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Tue, 5 May 2015
This episode focuses on death records. The news includes: MyHeritage CEO Gilad Japhet has been involved with research about a fascinating story from World War II. A Jewish tailor named Savas escaped the Nazis when they invaded Corfu, along with his three daughters and another girl, and fled to the island of Erikoussa. The entire island of Erikoussa joined forces, at the risk of death, to provide refuge and to protect the secret of their identity from the Nazis. Descendents of Savas have been located, and a fascinating video of a news story aired in Israel is available for viewing at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Oijpqpx2gY. MyHeritage has just made its Instant DiscoveriesTM available for all members at their site. The Association of Professional Genealogists has announced membership discounts for younger and retiring genealogists. Catholic Church Registers have been digitized and will be made available at the National Library of Ireland website on 8 July 2015. Genealogist Donna Moughty, an expert on Irish genealogical research, clarified what will be included and the fact that there will be no indexes available at that site. Ancestry.com will relaunch their website with a number of new features, including LifeStory and Historical Insights, and enhancements to the Facts View and Media Gallery. Findmypast has released many new records, including the ANZAC Prisoners of War collection, new records for Australia and the United Kingdom, new additions to the British Newspapers collection, new images for PERSI, and a substantial collection of Quaker birth, marriage, and burial records spanning the years 1578 to 1841. The FamilySearch Historical Book Collection online has reached a milestone of 200,000 digital books available through its website. Drew recaps the almost 30,000,000 records added by FamilySearch to its website in the last month. Drew and George have an in-depth discussion about death-related records. Of special interest is Drew's discussion of the International Classification of Diseases that can be found at the Wolfbane site at http://www.wolfbane.com/icd. |
Tue, 7 April 2015
The news includes: · The Suzanne Winsor Freeman Memorial Student Genealogy Grant Committee has announced that applications are being accepted for the 2015 Student Genealogy award. Student genealogists between the ages of 18 and 23 are eligible to apply for the award. Application deadline is April 10, 2015 at midnight PDT. Details and forms are available at the Student Grant Webpage at http://www.thefamilycurator.com/swf-grant. · MyHeritage will hold a free webinar on Wednesday, April 15, 2015, on How to Discover Your Scandinavian Ancestors. · The Ontario Genealogical Society will host its 2015 conference on May 29-31 at Georgian College in Barrie, Ontario, with the theme "Treks through Time". · Ancestry.com has announced a new innovation at AncestryDNA called New Ancestor Discoveries. · Findmypast released new military records for the United States and Britain. · The Federation of Genealogical Societies issued a statement concerning the Indiana Religious Freedom Restoration Act. It states its position and supports non-discrimination and non-bullying policies in all of its activities, including selection of conference facilities and vendors. · RootsMagic has established a new Virtual RootsMagic User Group on Facebook. · Ancestral Connections, the Irish Genealogy Summer School held at University College Cork will run 28 June-5 July 2015. Booking is available at http://www.ucc.ie/en/ace-genealogy. · The Global Family Reunion has launched a crowdfunding campaign for its event on June 6, 2015, in New York City. · FamilySearch has announced that the Knowles Collection, a quickly growing, free online Jewish genealogy database, has reached its one million record milestone. They can be accessed at http://FamilySearch.org/family-trees. · Drew discusses highlights of the more than 8 million records recently added to FamilySearch. Listener email includes: · The Guys have received numerous compliments on its recent topical podcast concerning newspaper research. · Kelvin recently discovered Historic Oregon Newspapers free online at http://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/. · Jim reports that the Gilbert and Martha Hitchcock Foundation has funded the digitizing and availability of the Omaha World Herold newspaper from 1867 to 1983. The collection is accessible through the Omaha Public Library with the use of a library card to login. · Jana tells us of the new blog titled "The Genealogy Kids" at www.thegenealogykids.blogspot.com which also links to videos. · Tracie asks whether the church records being released this summer by The National Library of Ireland will include records from Northern Ireland. Listeners are encouraged to share any information they know with The Guys. · There is a new Jefferson Tayte genealogical mystery available titled "In the Blood". · Julienne asks about genealogical research in Hong Kong Territory. George suggests the following resources may be of some assistance, and welcomes other suggestions from our listeners: o https://familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/Hong_Kong_Genealogy (FamilySearch Wiki) o http://genealogy.about.com/od/china (Kimberly Powell of About.com addresses Chinese genealogical research) o http://forebears.io/hong-kong (Hong Kong Genealogical Records for British Nationals and other resources) o Hong Kong Family History Research and BMDs: http://hongkongfamilyhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/hong-kong-birth-marriage-death.html o http://www.researchhongkong.org.uk (A professional researcher covering China and Hong Kong) o There is a book titled "A Student's Guide to Chinese American Genealogy" by Colleen She (Oryx American Family Tree Series) that was published in 1996 that contains a substantial amount of methodological information about researching Chinese ancestry in modern times. · Julia asks about recording same-sex marriages in genealogical software. · Another listener reported about the importance of reading/searching through newspaper gossip columns for important family history clues. Our next episode will be another themed podcast. |
Tue, 17 March 2015
This episode focuses on Newspaper Research. · Google Newspaper Archive – free, 1700s-2009, worldwide coverage, OCR. https://news.google.com/newspapers · Fulton History – free, 1795-2007, but almost exclusively New York State, OCR. http://fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html · Elephind – free, 1803-present, OCR. Over 2700 titles, of which over 1000 are from Chronicling America. Includes Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore. https://www.elephind.com · GenealogyBank (personal subscription, $20/month, $70/annual, over 7000 titles, 1690-present) and America's GenealogyBank (library subscription, over 4200 titles, 1690-1922) – product of NewsBank, OCR. http://www.genealogybank.com · ProQuest Historical Newspapers (library subscription only) – major U.S. cities, international newspapers, African-American newspapers, Jewish newspapers. OCR. · Newspapers.com (personal subscription, $8/month, $80/annual, over 3400 titles, 1700s-2000s) – OCR. http://www.newspapers.com · NewspaperARCHIVE.com (personal subscription, $100/6 months, over 6200 titles, 1607-present) – OCR. http://newspaperarchive.com · Access World News (library subscription, over 2400 titles) – 1977-present, product of NewsBank, born digital. For additional reading, we recommend: Breland, Claudia C. Searching for Your Ancestors in Historic Newspapers. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. 2014.
Direct download: The_Genealogy_Guys_285_-_2015_March_15.mp3
Category:Genealogy -- posted at: 12:12 AM |
Fri, 6 March 2015
The news includes: · RootsMagic has more than 40 free online classes in the form of recorded webinars at its website.
o They have added 900 million records to its global digital archive. o They have added millions of new records from Scandinavia, including the 1930 Danish census and the Swedish Household Examination Rolls from 1880-1920, with more scheduled for addition this year. · Their Family Tree Builder software is now available for the Mac, and a native Mac version is in the advanced stages of development. · The Federation of Genealogical Societies has announced several important items: o Registration is underway for the FGS 2015 Regional Conference in Syracuse, NY, on 17-19 September 2015. o The FGS Alaska Cruise sails from Seattle, WA, for its voyage on 28 August through 4 September 2015. o The Call for Presentation Proposals for the 2016 FGS Conference in Springfield, IL, has been released. Proposals are due by 10 April 2015. · Findmypast has made a number of important announcements recently: o Listen to the podcast for specifics about Findmypast's fee access to all records this coming weekend. o They have released 2.5 million new British newspaper articles to their collection; British Army Bond of Sacrifice records; East London Marriages; Derby Railway Servant's Orphanage Registers; Irish Poverty Relief Loan records; British Merchant Navy WW1 Medal Index Cards; Dorset BMDs; and another 101 million US, UK, and Australian records. o The company has partnered with the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society to bring wider access to New York records. o They have announced a partnership with BillionGraves to bring more than 12 million grave marker indexes available. o The company has begun offering DNA testing to its customers through a new partnership with FamilyTreeDNA. · The British Library has opened its new National Newspaper Building for long-term archival storage and retrieval at Boston Spa, West Yorkshire. · The National Library of Ireland ahs announced that it will give free online access this summer to its Catholic Church Records collection, the earliest of which dates back to the early 1700s. · Ancestry.com has announced major developments for 2015: o The website will receive a new and easier to use look. o It's iOS mobile app will introduce a full search feature to access their more than 15 billion records online. o The company will launch Ancestry Academy in April 2015 with excellent educational videos on a wide array of topics. o AncestryDNA is being improved in the US and UK markets, and AncestryDNA is being launched in Australia and Canada soon. o Later this year, Ancestry will announce resources for users in Germany and Mexico. o Many new record collections are planned for launch later this year for the US, Australia, and the UK.
o The FamilySearch Discovery Center was recently opened in Salt Lake City, and others are planned for around the US. o FamilySearch ahs announced a multi-year collaboration agreement with the New England Historic Genealogical Society o Drew highlights the millions of new records added in the last month to FamilySearch. o The Family History Library has announced its free on-site classes for March. You will want to check the schedule each month if you plan to visit the library in Salt Lake City. Listener email includes: · Kari has a question about ships' passenger records for her 2X-grandmother whose ship sank coming from Denmark in 1889 and whose passengers were rescued by another ship, then sailing to Philadelphia.
o Bremen Passenger List at http://passagierlisten.de o Oldenburg [Germany] Emigrants at http://www.auswanderer-oldenburg.de o Both sites can be translated to English using Google Translate. · Jim and Timothy share information about new genealogy mystery books/stories/novellas available. · Jenny asks why there are no Greek records at the FamilySearch.org website. · Several listeners responded with comments about Find a Grave and the ability to add records for persons who were cremated. · Connie comments about cemetery photographs, Find A Grave, and copyright. The next episode of the podcast will focus on the theme of Using Newspapers for Your Genealogical Research. |
Wed, 25 February 2015
Drew and George have returned from RootsTech 2015 (a combined conference with the Federation of Genealogical Societies), and they share their interviews with:
Direct download: The_Genealogy_Guys_283_-_2015_February_24.mp3
Category:Genealogy -- posted at: 6:58 PM |
Sun, 8 February 2015
The Guys will be at the RootsTech/FGS 2015 Conference in Salt Lake City on 11-14 February. Visit with them at the Moorshead Magazines booth where they will be signing books on multiple occasions. George's new book, How to Do Everything: Genealogy (the 4th edition), has just been released by McGraw-Hill and is available in softcover and Kindle versions. Moorshead Magazines has just published a new laminated quick sheet, Brick Wall Research Strategies, written by George and Drew. It is based on their best-selling book, Advanced Genealogy Research Techniques. Both books and the new quick sheet will be available for sale at the Moorshead Magazines booth. The news includes: · MyHeritage has just released their Family Tree Builder software for the Mac. · FamilySearch has launched an App Gallery at their website that includes software applications for Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android. The Guys continue with a themed episode devoted to U.S. immigration and ships' passenger lists.
Direct download: The_Genealogy_Guys_282_-_2015_February_1.mp3
Category:Genealogy -- posted at: 4:46 PM |
Wed, 14 January 2015
The news includes: · The early registration discount for the 2015 Federation of Genealogical Societies Conference ends on January 23, 2015. The conference, in conjunction with RootsTech 2015, will be held in Salt Lake City on February 11-14, 2015. · Findmypast has introduced a new program for its 12-month subscribers, including webinars as well as discounts with several vendors. · Findmypast has announced the appointment of Ben Bennett as the new vice president of international business. · The ScotlandsPeople service has introduced Scottish statutory births for 1914, marriages for 1939, and deaths for 1964 at its site. · The British Ministry of Justice announced that their archive of 41 million wills dating back to 1858 have been made available online. Scanned copies of the wills can be ordered for a fee of ₤10. · GenSoftReviews has announced its Users Choice Awards for 2014 at http://www.gensoftreviews.com/awards.php. · FamilySearch announced the 10 most popular free online databases at their site. · Margie Beldin won the free all-access pass to RootsTech 2015 with her technical tip about enlarging the screen size on your computer and then resetting it back to its default with CTRL + 0 (for PC) or CMD + 0 (for Mac). Listener email included feedback on Episode #280 and The Guys' discussion about copyright: · Jim asked the question about downloading a photograph, cropping and editing it, and whether there is a violation of copyright law or ethics. He also comments on photographs uploaded to Find A Grave and to family trees on sites such as Ancestry.com. · Margaret has a copyright question about a collection of un-cataloged and un-indexed documents in a library that she encountered several years ago. She paid to have the papers microfilmed and then indexed and transcribed them herself, giving a copy of her work to the library. She has questions about to what extent she is allowed to use this collection and what copyright laws might apply to these old documents. · Julie wrote that she knows our discussion about copyright was geared primarily to an American audience, and that we used the expression "fair use" in the discussion. She tells us that there is a similar concept in the UK called "fair dealing". It does not have any statutory definition but is a legal term basically used to assist in determining if something is in compliance with copyright or not. She provided a link at https://www.gov.uk/exceptions-to-copyright that describes exceptions to copyright that allow limited use of copyrighted material without the permission of the copyright owner. · Suzanne asks a question about people who choose to be cremated and have their ashes scattered but don't have any kind of Cemetery Memorial. Whereas she uses Billion Graves and Find A Grave in her research, she wonders if there is any equivalent site for cremated memorials. [The Guys welcome email from our listeners about this subject.] · Kristi wants to know what we recommend as "must do" conferences and seminars each year. Book review: · Moorshead Magazines, Ltd., the publishers of Family Chronicle, Internet Genealogy, and History Magazine, continue their publication of special research publications in softcover magazine format with a new title, "Tracing Your Italian Ancestors" written by Marcia Iannizzi Melnyk and Mary M. Tedesco. George gives the new publication a great review. Our next podcast episode will be a themed discussion: "U.S. Ships' Passenger List Records". The Guys welcome your questions and suggestions on this subject at firstname.lastname@example.com.
Direct download: 281_The_Genealogy_Guys_281_-_2015_January_11.mp3
Category:Genealogy -- posted at: 2:12 AM |
Thu, 1 January 2015
The news includes: · MyHeritage has announced that they have entered into an agreement with the Danish National Archives to index census and parish records from 1646 to 1930 in their SuperSearch facility. · Moorshead Magazines, Ltd., has announced that they are changing the name of their Family Chronicle magazine to Your Genealogy Today, effective with the March/April 2015 issue. · George's new book, How to Do Everything: Genealogy, 4th edition, will be released by McGraw-Hill on 16 January 2015 and will ship from Amazon and Barnes & Noble thereafter. The Kindle version of the book will follow shortly. · George and Drew have written a new genealogy quicksheet called "Brick Wall Research Strategies" that will be published by Moorshead Magazines, Ltd., later in January. It is based on their best-selling book, Advanced Genealogy Research Techniques. The Guys present a themed discussion about "Copyright for Genealogists," with a focus on photographs. The Guys welcome your questions and comments on this subject at email@example.com. The winner of the All-Access Pass to RootsTech 2015 is Bill Wheeler. The Guys have notified him and will advise RootsTech 2015 to contact to make arrangements with him. Congratulations, Bill! We'll see you in Salt Lake City next month! [UPDATE: As it turns out, Bill will be unable to attend RootsTech this year, so the new winner of the All-Access RootsTech 2015 Pass is Margie Beldin! We'll share her tech tip in the next episode. Congratulations, Margie!]
Direct download: 280_The_Genealogy_Guys_280_-_2015_January_1.mp3
Category:Genealogy -- posted at: 11:24 PM |
Wed, 22 October 2014
The news includes: · ICAPGen Conference will be held on Saturday, 1 November 2014, on the Brigham Young University campus in Salt Lake City, Utah. Details and the link to the conference registration can be found at www.icapgen.org. · MyHeritage and EBSCO have partnered to bring the service MyHeritage Library Edition to libraries and educational institutions. · The 35th International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS) Conference will be held on 6-10 July 2015 in Jerusalem. Registration is now open for persons living outside of Israel; Israeli residents' registration will be announced. The conference will take place in cooperation with MyHeritage. · RootsMagic has announced a free update for existing Charting Companion 5 owners. RootsMagic has also added direct import support for The Master Genealogist (TMG) software users. · The State of Tennessee has announced its partnership with Ancestry.com and will become the first state to offer access to Ancestry.com in every K-12 classroom throughout the state. · The Board for Certification of Genealogists welcomes its new president, Jeanne Larzalere Bloom, and two new board members. · FamilySearch and GenealogyBank have announced an agreement to make over 1 billion records from historical newspapers searchable online. Volunteer indexers are needed, and more information is available at http://familysearch.org/indexing. · FamilySearch and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania announced a joint initiative to digitally preserved select collections of the historical society's holdings. · FamilySearch has announced a new facility for its Family Tree to upload audio files. They also announced the availability of two mobile apps. · The New England Historic Genealogical Society will host an exclusive evening on 13 November 2014 to honor critically acclaimed actress Dame Angela Lansbury at the Four Seasons Hotel in Boston. Details are available at http://www.americanancestors.org/Lansbury/. George begins a new series about available cell phone apps for the iOS and Android operating systems. He discusses the following:
Drew reviews two new publications:
Listener email includes: · Gus asks what software The Guys are using on their Macs to run Windows programs. · Jane asks about the availability of any free American newspaper websites that she could browse, particularly for New Jersey. · Julie asks for recommendations for learning more about genealogy and becoming a professional genealogist. · Emily discusses finding some shocking information about a grandfather, and asks advice for combating genealogy burnout and about what information is and is not appropriate to share.
Direct download: 276_The_Genealogy_Guys_276_-_2014_October_19.mp3
Category:Genealogy -- posted at: 11:32 PM |
Fri, 3 October 2014
The news includes: · The Association of Professional Genealogists announced a Young Professional Discount for its 2015 Professional Management Conference. · Geni.com, a division of MyHeritage, announced that it now supports multilingual profiles. · RootsMagic announced that it now has direct file import support for the soon-to-be-discontinued program The Master Genealogist. · Registration is now open for the fourth annual Forensic Genealogy Institute (FGI) at www.forensicgenealogists.org/institute. FGI will be held on 26-28 March 2015 in Dallas, Texas. · The Virtual Institute of Genealogical Research will be presenting year-round educational genealogical courses. For more information, visit www.vigrgenealogy.com. · Findmypast has begun a new weekly records release program called Findmypast Fridays. The first release began on 19 September 2014 with many Irish county records. They've also released 4 million Yorkshire records online. The Guys review a number of new publications:
· Two new laminated QuickSheet guides by Elizabeth Shown Mills: o Your Stripped-Bare Guide to Historical 'Proof' o Your Stripped-Bare Guide to Citing Sources Listener email includes: · Timo shares information about the German Church Book Portal (Archion), currently in beta test mode, at http://www.dergenealoge.de/archion-einblick-in-die-testphase. · Timo also shares information about the Verein für Computergenealogie (Computer Genealogy Society of Germany), which is the largest genealogical society in Germany, which hosts a large free online database with approximately 35,000,000 free records available. The website at http://www.genealogy.net will redirect you to http://www.genealogy.net. · Tom asked a question about interpreting the results from his mother's AncestryDNA test, specifically about the origins of her great grand parents and their ancestors. · Terri and her niece are attempting to interpret their DNA test results to figure out if they are actually half-sisters. · Matt writes about a project involving the scanning of old glass negatives of the Fort Madison State Penitentiary in Iowa. There are many inmate photographs, and paperwork associated with the prisoners was also found. That information is being matched being matched to the photographs. The project website is IncarceratedinIowa at http://www.incarceratediniowa.com, and Matt's blog postings are accessible at http://matthewkmiller.blogspot.com. · Dawn discusses her genealogical research, and in particular discusses seeking information about her grandfather. No one wants to talk about him and there is some speculation about whether he was on trial in the 1930s for homosexuality or pedophilia. She asks for research guidance, and whether librarians would be reluctant to help her.
Direct download: 275_The_Genealogy_Guys_275_-_2014_September_30.mp3
Category:Genealogy -- posted at: 12:12 AM |
Tue, 9 September 2014
The Genealogy Guys are celebrating their 9th podcast anniversary. We began on 5 September 2005 and are still going strong! The news includes: · MyHeritage Founder and CEO, Gilad Japhet, has been featured in the news for his work in identifying heirs to stolen artwork and property seized by the Nazis during the 1930s and 1940s. See the video (with English sub-titles) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvPjrpse92o. · Findmypast has launched the "Hall of Heroes" at its website to celebrate the heroes in everyone's family. · Findmypast has also launched over 240,000 UK new parish records. · The Association of Professional Genealogists (APG) honored six of its members for their achievements and services. They also named Eva Goodwin as the winner of the APG Young Professional Scholarship. · RootsTech and the Federation of Genealogical Societies have opened registration for their combined conference in Salt Lake City in February 2015. (See https://registration.rootstech.org/2015/portal/newreg.ww and https://www.fgsconference.org. · Drew shares the latest release of records by FamilySearch. · Drew's research for surviving family members of the boys who died at the Dozier School for Boys inspired a listener to send a link to the Knoxville News Sentinel about comparable abuses at the Okeechobee School for Boys. · RootsMagic has announced the availability of MacBridge software that will run RootsMagic on the Mac. Drew discusses an exciting link with a cousin using DNA that has revealed marriage records of Irish ancestors in England in 1861. Listener email includes: · One listener is seeking more information about a Civil War ancestor from Ohio, and asks the guys for additional research suggestions. · Julie had a poor experience with a researcher in the UK and asks for tips on handling this type of problem.
Direct download: 274_The_Genealogy_Guys_274_-_2014_September_7.mp3
Category:Genealogy -- posted at: 1:55 AM |
Thu, 21 August 2014
The news includes: · Whollly Genes has announced the discontinuation of The Master Genealogist (TMG) genealogy database program. · RootsMagic's Weekly Tips are on their blog and are available on Facebook if you Like and Follow their page there. · The Association of Professional Genealogists (APG) has announced that registration for its 2015 APG Professional Management conference is now open. It will be held on 8-9 January 2015 at the Hilton Hotel in Salt Lake City, Utah. · Genealogical Publishing Company has just published a new laminated "Genealogy at a glance" sheet titled Scots-Irish Genealogy Research by Brian Mitchell. · The Family History Information Standards Organisation (FHISO) has announced that it is ready to begin the technical process of developing standards for genealogy. · The British Newspaper Archive has announced the beginning of digitization of eight new titles. There are more than 8 million newspaper pages from 1710-1954 online at their site, and they estimate that by 2021 there will be up to 40 million pages from historical newspapers across the UK and Ireland. · The National Archives (TNA) in the UK is implementing its new online catalog, Discovery, which will contain information about all the records held at TNA, records held in other archives, data from the National Register of Archives, ARCHON, Access to Archives (A2A), and the Manorial Documents Register (MDR). They are working to deliver a revised, updated, and online MDR on a county by county basis, in the Essex section is now complete. · Drew highlights the new collections for FamilySearch from 25 July 2014 and 15 August 2014 Listener email includes: · Jenny asks whether there is any point in having siblings take an autosomal DNA test. · Timothy asks about birth date discrepancies between an SS-5 and the SSDI. · Kelly wants to know what The Guys' top 10 list of genealogy books for the beginner or intermediate genealogist might be. · Virginia asks if there is an easy way to play the downloaded podcast episodes in chronological sequence. · Mac asks about obtaining permission for screenshots for inclusion in books, and George shares insights from his experiences. · Jim is looking at the 1910 U.S. federal census for his father and cannot find him with his parents and siblings. He may have run away from home but Jim has questions. He also asked about Enumeration Districts and how to learn more information about them. · Eric is looking for information about his paternal line, which came from the Azores. The surname was Gomes, but has been misspelled as Gomez. He shares information about his research and how he got around a set of problems. Drew shares his excitement at connecting via a DNA match with a distant cousin who shared with him the places of origin of his Irish Bonnon and Hyland ancestors and the fact that they were married in West Bromwich, Staffordshire, England.
Direct download: 273_The_Genealogy_Guys_273_-_2014_August_18.mp3
Category:Genealogy -- posted at: 12:42 AM |
Mon, 21 July 2014
The news includes:
The Guys review two books of interest to genealogists:
Listener email includes:
Direct download: 272_The_Genealogy_Guys_272_-_2014_July_20.mp3
Category:Genealogy -- posted at: 11:42 PM |
Fri, 4 July 2014
Drew shares his last 2 interviews from the recent SCGS Genealogy Jamboree:
Direct download: 271_The_Genealogy_Guys_271_-_2014_July_4.mp3
Category:Genealogy -- posted at: 11:31 PM |
Sun, 22 June 2014
Drew shares 3 more interviews from the recent SCGS Genealogy Jamboree:
Direct download: 270_The_Genealogy_Guys_270_-_2014_June_22.mp3
Category:Genealogy -- posted at: 8:32 PM |
Tue, 17 June 2014
In addition to the latest news, Drew and George share interviews from the recent Southern California Genealogical Society's annual Genealogy Jamboree, with guests:
Direct download: 269_The_Genealogy_Guys_269_-_2014_June_15.mp3
Category:Genealogy -- posted at: 1:53 AM |
Wed, 4 June 2014
The news includes:
Listener email includes:
Drew shares interviews he recorded at the Ohio Genealogical Society Conference with two great genealogists:
Direct download: 268_The_Genealogy_Guys_268_-_2014_June_2.mp3
Category:Genealogy -- posted at: 2:39 AM |
Wed, 19 March 2014
The Guys reviewed two new products from Genealogical Publishing Co.:
Listener email includes:
Direct download: 263_The_Genealogy_Guys_263_-_2014_March_16.mp3
Category:Genealogy -- posted at: 12:32 AM |
Sun, 9 March 2014
Drew shares his second and final set of interviews that he conducted at RootsTech 2014, including:
Direct download: 262_The_Genealogy_Guys_262_-_2014_March_9.mp3
Category:Genealogy -- posted at: 11:09 PM |
Tue, 25 February 2014
Drew shares the first set of interviews that he conducted at RootsTech 2014, including:
Direct download: 261_The_Genealogy_Guys_261_-_2014_February_23.mp3
Category:Genealogy -- posted at: 12:36 AM |
Wed, 29 January 2014
Ancestry needs your help!! We're looking for Ancestry enthusiasts to provide feedback on some new concepts on the ancestry.com website experience. Member feedback has always been vital to our product development and Ancestry has recently expanded its User Research team, and we want to talk to you! Based in both Provo and San Francisco, sessions would typically last an hour either online or in person if you're local. We are happy to get your input on existing and new experiences across both the website and mobile. Participants will have a few different incentives to choose from, such as the latest edition of FTM for Windows or Mac! If you are interested in applying for participation, please drop us a line at firstname.lastname@example.com. We have some in-person opportunities at RootsTech to kickoff this expanded initiative. ROOTSTECH Starting this February at RootsTech, we will be conducting sessions on Thursday (2/6) and Friday (2/7). There are two ways you could participate: · One of two, 90 minute focus groups from 4:30 – 6:00 PM each day, where we will look specifically at the Profile Page of people in your tree to understand both how you currently use it and what new features that you'd love to see incorporated. You will be asked to pull up interesting people in your tree and share with the Research team and the 4 or 5 other subscribers in the group. · A 50 minute, one-to-one interview session with a member of the Product Research team who will walk you through some new concepts and get your input. We will be conducting 7 sessions at different times during the day on Thursday and Friday. Follow the link below to select your preferred times. To participate in either RootsTech research session type, you need an active ancestry.com account with a tree. To be considered, please fill out this survey, so that we can confirm your participation and set up scheduling. http://ancestry.qualtrics.com/ Thank you, Lisa R. Handalian, Senior User Researcher | Ancestry.com Product Team
-- posted at: 3:59 PM
Tue, 28 January 2014
The news includes: · RootsMagic announces that their webinars are now indexed and that their Android app is coming soon. · Family Tree DNA and MyHeritage have teemed up to integrate DNA tests into the MyHeritage customer base of 75M users. · Findmypast announces that they are making improvements to their website and will be adding records more frequently. · GenSoftReviews announces the Top Genealogy Software Awards for 2013. · AmericanAncestors.org (NEHGS) has debuted their blog, Vita Brevis, at http://vita-brevis.org. · FamilySearch announces their new indexing website at https://familysearch.org/indexing/. · Ancestry.com and FamilySearch announce an expansion of their collaborative agreement to make more than 1 billion additional records from 67 countries available on Ancestry.com. · Drew highlights new record additions at FamilySearch. · There are news reports that indicate that Pope Francis will open the Vatican's archives covering Pious XII and his pontificate of World War II and the role he played in supporting/facilitating the Nazi regime's activities. (See http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=20240.) The Guys talk about upcoming conference appearances. Listener email includes: · Neal shared a website called American Radio History at http://www.americanradiohistory.com with over 1M page of magazines, periodicals, yearbooks, directories and more that can provide information about ancestors in the broadcasting industry and insights into your ancestors' entertainment. · Karen asks questions about Family Tree Maker 2014. · Noi asks questions about rescuing family photos and documents. · Sam ask questions concerning DNA testing advances. · Joshua ask questions about the FamilySearch family tree facility and whether data submitted might be used by the LDS for baptism by proxy. Drew discusses the Arthur G, Dozier School for Boys and the role that the University of South Florida (and himself) are playing in researching the abuse and deaths of boys committed to the school. (See http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/students-skeletal-remains-uncovered-infamous-florida-school-boys-article-1.1448534 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_School_for_Boys.
