Genea-Musings

Thursday, November 9, 2017

Updated Find A Grave Website Adds Decent Source Citations

Find A Grave changed the look and format of their website earlier this month, and added some much-desired features. The most important new feature, for many researchers, is a source citation for a Find A Grave memorial.

Here is the Find A Grave home page, with information to search for my 3rd great-grandmother, Elizabeth Smith (1791-1869) of Massachusetts.

I clicked on the orange "Search" button and saw the list of matches (there was only one):

That's my third great-grandmother. She is buried in Vine Lake Cemetery in Medfield, Massachusetts. I clicked on the link for her memorial:

The information for Elizabeth is grouped as follows:

* Name
* Birth, death, burial, and Memorial ID information
* Links for Memorial, Photos and Flowers
* Biographical information
* Family Members (parents, spouse, children, siblings) (not shown above)
* Gravestone Inscription (not shown above)
* Links to other Smith memorials in the cemetery, city, county, state, country, world) (not shown above)
* Links to Ancestry pages (not shown above)
* advertisement (not shown above)
* Creator information and link to a source citation (shown below):
* Advertisement (shown below):

A source citation? Cool. I clicked on the link for "Source citation" on the screen above.

Well, lookee there - it's a decent Evidence Explained quality source citation, saying for Elizabeth's memorial:

Find A Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com : accessed 9 November 2017), memorial page for Elizabeth H. Dill Smith (1792–17 Nov 1869), Find A Grave Memorial no. 60037924, citing Vine Lake Cemetery, Medfield, Norfolk County, Massachusetts, USA ; Maintained by Bill Boyington (contributor 46800933) .

I could copy and paste that into a source citation field in my RootsMagic, or other software program, and be happy with it. It's better than what I use now. The problem is that I have over 20,000 citations to Find A Grave already and choose not to modify them at this time.

The placement of the creator information and the source citation are all the way down to the bottom of the page and will be easily missed. They really belong after the Gravestone Inscription information and above the links to other memorials and the advertisements. And why not just put the source citation on the page rather than have to click another link? It's just formatted text. I opened the "Send Feedback" field and added this comment.

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The URL for this post is: http://www.geneamusings.com/2017/11/find-grave-adds-decent-source-citations.html

Copyright (c) 2017, Randall J. Seaver

Please comment on this post on the website by clicking the URL above and then the "Comments" link at the bottom of each post. Share it on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or Pinterest using the icons below. Or contact me by email at randy.seaver@gmail.com.

1705/6 Marriage of Thomas Dill and Mary Pierce in Woburn, Mass. --- Post 389 of Treasure Chest Thursday

It's Treasure Chest Thursday - a chance to look in my digital image files to see what treasures I can find for my family history and genealogy musings.

The treasure today is the 1706 marriage record of Thomas Dill and Mary Pierce in Woburn, Massachusetts:

The 1706 marriage record for Thomas Dill and Mary Pierce:

The transcription of the marriage record is:

" Thomas Dill of Cambridge Farms and Mary Pierce of Woburn, Jan. 17, 1706"

The source citation for this record is:

Edward F. Johnson, Woburn Records of Births, Marriages and Deaths [5 Volumes], (Woburn, Mass.: The News Print, 1893), Marriages, page 77, Thomas Dill and Mary Pierce entry, 1706.

Thomas Dill (1682-1718) was the son of Peter and Thanks (Shepard) Will of Concord and Littleton, Mass. Mary Pierce (1682-1713) was the daughter of Nathaniel and Elizabeth (Pierce) Pierce of Woburn, Mass. Thomas Dill and Mary Pierce had three children between 1706 and 1712. Mary died after her third child, Elizabeth, was born on 2 January 1712, and when Thomas married his second wife on 11 May 1713.

The Cambridge vital record book has exactly the same information, but dates the marriage as 17 January 1705. Therefore, it is probably that the date was 17 January 1705/6.

Thomas and Mary (Pierce) Dill my 6th great-grandparents, through their son Thomas Dill (1708-1761), who married Mehitable Brown (1714-1758) in 1733 in Eastham, Massachusetts.

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The URL for this post is: http://www.geneamusings.com/2017/11/17056-marriage-of-thomas-dill-and-mary.html

Please comment on this post on the website by clicking the URL above and then the "Comments" link at the bottom of each post. Share it on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or Pinterest using the icons below. Or contact me by email at randy.seaver@gmail.com.

