Saturday, July 17, 2010

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - I Write Like...

Hello there, genealogy fanatics ... It's Saturday Night - time for more Genealogy Fun!

A number of geneabloggers have already done this, but many have not and most of my readers have not either, so let's go for it!

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to:

1) Find something that you have written that you are really proud of - the best of your work. Do an Edit > Copy of it.

2) Go to the website
http://iwl.me/ and Paste your text into the waiting box.

3) Tell us which famous author you write like. Write it up in your own blog post, in a comment to this blog, or post it on Facebook. Insert the "badge of honor" in your blog if you can.


Here's mine:

I chose two pieces that typify my work:

* The post The Best of Genea-Musings for 2009.


I write like
Dan Brown

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!




* The post Who is Mr. Seaver, Part 1. The website said that I Write Like...:


I write like
Vladimir Nabokov

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!




Who knew? Maybe I should choose something not so like an engineer? But everything is like technical writing with me, it seems. I'll try some of my family tree narrative next time. It will probably say that I write like someone really boring.

Surname Saturday - PHILLIPS (England > MA)

It's Surname Saturday, and I'm "counting down" my Ancestral Name List each week. I'm passing on #77, who is the unknown mother of Thomas J. Newton, and now am up to number 79, who is Martha "Patty" Phillips (1757-after 1820), one of my 4th-great-grandparents.

My ancestral line back through five generations of PHILLIPS is:

1. Randall J. Seaver

2. Frederick W. Seaver (1911-1983)
3. Betty V. Carringer (1919-2002)

4. Frederick W. Seaver (1876-1942)
5. Alma Bessie Richmond (1882-1962)

8. Frank W. Seaver (1852-1922)
9. Harriet Hildreth (1857-1920)

18. Edward Hildreth (1831-1899)
19. Sophia Newton (1834-1923)

38. Thomas J. Newton (ca1795-????)
39. Sophia Buck (1797-1882)

78. Isaac Buck, born 27 September 1757 in Southborough, Worcester County, MA, and died 07 February 1846 in Sterling, Worcester, MA. He was the son of Isaac Buck and Mary Richards. He married 18 May 1780 in Lancaster, Worcester County, MA.
79. Martha "Patty" Phillips, born 20 August 1757 in Shrewsbury, Worcester County, MA; died after 1820 in probably Sterling, Worcester County, MA.

Isaac and Patty had children: Polly Buck (1782-????); Silas Buck (1784-1863); Pliny Buck (1789-1874); Martha Buck (1791-????); Sally Buck (1794-????); Sophia Buck (1797-1882); Isaac Buck (1807-1871); Leander Howe Buck (1810-????).

158. John Phillips, born 11 September 1722 in Charlestown, Middlesex County, MA. He married 03 May 1749 in Southborough, Worcester County, MA.
159. Hannah Brown, born about 1725 in MA; died before 1774 in probably Shrewsbury, Worcester County, MA.

Children of John Phillips and Hannah Brown are: Sarah Phillips (1750-????); Jonathan Phillips (1752-????); Joanna Phillips (1755-????); Martha Phillips (1757-after 1820); Elizabeth Phillips (1764-????).

316. Ebenezer Phillips, born 17 August 1695 in Charlestown, Middlesex, MA; died before 21 August 1746 in Southborough, Worcester, MA. He married before 1719 in probably Malden, Middlesex, MA.
317. Mary Smith, born 08 March 1697/98 in Charlestown, Middlesex, MA. She was the daughter of 634. John Smith and 635. Ruth Cutler.

Children of Ebenezer Phillips and Mary Smith are: Mary Phillips (1719-????); Ebenezer Phillips (1721-????); John Phillips (1722-????); Samuel Phillips (1726-1810); Joanna Phillips (1729-1788); Ruth Phillips (1733-????).

732. Andrew Phillips, born about 1661 in probably Charlestown, Middlesex, MA; died 10 December 1717 in Charlestown, Middlesex, MA. He married 11 November 1683 in Charlestown, Middlesex, MA.
733. Sarah Smith, born before 04 August 1661 in Malden, Middlesex, MA. She was the daughter of 1466. Michael Smith and 1467. Jane or Joanna.