Direct download: 260_The_Genealogy_Guys_260_-_2014_January_26.mp3
Category:Genealogy -- posted at: 2:26 AM |
Sat, 4 January 2014
The news includes: · The Genealogy Guys have been interviewed by Marian Pierre-Louis on episode 72 of her podcast, Fieldstone Common, at http://www.fieldstonecommon.com/george-morgan-drew-smith. · Restrictions placed on access to the Social Security Death Index. · Keynote speakers at RootsTech 2014. · News about 23andMe and its genetic genealogy testing service. · Matthew Batchelor is appointed as the new Chief Technology Officer at DC Thomson Family History, owner of Findmypast.com and Genes Reunited. · The National Archives in the UK has announced a series of six webinars, beginning in January 2014 They will be held at different hours that help assure most people all over the world can enjoy them live. The schedule and topics are available at http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/records/webinars.htm. · RootsMagic has released a new update to Version 6, is working on the beta test of the Android app, and has a great collection of free recorded webinars online and videos about RootsMagic. · FamilySearch continues to add hundreds of thousands of new records each week, and Drew summarizes some highlights from December 2013. · MyHeritage announces a huge initiative into the Nordic countries and the addition of millions of names and records. · Ancestry.com has announced the release of Family Tree Make Mac 3. · Betty Kreisel Shubert's landmark book, Out-of-Style: A Modern Perspective of How, Why, and When Vintage Fashions Evolved, has been named by Kirkus Reviews as one of the Best Books of 2013. Listener email includes: · Russ Worthington, in his October postings in "A Worthington Weblog," discusses how he files his digital images. · William asks about the proper way to record surnames that were changed due to adoption or "Americanization" by immigrant ancestors. The Guys discuss how they are using technology and the hardware, software, and apps that they are using the most as of the beginning of 2014.
Direct download: 259_The_Genealogy_Guys_259_-_2014_January_2.mp3
Category:Genealogy -- posted at: 12:57 AM |
Thu, 10 October 2013
Note: It appears that there are problems with the audio quality in portions of this episode, causing one of the two stereo tracks to drop out at random times. We apologize for this. The news includes:
Listener email includes:
Direct download: 256_The_Genealogy_Guys_256_-_2013_October_8.mp3
Category:Genealogy -- posted at: 1:04 AM |
Sat, 8 June 2013
Drew shares his three remaining interviews from RootsTech 2013:
Direct download: 252_The_Genealogy_Guys_252_-_2013_June_5.mp3
Category:Genealogy -- posted at: 12:08 AM |
Wed, 22 May 2013
Drew shares three more interviews from RootsTech 2013:
Direct download: 251_The_Genealogy_Guys_251_-_2013_May_21.mp3
Category:Genealogy -- posted at: 2:14 AM |
Sun, 7 April 2013
George is out of town speaking for the North Carolina Genealogical Society, so Drew hosts this episode, beginning with the following news items:
Drew shares 3 interviews from RootsTech 2013, including:
Direct download: 249_The_Genealogy_Guys_249_-_2013_April_7.mp3
Category:Genealogy -- posted at: 4:25 PM |
Thu, 11 October 2012
The Guys are very pleased to welcome a new sponsor for the Podcast, findmypast.com The news includes:
The listener email includes:
Drew discusses his discovery of some delayed birth certificates at Ancestry.com
Direct download: 242_The_Genealogy_Guys_242_-_2012_October_7.mp3
Category:Genealogy -- posted at: 12:13 AM |
Wed, 19 September 2012
The news includes:
Listener email includes:
George discussed some information received about FamilySearch and its progress in digitizing microfilm. He also discussed current crews acquiring digital images around the world. You can contact firstname.lastname@example.com to learn about opportunities to become involved. Drew discussed the formation of the Family History Information Standards Organisation (FHISO) and its plans to develop data standards for genealogy-related data. Drew also discussed the discontinuation of the group, Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness (RAOGK) and his search for other groups forming to take over this volunteer activity.
Direct download: 241_The_Genealogy_Guys_241_-_2012_September_16.mp3
Category:Genealogy -- posted at: 12:16 AM |
Tue, 21 August 2012
The news includes:
George just received the results of a Y-DNA test from Family Tree DNA. The Guys discuss how Drew (and George) pursued researching all the descendants of one of George's great-great-grandfather's sons. The Guys located records for almost 200 new people (descendants, spouses, and their parents) in just a few hours.
Direct download: 240_The_Genealogy_Guys_240_-_2012_August_19.mp3
Category:Genealogy -- posted at: 12:26 AM |
Tue, 7 August 2012
The news includes:
Listener email includes:
Direct download: 239_The_Genealogy_Guys_239_-_2012_August_5.mp3
Category:Genealogy -- posted at: 12:35 AM |
Tue, 10 April 2012
The news includes:
Listener email includes:
The Guys talked briefly about their own research into the 1940 U.S. federal census records.
Direct download: 235_The_Genealogy_Guys_235_-_2012_April_8.mp3
Category:Genealogy -- posted at: 9:03 PM |
Wed, 27 April 2011
News stories discussed on this episode:
The Guys discuss upcoming conferences where they will be speaking in coming months. George announced that he has begun working on a third edition of his book, How to Do Everything: Genealogy, for McGraw-Hill Professional. The new book will be available at the end of 2011 or early 2012. Listener email includes:
Direct download: 220_The_Genealogy_Guys_Podcast_220_-_2011_April_26.mp3
Category:Genealogy -- posted at: 8:17 PM |
Tue, 18 January 2011
The news includes:
Listener email includes:
George tellss everyone that there are several new book reviews coming. |
Fri, 7 January 2011
This week's news includes:
This episode's listener email includes:
The Guys discuss the use of CrossOver, and George tells about how simple it was to relink all the graphics for his ancestor research using RootsMagic. Drew discusses his personal research and the fact that his brother has sent him two new boxes of materials. |
Mon, 29 November 2010
The news includes:
Ideas for holiday gifts include:
The Guys review the following books:
Listener email includes:
Sun, 14 November 2010
This episode was recorded in front of a live audience at the annual conference of the Florida State Genealogical Society, held at the Hyatt Regency Sarasota. (Note: At one point during the episode, Drew tries to recall the name and URL of the national program that manages the archiving of local newspapers. After the recording, a helpful audience member let Drew know that it was the United States Newspaper Program.) |
Tue, 19 October 2010
This week's news includes:
Listener email includes:
The Guys discuss a product from CodeWeavers called CrossOver Mac for Macintosh OS X ($39.95) that "allows you to install many popular Windows applications and games on your Intel Mac. Once installed, your application integrates seamlessly in OS X. Just click and run your application directly from the OS X Finder. Clicking a Windows file or document — including email attachments — will launch the appropriate Windows program, allowing you to work on the files. Best of all, you do it all easily and affordably, without needing a Microsoft operating system license." The Guys are now running RootsMagic on their Macs instead of using VMWare Fusion or Parallels software and without buying an expensive Windows operating system license. More listener email includes:
Drew discusses his blog, Rootsmithing at http://rootsmithing.com. |
Wed, 22 September 2010
The news includes:
Listener email includes:
Sun, 29 August 2010
This episode was recorded in front of a live audience at the 2010 annual conference of the Federation of Genealogical Societies in Knoxville, Tennessee. |
Mon, 2 August 2010
The news includes:
Drew reads a question from Jim about a French puzzle. Drew will respond on this after he has a chance to review the details. The Guys discuss technology, including the iPhone and Drew's new iPad and a number of applications - apps at the iTunes store and on the Web:
Wed, 21 July 2010
The news includes:
The guys discuss their upcoming travel plans:
Listener email includes:
Fri, 2 July 2010
The news includes:
Listener email includes:
George and Drew discuss three books:
Wed, 9 June 2010
Our listener email includes:
George reviews several books this week:
Wed, 2 June 2010
The news includes:
Our listener email includes:
Mon, 10 May 2010
The Guys discuss their recent trips, including a great visit to Salt Lake City for the NGS Conference. This week's news includes:
George discusses his meeting at NGS with Gary Gibb and Chad Milliner of Ancestry.com to discuss problems with the new images for the 1860 U.S. federal censuses at their site. George explains the cause and that Gary is evaluating possible corrective actions. Listener email includes:
The Guys discuss their upcoming conference activities. George heartily recommends attendance at the Southern California Genealogical Society's Jamboree on 11-13 June 2010 in Burbank. He also encourages you to watch the webinar he did for the SCGS titled "Getting the Most out of a Genealogy Conference" at their website and at http://www.scgsgenealogy.com/RootsTV.htm. Drew discusses his newest toy - an Apple iPad. |
Tue, 20 April 2010
This week's news includes:
Phil Wright is looking for feedback on a potential new online genealogy service. You can respond to him at firstname.lastname@example.com. This week's listener email includes:
In response to Beverly's inquiry about options for genealogy home study courses, George compiled the following list: National Genealogical Society: Home Study Course http://www.ngsgenealogy.org/cs/homestudy_course_cd Family Tree University http://www.familytreeuniversity.com National Institute for Genealogical Studies http://www.genealogicalstudies.com Boston University – Certificate in Genealogical Research http://professional.bu.edu/cpe/Genealogy.asp Brigham Young University – Independent Study (Free Courses) http://ce.byu.edu/is/site/courses/free.cfm New England Historic Genealogical Society Online Seminars http://www.newenglandancestors.org/events/online_seminars.asp Drew issues his first research challenge: Find Drew's paternal grandparents (William Henry Smith, his wife Elizabeth, and their sons William, Charles, and George) in the 1920 census for northern New Jersey. |
Tue, 30 March 2010
Our hosting service, Libsyn, may be experiencing some server issues, which is causing a problem with episode #200. We'll update you as soon as we know that it has been resolved. UPDATE (March 31): Libsyn appears to have fixed their problem, and we're back in business with episode 200!
-- posted at: 12:41 AM
Tue, 30 March 2010
The 200th Episode! The Guys are pleased to celebrate the 200th episode of the Genealogy Guys Podcast! This week's news includes: Mail in your 2010 census forms; a brief discussion of the NBC series, Who Do You Think You Are?; RootsTelevision will remain in operation; library funding crises are spreading as the New Jersey State Library is threatened with a merger with Thomas Edison State College; the Charlotte-Mecklenburg County [NC] Library system's threatened 13-branch library closure announcement is mitigated by staffing and operation hours slashes; the Library of Michigan's collection will remain in one piece for now, but other changes are being discussed; a Massachusetts senate bill proposes closure to all that state's vital records created after 1841; Turner Publishing of Nashville, Tennessee, will take over all of Ancestry Publishing's brand and books, and will continue handling distribution and sales; The National Archives in the U.K. has announced that it will cease publication of its acclaimed genealogy magazine, Ancestors, and subscribers must contact the publisher, Wharncliffe Publishing, Ltd., concerning refunds. George has been been contacted by Gary Gibb of Ancestry.com and Chad Milner concerning some quality problems with Ancestry's recent upgrade of census images. George discusses the 1861 censuses for three Ohio counties reported by Tina, and the intense attention being taken to address problems. Jonathan Wiltman announces GenAnswers, a new site at www.genanswers.com, a new and free genealogy question and answer community. Meg announces that her True Lover's Knot has been published as notecards by Etsy.com at www.hughpugh.etsy.com. This week's news includes:
Thank you, everyone, for listening and becoming part of our growing family! |
Sat, 20 March 2010
George and Drew in front of a live audience on March 6, 2010 at the annual conference of the Santa Barbara County (California) Genealogical Society. |
Thu, 11 March 2010
This episode features three interviews:
George and Drew also discuss their recent trip to Santa Barbara County, California, including a tour of the library of the Santa Barbara County Genealogical Society. (The next episode, #199, will be a podcast recorded in front of the audience in Santa Barbara County.) Finally, listeners learn how they can become part of the upcoming 200th episode of the Genealogy Guys Podcast! |
Mon, 1 March 2010
George and Drew set sail on the second-largest cruise ship in the world, Royal Caribbean's Liberty of the Seas, and record a podcast episode in front of a live audience participating in the RootsMagic 2010 genealogy cruise. (Note: The correct URL for FreeBMD should be www.freebmd.org.uk.) |
Sun, 7 February 2010
In this episode:
Thu, 28 January 2010
This week's news includes:
This week's listener email includes:
George does a review of a new book, "Wanted! U.S. Criminal Records, Sources & Research Methodology" by author Ron Arons. The book is published by Criminal Research Press and retails for $49.99. The book is a compendium of a wide variety of criminal records and where the records can be located. Learn more at http://www.ronarons.com. George discusses his exciting finds concerning his paternal grandmother, her first marriage, her second marriage to his grandfather, and some very surprising connections that he has uncovered. Drew joins in the discussion because he, too, helped with the puzzle. |
Thu, 21 January 2010
The Guys have been traveling the last two weeks, but here's a new episode for everyone!
This week's news includes:
George and Drew discuss their trip earlier this month to Salt Lake City and the research work they did on-site in the Family History Library. They each discuss the types of records they researched on microfilm, including probate indexes, probate files, grantor and grantee indexes to deed books, and other materials. George describes the process for having requested microfilm from the Granite Mountain vault. Drew recounts a recent discussion on the ROOTS-L mailing list. He discusses "name chasers" who collect and add names to their databases without performing research to check sources. They also eschew entering any source citations for their collections. Some have even attacked Drew's position on the importance of source citations, stating that citing sources takes the fun out of genealogy. The Guys talk about how important and integral source citations are in everyone's research. |
Mon, 4 January 2010
This week's news includes:
The Guys are headed to Salt Lake City this coming weekend for the annual Winter Retreat which coincides with the Salt Lake Institute classes. Following that, Drew is headed to Boston for the American Library Association's Midwinter Conference. George will be at the following locations giving presentations: January 16th - Sarasota Genealogical Society January 30th - Palm Beach County Genealogical Society February 6th - Highlands County [FL] Genealogical Society Drew will be at the Englewood Genealogical Society of Florida on January 27th. He and Drew will both be sailing and presenting on the RootsMagic Valentine's Day Cruise to the Western Caribbean. Stop by and see us! |
Tue, 22 December 2009
This week's news includes:
This week's listener email includes:
Fri, 11 December 2009
The Guys published a new podcast dated December 7, 2009. However, one
of our listeners reported a problem with the repetition of material
following the first commercial break. This is the second time this has
occurred. We rechecked the file and verified the problem. We believe it
is a software problem with GarageBand, the software we use to record and
process the podcasts. We believe that the "mix down" process that
occurs after the editing of the podcast, and what actually produces the
MP3 file, has a bug in it.
We are searching for details about this problem. However, in the meantime, we remixed the file, created a new one, and uploaded/published the podcast again. The new, corrected file was republished this evening (12/10/09). If you want to obtain the corrected file, please visit The Genealogy Guys Podcast website at http://genealogyguys.com and open or download the new file. Sorry for the problem, but we're on it!
-- posted at: 6:06 AM
Tue, 8 December 2009
This week's news includes:
Wed, 25 November 2009
News from Ancestry.com includes more records, such as U.S. Navy records, improved 1850 U.S. census images, Atlanta federal penitentiary records, more historical postcards, Bavaria muster rolls, and other new records from Ireland, Australia, and Paris. Footnote.com has added more Native American records. RootsMagic has updated its website and has released RootsMagic Essentials, a free version of the RootsMagic software. The DAR has made an online database of many of its genealogy records available to the general public.
Listener e-mail involves a question about the link to New York government divisions (turns out it's on Wikipedia); the correct pronunciation of Islip, NY (which Drew did correct in the show notes from the episode in which he mispronounced it) and another NY town; the Federation of Genealogical Societies 2010 conference in Knoxville, Tennessee; volunteering to provide free online access to records, especially local historical records; volunteering to provide genealogy classes at the local public library; online Navy records and other military records; issues related to using Facebook, Genealogy Wise, and the Genealogy Guys videos on Blip.tv; citing census records; running Windows programs on a Macintosh; and researching Smiths in England. Drew shares his first experiences with Google's latest online service, Google Wave. |
Thu, 19 November 2009
This podcast episode was recorded "live" at the Western Michigan Genealogical Society's conference in Grand Rapids on Saturday, November 7, 2009. We had a fabulous time with the society and its members!
Mon, 16 November 2009
The Guys have THREE new videocast interviews for your viewing pleasure. Drew interviews: Craig Manson, author of GeneaBlogie; Dick Eastman of Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter; and Leo Myers and Paula Hinkel, co-organizers of the Southern California Genealogical Society's annual conference called JAMBOREE. Check them all out at http://genealogyguys.blip.tv!
-- posted at: 9:40 PM
Thu, 5 November 2009
This week's news includes: Ancestry.com expects to raise $100 million in its IPO; the Kansas African American Museum in Wichita has received a $25,000 grant to establish a statewide program called "Knowing Me, Knowing You"; Footnote.com has announced its plan to create the complete Interactive U.S. Census; and the "Who Do You Think You Are LIVE" show will be held in Olympia, London, on 26-28 February 2010, sponsored by Ancestry.co.uk.
The Guys will be at the Western Michigan Genealogical Society's Conference in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on 6 November 2009. Details are available at http://gotancestors.com. The Guys will also be at the Florida State Genealogical Society's Conference in Melbourne, Florida, on 13-14 November 2009. Details are available at http://flsgs.org. George thanks Teresa Remsberg for providing a link to the Canadian Border Crossings database at Ancestry.com where a record of his great-uncle, Brisco Washington Holder, showed he arrived in 1919. Mary responded to Pat's concerns in podcast episode #186 about birth certificate copies being issued with a different place of birth (Drew realizes after the podcast that he mispronounced "Islip" several times); Victoria asks about Post-Em notes on Ancestry.com family trees; Mark shares information about articles of genealogical interest:
Thu, 5 November 2009
The Genealogy Guys have published three new videocasts at http://genealogyguys.blip.tv this week. They include interviews with:
-- posted at: 5:20 PM
Thu, 22 October 2009
SURPRISE! A second new videocast, an interview with Maureen Taylor (The Photo Detective), is also now available at http://genealogyguys.blip.tv.
-- posted at: 12:03 AM
Wed, 21 October 2009
Join Drew as he interviews Lisa Louise Cooke, host of The Genealogy Gems Podcast, in a new episode of The Genealogy Guys Videocast at http://genealogyguys.blip.tv.
-- posted at: 8:53 PM
Thu, 15 October 2009
This week's news includes: The National Army Museum (UK) has launched an exhibition called First Shots: Early War Photography 1848-1860. It includes some of the earliest war photographs in existence, and the online version of the exhibition can be viewed at http://www.national-army-museum.ac.uk/pages/firstShots/. The Vision of Britain website has a new set of digitized maps for England, Scotland, and Wales going back to the early 1800s at http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/maps/.
George has been elected to the position of Vice President of Membership Services of the Federation of Genealogical Societies, effective 1 January 2010. George describes a beautiful poster that Gus Marsh has sent to illustrate work with Adobe In-Design. Gus also asks about two individuals buried in Pinellas County in Florida. The Guys report on the status of the Library of Michigan funding crisis and the threat of breaking up its excellent historical and genealogical collection. George will be in Louisville, KY, this Saturday for an all-day seminar (details at http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~kylgs/seminar2.html). George and Drew will be at the Western Michigan Genealogical Society (http://www.wmgs.org) in Grand Rapids, MI, on Friday and Saturday, November 6th and 7th. The society is celebrating its 55th anniversary with a banquet on Friday evening, and an all-day seminar on Saturday, titled Got Ancestors?! Guydes to Genealogical Research. Details are available at http://gotancestors.com. The day's festivities will conclude with The Genealogy Guys LIVE!, a live recording session of the podcast with questions and answers. The Guys present two final interviews from the SCGS Jamboree in Burbank. Drew first interviews Suzanne Russo Adams of Ancestry.com and the author of Finding Your Italian Ancestors: A Beginner's Guide. He then interviews Paula Hinkel and Leo Myers, the planning and organizing force behind Jamboree. This week's listener email includes: Teri has downloaded all the podcasts and listens while swimming; Peter asks Drew about researching his slave ancestors in Newberry, SC, Drew's hometown; Amy discusses the use of newspapers and newsletters for company employees. |
Fri, 9 October 2009
The Podcast has been nominated by Family Tree Magazine's Top 40 Genealogy Blogs in the HOW-TO Category. Please cast your vote for us at http://www.familytreemagazine.com/article/40BestVoting.
This week's news includes: Ancestry.com will present a free online presentation on Wednesday, October 14, 2009, at 8:00 PM Eastern Time titled "Learn the Best Strategies for Searching Ancestry.com" - and you can register at http://learn.ancestry.com/LearnMore/Webinars.aspx; Ancestry.com also announced that they have expanded their agreement with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to scan and index documents there, and have therefore opened a new scanning facility in the Washington, DC, area - new content collections from this new facility are discussed in this episode; UK Minister Ed Miliband, visiting Moscow on official business and appearing on a call-in radio program, received a call from a relative. You can read the BBC news story at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8295394.stm. The City of Kennesaw, Georgia, received a grant that enabled them to begin underground imaging of their cemetery, and you can read all about it at http://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/etd/2/. Note: Another update on the Library of Michigan crisis will be provided next week. Maureen A. Taylor, well known as The Photo Detective, has just published a new book, Fashionable Folks: Hairstyles 1840-1900. It can help you date those mystery photos you have. The book is available at http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/fashionable-folks-hair/7559085. The Guys have a busy speaking schedule coming up! Drew will speak about DNA on Sunday, October 11th, for the Jewish Genealogical Society of Tampa Bay (http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~fljgstb). George will be presenting at an all-day conference for the Louisville Genealogical Society (details at http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~kylgs/seminar2.html) in Louisville, KY, on Saturday, October 17th. And George AND Drew will be speaking for the Western Michigan Genealogical Society (http://www.wmgs.org) in Grand Rapids, MI, on Friday and Saturday, November 6th and 7th. The society is celebrating its 55th anniversary with a banquet on Friday evening, and an all-day seminar on Saturday, titled Got Ancestors?! Guydes to Genealogical Research. Details are available at http://gotancestors.com. The day's festivities will conclude with The Genealogy Guys LIVE!, a live recording session of the podcast with questions and answers. Drew interviews Dick Eastman, author of Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter (http://blog.eogn.com). Dick will be appearing for the Pinellas Genealogy Society in Largo, Florida, Saturday, February 13, 2010. The listener email includes: Carolyn raves about how much she likes RootsMagic software; Lee continues discussing wives' maiden names on gravestones; Roger tells us that the Scottish practice of using maiden names of married women in birth entries in parish registers and on gravestones. Roger shares two examples: http://roger.lisaandroger.com/showmedia.php?mediaID=81 shows a parish register; examples of headstones appear at http://roger.lisaandroger.com/browsemedia.php?mediatypeID=headstones. Pat shares concerns about official, raised seal birth certificates from New York that are using different birth locations now rather than the actual (and original) locations. TC shares information about Dropbox software, a free tool to help keep data on multiple computers in synch. It is available at http://www.getdropbox.com and is free. George talks about Internet Genealogy magazine from Moorshead Publications, the last magazine covering Internet research topics. (Visit http://www.internet-genealogy.com for more information and to subscribe.) Katie asks for guidance for using pre-1850 U.S. federal censuses and getting past some roadblocks created because only the head of household was listed, followed with tick marks representing gender, age, and race. |
Thu, 1 October 2009
This week's news includes: The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and Footnote.com announce a new Digital Holocaust Collection at Footnote.com at http://www.footnote.com/holocaust, and will be accessible for free through October; Gale and the British Library have made a vast collection of "British Newspapers, 1800-1900" available online at http://newspapers.bl.uk/blcs - searches are free and downloads of full-text articles are available by purchasing either a 24-hour or 7-day pass; WorldVitalRecords.com announced that it has lowered its price for an annual World Collection Subscription to $99.95; and FamilySearch announces new and updated records and indexes at its site at http://pilot.familysearch.org/recordsearch.
The Guys provide an update about the Library of Michigan crisis, provided by Tom Koselka of the Michigan Genealogical Council. Drew interviews Steve Danko, expert genealogist in Polish research and personal blogger extraordinaire (http://www.stephendanko.com). George discusses the fact that he has a new membership to the Godfrey Memorial Library (http://www.godfrey.org) and the types of subscriptions available. The listener email includes: Eiya asks when you should shell out the big money for certified certificates; Ian asks for advice about the treatment of sensitive family information, such as illegitimate children; Jenna asks about the filing of marriage certificates - under the groom, the bride, or both; Clive shares some Irish websites he has found very helpful: http://www.leitrim-roscommon. http://www.leitrim-roscommon. http://www.leitrim-roscommon. http://www.irish-roots.ie/ http://roscommon.brsgenealogy. http://pilot.familysearch.org/ http://www.groireland.ie/ Tom shares his new understanding about the term "removed" cousin; and Noi asks for advice in locating and accessing corporate records for genealogical purposes. |
Wed, 23 September 2009
Join us for a terrific interview with Dr. Tukufu Zuberi, one of the co-hosts of the great PBS series, The History Detectives. The videocast can be accessed directly at http://genealogyguys.blip.tv.
-- posted at: 5:09 AM
Sat, 19 September 2009
Drew here: When I was inserting the commercials into the most recent podcast episode (#184) this morning, I made an error with the second one. Fortunately, one of our listeners caught it and let us know. I've now re-created the episode with the correct commercial. So if you downloaded our #184 episode prior to 7:30pm ET (thereabouts) today, you'll have the uncorrected version, but you should be ok if you downloaded it since that time. Sorry about that!
-- posted at: 11:31 PM
Sat, 19 September 2009
We are pleased to present another video interview, this time with Schelly Talaly Dardashti, an expert on Jewish genealogical research. You can access the current episode at http://genealogyguys.blip.tv. However, you can access and download this and all previous videocast episodes at iTunes.Let us know what YOU think!
-- posted at: 5:55 PM
Sat, 19 September 2009
We apologize for the delay between podcasts, but we're back on schedule again!
This week's news includes: Ancestry.com and the Drouin Institute (http://institutdrouin.com), holder of one of the most important Canadian genealogical collections, announce the successful resolution to arbitration concerning content and indexing, and Ancestry.com has announced that the collection will be returning to its site very soon; dynastree announces that it now has 10 million family trees on its site, and that they have added new features including the ability to include family pictures in a GEDCOM file export; MyHeritage.com announces that its free Family Tree Builder software (free for download) now supports mapping, photo albums, and other new features; the Free Library of Philadelphia has averted disastrous budget cuts that would have closed all of its branches in early October; and the FamilySearch Indexing Project (http://pilot.familysearch.org/recordsearch/start.html#start) has announced the release of additional new and updated collections. The Library of Michigan continues to hang under the threat of its collection being dispersed by executive order of the state's governor. The Records Preservation and Access Committee (RPAC), a joint group of the Federation of Genealogical Societies and the National Genealogical Society, has initiated an online petition drive at http://www.petitiononline.com/RPAC2009/petition.html and The Guys strongly encourage you to sign electronically by 30 September 2009, the deadline date for the petition. For more information about the situation, visit the Michigan Genealogical Council's website at http://www.mimgc.org/LOM.html. (The Guys will continue to report on this critical situation over the coming weeks and months.) This week's listener email includes: Pheobe has created a Cousin Camp for her nieces, nephews, and cousins aged 9 to 14 and offers to share information with others; George asks about how to cite death notices; Rob asks how many listeners there are for the podcast; Victoria discusses the software she uses on her Mac in order to run Windows-based programs such as RootsMagic; Margaret reports on genealogists and libraries, and methods for creating knowledge with web 2.0 technologies; Rebecca asks about file formats for digitizing family photos and documents and saving them into her genealogy database; Lee asks if other listeners have seen tombstones on which the wife's maiden name is listed; and Mary Ann asks for assistance in helping to locate more information about her grandmother in Texas. |
Fri, 11 September 2009
George and Drew record this episode in front of a live audience at the 2009 annual conference of the Federation of Genealogical Societies in Little Rock, Arkansas. Drew interviews members of the audience and the Guys take a number of audience questions.
Tue, 25 August 2009
This week's news includes: Hamburg, Germany-based dynastree (http://www.dynastree.com) announces an automatic search for potential relatives on its site; responses have been great about The Guys' new videocasting at http://genealogyguys.blip.tv; Ancestry.com announces the release of its new Family Tree Maker 2010 software; and Genealogy Wise announces that there are many great videos on its website.
Drew shares two interviews this week: Michelle Pfister and Mark LeMonnier on the product team of Family Tree Maker of Ancestry.com discuss the software, improvements that have been made over the last year, and some of the things coming in the future. Schelly Talalay Dardashti, author of the Tracing the Tribe blog (http://tracingthetribe.blogspot.com), discusses Jewish genealogy and how to progress with your research. This week's listener email includes: Eiya asks about the absence of marriage records for Fannin County, Texas, at Ancestry.com, and George has information about those records' availability on microfilm through the LDS Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah; one listener joined a genealogy society in January and has felt less than welcome, and asks when it might be appropriate to make suggestions for improvements; and Rebecca asks The Guys which genealogy software program that they use. NOTE: The two interviews will be posted as videocasts within the coming week at http://genealogyguys.blip.tv. |
Fri, 21 August 2009
We are very excited to announce that we've just published our first video episode at http://genealogyguys.blip.tv. This includes the interview with Janet Hovorka, otherwise known as "The Chart Chick," of Generation Maps (http://generationsmaps.com). You'll enjoy
seeing the many examples of great genealogy charts that they can
produce for you. More video episodes are coming! You'll also be able to subscribe to an RSS feed as soon as iTunes reviews the first episode. Let us know what YOU think!
-- posted at: 12:41 AM
Sat, 15 August 2009
This week's news includes: GenealogyWise (http://www.genealogywise.com), the recently launched genealogy social network, has added indexing to the Surname Groups; dynastree (http://www.dynastree.com) has announced that it now features maps showing the distribution of a surname for eight countries; and MyHeritage (http://www.myheritage.com) has added many new features and activities to its site. The Guys then discuss news about the upcoming Federation of Genealogical Societies Conference in Little Rock, Arkansas.
This week's podcast features two interviews by Drew from the Southern California Genealogical Society's Jamboree in Burbank, California:
Sat, 8 August 2009
This week's news includes: the Library of Michigan and its historical and genealogical collections are in jeopardy; Ancestry.com has filed with the SEC for a $75 million IPO; brightsolid announced the acquisition of the Friends Reunited Group for £25 million; Ancestry.com has substantially expanded its Jewish Family History Records collection; Ancestry.com also has announced the release of its fourth Ancestry World Archives project, the England and Wales Criminal Registers, 1791-1892; dynastree.com now offers a free 14-day trial of its premium subscription; and RootsMagic's Valentine's Day Family History Cruise of the Western Caribbean, sailing from Miami on 14 February 2010, is accepting reservations, and there will be great genealogy classes and shore excursions -- details are available at http://www.rootsmagiccruise.com.
