Sunday, July 20, 2008

Best of the Genea-Blogs - July 13-19, 2008

Several hundred genealogy and family history bloggers write thousands of posts every week about their research, their families, and their interests. I appreciate each one of them and their efforts.

My criteria for "Best of ..." are pretty simple - I pick posts that advance knowledge about genealogy and family history, 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.

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

* Traditions by Wendy Littrell on the All My Branches Genealogy blog. Wendy lists many of her family traditions and challenges each of us to write about theirs. Any takers?

* Indexing Tips: 1900's American Handwriting, Indexing Tips: The Palmer Method, and Indexing Tips: The Palmer Method in New York Schools by the writer on The Ancestry Insider blog. Mr. Insider goes back to school to find samples of American handwriting to help all of us interpret those records with rotten handwriting.

* In Case You Missed "A Day of Irish Information" by Kathryn Doyle on the California Genealogical Society and Library Blog. Kathryn describes the day-long program presented by Nora Hickey to CGS about Irish Research. It sounds like a fabulous day. I'm still jealous and sad that I don't have any Irish ancestors to search for.

* Breaking Down Brick Walls at CGS by Steve Danko on Steve's Genealogy Blog. Steve treats us to a summary of another excellent CGS program about finding elusive ancestors presented by Jane Hufft, Lavinia Schwarz, and Nancy Peterson.

* Comparing three collaborative websites by Dean Richardson on the Genlighten Blog. Dean compares using Geni, Ancestry Member Trees, and New FamilySearch for sharing family tree data with family or other researchers. He provides an overview of each site, and lists some strengths and weaknesses. Nice job - I really like the strengths and weaknesses list.

* My Greatest Genealogical Mysteries - Revealed (Not Solved) by Family Tree DNA by Tim Agazio on the Genealogy Reviews Online blog. Tim has a fascinating post about his patrilineal line and the Y-DNA results that make him wonder just how things happened centuries ago.

* July 18 - Friday from the Collectors: Collectors of CDVs by guest-blogger Lorine McGinnis Schulze (of the Olive Tree Genealogy site) on footnoteMaven's Shades of the Departed blog. Lorine covers more than Carte des Visites in her post - she describes 19th century photographs with many examples in this excellent post.

* Punt and Punt: Part II by John Newmark on the Transylvanian Dutch blog. John looks for living relatives and decides to smoke them out the old-fashioned way. Smart move, good example. Hopefully, he will report on the results.

* Blogging Family History by Denise Olson on the Family Matters blog. Denise discusses why she blogs, partially in response to a Janice Nickerson magazine article. As Denise says, blogging enables her to share stories with her family and find others researching the same families.

* Seize from Every Record Its Unique Genealogy Evidence by Arlene Eakle on the Arlene Eakle's Virginia Genealogy Blog. Arlene provides an excellent article summary from a 1979 book, with great advice for all researchers.

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!

4 comments:

Moultrie Creek said...

I always enjoy your Best of posts. Thanks for including me in this one. --Denise

Tim Agazio said...

Ditto what Denise said. I look forward to this post every week because you always find great blogs I've never visited before. I appreciate you including me every now and then.

Tim Agazio

Kathryn Doyle said...

Randy, I'm next in line repeating what Denise and Tim said! Thanks for the mention. And CGS got a double score with Steve's post!

wendy said...

Thanks so much for including my post of "Traditions" on my blog: http://allmybranches.wordpress.com on the Best of list! I am so appreciative that you thought it was worthy of mentioning!