Sunday, February 8, 2009

Best of the Genea-Blogs - February 1-7, 2009

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 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:

* Looking for Catherine by Terry Snyder on the Desktop Genealogist Unplugged blog. This great research story has many lessons for all of us with elusive ancestors. I loved the way Terry wove the picture, and her feelings about this person, into the story.

* The Streets of San Francisco by Sheri Fenley on The Educated Genealogist blog. Sheri has a great example of showing street addresses of families on a street map of San Francisco.

* How Do You Keep Track of the Blogs You Read? by Julie Cahill Tarr on the GenBlog by Julie blog. Julie provides a great tutorial on using Bloglines to read many genealogy (or other) blogs time-efficiently. I also use Bloglines, but there are some things I didn't know in this post! No surprise, there, I guess.

* The Familiar… Grocery stores or genealogy programs by GenerationsGoneBy on the Generations Gone By's Weblog. Here is a fascinating history of using genealogy for sanity and the use of several software programs over the years. Funny, too!

* Come Dance With Me ... by Becky Wiseman on the kinexxions blog. This is the 65th Carnival of Genealogy post on the topic of "The Happy Dance. The Joy of Genealogy." There are 50 entries in this carnival, all of them about solving genealogy research problems. Excellent work by everyone, especially Becky for putting it all together.

* Ferencz Ujlaki and the trip he didn't take by Lisa on the 100 Years in America blog. This is a fascinating research story about trying to find out exactly when Lisa's great-grandfather came to America. Donna found the answer after Lisa's post - see her comment! Well done by a group collaborating with each other!

* Gleaning Information from Military Records - Part 1; Part 2; Part 3 by Wendy Littrell on the All My Branches Genealogy blog. Wendy's series (ongoing) provides wonderful examples of records and summarizes information obtained from a number of available military records. Stay tuned.

* FamilySearch news bytes by my distant cousin, The Ancestry Insider. Mr AI provides a nice summary of what's happening in the FamilySearch genealogy empire. I'm not in the LDS Church, so I have to rely on those that are for good news.

* Genetic Genealogy - Q&A Quick Reference for Newbies by Emily Aulicino on the DNA - Genealem's Genetic Genealogy blog. Emily's question-and-answers about using DNA in genetic genealogy studies is helpful and easy to understand.

* From the MONROE JOURNAL: Pet alligator wreaks havoc in Parham, February 3, 2009 by Terry Thornton on the Hill Country of Monroe County, Mississippi blog. Terry tells a funny, yet useful, story about his pet alligator in Mississippi, of all places.

* Some quotes about genealogy by Elizabeth Powell Crowe on the Crowe's Nest by Elizabeth Powell Crowe blog. Libbi has compiled a nice list of quotes here. My favorites are the ones by Sellner and Lippman.

* Blogging for Genealogists - The Presentation by Janet Iles on the Janet the Researcher blog. Janet shares her PowerPoint presentation given recently to a society about genealogy blogging. She did a great job covering the important issues, and used many genea-blogs as shining examples.

* Finally Get Organized! - Feb 2009 Checklist by Pat Richley on the DearMYRTLE Genealogy blog. Ol' MYRT has outdone herself again with the second month checklist of how to organize your files. I'm already a month behind on this. There is so much in the first two checklists that I'm wondering what will be left in the out months.

* Casting the Genealogical Net by Gena Philibert Ortega on Gena's Genealogy Blog. Gena's checklist of places to look for family history information is a keeper.

* Little Ones Lost by Lee Drew on the FamHist blog. Lee's memories and family stories leads him to identify family graves hidden beside a road. Watch his embedded video too - excellent. There's a good lesson here for all of us.

* The Joys of (Re)-Filing by Lori Thornton on the Smoky Mountain Family Historian blog. Lori has been trying to clean up her paper files, and made some interesting discoveries while doing it. The lesson here is to revisit your papers regularly and see what you've missed before!

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 - all bloggers appreciate feedback on what they write.

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

Read past Best of the Genea-Blogs posts here.


In work!!!

4 comments:

DearMYRTLE said...

Thanks for the shout-out Randy. It is never too late to work on getting your genealogy stuff organized.

BTW did you find a ride to the St. George Family History Expo?

Terry Thornton said...

Thanks Randy for the alligator mention. I'll always remember that alligator story for another reason --- I remember the family friends saying they heard the critter thrashing about in the trunk of the car so they stopped and figured it hungry. All they had to feed it was one of their mother's homemade biscuits! LOL! Southern biscuits to the rescue --- it was another time and another age when that alligator lived.
Terry

TERRY SNYDER said...

Thanks Randy for the nice mention. I really appreciate it. :-) PS Next time you decide to do a Hostage Watch, I'm there for you.

Janet Iles said...

Thanks Randy for highlighting different blog articles each week. Thanks for highlighting my presentation on "Blogging for genealogists." I appreciated all the help I received from fellow geneabloggers.