The Guys will be part of a special event at the Federation of Genealogical Societies 2009 Conference in Little Rock. They will lead an Open Forum for Bloggers, Social Networkers, and Podcasters -- and for anyone interested in discussing or having questions. Meet The Guys, other bloggers, people on social networks you may never have met in person, and podcasters. The Guys interview Maureen A. Taylor, the Photo Detective. Visit her website at http://www.photodetective.com, and sign up for her free newsletter at the bottom of the Web page. Catch her great blog as well! The Guys discuss the crisis in Michigan with the governor's proposal to stop funding, close the library, and disperse the collection. The Michigan Genealogical Council organized an important rally this week at the State Capitol and then proceeded to march to the Library of Michigan. There the participants, nearly 500 strong, formed a "Hands Around the Library" demonstration, carried signs, and spoke with passers-by. There was local television and newspaper coverage of the event. The Guys are very concerned about this situation, and George is an outspoken library and archives advocate. George reviews an outstanding book, Crash Course in Family History (3rd edition) by Paul Larson. The outstanding step-by-step book is available from EasyFamilyHistory.com (http://www.easyfamilyhistory.com), and previews of the book are available at http://www.crashcoursebook.com. This week's listener email includes: Eric asks about the Frappr map that The Guys had on their website; Victoria shares the address of the University of Chicago's Archival Photographic Files at http://photofiles.lib.uchicago.edu; John weighs in on the subject of genealogical data placed behind societies' members-only walls; and Stephanie asks for suggestions on how to move data from Reunion to another PC-based software package. |
Sat, 1 August 2009
This week's news includes: Ancestry.com launches a new feature called Member Connect to make connecting with others easier; and the Federation of Genealogy Societies (FGS) reminds our listeners that the 2009 FGS Conference is only a month away, September 2-5, in Little Rock, Arkansas. The Guys reminds listeners that they will be there doing a LIVE podcast recording session with an audience.
The Guys welcome Julie Miller, CG, and Drew interviews her at the Southern California Genealogical Society's Jamboree about research into the ancestors and relatives of a certain Denver celebrity. This week's listener email includes: Clive asked George to also share the fact that The National Archives (TNA) in the UK also produces podcasts at http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/podcasts/default.htm on many topics; he also asks if we can find out when the "Criminal Registers, 1791-1892," from Ancestry's World Archive Project will be available online (and George will check); Clive also tells us another story of the use of the word "craic." (Drew also discusses the Geo Challenge game on Facebook.com.) Bill reminds us that PAF (Personal Ancestral File genealogy software from the LDS Church) is still an excellent free option for creating and maintaining your database; Noi asked about Footnote.com's calculation of the percent completed in the Civil War Widows' Pension Files collection, and received an answer from Footnote Support that she shared with everyone; Damien thanked The Guys for information about photo tagging software; Michael asked which death date to use in his database when his great uncle died at home about 11:00 PM and the doctor did not arrive to create the death certificate until about 12:30 AM on the next day; Michael also shares his difficulties working with the New Jersey state government to obtain an old death certificate -- the search was $25.00, regardless of outcome, required an extensive set of proofs of his relationship to the person for whose record he was requesting, and the office was exceptionally rude when he followed up by telephone. Ann Gulbransen, Historian for the Ohio Society of Mayflower Descendants, responded to a listener's inquiry in Episode 177. She tells us that the official books that trace Mayflower ancestry are called "The Mayflower Families Genealogies through Five Generations." Also known as the Silver Books, the completed books and indexes can be purchased through the online store at the Society's website at http://www.themayflowersociety.com. Kay is concerned about Ancestry's Hints and their application to potentially incorrect data. Rabbi Gary M. Gans has a new iPod and has been listening to the show since the first day he got it, and he inquired about the "Brisco" name he has heard George mention. |
Fri, 24 July 2009
This week's news includes:
This week's listener email includes:
Thu, 16 July 2009
This week's news includes: The Generations Network has changed its name to Ancestry.com; The National Archives (TNA) (http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk) in the U.K. has launched truly great new learning guides online at its site, under the tabs Research and Learning, Research Guidance, and Understand the Archives in Minutes; Digital Genealogist magazine will cease publication with the July/August 2009 issue; MyHeritage (http://www.myheritage.com) announces new photo features, including a photo tagging system; dynastree (http://www.dynastree.com) announces an extended search facility; Gus reminds us that the newly updated Reunion app from LeisterPro (http://www.leisterpro.com) will operate on both the iPhone and the iPod Touch; and The Genealogy Guys Podcast will be LIVE at the Federation of Genealogical Societies Conference in Little Rock, Arkansas -- producing a live podcast recording session on Thursday, September 3rd, at 3:30 PM.
Drew interviews Lisa Louise Cooke of the Genealogy Gems Podcast (http://www.genealogygemspodcast.com) at the Southern California Genealogical Society Jamboree. This week's listener email includes: Rich asks about what is involved with playing and producing podcasts; Christopher tells us that annotating and tagging photos is a feature of LifeStory Productions' Heritage Collector Suite (http://heritagecollector.com); a listener asked if our podcasts are transcribed into written form, and Drew responds that they are not; Michael asks for suggestions about his brick wall with Murry M. Jones in Indiana; Roger, Tom, and Rich responded to the discussion about information placed in member-only areas of genealogical websites; Brent Ropelato of TopTenREVIEWS recommends the genealogy software reviews (http://genealogy-software-review.toptenreviews.com) which George indicates does not at present include Mac software, and may not be 100% up to date; and Larry asks for suggestions about tracing his ancestor who supposedly is a Mayflower descendant. |
Mon, 6 July 2009
This week's news includes: Aster Software has released a new version 2.0 of its FamViewer software application (app) for the iPhone, and LeisterPro has released its version 1.0.2 of Reunion for the iPhone. Famview is used to download GEDCOM files to an iPhone, while Reunion is specifically used to download genealogy data from the Reunion desktop program. dynastree (http://www.dynastree.com) is celebrating its second anniversary, and has launched Turkish support on its site. Ancestry.com has launched a new "My Story" advertising campaign.
This week's listener email includes: a response to Rollin concerning a photo of a child holding a ball; Joel Weintraub responds to a listener's query for a photo tagging program, and he gives us Photo Express (http://www.passageexpress.com); Judy asks for advice about locating Social Security information for her great-grandfather who may have stretched the truth about his year of birth; Rich suggests two websites for locating obituaries in the New York City area - Legacy.com at http://www.legacy.com/NS/ and The Journal News at http://www.nyjnews.com/obituary/search.php3; Tom shares a great story about kids getting interested in genealogy; Art is compiling an Excel spreadsheet with information about people he plans to research in the 1940 census when it is released to the public in 2012; Michelle did her podcasting presentation for the Glendale Chapter of the Family History Society of Arizona; Michael discusses his DNA testing and encourages people to especially have their older relatives tested; Jim asks about NewpaperARCHIVE.com, and shares with us the Washington State Digital Archives at http://www.digitalarchives.wa.gov, where recent additions include the King County, WA, marriage Records and World War I Veterans' Records. Roger (Marathon Man) is once again caught up on the podcasts, and reminds people that The Guys will be at the Western Michigan Genealogical Society Conference on November 7th -- details are at http://gotancestors.com. He also talks about:
And The Guys thank everyone at the Southern California Genealogical Society for a wonderful time at Jamboree! |
Sun, 21 June 2009
The Guys remember John Fuller who passed away recently. John maintained a masterful site of all of the genealogy mailing lists in the world.
This week's news includes: Family Tree Magazine has published its 101 Best Websites for 2009, and The Genealogy Guys Podcast has been named to that prestigious list; Ancestry.com will soon be launching Member Connect at its website to facilitate communication and collaboration between members and subscribers; and the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) will be turning over alien registration files to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) facilities near San Francisco and Kansas City (the searchable index announced in the podcast is no longer there). One of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission's "Lincoln Legacy Town Hall" meetings will be held on Monday, June 29th, from 6:00 to 7:30 PM at the Harold Washington Library Center, in the Cindy Pritzker Auditorium. Author and scholar Henry Louis "Skip" Gates, Jr., will join Chicago writer and interviewer Rick Kogan to have an interactive discussion of how the stories we tell shape history and how history shapes our stories. U.S. Congressman Jesse Jackson, Jr., will also be in attendance. The Guys discuss the upcoming Southern California Genealogical Society's Jamboree in Burbank, June 26-28, 2009. Join them at this great event. More details are available at http://www.scgsgenealogy.com/2009jam-home.htm. Note: Dr. Zuberi's dinner speech will be on Friday. This week's listener email includes: Roger responded to Kristen's email (Episode 174) concerning genealogical society dues vs. fees for members-only areas of a website; Gus reconfirms that deceased persons do appear in the Social Security Death Index (SSDI) while the surviving spouse collects benefits; Sean responded to the point made about recording multiple spellings of surnames by telling us that The Master Genealogist program supports the entry of multiple names in its database; Georgia Keilman asked us to tell people about her Greek genealogy website at http://www.HellenicGenealogyGeek.com; Tim tells us about another software package that can be used to generate your genealogy website, called The Next Generation of Genealogy Sitebuilding" at http://lythgoes.net/genealogy/software.php. The software also incorporates Google Maps into the site and Tim provides a link to his own site at http://www.ryeland.com and a link to his great-grandfather's page at http://ryeland.com/getperson. Drew shares information about the Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS). Bobbi King assists persons seeking a roommate for the upcoming FGS Conference in Little Rock, Arkansas, on September 2-5, 2009. Email her at email@example.com to request assistance with roommate matching. The opening session on Wednesday morning at the FGS Conference is "Delegate 101," a panel discussion and Q&A session concerning how societies and their FGS Delegates can be more effective in their liaison work. Drew discussed two social networking issues:
Thu, 11 June 2009
This week's news includes: the newly released Welsh 1911 census reveals that singer Tom Jones is actually three-quarters English; MyHeritage.com (www.myheritage.com) has announced a new version of its photo service that makes it easier to upload, share, and organize their photos online; EBSCO Publishing, one of the largest distributor of electronic materials to libraries and archives, and Footnote.com have announced a distribution deal that makes EBSCO the worldwide distributor of Footnote.com to libraries and institutions; Ancestry.ca, the Canadian geographical version of Ancestry, announces a partnership with the Library and Archives Canada in which the entire historical Canadian censuses, 1851-1916, have been released online at its site; and George spoke with Stephen Carr of our sponsor, NewspaperARCHIVE.com, and indicates that the newly announced free membership includes access to up to 5 pages per day at their site -- great for the casual user -- but serious researchers will want to subscribe to the full service.
The Guys are pleased to announce details of the RootsMagic Valentine's Day Cruise on Royal Caribbean's Liberty of the Seas, sailing from February 14th to 21st from Miami for a week's tour of the western Caribbean. Details can be found at Rootsmagic's website at www.rootsmagic.com. The Guys are excited about going to Burbank for the Southern California Genealogical Society's JAMBOREE on June 26th to 28th. George will be moderator of "Son of Blogger," a panel discussion of blogs, podcasts, and videocasts. More details are available at the SCGS website at www.scgsgenealogy.com. This week's email includes: Cheryl wants to know how to source a copy of a military record received from a relative; Kay corrects George on what happens on the Social Security Death Index (SSDI) when a spouse receives the Social Security benefits of a deceased spouse; Kay also shares a wealth of information about the land records related to Old Pendleton, South Carolina; Noi located the Pleasantville Cook-Book at the Internet Archive at www.archive.org (the cookbook is at http://www.archive.org/details/pleasantvilleco00clargoog); Jim shares information about UK copyright law and public domain; Lynda shares her experiences with CDs created by an Arkansas genealogy society, and requested a format for the Mac; Mac praises Drew's book, and thanks The Guys for encouraging him to begin lecturing; Gus is now researching his Polish ancestors, and questions how to enter the original name and the Americanized name into his genealogy database program; Blaise shares his experiences working with the "My Library" feature of Google Books (books.google.com); Sam clarifies information about a great-grandmother who immigrated from Austria/Poland to New York in 1902, and asks about immigrants held as LPCs (likely to become public charge); Victoria shares a poignant article in the Los Angeles Times about Josh Lipsky, a White House employee who made the trip with President Obama to Buchenwald concentration camp, and how he connected with his grandparents' story there (see article at http://tinyurl.com/BuchenwaldStory-LATimes); Katie discusses an article about Google Books, and a possible monopoly in digitizing out-of-copyright books (see article at http://tinyurl.com/qkgea2); and Kristin is concerned about genealogical societies choosing to restrict their Web content to "members only." (The Guys would like your input about this topic.) |
Tue, 2 June 2009
This week's news includes: NewspaperARCHIVE.com announces that it is now offering free membership; Calico Pie, Ltd., announces the release of Family Historian Version 4 genealogy software at http://www.family-historian.co.uk; Ancestry.com announces new content, including German Phone Directories (1915-1981), the Alabama State Census, and more; and the Federation of Genealogical Societies has extended its Early Bird registration for its conference in Little Rock, AR, on September 2-5, 2009, and details are available at http://www.fgs.org/2009conference.
George and Drew send "shout out" greetings to: Birdie Holsclaw in CO; Veronica June Vinson in Hove, England (Happy Birthday!); and Michelle and the Glendale Chapter of the Family History Society of Arizona. Ryan Oliver of Bozboz, Ltd., tells us about the site at http://www.howto.co.uk at which you can find many free books online, including genealogy materials. Drew revisits the "Pleasantville Cook-Book," and discusses the issue of Google Books blocking access to it in Canada because of Canada's different copyright laws. Drew proceeded to research the three compilers of the 1894 cookbook in order to confirm that they are all deceased, and he will try to communicate with Google to lift the block on this cookbook. Listen to Drew's fascinating research experience. This week's listener email includes: Paul, who works for the U.S. Postal Service, tells us that DNA test kits are not considered "hazardous" in the mails; Barb discusses locating the maiden name of Sam's Jewish-Polish grandmother that The Guys discussed in Episode #171; Patti asks what people's experiences have been in moving to RootsMagic 4; Tom reminds everyone that Soundex microfilm can be invaluable in locating people who may have been mis-indexed in census databases; Mac has the wikiHow gadget on his iGoogle page, and he found an interesting entry: "How to Cite a Wikipedia Article in MLA Format" at http://www.wikihow.com/Cite-a-Wikipedia-Article-in-MLA-Format; Bill tells us he has found a free iPhone app called Stitcher in the iTunes Store that "stitches together" news, talk, sports, and entertainment in an on-demand mobile application, and that he asked them to add our podcast to their lineup; MLR asks why someone who collected Social Security benefits may not be included in the Social Security Death Index (SSDI). George announces that RootsMagic is hosting another RootsMagic Cruise, sailing from Miami on 14 February 2010, cruising the western Caribbean, and returning to Miami on 21 February 2010. Details are available at http://rootsmagic.com/cruise. JOIN US! |
Tue, 19 May 2009
This week's news includes: The Generations Network, Inc., parent of Ancestry.com, and FindMyPast.com are said to have approached ITV about purchasing Friends United; Everton's is said have come to a verbal agreement with a purchaser, and details will be announced shortly; the International Society of Family History Writers and Editors (ISFHWE) announced the winners in their annual Excellence in Writing Contest last week at the NGS Conference in Raleigh, NC; MyHeritage has announced a fun gadget called the Look-alike Meter; Sirius Innovations, LLC, announced the Sirius Genealogist Web Directory; the Southern California Genealogical Society has issued a Call for Papers for lecture proposals for its 2010 Jamboree (details at http://www.scgsgenealogy.com/2010jam-CallForPapers.htm); Irish indexes to statutory births, marriages, and deaths from 1845 to 1858 are now online at the FamilySearch Pilot site at http://pilot.familysearch.org/recordsearch/start.html; and Ancestry and FreeBMD have partnered to post English and Welsh birth indexes from 1837 to 2005 online at http://www.ancestry.co.uk.
This week's email includes: Eric reports that the LDS Library catalog entry for microfilm containing the civil registration records for Faenza Italy, has been reinstated; and Steve provides updated details about the uses of handheld computing devices in the 2010 U.S. census. Ancestors, the magazine published by The National Archives (TNA) in the U.K., has published an excellent article in its March 2009 issue titled "How to Read a Document." It presents methods for deciphering old documents. A sample document, a page of a letter written byPrincess Elizabeth on 17 March 1554, beseeching Queen Mary to free her from impisonment in the Tower of London, is included to let you decipher the document. George shares the news that the National Archives of Scotland, the National Museums of Scotland, the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historic Monuments of Scotland, and the National Trust for Scotland have formed a joint venture and have launched a stunning new website, http://www.scotlandsimages.com. Drew discusses the use of hashtags at websites, including the hashtag for the Southern California Genealogical Society's 2009 Jamboree: #scgs09. George then discusses Jamboree and "Son of Blogger," a blogger summit panel discussion to be presented on Saturday, 27 June 2009, from 9:30 to noon. George will be in Denver this Saturday, 23 May 2009, and The Guys will present a seminar about RootsMagic Version 4 software for the Florida Genealogical Society (Tampa) on 6 June 2009. The Guys have invested in a new camcorder and plan to begin videoing some interviews and other materials. These will NOT replace the Podcast. Rather, the audio from any video recording will be published as an audio podcast, and the video will be published separately for anyone interested n viewing the video. The Guys will begin videos at the Southern California Genealogical Society's 2009 Jamboree in Burbank at the end of June. The Guys think that this will provide another level of information for their listeners and fans. |
Thu, 7 May 2009
The Guys welcome a new sponsor: NewspaperARCHIVE.com.
This week's news includes: Ancestors Magazine, the monthly publication of The National Archives in the U.K., is now offering selected past articles in PDF format for download at a modest fee at their Documents Online site (click here); Calico Pie Ltd. has released Version 4 of its popular Windows-based genealogy database software, Family Historian, at http://www.family-historian.co.uk; Directgov in the U.K. provides access to ordering civil registration records; Footnote.com has updated its content with over a million new images online; WorldVitalRecords.com has made an enhancement to its image viewer, making it possible to magnify to 200%; NewspaperARCHIVE.com will be sponsoring the popular National Public Radio (NPR) news and comedy show Whad'ya Know? on May 16th from Hoyt Sherman Place in Des Moines, Iowa; and the Ohio Genealogical Society has scheduled the groundbreaking ceremony for its new 18,000-square foot library on May 29th at 10:30 AM. This week's listener e-mail includes: Marty verifies that The Master Genealogist software accepts GPS coordinates; Daniel Horowitz of MyHeritage Ltd. congratulates Drew on his new book, Social Networking for Genealogists, available from Genealogical Publishing Company; Lisa asks whether Everton's Genealogical Helper magazine is out of business, but The Guys have no information about this; Julie shared information about Steve Luxenberg's new book Annie's Ghosts: A Journey into a Family Secret, and Drew recounts the story he heard about the book on NPR (click here to listen to the story too); Gus recounts the lessons he learned on his recent research trip to Salt Lake City; Pat reports about migrating to Windows Vista and shares information about software compatibility; Pat also tells about having a brother take a DNA cheek swab, and that the postal clerk considered the package "hazardous"; Rich shares information about the U.S. Census Bureau's plans to use GPS technology in the upcoming 2010 census; Connie discusses a problem with automatic downloads of the podcast from iTunes, and Drew responds; Sam asks for suggestions for finding U.S. records for his Jewish great-grandmother who arrived in 1902; Noi asks for recommendations of episodes of the podcast that might be particularly helpful for beginners; and Noi also would like the Web address for the Pleasantville Cook-Book that Drew found online through Google Books. Drew also discusses the advantages of being a member of the Association of Professional Genealogists. |
Mon, 27 April 2009
This week's news includes: NBC has temporarily shelved the U.S. edition of the popular show, "Who Do You Think You Are?"; and Ancestry.ca, the Canadian version of Ancestry.com, has released a new database, Border Crossings from the U.S. to Canada, 1908-1935, which contains more than 1.6 million names. Drew eulogizes genealogist Donna Dinberg, the noted librarian from the Library and Archives Canada and an expert in Jewish genealogy, who died of cancer on 11 April 2009.
George's new book, the second edition of How to Do Everything: Genealogy, has just been published by McGraw-Hill, and the book is available from Amazon.com at http://tinyurl.com/HTDE2-GGM. George and Drew discuss upcoming seminar appearances. George will be hosting a Webinar for Ancestry.com titled, Planning a Perfect Family Reunion, 14 May 2009 at 9:00 PM (Eastern). You can register at http://tinyurl.com/ReunionWebinar. Listener email this week includes: Sharon reports that My Yahoo! is not updating the podcasts listings, and The Guys ask for any suggestions from other listeners; Melanie discusses contacting other researchers who have errors in their online family trees; Jill suggests having DNA testing done for your oldest relatives before it is too late; Timothy, a Mac user, asks for advice about how to use Windows-based CDs from his genealogy society that are DRM protected; Stella reports that she followed George's suggestions in his "The Genealogist as CSI" seminar, went back to reread everything on one ancestor, and was able to verify his participation in the War of 1812; Rollin reports on a free Windows-based program, Winsplit Revolution, available at http://www.winsplit-revolution.com, that "allows you to easily organize your open windows by tiling, resizing and positioning them to make the best use of your desktop real estate"; Matt Combs has developed a new piece of Windows-based software called Surname Findit, available for download at http://mattcombs.webs.com/sfmain.html, that helps decipher possible surnames from fragments you may have discovered in hard to read documents; Beth in Ontario, Canada, found an old cookbook from New York and wonders whether people would be interested in her digitized images of the pages (and Drew responds with his expert research method used to locate the book and digitized images); Rich forwarded the text of a 1984 death notice of a man whose wife's maiden name is Weinglass (one of Drew's ancestral lines); George asks for suggestions about how to cite alternate spellings of a surname in his database and source citations; The Guys thank Gus for his extensive research into articles in the Wall Street Journal concerning services that digitize photos, and these include: - ShoeboxReprints.com/ScanMyPhotos.com (http://www.scanmyphotos.com) Drew discusses anonymity in posting to professional mailing lists.- Blosser's Camera and Portrait Studio (http://www.blossers.com) Call for pricing scale - Chris' Camera Center (http://www.chriscamera.com) Drew is maintaining a blog to accompany his new book, Social Networking for Genealogists, at http://snfg.blogspot.com. |
Tue, 14 April 2009
Topics this week include:
Wed, 1 April 2009
This week's news includes: The Generations Network announced the launching at its Ancestry UK site (http://www.ancestry.co.uk) of more than 400 years of London history, derived from records at the London Metropolitan Archives (LMA) and the Guildhall Library; and Footnote.com (http://www.footnote.com) has launched its new Great Depression Collection, including the Interactive 1930 U.S. Census, and additional records are coming soon.
George interviews Drew about his brand new book, Social Networking for Genealogists, published by Genealogical Publishing Company (http://www.genealogical.com). This week's listener email includes: Steve discusses the new RootsMagic version 4 and the RootsMagic To-Go; Rich suggests another way of telling someone that there's a mistake in their research; he wonders if Stephen Morse would consider a single-search step at his One Step website; and he asks if George has more information about Brisco Holder (and George shares some surprising information); Drew responds to a question about copyright for Nancy; Jimmy shares information about great YouTube videos of "Depression Cooking with Clara" at http://www.youtube.com/user/ |
Thu, 26 March 2009
This week's news includes: RootsMagic releases Version 4 of its great genealogical database software; NBC will begin broadcasting the American version of the popular British television show Who Do You Think You Are? on Monday, April 20th, at 7 PM; Ancestry.com has updated its 1940 census substitute and will soon be adding to the U.S. Public Records Index (USPRI); and the 1911 England and Wales census has been released online at http://www.1911census.co.uk.
Drew discusses Twitter, the social networking service being used for messaging. This week's listener email includes: Joshua asks about adding multiple sources for multiple marriages at Ancestry.com; Craig asks a question about ways to access obituaries; he also asks about family tree-oriented websites at which family trees and family photographs; Claire informs us that Reunion (genealogical database for Macintosh from Leister Productions, Inc.) has just released their iPhone app to take your genealogy with you; James is looking for his great-grandparents in Smith Township, Robeson County, North Carolina; Michael shares information for locating naturalization records for immigrant ancestors - they may have received land under the various U.S. Homestead Acts, and the Bureau of Land Management General Land Office (http://www.glorecords.blm.gov) may have information in the case files about naturalization; Kirsten asks how to receive the podcast on her TiVo; Jerry asks about additional sources for locating his Irish ancestors who received a land grant in 1790 in Pendleton District, South Carolina; Joel Weintraub shares more information about the 1940 U.S. census, which will not be released on microfilm, and he is already transcribing information from the 1940 census enumeration district maps; he also talks more about the 72-year rule for release of U.S. census information. |
Tue, 24 March 2009
We published episode #166 from 17 March 2009, but our podcast hosting service experienced an outage of its primary server. As a result, this episode was published through all of its various feeds without the MP3 sound file.
Please reacquire this podcast episode from The Genealogy Guys Podcast website at http://genealogyguys.com through the iTunes Store. We're also attaching the MP3 file with this posting. Thanks for your patience and understanding. We're compiling information for episode #167 and will have that published later this week too. George & Drew
-- posted at: 12:58 PM
Wed, 18 March 2009
This week's news includes: Ancestry.com has added new content; MyHeritage.com has added more than 150 new databases in the last week of February; NewspaperARCHIVE continues to add new digitized and indexed newspaper content, and has added blogs, social networking interfaces, and Twitter; the Library of Michigan has just added Michigan death certificates spanning 1897 to 1920 at Seeking Michigan at http://www.seekingmichigan.org; Dick Eastman welcomes new English writer and genetic genealogy expert Chris Pomery to Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter (http://blog.eogn.com); Steve Danko has just returned from the Family Tree DNA 5th International Conference on Genetic Genealogy for Project Administrators, and he has a great report at his blog at http://stephendanko.com; and Maureen A. Taylor, the leading expert on evaluating and dating photographs, author, and lecturer, has an excellent blog on the subject at http://photodetective.blogspot.com. |
Fri, 6 March 2009
This week's news includes: RootsMagic releases the public beta of Version 4 of the RootsMagic software; Ancestry.com released five new databases in commemoration of Abraham Lincoln's 200th birthday; Ancestry has replaced the Ancestry Weekly Journal with a new newsletter, The Weekly Discovery; Sonja Nishimoto, Family History Library Consultant, has invited genealogical and historical societies and their members to contribute content to the FamilySearch Research Wiki at wiki.familysearch.org; the Southern California Genealogical Society's 40th annual Jamboree will be held in Burbank, CA, on 26-28 June 2009, and its blog is online at www.genealogyjamboree.blogspot.com -- and a special guest speaker, Tukufu Zuberi of the PBS show, "History Detectives," will address the Friday evening banquet; the MyHeritage Genealogy Search Engine (www.MyHeritage.com) announces some newly released improvements; and Lisa Louise Cook of "The Genealogy Gens Podcast" (www.genealogygems.tv/Pages/Podcast/PodcastList.htm) announces the guest of the most recent episode of the podcast, Darby Hinton, who starred as Israel on the 1960s TV hit, "Daniel Boone." The episode also celebrates the podcast's second anniversary.
This week's listener email includes: Nancy in Ontario reported that she had a problem with the podcast loading in her Firefox Live Bookmark feed; Doug reminds us that the St. Albans Border Crossings immigration records reflect immigrations from Canada (and that St. Albans is in VT and not NH); Elliot asks for advice about what name to record when the surname changed over the centuries; Jane asked George for the name of his publish-on-demand resources, which is Lulu.com; Drew provided a resource for comparison of print-on-demand resources at http://mashable.com/2009/03/01/publish-book/; Joel Weintraub provides information about the origins of the 72-year privacy policy for U.S. federal censuses and his article on the subject at http://members.cox.net/census1940/; Bill discusses the fact that census images in the Ancestry.com and HeritageQuest Online databases are not the same; TC discusses the backups of genealogy files on Mozy.com; Gus recounts his experience of getting locked in a cemetery; Judy shares a follow-up story about storing photos on an external hard drive; Scott asks about the protocol for thanking helpful cemetery workers; Cheryl tells us that the 1935 and 1945 Florida census records are also available at the LDS pilot site at http://search.labs.familysearch.org, and that many records still need volunteers to help index them; Mary tells us that The Master Genealogist database software allows for the entry of GPS latitude and longitude coordinates on every event; Mac shares a service at http://www.mailstore.com/en that allows you to backup email from multiple email accounts and tools in one place; and Rollin asks for help with the definition of "freeman" as applied to Caucasians in 1600s New England colonial records. George reviews two new products: Elizabeth Shown Mills has a new QuickSheet out. It is titled, "Citing Ancestry.com Databases & Images," and it is the perfect quick reference for your source citations for Ancestry.com data. It is available from Genealogical Publishing Company (http://www.genealogical.com). Suzanne Russo Adams, AG, has written a brilliant new book, Finding Your Italian Ancestors: A Beginner's Guide, published by Ancestry Publishing and available through the Ancestry.com Store. The book is filled with well-written explanations and discussions, and includes a wide variety of document and Internet site illustrations. Listen to the podcast and find out more about these two excellent new products! |
Wed, 18 February 2009
This week's news includes: Ancestry.com adds Abraham Lincoln Papers, New Orleans Slave manifests (1807-1860), Confederate Pension Applications from Georgia, Confederate Applications for Presidential Pardons, and U.S. Civil War Soldier Records and Profiles; Ancestry.com also has reduced the prices of its DNA tests; FamilySearch is partnering with the Houston Public Library to digitize a vast collection of Gulf Coast records; NewspaperARCHIVE.com has announced a new column by Phyllis Matthews Ziller; a new, free online genealogy magazine has just been announced -- Genealogy In Time at http://www.genealogyintime.com; The Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS) has just announced the program for the 2009 Conference in Little Rock, Arkansas (2-5 September 2009) and has made the program and registration available at http://www.fgs.org/2009conference/; registration is also now open for the Association of Professional Genealogists' Professional Management Conference, to be held on 2 September 2009 in conjunction with the FGS Conference, and registration is also available at http://www.fgs.org/2009conference/; Wholly Genes, maker of The Master Genealogist software program, has announced its 5th annual conference, a "land cruise," to be held 26-30 August 2009 in Orkney Springs, Virginia, and information and registration is available at http://www.whollygenes.com/confregister.htm; George will appear at the Oregon Genealogical Society Conference in Eugene, Oregon, on 7 March 2009, and more information is available by calling the OGS Library at (541) 345-0399; NBC has announced that it will begin televising the U.S. version of the popular British program, "Who Do You Think You Are?"; the annual "Who Do You Think You Are?" genealogy conference will be held at Olympia, London, England, on 27 February to 1 March 2009; the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has created a site at http://www.familyhistory.hhs.gov at which you can enter your medical genealogy for your family; the U.S. War Department papers (1784-1800) have been reconstituted and digitized, and can be found at http://www.wardepartmentpapers.org; and David Rumsey, active collector of historical maps and owner of the site, http://www.davidrumsey.com, has announced that he will be donating his collection of maps to Stanford University. In the meantime, there are more than 18,500 map images online at present, and plans are to add 3,000 to 5,000 images per year.
