Saturday, March 31, 2007

Stephen P Morse help for the 1910-1940 US Federal Census

Obtaining EDs and streets for the 1910-1940 Census in One Step

In order to find a person in the census you may need to know the enumeration district (ED) in which the person lived. Today there are many resources available for determining the ED. Our website is one of them and is unique in that it provides a geographical search tool for determining the ED for the 1910-1930 censuses

By far the easiest way to determine the ED is to use a name index. That allows you to enter a person's name and get the ED. There are microfilm name indexes for US Censuses available at NARA starting in 1880, but many of the years have indexes only for certain states and only for heads of households. For 1910 NARA has only 21 states name-indexed and 12 for 1930. Name indexes are also available, on a subscription basis, from commercial companies.

Our website is most useful when you don't have access to a name index or you can't find the person by name on the existing name indexes. It presents an interactive interface for the major cities that allows you to "compute" the ED. All cities having at least 25,000 people in 1930, and many smaller ones as well, are on this website. Over 80 of the larger 1910 cities are also here. And our site provides a means of converting between 1930 and 1920 EDs. We are grateful to all the volunteers who generated the data for many of the cities and for the conversion tables.

Explore the other portions of this website as well and please see the Frequently Asked Questions (faq) page for more details

© Stephen P. Morse, Joel D. Weintraub, David R. Kehs, 2002

Usenet local Birmingham 2600 Meeting - 7th April '07 - uk.local.birmingham | Google Groups

currently meet at 7pm inside Snow Hill Station on Colmore Row.

Birmingham 2600 Meeting - 7th April '07 - uk.local.birmingham | Google Groups, commonly known as Brum2600 is held on the first Saturday of every month. Everyones welcome, we have all kinds of people attend HAMs, phreaks, geeks you don't need to know anything to fit in and theres plenty of info on hand :)

If you're wondering why we hold it on the Saturday rather than a Friday, it's because Saturday is easier for most people that attend regularly.

When everyone has arrived we discuss what we want to do that evening. We
normally end up in :

Old Joint Stock, Birmingham, West Midlands, B2 5NY - pub details # beerintheevening.com: "Address: 4 Temple Row West, Birmingham, West Midlands, B2 5NY [map] [gmap]

Tel: 0121 200 1892

Nearest train stations Birmingham Snow Hill (0.2 miles), Birmingham New Street (0.2 miles), Birmingham Moor Street (0.4 miles)

If you are traveling into Birmingham and need bus information visit : http://www.travelwm.co.uk/

or train information, visit : http://www.networkrail.co.uk/

societies and shows

The National Genealogical Society, Arlington, Virginia, USA - Where Genealogy Begins:

"16-19 May 2007
29th NGS Conference in the States and Family History Fair
Richmond, Virginia, USA


24 February - 2 March 2008
Salt Lake City Research Trip
Salt Lake City, Utah

14-18 May 2008
30th NGS Conference in the States and Family History Fair
Kansas City, MO"


The National Genealogical Society, a non-profit organization founded in 1903, is the premier national society for everyone from the beginner to the most advanced family historian. The NGS serves its members by:

  • Providing genealogical skill development through education, information, publications, research assistance, and networking opportunities;
  • Establishing and promoting the highest standards of ethical research principles and scholarly practices;
  • Establishing important links with other groups worldwide;
  • Providing depth and breadth of knowledge and opportunities for our members;
  • Creating programs to increase public awareness of opportunities to discover family history; and,
  • Promoting interest in the fascinating field of genealogy and family history.


Society of Genealogists - Home Page

Society of Genealogists - Family History Show will take place as part of the Who Do You Think You Are? LIVE National History Show - A Show within a Show!"


The Society of Genealogists is the leading national learned society concerned with family history and genealogy and their associated social science disciplines. It is the largest society of its kind in the UK, with some 13,000 members. The Society campaigns for the integrity and preservation of records relevant to current and future research and optimum access to such records. Members of the Society are all researching family history, mostly as amateur hobbyists, though a significant number are professional researchers. Hence the Society’s main, but by no means exclusive, concern is for access to historic records on behalf of genealogists who are looking for information about families and individual ancestors. Since its foundation in 1911 the Society has continued to lobby on behalf of the genealogical community and takes an active role in rescuing documents that are of interest to family historians but which have been discarded by other larger and often public archives.

The Society of Genealogists seeks to promote a genealogical community in which everyone has convenient, affordable access to records, finding aids, knowledge and skills necessary to conduct authoritative research in family history.