Children of Andrew Phillips and Sarah Smith are: Andrew Phillips (1687-????); Ebenezer Phillips (1695-1746); Joanna Phillips (1697-????); Samuel Phillips (1699-1722)

1464. Andrew Phillips, born in ENGLAND; died in Charlestown, Middlesex, MA. He married before 1657 in prob. Charlestown, Middlesex, MA.
1465. Elizabeth, died in Charlestown, Middlesex, MA.

Children of Andrew Phillips and Elizabeth are: Elizabeth Phillips (1657-????); Ephraim Phillips (1659-????); Andrew Phillips (1661-1717).

Does anyone reading this have more information about these Phillips families? Are any readers cousins stuck on the same families?

Friday, July 16, 2010

Exploring Newberry's Atlas of Historical County Boundaries

The Newberry Library Genealogy News Blog announced the Completion of Digital Atlas of Historical County Boundaries - "a dataset that covers every day-to-day change in the size, shape, location, name, organization, and attachment of each U.S. county and state from the creation of the first county in 1634 through 2000."

Read the entire blog post for more details. I clicked on the link to the Atlas of Historical County Boundaries (http://publications.newberry.org/ahcbp/) and saw:




The site does not permit clicking on a state in the map area. You have to pick from the dropdown menu on the right, or pick from the list of states, to pick a state.

I picked California from the "Interactive Map" dropdown menu, and saw:


There is a menu ribbon on the left of the map - with icons for View (to toggle overview map in upper left corner), Zoom In, Zoom Out, Full (zoom in to full extent), Back (go back one screen), Pan (use the "magic hand" to move the map image around), Link, Info, Query, Measure, Select by Rectangle, Select by Line/Polygon, Clear and Print. You click on the icon, and then do the action on the map.

In the upper right corner is a date box - to see the historical map boundaries for any date, you have to enter the date in this box and click on the "Refresh" button. The default date is the first set of boundaries available. For California, that was 18 February 1850.

Further down on the right side of the screen is a list of "layers." You can select any number of layers to be visible, but only one is "active."

There are links at the bottom of the page for "Chronologies," "Supplemental Texts," "County Index," Select a State, and "Home."

I used the Zoom In tool and the Pan tool to look at Southern California as of 18 February 1850:


I changed the date to 18 February 1900, and selected all but the "Unsuccessful Proposals" layer to be visible, and only "Modern County Seats" to be "active," and saw:



By clicking on the "Chronologies" link at the bottom, the user can see a list of all of the county historical boundary changes described by date, additions to and subtractions from which other counties, etc., plus a reference for each change. Here's the California list:




As on most websites, the Help page is your friend. For this site, reading the Help page will shortcut your trial and error searches on this site. The Help page is here:





I haven't explored some of the more complex features of the site. I see that, in the "Downbload GIS files" on the home page, that the user can download files for each state in GIS, KMZ (Google Earth) or PDF formats.

The graphical user interface with icons on the left side of the map is fairly clunky, but it works, and has a learning curve - most people should be able to master it in 5 or 10 minutes. The layers feature can provide helpful information.

This type of mapping feature is valuable to researchers, in order to find where their ancestral records might be located (usually in the county at the time the event was recorded). The digital maps may be helpful to determine if someone who lived on the edge of a county was actually in another county at one time or another. Using the digital file with Google Earth may help the researcher understand the terrain when his ancestor resided in a particular place.

A Hiccup on Ancestry.com

...
In the interests of helping other users that might experience similar problems at some point in time...

When I used Ancestry.com yesterday and this morning, I was unable to view record images. I went to the Ancestry Site Comments message board to see if anyone else had complained about this problem. They hadn't, so I posted a message there asking for help:

"When I click on "View Image" from a record summary, the URL starts out: http://search.ancestry.com/Browse/InstallAdvancedImageViewer...%...

It appears to be trying to install an Advanced Image Viewer. I get no image and it appears to cycle for several minutes trying to install it. I finally stopped it. I am using Windows XP and Internet Explorer 7. I have not added or deleted any software in recent days.

What did Ancestry.com change in the last two days? I checked the Help section and see lots of info about the Enhanced Image Viewer. Is that the same as the Advanced Image Viewer?

Frankly, the "fixes" on the Help page are really complicated - I don't have time to go through all of that to fix something that Ancestry.com caused.