This week's listener email includes: Linda discusses Mozy indicators on files; Gus shares another back up resource -- Click Free at http://goclickfree.com/; Roger discusses New York state censuses (and using his iPod at the gym!); Paul discusses the problems he has working with Ancestry.com search results, and wishes that his own data and data without any source citations wouldn't show in searches; Pete discusses backups with Windows Home Server; HP's equivalent, and Acer's new product; Victoria provides an excellent idea for adding identifying information to your flash drive, in case it gets lost or forgotten in a library or archive; Valerie asked about what to expect at a local LDS Family History Center; Tom discovered a subsidiary collection of information at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library website titled "Boys in Blue," at http://www.alplm.org/library/boys_intro.html, and the site as a searchable database that references the library's photographs of soldiers; and Rich shares a source for "the world's most secure flash drive" at https://www.ironkey.com/. |
Thu, 5 February 2009
The Genealogy Guys broadcast "LIVE" from the Volusia-Flagler County Genealogical Society Conference in Daytona Beach, Florida. They take and respond to questions from the audience.
Thu, 22 January 2009
The podcast begins with The Guys talking about upcoming speaking engagements.
Drew discusses his recent trip to Salt Lake City, and describes Blogger's Day at Ancestry.com. Eight bloggers paid a visit to The Generations Network's data center, which houses the computer equipment for Ancestry.com, RootsWeb.com, and Genealogy.com. They then went to Provo to the company's offices and met with a number of the employees, and learned more about Ancestry.com's operations and plans. Drew began the next segment by reading an email from John with his tips for visiting Salt Lake City and the Family History Library. Drew then describes the nearby Plaza Hotel accommodations and the FHL itself. He offers tips for people traveling to SLC for a library research visit. He stresses advance preparation, and offers information about the area. This week's listener email includes: Chanda discusses cousin marriages; Sherry comments on her recent experience with Mozy, and Drew adds more -- about the need to specify uncommon file types to insure that they are backed up; Barbara reminds George that RootsMagic 3 does support the input of latitude and longitude coordinates in the database; Bill got our RSS feed for his WiFi radio working, and can now tune to our station on his radio to listen to the podcast; Marilyn was lookoing for the RSS feed URL on our website, and Drew told our listeners to look for the little RSS 2.0 box under Syndication on the right side of our webpage; Karen wrote to discuss the question, "What do I do with the 'stuff'?"; and Kay says, "I can't believe I listened to the whole thing!" |
Wed, 7 January 2009
This week's news includes: Ancestry.com launches a new Florida State Census Collection (1867, 1875, 1935, and 1945); the Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS) announced that president J. Mark Lowe has resigned for personal reasons, and Vice President of Administration, Pat Oxley, has assumed the presidency; a Union County, Illinois group, Promoting Appreciation of Structural Treasures (PAST), is seeking to purchase the "House Where Lincoln Stayed" in Anna, Illinois, in 1858 when he was there to debate Stephen Douglas in one of the most historic political debates in U.S. History. Tax-deductible contributions can be made to PAST Lincoln House Project, Mona Diefenbach, 190 White Pine Lane, Anna, IL 62906.
Listener email this week included: Peter is concerned that searches in Ancestry.com for his family always include his own data at the top of the search results list, and believes that Ancestry.com should be able to mask or omit his own results; Virginia asked for clarification about ordering SS-5 applications for a Social Security Number, especially for deceased persons not in the SSDI; Roxanna shared a strong tip for researching in Salt Lake City; Scott wrote again to clarify his method for storing data at Ancestry.com and using his RootsMagic software; he also shared his excitement at having found old family photo albums and having found great information on the back of important photos; Sean recommends a product called SpinRite from Gibson Research Corporation (http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm) to help recover data from damaged magnetic storage media. Drew discusses the crash of his desktop PC, and the steps he is taking to repair the hard disk and restore his data. |
Fri, 26 December 2008
The Guys wish all their listeners a wonderful holiday season! This week's news includes: The North Carolina Genealogical Society (NCGS) announces a workshop on 14 March 2009 with Craig Roberts Scott, CG, in New Bern, NC -- more information is available at the NCGS website at http://www.ncgenealogy.org/ (click the Calendar button); Science Daily has published an interesting article at this location; Tim Skinner, author of the Map My Ancestors program (http://www.familytreeassistant.com/), informs us that the program allows you to view your tree on Google Earth, Google Maps, and many GPS and SatNav devices; and Mike O'Laughlin has two new genealogy podcasts -- Irish Families enhanced podcast at http://www.irishroots.com/podcasten/rss.xml (free QuickTime player preferred) and Irish Roots Cafe video podcasts at http://www.irishroots.com/irishvideo/rss.xml (free iTunes player preferred). This week's listener email includes: Marie found lots of Body/Bodi surnames in the FHL microfilm for Ottawa County, Ohio, birth records; Ian Towler shares information on another open source program, PhpGedView, at http://phpgedview.net/ that allows you to view and edit your genealogy on your website -- and Ian has shared the URL for his website (http://familytree.itowler.com/) that uses this program so that everyone can see what he was able to do with the software; and Michael Moore has begun a website and library called Bookscanned (at http://bookscanned.com/) which allows you to upload scanned pages of a book, such as a family history, and then he OCRs them, and then adds the image and the OCR text to a Web page -- and then a search engine can find the page; Scott tells us that (re: episode #159) that he maintains his family tree at Ancestry.com, and then downloads a GEDCOM file into his copy of RootsMagic genealogy software. The Guys discuss Christmas traditions in their families and others over the years. |
Tue, 16 December 2008
This week's news includes: Allen Weinstein, Archivist of the United States, submitted his resignation to the President, effective 19 December 2008, citing health reasons for his decision; and FamilySearch (http://www.familysearch.org) just completed digitizing its 25,000th book. (Visit http://www.familysearch.org and click on Search Records and then on Historical Records.)
This week's listener email includes: Rich discusses how he used Windows Home Server to back up his data, and how he was able to use it when his son's hard drive failed; he also shared another website at which a small program can be downloaded for free that allows you to locate and use special characters -- It is at SourceForge at http://sourceforge.net/projects/allchars; Rollin wrote to clarify that support for adding GPS coordinates is available in the purchased Deluxe version of Legacy and not in the free Basic version; Rich in PA advised us that Find A Grave (http://www.findagrave.com/) has added the great facility to link parents and children, and spouses, to records there (using the Find A Grave Memorial number at the bottom of the left-hand column); he also shares another social networking site for book lovers called Shelfari (http://www.shelfari.com/), similar to LibraryThing (http://www.librarything.com); Claire shared an excellent census map resource at http://www.familyhistory101.com/map_census.html at which you will find maps for most U.S. states that you can use to see boundary changes for each of the census years; Tom shared a story from the Kansas City Star from 15 November 2008 [the story has been retired from their website] in which Linda K. Lewis was highlighted as having spent 5 years with volunteers documenting and photographing 40 of the 44 known cemeteries in Johnson County, KS -- and she has documented them all at http://cemetery.cottonhills.com/; Tim asked for The Guys' opinions about using a genealogy database software program vs. Ancestry.com as a repository for his genealogy information; Rod in Australia shared an excellent interview from Australian Radio National regarding cousin marriage with Cathy Day, PhD researcher, School of Archaeology and Anthropology, ANU -- listen to it at http://www.abc.net.au/rn/lifematters/stories/2008/2426440.htm or click on the link above. |
Tue, 9 December 2008
We have a new microphone cable for the mixer this week, and we hope that alleviates the stereo cut out problems. We are also sending out our logo as album art.
This week's news includes: Footnote.com announces a new Interactive World War II Collection; The Generations Network, owner of Ancestry.com and other companies, announces the appointment of Howard Hochhauser as the new CFO; Ancestry.com's first World Archives Project Collection, Wisconsin Mortality Schedules, 1850-1880, has been completed; The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has announced two new awards to recognize significant achievements in genealogy research, based on records from the National Archives, and eligible applicants must attend a U.S. college or university; the Arizona State Archives (http://www.lib.az.us/archives/) has moved into the new, $29M Polly Rosenbaum Archives and History Building in Phoenix; and the Ohio Genealogical Society (http://www.ogs.org/) has reached its $2.5M funding goal to construct a new 18,000 square foot library in Bellville, Ohio, with construction beginning in early 2009. This week's listener email included: Brian asked if there are online church records available for Northern Ireland, and Drew suggested the Ulster Historical Foundation site at http://www.ancestryireland.com/, a pay site; Brian also has started a family site at MyHeritage.com (http://www.myheritage.com/) and was concerned about privacy -- Drew found that you can log in, set up your site, and specify that it is a) a public site, b) a private site (for invited persons only to access), or c) a mixed site that is a combination of public information and private information that you define; Mike had asked for help locating his great-grandfather in the census prior to his marriage; Gus provided an excellent link to a website that shows the keyboard equivalents for UTF-8 special characters, at http://www.typeart.com/special_characters.asp; Rollin advises us that Legacy Family Tree software allows the recording of GPS coordinates; Peter advises us that Brother's Keeper software also allows recording of GPS information; Karen shares information about the importance of using small, hometown newspapers in your research; Bill asks for help with linking to the podcast using a WiFi radio, and Drew suggested the use of Reciva.com (https://www.reciva.com/); Jack shared information about communities and church membership, and about another look at researching the information; Russ shares information about the destination of Episcopalian records for a church that closes; and Jonathan discusses the transformation of maiden names down through the generations. Drew discusses DNA mailing lists: the International Society of Genetic Genealogy (http://www.isogg.org/) has a free monthly email newsletter, as well as other resources at its site; and RootsWeb's DNA-Newbie mailing list is available for free subscription at http://lists.rootsweb.ancestry.com/index/other/DNA/DNA-NEWBIE.html. Drew also explains how a DNA paternity test works. |
Sun, 30 November 2008
We apologize for the few cut-outs of stereo in this week's episode. We have replaced a damaged cable and should be fine in the future.
This week's news includes: Edna Parker, world's oldest woman, died in Shelbyville, Indiana, this week at age 115 years, 220 days; social networking site Genoom.com (http://www.genoom.com) announces the expansion of its international support for 17 languages; social networking site itsourtree.com has been renamed to dynastree (http://www.dynastree.com/); FamilySearch.org is seeking assistance with indexing projects, and you can learn more at http://www.familysearch.org/eng/indexing/frameset_indexing.asp - particularly Canadian and Norwegian censuses; Ancestry.com (http://www.ancestry.com) has recently added more than 1100 U.S. city directories with more than 50M names; Calico Pie Limited, maker of the U.K.'s leading family history program, announces the forthcoming release of version 4 of its Family Historian program at http://family-historian.co.uk/; Library and Archives Canada (LAC) announces the launch of a new online database, Immigrants to Canada, accessible by clicking here; and FamilySearch.org has released more online courses. George reviewed a book last week, and inadvertently misspelled the author's name. The book is Finding Your Chicago Ancestors: A Beginner's Guide to Family History in the City and Cook County, by Grace DuMelle, and published by Lake Claremont Press. My sincere apologies! This week's listener email includes: John's confusing ancestral marriages for the Muson family; Sharon had questions about sources, and about resources for Tory ancestors [Listeners can weigh in on the topic]; Kathy asked about content in the Ancestry Publishing surname books, and she offers information about TinyUrl.com (http://tinyurl.com/); Deborah makes suggestions for your 2009 genealogy project; Peter tells us that a Palm OS handheld application for genealogy, MobileGenealogy, has been newly updated and is available at http://www.mobilegenealogy.com/ [Correction: MobileGenealogy is not a Palm OS application, but instead a website that discusses handheld genealogy applications.];Claire discusses the Shrubs app for iPhone, and she shares another excellent online newspaper application at the Library of Congress at Chronicling America (http://www.loc.gov/chroniclingamerica/); Beth shares an excellent and simple database program for Macintosh called Bento from FileMaker (http://filemaker.com/); Victoria asked for clarification of how George has been able to run RootsMagic, a Windows program, on his Mac; and Russ asked about how to handle the sourcing of a burial in his database. |
Thu, 13 November 2008
This week's news includes: Sirius Innovations introduces a new genealogy website at http://www.siriusgenealogy.com/ "with a focus on using today's technology in documenting a family's history"; Ancestry.com has introduced the Ancestry Toolbar for use with your browser (IE or Firefox, ostensibly for Windows users only) to save photos and stories/text from the Web to your Ancestry Member Tree and more information and the free download can be found at http://landing.ancestry.com/toolbar/. George also has corrected his typo on the URL for the National Library of Australia, which has launched Australia Newspapers at http://ndpbeta.nla.gov.au. Please check it out!
George reviews the book, Finding Your Chicago Ancestors: A Beginner's Guide to Family History in the City and Cook County, by Grace DeMelle, and published by Lake Claremont Press. (The publisher has a number of additional excellent titles concerning the Chicago area.) Listener email includes: Gus tells us that his mystery concerning his grandfather, Vere Preston Marsh, in Virginia, St. Louis County, Minnesota, has been solved and he now has a photo of the gravestone; Rich suggested that Gus check at Find A Grave and post a request for a volunteer to get that photo for him too (and I see that Gus has added a record for Vere already!); Tom advised us that the Rome [GA] Tribune-Herald newspaper is online and searchable; Linda responded to last week's podcast regarding the PDF version of Elizabeth Shown Mills' book, Evidence Explained, and the fact that it can be used on multiple computers; the Family History Library (FHL) has introduced five free video classes about English research [click here] and requests feedback on them; Tom asks for advice about treatment and preservation of a collection of moldy documents received from his great aunt; T.C. and Claire shared information about another iPhone application (app) for loading genealogy information onto your device -- it is FamViewer from Aster Software (http://www.astersoftware.biz/)and sells for $14.99 at the iTunes Store (iTunes for Mac and PC is a free download at http://www.apple.com and you can access the Tunes store through that software); Russ has published information on his blog concerning moving Family Tree Maker Version 16 (or earlier) from one computer to another with the new FTM 2009; Dave wrote to continue the discussion concerning primary vs. secondary sources; and Russ discusses church history. |
Thu, 6 November 2008
This week's news includes: Ancestry.com launches the world's largest collection of Jewish documents; they also have added French collections at their Ancestry.fr site: Paris, France, & Vicinity Births, marriages, Deaths, marriage Banns -- AND -- to their UK site at http://www.ancestry.co.uk the UK incoming Passenger Lists (1878-1920); the National Library of Australia has launched Australia Newspapers at http://ndpbeta.nla.gov.au; Ancestry.com has won the contract to digitize and host key collections from the London Metropolitan Archives (LMA) and the Guildhall Library, representing more than 500 years of records (more details of the content are available at http://www.history.ac.uk/gh/digitisation.htm); The National Archives (TNA) in the U.K. is using Digital Microfilm to make available remote access to four series of military records.
Drew announced that George's newest book, the second edition of The Official Guide to Ancestry.com, has just been released, and it is available at the Ancestry Store. Drew shares "11 Creative Ways to Pay Homage to the Dead" from the Life Hackery blog at http://lifehackery.com/2008/11/03/life-26/. This week's listener email includes: Sherry visited a courthouse to access her great-grandfather's probate file, and found that these records are being digitized and will then be thrown away. (She was given her great-grandfather's probate file.); Peter asked about the eBook of Elizabeth Shown Mills, Evidence Explained, and wants to know if it has Digital Rights Management [Listeners can respond if they know.]; Ian asked about how to cite a source using a location that no longer exists (i.e., Prussia); Gus reports on the status of his search for his grandfather, Vere Preston Marsh; "William comments on huge GEDCOMs on Ancestry.com, and asks about uploading his own research; Claire reports on a new iPhone application (app) that allows people to load a GEDCOM's contents to the iPhone and take it along (George is trying to get this loaded and will report back); Joel suggests that Barry's search in the 1900 U.S. federal census in Kentucky might be aided by using the new upload at http://search.labs.familysearch.org or at Stephen P. Morse's site at http://www.stevemorse.org/census/index.html; Russ asks questions concerning primary and secondary sources, and about using the "complete event;" and Sam shares his concerns about his grandmother's real name and the many spellings in different records throughout her life. George reports the death on 1 November 2008 of singing sensation Yma Sumac at the estimated age of 86. Miss Sumac, born in Peru, had a phenomenal 6-octave singing voice and had a wonderful recording career in the 1950s and 1960s, and then a cabaret act in the 1970s and 1980s. |
Sun, 26 October 2008
This week's news includes: Ancestry.com has renamed its self-publishing tool from AncestryPress to MyCanvas, and has also doubled its yearbook collection; ItsOurTree.com announced that its site (http://www.itsourtree.com/) can help predict male baldness through members' postings of family photographs; FamilyRelatives.com (http://familyrelatives.com/), a subscription website, has one of the largest collections of Irish records on the Internet, and they announced that they plan to add more than 10 million new records by the end of the year; Footnote.com (http://www.footnote.com) has begun to publish digitized and indexed Civil War Widows' Pension Files; the University of Michigan has announced that it has digitized and indexed 428 titles in its Michigan County Histories and Atlases Digitization Project, and the search template is available at http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/micounty/; and Geni.com (http://www.geni.com/) has announced enhanced search facilities and improved privacy at its website. Finally, the Wall Street Journal published an article on 22 October 2008 about University of Texas El Paso, librarian Claudia Rivers, who has formed an aggressive program to identify 50,000 photographs taken bythe closed Cassola photography studio. Check the WSJ site for an article published on that date titled, "In Old El Paso, This Detective Story Is Written in Pictures."
George announces that Ancestry.com has just received copies of his new book, the new second edition of The Official Guide to Ancestry.com in its warehouse the end of this past week. Ancestry.com's online store will be listing the book and advertising it for sale very soon. George interviews Gary M. Smith and Diana Crissman Smith, two of his fellow speakers on the recent RootsMagic Cruise. Listener email this week includes: a thank you and report from Pat (Ms. DNA Manners) about communicating with people with potential genetic genealogy matches; a question from Pattie concerning obtaining SS-5 applications for deceased relatives whose deaths predate the SSDI database; Drew responds to Ann about the Harvey Girls, and provides a link to the Harvey Girl Historical Society (http://www.oerm.org/pages/Harveygirls.html); Robert Reeve of VideoJug has contacted us to say that their website has more than 43,000 free videos, including a number concerning genealogy (located at http://www.videojug.com/tag/genealogy); Michael tells us about his Dutch genealogical research, and asks about the benefits of seeking genealogical certification; and Sandra asked for advice about how to organize the many family letters and other documents she has in her possession. |
Tue, 14 October 2008
This week's news includes:Art Lassagne, founder of The Gold Bug (producer of AniMap software), died on 29 September 2008 at his home after a long battle with lung cancer; Ancestry.ca has published the Canadian Passenger Lists (1865-1935); the Godfrey Library (www.godfrey.org) of Middletown, CT, announced that its product, the online American Genealogical Biographical Index (AGBI), will no longer be available at Ancestry.com after the end of this year, but it will be available at the Godfrey Library and at World Vital Records (www.worldvitalrecords.com) beginning in January 2009; Northern Hills Software (www.northernhillssoftware.com) announces Pocket Genealogist Version 3.3 for Windows Mobile devices which includes support for multimedia; Summit County Ohio Probate Court received a grant to digitize and index to birth, marriage, and death records, and those records will be available at their website and those of their partners, Ancestry.com, FamilySearch, and the National Association of Government Archive and Records Administrators (NAGARA); the St. Petersburg Times in Florida has brought up it digital archives of more than 100 years of its newspapers (May 1901 through August 2007) and it is available at news.google.com/archivesearch (Users should type "St. Petersburg Times" before they enter their query terms.); Dick Eastman, of Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter (blog.eogn.com), has announced the addition of Lloyd de Witt Bockstruck to the writing team at the enormously popular online publication [George also writes a weekly column for Dick]; and the free 12th annual Central Florida Family History Conference will be held on 25 October 2009 in Orlando, and more details are available at www.familyhistoryconference.org.
Listener email includes: Gus added this podcast to his site at www.macapart.com/gen; Jon asked for more information about portability of Family Tree Make 2009 on a flash drive (and Drew will report back); Russ recounts his search for his grandfather in the 1900 census and discusses names; Kevin reminded The Guys to remind our listeners to celebrate October as Family History Month and as Hispanic Heritage Month; Tim asked for suggestions concerning the best national or regional conferences to consider attending for a relative beginner; and Dee found a great online out-of-copyright map site at commons.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_maps. George interviews Bruce Buzbee, creator of the RootsMagic genealogical database software. Bruce discusses this year's great cruise to the Mexican Riviera and talks about the upcoming release of RootsMagic Version 4, a complete rewrite of the software with many exciting new features and improvements. |
Thu, 2 October 2008
Because I had to delete episode #152 and then re-upload it (to fix the missing interview), it's possible that some users who automatically download episodes using iTunes may not immediately see the corrected episode #152. You may need to delete the flawed episode from your iTunes, and then refresh the Podcast so that a new copy is downloaded. If you run into any problems with this, let me know.
-- posted at: 5:14 PM
Tue, 30 September 2008
It looks like I was able to fix the problem with the missing interview. If you had already downloaded the bad version of episode #152, you should now be able to re-download it to get the corrected version. Sorry about the extra hassle!
-- posted at: 11:35 PM
Tue, 30 September 2008
It appears that the interview with Ann Mitchell didn't properly get included in the podcast episode, so I've deleted the episode and will re-upload it with a corrected version. Sorry for the problem!
-- posted at: 3:10 PM
Tue, 30 September 2008
Oops...I'm getting reports that there is a problem with the Ann Mitchell interview. I'll try to figure out the problem.
-- posted at: 3:08 PM
Tue, 30 September 2008
While George relaxes on a cruise ship off the Pacific coast of Mexico (ok, so he's doing some genealogy lecturing on the RootsMagic 2008 cruise), Drew handles the entire podcast himself (not even assisted by the cats). |
Wed, 17 September 2008
This week's news includes: The Association of Professional Genealogists (APG) recognized genealogists with achievement awards at the FGS Conference in Philadelphia; FGS also recognized two outstanding awards at the same conference; The Genealogy Seminar at the Allen County Public Library in Ft. Wayne, IN, is holding Military Symposium 2008 on 26 and 27 September, with speaker Marie Varrelman Melchiori, CG, CL, from NARA; the PublicProfiler site (http://www.publicprofiler.org/worldnames/Main.aspx) allows you to enter a surname and view a map showing the distribution across the world and statistics.
Reader email this week includes: Loretta asks a question about the meaning of a tattoo; Sherry asks about locating older birth records in Texas and Indian Territory; Barb relates a story of how being in a particular place and time can inextricably alter your family history; and Barbara asks questions about Ancestry.com's World Archive Project. (Listen to the interview with The Generations Network's CEO, Tim Sullivan, in episode 150.) Drew interviews J. Mark Lowe, CG, at the FGS Conference. Mark is a candidate for president of the Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS). The Guys discuss the success of their local society's recent gala 50th anniversary banquet and annual Fall Seminar with Paula Stuart-Warren, CG. |
Tue, 9 September 2008
The Guys are celebrating the 150th episode of the podcast which began on 4 September 2005. Thank you for listening and sharing with all of us! This week's news includes: The Generations Network, Inc., announced that Ancestry.com has launched the World Archives Project, "a global public indexing initiative to give everyone the opportunity to help preserve historical records" at http://www.ancestry.com/worldarchivesproject/; Geni.com (http://www.geni.com) announced that the firm has exceeded 1 million unique visitors to the site; the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), working through the General Services Administration (GSA), has announced plans to lease a new facility in St. Louis, Missouri, to house the Military Personnel records Center, with occupancy scheduled for March 2010; Ancestry.co.uk (http://www.ancestry.co.uk/) has been chosen to host the most comprehensive historical collection of London records -- 77 million names -- covering 500 years (ca. 1500-2006) online, beginning in early 2009. The Pew Internet & American Life Project has released new results about podcasting, reflecting significant increases in downloading podcasts. (See the PDF report at http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Podcast_2008_Memo.pdf.) Links that were omitted from the show notes in Episode #149 include: - Scottish genealogy records : http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk - Indexes to Scotland's censuses: http://www.ancestry.co.uk - The General Register Office for Scotland (GROS): http://www.gro-scotland.gov.uk Listener email this week includes: Randy bought a Sansa Fuse MP3 player to listen to the podcast; Amelia shared a podcast from BBC4 in England, at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/tracingyourroots.shtml; Barb shared another reason for the changing of names -- scandal (see http://www.rood.net/Gen1-2.pdf); Kay shares information about testing for Indian ancestry, and a genetic testing company called DNAPrint Genomics, Inc. (http://www.ancestrybydna.com); Sharon discovered a wonderful genealogist through a mailing list who shared huge amounts of genealogical data with her; and Barb discusses a "possible paternity event" in her husband's family. George reviews an excellent new book by Kevan M. Hansen, the new second edition of Map Guide to German Parish Records: Grandduchy of Baden, published by Family Roots Publishing Company. |
Mon, 1 September 2008
A correction to last week's story about the death of a Confederate widow can be found in last week's show notes.
The news this week includes: an update about the collapsed project to digitise the UK's GRO's Birth, Marriage, and Death records from 1837 forward; the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) will be moving its office to a new home in central Belfast; the National Archives of Australia in Canberra plans to make almost all 7 million immigration records available online in the next several years (click here to learn more); and a new genealogy social network site, Genetree, is up and running at http://www.genetree.com. This week's rich collection of listener email includes: Sharon's use of Bloglines.com to catch all of here URLs for her day's work; Valerie wrote to say she is 24 and a listener to the podcast (another young listener!); Laraine wrote to discuss her confusing marriage and birth situations for her Putnam family; Tom asked for opinions about when to prune the family tree; Betty asks about the benefits of subscribing to Genealogy.com, and The Guys ask for feedback from listeners; the Grand Traverse Genealogy Society has published a CD of cemeteries in its area at http://grandtraverseregion.com/gtags/cem_rural_flier.htm; The Guys' latest episode of "Down Under: Florida" is "The Miltons, and George's case study titled "The Milton Family Tragedy" has just been published in Family Chronicle Magazine; Michael shares information about his ancestor, John K. Zacherle, a TV horror show TV host from New York who was a candidate in the 1960 presidential election (listen to an MP3 of his campaign ad at http://www.zacherle.com/President.mp3); Gus reports that his niece, Alyssa Skalski, is possibly the youngest listener to this podcast at age 14; Rich asks about the inability to upload PDF files to the Ancestry.com famiy tree; Ben Sayer provides a terrific primer at his blof site (http://MacGenealogist.com) about secrets to digitally restoring family photos and uses one of Drew's treasured family photos as an example (He uses iPhoto for Mac but there are certainly other excellent PC and Mac programs, but Ben provides an excellent overview.); Maureen discusses George's article for Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter titled "The Legacy of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic"; Roger (Marathon Man) discusses multimedia file usage in Family Tree Maker; and Sean shares an intensive blog article he wrote titled "10 Essential Steps to Protecting Your Family History Data". Drew discusses the genealogical stories about Today Show hosts Meredith Vieira, Matt Lauer, and Al Roker with expert genealogist Maureen Taylor. Don't miss joining us for our 150th Episode! |
Sat, 23 August 2008
This week's news includes: Alberta Martin [Oops, correction, this should have been Maudie Hopkins], 93, the last widow of a Civil War veteran, died Monday, 18 August 2008, in a nursing home in Enterprise, Alabama; Footnote.com (http://www.footnote.com) has announced membership price increases effective 1 September 2008 ($11.95 per month or $69.95 annual membership); American scientists have studied 32 people who lived through the 1918 influenza pandemic and have found that antibodies in their blood still protect them against the virus; and The Genealogy Gems Podcast, hosted by Lisa Louise Cooke, celebrated its 50th episode with an interview with NPR Radio's Prairie Home Companion actor Tim Russell, and featured comments from other podcast hosts, including The Guys.