Wednesday, November 8, 2017

A.J. Jacobs "It's all Relative" Book Notice

I received this from my cousin A.J. Jacobs via email today:

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Hello Friends, Colleagues and Family (though everyone fits into that third category, as you’ll see),

I wanted to let you know that my new book It’s All Relative comes out today! And I also wanted to give you a little something for free just because you’re my distant-but-beloved cousin.

Let me say, I’m absurdly excited to have this book out in the world so that you can finally read it.
So far, the reviews have been delightfully flattering, such as….

“A real treat” (Booklist), “delightful” (Kirkus Reviews), “required reading” (Real Simple), “fascinating and funny” (CBS News), “entertaining… and lively” (Publishers Weekly), “the most original and entertaining book you’ll ever read about family” (bestselling author Mary Roach) and “why is Zane listed first in the acknowledgments?” (Lucas Jacobs, my 11-year-old son.)

The book is partly a memoir about my eccentric family. It’s also partly about the revolutions in DNA and family trees and the huge effect they’re having on politics, race relations and happiness. And it’s partly an adventure in which I try to put on the biggest family reunion in history, The Global Family Reunion. Because, as the book demonstrates, we’re all related. We are all cousins. Family is the ultimate social network.

It’s All Relative features black sheep, celebrity cousins (Daniel Radcliffe! John Legend!), separated-at-birth twins, genealogy obsessives, plenty of Mormons, a family with nine fathers, an African-American daughter of the revolution, the real Adam and Eve, kissing cousins and friendly Neanderthals, among much more.

It’s also a heartfelt argument against tribalism, which I believe is the biggest problem facing the world today. This idea of “us vs. them” is killing us. We need to remember that we share 99.9 percent of our DNA with all other humans. A Harvard study from last year showed that Israelis and Palestinians treated each other with more kindness when they were shown how closely they were related.

My website has a list of other press, including a People magazine feature that ran this week on me. And the image below is a link to a CBS This Morning piece where you can see me (and also my kids in the background enjoying green room croissants).

Here are some ways to support the book, if you’re moved.

You can buy it! Right now!

You can leave a review on the book page on Amazon, Goodreads, or wherever else you like to share and talk about books.

There’s also Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram in case you forgot they existed. People enjoy photos of other people holding books!

And now for the free part:

The book features an Appendix that gives you a How-To Guide to finding the best info about your own family. I’m offering this appendix to you now for free, in case you’re interested. It’s co-written by professional genealogist Eowyn Langholf. No obligation!

Click here to download the How-To Guide.

Thank you.
Your cousin, A.J.

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Disclosure: I received a pre-publication digital version of this book and am in the process of reading it. It is funny!!! A.J. is my cousin also, see Cousins, Kinship, AJ Jacobs and King David (we are 92nd cousins, 23 times removed! Who knew?). A.J. proclaimed us "cousins" at RootsTech 2015 (and I still have the poster):

The URL for this post is: http://www.geneamusings.com/2017/11/aj-jacobs-its-all-relative-book-notice.html

SDGS Program Meeting on Saturday, 11 November Features Jeanette Shiel

The San Diego Genealogical Society (SDGS) program meeting on Saturday, 11 November 2017 will be held at St. Andrews Lutheran Church (8350 Lake Murray Blvd., San Diego, CA 92119, at Jackson Drive).

The program speaker will be Jeanette Shiel:

* 10 a.m.: Session 1: Newspapers Beyond Vital Records

* 11:30 a.m.: Session 2: The Heart of the Story

The 9 a.m. education class in the upper floor classroom is:

* Randy Seaver on "RootsMagic Family Tree Software."

There is limited seating for this class - please RSVP at sdgsclasses@gmail.com.

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The URL for this post is: http://www.geneamusings.com/2017/11/sdgs-program-meeting-on-saturday-11.html

2013 NGS Conference, Part 2 -- Post 489 of (Not So) Wordless Wednesday

Linda and I attended the 2013 NGS Conference in Las Vegas, and I took some photos of things and persons. I took some of these with my digital camera, I think, rather than my iPhone:

This is from Day 2 of the Conference (9 May 2013):

1) MyHeritage exhibit (with Daniel Horowitz smiling):

2) FamilySearch exhibit:

6) Archives.com exhibit:

7) The National Genealogical Society (NGS) exhibit:

More next week...