Or am I the only victim here? I have no clue - nobody else has posted about it on this board. Of course, I renewed my subscription two days ago..."

I rebooted my computer, and that didn't solve my problem. So I went to the Help link at the top of the Ancestry.com home page, put "Advanced Image Viewer" in the Search field, and selected the "Troubleshooting the Enhanced Image Viewer" item from the list.

This recommended clearing my computer cache (Temporary Internet Files) and cookies. I did that, and opened Ancestry.com and can now see images. I had only 50 mb of Temporary Internet Files set, so I increased that some. The computer seems to work faster on the Internet too (probably until the cache fills up again!).

The downside is that every website that I have an account with requires me to use my username and password because I deleted my cookies.

The lessons learned here are:

* Use the Ancestry.com Help link when you have a problem. There are 1,434 FAQs available. Use the Search box to narrow your search.

* Check the Ancestry Site Comments message board to see if someone else has your problem and what they did about it.

* Apparently the "Advanced Image Viewer" is the "Enhanced Image Viewer" - but this is not stated explicitly anywhere. Words mean something... I thought they might be different.

Of course, I've wasted about two hours trying to make this work...and I don't think it was my fault, but who knows?

Disclosure: I am not an employee, contractor or affiliate of Ancestry.com, and have received no remuneration for this article. I am a fully paid US Deluxe subscriber to Ancestry.com.

Follow Friday - Heritage Happens

...
It's Friday, time to pick one of my favorite genealogy blogs to recommend to my readers.

Today, my choice is Heritage Happens, written by Cheryl Palmer.


Cheryl describes her blog as:

"My blog is genealogy based. I share challenges in my research as well as knowledge I learn along the way. Pictures help bring life to any family, and I love to share mine with you. I may add a bit of my personal life for flavor, and documentation. I also author another blog. I am a Charter Member of the Association of Graveyard Rabbits! Check out THE GRAVEYARD RABBIT OF SOUTH ALAMEDA COUNTY! "

I enjoy Cheryl's posts, which are pretty eclectic - memes, games, family research, and pictures! She takes great pictures. See her Jamboree 2010 posts for some of them.

I highly recommend Heritage Happens to my readers. Enjoy!

Thursday, July 15, 2010

New Features on Ancestry.com New Search

Ancestry.com announced on Tuesday, in the Ancestry.com Blog post Updated new search homepage, place pages, recent searches & recently viewed collections, by Laura Dansbury, that there are several new features when a user is using "New Search" (as opposed to "Old Search").

Laura explains the changes much better than I can, so please review her post.

The blog title could be construed to mean that the search feature on the Home Page (i.e., the "Home" tab) has been changed. It has not. What has changed is the "Search " tab page in "New Search." Here is what it looks like now:




And further down the web page:




There are several new features on the Search tab page, including:

* A link to "Old Search" for diehard Old Search users. This makes it very easy to go to "Old Search" if the user wishes. Before, the "Old Search" link was only on pages of matches resulting from a search.

* The "Recently viewed collections" at the top of the right-hand sidebar. This will be very useful, I think - when I come back to Ancestry.com, I often can't recall what I did last. This helps.

* Maps are on the "Search" tab page - for USA, UK & Ireland, Europe, Canada and Australia (use the appropriate tab). If users wish to search for a specific locality (country or state/province), they can click on the entity in the map or click the link below the map. This will be very helpful, I think. This will provide a fairly easy way to find a specific database for a specific locality, and enable the user to browse that specific database (especially if it is not indexed...). I think that this feature will uncover a number of heretofore well-hidden databases in each state.

Users should click on the links to "View other..." or "View all..." on the State Place Page - there may be databases available that don't include the state name, but contain records pertaining to the state or one or more counties.

I clicked on California in the USA Map, and saw this "Place Page" summary of the databases available on Ancestry.com specifically for California:




Note that the more general databases, like the US Federal Census Records, don't show on the list on the state "Place Page," but are included in the "View other..." or "View all..." links that provide collections that pertain to, but are not specifically for, the selected state.

For specific counties within a state, there is a selection box on the right of the "Place Page" where the user can see how many specific databases there are for each county, and can select a County from the list. I selected "San Francisco 36" on the County list, which means that San Francisco County has 36 specific databases on Ancestry.com. The "County Page" looks like this:




From this page, I can select any item on the specific County database list to either browse or search. I chose the "Daily Alta California (San Francisco)" newspaper with 61 records. Here is what the database page looks like:



Unfortunately, there are images of only a few editions of this newspaper in the database.