This week's listener email includes: the distinction between the words "immigration" and "emigration"; Patti opines about a family case in which mt-DNA testing might be used to refute the family myth that a female ancestor had Indian blood (and high cheekbones); more favorable comments about The Guys' newest episode of "Down Under: Florida" at RootsTelevision.com -- "The Miltons"; the oldest family tree dates back 3,000 years in the Lichtenstein Cave near Dorste, Lower Saxony, Germany, and Y-DNA samples taken from some of the 20 skeletons there have produced a match with 2 local villagers; Rich shares an interesting way of digitizing your photos in an article by David Pogue from the New York Times (click here to access the article); Kay asks George about his Cleveland (Bradley County) Tennessee connections; in the UK, a government-sponsored contracted project with German company Siemans to scan all of the birth, marriage, and death records in the GRO has collapsed less than half way through; Sharon asks for suggestions on how to better organize and focus her research; Gus asks for suggestions for finding his grandfather's burial location in or near Virginia, Minnesota; and Jason believes that, at age 26, he may be our youngest listener, and he is interested in career opportunities in Genealogy. Drew discusses his research into an Italian immigrant and his family members, and spelling variations that he uncovered. |
Fri, 15 August 2008
This episode is dedicated to our dear friend, Tom Ryder, who passed away today in Port Charlotte, Florida. This week's news includes: Ancestry.com extends its global reach to China with an exclusive partnership with the Shanghai Library - the new site is http://www.jiapu.cn; and Ancestry has also added extensive new content, including Bremen, Germany, ships and sailors databases (in German). A new episode of "Down Under: Florida" has been released at RootsTelevision.com, starring The Guys. Click here to go directly to the episode about "The Miltons." Note: The Genealogy Guys Podcast's fans at Facebook.com got an email as soon as the new episode was released! Listener email this week included: Roger (Marathon Man) shared information about school censuses and cited a database of these from Kent County, Michigan, at http://data.wmgs.org/SchoolCensus/ with samples to view; Confederate service records are available and accessible at Footnote.com (various states are still being added); Kay shared another family story about a son who acidently shot his father; a listener asked about how to locate Web pages that have disappeared, and The Guys provided some methods, including the use of the Wayback Machine (http://www.archive.org/), a part of the fascinating Internet Archive; Richard shares a response from the Millennium Corporation about available genealogy software it produces for mobile devices; the USCIS has established a new genealogy program for obtaining immigration and naturalization records, rather than requesting them through the Freedom of Information Office - click here to go to the USCIS site; Connor has compiled an index to newspaper records and asks advice for how to disseminate the information; Laraine writes about her experiences visiting her old hometown of Marietta, Ohio, and the importance of citing sources; the Fulton County Genealogical Society has a new home for its genealogy collection in the Evergreen Community Library in Metamora, Ohio. In last week's episode, George reviewed a new book by Timothy N. Pinnick, Finding and Using African American Newspapers. Unfortunately, he included an incorrect URL for Tim Pinnick's website. It should have been http://www.blackcoalminerheritage.net. It's been corrected in last week's show notes, but please visit his site for details about the great little book. Drew discusses his new volunteer assignment as editor of the Federation of Genealogical Societies' Delegate Digest, an monthly email newsletter sent to the delegates of FGS member societies. This is a great benefit to having your society be a member of FGS. Drew also discusses CAPTCHAs (corrected spelling), the images containing letters and numbers that we all type in at Web sites to provide security from hackers. People are now working with OCR'd books to interpret problem characters and making the indexes correct. |
Wed, 6 August 2008
This week's news includes: archaeologists are actively working to locate the identities of everyone interred at Fairview Cemetery, an African American cemetery in Staunton, Virginia; DNA Heritage (http://www.dnaheritage.com/) has succeeded in overcoming a patent claim in the U.K. that will allow them to continue providing genetic genealogy testing; Tribal Junction (http://www.tribaljunction.com/) has announced a new social networking and genealogy connections site; Synium Software (http://www.synium.de), makers of MacFamilyTree software, has announced the release of MobileFamilyTree, an app for Apple iPhone and iPod Touch products -- the app is $4.99 at the Apple iTunes store (http://www.itunes.com); Leister Productions (http://www.leisterpro.com/), makers of Reunion genealogy software, has announced that it is working on a version of Reunion for the iPhone and iPod Touch and, when ready, will offer it as an app in the iTunes store; Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/) and the Library of Congress (http://www.loc.gov) have been collaborating with a project called "The Commons" at http://www.flickr.com/commons/ where people can view photos, comment on them, and tag them. The Commons provides access to the LOC collection and more are being added, making this a premier destination on the web.
Digital Genealogist, a terrific online e-zine, is published 6 times a year and delivered to your e-mailbox in PDF format. Both of The Guys write articles for DG and are joined by some of the greatest, most technology knowledgeable people in the genealogy community. Learn more at http://www.digitalgenealogist.com/. Our listener email this week includes: Tim Skinner, whose e-mail we read on episode #143 (7/7) concerning using Google Maps to trace ancestors' movements, wrote again to ask us to share the Web address (http://www.familytreeassistant.com) for his software, Map My Ancestors; Judy wrote to ask about the wisdom of adding digitized photos to Family Tree Maker and other programs; Michelle asked if NARA had information about substitute soldiers for both the Union and Confederate armies; Tim wrote about he availability of genealogy-specific back-up sites; Bill also wrote to tell us that FamilySearch (http://www.familysearch.org) has published Ohio Death Records (1905-1953) in their Record Search Pilot; Patti reports that she has been working on the Home Study Course offered by the National Genealogical Society and that, as a result of refocusing on her source citations, she has made a huge breakthrough AND has been doing the Genealogy Happy Dance; and Sharon is a new fan and asked for The Guys' recommendations for the best genealogy database software program. Joel Weintraub, an association of Steve Morse and the One Step Website, wrote to describe another technique for digitizing microfilm. View the article at Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter of 19 February and please read the comments, especially those of Joel's. George reviewed a great new book by Timothy N. Pinnick, Finding and Using African American Newspapers. George has been aggressively promoting the addition of African American newspapers and publications to libraries' and archives' collections. The John F. Germany Public Library has been trying to obtain copies of African American newspapers on microfilm and microfilm from the University of Florida's libraries in Gainesville, and has met with resistance and refusal for several years. I and other people believe that the hoarding of such materials and refusing to allow for replication (at the JFG's offered expense) is an unconscionable act that prevents the open access of information to the originating community. Tim Pinnick's book is an excellent reference for every genealogical library collection and for every African-ancestored individual who seeks to learn more about his or her ancestors' records as included in newspapers. More information and an extract of the book are available at Tim Pinnick's website at http://www.blackcoalminerheritage.net and atGregath Publishing Company at http://www.gregathcompany.com/. Congratulations, Tim, on a very fine addition to our reference resources! The Guys talked about three conferences at which you can meet one or both of them.
Sat, 26 July 2008
This week's news includes: FamilySearch and Ancestry.com team up to publish new images and enhanced indexes to the U.S. federal censuses; Ancestry.com announces a number of new databases and upgraded collections; GeneTree (http://www.genetree.com) adds a Y-chromosome testing option to its site; Geni.com (http://www.geni.com) announces the addition of a new and private video-sharing option for families at its site; and Modern Genealogy president, Jeromy L. Walsh, thanks The Guys for announcing their forthcoming beta test of their new genealogy database software, and he restated the company's commitment to having users involved in developing and testing their program.
Listener email this week includes: an inquiry concerning the availability of genealogy software for the Blackberry; a reminder of how to access, play, and download our previous podcasts (using the POD icon to the left of each episode's title); several emails from listeners telling George about the availability of Ohio Death Certificates (1908-1953) at the FamilySearch Labs site (http://search.labs.familysearch.org/); a discussion of a genealogy filing system by source; using an iPod shuffle (~ $40) vs. a more expensive player when mowing the lawn and listening to the podcast; and a discussion of why some stores with photocopy facilities will not copy (or allow copying) of photographs. George announces that the third episode of RootsTelevision.com's series, Down Under: Florida with The Genealogy Guys will be debuting in mid-August. In tandem with its premiere, George has written a case study, "The Milton Family Tragedy," for Family Chronicle Magazine. The issue containing this article will appear on newsstands at about the same time in August. The story describes the behind-the-scenes research involved in filming the story, and it includes a couple of additional surprises. George discusses the Asus Eee PC, a small PC loaded with Windows XP, that is lightweight, fully functional, and has Wi-Fi. You can take this little gem with you almost everywhere with your entire genealogy database and all the multimedia resources. The price makes this little PC a very attractive item. Visit AsusTEK at http://usa.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=24&l2=164 for more details, and then use your favorite search engine to search for "asus eee" to locate the best place and lowest price to purchase. Drew recommends that subscribers to genealogy mailing lists be sure to use a "plain text" setting in their e-mail software in order to prevent strange characters appearing in their messages. He also describes his experiences in using microform equipment that scans an image for use in e-mailing or saving to a USB flash drive (instead of printing the image). Drew discusses a book he is reading: Brittania's Children: Emigration from England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales Since 1600, by Eric Richards. |
Sat, 19 July 2008
This week's news includes: Abraham Lincoln's ancestry is questioned; Ancestry.com announces new databases, including WI Death Index (1959-1997), NC Death Certificates (1909-1975), TN Divorces (1800-1865), and U.S. Colored Troops Service Records (Civil War); The Florida Genealogical Society (Tampa) celebrates its 50th anniversary; Modern Genealogy (http://www.moderngenealogy.com) announces a new database for Windows XP and Vista and invites people to assist as beta testers; Genlighten (http://www.genlighten.com) is building a network of people to look up and obtain copies of documents at a reasonable cost; FamilyRelatives.com (http://www.familyrelatives.com/) has added lots of new British Isles trade and court directories to its site; The National Archives (TNA) in the U.K. has completed renovations and has reorganized its facility to accommodate the addition of the Family Records Centre materials, and urges people to check out the changes at their site at http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/; the National Library of Ireland (http://www.nli.ie) has unveiled a new exhibition about William Butler Yeats and a virtual tour can be viewed at their website; and Microsoft has anounced the closure of its Live Search Books project.
Listener email this week includes: How does one become a doctor in 5 years or less?; using the My Maps feature of Google Maps (http://maps.google.com/) to trace and map your ancestors' movements; Helen Parkhurst of the World Burial Index (http://www.worldburialindex.com) shares information about this subscription database for searching cemetery monumental inscriptions across England and elsewhere; a discussion of people listed multiple times on the census -- and an example with Amelia Earhart; tracing substitute soldiers and the men in whose stead they fought; the National Geographic Genographic Project; origins of unusual first names; how will same sex marriages change genealogy and software; and the delights of moving to broadband. There are a number of genealogy software packages for PDAs and SmartPhones that run the Palm or WindowsMobile operating systems. These allow you to load your genealogy data files on the devices and take it with you. George and Drew issue a challenge to software developers to provide the equivalent software apps (applications) for the Apple iPhone and for Blackberry devices. Natalie of Ogden, Utah, provided the following weblinks for all our listeners:
Wed, 9 July 2008
This week's news includes: George Washington's boyhood home is found; and new features are unveiled at MyHeritage (http://www.myheritage.com).
Listener e-mail includes: a recap about Henri Guest Scott and the Scott family; Panoramio (http://www.panoramio.com) allows you to place photos on Google Earth and Google Maps; Laraine got a headstone for her great-grandfather and gained information from a cousin; Carolyn sought help with locating her great-grandmother and Drew addresses some possibilities; our friend Jeane sent was contacted about a family bible on eBay and, while she lost the bid, she made an invaluable connection with another researcher; JoAnne Rockower of Geni.com (http://www.geni.com) e-mailed about our time together in California; and The Guys received a great spreadsheet of past podcasts' links and will be evaluating them for use on the website. The Guys discuss the terrific Southern California Genealogical Society's Jamboree in Burbank. They begin with a fascinating interview with Karie Bible, our guide for a fascinating tour of the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. (Look for Karie at http://www.cemeterytour.com.) And listen afterwards for what Karie does every August 23rd at 12:10 PM! Wow! Jamboree included terrific presentations, meals, and enjoyable activities. George participated in the Blogger Summit with some new and old friends. Listen to more about it. Enjoy Sharyn's terrific and enjoyable song from Jamboree. Finally, The Guys discuss changing over to FIOS, and Drew reports that HP has finally sent him the memory they owed him for his replacement tablet PC. |
Sun, 22 June 2008
This week's news includes: the new Midwest Genealogy Center in Independence, Missouri, opened on 21 June; Footnote.com has announced a new, popular, and forthcoming database titles; Synium Software (http://www.synium.de/products/index.html) announces the new version 5.2 of its MacFamilyTree software which includes a 3-D family tree view; Geni.com (http://www.geni.com/home) announced that it has increased its GEDCOM file support to 15,000 individuals.
Listener e-mail includes: a question about the availability of a consolidated list of all of The Guys' podcast links (not available); more comments and suggestions for George, who recently switched from a PC to a Mac; Drew discusses an article in the April 2008 edition of Smithsonian Magazine titled "To Catch a Thief"; forensic genealogy and author Colleen Fitzpatrick; RootsTelevision.com is seeking volunteer case coordinators for its "Unclaimed Persons" project. The Guys discuss the situation in which the State of California's Department of Public Health' Laboratory Field Services Office issued 13 cease-and-desist letters to biotech companies in that state performing clinical DNA testing. These are NOT related to the DNA marker tests that genealogists obtain for research purposes, and none of those testing services was included in this action. The Guys announce their new Facebook site for fans of "The Genealogy Guys Podcast". Drew discusses Ahnentafels, also known as the Sosa-Stradonitz System, for genealogical numbering and reporting. There will be no podcast next week as The Guys will be in Burbank, California participating at the Southern California Genealogical Society Jamboree. |
Sun, 15 June 2008
This week's news includes: Ancestry.com announces the doubling of its digitized newspaper collection; and Genealogy Online, Inc., announces that a new online edition of Everton's Genealogical Helper will debut on July 1st, with more details available at www.everton.com.
This week's listener e-mail includes: congratulations and comments for George concerning his new iMac; opinions about genealogy add-ons; and a question concerning newspapers. Drew discusses his research experiences into the "Unclaimed Persons" project started by RootsTelevision.com. Look for "Unclaimed Persons" on facebook.com for information and open cases. The Guys discuss the availability of digitized newspaper resources and how to access them. |
Thu, 5 June 2008
This week's news includes: Genclass.com (http://genclass.com/) partners with Familylink.com (http://www.familylink.com/) to offer two free genealogy classes at WorldVitalRecords.com (http://www.worldvitalrecords.com/); APG names Michael Melendez of Fullerton, CA, as the first recipient of the Young Professional Scholarship; Millenia Corp. announces that new Legacy Family Tree version 7.0 is now available; construction delays at the new Midwest Genealogy Center in Independence, MO, postpone preservationists' tour; Moorshead Magazines, Ltd., publishers of Family Chronicle, Internet Genealogy, and Discovering Family History, has issued a call for old military uniform photos for a tentative book to cover the U.S. Civil War through the Mexican-American War and through World War I (no WWII) - submission details are available at http://familychronicle.com/militaryphotos.htm; Stonehenge has been found to have been a burial ground from 3,000 to 2,500 B.C.; a new genealogy centre has opened in Dinfermline, Scotland; Ancestry.co.uk has released a new database of 8.9 million "free settlers" to Australia; and the True Lover's Knot" discussed here has been published in Real Simple magazine and online here.
Listener e-mail includes: an inquiry about accessing The Guys' Down Under: Florida videos at RootsTelevision.com; the different pronunciations of "Beaufort" in North Carolina and South Carolina; The History of Mecklenburg County, NC by J.B. Alexander, published in 1901, has been reprinted by Clearfield Company (at http://www.genealogical.com); whether to city every source you work with, and a response from Elizabeth Shown Mills' book, Evidence Explained; Ancestry.com continues its free ethnic research training webinars series; a question about searching the LDS Family History Library catalog; a question about citing websites and using the "www." in the typed address; the Algonquin Area Public Library is beginning a series of training lessons about Web 2.0 at http://community.ahml.info/bakersdozen/; and Mark Tucker, author of ThinkGenealogy.com blog (http://www.thinkgenealogy.com) is seeking feedback as to whether he should evolve his site into a community site, and invites you to visit his Mission Statement proposal and make comments. George reveals that he has just purchased an iMac and refused to migrate to Vista on his PC. The Guys talk about using different computer platforms and operating systems, and George will report back on his experience in future podcasts. |
Fri, 30 May 2008
The news this week includes: a new series at RootsTelevision.com titled Unclaimed Persons which the producers hope will raise awareness of the problem of unclaimed bodies and encourage viewers to help; Ancestry.com announces a series of free Ethnic Webinars, beginning June 3rd, to help you with researching your ancestry (click here to register); vandals wreak havoc and destroying monuments in a Riverview, Florida, cemetery; and MyHeritage Research (http://www.myheritage.com/research) announces the upgrade of its unique search engine.
George announces conference venues at which he and/or Drew will be appearing soon: Southern California Genealogical Society's Jamboree (27-29 June - http://www.scgsgenealogy.com/2008jam-index.htm with G&D); RootsMagic Cruise (28 September to 5 October - http://www.rootsmagiccruise.com/ with G; South Orange County California Genealogical Society (18 October - http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~casoccgs/ with G); and the Florida State Genealogical Society (14-15 November - http://www.flsgs.org/ with G&D). The poem mentioned mentioned in Episode #137 was identified as "Voices from the Past" by Adelaide Ann Proctor (1825-1864). Listener e-mail includes: a new online citation tool at Zotero.com; a discussion of the availability of Ancestry.com at Family History Centers and the Family History Library; information about the Army Heritage Education Center outside Carlisle, Pennsylvania; and a problem with duplicate individuals appearing in the personal MyAncestry family tree view. Drew talks about finding a new record type: an Alcoholic Beverage Control License. |
Thu, 22 May 2008
News this week includes: FamilySearch teams with FamilyLink.com to bring online the Brenner Collection of German records (1650-1875) with more than 3.5 million names and between 900,000 and 1.5 million images; and Ancestry.com announces plans for massive additions in global content and new geographical locations, including a Chinese site with Chinese Jaipu and a Spanish-language site.
George shares a special Ancestry.com web page that specifically contains the list of all the NARA microfilm collections that have been digitized and indexed. The site is at http://www.ancestry.com/search/rectype/nara.aspx and contains a search template for searching these specific databases. There is a complete list of the databases which you can access and search individually. George recommends bookmarking this site! The Guys talk about some collaborative research they helped a friend with. It concerned identifying the names of the two casualties of the explosion of the ship, Ophir, in the port of Gibraltar on 11 November 1918. In the process, an interesting story about the explosion is discovered. The Guys discuss in detail the "Brave New World of Genealogical Research" that has evolved in the last several years. |
Thu, 15 May 2008
This week's news includes: Geni, Inc. (geni.com) announces the new functional availability for users to upload GEDCOM files; FamilyLink.com (familylink.com) announces its partnership with FamilySearch to add new functions to the Family History Library Catalog, making it searchable by Internet search engines and allowing users to annotate entries; Footnote.com (footnote.com) announces the addition of the 1860 U.S. Federal Census to its Civil War Collection; and the Social Security Administration has released its list of the most popular baby names for 2007.
Listener e-mail topics include: a family listed twice on the 1880 U.S. federal census -- in two enumeration districts; observations about the embedded player at "The Genealogy Guys Podcast" site; Drew discusses his findings in the 1910 and 1920 censuses for a Black Seminole family in Escambia County, Florida; and George responds to an inquiry about web sites to which photos of WWII service personnel can be uploaded and accessed by family members. George cited Dead Fred (http://www.deadfred.com), Ancestors Lost and Found (http://www.usgennet.org/usa/topic/ancestors/), and Honoring Our Ancestors (http://www.honoringourancestors.com/library_orphan.html). George shares news about three web sites of interest to listeners:
The Guys discuss how they have used PowerPoint to create a presentation for a memorial service. The process can be used for heritage presentations, family reunions, anniversary celebrations, and many other genealogical projects. |
Fri, 9 May 2008
This week's news includes: the Vatican has issued a letter instructing all dioceses not to give any information to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, due to concerns about the Mormons' practice of posthumous rebaptism; a new Midwest Genealogy Center (see http://www.mcpl.lib.mo.us/genlh/mgc.htm) will open in Independence, Missouri, on 21 June 2008 with the largest collection of genealogical materials in the U.S.; DNA links have been found from the ancient "iceman" found in British Columbia in 1999 to at least 17 living people; an American couple touring in Germany visited a gasthaus in Binningen and were introduced to a relative -- a man who looked exactly like the husband. The men shared the same great-great grandfather.
Listen e-mail included: loss of HeritageQuest Online in the Satellite Beach, Florida, library; a thank you for our discussions of the Mozy (http://mozy.com/) computer backup facility; Catholic parish family books (Familienbuecher) in Germany; suggestions for locating information about Black Seminole people (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Seminoles and Seminole & Apalachicola Indian Records); a listener asks for help when his own DNA and that of his family members disagrees; teaching genealogy to and for kids; the occupation of "vanman" is defined; and the origins of the surname Turtle are discussed. [Drew referred to the book, A Dictionary of English Surnames: The Standard Guide to English Surnames by P.H. Reaney and R.M. Wilson, published by OxforndUniversity Press in 1995.] George discusses the practical use of DNA in conjunction with genealogy, archeology, and geography in the research of the Lost Colony Center for Science and Research (http://www.lost-colony.com/). The "Lost Colony" was the second settlement on Roanoke Island on the Outer Banks of what is now North Carolina. It began in 1587 and it was there that Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the New World, was born on 18 August 1587. When the relief ships finally returned from England in 1590, the settlement was deserted, and a single word -- "Croaton" -- was carved into a post of the fort. Croaton was the name of one of the local Indian tribes. One suggestion is that the settlers were assimilated into one or more of the three tribes. The DNA testing and analysis being done by the Lost Colony Center for Science and Research is seeking to validate or refute this hypothesis, and the project is infinitely interesting. |
Thu, 1 May 2008
News this week includees: Geni.com (http://www.geni.com/) announces new features, including a family timeline, posted links, send gifts, and the family Forest; Progeny Software offers its Charting Companion software to produce great-looking charts in color and with photos -- click here for more information; and the Allen County Public Library in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, is presenting a Military Symposium 2008 on September 26 & 27, 2008, with guest speaker Marie Varrelman Melchiori, CG, CGL, and more information is available from firstname.lastname@example.com.
The Guys responded to listener e-mail: Find-a-Grave (http://www.findagrave.com/) does include graves in the UK and other countries; locating the physical address for a rural postal box in 1935; more about the downloadable PDF file at http://www.thegeneticgenealogist.com about what to do with the results of your genealogy test; Catholic priest's census records; findings in old address books; another look at Chicago Public Radio's March 14th podcast about the kidnapping of Bobby Dunbar; an article titled "To Catch a Thief" at Smithsonian.com (click here to the exact location) tells how Civil war buffs got onto the trail of stolen documents; and Drew discusses uninterruptable power supply (UPS) units. |
Wed, 23 April 2008
In the News, The Guys review two new publications: Hookers, Crooks, and Kooks by Jana Sloan Broglin, and Kisses from a Distance by Raff Ellis. A baby's tombstone from 1894 is discovered on a houseboat in Charleston, SC.
George responds to a request about deed platting software: DeedMapper from Direct Line Software (http://www.directlinesoftware.com) sells for $99.00, while a free online deed platting tool is available for use at http://www.genealogytools.net. Drew follows up regarding the use of a final 'e' at the end of some surnames, such as Greene. Chicago Public Radio's series, This American Life, has an interesting episode from 14 March 2008 titled "The Ghost of Bobby Dunbar" available as a podcast at http://thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1234. It is a terrific story! Drew talks about the term "countryman" and its origins. He then discusses ordnance maps and their use. George suggests copying online obituaries from newspapers and from funeral homes' Web sites and from their online guest books. The Guys end the show with a discussion of church directories and church bulletins. |
Wed, 16 April 2008
This week's news includes the following: Ancestry.com launches the Drouin Collection of 29 million French-Canadian names from, ultimately to include 37M names by mid-2008; Ancestry.com also launched the Former Colonial Dependencies Slave Register Collection, 1812-1834; RootsMagic has extended the early Bird Registration for this year's genealogy cruise to April 30th (see http://www.RootsMagicCruise.com); Wholly Genes has announced its genealogy cruise line-up (see http://www.WhollyGenes.com/cruise.htm); the My Genealogy toolbar is free and helpful for those researching their UK ancestors, and is at http://www.usefultoolbars.co.uk; and the National History Show will be held May 2-4, 2008, in Olympia, London, UK (see http://www.whodoyouthinkyouarelive.co.uk for information and tickets.)
The Genealogy Guys appear in their second episode of Down Under: Florida at RootsTelevision.com. Click here to see the new feature about famed Ringling Brothers circus performers, The Flying Zacchinis. You'll love it! Listeners share lots of great information, including: "Catholic: Under the Hood" videocast about the Sicily-Rome Cemetery, resting place of WWII soldiers; print labels for your family heritage CDs and DVDs using Light Scribe software and disks (http://www.lightscribe.com/); search the Web site for the funeral home that recently handled arrangements for an individual -- they often have more detailed obituaries than the newspapers, guest books, and even photographs; a suggested reference for understanding land records and land platting is E. Wade Hone's book, Land and Property Research in the United States (Ancestry Publishing); The Guys offer tips for breaking through brick walls; and George responds to a request about his research on his great-uncle, Brisco Washington Holder. George reviews and recommends three books: Capturing Memories: Your family Story in Photographs by Maureen A. Taylor (Ancestry Publishing: 2007) Bibliographic Checklist of African American Newspapers by Barbara K. Henritze (Genealogical Publishing Co./Clearfield Company: 1995 and Reprinted 2008) Bad Baby Names by Michael Sherrod and Mathew Raybeck. (Ancestry Publishing: 2008) |
Thu, 3 April 2008
The Genealogy Guys Podcast will take a short break while the Guys enjoy a Caribbean cruise with family and friends. We'll be back the week of April 14!
-- posted at: 2:50 PM
Wed, 2 April 2008
Drew addresses proving relationships using mitochondrial
DNA. He then discusses two genealogical books on the subject of DNA. They are: DNA & Genealogy by Colleen
Fitzpatrick and Andrew Yeiser (published in 2005 by Rice Book Press) and Family History in the Genes by Chris
Pomery (published in 2007 by The National Archives in This week's news stories include: Roots Television at http://www.rootstelevision.com has
won four Telly Awards in its first year in business; the National Genealogical
Society has announced the appointment of Pamela K. Boyer, CG, CGL, its
Education and Publications Director; and WorldVitalRecords.com (http://www.worldvitalrecords.com)
has added 300 new databases from the Godfrey Memorial Library and will add 300
more each week this month. Listener e-mail includes discussions concerning: "The Vision
of Britain? system holds the full text of three 19th century
gazetteers at http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/index.jsp;
LDS Family History Center personnel can provide expert advice to you before you
reach the point of hiring a professional researcher; a listener asks for
opinions about the National Genealogical Society's online course, "Introduction
to Genealogy?; genealogy of U.S. presidential candidates is a topic of
worldwide discussions; another recommendation is made for creating CDs/DVDs of
family history information; the recessive gene responsible for red hair is
declining and is expected to be obsolete by 2100; Arphax Publishing Company
publishes excellent quality family maps by state and county, and can be found
at http://www.arphax.com; and additional
information about District of Columbia records is offered. |
Fri, 28 March 2008
This week's news includes: NBC has purchased rights to
create an American version of the popular BBC reality series, Who Do You Think You Are?; NARA recently announced the availability of
nearly 9 million WWII U.S. Army enlistment records at its Web site, but be
aware that there were many records that could not be scanned – and the
collection is therefore incomplete; Sen. John McCain's new book, Hard Call, indicates his descent from
Scottish heroic warrior Robert the Bruce, but the claim has been termed "baloney?
in the British press by professional genealogists; Jacksonville Public Library
in Florida has begun an "ASK a Librarian? online chat service; I.R.I,S., Inc., (at
http://www.irislink.com) has two new
portable scanners of note. Listener e-mail topics this week include: Genealogical Publishing Company's new
CD by Michael Hait, titled The Family
History Research Toolkit, has PDF format forms into which you can type
information or use the forms for transcription purposes ($19.95 USD); a
discussion of professional research services and researchers (Board for
Certification of Genealogists at http://www.bcgcertification.org/
and the Association of Professional Genealogists at http://www.apgen.org/ and the International Commission for the Accreditation
of Professional Genealogists at http://www.icapgen.org/)
are three resources); missing census images at Ancestry.com were reported
through the online Help facility and will be handled; a question about
searching databases that are added to sites incrementally, and not wasting your
time doing the same searches on the same data; an early pilot of the LDS'
online databases is available at http://search.labs.familysearch.org;
use of Google's My Map feature to create maps of cemeteries and other locations
in a specific area; scanning photos using Google's Picasa feature; Washington,
DC, records storage repositories for that jurisdiction; and issues concerning placing
one's genealogical data online. |
Wed, 19 March 2008
In this week's news: NARA (http://www.archives.gov)
posts free passenger lists online, including Russian, Italian, and German lists
to east coast ports; 1871 England and Wales census images are now complete on
British Origins (http://www.britishorigins.com);
The Generations Network, Inc. (http://www.tgn.com),
parent of Ancestry.com, RootsWeb, Genealogy.com, and other entities, announced
that they will move RootsWeb onto the Ancestry.com domain, using http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com,
and that there should be no changes to the online experience of users – and
that RootsWeb will continue to be free; and WorldVitalRecords.com (http://www.worldvitalrecords.com)
now has over 1 billion names at its site. The Guys respond to many listener e-mail topics: the correct
pronunciation of Haaretz, the largest newspaper in The Guys continue discussing listener e-mail about DNA and Drew continues his discussion of the topic to try to educate us all. |
Wed, 12 March 2008
George delivers a lot of news this week: the New England
Historic and Genealogical Society (http://www.newenglandancestors..org)
has received a large gift of photographs from the family of Thaxter Spencer,
including an unknown 1888 photo of Helen Keller and her teacher, Annie
Sullivan; the Library of Congress's digital preservation program has a new
e-mail newsletter and you can subscribe by clicking here; NARA is soliciting comments from the public by 9 April 2008 regarding a
proposal to enter into a non-exclusive agreement with The Generations Network,
Inc., owners of Ancestry.com, to digitize and expand access to record holdings
in NARA's custody (see http://www.archives.gov/comment/tgn-preamble.html); Dublin's Glasnevin Cemetery's registers are about to be
placed on the Internet, and more information is available at http://www.cigo.ie; Genealogical Publishing
Company (http://www.genealogical.com)
has partnered with FamilyLink.com, Inc. (http://www.familylink.com)
to make their databases available on WorldVitalRecords.com (http://www.worldvitalrecords.com);
Haaretx, Inc. (http://www.haaretz.com/) announced
with Famillion (http://www.famillion.com)
the launch of a new genealogy and social network search engine aimed at
connecting the Jewish people worldwide; MyGreatBigFamily.com (http://www.mygreatbigfamily.com) launches enhanced
social networking websites for families; GenealogyBank (http://www.genealogybank.com) has
added the first 20 Hispanic newspaper titles for 4 states to its online historic
newspaper collection, covering the period from 1855 to 1956, and will add many
more, ultimately covering the period 1808 to 1980; an ID thief is caught and
imprisoned in New Zealand for fraud in the theft of thousands of dollars in
student loans for deceased children whose birth certificates he had obtained. The Guys read and respond to listener e-mail on many topics:
George misread the URL for the multimedia presentation software called Passage
Express (which should be http://www.passageexpress.com);
a listener and the Web Marketing Director of NewspaperArchive.com provided
information about and a free trial of their site at http://www.newspaperarchive.com; information
is shared about the HP MediaSmart Server for compact file backups and extensive
hard drive installation; a free site to convert files into other formats is
available at http://www.youconvertit.com);
the True Lover's Knot will be featured in the May issue of Real Simple magazine (http://www.realsimple.com);
Newberry Library in Chicago is working on a project to document and then
digitize all state and county boundary changes in its Atlas of Historic County Boundaries
Project (AHCBP) and has 23 states available online at http://www.newberry.org/ahcbp/; a
listener shared the image of an 1880 census Enumerator's Daily Report to Census
Office form that he purchases on eBay; and one listener shared information
about her ancestry and, in particular, shared her related photos that she has
uploaded to the Shutterfly photograph file sharing site at http://www.shutterfly.com. The Guys continued with listener e-mail on the subject of genealogical DNA testing and will continue next week again with another descriptive discussion. |
Wed, 5 March 2008
This week's news includes: condolences to the family of Chuck Knuthson, a great genealogical speaker, researcher, and former board member of FGS, GSG, and other organizations; Halvor Moorshead, head of Moorshead Magazines [Family Chronicle, History Magazine, Internet Genealogy, and the new Discovering Family History] is retiring and has sold the company to staff members Ed Zapletal and Rick Cree.