Thursday, March 29, 2007

U.S.A. - Canada Borders

24-7 Family History Circle » Ancestry Launches U.S.-Canadian Border Crossings Collection, 1895-1956:

"Ancestry.com, the world’s largest online resource for family history, today announced the addition of the first and only online collection of more than 4 million names of individuals who crossed the U.S.-Canadian border between 1895 and 1956. These historical records are the latest addition to Ancestry.com’s Immigration Records Collection, which also includes more than 100 million names from the largest online collection of U.S. passenger lists, spanning 1820 to 1960.

An often-overlooked, but major U.S. immigration channel, the U.S.-Canadian border typically offered easier entrance to the United States than sea ports such as Ellis Island. This new collection includes immigrants who first sailed to or settled in Canada before continuing to the United States as well as U.S. and Canadian citizens crossing the border."

Ancestry.com - Canadian Border Crossings, 1895-1956

ethical slimming

simplefit.org:
# Use your own body weight, no expensive equipment needed
# Eat regular food, no dietary supplements needed
# Adjust the program easily to your changing fitness needs
# Pay nothing, this site is free"

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

digitizing and the Granite Mountain Vault in Little Cottonwood Canyon

deseretnews.com | Another revolution in genealogy
by
Susan B. Whitney staff writer

When Derek Dobson speaks to LDS seminary classes, he talks revolution.

Dobson is the family-search indexing-product manager for the LDS Church's Family History Department. He tells the teens about the invention of the printing press and how that revolution made the Bible available to the world.
He tells them about the invention of microfilm and how the 1930s saw the beginning of their church's archival collection in the Granite Mountain Vault.

And finally, Dobson announces, excitedly, "We are about to go through another revolution." Using the Internet, from their homes or laptops, people around the world are about to have access to more documents than they ever dreamed possible.

Before the end of the year, the church's free genealogy Web site, familysearch.org, will have a new look. That's how users will know when the revolution Dobson speaks of has begun.
Rich Running, also a project manager for the church's Family History Department, is responsible for seeing that the church's genealogy records — more than 5 billion documents on 2 1/2 million rolls of microfilm and 1 1/2 million microfiche — are scanned.

Not everything in the Granite Mountain vaults in Little Cottonwood Canyon can be scanned. The LDS Church got these records from a variety of sources, some of which are archival companies that don't want their records published.

Still, the vast majority of the church's documents are reproducible, and right now the church's software experts need to scan quickly, because they have a lot to scan. Dobson explains that the U.S. Library of Congress contains 29 million books, and the LDS Church's records hold 132 times that much data. Dobson doesn't want to guess how many billions of names are on those 5 billion documents.

Of course, "searching through 5 billion images on your computer would not be an ideal experience," Dobson points out. The records must be indexed so that when a user types in a name, that name will pop up. This is where an army of volunteers comes in.
More than 25,000 volunteers are currently at work indexing the records. Running predicts there will be 100,000 volunteers by the end of this year and many hundreds of thousands in the years to come.

Dobson can demonstrate, online, just how easy it is to volunteer. Last week, in his office in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building, Dobson, on his laptop, went to www.familysearchindexing.org and called up a registry. There were a half-dozen registries listed on the Web site — including Georgia death certificates from 1919-1927 and a federal census from New York State from 1900. (As each of these registries is transcribed, new registries will appear on the Web site.)

Dobson clicked on a registry and a handwritten census record popped onto his screen, along with a blank form on which he was to type the handwritten names and dates.
The handwritten record on his screen featured a family named Johnson, and the mother's first name seemed to be spelled "Allice," and her son's name looked to be "Clarience." Because these are not traditional spellings for "Alice" and "Clarence," when Dobson typed in those names, they came up with a note indicating he needed to double-check the handwritten records. This he did. To him, the names still looked like "Allice" and "Clarience," so that's how he left them when he finished transcribing the document.

Dobson explains that there is an invisible double-check built into the system. Each handwritten record will come up twice, at random, and be typed in twice, by two different volunteers. Any discrepancies between the two forms will alert a third person, an arbitrator, who is a more experienced genealogist. The arbitrator looks at the original record and makes a final decision on the name or date or geographical location in question.

In order to make volunteering easy and to let people feel they've accomplished something, the Family Search Indexing project assigns each volunteer only as many names as can be typed up in about 30 or 40 minutes. If your children are little, Dobson notes, you could put them down for a nap and do your volunteering by the time they wake up.

Dobson has three goals for his portion of this project.
For one thing, he hopes to get more volunteers. Already genealogy groups from other parts of the country, people outside the LDS Church, have enthusiastically taken on the project. (The Family Search Indexing site explains how to go about becoming a volunteer.)
Dobson also hopes to broaden the participation. He pictures families gathered around the computer, having fun as they research.
And he believes, as genealogy becomes accessible, more young people will be drawn into the hobby. A recent survey, taken within the Family History Library system found that 35 percent of those who do family history are in the 41- to 60-year-old age group, and about 33 percent of those who do family history have little or no experience.