All of these updates to the Ancestry "New Search" "Search tab" page are useful to me as a researcher.

I've given three presentations about "Using Ancestry.com Effectively" in the past two months, and have had to make significant changes to the presentation each time because of recent changes to the web site content and format. In my talk, one of my conclusions is that "Ancestry.com's 'New Search' capability is the most sophisticated and complex search algorithm in genealogy research." However, I also note that "New Search" has a steep learning curve - you have to practice quite a bit to learn how to use it effectively. Do you agree with me about this?

The question now is: What will Ancestry.com update, or improve, next in their Search capabilities?

My question for my readers is: What improvements to "New Search" would you like to see?"
Disclosure: I am not an employee, contractor or affiliate of Ancestry.com, and have received no remuneration for this article. I am a fully paid US Deluxe subscriber to Ancestry.com.

Treasure Chest Thursday - Hannah Richman Passenger List

...
It's Treasure Chest Thursday - time to display another nugget in my treasure chest of ancestral family records.

Last week, I highlighted the Passenger List on which James Richman (1821-1912) appears in October 1855.

This week, I have the Passenger List for "the rest of the family." Hannah (Rich) Richman (1824-1911) (age 32) and their children James (age 7), Thomas (age 6), Louisa (age 4), Elizabeth (age 3) and Ann (age 1) came to America on the ship Osprey, which sailed from Bristol in England. The Passenger List was sworn to on 14 November 1856.

Here is the first page of the Passenger List from the Osprey:



The Richman family appears on page 3 of 4 of the list. They are down near the bottom of the page:



The ages of the children do not match the baptism records exactly. Thomas was the oldest child born in June 1848, and James the second son, born in November 1849. The youngest child in the Passenger List is "Ann" age 1, but the child after Elizabeth in the records is Emma, born 6 July 1856. If Emma was a full-term baby, then conception was in early October 1855, at about the time that James Richman sailed away to America. I wonder if he was surprised by this when he greeted the ship in New York?

New "Digging for Answers" Column in Graveyard Rabbit Online Journal

...
My latest "Digging for Answers" column in The Graveyard Rabbit Online Journal is posted here.

The question asked was: What do gravestones or grave markers cost these days? How can I comparison shop?

You can read my answers in the column. This was an interesting column to write - there are websites where you can "design your own gravestone." You may see some of mine in future Tombstone Tuesday posts!

The Graveyard Rabbit Online Journal is comprised of weekly columns, edited and posted by Gale Wall. The most recent columns are:

* International Rabbit, by Hank Van Kempen, posted 1 July 2010 "Zuiderhof Cemetery in Hilversum, The Netherlands"

* A Rabbit's Tale, by Tammi Thiele, posted 24 June 2010 "Grieving Lilacs"

* Photo Monument, by Gale Wall, posted 17 June 2010 "Lettering in Marble"

* Tech T.I.P., by Denise Barrett Olson, posted 10 June 2010 "Managing Your Blog Archives"

* The History Hare, by footnoteMaven, posted 3 June 2010 "Obituaries, the Women's Movement, and Humor"

* Graveyard Guru, by Stephanie Lincecum, posted 27 May 2010 "The Obelisk and its Origins"

I encourage you to add The Graveyard Rabbit Online Journal to your blog reader so that you don't miss the wit and wisdom of the columnists!

Thank you to Gale Wall for organizing this Journal, for editing and for posting these columns on a weekly basis.

Gale is trying to find more columnists - if you would like to contribute a regular column, or even just a guest column on a Graveyard Rabbit topic, please contact Gale through the Send A Note To The Editor link.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

A Reader Survey - Favorite Genealogy Websites

...
The New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) is polling its members each week on a survey question. I thought it might be interesting to compare the survey results of Genea-Musings readers with NEHGS Members.

