Genealogy News for April

Here is the genealogy news for April that I passed to my CVGS colleagues by email today. I usually present this at the monthly Research Group meeting, but I wasn't present last week for the meeting.

1. INTERESTING GENEALOGY WEB SITES

* The FamilySearch Record Search web site has completed imaging and indexing of more databases. You can find these at http://labs.familysearch.org. One only needs to sign in using a valid email address, and then you have always free access to FamilySearch’s. DearMYRTLE has a list of the databases at http://blog.dearmyrtle.com/2008/04/new-records-search-interface-at-labs.html

* Chronicling America (http://www.loc.gov/chroniclingamerica/), is enhancing access to America's historic newspapers. This site allows you to search and view newspaper pages from 1897-1910 for California, District of Columbia, Florida, Kentucky, New York, Utah, and Virginia, and find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present.

* www.germanoriginality.com, a Web site for German American heritage, is brought to you by the German National Tourist Office and the German Information Center USA. www.germanoriginality.com extends an invitation to Americans from all walks of life to come visit and learn about the contribution Americans of German ancestry have made to the social fabric, culture and economy of the United States – and to discover Germany "as it was… and is today."

* UK National Archives has Research Guides at http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/gettingstarted/in_depth_guides.htm for Family History, Local History, Latin and Palaeography.

* http://alexanderstreet.com/resources/civilwar.access.htm has free access to some of the most popular Alexander Street Collections. Through April 30, 2008 you can explore three of our Civil War databases with no restrictions. As a bonus, we are also offering free access to two streaming music collections, which contain songs from the Civil War era.

2. NEW GENEALOGY DATABASES

a) at www.Ancestry.com - subscription site (US = $155.40, World = $299.40) - now available for FREE at San Diego FHC (Institution with World databases) or Chula Vista Public Library (Ancestry Library Edition). See new content at http://www.ancestry.com/search/rectype/recent.aspx. New databases include:

* www.Ancestry.ca, Canada’s leading family history website, today announced the online launch of the fully searchable indexes for the historic Drouin Collection, which contains Quebec records spanning 346 years from 1621 to 1967. Starting with 29 million names for the years 1850 to 1967, the indexes will include 37 million names in baptism, marriage and burial records, and also a compilation of church records from Ontario, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and various New England states, when complete in mid-2008.

* Ancestry.co.uk has posted 3 million names of slaves held across the British Empire in the early 19th century, putting hundreds of thousands of pages of searchable information online to help slaves' descendants research their past. The project uses registers that the British government created between 1813 and 1834 in an effort to stamp out the slave trade by ensuring plantation owners did not buy new slaves. Information from about 700 registers from 23 British territories and dependencies include Information available on these records includes: name of owner, parish of residence, name, gender, age, and nationality of slave.

* The U.S. IRS Tax Assessment Lists, 1862-1918, are now available.

* Many South Carolina databases (Charleston County Wills, 1671-1868; SC Naturalization Records, 1783-1850; Will Indexes for SC counties)

* Persons naturalized at the Port of Philadelphia PA, 1800-1819.


* Pennsylvania German passenger arrivals at the port of Philadelphia, 1727-1808.

b) at www.WorldVitalRecords.com - subscription site (US = $49.95 for 2 years, World = $149.95) -- now available for FREE at the San Diego FHC. Over 6,500 databases, 1 billion names. Recent content at http://www.worldvitalrecords.com/recentcontentlisting.aspx. New items FREE at WVR for 10 days. New databases include:

* 1.7 million records from three key partners: British Origins, Eneclann Ltd. New Publications, and the Ryerson Death Index.

* 80 databases from the Godfrey Memorial Library collection and contains family histories, pedigrees and memoirs.


* 87 databases provided by the Genealogical Publishing Company. These databases are excellent resources for people researching immigrants who came to America during its early colonial days and its infancy as a nation. There are also a number of resources for Ireland, Canada, Barbados, Germany and England.

* www.FindMyPast.com , a family history and genealogy website based in London, England, containing over 550 million family history records recently announced its partnership with FamilyLink.com, Inc. to bring UK Censuses online at WorldVitalRecords.com


* Many Family history books added

c) at www.Footnote.com - subscription site ($59.96 annual retail, $7.95 monthly) - now available for FREE at San Diego FHC, they offer 7-day FREE trial. 322 Titles, over 31 million images, 1 million free. Content list at http://www.footnote.com/documents.php. Information added this month includes:.


* Passport applications 1795-1905 from NARA. This series consists of letters and form applications for passports. Included with the typical application are supporting letters and affidavits from friends and relatives concerning the applicant's citizenship, residence, and character. The letter or application also contains information regarding the applicant's immediate family, date and place of birth and (if foreign) of naturalization, occupation or business, and physical characteristics. Images are alphabetical by surname.

* A partnership with SmallTownPapers, Inc. adds millions of pages of historical newspapers to the site. The SmallTownPapers Collection details the lives and histories of people and events across the United States.


