Sunday, February 19, 2012

Best of the Genea-Blogs - 12 to 18 February 2012

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:
  


*  What is Causing Your Brick Wall? by Marian Pierre-Louis on Marian's Roots and Rambles blog.  She wants to know so she can solve it for her coming webinar, right?

*  The most fulfilling research I've ever done by Katie O. on the You Are Where You Came From blog.  Katie had a great plan, and then got lucky.  


*  Posting records online -- beyond copyright by James Tanner on the Genealogy's Star blog.  James discusses privacy, secrets and plagiarism...


*  Nancy Drew and the case of the possible re-marriage by Mary Ellen on the Threading Needles in a Haystack: The Genealogy Journey blog.  Mary Ellen finds some intriguing clues in a newspaper article.  We all should be so lucky!


*  Musings on Books, Bytes, and Josh Coates by Nancy on the My Ancestors and Me blog.  Nancy  summarizes the Friday Keynote at RootsTech 2012 and muses about how she could possibly create one gigabyte of text, and then reviews a new technology device.


*  Ten Brick Wall–Homework Assignment by Russ Worthington on The Worthington Weblog blog.  Russ is a man of action - he watched Marian's webinar on brick walls, then analyzed each one using my William Knapp problem.  I really appreciate his help!


*  SSDI: Genealogy’s Public Enemy No. 1 by Judy G. Russell on The Legal Genealogist blog.  Judy profiles the head of Social Security, and offers him examples about the value of the SSDI to the genealogy community.


*  The Genealogical Mystery of Thomas Tew, the Rhode Island Pirate by guest poster John D. Tew on Heather Rojo's Nutfield Genealogy blog.  John describes the pirate Thomas Tew, and his research into the man who, apparently, is not his ancestor.  Too bad!


*  Where to Start? by Caroline M. Pointer on the BloggingGenealogy.com blog.  Caroline "talks to" her second great-grandfather... and tells an interesting "story."  She also shares how, and why, we should be blogging about our ancestral stories. 


*  Go West, Young Man! by Carolyn L. Barkley on the GenealogyAndFamilyHistory.com blog.  Carolyn found some interesting data about 19th century western USA migration trails and shares them with us.  


*  SSDI Mining by Tonia Kendrick on the Tonia's Roots blog.  Tonia organized a great way to look for SSDI data and it paid off for her.  

*  Trefusis part 1 and Trefusis part 2 by Janet Hovorka on The Chart Chick blog;.  Wow - Janet has notes from her great-grandfather's research about a farm in England, and then she found the farm on Royal Ordnance Map and Google Maps.  Well done!  Have fun at WDYTYA Live! too.

*  The Decision to Find Your Family by Diane Beumenot on the One Rhode Island Family blog.  Diane reviews how she got involved in genealogy and asks "Are you a “first generation genealogist”, and if so, why do you think that is?"

 Several genea-bloggers wrote weekly pick posts and news summary posts this week, including:   


*  Monday Morning Mentions by Lynn Palermo on The Armchair Genealogist blog.

*  Ruth's Recommendations by Ruth Blair on The Passionate Genealogist blog.

*  Donna’s Picks, Link Love, and More: Valentine Edition by Donna Pointkouski on the What's Past is Prologue blog.


*  Genealogy Round Up, February 16 by Megan Smolenyak on the Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak's Roots World blog


*  Friday Finds -- 2/17/12 by Julie Cahill Tarr on the GenBlog blog.


*  Genealogy News Corral, Feb. 13-17 by Diane Haddad on the Genealogy Insider blog.


*  Notable Genealogy Blog Posts, 19 February 2012 by Michael Hait on the Planting the Seeds 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 1200 genealogy bloggers using Google Reader, but I still miss quite a few it seems.


Read past Best of the Genea-Blogs posts here.

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2012/02/best-of-genea-blogs-12-to-18-february.html

7 comments:

Kathleen O'Hara said...

Thanks so much for including me, Randy! I'm honored!

Tonia said...

Thanks Randy!

Caroline said...

Thanks for the shout-out, Randy! I appreciate it.

~C

Nancy said...

Thanks for the mention, Randy. I think you are the only one who "got" that post.

Judy G. Russell said...

Thanks for the mention, and for doing this, Randy. I always find great things I've missed in your lists!

Heather Wilkinson Rojo said...

Thanks for mentioning John Tew's guest post on my blog, the one about the pirate Thomas Tew of Rhode Island. John did some excellent research, and it was fun being able to highlight it on my blog. I can't wait to tell John that you made him one of the "picks of the week!"

J. Tew said...

As heather just mentioned, she told me about your blog (which I admit I was unfamiliar with until now) and that you picked the Thomas Tew post as one of your top reads for the week. Thank you very much -- and thanks to Heather for inviting me to post on her blog and now introducing me to this site!

John