This week the question is:

Genealogists today use websites all the time for their research. Rank the following websites in the order of their importance to you in your research:

o http://www.ancestry.com/

o http://www.familysearch.org/

o http://www.newenglandancestors.org/

o http://www.rootsweb.com/

o http://www.usgenweb.org/

o http://www.footnote.com/

o http://www.worldvitalrecords.com/

o http://www.google.com/

Would you please rank those in the order of importance to you in your research, and list them in a comment to this post, in a note on Facebook, or in a post on your own blog (but please leave a link to this post so I can easily find it).

If you want to, please list other websites that are more important to you than one site on the list above.

My own list is:

1) http://www.ancestry.com/ - $$, still the biggest, best search engine, well worth it
2) http://www.familysearch.org/ - free, adding record content monthly, Wiki, FHLC
3) http://www.google.com/ - free, searching websites, books, maps, Blogger, etc.
4) http://www.footnote.com/ - $$, NARA records, Footnote pages, well worth it
5) http://www.usgenweb.org/ - state and county data, all user contributed
6) http://www.rootsweb.com/ - free, WorldConnect, message boards, mailing lists, databases
7) http://www.newenglandancestors.org/ - $$, databases, periodicals, articles/videos
8) http://www.worldvitalrecords.com/ - $$, databases

I think that I would list http://www.findagrave.com/ above the bottom two, and http://www.cyndislist.com/ above #8.

In my list above, I'm assuming that the FamilySearch Beta site and Pilot Record Search are part of http://www.familysearch.org/, that the http://www.usgwarchives.net/ are part of http://www.usgenweb.org/, and that the message boards, mailing lists and WorldConnect family tree is part of http://www.rootsweb.com/.

Steve Morse Speaking at CGSSD Meeting on Saturday, 17 July

...
The next meeting of the Computer Genealogy Society of San Diego (CGSSD) is Saturday, July 17, 2010, and features two presentations by Steve Morse about his One-Step Website at this meeting.

User Groups will not meet at this meeting.

This meeting will be in the large auditorium across the walk way from the usual meeting rooms at the student center. The meeting details are:

9:00 a.m. - A Potpourri of Genealogy Research Tools, by Steve Morse

10:50 a.m. - Break, refreshments (note change in time, this meeting only)

11:10 a.m. - A Hodgepodge of Lesser-Known Gems, by Steve Morse.

Stephen Morse is an electrical engineer and computer professional known for being the architect of the Intel 8086 chip which set the stage for personal computing as we know it; he is also an amateur genealogist who began researching his Russian-Jewish origins and wound up devising some wonderful tools for all genealogists to use in their own research on the internet. These web-based searching aids and his websites have made him a household name within the genealogical community, and garnered him a number of awards (2003 IAJGS Award for Outstanding Contribution to Jewish Genealogy, 2007 NGS Award of Merit, 2007 Association of Professional Genealogists Excellence Award, etc.).

Morse has developed at his site, http://www.stevemorse.org, more than 100 portals to other Internet sites that are superior to those offered by the host sites. He began his efforts in 2001 when the Ellis Island database was made available online. The Morse portal, the One-Step site, searches numerous other sites containing immigration records, census, and vital records, and genetic genealogy sites. He also developed a number of utilities such as those that transliterate Hebrew or Russian to the Latin alphabet and vice versa, and has searches for various Holocaust and Eastern European records.

Charge: Free for CGSSD members; $10 for all non-members; should you join within three months following the event, the $10 will be credited toward your dues. You may pay at the door.

We meet at the Robinson Auditorium complex on the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) campus in La Jolla. From North Torrey Pine Road turn at Pangea Drive into UCSD. Free parking is available in the parking garage on the left; use any A, B, or S space. Signs will mark directions to our meeting room. Please refer to our website www.cgssd.org; or the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies website http://irps.ucsd.edu/about/how-to-find-us.htm for driving directions and a map.

PARKING NOTICE: Parking for this meeting will be free. The previously announced change in parking will not take place until August 1.

Thank you to Linda Hervig for passing this notice to CGSSD members. I plan to attend this meeting and will report on the presentations, although I probably won't do a live Twitter feed.

(Not So) Wordless Wednesday - Post 111: Unknown Ontario Family

I'm posting family photographs from my collection on Wednesdays, but they won't be wordless Wednesday posts like others do - I simply am incapable of having a wordless post.

I managed to scan about 100 family photographs in the Scanfest in January, and have converted the scanned TIF files to smaller JPGs, cropped and rotated as best I can. Many of these were "new" to my digital photograph collection.

