Sunday, June 8, 2008

Best of the Genea-Blogs - June 1-7, 2008

Here are my picks for great reads from the genealogy blogs for this past week.

My criteria are pretty simple - I pick posts that advance knowledge about genealogy, address current genealogy issues, provide personal family history, are funny or are poignant. I don't list posts destined for the Carnival of Genealogy, or other meme submissions (but I do include summaries of them), or my own posts.

* "Boston Diary - June 1," "Boston Diary - June 2," "Boston Diary - June 3," "Boston Diary - June 4," "Boston Diary - June 5," "Boston Diary - June 6, Part 1" and "Boston Diary - June 6, Part 2" by Lori Thornton on the Smoky Mountain Family Historian blog. My distant cousin Lori provides a history, genealogy, sightseeing and gastronomic tour of eastern New England while on her vacation/conference trip to Boston and environs. I really enjoyed all of Lori's pictures and comments, and she did quite a bit of genealogy too! Well done.

* "Breaking Through That Brick Wall" by Brenda Joyce Jerome on the Western Kentucky Genealogy Blog. Here is good advice from Brenda about solving the brick wall problems that everybody has in their family research.

* "Urge your Representative: sign "Preserving the American Historical Record" Bill" and "My letter urging preservation of American historic records" by Pat Richley on the DearMYRTLE's Genealogy Blog. Pat provides lots of information about the PAHR bill and her own letter written in support of it. Excellent work here!

* "The Cherokee Booger Dance" by Dave Tabler on the Appalachian History blog. Dave had me with the post title - and describes a fascinating bit of American dance folklore. Priceless photos, too.

* "One Super-Power To Go, Please!" by Terry Snyder on The Desktop Genealogist blog. Terry muses about being a genealogist with X-ray vision, being able to fly, being telepathic, but she settles on, well - go read her post. Kind of reminds me of Genea-Man (Janice Brown's cartoon is still here) and History Woman (see Janice Brown's cartoon here).

* "Old Maids' Day - 4 June 2008: A Genealogical Asset on Your Family Tree" by Arlene Eakle on Arlene H. Eakle's Genealogical Blog. Arlene tells us why searching for the old maids on our family tree can really help us in our research. I hadn't really thought about this - great post!

* "The Rise and Fall of Heartland Farmhouses" by Chery Kinnick on the Nordic Blue blog. Chery links to a PBS documentary and a book titled "Death of a Dream" that lament the passing of the farm house culture, and has some excellent pictures from her own family collection. Thanks, Chery.

* "Ancestry Profiles" by Taneya Koonce on Taneya's Genealogy Blog. Taneya shows the enhancements that Ancestry has added to member profiles, and how you can connect to others searching the same surnames. After reading this, I updated my profile! Have you updated yours? Thanks, Taneya.

* "I Think She's Dead!" by footnoteMaven on the Shades of the Departed blog. fM has a fascinating photo - is she dead or isn't she? I don't think she is...but who am I to judge?

* "June 6 - Friday from the Collectors: Digital Scrapbooking for Genealogists" by Jasia on footnoteMaven's Shades of the Departed blog. Every week these Collector posts are keepers for me! Jasia (of the Creative Gene and Creative Genealogy blogs) tells some of her scrapbooking secrets - I wish I could do something like this, but I was a male engineer...

* "One Day in Dallas (or 'sleep is overrated!')" by Ruth Stephens on the Bluebonnet Country Genealogy blog. Ruth finds some goodies in the Texas Death Certificates 1890-1976 database on the FamilySearch Record Search site. Take a peek and see who her examples are! Great catches.

* "Steve Morse: new one-step features" by Schelly Talalay Dardashti on the Tracing the Tribe: The Jewish Genealogy Blog. Schelly summarizes the latest features on Steve Morse's One-Stop web site. The latest research helps include Arabic transliteration, French and Muslim calendar converters, phonetic name matching, searching naturalization records, searching reference books, and New Orleans ship records.

I encourage you to go to the blogs listed above and read their articles, and add their blog to your Favorites, Bloglines, reader, feed or email if you like what you read. Please make a comment to them also - we all appreciate feedback on what we write.

Did I miss a great genealogy blog post? Tell me!

6 comments:

Jasia said...

Thanks for the mention Randy!

TERRY SNYDER said...

I appreciate the thumbs up Randy. It's nice to be in such good company!

footnoteMaven said...

Randy:

Thank you so much for the mention(s).

I'm really enjoying the Collector's Series and glad that you are as well!

fM

SCHELLY TALALAY DARDASHTI said...

Hi, Randy,

Thank you for the mention. As always, a good list.

Taneya said...

Thanks for the mention!

Chery Kinnick said...

Randy - Once again, I was surprised to find myself mentioned. You are a do-gooder if ever I knew one. Thanks!