The Year in Review

The new year always seems to bring reviews of one sort or another other regarding the past year. Why should reviews of things genealogy be excluded.

Dick Eastman in his Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter gives a good one. It is illuminating to see all of the goings-on in our field in one place. Thanks, Dick.

You can read Dick’s article at:

2012 in Review - Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter

Looking at the Numbers

Randy Seaver, writing in his blog Genea-Musings, gives us an interesting and impressive series of benchmarks concerning some of the major genealogy websites…fee and free.

Check it out at:

Genea-Musings: Genealogy Industry Benchmark Numbers for 1 January 2013

Accessibility of Federal Records

William Dollarhide, writing in Leland Meitzler’s GenealogyBlog gives us a wonderful overview of public access to various types of federal records.

The article explains key changes to federal privacy laws that influence our access to records. He talks about FBI files, social security files, military records, federal employee records, and more.

Check out the article at:

http://www.genealogyblog.com/?p=23537

Back to the Basics

New to genealogy? Want a refresher on your strategies and techniques? This Ancestry.com video on You Tube may be just what you need.

Trumbull County, Ohio Casualties

This is a rather specialized site in that it deals only with casualties from Trumbull county, Ohio. However, if that is where your people are from, it is spot on.

The site gives information on county casualties from WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. There is a search field on each page for convenience, and a tab on how to search if you need detailed instructions.

You can find the information at:

Home

Problems in Identifying People

In his blog Planting the Seeds: Genealogy as a Profession, Michael Hait gives us a great article dealing with the challenges in identifying people and common problems we confront in trying to do so.

He considers the variables of name, age, place, and time that we have to deal with, and gives good examples.

This is a good read. You can find his article at:

The most important thing you can ever prove « Planting the Seeds

Helpful Website to Check Out–Genealogy Trails

The Genealogy Trails website is worth your time to check out. It contains a myriad of information that a lot of volunteers have provided.

On the left panel of the home page you will find links to state sites that you will want to follow also.

Check it out at:

Genealogy Trails History Group - Finding Ancestors wherever their trails led

Tips about Spelling Challenges

This recent You Tube video from Ancestry.com about the challenges of finding names that were spelled in various ways may be helpful to you.

The vido gives you great insights into using the Ancestry.com seach forms to help account for variations in name spellings.

Genealogy Presentation at Tarpon Library

The following is from Denise Manning of the Tarpon Springs Public Library:

"On Monday evening, Feb. 25th at 7:00 p.m., here at the Tarpon Library, Genealogist Jean Best-Richardson will present "Discovering Ancestors through Primary Sources and DNA Proof." Ms. Best-Richardson uses traditional sources and cutting-edge DNA technology to research her African American, Native American, and European ancestry."

Writing Helps Our Genealogy

Harold Henderson gives us some tasty food for thought in an article he wrote for Archives.com. His point is that writing about our genealogy forces us to slow down, consider sources, and all-in-all improves our research.

This is a great article that deserves a good read. Find it at:

Why We Don't Write, and How We Can | Harold Henderson

Three Sources Agree—That’s A Good Thing, Right?

Michael John Neill in his Blog Genealogy Tip of the Day cautions us to be careful about thinking that agreement of multiple sources means we have good information.

Read his tip about that at:

Genealogy Tip of the Day: I've Got Three--It Must Be

WWII Navy Muster Rolls on Fold3

The military records website Fold3.com had started digitizing the WWII navy muster rolls for the period 1939-1949. Although Fold3 is a fee site, this set of records is free. This periodic list of the personnel on a ship can prove a valuable souce of information about their movement/assignments and more.

The documents can be searched by name or by ship name. So if you know the name of the ship your ancestor severed on, you can easily check the rolls. To do that click on the "Records" tab at the top of the home screen and select "Browse Records." Then click on "World War II" and "WWII Navy Muster Rolls" on the next two lists that appear. The next list is where you select the name of the ship and then you can see the rolls. They are organized alphabetically by surname.

The digitizing project is on-going so it is worth while checking back often as new records are added.

Check it out at http://www.fold3.com/

Roots Magic App

About a month ago, Roots Magic introduced its app for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod. It is a handy application that allows you to take your genealogy file with you on your mobile device.

One of the attractive features of the app is that you do not need to do any conversion to get your file on the mobile device. Another is that there are a couple different ways to transfer your file…one of which is using Dropbox and the other is using iTunes. Both are very easy to use.

If you go to the web page below you can see a webinar on how to make the transfers and use the app. You will have to scroll down the page to find that webinar.

While you are there, you might as well look over the complete list of webinars and see what else appeals to you. The webinars are great learning aids that many Roots Magic users are not aware.

See the list at:

RootsMagic Webinars

Importance of Genealogy

I recent edition of the Genealogy In Time Magazine gives us a thought provoking article on the importance of genealogy. This can also be interpreted as “why to do genealogy.”

It was fun to read the article and see which of the listed points I identified with. And it was really revealing to come across a few points that I had not considered at a conscious level, but having read them, found a good fit to help me explain my involvement in the genealogy world.

Read the article at:

Why Genealogy is Important

Browse the Record collections at FamilySearch

If you have not looked at the list of databases available at FamilySearch lately, it may well be worth you time to do so. Recently, FamilySearch has added an impressive number of databases that provide images you can browse through. Those collections have not been indexed yet, but that should not stop you form exploring them if they included the type of record and time frame you are interested in.

One way to reveal those record sets is to scroll down the FamilySearch home page (yes, go right by that tempting search form you initially see on the page), until you come to a list of locations. Click on your location of interst, "United States" for example, and you will be shown an alphabetized list of available record sets. You can scroll down the list, or click on a state listed in the left panel of the screen. Since the list of record sets is getting so large, clicking on the state can be a real time-saver.

Notice in the column to the right of the record collection title you will see one of two entries: one will be the number of records in the collection, and the other will be the words "Browse Images." Those are the collections that are not yet indexed. It's a bit more work to look through those records (takes us back to those delightful hours spent in front of  microfilm readers), but you will see records that will not turn up if you do your usual name search.

https://familysearch.org