Listener e-mail includes: Greek genealogical research links are available at Cyndi's List (at http://www.cyndislist.com/greece.html) and at Kimberly Powell's column at About.com (at http://genealogy.about.com/od/greece); a request for help reading an occupation on a 1920 census schedule for Flint, Michigan, draws a unanimous opinion from The Guys [Quarry]; thanks for suggestions for recording an interview with a mother who transcribed contents of a now-lost Bible; an explanation of the source for information used by a census enumerator to complete a mortality schedule in the 1880 census; and a true life story of backing up one's data. Drew describes and discusses Mark Tucker's brilliant Genealogy Research Process map and textual description at http://www.ThinkGenealogy.com. It is derived from concepts of the Board for Certification of Genealogists and by Elizabeth Shown Mills, expert on the genealogical proof standard and author of Evidence Explained, the new and definitive book concerning citation of genealogical evidence. Drew discusses the use of dictionaries to locate the definitions of older, more obscure terms found in historical and genealogical documents. The example he cites is the term, "Fresno," a piece of equipment once used for scraping road surfaces. The Guys discuss databases for historical newspapers and more recent (ca. 1980 to present) newspapers. The companies discussed are LexisNexis (the Nexis portion); NewsBank's "America's Genealogy Bank" database; and ProQuest. Newspaper databases may be available through your local public library and/or your local college or university library. Drew discovered that sometimes the newspapers available in a database inside the library are greater in number than when you access the database remotely from outside the library. This can be due to differences in licensing contracts. George encourages listeners to check out all the databases available through their libraries. |
Tue, 26 February 2008
This week's news includes: Congratulations to Matt Wright who becomes editorial director at FamilyLink.com; a recap of a USA Today report of 18 February about states unsealing adoption records and opening original birth records to adoptees; passenger lists of persons leaving the U.K. for the U.S., Canada, and Australia during the 1940s are available at Ancestors Onboard at http://www.ancestorsonboard.com; the National History Show will be held on 2-4 May 2008 in the Grand Hall, Olympia, London, and tickets can be booked at http://www.whodoyouthinkyouarelive.co.uk.
Listener e-mail includes more kudoes for The Guys' "Down Under" video at RootsTelevision.com; Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps at the New York Public Library at (accessible now only at the NYPL), as well as digital maps and photographs in their digital gallery at http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/; a number of video options for creating heritage DVDs and slideshows using Apple Macintoshes and PCs have been suggested in various price ranges:
The Guys spend the remainder of the show discussing the intricacies of U.S. copyright laws and fair use standards. Definitely worth a listen! |
Wed, 20 February 2008
George reports on the genealogy news this week: Julia M.
Case, beloved genealogist and author at RootsWeb has died; Moorshead Magazines
has begun a new magazine called Discovering
Family History for beginning genealogists and those who want a refresher,
and a premier online issue is available for free at http://www.discoveringfamilyhistory.com;
and other stories. The Guys share listener e-mail including: places for
locating French records; safety of publishing family trees on the Internet;
validating the contents of a lost family Bible; responses to the topic of how
to avoid genealogy burnout; and they share feedback on their new Down Under: Tampa series at RootsTelevision.com. |
Mon, 11 February 2008
This week's news includes: Ancestry.com has added a huge collection of African-American records with the Freedmen's Marriage Records and the Southern Claims Commission Collection at Ancestry.com; the 1911 Irish Census is beginning to be made available at http://www.census.nationalarchives.ie, and the 1862 Dublin City Street Directory is now online at http://www.libraryireland.com/Dublin-Street-Directory-1862/Home.php; and a new book by Terry Reigel titled A Primer for The Master Genealogist is now available from Wholly Genes Software. The Guys discuss news about DNA, including: "One Embryo from Three Parents" in a case where mitochondrial disease has been corrected with a third person's mitochondrial DNA; and an intriguing finding by scientist Hans Eiberg in Norway about blue-eyed persons and their common forebear 6,000 to 10,000 years ago. The Genealogy Guys make their television debut today at Roots Television in a new series, "Down Under: Florida." The series is not unlike PBS' "History Detectives" in that they investigate persons in the past whose cemetery markers and stories have piqued their interest. Check out the first of their new online television programs. The Guys describe for listener (and now viewer!) Donna in Hawaii the production process. Listener e-mail includes: discussion of Horry and Marion Counties in SC; comments about the genealogical value of address books; and more. The Guys talk about climatic changes and their effects on our ancestors, including the influence on their migrations and settlements. |
Tue, 5 February 2008
This week's news includes: the funeral for Gordon B. Hinckley, 97, in Salt Lake City on 2 Feb. Mr. Hinckley was the president of the LDS church since 1995; FamilyLink.com, Inc. (http://www.familylink.com) launches their World Collection containing more than 1.5 billion names from 35 countries; and beginning this week, George will be writing a weekly column for Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter (http://blog.eogn.com/). Drew discusses search strategies for researching common surnames, such as his own: Smith. The Guys discuss ways to avoid "Genealogy Burnout." And finally, Drew discusses the value of his parents' address book in extending his research. |
Sun, 27 January 2008
This week's news items include: James LeVoy Sorenson,
renowned medical device inventor, entrepreneur, and philanthropist died on 20
January 2008 at 86 – his companies list includes the non-profit Sorenson Molecular Genealogy
Foundation which provides DNA testing; Genealogical.com has launched a new blog
at http://GenealogyandFamilyHistory.com;
a wiki is available for users of FamilySearch and the LDS Family History
Centers, at http://www.familysearchwiki.org. Drew and George discuss the explosion of social networking
sites for genealogists and some of the issues regarding choosing one or more to
use. The list includes: Geni.com (http://www.geni.com/),
Famillion (http://www.famillion.com),
Ancestry.com (http://www.geni.com/),
OneGreatFamily.com (http://www.onegreatfamily.com),
FamilyTreeDNA.com (http://www.familytreedna.com/),
MyHeritage.com (http://www.myheritage.com/),
23AndMe (https://www.23andme.com/),
MyHeritage.com (http://www.myheritage.com/),
ItsOurTree.com (http://www.itsourtree.com/
and available in multiple languages), Amiglia.com (http://www.amiglia.com), Kindo.com (http://kindo.com/), and TreeX.com (http://treex.com/tree/). Others include
KinCafe (http://www.kincafe.com/),
FamilyLink (http://www.familylink.com/
- formerly WorldVitalRecords.com), OurStory.com (http://www.ourstory.com/), WeRelate (http://www.werelate.org), and Famiva (http://www.famiva.com/). Drew has revived his personal blog with a new name, Internet domain, and a new look. The blog, called Rootsmithing, can be found at http://rootsmithing.com. |
Thu, 17 January 2008
This week's
news includes many announcements. Memeria (http://www.memeria.com)
launches the first house-call photo-scanning service; another genealogy podcast
is available -- Genealogy Gems at http://www.genealogygemspodcast.com;
WorldVitalRecords.com has changed its name to FamilyLink.com (http://www.familylink.com) and has formed
partnerships with other companies in recent months; RootsMagic announces its
2008 Genealogy Cruise to the Mexican Riviera on Sept. 28 to Oct. 5, and details
can be found at http://www.RootsMagicCruise.com.
There are also many seminars coming up this year: San Luis Obispo County
Genealogical Society (Feb. 2) (http://www.kcbx.net/~slogen/);
St. George family History Expo 2008 (Feb. 8-9) (http://www.myancestorsfound.com/events/upcoming.php?event_id=1);
Czechoslovak Genealogical Society International Symposium (April 11-12) (http://www.cgsi.org/news.asp?intNewsID=129);
North Carolina Genealogical Society's 3rd Annual Speakers Forum (April 11) (http://www.ncgenealogy.org); Federation
of East European Family History Societies Conference (August 1-3) (http://feefhs.org/). |
Wed, 9 January 2008
Welcome to The Genealogy GuysTM Podcast for 2008! The Guys discuss some user e-mail as always, and then focus on what is happening and coming for genealogy in 2008. |
Mon, 31 December 2007
George begins with two pieces of news: he will be appearing at the Mississippi Genealogical Society's Conference on January 19th. For more information, call 601.924.9346. He also announced that he is discontinuing his long-running "Along Those Lines ..." column, which began on AOL, then appeared for years at Ancestry.com, and has been a blog for the past two years. The blog at http://ahaseminars.livejournal.com/ will remain online through April 2008.
Listener e-mail provided some great information this week: Jerry highly recommends the Fujitsu Scansnap S510 scanner for its lightening speed, accuracy, and automatic feed. (Click here for a link to the Fujitsu product information.); The Guys do accept friend links at LibraryThing, and George has just been designated a LibraryThing Author; Megan tells about her research into an heirloom "True Lover's Knot"; Rollin asks about how to record a confusing death date, and shares information about a free Windows screen capture program he likes -- FastStone Capture 5.9 at http://www.faststone.org; Find-a-Grave's Rich Hrazanek reports that there are now over 20 million interments recorded at the site; and Patty asks about the indexing by Ancestry.com of the Drouin Collection and George refers her to Suzanne Adams at Ancestry for a status. George discusses the progress of Web-based resources over the last 15 years, including databases, blogs, wikis, podcasts, and video. He especially likes RootsTelevision at http://www.rootstelevision.com which features lectures, conferences, different ethnic research resources, military research hints, DNA research discussions, genealogy for kids, reunions, and much more. The Guys will have more to say about RootsTelevision in 2008! The Guys spent the last segment of the show recapping genealogical news, additions, developments, people losses, conferences and cruises, books, and more in 2007. HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Sun, 23 December 2007
George begins with the genealogical news: ▪
FamilySearch and The Generations Network, Inc.,
parent company of Ancestry.com, today
announced an agreement that provides free access of Ancestry.com to patrons of
the Family History Library in ▪ Ancestry.com added 340.2M new names last week, including digitized and indexed newspapers from 10 U.S. states and 2 Canadian provinces, more than 4,5 new BMD records, and updated the British Telcom U.K. telephone directories with more than 71M new names. ▪
also unveiled its new ▪ The California Genealogical Society and Library celebrates 110 years with an all-day seminar by nationally-recognized "Photo Detective? Maureen A. Taylor. Ms. Taylor's lectures will focus on identifying and dating old photographs, preserving family photos, and identifying immigrant clues in photos. More information is available at http://www.calgensoc.org. ▪
The Denver Public
Library has just received an IMLS grant of $778K to digitize historical
materials in its collection relating to
Mon, 17 December 2007
The Guys go straight to listener e-mail this week: the value of contacting genealogical societies for obit & funeral notice lookups and copies; Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps that have been made available at state sites, such as Florida (http://www.uflib.ufl.edu/UFDC/?c=sanborn), Georgia (http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/sanborn), and South Carolina (http://www.sc.edu/library/digital/collections/sanborn.html) and digital cameras used by The Guys: Pentax A20 Option Megapixel camera (see review at http://www.dpreview.com/news/0608/06082103pentaxa20.asp).
Drew recaps the instructions for accessing older podcasts. He also shares his "Genealogy Society Tip of the Week" about expending a little extra money for name/quality speakers for your society to attract visitors and new members. George recaps the importance of making contact with and/or joining genealogical societies where your ancestors lived. They can also provide obituary and funeral notice lookups and copies from their local card or online computerized index files. The Guys discuss the negative side of sharing information about living family members, especially when one becomes a debtor who becomes the subject of debt collectors. Some debtors are now accessing genealogical database as vehicles to persecute and ride relatives of a debtor, and that is illegal Listener Nancy details the underhanded tactics of collectors who began contacting siblings, children, aunts, uncles, and grandparents of the debtor to harass and dun then for their relative's debt. George discovered that every state in then Union has laws governing collection agencies. Most, if not all, cannot by law contact anyone other than the debtor and his/her spouse directly. Contact with your state Attorney General's office to determine what YOUR rights are and what a collection agency can and cannot do. You will often find that the collection agent/agency is exceeding his or her authority. George discusses his Pentax Option A20 (10 megapixel) digital camera, its features, and how he uses the Text setting and other features in his genealogical research. Drew talks about Chris Dunham's "The Genealogy" site at http://www.genealogue.com and the Genealogue Challenge. George reminds listeners that The Genealogy Blog Finder is also one of the features of this great site. George reviews William Dollarhide's new two-volume book set titled Census Substitutes & State Census Records. Volume I covers the Eastern States and Volume II covers the Western States. The books are available through Family Roots Publishing Company at http://www.familyrootspublishing.com. |
Thu, 6 December 2007
The week's news includes: NARA partners with TOPICS Entertainment to produce two filmed histories on DVD - WWII: A Filmed History and Aviation" A Filmed History from the National Archives, both 24-CD sets; Ancestry.com has completed digitizing and indexing the British Telephone Books, 1880-1984, the full collection of the British Telcom Archives collection; the Florida State Genealogical Society awards it's prestigious Award for Outstanding Achievement in Florida Genealogy to Hal J. Becker; readers of Oklahoma Living magazine have voted to award the Muskogee Public Library the best library in the state; Wholly Genes, Inc., announces its 2008 genealogy cruise with details at http://www.WhollyGenes.com/cruise.htm.
The Guys share reader e-mail about: inexpensive headstone options, including requesting markers from the Department of Veterans Affairs at http://www.va.gov/; more about DNA testing; binder organization and filing techniques; methods of locating military service numbers include: - Check county clerks' offices and post offices for registered DD-214s - Check funeral home records - Contact the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis - Contact the Department of Veterans Affairs - Some states have veterans databases online, such as Utah, Florida, and Missouri Michigan's genealogical library facilities are touted at the Library of Michigan and the Archives of Michigan, as well as the Detroit Public Library's Burton Historical Collection. George's "Web Site of the Week" is "Expert Links: English Family History and Genealogy," a massive collection of wonderful Web links at http://www.pricegen.com/english_genealogy.html?cpn=wvrnewsletter. Drew's "Society Tip of the Week" addresses membership directories, benefits, issues, and publishing options. |
Thu, 29 November 2007
The "News You Can Use" this week includes: Announcement of the National Genealogical Society's awards and competitions, details about which are can be found at http://www.ngsgenealogy.org/awardscompcalendar.cfm; Ancestry.com has published U.S. Passport Applications for 1795-1925 at its Web site at http://www.ancestry.com; Fly Away Travel has announced its "2008 Genealogy at Sea" on October 25-November 1, 2008 on the Royal Caribbean's fabulous Liberty of the Sea, sailing from Miami to Puerto Rico, St. Maarten, and a private location at Labadee, Haiti -- with 8 great, internationally known speakers. Details are available at http://www.GenealogyCruises.com. Family Roots Publishing Company has just released a two-volume set of books, Census Substitutes & State Census Records by well-known author, speaker, and census expert William Dollarhide. Details are at http://www.familyrootspublishing.com/servlet/StoreFront.
The Guys respond to a wealth of listener e-mail covering topics such as: DNA testing; locating WWI serial numbers; marking multiple graves scattered across a single cemetery; displaying a family tree on one's Web site; the name change of naval hero John Paul Jones; an article in the Nov. 4th Cleveland Plain Dealer concerning the ancestry of Carl Stokes, the city's first African American mayor, and Megan Smolenyak's discovery of an 1845 document in GA identifying the mayor's g-grandfather; home demonstration/extension clubs still exist and may be a source for your ancestors' genealogical information; and reworking an old manuscript with newly discovered information. The show concludes with Drew announcing the new Google Maps feature that allows you to not only create your own customized maps, but you can now invite other people to collaborate with you, add customized pushpin icons, graphics, videos, and other cool tools. Check out the My Maps user guide at http://maps.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=68480 for details about how to use this great new feature. |
Tue, 20 November 2007
George reports news items concerning: a new home for the Welsh West Glamorgan Archives (see www.swansea.gov.uk/westglamorganarchives); Geni (www.geni.com)announces that more than 10 million profiles have been created on their service; Ruth Emmel of the Lee County [FL] Genealogical Society (www.LeeCountyGenealogy.org) has published an excellent new book titled, Let's Plant a Family Tree: How to Start Your Genealogy Research, which is geared toward young people just beginning their quest; and Brisco Washington Holder's gravestone was set in place in Memorial Park Cemetery in Jennings, St. Louis County, MO, on 30 October 2007. (View the stone.)
The Guys explain DNA, the available tests, and the benefits of tracing DNA in your genealogy. Then they discuss organization of your genealogical materials and two types of filing system schemes. The Guys close by discussing how they plan to research genealogy at their family Thanksgiving in Newberry, South Carolina. |
Tue, 13 November 2007
This week's show was recorded LIVE at the Texas State Genealogical Society Conference held on 9-10 November 2007 in Tyler, Texas, and hosted by the East Texas Genealogical Society. This was a great conference for The Guys and they were greeted, welcomed, and treated like kings!
The Guys present a definition and description of what a podcast really is. They then take questions from the audience and respond on topics relating to: French ancestors; locating information for a woman living in a New York state hospital (tuberculosis); obtaining transcripts from universities and records of teachers, professors, and fellowships; the possibility of a genealogical societies that lists records they are holding or projects they are working to complete; a description of G-mail; how do The Guys manage their collections of Web links?; The Guys' favorite Web sites other than Ancestry.com and Footnote.com; and the definition of "overjet" as it relates to wagons in which people migrated. |
Sat, 3 November 2007
News this week includes: the first ten years (1908-1917) of issues of Chicago's historic Polish newspaper, Dziennik Zwiazkowy (translated, Alliance Daily) has been digitized by the Center for Research Libraries and is fully searchable at http://ecollections.crl.edu, along with other interesting collections; GenWed.com (http://www.genwed.com/) is a new and growing Web site that will help you locate free online marriage records, and you can submit records for inclusion in the databases; and finally, on 30 October 2007, a gravestone has been set in St. Louis' Memorial Park for George's great uncle, Brisco Washington Holder -- his brick wall for over 20 years.
The Guys will be featured presenters at the Texas State Genealogical Society Conference in Tyler, Texas, next weekend -- 9-10 November 2008. More information is available at http://www.rootsweb.com/~txsgs/conference.pdf and The Guys hope you can drop by and say hello! George will be autographing limited numbers of his latest book, The Official Guide to Ancestry.com. Mister Edd in Cape Coral, Florida, asked for advice for websites that help reunite people with old photos of their family members. George suggested Megan Smolenyak's "Honoring Our Ancestors" site at http://www.HonoringOurAncestors.com/orphanphotos.html and DeadFred at http://www.deadfred.com. Drew's "Society Tip of the Week" was a recommendation of the use of a Web site called SurveyMonkey.com at http://www.surveymonkey.com/. Basic surveys for less than 100 responses are free; other size responses are reasonably priced for a monthly or annual basis. SurveyMonkey may be an ideal way to allow electronic voting in society elections, conducting surveys of members for preferred meeting and seminar topics, and obtaining feedback on programs, projects, and other subjects. George's "Web Site of the Week" is a new Web site called GenDisasters at http://www.gendisasters.com which contains dates, descriptions, newspaper transcripts, drawings/photos of fires, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, train wrecks, bridge collapses, and more, with dates spanning from the 1800s to the 1950s. The site is searchable by state and county, and browseable. It is ideal for helping place your ancestors into historical context with these calamitous events and/or to determine which courthouses and other repositories may have been damaged and their records lost or destroyed. The Guys share a collection of entertaining epitaphs from gravestones around the world. Drew reviews a book by Andro Linklater titled Measuring America, and then The Guys discuss land measurement systems that have been used in the United States. Finally, Drew discusses how to deal with missing data, such as maiden surnames, or no data whatsoever in your genealogical recording systems. |
Sun, 28 October 2007
News stories for the week include: The Generations Network, parent of Ancestry.com, is to be acquired by Spectrum Equity Investors; the National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) (http://www.archives.gov/st-louis/military-personnel/) opens access to more than 6M new military personnel records, including all the Official Military Personnel Files (OMPFs) prior to 1946; Individual Deceased Personnel Files (IDPFs) can be obtained by following instructions at http://www.no-quarter.org/gui/nq_idpf.php; Nova Scotia Vital Records Database for BMDs is available free at http://novascotiagenealogy.com; Georgia Death Certificates (1919-1927) are now available online at http://www.GeorgiaArchives.org (Virtual Vault link); the Canadian Genealogy Centre (http://www.collectionscanada.gc/ca/genealogy) has two new search tools - Ancestors Search and That's My Family; NEHGS and Ancestry.com announce new member benefits as part of a collaborative agreement, including reduced joint membership fees; Sorenson Companies has launched a new Genetree (http://www.genetree.com), a DNA testing and social networking site; The National Archives (UK) will digitize the 1911 census (see press release at http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/news/stories/156.htm?homepage=news); The Guys will be key speakers at the Texas State Genealogical Society Conference in Tyler, Texas, on November 9-10, 2008 (information at http://www.rootsweb.com/~txsgs/conference.pdf); George begins teaching U.S. Immigration and Naturalization course at Pharos (http://www.pharostutors.com) and announces other upcoming courses there.
Listener e-mail includes:
George's "Web Site of the Week" is NewsBank Inc. and its product, America's Genealogy Bank (http://www.newsbank.com/genealogists/). The Guys discuss America's Genealogy Bank, some search hints, and George relates some finds that caused him to do the "Genealogy Happy Dance." Drew discusses outreach programs offered by libraries. The Guys ask for listener input about what services they have and/or want libraries to provide to them as genealogists. |
Fri, 19 October 2007
Ancestry.com's new DNA facility came online at their Web site this week, allowing people to order paternal or maternal DNA tests and getting their results online to compare against other testers.
Listener e-mail includes: several more Hispanic genealogy Web sites - http://www.rootsweb.com/~cafara/index.html, http://www.gsha.net, and http://www.loscalifornianos.org; a recommendation of a book about the coal mining industry, The Day the Earth Caved In, by Joan Quigley; the ten most expensive telephone directories ever sold at http://abebooks.com/docs/Community/Featured/Genealogy; a new genealogy board game at http://www.genealogyboardgame.com; and online vital records for Shelby County, TN (http://register.shelby.tn.us/index.php). George's Web Site of the Week is The National Archives (U.K.) site at http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk where you'll find online records, indexes, tutorials, exhibits, and lots more. George reviews and discusses Footnote.com (http://www.footnote.com), a great genealogy subscription Web site. Drew discusses mindmapping, a method of problem solving. He suggests a Web site at MindMeister.com that offers you up to 6 free mindmaps (http://www.mindmeister.com), and Mindjet (http://www.mindjet.com) which sells MindManager software. |
Sun, 14 October 2007
This week's news includes details about the public outcry against the planned early closure date for the General Records Office (GRO) in the U.K., and Ancestry.com announces a digital scrapbooking application for members.
Listener Thomas alerts others to a number of resources for Hispanic Heritage Month: The Society of Hispanic Historical and Ancestral Research (SHAAR) (http://members.aol.com/shhar/) and its newsletter (http://www.somosprimos.com); Library of Congress Hispanic Reading Room (http://www.loc.gov/rr/hispanic) and the Index to the Enciclopedia Heraldica Hispano-Americana (http://www.loc.gov/rr.hispanic/geneal/index_gc.html/); HISPAGEN (http://www.hispagen.es/portal/enlaces.php); the Argentine Genealogy Database (http://familias-argentinas.com.ar/us_principal.htm); and the new portal to the Online Spanish Archives (http://pares.mcu.es); the society, Los Floridanos (http://www.losfloridanos.org); the Cuban Genealogy Club of Miami (http://www.cubangenclub.org); and the Cuban Heritage Collection at the University of Miami (http://www.library.miami.edu/umcuban). George's Web Site of the Week is Griffith's Valuation 1848-1864 at http://failteromhat.com/griffiths.htm, which is searchable by surname and viewable by county in alphabetical sequence. This is a great site to help locate ancestors during these year for which census records are not available due to fire. The Guys discuss methods for finding live people and some of the experiences they have had. They then discuss "pathfinders," which are the instructional guides found as printed guides in libraries and/or at libraries' Web sites. They are guides to using the various collections or working with specific resources. George just found a digital copy of another important great-uncle's death certificate. Can you guess where he found it? Listen for the answer and a review of another great Web site next week! |
Sat, 6 October 2007
We apologize for the delay in the release of this week's podcast. George suffered from laryngitis this week and was unable to record until Friday evening.
The news is extensive this week. Pharos Tutors (http://www.pharostutors.com/) announces that George has joined their online training staff to teach U.S.-related genealogical staff. His first class begins on 30 October 2007 with the topic of U.S. Immigration & Naturalization Documents. Another new Pharos course features expert Helen Osborn training a class in the use of The National Archives (TNA) U.K. Web site, its extraordinary contents and tools, and more. Macintosh users have a new tool in MacFamilyTree 5, produced in a beta version by Synium Software. The beta test version may be vulnerable to errors and crashes at this point. However, Mac users will revel in testing this new version of the software. Visit the Synium Software site for more information. ScotlandsPeople has announced enhancements to searches of census forms, and improvements to images and their handling. World Vital Records, Inc. (http://worldvitalrecords.com) and Allcensus (http://www.allcensus.com/) have partnered to provide digitized U.S. Federal Census images at the WorldVitalRecords.com Web site. The new issue of Internet Genealogy Magazine is out and has a wonderful collectionof new articles. Visit http://internet-genealogy.com for more information. George's Genealogy Web Site of the Week is About.com's Genealogy area at http://genealogy.about.com. Kimberly Powell is the knowledgeable, talented, and affable guide for that area, and she fills the site with great information and tips for breaking through those dastardly brick walls. "Brava, Kimberly!" The National Archives (TNA) in the U.K. announces the availability of 5,000 registers of Nonconformist records that may be searched online; the AncestorsOnBoard Web site is up to 1939 in the searchable outbound passenger lists project; you can now personalize, save, customize, bookmark your searches at their site. Finally, Recordkeeping magazine is a quarterly publication by TNA that describes great resources, recordkeeping strategies, and case studies. It is a fabulous online resource, in PDF format, that you absolutely must check out. You can access information about it and download the Spring 2007 issue at http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/recordsmanagement/advice/recordkeeping.htm. The mailbag brings announcements of two new Jewish research resources from the U.K., as well as a new 3-D digital imaging resource developed by Carnegie Mellon that can be used to decipher eroded cemetery inscriptions. George provides in-depth information about scanning old family photographs in the second of a two-part discussion of digitization technology. |
Thu, 27 September 2007
The news includes announcements of new content at WorldVitalRecords.com and information about the Florida State Genealogical Society's annual conference in November.
George's Web Site of the Week is the Civil War Soldiers & Sailors System (http://www.itd.nps.gov/cwss/) maintained by the U.S. National Park Service. He also talks about the books, The Naked Quaker by Diane Rapaport and Uncovering Your Ancestry through Family Photographs by Maureen A. Taylor. In the first of a two-part discussion, The Guys talk about scanning photographs and the issues related to graphics file types, scanners, and software. |
Thu, 20 September 2007
News this week includes: a $10M donation by Norman B. Leventhal to the Boston Public Library's map collection; publication of new fees for ordering copies of documents from the National Archives and Records Administration (see press release); announcement by The National Archives (UK) of the availability of Nonconformist birth, marriage and death records online; and the release of free upgrades to Family Tree Maker 2008.