Genealogy is no longer just for retired people. And you don't have to know very much at all in order to volunteer, Dobson adds.

There is, of course, a certain irony to Dobson's efforts to enlist more teenagers in this genealogy revolution, he notes. Because they were raised to Google, to find a wealth of information by typing in a name, teenagers don't see this project as being quite as revolutionary as he does.
contact Susan through their Staff directory:

copyright the owners
borrowed from deseretnews.com | Deseret Morning News Web edition

and my thanks to Genea-Musings for the link

Randy Seaver adds:-
We also need to understand that not every record will be available online in the foreseeable future. There are literally shelf-miles of records at local courthouses, local societies and other repositories that have not been filmed, digitized or indexed. That's good - it's an opportunity for someone to do the job! And for each of us to find those golden nuggets that prove relationships before someone else finds it.

she got the link from Tim Agazio's Genealogy Reviews Online: Genealogy Revolution: "There are currently more big things going on in genealogy then I can keep track of."

and losts more to read
scanstone project - Google Search

"Derek Dobson" genealogy - Google Search

Digitizing of the Granite Mountain Records Could Take as Little as 10 Years » Genealogy Blog: "The digitizing of the millions of rolls of film held at the LDS Church’s Granite Mountain Vault Records facility is getting faster by the day. What was once estimated to take the next 120 years has now been reduced to 30 - and even as few as 10 years."

Little Cottonwood Canyon - Google Search

Little Cottonwood Canyon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "At the mouth of the canyon is the site where Mormon pioneers quarried massive quartz monzonite blocks to build the Salt Lake Temple. Mountain goats inhabit the surrounding mountains. . . .

Access for rock climbers can be a problem. On the north side, the "Church Buttress" above the Mormon archives, and the Black Peeler Buttress, are on private land and not legally accessible, as are parts of the south side."

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

the cost of freeing slaves

From John Latimer's Annals of Bristol in the 19th Century:
via the Bristol_and_Somerset Rootsweb list

"According to a parliamentary return issued in 1838, the principal firms and persons in this district owning slaves received compensations as follows:

Messrs. Thos. & John Daniel, £55,178;
Messrs. H.J.D.E. Baillie & G H Ames, £23,024;
Sir C Codrington, Bart., £29,867;
Mr James E Baillie, £12,357;
Mr Philip John Miles, £9,076;
Mr James Cunningham, £12,357;
Mr Richard Bright, £8,092;
Mr Robert Bright, £3,820;
Messrs Charles Pinney & E Case, £3,572.

The list does not include payments under £3,000.

The Bristol Times of April 8, 1854 stated that Messrs. Daniel & Sons, who had a house in London as well as in Bristol, "obtained not much less than a quarter of a million" to compensate for their slaves."

Identifying Place Names Using a Reverse Alphabetiical Index

AncestorStuff.com :: Main :: GERMANY: Braunschweig, Oldenburg, and Thuringia Indexes: Identifying Place Names Using Alphabetical and Reverse Alphabetical Indexes (Minert) (Minert):

"For the first time, a reverse alphabetical index is available to the public. Such indexes have been known and valued among researchers in the Family History Library for some time, but none have been available in print or microform.

The Reverse Alphabetical Index allows the researcher to determine the name of a town when the first part of the name (whether one or more letters) is missing.

This is a common problem caused by torn or moldy pages, ink blots, tight bindings, poor microfilm quality, etc. By using this index, the researcher can also determine the official spelling for towns when variant spellings occur in old records.

The book includes a regular alphabetical index of all the towns in the province as well as regular and reverse alphabetical listings of German kingdoms, duchies, principalities, counties, rivers, mountain ranges, and other geopolitical and topographical entities.

Experts in the field have this to say about the Place Name Indexes series:

'The Reverse Alphabetical Index is indispensable.
We need one for every German Province.' (Larry Jensen);

'A remarkable tool . . . a real time-saver. How did we ever do research without it?' (Daniel Schlyter);

"The Reverse Alphabetical Index is the only new technology in the deciphering of names!" (Shirley J. Riemer)

AncestorStuff.com: "Over 23,000 products - many at discount prices "

Monday, March 26, 2007

Llanspyddid near Brecon Wales

Welcome to Llanspyddid: "Listing of Gravestones now available from The Church History Page or click here:

"The following pages have been listed to help those people who wish to trace some of their family history. All the names have been listed by surname, residence, year of death and age at death. I have not listed any deaths within the past 100 years as these should already be known within the families."