NOTE: Here is the 2013 NGS Geneabloggers Compendium if you want to relive this event - http://www.geneamusings.com/2013/05/blog-posts-from-ngs-2013-conference.html.

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The URL for this post is: http://www.geneamusings.com/2017/11/2013-ngs-conference-part-2-post-489-of.html

Tuesday, November 7, 2017

Genealogy News Bytes - 7 November 2017

Some of the genealogy news items across my desktop the last four days include:

1) News Bytes:

*  Finding Your Roots – Black Like Me with Bryant Gumbel, Tonya Lewis-Lee and Suzanne Malveaux – Tonight on PBS

*  Ancestry.com To Recover Veterans Stories, and 50% Subscription Discount on 11 November

* 2018 NEHGS Research Tours and Programs

* Book Release:  AJ Jacobs: It’s All Relative

2) Record Databases:

*  Preserve and Enhance Your Family History Through Christmas With Famicity

*  Added or Updated Record Collections at FamilySearch.org - Week of 29 October to 4 November 2017

*  Added or Updated Ancestry.com Databases - Week of 29 October to 4 November 2017

3) Genealogy Education:

*  Online Genealogy Hangouts, Webinars and Chats - Week of 5 Nov 2017

*  Free Family History Library Classes and Webinars for November 2017

* Upcoming Family Tree Webinar - Wednesday, 8 August 2017, 11 a.m. PST:  New York City Genealogical Research: Navigating Through The Five Boroughs, by Michael Strauss

* Upcoming Family Tree Webinar - Friday, 10 August 2017, 11 a.m. PST:  Using Non-Population Schedules for Context and Evidence, by Jill Morelli

*  FREE Webinar From SCGS: November 15, 2017 - Jean Wilcox Hibben, PhD, MA - Ancestral Hunting Grounds: Doing On-Site Research

*  The Genealogy Guys Podcast: #334 - 2017 November 5

* Extreme Genes Radio Show/Podcast:  Episode 213 – Author A.J. Jacobs’ Genie Journey & New Book

* The NextGen Genealogy Network YouTube Channel:  Faces of NextGen Live - True A Lewis

* Ancestry.com YouTube Channel:  What's New at Ancestry: November 2017 Edition

* DearMYRTLE's YouTube Channel:  Mondays with Myrt - 6 Nov 2017

* Ancestral Findings YouTube Channel:  AF-151: Five Important Time-Saving Tips for Getting Your Genealogy Research Done

* Family History Fanatics YouTube Channel:  Is 23andMe the best DNA testing company?

4) Genealogy Bargains:

* Genealogy Bargains for Tuesday, November 7, 2017

*  GIVEAWAY: Win an Apple iPhone X from Genealogy Bargains

* RootsTech 2018 Registration Giveaway Contests

5) Neat Stuff:

*  The Valley of the Shadow: Two Communities in the American Civil War

*  Concord [N.C.] man finds biological father after 60 years

*  Long journey connects son and birth mother after decades apart

Did you miss the last Genealogy News Bytes - 3 November 2017?

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The URL for this post is: http://www.geneamusings.com/2017/11/genealogy-news-bytes-7-november-2017.html

Ancestry.com To Recover Veterans Stories, and 50% Subscription Discount on 11 November

I received this information from Ancestry.com today:

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I thought you’d be interested in this Veterans Day story - A catastrophic fire in 1973 at the National Personnel Records Center outside St. Louis destroyed 80% of the records of U.S. Army personnel discharged November 1912 to January 1960 and 75% of U.S. Air Force personnel discharged September 1947 to January 1964. None of these records - about 80-100 pages of info per soldier on average – had duplicate copies. Records about the battles these brave soldiers fought in, the ships they sailed on, the medals they received, etc. were lost.

Ancestry hopes to recover those lost accounts. We are launching a special project asking people to interview and share stories from WWII military vets. Ancestry will take the submitted interviews and turn them into a searchable database to help supplement the lost WWII records for these soldiers.