* An online interactive photo of the Vietnam War Memorial. In addition to releasing this unique version of the Wall, it enables visitors to search the Wall for people they know and pay tribute by adding photos, comments and stories of those who lost their lives during the Vietnam conflict. The Interactive Viet Nam Veterans Memorial is now visible to everyone at no charge.

d) at www.GenealogyBank.com - subscription site (trial $9.95 for one month, $69.95 for 12 months). It has archives for 2,400 U.S. newspapers in all 50 states, from the 1600s to the present day, with over 224 million family history records, 27 million obituaries, more than 115 million historical newspaper articles, and more than 11,000 historical books. Each article is a single digital image that can be printed and preserved for family scrapbooks.

e) at www.FindMyPast.com - a UK subscription site (30 days 14.95 pounds, 12 months 89.95 pounds, also pay-per-view options) offers England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland databases.


* Completed its project to scan and index the complete set of outbound passenger lists for long-distance voyages from all British ports between 1890 and 1960. Working in association with The National Archives of the United Kingdom, the project scanned 1.1 million full color individual pages In total 24 million passengers are recorded travelling between these dates.

3. GENEALOGY EDUCATION


* The NGS Conference in the States and Family History Fair is being held in Kansas City, Missouri from 14-17 May 2008. To download a full PDF of the conference brochure go to: http://www.ngsgenealogy.org/2008NGSRegistrationbrochure.pdf. Preregistration discounts end March 31.

* The Southern California Genealogical Society Jamboree is June 27-29, 2008 in Burbank. See www.scgsgenealogy.com for more information.

* Wholly Genes, Inc., of Columbia, Maryland, the creator of The Master Genealogist software program, announced the lecture series for the 4th annual Genealogy Conference and Cruise, October 26-November 2, 2008, the largest genealogy conference on the seas. See http://www.whollygenes.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?screen=CRUISE


* The RootsMagic cruise is September 28 - October 5, 2008 on the Royal Caribbean Vision of the Seas. The $50 per person early-bird discount on this year's RootsMagic Cruise was extended to the end of April. For more information on this year's RootsMagic Cruise, visit: http://www.RootsMagicCruise.com.

* Jana Sloan Broglin CG has published two books, entitled "Hookers, Crooks, and Kooks," Parts 1 and 2. One of her specialties is focusing on those "other people" in the family tree. You know the ones: those who were not fine, upstanding pillars of the community. We all have such people in our family trees although perhaps our older relatives didn't mention them when we were growing up.


* Roots Television announced Roots Central, a free advertising outlet for genealogical societies and organizations. See http://www.rootstelevision.com/submit-roots-central.php. Through Roots Central, non-profit genealogical organizations can advertise upcoming events, speaking schedules, new projects, and anything else of genealogical interest. Simply submit your information, and any accompanying graphics, to rootscentral@rootstelevision.com.

* ProGenealogists has posted a list of the Top 50 most popular Genealogy related web sites at www.progenealogists.com/top50genealogy2008.htm.


* Family Tree Magazine, Kids Edition. This online magazine (http://kids.familytreemagazine.com/?cpn=wvrnewsletter) children in genealogically-based activities, teaching at a younger age how to start. The basics are the same as for beginning adults, but written for a level that older children can understand.

* The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is currently digitizing selected books from their print collection of over 11 million volumes. See http://illinoisharvest.grainger.uiuc.edu/digitized_books.asp.


4. ANNOUNCEMENTS

* www.Rootsweb.com web pages will be moved into the Ancestry domain. The Generations Network has hosted and funded the RootsWeb online community since June 2000, thereby maintaining RootsWeb as the world’s oldest and largest free genealogy website. This move will not change the RootsWeb experience or alter the ease of navigation to or within RootsWeb. RootsWeb will remain a free online experience. What will be different is that the Web address for all RootsWeb pages will change from www.rootsweb.com to www.rootsweb.ancestry.com. The stated reason was to increase Ancestry domain traffic statistics and thereby increase advertising rates. The RootsWeb experience is not changing. However, many USGenWeb pages have migrated away from the Rootsweb/Ancestry domain.

* www.Ancestry.com recently became aware of three websites purporting to allow family history research: SearchYourGenealogy.com, Ancestry-search.com and Australian-Ancestry.com. The sites claim to have “the largest online genealogical search tool” and promote themselves as the foremost resources for genealogy, but from what we can tell, these sites are nothing more than a series of web pages with links to other services. These sites, in Ancestry's opinion, are clearly fraudulent.


* The Association of Professional Genealogists (APG) (http://apgen.org) has written a position paper (http://apgen.org/publications/press/APG-KGROW.pdf) that makes the case for open vital records, the paper contends that there is no proof that open records significantly contribute to ID theft or terrorism. It also asserts that open records are rarely used by identification thieves and maintains that the benefit of open access to records far outweighs any potential abuse. APG has joined forces with other genealogical organizations in calling on legislators to keep records open.