Genealogy News for July 2007

Here is the July 2007 edition of the monthly Genealogy News discussed at the Research Group meeting on Wednesday.

A) GENEALOGY WEB SITES OF INTEREST

1. US Census mortality schedules for 1850 to 1880 - at http://www.mortalityschedules.com/

2. California State Archives Collections online at http://www.sos.ca.gov/archives/archives_e.htm

3. 1930 Census Occupation codes are at http://stevemorse.org/census/ocodes.htm


B) NEW GENEALOGY DATABASES ONLINE

1. www.ancestry.com new databases (see http://www.ancestry.com/search/rectype/recent.aspx)

* Irish Emigration Lists, 1833-1839
* Australian (NSW and Tasmania) Lists - 1787 to 1859.
* California Marriage Index, 1960-1985
* California Divorce Index, 1966-1984
* US War Bounty Land Warrants, 1789-1858
* 1200 US County Plat (Land Ownership) Maps, 1864-1918
* Many out-of-copyright books about colonial ancestry.

To receive notices of new databases and read genealogy articles, sign up for the Ancestry Weekly News or visit the 24/7 Family History Circle blog at http://blogs.ancestry.com/circle/

Ancestry has added a neat popup tool to show some details of a record without clicking to see the record summary (you need to be an Ancestry subscriber to see this information).

Ancestry has also added France (www.ancestry.fr) and Italy (www.ancestry.it) to its specialized database collections (in addition to the USA, Canada, the UK, and Germany.

2. www.worldvitalrecords.com new databases - 10 day free access to each new database.

* Gazetteers for MA, WV, TX, MD, DE, England, Wales
* Baptism and Marriage Records from Quebec for 110 Towns
* Pioneer Ghosts of Kentucky: Name Index for dickey Diary Series

Note that www.WorldVitalRecords.com is a commercial service, but will eventually be available at the LDS FHC sometime in the future. To get notices of the new databases, sign up for their free email newsletter.

3. www.footnote.com databases in work (partially available) - see http://www.footnote.com/documents.php for all databases available. Footnote offers a 7 day free trial for all databases.

* Civil War Pension files
* Revolutionary War Pension Files
* Revolutionary War Service Records
* Pennsylvania, New York and Massachusetts Naturalization Records

Note that www.Footnote.com is a commercial service, but will eventually be available at the LDS FHC sometime in the future. To get notices of the new databases, sign up for their free email newsletter.

4. ProQuest partnering with American Antiquarian Society (AAS, Worcester MA) to put original documents and records online - perhaps on the HeritageQuestOnline site.


C) GENEALOGY SOFTWARE

1. FamilyTreeMaker 2008 software will be available in August 2007. FTM released a Beta version at http://beta.familytreemaker.com/ to be tried and tested by researchers. The look and feel of FTM2008 is completely different from earlier versions. The test period closes on August 24th - so don't use your existing database names unless you buy the software (on sale for $29.95 presently) - make a GEDCOM and change the database name if you use it. Most people wait to buy a new piece of software until the bugs are worked out of the initial release.

2. www.FindMyPast.com has added Family Tree Builder software (derived from PedigreeSoft's software?) for free upload of genealogy data to their web site. You do have to register with a password. Note that www.FindMyPast.com is a pay-per-view web site for UK records, but use of this software and uploading data to their site is free. You can sign up for their free email newsletter.

3. www.MyHeritage.com also has FREE software called Family Tree Builder that you can download to and install on your computer. If you wish, you can create Family Pages using the software and save them on the My Heritage site. But you don't have to!