George's Web Site of the Week is the Perry Castaneda Library Map Collection at the University of Texas at Austin (http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/index.html). The Guys discuss tips and suggestions for using microform readers. They also address the topic of excellent genealogical magazines that are available. |
Thu, 13 September 2007
The News includes: the launch of a new 9th The Generations Network, Inc., Web site at Ancestry Web site for Sweden (at http://www.ancestry.se); the introduction of DNA Ancestry (at http://dna.ancestry.com) and DNA testing services; and the announcement of Cook County, Illinois, births, marriages, and deaths online by January of 2008.
Listener e-mail reports include: many Pennsylvania Land Records are now online at the Pennsylvania State Archives at http://www.phmc.state.pa.us/bah/dam/landrec.htm; the Birmingham [Alabama] Public Library has an interesting and fun video it ints collection on YouTube.com. Watch it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAxrLJ5nw_g. A posting in the Mental Floss Magazine's blog at http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/7710 discusses and shows photos of "Strange Gravestones." Drew delivers his weekly Genealogy Society Tip. George's Web site of the week is Genwriters: Writing for Future Generations, at http://www.genwriters.com. The site was created by Phyllis Matthews Ziller and contains extensive tutorial, how-tos, and reference resources for writing family histories, biographies, and other historical documentation. Drew talks about Chris Dunham's blog, The Genealogue, at http://www.genealogue.com/, and about the Challenges posted there. The information is fun and informative, and the Challenges are excellent practice in honing your research skills. The Guys then discuss the use of City Directories in your research and tips for using them. (With thanks to Amy Johnson Crow, CG.) The Guys then examine and discuss some old family photographs that Drew's brother has uncovered, and their attempts at identifying the subjects. We learn about a Jewish mutual aid society, and George suggests studying old photos' environment and surroundings for additional clues to dating and identifying clues. |
Thu, 6 September 2007
The Guys share some listener e-mail, including a recommendation for a Web site that reviews and ranks online computer back-up services at http://www.BackupReview.info, and additional land patents being digitized and indexed at the Bureau of Land Management, General Land Office Records, site at http://www.glorecords.blm.gov/. RootsMagic announces a new minor update for the RootsMagic software.
George discusses his "Web Site of the Week," the Online Searchable Death Indexes & Records, at http://www.deathindexes.com. The remainder of the podcast is devoted to helping to debunk three prominent genealogical research myths:
Thu, 30 August 2007
George delivers this week's significant news items, and the Guys follow with listener e-mail items, including a definition of the cemetery inscription, "DoP."
This is followed by a discussion of three newer "social networking" sites for genealogists: Geni (http://www.geni.com); Famillion (http://www.famillion.com/); and MyHeritage (http://www.myheritage.com/). The Guys discuss the new Family Tree Maker 2008. They then talk about concerns over the Internet Biographical Collection made available at Ancestry.com and some issues associated with caching of Web sites by both Web search engines and corporations offering aggregated collections of Web sites for topical use. (Note that Ancestry.com has since withdrawn the collection in question.) |
Sat, 25 August 2007
The distribution of this week's podcast was delayed due to problems with the U.S. Domain Name Server (DNS) and our podcast network. We apologize for the delay.
George's news items include: details about the LDS' FamilySearch Genesis digitization project; Family Tree Maker 2008 has just been released for sale; the new portable digital microfilm scanner called the ST Genie from S-T Imaging; and two big conferences coming in 2008. This week's listener mail includes R.J.'s quandary about his Sommerfelt line. Drew asks listeners to check out R.J.'s blog at http://schulzresearch.blogspot.com and to consider the challenge, and to send us e-mail suggestions for him. The guys discuss the FGS Conference held in Ft. Wayne on August 15-18, and describe their experiences in the new Allen County Public Library's genealogy collection. They then discuss the much anticipated book by Elizabeth Shown Mills, Evidence Explained: Citing History Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace. It is the most complete reference about source citations ever written, and is brilliantly organized. It is available from Genealogy Publishing Co. in hardcover and in electronic format at Footnote.com. |
Mon, 13 August 2007
George's news report this week includes: the announcement of the non-exclusive agreement between NARA and CustomFlix Labs (a part of the Amazon.com group) to make thousands of NARA's historic films available for sale through Amazon.com in DVD-on-Demand format; The National Archives (U.K.) and Ancestry.co.uk have reached an agreement to make the digitized pension records of more than 1 million soldiers who fought in WWI (catalogue group WO 364) available for search and download at the Ancestry Web site; and The Generations Network will sponsor a Youth Fair at the FGS Conference in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, this coming week. In addition, George announces Irish Fest in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on August 16-19, 2007, at Henry W. Maier Festival Park. Fly Away Travel has announced its Genealogy Seminar at Sea, October 25-November 1, 2008, at www.genealogycruises.com aboard the fabulous new Royal Caribbean Liberty of the Seas. Steve Danko has begun a blog for the United Polish Genealogical Societies Conference 2008 to be held in Salt Lake City on April 18-21, 2008.
George introduces a new feature, the Web Site of the Week. This week's site is IPUMS USA's U.S. federal census enumeration forms (1850-2000) and enumerator instructions AND census questions for the population schedules 1850 to present (except 1890). The site is at http://usa.ipums.org/usa/voliii/tEnumForms.shtml. Drew discusses comparisons of four major genealogical software packages for PC users in the U.S. Drew also presents his second installment of his new feature, Genealogy Society Tip of the Week. The Guys conclude with a discussion of identity theft, genealogy, and the relationship or non-relationship between the two. |
Wed, 8 August 2007
George reports on stories about: Footnote.com's new partnership with ACPL; new content at HistoryKat; ScotlandsPeople's Registers; The Remembering Site; the launch of StoryofMyLife.com; and the release of Elizabeth Shown Mills' new book, Evidence Explained: Citing History Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace.
Listener mail includes: Jungle Disk, an application to help store your data at Amazon.com's S3 ™ Storage Service; and a directory of Online Searchable Death Indexes & Records (http://www.deathindexes.com/). Drew launches a new feature on the podcast, "Society Tip of the Week." George discusses conference syllabi, why it is important to retain them in your personal reference library, and how to purchase surplus syllabi from NGS and FGS in the U.S. after their conferences. Drew shares information about the thorn, a letter used in the Anglo-Saxon and Icelandic alphabets. Drew and George discuss the discovery of an historical cemetery survey performed by the Hillsborough County [Florida] Historical Commission and published in 1954. The survey had been almost completely forgotten, but the Guys are going to investigate the contents for a project that their local genealogical society is doing on Find-a-Grave. How will you preserve your ancestors' cemetery information? |
Mon, 30 July 2007
The Genealogy Guys celebrate their 100th podcast this week!
George reports on the partnering of Diversity Restoration Solutions, Slave Descendants Freedom Society, and Family Tree DNA to offer African Americans the opportunity to research their DNA. Archive CD Books USA announces the availability of a new CD, the Digested Summary and Alphabetical List of Private Claims Which Have Been Presented to the House of Representatives, representing more than 100,000 names and claims from 1789 to 1882. The collection is on sale for $19.97 at the link above. A new start-up company, MemoryPress, is offering a start-to-finish solution to publishing your personal or family history in a beautiful hardbound book. A new organization, Keeping Genealogical Records Open Workgroup (KGROW) has been formed to fight the closing of public records as a guise for a war against identify theft and terrorism. KGROW is a project of the Florida Chapter of the Association of Professional Genealogists. Listeners' email included: one of the better places to learn more about Mexican resources -- http://hispanicgenealogy.blogspot.com; a recommended Web site to learn about a wide array of data backup options -- http://www.BackupReview.info; and The Guys discussed organizational options for digitized materials, file naming options, and storage systems. George discussed an article published in Ancestors, the magazine of The National Archives in the U.K., concerning "The Lost Colony" of Roanoke Island. The settlement by Sir Walter Raleigh disappeared between August 1587 and 1590. Now, there is a project under way to use DNA to possibly trace any descendants of any settlers who may have survived. Drew and George reminisced about some highlights of the first 100 episodes of the podcast, and discussed some plans for the next hundred. They thank their thousands of listeners worldwide, and express gratitude to their loyal sponsors. |
Sun, 22 July 2007
George announces the new version of Heredis (v. X.2), available at the MyHeredis Web site (http://www.myheredis.com/index.html), and a host of new and updated Ancestry.com databases. Drew discusses his experience with the Beta version of Family Tree Maker 2008. He also announces the launch of the English language version of GeneaSofts (http://geneasofts.geneanet.org/en/), a French site devoted to discussing and reviewing genealogy-related software programs.
Responding to e-mail from a number of listeners concerning recommendations for Irish and Mexican research resources, Drew and George recommend two books by Ancestry Publishing: Finding Your Irish Ancestors: A Beginner's Guide, by David S. Ouimette, and Finding Your Mexican Ancestors: A Beginner's Guide, by George and Peggy Ryskamp They also recommend message boards at Ancestry.com and Genforum.com, mailing lists at RootsWeb.com. George discusses the imperative need to backup your genealogical data, and then The Guys discuss backup options, both on external hard disk drives and online sites such as Mozy (http://mozy.com/). George responds to a listener who wants to know how to effectively report missing census page images and indexing errors to Ancestry.com for correction. Next week's show will be the 100th Podcast! Don't miss it! |
Wed, 18 July 2007
George announces the availability of the Beta version of Family Tree Maker 2008 and the opportunity to pre-order for mid-August delivery at the introductory price of $29.95 at the Ancestry Store. Drew and George acknowledge the undisputed "Genealogy Guys Podcast" Marathon Endurance leader!
George announces the breakthrough of his >20-year brickwall to find the death date and location of his Great-uncle Brisco Washington Holder, thanks to research by a listener who located him in the Missouri Death Records Certificate database, 1910-1956. George talks about his subsequent research in other records, calls to the cemetery and the funeral home, and other possible records he will research while at the FGS Conference in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, in August. Drew makes additional suggestions, including references to the use of the new release of GenSmarts, V.2. Drew talks about online books and the wealth of printed genealogical sources, while George suggests the use of the book, Printed Sources, edited by Kory L. Meyerink (published by Ancestry in 1998) - an excellent reference to many published materials. |
Wed, 11 July 2007
George announces a new version of Pocket Genealogist software and a list of upcoming conferences. George and Drew discuss listeners' email about: "The Portal to Texas History" at texashistory.unt.edu/about/ which contains digitized books, histories, and photos of Texas; the use of WorldCat (www.worldcat.org) and Google Books (books.google.com) to locate books containing information on a French village; and strategies for getting around "brick walls." The Guys also discuss the new release of GenSmarts, Version 2.0, a software tool that provides research suggestions and tools to organize your genealogy database contents.
Fri, 6 July 2007
George announces some British genealogical news and Web sites, including the medieval fine rolls of Henry III at www.finerollshenry3.org.uk. Drew reviews Andro Linklater's book, The Fabric of America. And Drew and George discuss "Geographic Hygiene" -- entering place names in a standard way and checking the accuracy based on the time period, the political boundaries, and the responsible geopolitical entity at the time.
Fri, 29 June 2007
George announces the new French and Italian services from Ancestry.com. Drew researches the early days of musician Nellie Lutcher by checking census records. And George and Drew discuss some books that Drew brought back home after his mother's recent funeral, including Drew's father's high school yearbook, a book of old photographs of Newberry, SC, and a heritage book from Newberry.
Sun, 17 June 2007
News includes the digitization of Canadian passenger lists (www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/genealogy), an interactive online map of Chicago (chicagoancestors.org), and Diane Rapaport's soon-to-be-released book The Naked Quaker: True Crimes and Controversies from the Courts of Colonial New England. Listener mail includes details about Jewish marriage customs and a question about donating rare cemetery books. In response to a listener question, George and Drew describe their list of essential books for the genealogy reference shelf.
Thu, 14 June 2007
News about new records at Ancestry.com, and the use of DNA to attempt to solve the mystery of the Lost Colony. Drew returns from the Southern California Genealogical Society's Genealogy Jamboree and shares interviews with Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak of Roots Television (rootstelevision.com), Leland Meitzler of Everton's (genealogyblog.com), and Susan Kitchens of Family Oral History Using Digital Tools (familyoralhistory.us).
Wed, 6 June 2007
News of the upcoming Polish Genealogical Society of America (www.pgsa.org) conference in Schaumberg, Illinois on September 28-30, and listener mailbag with several items about military records, and an interesting find of funeral documents on eBay. George discusses June weddings, and Drew provides more details about LibraryThing (librarything.com). Drew also talks about how he uses newspaper databases to locate obituaries for distant cousins.
Wed, 30 May 2007
Drew clarifies the item from last week concerning using photo folders as screen savers, and updates the latest regarding finding the descendants of opera singer Henri Scott. George and Drew discuss military records of all types.
Wed, 23 May 2007
News and announcements include Lisa Louise Cooke's new weekly Genealogy Gems Podcast (available online at genealogygemspodcast.com), the latest version of Reunion software for the Macintosh (www.leisterpro.com), the Records Access digitization and indexing program of FamilySearch, and the successful recent annual conference of the National Genealogical Society in Richmond (www.ngsgenealogy.org). George discusses Robert Pols book Family Photographs 1860-1945, and how to use books like Joel Whitburn's Pop Memories 1890-1964 to identify the songs that were popular when your recent ancestors were living. Drew clears up a few puzzles in kinship terminology, and talks about his attempt to discover the living descendants of the late opera singer Henri Scott. [Note to listeners: In the episode, Drew mistakenly refers to Henri's daughter Eunice as "Emma".]
Wed, 16 May 2007
Listener mailbag includes an item from the editor of the Swedish American Genealogist (www.etgenealogy.se/sag.htm) about displaying photos as screen savers. Drew discusses Argali (argali.com), PC software that makes it easy to look for phone numbers and street addresses, and George discusses mortality schedules.
Tue, 8 May 2007
Announcements include Footnote.com's Revolutionary War documents, the WeRelate.org wiki social networking site, the June 8-10 Southern California Genealogical Society Jamboree in Burbank (www.scgsgenealogy.com/jamboree.htm), the LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City's study of genealogy to understand heart disease, and the Genealogy Concierge service of the Edinburgh Sheraton Grand Hotel and Spa. Mailbag brings questions and comments about backing up USB flash drives, what to call former spouses of parents, how to cite items found in WorldCat, and how to create personalized maps using Google's My Maps feature. George and Drew discuss database search strategies for atypical surnames and the use of reference resources (such as dictionaries) available in personal libraries and public libraries.
Wed, 2 May 2007
News includes the disastrous fire at the Georgetown (DC) Public Library and the new US/Mexican border crossing records collection at Ancestry.com. Mailbag includes lessons learned from crashed external hard drives, access to a newspaper project ("Chronicling America") at www.loc.gov/chroniclingamerica, and a lot of listener feedback to the past podcast discussion of FindAGrave. Other topics include ways to get the most out of Google, and more tips for genealogical spring cleaning.
Wed, 25 April 2007
George announces the website FamilyLink.com (a product of World Vital Records Inc.). George and Drew discuss uploading GEDCOM files, the use of the FindaGrave.com website, and where to begin genealogical spring cleaning.
Thu, 19 April 2007
Announcements include the new Ancestry Press product (ancestrypress.com), free access to Ellis Island records thru April 30 (www.ellisislandexperience.com), and the annual Spring Seminar of the Alabama Genealogical Society at Samford University in Birmingham on May 5 (www.algensoc.org). Major topics discussed include what to do when one inherits a large collection of family photographs, why you should record everyone with your research surnames in your geographic areas, and how you can make life easier as a member of the audience at a genealogical lecture.
Tue, 10 April 2007
Topics include: reminders about upcoming large conferences/seminars (NGS at ngsgenealogy.org, FGS at fgs.org, and the 2nd Annual Genealogy Seminar at Sea (www.genealogycruises.com); followups on translating Latin (www.nottingham.ac.uk/mss/online/skills/dating/latin.phtml), on newspaper archives, on testing one's skills (www.bcgcertification.org/skillbuilders/), and on looking for info from the Boston Transcript; backups of data; a new site for listeners to investigate regarding free live online family history classes (www.familyhistoryliveonline.com); the pros and cons of blogs vs. non-blog websites; possible problems using FamilySearch Indexing by a Linux user; an interesting drawing found in an Oxford County (Ontario) marriage book; the National Institute for Genealogical Studies at the University of Toronto (www.genealogicalstudies.com); feedback regarding show notes; the basics of subscribing to the Genealogy Guys Podcast using iTunes (so that one can sync the podcasts to an iPod), printing the show notes, and searching for content in past episodes; and whether or not to refer to siblings of direct ancestors as "ancestors". George also briefly reviews the book Infamous Scribblers.
Tue, 3 April 2007
George and Drew discuss the transliteration of documents (such as those in Latin), and tips for translating from one language to another. Drew also leads a discussion about using WorldCat to locate local newspapers, partially inspired by a listener's suggestion for using the U.S. Newspaper Program (www.neh.gov/projects/usnp.html). Mailbag and news includes Roots Television's (www.rootstelevision.com) new RootsTube channel, the Virginia Freedmen Extraction and Indexing Project (blackhistorymuseum.org/bureau), the Indiana Marriage Indexing Project (www.indgensoc.org/indexing.html), the storage of genealogy files online, the new Web 2.0-style LivingGenealogy.com site, and the upcoming state conference in Ohio (www.ogs.org).
Tue, 27 March 2007
Drew reminds listeners to nominate individuals and genealogy societies for the awards offered by the Federation of Genealogical Societies (www.fgs.org/fgs-awards.htm); shares the British government's response to the e-petition to provide earlier access to the 1911, 1921, and 1931 British censuses; and announces that Cyndi (of Cyndi's List) has a new blog at cyndislist.blogspot.com. George announces the Newberry Library's (www.newberry.org) annual workshop, this one focusing on Maps and Genealogy. Other listener mailbag items include the records of the Old Bailey (www.oldbaileyonline.org), Chicago area burial records, ways to deal with thick or odd-sized documents, locating newspapers in archives, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee map collection (www.uwm.edu/Libraries/digilib/maps/), and equipment used to restore photographs.
Tue, 20 March 2007
George and Drew discuss the recent announcement regarding Ancestry.com databases no longer being available at Family History Centers, and George also announces the new Iowa database. George mentions his recent speaking engagement in Hot Springs Village, Arkansas, while Drew talks about his own visit to DeLand, Florida. George reviews Kathy Chater's book about doing research in the UK and Ireland, and Nigel Cawthorne's book about unusual old English laws. Listener mailbag includes a discussion of people who lived near county and state boundaries, considerations regarding posting copies of vital record certificates online, the Geneanet site (www.geneanet.org), the Kentucky Vital Records Project (kyvitals.com), a question about NewspaperArchives.com, a way to organize materials by type of record, the North Carolina "Cemetery Census" site (cemeterycensus.com/nc), a happy user who found relatives in the Kansas State Census database, an announcement of the University of Washington's Extension program for Genealogy and Family History (www.extension.washington.edu), and a question about using tripods for digital cameras.
Tue, 13 March 2007
George reviews several news books, including the multivolume set of Revolutionary War Period Bible, Family, & Marriage Records (www.revwar.patriotpublishers.com), a new book about colonial ancestors, and a fantastic new book about researching Mexican ancestry. News includes the Jewish Genealogical Society in New York City's all-day seminar "Family History and the Holocaust: A Day of Learning" (www.jgsny.org/dayoflearning.htm). Listener mailbag includes more info about timelines, where to find the Genealogy Guys Podcast show notes, how to "re-jump start" interest in researching one's family, a new podcast coming from the Czech Republic (pathfinders.cz), how to follow up on items found in the AGBI, whether or not one should trust earlier research done on one's family, a suggestion about the Genealogy Guys Podcast having some "cover art" for iTunes, and some detailed info on using a digital camera for taking photos of documents (via the Kim Komando Show site, at komando.com).
Mon, 5 March 2007
George and Drew share news (including a reminder of the planned research trip to London), and listener e-mail (ancestors who had pottery factories, and the U.K. National Archives podcasts). George talks about using timelines and ancestor profiles to help explain why ancestors behaved as they did. Drew points out that the ideas of inquiry-based learning and critical thinking apply to the processes that good genealogists engage in.
Wed, 28 February 2007
After a few news items about the NGS Hall of Fame (www.ngsgenealogy.org/comhall.cfm), German postcards at Ancestry.com, preservation information for family treasures from the Library of Congress (www.loc.gov/preserv/familytreasures/), the Practical Archivist Blog (practicalarchivist.blogspot.com), and the new ProQuest CSA company, George and Drew dig into the podcast listener mailbag to discuss (in no particular order):
Tue, 20 February 2007
Topics include new sorting features of WorldCat (worldcat.org), and a discussion of folksonomies, tagging, and metadata, especially as it applies to photographs on such sites as Flickr (www.flickr.com). News and listener mailbag includes the use of vitalrec.com to learn more about when states began recording vital records, a Quaker genealogy conference (April 27th thru April 29th in Waynesville, Ohio - www.mlcook.lib.oh.us provides more information), photographic restoration (www.genealogy.com/10_restr.html), tips on using digital cameras to record documents, and a reminder of several upcoming genealogy cruises.
Mon, 12 February 2007
News includes the Nevada marriage and divorce data now available on Ancestry.com. Listener mailbag brings in items about the French-Canadian Drouin Collection coming to Ancestry.com (from the American-Canadian Genealogical Society at acgs.org), what may or may not be available at your nearest NARA branch regarding agricultural census schedules, and a new episode of Bill Puller's Genealogy Tech Podcast (genealogytechpodcast.com). Major topics include George's "ancestor wall" of photographs in the
living room, and Drew's discussion of how to get the most out of
visiting a local genealogy society.
Tue, 6 February 2007
George announces a genealogy conference in Tallahassee, Florida (www.talgen.org), a computerized genealogy conference in Provo (ce.byu.edu/cw/cwcompu), and three different genealogy cruises between late October and mid November, and reminds listeners of the writing contest deadline for ISFHWE (www.rootsweb.com/~cgc/contest.htm). Listeners share their successes in keeping local museums in business (www.gerisgenes.com/scmuseum.html), ask how to cite census records, ask how to do genealogy on a budget, tell us about the Genealogy Guys being on a French genealogy wiki (www.geneawiki.com/index.php/Recherche_Etats-Unis), solicit UK listeners to sign a petition to release census info (petitions.pm.gov.uk/CensusInfoFreed/), and talk about how much fun it is to volunteer for the FamilySearch Indexing Project. Drew gets ready to begin his new job as an "Information Literacy Librarian" at the University of South Florida and discusses information literacy concepts with George, and both share their suggestions for being more helpful when posting queries to mailing lists and message boards (especially including the name of the county in which a town is located).
Wed, 31 January 2007
George and Drew again share news and listener mailbag, including a way to store files using Gmail (https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/1593/), a question about how to handle conflicting information, some questions relating to Macintosh-using genealogists and suggestions about adding places to queries on mailing lists and message boards, and a question about what to do when you're left with many boxes of a grandparent's collected papers. George announces the 2007 conference of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS) to be held in Salt Lake City (www.slc2007.org), shares a listener suggestion about USAPhotomaps software (jdmcox.com), announces Footnote.com's digitization project involving NARA images (www.footnote.com/nara), and announces the Scottish parochial register images availability online (www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk).
Sun, 21 January 2007
George and Drew announce the new ProQuest offerings (two African-American newspapers, and a Civil War-era collection of pamphlets and newspapers). George points out the renovated British Library website (www.bl.uk), and remarks on the ability to search Ancestry.com for public family trees. George and Drew also talk about Donna Moughty's recent talk to the Florida Genealogical Society about "Who Is the Head of This Household?" (a census overview) and Donna's role within the Genealogical Speakers Guild (www.genspeakguild.org). George also discusses a new findmypast.com offering, "Ancestors on Board", available online at www.ancestorsonboard.com, which covers outbound passengers lists from the UK.
Listener mailbag brings in the correct pronunciation of "Quinte", a brief review of Legacy software, a great eBay sucess story involving an ancestral heirloom, podcasts from the National Archives (UK), how to order "The Source" for delivery in Germany, the availability of the online version of Internet Genealogy magazine, a reminder about ICAPGen accreditation, the volunteer project to index Family History Library microfilm at www.familysearchindexing.org, a question about how to keep up with new content at the LDS FamilySearch site, ways to convert digital images into word processing text, and a system for tracking both paper and digital documents. |
Wed, 17 January 2007
Drew returns from visiting Salt Lake City, where he attended board meetings of the Federation of Genealogical Societies and did some research in the Family History Library. George announces the new Ancestry.de service for German research. Drew describes his FGS activities, and shares some of his discoveries in the FHL, including a possible War of 1812 ancestor. George discusses the differences between transcriptions, extracts, and abstracts.
Sun, 14 January 2007
The next episode of The Genealogy Guys Podcast will be published late Tuesday. We were originally hoping to do a podcast today (Sunday), but the quality of the wireless connectivity in the hotel room at Salt Lake City has made it difficult. We appreciate your patience!
-- posted at: 8:47 PM
Mon, 8 January 2007
George shares the URL for the UK postcards site (www.oldukphotos.com), talks about the Genealogy Blog Finder (blogfinder.genealogue.com), and discusses the latest issues of Digital Genealogist magazine (www.digitalgenealogist.com) and Internet Genealogy. Drew tells about a podcast listener who used Google Maps to find something interesting about the French terrain, and notes that several listeners have brought up LibraryThing at www.librarything.com (an online tool for keeping track of one's personal library). Drew discusses his recent library visit where he discovers the benefits of examining the newest books, and Drew and George share their tips for getting past brick walls, including unsolvedancestry.com.
Tue, 2 January 2007
George and Drew take a look back at 2006, a look ahead to 2007, and discuss a variety of ideas for doing genealogy during the winter months. Among the items discussed during news, announcements, and listener mailbag: the extended deadline for submitting lecture proposals to the FGS 2008 Philadelphia conference (www.fgs.org); the plans for a U.S. version of the popular U.K. "Who Do You Think You Are?" TV series; the name change of 1837online.com to www.findmypast.com; a website for displaying old U.K. photos; and an interesting new site (www.familysearchlabs.org) that keeps up with the latest technology projects of the LDS.
Tue, 26 December 2006
George shares press releases about the renaming of MyFamily.com, Inc. as The Generations Network and about the new features of the Ancestry.com personal family trees. The mailbag brings mail from listeners whose ancestors are from "Whales", who use portable applications (from portableapps.com) stored on a USB flash drive, and who are interested in DNA testing and whether or not census index errors are caused by an OCR process. Drew follows up previous podcasts with information about his new Western Digital My Book external hard drive (used for backups) and about online phonebooks. George describes the surprise in discovering what an old photo is made of, and talks about how Christmas Day was spent. Finally, genealogist Jana Sloan Broglin returns for another interview by Drew.
Tue, 19 December 2006
Announcements include the relaunch of Ancestry Magazine, the purchase of ProQuest Information and Learning (the division of ProQuest that includes HeritageQuest Online) by Cambridge Information Group, the release of Calico Pie's Family Historian 3.1 (more info at www.family-historian.co.uk), The National Archives (UK) online release of UK Outbound Passenger Lists (with a 10% extra free if you buy units using code AOB10PCX) with more info at ancestorsonboard.com, and the ISFHWE Annual Writing Contest (more info at www.rootsweb.com/~cgc/contest.htm). Listener e-mail asks about how to present (and sometimes limit) information shared with newly found cousins. George and Drew, following up on last week's podcast in which they discussed the hardware they use, identify their favorite genealogy-related software tools (even when they aren't specifically for genealogy). Finally, George and Drew review the new series of surname books published by Ancestry.com entitled "Our Name in History".
Tue, 12 December 2006
A podcast listener writes in about free census worksheets and tutorials at www.censusmate.com. In response to another listener question, George and Drew discuss their computer hardware: desktop computers, notebooks, smartphones, wireless networks, scanners, multi-function printers, and digital cameras. George talks about sources of information for learning about an ancestor's occupation. Drew points out another source for relatively current newspapers: LexisNexis Academic.
Tue, 5 December 2006
As December begins, George suggests a place to shop for genealogy gifts: The Ancestry Store (theancestrystore.com), and he announces the new 1851 and 1861 Scotland census databases. George also mentions the new test for U.S. citizenship. The mailbag brings information about newspaper projects (www.library.uiuc.edu/inp and www.neh.gov/projects/usnp.html), and a question about a Texas application for a mortuary warrant. Drew interviews Deborah Abbott about collateral lines research, slaveholder records, and things not to be overlooked on the U.S. census. Finally, Drew thanks a listener for visiting the grave of Drew's uncle and sending along photos from the U.S. military cemetery near Cambridge, England.
Tue, 28 November 2006
After some brief items from genealogy news and listener mailbag, George and Drew discuss the recent Thanksgiving visit of George's relatives (including their photos and other family materials), and give their opinions about the relative merits of genealogy cruises vs. national genealogy conferences. Fletcher the cat weighs in near the end of the podcast, but it turns out later that she is merely happy to have re-discovered a long-lost stuffed cat toy.
Mon, 20 November 2006
George announces the new Ancestry.com store (theancestrystore.com), and reminds listeners of Ancestry's new German genealogical site (ancestry.de). George shares listener e-mail about Canadian passenger lists at Collections Canada (www.collectionscanada.ca/archivianet/passenger/). George also talks about using the Internet Public Library to find links to newspaper sites (www.ipl.org). Drew talks about using newspapers, including the NewsBank database Access World News. George shares a tip about using date ranges in Google. And Drew mentions metasearch tools, including the Copernic Agent Basic software (www.copernic.com).
Tue, 14 November 2006
George returns from speaking at the Florida State Genealogical Society conference in Melbourne, and spreads the news about the new passenger lists at Ancestry.com. Drew talks about two new services that provide a way to listen to podcasts (including the Genealogy Guys Podcast) using an ordinary phone: Podlinez (podlinez.com) and Fonpods (fonpods.com). Drew shares his interview with Irish genealogical expert Eileen O'Duill. Drew also receives a two-volume family history in the mail that gives details about his Eidson ancestry, and he talks about the virtual world of Second Life (secondlife.com), where librarians and genealogists are collaborating on new ways to teach and learn genealogy.