Here is a photograph from the Carringer family collection handed down by my mother in the 1988 to 2002 time period:


The only clue that I have about the family in this photograph is that it was taken by a photographer in Simcoe, Norfolk County, Ontario, Canada. Since my great-grandmother, Georgianna (Kemp) Auble was born in Ontario, it is very likely that this is a photograph of the family of one of her siblings or cousins - perhaps not with the Kemp surname.

I'm not smart enough to figure out the clues from the apparel or hair styles. My best guess is that this photograph was taken between 1890 and 1910.

I checked my genealogy database, and found no Kemp families that resided in Simcoe. Perhaps Simcoe was the place in Norfolk County that had a photo studio when the photo was taken.

Another clue from the photograph is a family composed of a father (perhaps aged 40 to 50), a mother (perhaps aged 35 to 45), two sons (perhaps aged 15-20 and 5-10) and a daughter (perhaps aged 10-15). Unfortunately, I cannot find a sibling of Georgianna's that fits this profile, or a Kemp cousin of Georgianna's that fits this profile. Unfortunately, I don't have complete family information for all of the Kemp's in Ontario, nor for the collateral families surnamed Sovereen (Georgianna's mother was Mary Jane Sovereen (1841-1874)) or Putman (Georgianna's grandmother was Eliza Putman (1820-1895), daughter of John Putman and Sarah Martin, who married Alexander Sovereen (1814-1907)).

I'm hoping that by dropping some names here that someone will search for those names and will recognize one or more persons in this photograph. If you know who is in this photograph, please tell me!

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

The Dot-Con Video - Genealogy Scam Revealed?

Ray Beere Johnson (on the APG Public List) pointed to a Microsoft advertisement that demonstrates a potential scam involving genealogy and family history. As far as I can tell, this was created by an advertising company and carried off as sort of a "Candid Camera" type event.

The YouTube video is here:




The genealogy scam part of it is around the one minute mark, and is very telling. It's amazing what information that people will provide in response to questions posed by a seemingly legitimate company.

Thankfully, this hasn't happened to anybody, yet. Or has it? We all need to be careful about the information we are asked to provide to obtain goods and services.

NGS Magazine - April-June 2010 Issue

...
The April-June 2010 issue of the NGS Magazine (Volume 36, Number 2), published by the National Genealogical Society (NGS), came recently, and I enjoyed reading it cover-to-cover.

The Table of Contents for this issue includes:

FEATURES

* page 8 - NGS Statement of Financial Position
* page 11 - 2009 NGS donations
* page 12 - 2009 NGS volunteers
* page 14 - Thomas Adams, winner of the 2009 NGS Rubincam Youth Award, by Lynda Suffridge
* page 16 - Making voter registration records count, by Sharon B. Hodges
* page 18 - A guide to voter registration records, by Richard Camaur, JD, CG
* page 22 - Occupation: it's not just a job, it's a finding aid, by J.H. Fonkert, CG
* page 27 - Researching your Japanese-American ancestors, by Pamela Loos-Noji, PhD
* page 31 - Living historian, family historian, by Mike Gillett
* page 34 - Notes from a librarian's corner, by Kim V. Garvey, MLIS
* page 36 - How to narrow your search criteria, by Elizabeth Doherty Herzfeld
* page 52 - Case study: Where in the world was John Nelson Kin g? by Harold E. Hinds, Jr., PhD

COLUMNS

* page 42 - National Archives: Irish immigrants on the Vermont, June-July 1812, by Claire Prechtel-Kluskens
* page 48 - Beginning genealogy: Discovering land records, by Gary M. and Diana Crisman Smith
* page 56 - Software review: Review of Family Tree Maker 2010, by Barbara Schenck
* page 59 - Technology: How trends in technology will affect genealogy, by Jordan Jones
* page 62 - Writing family history: When stuck, try reading history, by Harold E. Hinds, PhD.

The NGS Statement of Financial Position (for year ended 30 September 2009) was interesting to me. For instance, some observations:

* FY 2009 had $1,055,481 in total revenue and support. Of that, $377,184 was from Conferences and meetings, and $496,001 was from Membership dues.