The idea of this website is to provide a focus for villagers to share information about anything that is happening in and around our village."

Brecon Cathedral Website
The Church in Wales Cathedral of the Diocese of Swansea and Brecon and the bishop's archives have been deposited at Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru - National Library of Wales

FamilySearch.org - Family History Library Catalog
and another spelling Wales, Brecon, Llansbyddyd

Bishop's transcripts, 1687-1871 Church in Wales. Parish Church of Llansbyddyd

Bishop's transcripts, 1815-1872 Church in Wales. Chapelry of Pen-pont

Marriage bonds and allegations, 1678-1866 Church in Wales. Parish Church of Llansbyddyd

the registers ae due to be filmed in the near future
Cyngor Sir Powys County Council: Powys County Archives Office: "Opened as recently as 1991, the Powys County Archives Office is located in Llandrindod Wells, and serves as the official repository for the records of the modern county of Powys (first established in 1974) and the three former counties of Brecon, Montgomery and Radnor."

Breconshire Parish Registers on Microfilm: "link for a list of microfilm copies of parish registers held at the National Library of Wales. These microfilms are available at the County Archives Office. Further details of the records of these parishes, and of the parishes themselves, may be found in the book Parish Registers of Wales, published in 2000."

Llansbyddyd: C 1699-1983, M 1699-1969, B 1699-1909, X 1754-1812

Flixster do not use this viral site

a warning is going around aol genealogy users

Flixter asks you for your AOL/google/G.mail/ or Yahoo password ... and then sends Spam to everyone on your Address Book, plus, to people you do not know .. big organisations included. Please be careful.

never share a password with strangers.

Flixster - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "database of information about films and actors which includes social features such as the ability for individual users to review and rate films and to compare their ratings with invited friends to assess compatibility in film tastes.

Started in January 2006, the site administrators avoided heavy promotion until November 2006 in order to improve the service.[1] Between November 2006 and January 2007, the number of daily page views by Alexa Toolbar users rose from fewer than 20 million per day to around 50 million per day.[2]"

Flixster actively encourages users to invite friends using their hotmail, yahoo or gmail address books. The site DOES allow the user to select which friends from their address book to invite - but the default option is to invite all your friends and some users thus accidentally send a lot of invites they did not intend. While flixster has been criticized for being aggressive in encouraging users to invite friends, the practice of integrating with webmail address books is very common, and is used on sites such as MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, Yelp & many others - count me out.

GRO indexes online 2008 - 20009

Internet access to GRO indexes

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) today announced that facilities to search indexes of births, marriages and deaths will start to be available on the Internet from early 2008.

ONS intends to close its public search facility, currently located at the Family Records Centre (FRC) in Islington, and instead to make indexes available at The National Archives (TNA) in Kew.

This will enable researchers to access records yet to be digitised in paper or microfiche format as well as making use of the wider opportunities offered by Kew for researching historic records.

The relocation is expected to be complete by April 2008. The services currently provided by ONS in Islington will then cease.

TNA announced earlier this year that it intended to relocate to
Kew the facilities it currently provides alongside ONS at the FRC. At the time, ONS said that it would be reviewing the services it offered at the FRC.

Peter Murphy, ONS Director of Registration Services, said:
“The decision reflects the outcome of the review we said we would carry out but, more importantly, it reflects the changes in the way family historians and others prefer to carry out their research, by making use of online facilities. Confirmation of funding for further development of the existing civil registration modernisation programme has now allowed us to plan for most searches to be possible electronically by April 2008 and almost all the rest by 2009.


“As part of the system developments underlying these changes we will improve the process for users to place orders for the certificates they identify from the indexes.

“Our decision has been taken in close consultation with The National Archives. In planning the detail of the relocation, we will be discussing ways in which we can maintain and further develop services of a high quality.

“Because the electronic indexes will not be fully complete when the relocation [to Kew] takes place, we expect that some indexes in the form of books or microfiche, will be available at Kew for a short period after the move. This will ensure that users of the search facility will have access to all records by one means or another.”

News release issued by
National Statistics
1 Drummond Gate
London SW1V 2QQ
Telephone
Press Office 020 7533 5702
Email press.office@ons.gsi.gov.uk
Public Enquiries 0845 601 3034

Internet
www.statistics.gov.uk
Public Enquiries 0845 601 3034

blog with no title

St Vincent memories: "One small town in Minnesota USA"
http://56755.blogspot.com/index.html
on the railway and the Canadian border
and is another exemplary local history blog

is the empty title field another bug of the new blogger ?