Less than 600,000 of the 16 million American veterans who served in WWII are alive today. It’s predicted that 50% of remaining WWII Vets will be gone in 3 years and 90% will be gone in 10 years, so the time to preserve their histories is now. For more information on the project or to contribute a story, please visit: https://www.ancestry.com/veterans

For Veteran’s Day, Ancestry will also be giving 50% off all Ancestry subscriptions so everyone can learn about the heroes in their own family histories. This promotion will run on November 11th for Veteran’s Day only.

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The URL for this post is: http://www.geneamusings.com/2017/11/ancestrycom-to-recover-veterans-stories.html

Copyright (c) 2017, Randall J. Seaver

Please comment on this post on the website by clicking the URL above and then the "Comments" link at the bottom of each post. Share it on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or Pinterest using the icons below. Or contact me by email at randy.seaver@gmail.com.

Treasure Chest Tuesday -- 1777 Baptism Record of Margaret Mansley (1777-1850) in Chorley, Lancashire

This week's Tuesday's Treasure is the 1777 baptism record for Margaret Mansley (1777-1850) in Chorley, Lancashire, England:

The Margaret Mansley baptism record:

The information in this baptism record is:

[Oct. 5 1777] Margaret d. Robert & Ann Mansley

The source citation for this record is:

Parish registers for St. Laurence's Church, Chorley [Lancashire], 1653-1947, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah (on 10 FHL Microfilm reels), original records at Lancashire Record Office, Preston, Births, baptisms, marriages, burials, 1653-1821 on FHL BRITISH Film [93703]. Baptisms, 1777, Margaret Mansley entry.

Margaret Mansley was the 5th child of at least 7 born to Robert and Ann (Higginson) Mansley in Chorley, Lancashire. She married Alexander Whittle (1774-1855) in 1797 in Chorley, Lancashire, and they had 12 children between 1798 and 1823. Their son, Alexander Whittle (1818-1853) married Rachel Morley (1821-1861) in 1840 in Bolton-le-Moors, Lancashire.

Alexander and Margaret (Mansley) Whittle are my wife's third great-grandparents.

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The URL for this post is: http://www.geneamusings.com/2017/11/treasure-chest-tuesday-1777-baptism.html

Copyright (c) 2017, Randall J. Seaver

Please comment on this post on the website by clicking the URL above and then the "Comments" link at the bottom of each post. Share it on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or Pinterest using the icons below. Or contact me by email at randy.seaver@gmail.com.

Monday, November 6, 2017

Finding Relatives in the MyHeritage New York Passenger List Database

I was curious about the "Unique Content" in the MyHeritage collection of "Ellis Island and Other New York Passenger Lists, 1820-1957" that was announced last week.

The announcement noted that:

"As of 1897, immigration officials began asking those entering the United States for the name and address of the relative or friend whom they are joining in the USA, and in 1907 they began asking for the name and address of their closest relative or friend in their home country. The responses to these supplemental questions, that have been filled in the passenger manifests, have now been indexed by MyHeritage for the very first time, yielding an additional 26.6 million names in the Ellis Island and Other New York Passenger Lists collection on MyHeritage. These passenger manifests have been digitized by other organizations in the past, but the answers to these vital supplemental questions have never been indexed — until now. Furthermore, many of the passenger manifests span two pages, and a common omission for genealogists has been to locate the first page and miss the existence of the second. MyHeritage has solved this problem for the first time by stitching the double pages into single document images, ensuring that users do not miss information again."

I decided to see what additional information there might be in the Indexing for some of my grandsons Italian ancestors. I searched for Giacomo Sturla, born in about 1892) (my grandsons' 2nd great-grandfather, hoping to find his wife also. I did:

Here is the top of the search result page:

And further down:

The indexed information for Giacomo Sturla was:

* Name: Giacomo Sturla
* Gender: Male
* Birth: Circa 1892
* Arrival: Nov 10, 1921, New York, New York, United States
* Departure: Napoli
* Ship: Dante Alighieri
* Age: 29
* Last permanent residence: Lavagna, Italy
* Nationality: Italy
* Marital status: Married
* Relative in country of origin: Luigi Sturla (father)
* Relative joined in the U.S.: Giovanni DeLucci (brother-in-law)
* Line: 24

I downloaded the image of the page by right-clicking and "Save as":

Here you can see that MyHeritage has stitched two pages together so that a researcher won't forget to find the second page..