* FY 2009 had $1,090,861 in Expenses, of which $320,514 was from Conferences and meetings, $228,945 was for NGS Quarterly and NGS Magazine publication, and $310,747 was Management and general expenses. [Note, there is an error of $80 in the number in the Total Expense line for 2009.]

* The NGS lost $35,348 in FY 2009 (about 3% of Net Assets).

* The Net Assets at the end of FY 2009 are $1,165,889.

* Membership revenue in FY 2009 was down from $543,841 to $496,001. This likely means an approximate drop in membership by about 9%. No membership number was quoted. $496,001 is the equivalent of 8,266 members at $60 annual dues.

* Conferences and meetings had higher revenue than expenses for FY 2009 ($56,670)

* Educational services had lower revenue than expenses for FY 2009 ($39,970)

The NGS looks to me to be financially healthy and stable, with Net assets somewhat higher than one year's worth of revenue and expenses. I'm happy to see that, and it's a credit to the Board of directors and Administrative Staff of NGS.

Tombstone Tuesday - Deadman

It's Tombstone Tuesday, and I've run out of my own photographs of ancestral gravestones.

Therefore, I'm posting pictures from my archive of "different" gravestones collected over the years.


The only marking on this gravestone photo is the surname "Deadman." I searched on Google for [deadman gravestone] and [deadman tombstone] and found no matches that provide the name of the person or the location of this stone.

There are 150 entries on www.FindAGrave.com for the surname "Deadman" but I found no photos that match the one above.

Does anybody know where this gravestone is located, and who it commemorates?

Monday, July 12, 2010

NGS Quarterly - June 2010 Issue

The June 2010 issue (Volume 98, Number 2) of the National Genealogical Society Quarterly (NGSQ) came recently, and I read it cover-to-cover.

The Table of Contents includes:

FEATURE ARTICLES

* page 85 - A Blue Ridge Family for Alsaph Briggs Barker, by Paul K. Graham, CG

* page 101 - The Man Who Wasn't There: Harold Bion Wiltse (1896-1972) and the World War I "Lost Battalion," by Harold E. Hinds, Jr., PhD

* page 111 - Johann Henrich Klocke of Lippe-Detmold: An Identity Hidden by a German Farm Name, by Carolyn L. Whitton, CG

* page 121 - Leaving No Stone Unturned: A Father for Thomas Stone (d. 1791) of Prince William County, Virginia, by Pamela Stone Eagleson, CG

* page 139 - Developing Historical Context: Pierre Montarras, Soldier of France, by David Kendall Martin, FASG.

page 83 - EDITOR's CORNER: Working together

page 147 - REVIEWS

As always, the feature articles demonstrate scholarly and persistent research work. Each highlights one or several methodologies used to solve seemingly impossible elusive ancestor problems. These are excellent examples for researchers who may have similar research problems for their own ancestral families.

Copyright Fundamentals for Genealogists

Gena Ortega made two excellent presentations on Saturday, 10 July at the San Diego Genealogical Society meeting - the subjects were "Copyright, Plagiarism and Privacy."

One of my takeaways from the meeting and the handout was a website for Copyright Fundamentals for Genealogy by Mike Goad. The situations and examples in this article are excellent.

There are a number of excellent other articles on this site (see the right-hand sidebar), including:

* What is Copyright

* My Copyright Infringement - information in family tree databases

* What is NOT Protected by Copyright?

* Public Domain

* Fair Use

I encourage all geneabloggers and writers to read the articles on these web pages.

Thank you, Gena, for the useful information and links. We enjoyed Gena, genealogy and ice cream at SDGS on Saturday, and a great time was had by all!

Amanuensis Monday - Sarah Putman's RevWar Pension Affidavit

Genea-blogger John Newmark (who writes the excellent TransylvanianDutch blog) started his own Monday blog theme many months ago called Amanuensis Monday. What does "amanuensis" mean? John offers this definition:

"A person employed to write what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another."

My subject today is an affidavit written by Sarah (Kinnan) Putman (1761-1841) included in the Revolutionary War Pension File (W 7,501) for her husband, Peter Putman (1760-1835), who served in the Revolutionary War in the state of New Jersey (obtained from http://www.footnote.com/).

"State of New York
County of Yates.

