looks to me as if someone thought, "Just throw all the letters in... Dick Eastman

Are you ready for a radical change in your lifestyle? Some people are advocating just that and are doing it themselves. They are selling or giving away nearly all of their physical possessions and changing to an almost all digital life. These are minimalists: people who prefer to live with an absolute minimum of personal possessions. I suspect we will see more and more minimalists within the next few years. As genealogists, we need to record the lifestyle changes of our relatives and perhaps of ourselves. Chris Yurista is a Washington, DC, resident who lives out of a backpack while... Dick Eastman

The Footnote Blog mentions a CNN article about what some folks have called, “one of the most significant Civil War discoveries in decades.” Some students from Georgia Southern have found what may be “the exact location of a stockade and dozens of personal artifacts belonging to” Union Prisoners at Camp Lawton, a Confederate prison that housed about 10,000 men. Camp Lawton was built to replace the notorious Andersonville Prison, but it wasn’t much of an improvement. The article also mentions Pvt. Robert Knox Sneden, a Union map maker who painted some watercolors of the prison and kept a journal of... Dick Eastman

Beller, Susan P.
Roots for Kids: A Genealogy Guide for Young People. 2nd Edition.
Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Publishing, 2007.
Call No. folio CS 15.5 .B45 2007

Magocsi, Paul R. and Ivan Pop, eds.
Encyclopedia of Rusyn History and Culture.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005.
Call No. folio DJK 28 .R87 E53 2005

Sommer, Barbara W. and Mary Kay Quinlan, eds.
The Oral History Manual. 2nd ed.
Lanham, MD: Altamira Press, 2009.
Call No. Local History Ref D16.14 .S69 2009 (2nd floor open shelf)

Zelner, Kyle F.
A Rabble in Arms: Massachusetts Towns and Militiamen During King Philip's War.
New York: New York University Press, 2009.
Call No. E 83.67 .Z455 2009

At 8 p.m. Eastern time, an encore telecast of "Who Do You Think You Are" averaged a 0.9/4 in 18-49, 3.7 million viewers overall. "Who Do You Think You Are" is currently reporting NBC's biggest overall audience in the time period in 10 weeks (since June 4). In the time period, "Who Do You Think You Are" is tied for #1 among the major networks in men 25-54 (pending updates). Dick Eastman

A newsletter reader recently contacted me about an email message a relative received. She wrote: I wanted to ask you about this Probate email my sister in law received, she is not into genealogy at all so questioned me about it. They gave my step father's name and totally different or wrong parents for him, but knew his date of birth, death and that my mother remarried and had the correct name of that husband. It worried her that they knew some of the correct material (no secrets anymore on the internet these days) they wanted her to contact them... Dick Eastman

Researching African American ancestry prior to 1870 is always difficult. However, ProQuest has added new online tools to the genealogist's toolbox. The following announcement was written by ProQuest: ProQuest Expands Content in Ground-Breaking African American Genealogy Resource African American Heritage takes genealogists back beyond 1870 with marriage records, slave registers and more August 16, 2010 (ANN ARBOR, Mich.) -- New content in a ground-breaking ProQuest genealogy product enables African Americans to more easily trace their ancestry and break through a boundary that has hindered research in the past. ProQuest African American Heritage has added marriage, cohabitation, and registers of slaves... Dick Eastman

The following announcement was written by FamilySearch: The Tennessee page on the FamilySearch Research Wiki has recently been updated and now includes a wealth of new information and resources to help people find their ancestors in the Volunteer State. The link for this revised page is: http://wiki.familysearch.org/en/Tennessee Background The FamilySearch Research Wiki is a free resource created by the genealogy community. The core content for the Tennessee page was contributed by the expert researchers at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah. The page also includes tips and research advice from local experts. The Wiki staff is currently... Dick Eastman

Chinese historians are trying to piece together the story of the Liaoyuan POW camp, near Changchun, China. I once spent two weeks in Changchun and became very aware of the importance of the city although unaware of the former POW camp. Changchun is in northeastern China in the area formerly known as Manchuria. It is north of North Korea and just south of Russian Siberia. During World War II the entire area was occupied by the Japanese Army and Changchun served as the capital of the Japanese-controlled puppet state in Manchuria. China's last emperor Pu Yi was installed as the... Dick Eastman

