Best of the Genea-Blogs - 8-14 May 2011

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Hundreds of 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 genealogy carnivals, 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:

*  Name Changes at Ellis Island by Philip Trauring on the Blood and Frogs: Jewish Genealogy and More blog.  Philip's post describes some of the reasons people changed their surname, but it wasn't at Ellis Island.

*  A Most Curious Case and ". . . And The Dish Ran Away With The Spoon." by Sheri Fenley on The Educated Genealogist blog.  Sheri's working on this case of an attempted murder and ... well, go read it.  Interesting material, with more to come.

*  My Jurisdictional Approach (R) and Your New York Genealogy by Arlene Eakle on the Arlene Eakle's New York Genealogy Blog.  Arlene's advice for pursuing jurisdictions is right on, and she has words or wisdom about chasing ancestors and sources.

*  Local Museums - an Overlooked Genealogy Treasure Trove! by Lorine Schulze McGinnis on the Olive Tree Genealogy Blog.  Lorine asks, and receives!  A wonderful research story and great advice.

*  Going Prepared to Learn a Lot by Ruby Coleman on the You Go Genealogy Girls blog.  The girls are off to Salt Lake City soon for two weeks in the genea-mecca.  Ruby shares her packing tips and research goals.

*  Top 3 Reasons to View the Actual Vital Record by Amanda R. on Amanda's Athenaeum blog.  You can't go wrong with Amanda's advice - great examples!

*  Names Tell All in 1881 British Census by Lee R. Drew on the Family History with the Lineagekeeper blog.  Have a laugh at the names found in the 1881 English census.  Funny post!  Censuswhacking redux!

*  A Speaker's Perspective by Leslie Albrecht Huber on The Journey Takers blog.  Leslie tells about her journey from writer to speaker - fascinating.

*  What’s With Other Genealogy Software Developers? by Louis Kessler on the Louis Kessler Behold!  Blog.  Excellent questions by Louis, and I agree with him - software companies should be responsive to customer comments and questions and problems.

*  Wagon Trains 1840-1860 by Kathleen Brandt on the a3Genealogy blog.  Kathleen authors an excellent article describing print and online resources to find records of persons on the wagon trains.

*  Evan hits a home run by Geoff Rasmussen on The Rasmussen Review blog.  Geoff has a great "making family history" and "making memories" post about his son playing Little League.  Read it - you'll feel good about it!  I guess I like it because I never hit a home run, except in my dreams!  My grandsons are playing baseball now, and I love watching them.

*  Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary by the writer of the Walking My Tree blog.  S/he starts out looking for Connecticut divorce records, and ends up in the Santa Cruz (CA) Public Library!  A fascinating research post.

*  Going Public with New FamilySearch by James Tanner on the Genealogy's Star blog.  James mentions my post about New FamilySearch, and summarizes his experiences with it over the past three years.  I hope his summary will help readers determine when or if to use the website.

I intentionally did not include any posts from the NGS Conference attendees on the list above - but I collected all I could find in NGS Conference Posts Compendium.

Several other genea-bloggers wrote weekly pick posts this week, including:

*  Best Bytes for the Week of May 13, 2011 by Elizabeth O'Neal on the Little Bytes of Life blog.

*  Around the Blogosphere: May 15 2011 by Susan Petersen on the Long Lost Relatives.net blog.

I encourage readers to go to the blogs listed above and read their articles, and add their blogs to your Favorites, Google Reader, RSS feed or email if you like what you read. Please make a comment to them also - all bloggers appreciate feedback on what they write.

Did I miss a great genealogy blog post? Tell me! I am currently reading posts from over 870 genealogy bloggers using Google Reader, but I still miss quite a few it seems.

Read past Best of the Genea-Blogs posts here.