"Then this 3d day of August personally appeared before Court of Common Pleas of the county of Yates Sarah Putman, a resident of the town of Barrington in the county of Yates and State of New York, aged seventy six years and two months, who being first duly sworn according to Law, doth on her oath make the following declaration in order to obtain the benefit of the provision made by the Act of Congress passed July 4th 1836. That she is the widow of Peter Putman, who was draughted out of Hankinson Regiment about the year 1780 under Captain Joseph Horker and served in the New Jersey Militia for about six weeks. She further declared that she was married to the said Peter Putman on the 20th day of March in 1780 that her husband the aforesaid Peter Putman died on the 3 day of October in the year 1835 and that she has remained a widow ever since that period as will more fully appear by reference to the proof hereto annexed.

"Sworn to and subscribed on ...................................... her
the day and year above written .......................... Sarah X Putman
before me ................................................................. mark
A.W. Woodworth Co. Ck."

This affidavit by Peter Putman's widow provides more biographical information, including the approximate month and year of her birth and the marriage date of Peter and Sarah (Kinnan) Putman. She recounts additional service by her husband in 1780 for some reason (probably related to the Act of Congress on 4 July 1836).

The full Revolutionary War Pension File is available on www.Footnote.com and now on www.Ancestry.com.

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Best of the Genea-Blogs - July 4-10, 2010

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:

* Carnival of Genealogy, 95th Edition edited by Jasia on the Creative Gene blog. This was the "Swimsuit Edition" of this carnival, with 26 entries, and the featured post was Margie Rennick's The Old Fashioned Vacation and Bathing Suit posted at Ancestor Chase,

* Graveyard Rabbit Carnival - July 2010 edited by footnoteMaven (corrected from original!) on The Graveyard Rabbit blog. This was the "Scavenger Hunt" edition of this carnival, and there were 14 interesting entries.

* Involving Family by Cheri Hopkins on the The You Go Genealogy Girls blog. I missed this excellent post last week - Cheri has some excellent examples of ways to involve family in genealogy.

* It’s 10:00 PM – Do You Know Where Your Genealogy Data Is? by Thomas MacEntee on the High-Definition Genealogy blog. Thomas links to the article of the same title on the Archives.com site about digital preservation..

* Digital or Paper? by Pat Richley on the DearMYRTLE's Genealogy Blog. Pat answers Alec's question about how to keep records found with sage advice.

* Family Finder Testing Series: Expanding the matches; narrowing the search by Emily Aulicino on the DNA - Genealem 's Genetic Genealogy blog. Emily's advice about what to do after the autosomal test results come in.

* Follow Friday: Review of 5 of Family Tree Magazine's Best FREE web sites by Susan Petersen on the Long Lost Relatives.net blog. Susan did what all of should do once in awhile - check recommended websites and links. Nice and helpful report!

* Genealogy and Social Networking by Russ Worthington on the A Worthington Weblog. Russ continues his cousin finding saga - his feet hurt from the happy dance all week.

* Publishing a Genealogy Book by Martin Hollick on The Slovak Yankee blog. Martin tells us about his book publishing experience. I think that it's a great book that should be on every genealogical library shelf.

* Lift Off by Brenda Dougall Merriman on the Brenda Dougall Merriman blog. I laughed all the way through this post about planning ahead for a genealogy road trip.

* Finding what I wasn’t looking for by Elizabeth on the Genealogy Geek blog. Elizabeth found more than she ever dreamed she'd find when she went looking through online historical newspapers.

* JGSLA 2010: Friday afternoon and JGSLA 2010: Saturday, July 10 by Schelly Talalay Dardashti on the Tracing the Tribe: The Jewish Genealogy Blog. Schelly is in Los Angeles at the JGSLA Conference - these are her first two daily reports.

Other "Best of ..." posts can be found at:

* Weekly Genealogy Picks by John Newmark on the TransylvanianDutch blog.

* Follow Friday - 9 July 2010 by Greta Koehl on Greta's Genealogy Bog.

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! I am currently reading posts from over 640 genealogy bloggers using Bloglines, but I still miss quite a few it seems.

Read past Best of the Genea-Blogs posts here.

UPDATED 7/12: footnoteMaven commented that she edits the Graveyard Rabbit Carnival posts and that I erroneously conflated Gail Wall and Diane Wright into Diane Wall as the editor of the Carnival. It is hard to keep those wonderful Wabbit Women straight! So much talent!