Sunday, March 25, 2007

by Myra Vanderpool Gormley

Tracing Patriot Ancestors: "If your ancestors lived in America in 1775, you may descend from a Revolutionary War veteran. About 250,000 men, out of a population of about 2.7 million in the Colonies, fought on the American side.

The Revolution generated volumes of records, many of which included detailed genealogical information on the veterans, their wives, and their dependents. Fortunately, many of the records survived. Most of them are in the National Archives, in Washington, D.C.; the archives of states that composed the original 13 Colonies; and university and private archives in those states. There are also in the archives of a few other states, in city and county agencies, and in French archives.

One kind of record that may provide detailed information on your Revolutionary War ancestor is the pension application. To deter desertion and resignation during the war, the government promised to provide pensions after the war. (The states also awarded pensions.)

There were three types: Disability, or invalid, pensions went to servicemen for injuries sustained in the line of duty; service pensions, to veterans who served specified time periods; and widows� pensions, to women whose husbands were killed in war." . . . .

About Datatrace Systems: "which was founded in 1985, we have successfully produced quality genealogical research and award-winning publications.

American Genealogy Magazine, published from 1987 to 1999, brought family historians a wealth of information through its insightful 'how-to' articles by nationally recognized writers. From the first in-depth study of the mysterious Black Dutch to the publication of 'lost' military pensions, and on-site research at Salt Lake City's noted Family History Library, Datatrace Systems continues to emerge as an invaluable source to genealogists.

Our website, GenealogyMagazine.com, is utilized as a reference by wikipedia.org, the Texas Historical Commission, and Learning and Teaching Scotland�s series, SCET.Net for History: A Virtual Department (a CD-ROM introducing Internet resources in the classroom)."
"American Genealogy Magazine" - Google Search

"Myra Vanderpool Gormley" - Google Search
finds many more of her useful articles and her Family Tree Magazine e-zine and newslettter and Category & forums listing - Family Tree Magazine Forum

Grandma's Diary

Grandma's Diary: "Wed Feb 28, 1945

Marguerite & Willard have split up again. Duane came down about 8:15. Got car fixed - took a little ride but were home most of eve. We both cut-up and acted kinda silly at first. Tonight was really wonderful!! Duane acted & talked like he used to. Talked about getting married & our children. Duane said his grandpa likes me. He said I were nice & darn cute. Really made me feel good. Didn't get to bed until 2:00. Marguerite gave me crocheted dutch cap."

publishing family archives with photographs by blogging - a very fine example - and much much easier than making web pages

Grandma's Diary: Who's Who? does need full names like SHIRLEY WALLACE and her father DUANE WALLACE for google to find more easily and dates and places too

The 1930 census began on 2 April 1930 for the general population of the United States and you need a point of entry see Ancestry.com - 1930 United States Federal Census


link page for Canada genealogy

Sources for Genealogical Research in Canada

some links have been by the government webmasters whom we all hate
HOME PAGE - BC ARCHIVES
Welcome to the British Columbia Archives (BC Archives), located in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. The BC Archives is the archives of the government of British Columbia, and provides research access to records of enduring value to the province for both the provincial government and public clientele.

Our archival holdings include: government documents and records; private historical manuscripts and papers; maps, charts and architectural plans; photographs; paintings, drawings and prints; audio and video tapes; film; newspapers; and an extensive library of publications with a strong emphasis on the social and political history of British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest.


VITAL EVENT INDEXES - BC ARCHIVES:

search the on-line indexes for summaries of historical birth, marriage, death registrations, and colonial marriage, and baptism records.
(Please note: registrations available are of limited release dates for British Columbia only.

danish genealogy help

Usenet replayer's open free directory of dk.binaer.historie
is a freebie for posting images - double click one to study it

US Census Substitute

Ancestry.com - 1890 Census Substitute:

"When a basement fire in the Commerce Building in Washington, D.C. destroyed most of the 1890 federal census, a valuable source of information was lost to researchers of America's past. Ancestry.com, with the aid of the National Archives and Records Administration and the Allen County Public Library, now provides the first definitive online substitute for the missing census.

More than 20 million records have been identified for inclusion in the collection and additions will be made regularly as they become available for posting. It will include fragments of the original 1890 census that survived the fire, special veterans schedules, several Native American tribe censuses for years surrounding 1890, state censuses (1885 or 1895), city and county directories, alumni directories, and voter registration documents. When completed, this collection will be an unparalleled tool for researchers of American ancestors.

Source Information:
Ancestry.com, Inc. 1890 Federal Census Substitute Project. Orem, UT: Ancestry.com, Inc., 2000. Source information for a particular database is provided on the individual description page."