58-year-old Laura Smith of Richmond, Indiana died Thursday, Aug. 12, 2010, at Reid Hospital. She was born in Richmond, April 29, 1952, to Elmer Eugene and Marilyn Baldwin Pohlenz. Laura was very active in the Wayne County Genealogical Society. You can read Laura Smith's online obituary at http://www.pal-item.com/article/20100815/NEWS04/8150307 Dick Eastman

The Paik Inje Memorial Library of Inje University has introduced Inje's Digital Genealogy Library, after three years of dedicated preparation. The genealogical materials have been collected by the library since 2007 in an effort to preserve Korea’s ethnic history. In association with the Utah-based organization Family Search, the library has digitalized hundreds of records and created the Digital Genealogy Library to allow users to search for their genealogical records. Currently about 500 genealogy e-books are available online, with page-turning and zoom features that allow users to freely explore these records. They include Gimhae Kim and Gimhae Heo clans, which are... Dick Eastman

Yes, I do remember Grandma's lye soap. It was heavy-duty, although it didn't suds and it didn't foam. Back in 1952, Johnny Standley even had a hit record about it, called "It's in the Book!" Side A was "Little Bo Peep" (a parody of the popular Bible meetings of the day) and Side B was "Grandma's Lye Soap." This #1 hit was the first million selling comedy record. The music was corny then and seems even more so today. Nonetheless, this is what your parents (and a few of us older folks) listened to for amusement. You can listen to... Dick Eastman

I tend to travel often but have been at home for the past two months. All that is about to change. This week I am leaving for the annual conference of the Federation of Genealogical Societies in Knoxville, Tennessee. That is but the first of several trips that should keep me on the road most of the time for the next two months. I'll be traveling with an assortment of laptop computers, an iPad, various wi-fi and 3G wireless devices, and more. I should remain connected and be able to post new articles to this newsletter. However, time may be... Dick Eastman

The following is a Plus Edition article written by and copyright by Dick Eastman. How many times has this happened to you? You enter a courthouse, library, or other repository of genealogy information with the intent of finding information about your ancestors. You don't really know what is available in that library or archive. After all, that is the purpose of your trip, right? You want to find out. Next thing you know, your head is spinning amidst a profusion of information and a confusion of objectives. You may be wondering how this happens. While at the library/archive/repository, you start... Dick Eastman

Last year I wrote about geotagging photographs. Geotagging can be a major addition to digital photographs. In short, geotagging is the process of adding geographical identification to digital photographs, video, websites, or even RSS feeds. The information added typically consists of latitude and longitude coordinates, but it can also include altitude, bearing, accuracy data, and place names. However, the New York Times reports that security experts and privacy advocates have begun warning consumers about the potential dangers of geotags, which are embedded in photos and videos taken with GPS-equipped smartphones and digital cameras. By looking at geotags of uploaded photos,... Dick Eastman

Franklin County, Pennsylvania's officials, including the county's archivist Stu Veinotte, say the county is better off without all the old papers that constitute more than 200 years of local history. Paper copies of old estate records, marriage licenses, tax and court records and book after book of deed records, some of which date to the late 1700s, will be gone, existing only in digital files and in some cases on microfilm. Veinotte is managing a team that is digitizing the old records, many of which are stored in two rooms in the basement of the courthouse annex, converting them to... Dick Eastman

The computer world is full of nasties these days: viruses, Trojan horse programs, keyloggers, and all sorts of other programs designed to steal your personal information and to do harm to your computer. Ninety-nine percent of the problems affect Windows computers, but even Macintosh and Linux systems are not completely immune. You can install anti-malware programs on your computer in an attempt to keep your data safe from malware (malevolent software), but that still does not entirely secure your data. The people who write anti-virus software are always behind their counterparts who write viruses. Yesterday's anti-virus software does not protect... Dick Eastman

The Lockhorns' web site has a cute cartoon involving genealogy. Copyright laws prevent me from posting the cartoon here but I can legally post a link to it: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/comics/index.html?feature_id=Lockhorns&feature_date=2010-08-14 My thanks to Eric Gomes for telling me about the cartoon. Dick Eastman

The following is a Plus Edition article written by and copyright by Dick Eastman. Here's another non-genealogy article about free telephone service. I wrote about one such service just a few days ago at http://eogn.com/wp/?p=11136. Now magicJack, the Internet phone gadget that is advertised all over late night television, is planning to offer FREE phone calls from computers, smart phones and iPads. That means that anyone will be able to call landline and cell phones in the U.S. and Canada, with no time limits on the calls. There will be no hardware gadget to purchase and no charge for the... Dick Eastman