There is a lot more information than what MyHeritage indexed, and it is all useful to a researcher. For instance:

* on Line 22, for Maria Figone Delucci, there is a handwritten note "mother of #25." #25 is her daughter, Stella (Delucci) Sturla, the wife of Giacomo Sturla.
* The birthplace information for Stella (Delucchi) Sturla is San Francisco, Calif., so this isn't the first visit to America for the Delucchi family. Giacomo Sturla was born in Lavagna, Italy.
* Another column for Maria (Figone) Delucchi indicates that she has traveled to the USA in 1880 and 1920. Giacomo Sturla has traveled to the USA in 1907 and 1919.
* Giacomo Sturla's height was 5 feet 7 inches and his hair and eyes were chestnut, and his wife Stella was 5 feet 6 inches and her hair was fair and her eyes brown. The mother-in-law, Maria Delucchi was 5 feet 5 inches, with grey hair and grey eyes.

The enhanced indexing may enable researchers to find persons they previously not found - for instance, you can search without a name and with an Italian town name, or the name of a relative in the country of origin.

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Disclosure: I have a complimentary MyHeritage Data and Tree subscription, and have received material considerations from MyHeritage over the past eight years. However, this does not affect my objectivity in discussing and analyzing the MyHeritage products.

The URL for this post is: http://www.geneamusings.com/2017/11/finding-relatives-in-myheritage-new.html

Preserve and Enhance Your Family History Through Christmas With Famicity

I received this information from FamiCity recently and wanted to share it with my readers:

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PRESERVE AND ENHANCE YOUR FAMILY HISTORY THROUGH CHRISTMAS WITH FAMICITY

Christmas is a time for coming together, celebrating and creating memories. For those that may not
live close to their loved ones, Famicity, a new website that combines preserving your family history
and new memories, is offering its service free-of- charge throughout the busy festive period to share
those treasured moments. Famicity is a safe and secure social media network that allows users to
share photos, documents, family trees and other memories directly with their network whilst
retaining full ownership of their uploaded data.

From charting your baby’s development safely to sharing your family’s history, every user has the
opportunity to create a timeline for their most precious memories and share with their network by
tagging relatives and approved users. All data is protected and owned by the user alleviating any
data privacy issues and providing the user complete control to edit and delete at their convenience.

Expertly designed with all levels of technology users in mind, Famicity provides a smooth and
intuitive user experience. The simple look and feel of the site presents users the opportunity to
navigate through Famicity with ease whilst delivering a fully responsive experience via a seamless
transition from desktop to mobile. Users can also receive real-time email and text notifications of
any uploads ensuring no moment is ever missed.

Since it launched earlier this year, Famicity has been investing in strong relationships with key
partners within the online family history industry to help make a significant contribution to the
growth of preserving old and new memories online. Users can take advantage of the GEDCOM
import feature and digitally share their family trees with ease.

Genealogist and historian, Dr Nick Barratt commented: “I’ve worked with many genealogy sites over
the years but I’m very excited about the launch of Famicity as it truly helps users record and
preserve memories in the most efficient way for everyone and not just expert social media users.
The holidays bring a great deal of joy as well as challenges of what is shareable on social media. This
site takes care of those concerns for users as well as eliminating storage issues we all encounter
frequently in the digital age.

"In addition, the GEDCOM import feature is the icing on the Christmas pudding! It’s the best time of
year and way to honour your family by showcasing your family history research.”

Don’t miss any of your family’s beautiful moments through the festive period. Visit
www.famicity.com to start your journey today.

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From what I can tell, this service is FREE to sign up and to use. Users can add a family tree using a GEDCOM file or inputting names, dates and places individually. Users can add stories and photo albums for their ancestors, descendants and families. Access to the information is limited to a person's contacts invited to use the program.

Disclosure: I have signed up for Famicity and have uploaded a relatively small family tree there, but have not done more on the site. I am going to try to do more - add photos, add stories, include relatives, etc.

The URL for this post is: http://www.geneamusings.com/2017/11/preserve-and-enhance-your-family.html

Copyright (c) 2017, Randall J. Seaver

Please comment on this post on the website by clicking the URL above and then the "Comments" link at the bottom of each post. Share it on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or Pinterest using the icons below. Or contact me by email at randy.seaver@gmail.com.

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Thursday, November 9, 2017

Wednesday, November 8, 2017

Tuesday, November 7, 2017

Monday, November 6, 2017