Tue, 7 November 2006
George and Drew return from the genealogy cruise and give listeners an idea of what it is like. Drew also shares his visit to a cemetery on St. Maarten. The first issue of Digital Genealogist (which includes an article by Drew) is now available for free online at www.digitalgenealogist.com. George announces a new Welsh database, and reminds listeners of the November special for RootsMagic's new software, Family Atlas.
Sat, 28 October 2006
George announces Ancestorsonboard.com, a new database for passenger lists for those leaving the British Isles between 1890 and 1960. Other topics include the new online magazine, Digital Genealogist; and the new GenealogyBank.com database service; George and Drew dig into the podcast listener mailbag and discuss such topics as a fascinating story from a cemetery visit, strange 1820 U.S. Federal census columns, birth information supplied to the Social Security Administration, and death dates that appear in the Social Security Death Index. Podcast listeners are also encouraged to check out the genealogy segments appearing on ABC's Good Morning America show.
Tue, 24 October 2006
George and Drew mention the new Internet Explorer 7 and Mozilla Firefox 2.0 browsers. Ancestry.com has added German content. George and Drew have taken their first look at the new NewsBank genealogy databases product, GenealogyBank.com. George discusses an online map browsing service for Ireland, www.pasthomes.com. Drew interviews genealogy blogger Steve Danko (www.stephendanko.com) and discusses his research into his Polish ancestry. Finally, George and Drew talk about how easy it is to set up a genealogy research blog using Blogger or LiveJournal, and they also discuss some techniques in using pre-1850 U.S. censuses. Drew invites listeners to visit his personal research blog at drewsmith-genealogy.blogspot.com.
Tue, 17 October 2006
George announces RootsMagic's new software product, Family Atlas, and its introductory price (www.familyatlas.com/introspecial.htm). Drew interviews professional genealogist Linda Woodward Geiger, where they talk about things to avoid when creating genealogy websites, what goes on in a state chapter meeting of the Association of Professional Genealogists, the fun of "ancestor roadshows" at state and national conferences, and the Regional In-depth Genealogical Studies Alliance (www.rigsalliance.org). Finally, George and Drew discuss the importance of geography in genealogical research, and suggest a number of books as well as online historical map collections (the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection at www.davidrumsey.com, and the Perry-Castaneda Library Map Collection, UT-Austin at www.lib.utexas.edu/maps).
Tue, 10 October 2006
News includes the new RootsTelevision site (www.rootstelevision.com). Drew shares his interview with Paul Milner, where they discuss Paul's career and Paul offers advice on conducting British research. George talks about the usefulness of voter registration records. Finally, has George discovered that he and Drew are related? Listen and find out!
Mon, 2 October 2006
News items include the tragic death of genealogy librarian Ryan Taylor, an update to last week's naturalization topic including the Italian Genealogical Group's database project (www.italiangen.org/databaselist.stm), the upcoming conference of the North Carolina Genealogical Society (www.ncgenealogy.org) in Raleigh, the soon-to-be-available first issue of Digital Genealogist (www.digitalgenealogist.com), the availability of British Telecom telephone books on Ancestry.com, and George's book regarding London research repositories (www.lulu.com/content/253150). George suggests things to do during Family History Month and swaps stories with Drew regarding genealogical serendipity. Drew shares his interview with well-known genealogist Laura Prescott.
Mon, 25 September 2006
George and Drew take the Genealogy Guys Podcast on the road to a monthly meeting of the Lee County Genealogical Society in Ft. Myers, Florida, where they discuss naturalization and take questions from the audience. They share images of naturalization records and Drew points out the great example of Steve Danko's blog (www.stephendanko.com). Drew also shares a statement from Chris Cowan, Vice President of Publishing for ProQuest Information and Learning, announcing the latest updates to the PERSI database available through HeritageQuest Online.
Mon, 18 September 2006
Drew interviews Audrey Collins, a reader advisor from The National Archives' Family Records Centre in London (www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/visit/planfrc.htm). George and Drew discuss the past Saturday's annual fall seminar of the Florida Genealogical Society (Tampa), and the amount of work that goes into planning and executing an all-day genealogy seminar. The Genealogy Guys also pass along a few genealogical research tips and techniques they learned from the seminar's speaker, Hank Jones (www.hankjones.com), an expert on Palatine research and a collector of interesting and unusual stories of genealogical research experiences.
Mon, 11 September 2006
George and Drew discuss how to find out about our ancestors' occupations. [Note: The correct URL for the USGenWeb page giving explanations of old occupation names is http://www.usgenweb.org/research/occupations.shtml]
Drew shares an interview with Maureen Taylor (the Photo Detective) and David Lambert (of the New England Historic Genealogical Society) and their project involving photographs of individuals associated with the American Revolutionary War. For details, visit http://www.maureentaylor.com/projects.html Other topics include the results of the NARA access petition drive, the availability of FGS 2006 conference recordings at http://stores.lulu.com/fgs2006. The Genealogy Guys also recommend a visit to fellow genealogist Steve Danko's blog (www.stephendanko.com). |
Tue, 5 September 2006
George and Drew return from Boston with a report of highlights from the 2006 Federation of Genealogical Societies conference. George also talks about the urgent petition regarding a proposed reduction in NARA research hours (www.petitiononline.com/FGS2006/petition.html) which must be submitted no later than September 8; the brochure for the Genealogy Guys' 2007 Research Tour to London is now online (see the menu on this site); George points out a serious problem with the way ProQuest is applying updates to the PERSI database; and the locations of the next two FGS conferences are announced. Information about the Association of Personal Historians conference (www.personalhistorians.org) in Portland on October 4-8 is provided, and George mentions a name thesaurus (www.namethesaurus.com/Thesaurus/Search.asp).
Mon, 28 August 2006
Just before the Genealogy Guys head off for the FGS Conference in Boston, Drew announces the Ebenezer, GA Heritage Day Festival on Labor Day for Salzburgers (www.georgiasalzburgers.com) and the University of Washington Extension Program's Genealogy and Family History Certificate (www.extension.washington.edu/ext/certificates/gfh/gfh_mtg.asp), and shares listener tips regarding both WorldCat and state archives. George and Drew outline what topics they'll be addressing at the FGS Conference, and the Guys will also be at the Lee County Genealogical Society in Ft. Myers, Florida on September 20 to produce a "live" podcast. George's "Along Those Lines" column will start being seen on September 7th in the Signal Hill Tribune in Signal Hill, California (thanks to a podcast listener). Drew shares his recent experience participating in a Skypecast moderated by Dick Eastman, both of the Guys talk in detail about next year's research trip to London (e-mail email@example.com for more info), and a listener question about a gas station leads to a discussion about locating information about businesses.
Mon, 21 August 2006
George talks about two January 2007 events in Salt Lake City: the Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy (www.infouga.org) and the NGS Research Trip (www.ngsgenealogy.org/edutripsaltlake.cfm). George and Drew are especially pleased to announce the 2007 Genealogy Guys Research Trip to London (July 14-24). (If you want to be placed on the list to receive information, please send an e-mail to email@example.com.) The Guys then share some recent research stories involving friends, including locating a hard-to-find marriage certificate in England, and identifying resources to find out more about a New Mexico rancher. Drew brings listeners up-to-date about the migration of RootsWeb's genealogy mailing lists to new software, and then discusses the issue of Virginia's independent cities. Finally, George reviews the latest edition of The Source.
Mon, 14 August 2006
As the days count down toward the Federation of Genealogical Society's upcoming Boston conference, Drew and George announce that Paul Milner is a new co-leader for the National Genealogical Society's Britain and Ireland Forum (www.ngsgenealogy.org/forums/britainirelandforum.cfm), and that NGS is sponsoring a January 2007 research trip to Salt Lake City (www.ngsgenealogy.org/edutripsaltlake.cfm). Following up on last week's episode regarding boxer Bob Fitzsimmons, a listener reminds the Guys about Find A Grave (www.findagrave.com). George announces Liz Kerstens' new e-magazine Digital Genealogist (www.digitalgenealogist.com). After George discusses tips for deciphering old documents (handwriting, abbreviations, and language), Drew alerts listeners to upcoming changes for RootsWeb mailing lists (lists.rootsweb.com) and to a new way to access the WorldCat database (worldcat.org). George ends the episode by sharing ways to keep track of what census columns mean, using the census charts at Ancestry.com (www.ancestry.com/trees/charts/census.aspx).
Mon, 7 August 2006
Back in Tampa, Drew and George try out their new podcasting equipment, two new microphones and a mixer, and listeners are encouraged to give feedback regarding the sound. Drew reminds listeners of the upcoming August 13-18 conference of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies in New York (www.iajgs.org). George talks about family reunions and how they can be a good source of genealogical information. Drew recommends using the GNIS service of the USGS (geonames.usgs.gov/pls/gnispublic/) to locate and map U.S. locations. And a message from a New Zealand listener leads to a discussion of a Chicago cemetery and the life of a famous heavyweight boxer.
Tue, 1 August 2006
Drew shares his interviews with Matt Helm regarding Matt's new HistoryKat.com subscription web service, and with Bill Forsyth of ProQuest regarding their many genealogy-related databases. Drew also shares some audio clips of his trip with George to Atlanta and Rome, Georgia, with the highlight being a visit to the Myrtle Hill Cemetery. While George returns to Tampa to work on a new book, Drew continues on to Newberry, South Carolina to visit with family.
Mon, 24 July 2006
George announces the upcoming annual conference of the British Isles Family History Society of Greater Ottawa (www.bifhsgo.ca) and makes a correction about a date for Canadian censuses in a previous podcast, and Drew mentions a handy website for viewing Canadian boundary changes over time (atlas.nrcan.gc.ca/site/english/maps/historical/territorialevolution). Continuing along a Canadian theme, Drew interviews Louise St. Denis of the National Institute for Genealogical Studies (www.genealogicalstudies.com), a Canadian-based educational institution providing distance education to genealogists all over the world. George shares some websites for Moravian researchers, including www.enter.net/~smschlack, www.moravianarchives.org, and www.moravianchurcharchives.org. Drew announces the new WorldCat.org site for searching library records. And George interviews Drew about the upcoming FGS conference in Boston (www.fgs.org).
Mon, 17 July 2006
Drew shares his interview with Amy Johnson Crow, where they discuss the International Society of Family History Writers and Editors, as well as Amy's fascinating new website devoted to Deaf Americans, deafbiographies.com. George discusses congregational histories plus the U.S. Soldiers Home in Washington, DC (www.defenselink.mil/specials/heroes/history1.html and www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/231.html). Meanwhile, Drew enjoys a magazine from his hometown in upstate South Carolina. George and Drew announce upcoming conferences in Provo, Utah; Lansing, Michigan; Morrow, Georgia; and Tampa, Florida.
Drew reads from podcast listener mail with tips about software for saving and organizing webpages (www.netsnippets.com) and keeping a folder to organize pending requests for information. And Drew points out the idea of using Google Earth to view cemeteries from satellite photos. |
Tue, 11 July 2006
Drew interviews Tom Kemp of NewsBank (www.newsbank.com) about their new product America's GenealogyBank, offering genealogists information from American newspapers dating back as far as 1690. Drew also explains the difference between Legacy's Research Guidance feature and GenSmarts software, while George talks about how to print wallcharts from RootsMagic (www.rootsmagic.com/wallcharts.htm). Drew shares a listener tip about creating PDF files inexpensively using PrimoPDF (www.primopdf.com) and George talks about a preview site for Irish historical maps (www.irishhistoricmaps.ie).
Tue, 4 July 2006
Drew shares the announcement from the National Archives (UK) regarding what the plans are for the Family Records Centre in Islington. George reminds listeners of the upcoming Italian genealogy conference (www.rootsintheboot.org). A number of listeners respond to a previous podcast about a tool for keeping track of census forms (www.censustools.com). Drew interviews Lou Szucs and Sandra Luebking about the new edition of The Source. Drew and George share tips on filing oversized documents (George recommends some
filing supplies from Gaylord at www.gaylord.com and Light Impressions
at www.lightimpressionsdirect.com), citing Social Security
applications, and maintaining research logs.
Mon, 26 June 2006
After the usual announcements, George and Drew share items from the listener mailbag. The Frappr map of Genealogy Guys Podcast listeners now shows a pin in South Dakota (only two more states to go!). Listeners suggest tips on using portable software applications that can be carried from computer to computer on a flash drive and on backing data files up to the Mozy website (mozy.com). Drew plays his interview with Liz Kerstens where they talk about the latest version of her genealogy filing program Clooz 2.0 (www.clooz.com). Finally, George and Drew talk about how they file their physical genealogy documents.
Mon, 19 June 2006
George and Drew notify listeners about the deadline for early FGS conference registration (www.fgs.org), the new Canadian and Scottish resources at Ancestry.com, and the July 15-22, 2007 research trip to London with the Genealogy Guys (limited to 40 people). The mailbag brings tips about using Google Notebook (www.google.com/notebook) to keep track of bookmarks wherever you are, and a reminder about the genealogy cruise on Royal Caribbean's Mariner of the Seas. Drew shares his fun interview with Elissa Scalise Powell, highlighting the recent NGS conference, the first statewide Pennsylvania Genealogy Conference (September 29-30) in Pittsburgh (www.pagenealogyconference.com), the July 14-15 Roots in the Boot Italian genealogical conference also in Pittsburgh (www.rootsintheboot.org), the joys of networking at conferences, the great BCG-related lectures at NGS, the dos and don'ts of writing family histories, and the not-to-be-missed educational opportunities at the Institute of Genealogy and Historical Research held every June at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. George discusses what he has discovered about his ancestors in microfilmed agricultural censuses.
Tue, 13 June 2006
George and Drew return from the annual conference of the National Genealogical Society. Roots in the Boot (an upcoming mid-July Italian Genealogy and Heritage Conference in Pittsburgh) is announced (www.rootsintheboot.org). Reading the mailbag, George and Drew clarify some issues relating to ProQuest's HeritageQuest Online product (as it relates to remote access for genealogical and historical societies), bring up concerns about the closing of the Sullivan County (NY) Historical Society/Museum, and discuss affidavits as they relate to birth and marriage certificates. Podcast listeners will find out if Drew was successful in completing his 5-item to-do list for the NGS conference. George talks about the vendors (especially the ones selling books).
Fri, 2 June 2006
Just prior to their trip to Chicago for the National Genalogical Society conference (www.ngsgenealogy.org), George tells Drew about the great time he had at the Ontario (Canada) Genealogical Society conference, and George reviews the book Genealogy, Geography, and Maps (written by Althea Douglas and available from www.ogs.on.ca). George also reviews Frank Smith's A Genealogical Gazetteer of England, published by Genealogical Publishing Co. (www.genealogical.com). Next is one more reminder of the 2006 Genealogy Seminar at Sea (www.genealogycruise2006.com), and news about new Canadian data at MyFamily.com's new Canadian site (ancestry.ca). Drew talks about searching for genealogy data using Ask.com's new blog search tool (www.ask.com), compares The Red Book to The Source, and clarifies the distinction between original/derivative documents, primary/secondary information, and direct/indirect evidence.
Tue, 30 May 2006
While George rests up from his recent trip to Ontario, Canada, Drew handles the hosting duties. Drew begins with an explanation of all of the menu choices on the righthand side of the Genealogy Guys website (they've been updated a bit). He then provides a checklist of 5 things he plans to do at the upcoming National Genealogical Society conference in Chicago (which are 5 things that anyone should do at any genealogy conference). Drew then describes the workspace he uses at home to work on his genealogical research (and the advantages of displaying those historical maps). Finally, he discusses the pros and cons of splitting his genealogical research database into two parts (and asks for feedback from listeners).
Mon, 22 May 2006
George announces that Ancestor Detective has released Clooz 2.0, a genealogy-oriented electronic filing cabinet program (www.clooz.com). And RootsMagic will be having a free class at the NGS Conference in Chicago. George's book on doing English research at the London repositories is available at the Lulu site (www.lulu.com/content/253150). Genealogy Guys Podcast listeners have been busy: Steve Danko has a new genealogy blog at stephendanko.com, and Bill Puller has just started recording a technology-oriented genealogy podcast at genealogytechpodcast.com. George explains why every genealogy society should be sure to have a complete run of their publications at the Allen County Public Library (all due to PERSI), and Drew describes exactly what hardware every genealogist needs.
Tue, 16 May 2006
Drew addresses listener comments and questions regarding brute-force searching of census districts and how to specify the repository when citing sources. George brings up the idea of using a combination of geographical reference books, county histories, and courthouse books to locate ancestors and discover where their records are kept.
Mon, 8 May 2006
George and Drew share a number of announcements, including the roommate service being offered for the August 2006 FGS Conference (contact Bobbi King at firstname.lastname@example.com), the upcoming new message board system at Ancestry.com, reminders about Genealogy Cruise 2006 (see the link to the right), the "Along Those Lines..." column (which is now at ahaseminars.livejournal.com), and a July 2007 London research trip being planned by George and Drew. Drew opens up the listener mailbag to address a number of questions involving copyright, research trips, privacy, and free online research sources. And Drew points out some strange goings-on with some of the Social Security Death Index data. George talks about county heritage books as a research source.
Tue, 2 May 2006
George returns from the Ohio Genealogical Society just held in Toledo, and shares announcements about the 1841 English/Welsh census at Ancestry.com, the newly designed Society of Genealogists (UK) website at www.sog.org.uk, the new managing editor of Everton's Genealogical Helper (old friend Leland Meitzler), the updated Helm's Genealogy Toolbox (www.genealogytoolbox.com), and George's upcoming presentations at the Ontario Genealogical Society at the end of May (www.ogsseminar.org). George and Drew discuss some issues relating to finding people in the census. Drew explains why it is important to understand both copyright and plagiarism. And George shares reviews of books about John Adams and Irish genealogical research.
Mon, 24 April 2006
George returns from a visit to the Virginia Beach Genealogical Society and announces Family Historian (version 3), talks about special promotions at 1837online.com, and covers important information from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and a list of U.S. ports with published records. Drew corrects some information regarding the online version of NUCMC, points out when it is safe (copyright-wise) to use old photos, and discusses the importance of using the Social Security Death Index.
Mon, 17 April 2006
George and Drew begin this podcast at the Largo Library in Largo, Florida, in front of an audience of the Pinellas Genealogy Society (plus some guests from the Florida Genealogical Society of Tampa and the Brandon Area Genealogical and Historical Society). George shares news regarding Missouri death certificates, as well as genealogical librarianship courses at the National Institute for Genealogical Studies (University of Toronto). After answering some questions from the Largo audience, George and Drew return to the usual Genealogy Guys home studio to talk about various kinds of death records.
Mon, 10 April 2006
A passle of announcements, including the deadline for early-bird registrations for NGS (www.ngsgenealogy.org), new online registration for FGS and a deadline for FGS award nominations (www.fgs.org), and George's newest book on researching in London respositories (www.lulu.com/content/253150). George talks about his recent visit from a first cousin and the use of upcoming holidays to learn more about family history. Drew uses the opportunity of a visit from an old roommate to do some U.S. census research, and develops some new search tricks.
Mon, 3 April 2006
George announces new databases at ScotlandsPeople (www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk), the new Ancestry Weekly Journal, the new 24/7 Family History Circle blog (blogs.ancestry.com/circle), the early bird deadline for the upcoming NGS conference in Chicago (www.ngsgenealogy.org), and George's new blog that will continue his "Along Those Lines..." column (ahaseminars.com). Drew discusses how to choose the right genealogy database software. George shares his recent experiences in using Lulu (www.lulu.com) to publish his latest book on doing research in London repositories.
Tue, 28 March 2006
George returns from his trip to Muskogee, Oklahoma (which is why the podcast is a day late). Drew talks about using PERSI, an index to genealogy periodicals produced by the Allen County (Indiana) Public Library and available via HeritageQuest Online, and George shares his successes in searching for and obtaining WWII-era civil marriage records from England.
Mon, 20 March 2006
Drew completes his discussion of locating family history books by suggesting the use of metasearch sites Addall (www.addall.com) and Bookfinder (www.bookfinder.com) for finding new and used books to purchase. George points out the value of using eBay to locate genealogy-related material. Finally, George gives advice on British research sites GENUKI (www.genuki.org.uk), 1837online (www.1837online.com), and the General Register Office (www.gro.gov.uk).
Mon, 13 March 2006
George returns from his all-day seminar in Tallahassee to talk about upcoming conferences: the National Genealogical Society (www.ngsgenealogy.org), the International Assocation of Jewish Genealogical Societies (www.jgsny2006.org), and the Federation of Genealogical Societies (www.fgs.org). Drew gets feedback from the fine folks at OCLC about their genealogy site (www.oclc.org/worldcat/genealogy/). A discussion of where to find books online (including the BYU site at www.lib.byu.edu/fhc/) is followed by an introduction to using the interlibrary loan services of libraries.
Mon, 6 March 2006
Drew and George discover a new resource for biographical information about U.S. federal lawmakers (www.gpoaccess.gov/serialset/cdocuments/hd108-222/). Then Drew continues a discussion of using sources written by others, this week focusing on manuscript collections. The free trial of ArchiveGrid (www.archivegrid.org) is mentioned, as is NUCMC and ArchivesUSA. The A2A database of the UK is another source (www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/a2a). Finally, George shares 5 reasons that things aren't found in a courthouse. This week's podcast welcomes a new sponsor, Moorshead Publishing.
Sun, 26 February 2006
George recommends the new magazine "Internet Genealogy" (www.internet-genealogy.com). George and Drew discuss using deeds as a resource. Finally, Drew and George talk about using the Library of Congress catalog (catalog.loc.gov) and the WorldCat database to locate books about your family.
Mon, 20 February 2006
George identifies a handy Australian site (www.coraweb.com.au), reminds listeners of the annual ISFHWE writing contest (www.rootsweb.com/~cgc), announces an upcoming Scandinavian seminar (www.scandinavianseminar.org), and encourages listeners to consider becoming certified genealogists (www.bcgcertification.org). Drew continues his discussion of genealogical goals and projects by starting with reviewing past research done by others, beginning with the family histories found in the Family History Library Catalog (www.familysearch.org). Drew also chats with Wendy Elliott, president of the Federation of Genealogical Societies (www.fgs.org), about a contract job opportunity, FGS publications, national genealogical awards, and a new way to encourage youth to engage in genealogical research.
Sun, 12 February 2006
George recommends an online tutorial that teaches beginning Latin for reading pre-1733 documents (www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/latin/beginners/). Then Drew and George begin a detailed discussion regarding genealogical goals and projects, including preparing for trips, referencing published sources, and saving time and money in doing research.
Mon, 6 February 2006
George announces the annual ISFHWE writing contest (www.rootsweb.com/~cgc/writing_contest_home.htm), and mentions that he'll be speaking at the Palm Beach County (FL) Genealogical Society (www.pbcgensoc.org) on February 11 and the Muskogee County (OK) Genealogical Society (www.rootsweb.com/~okmuscgs) on March 23. Drew interviews Jana Sloan Broglin, and they talk about being a certified genealogist (www.bcgcertification.org), doing Ohio genealogical research (www.ogs.org), and becoming a member society of the Federation of Genealogical Societies (www.fgs.org). And don't miss Jana explaining about a certain unusual costume...
Mon, 30 January 2006
George talks about educational opportunities for genealogists, and Drew shares some of the insights he gained in using microfilmed records at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City.
Mon, 23 January 2006
George and Drew discuss finding genealogy-related materials on eBay and sites for used books; and Drew interviews Paula Stuart-Warren on the subjects of Native American research, using professional genealogists, and doing research at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City.
Thu, 12 January 2006
As Drew gets ready to head off to Salt Lake City for a board meeting of the Federation of Genealogical Societies, he talks about Lulu (www.lulu.com), a service for printing books on demand. George wraps up his discussion of ecclesiastical records.
Mon, 9 January 2006
Drew catches up on the wide variety of topics found in the Genealogy Guys Podcast listener e-mailbag, and George starts a discussion of ecclesiastical records.
Tue, 3 January 2006
George is a bit under the weather, so Drew turns this podcast into a rare all-Smith program when he is joined by his special guests: husband-and-wife genealogy writers/speakers Gary and Diana Crisman Smith. But first, loyal Genealogy Guys Podcast listeners are given the opportunity to locate themselves on a Frappr map!
Wed, 28 December 2005
George shares his delight in receiving a very special Christmas gift from a cousin, and Drew encourages genealogists to use blogs for the purpose of an online research log. [Note: Ralph Brandi's web site can be found at www.brandi.com/geneablogy/]
Mon, 19 December 2005
Drew enthuses over the results obtained from using GenSmarts (www.gensmarts.com) with his genealogy database to suggest future research, and George shares 5 good ideas about using libraries.
Mon, 12 December 2005
George and Drew discuss some of the generous responses of volunteer time to George's announcement concerning his brick wall, and later they compile a long list of great gift ideas for the genealogists in your family.
Mon, 5 December 2005
Drew points out two more ways to get past brick walls (talking to others and making a picture), while George gives a broad view of working with English genealogical research.
Mon, 28 November 2005
George and Drew recount their Thanksgiving holiday experiences, including some highlights of the cemetery in St. Mary's, Georgia, and the sharing of family information among George's cousins. Drew points out the treasures hidden among manuscript collections held in libraries around the world.
Sun, 20 November 2005
In response to listener questioners, Drew suggests some ways to get past brick walls, and both Drew and George discuss ways in which to use maps for genealogical research, from historical maps to the latest GPS technology.
Mon, 14 November 2005
George shares his success in locating a great-uncle in the World War I Draft Registration records, and both Drew and George talk about the World War II Enlistment records. Drew also explains the basic questions that need to be answered when citing sources.
Mon, 7 November 2005
George reminds listeners of a good Scottish resource, and where he'll be the next few weeks. Drew brings listeners up-to-date on the LDS digitization project, as well as the new Google Print database. George offers up a tip on organizing bookmarks, and then provides details on how to determine the date of an old photograph.
Mon, 31 October 2005
After the usual announcements, George talks about cemetery iconography, and Drew makes plain the nature of "RSS feeds". In the middle of this there's also a surprise visit from a creature usually associated with Halloween. [One clarification: Bloglines, mentioned during the podcast, is not software, but instead is a free web-based service.]
Sun, 23 October 2005
George reviews some recent issues of popular genealogy-related magazines, while Drew gives tips on getting the most out of electronic mailing lists. George points out the advantages of using online local and family history books.
Mon, 17 October 2005
George shares his knowledge of professional genealogical organizations. Drew points out the advantages of using straight-cut folders and labelmakers for organizing research files. George says that he is a big fan of the National Archives in England (and its publications). And Drew divulges some of his secrets for success in doing database searches.
Mon, 10 October 2005
George reminds listeners of next year's genealogy cruise (www.genealogycruise2006.com). Then Drew discusses genealogy software for PDAs that run the Palm OS, including GedWise (www.batteryparksoftware.com), GedStar (www.ghcssoftware.com), and My Roots (www.tapperware.com). Finally, George shares a lot of information about American Revolutionary War pension files.
Mon, 3 October 2005
George reviews two books that may help to provide historical, geographical, and social context to our ancestors: "1776" by David McCullough, and "The Widow of the South" by Robert Hicks. Drew interviews Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak, co-author of "Trace Your Roots with DNA".
Sun, 25 September 2005
George and Drew discuss the range of technology options available to genealogists (desktop PCs, notebooks, and PDAs); updates to the NARA and Ancestry.com web sites; a new laminated citation guide for online historical resources; and what can be found in census records that can help with tracking immigrant ancestors.
Mon, 19 September 2005
George and Drew talk about their day at the Fall Genealogy Seminar of the Florida Genealogical Society (Tampa); how to find and download podcasts; a few tips about keeping track of papers, e-mail, and unmatched relatives; and a whole lot about cemetery research.
Mon, 12 September 2005
In this podcast, George and Drew discuss their recent trip to Salt Lake City, where they attended the annual conference of the Federation of Genealogical Societies, and got to do research in the world-famous Family History Library. Drew interviews Bruce Buzbee and finds out about the brand-new RootsMagic 3.0. [Note from Drew: I've uploaded a new version of this podcast with better sound quality during the interview portion.]
Sun, 4 September 2005
George and Drew discuss podcasts, preparing for genealogy conferences and what to do when you get there, plans to attend the annual conference of the Federation of Genealogical Societies in Salt Lake City, and digital voice recorders.
Sat, 3 September 2005
The Genealogy Guys are two avid and enthusiastic genealogists who want to discuss all facets of genealogical research. The Genealogy Guys are: George G. Morgan, internationally-recognized genealogy expert, author, and lecturer. His "Along Those Lines ..." online column at Ancestry.com is read by up to 2 million people each Friday. His most recent book, How to Do Everything with Your Genealogy (McGraw-Hill/Osborne) is one of the biggest-selling references in the last 20 years and is being used on several U.S. college campuses as a textbook. His hundreds of magazine, journal, and online articles have appeared all over the world, from the U.S. and Canada to Europe and Singapore. He is a member of more than 20 genealogical societies in the U.S. and the U.K. Drew Smith, MLS, instructor at the School of Library and Information Science at the University of South Florida in Tampa. He, too, is a nationally-recognized genealogical author and lecturer. He is the "Cybrarian" columnist for MyFamily.com's quarterly magazine Genealogical Computing, is a regular contributor to the NGS NewsMagazine, and was the technical editor for George's book How to Do Everything with Your Genealogy. He is a member of the boards of the Federation of Genealogical Societies and the Florida Genealogical Society (Tampa). Beginning 4 September 2005, the Genealogy Guys will publish a weekly, 30-minute genealogy discussion. Join us for fun and informative discussions that will help make you a more savvy genealogical researcher! This podcast is sponsored by Aha! Seminars, Inc.. My Odeo Channel (odeo/39a77bcb437ad22a)
-- posted at: 4:00 AM