Saturday, June 30, 2007

Gene Technology

USAroots.com » Ancestry.com to Offer DNA Database: "Online genealogy giant Ancestry is stepping into the DNA arena in a new partnership that seeks to reunite families through science.

Ancestry’s parent company, The Generations Network, has announced it will combine its collection of online family trees and databases with Sorenson Genomics’ precision ancestral DNA testing. This partnership will allow people to trace their roots and connect to distant cousins through DNA at the click of a mouse.

Ancestry.com boasts more than 14 million users and the world’s largest collection of online family trees. In the last 12 months alone, more than two million people have built family trees on Ancestry.com. Sorenson Genomics is one of the world’s foremost laboratories for genetic genealogy testing services, and has been helping genealogists extend branches of their family trees through DNA analysis since 2001."

One of my reservstions about all this was that the design of these studies was the key to success.
Here I shall watch with interest how it proceeeds - just think in a hundred years time this database may have substantial medical value - or much sooner

my own small study RootsWeb's WorldConnect Project: BORUM forensic genealogy:
"There is a possibility of an illness caused by a defective gene carried by some of the females in or from Denmark."

Friday, June 29, 2007

1901 and 1911 Irish Census digitisation project

Visit Us: Opening hours and document ordering times:

"The National Archives of Ireland has arranged for the digitisation, indexing and contextualisation of its most popular records, the census records for 1901 and 1911. The resulting website will contain images of the forms for each household and institution, which will be indexed by name (all names), townland/street, age and sex.

Forristal family census return for 1911: " of Nottingham Street in Dublin city Census 1911, Dublin Return 39/64/27",

click the above link to see the household return for the Forristal family of Nottingham Street in Dublin city - please double click to enlarge and view the caption.
There will also be illustrated information on what life was like in Ireland in the early days of the last century. The site will be free to access, with no charge to use the indexes or view the images.

The first phase of the project, Dublin City and County 1911, is to be launched in Autumn 2007. We had hoped to launch earlier, but rapidly changing technology has meant that we are revising the architecture of the site, and this will lead to a small delay."

National Archives home pages

The National Archives holds a wide variety of records, many of which are relevant to Irish genealogy and local history.

Find out more about our holdings, begin researching your family tree and search our online finding aid databases


Coimeádann An Chartlann Náisiúnta: "Coimeádann An Chartlann Náisiúnta go leor taifead éagsúil, a bhfuil baint ag cuid mhór acu le ginealas na hÉireann agus leis an stair áitiúil.

Faigh tuilleadh eolais faoinár sealbháin, téigh i mbun taighde ar do chraobh ghinealaigh agus cuardaigh ár mbunachair shonraí áis fála ar líne."

Thursday, June 28, 2007

Family TreeMaker 2008 splash

Family TreeMaker 2008 by Ancestry.com
will be out in August 2007 - details anyone?

Google Book Search

for exampl:-

A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Commoners of Great Britain and Ireland, ... - Google Book Search: "By John Burke
Published 1838
Published for Henry
Colburn, by R. Bentley"

do try Advanced Book Search

a source for fiche readers

Freecycle™: Changing the World One Gift at a Time: "The Freecycle Network™ is made up of many individual groups across the globe. It's a grassroots and entirely nonprofit movement of people who are giving (& getting) stuff for free in their own towns. Each local group is moderated by a local volunteer (them's good people). Membership is free. To sign up, find your community by clicking on the region on the left. You may then go directly to your local group by clicking on 'Go To' or you may immediately join by clicking on 'Join.' It will generate an automatic e-mail which, when sent, will sign you up for the local group and send you a response with instructions on how it works. Can't find a group near you? You might want to consider starting one (click on 'Start a Group' for instructions). Have fun!

The Freecycle Network was started in May 2003 to promote waste reduction in Tucson's downtown and help save desert landscape from being taken over by landfills. The Network provides individuals and non-profits an electronic forum to 'recycle' unwanted items. One person's trash can truly be another's treasure!"

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

subscription sites

GenealogyBank.com - Find Ancestors | Family History Records

a new offering from a premier information company, NewsBank inc. For over 60 years NewsBank's information products have been familiar to researchers in public libraries, colleges and universities, schools, and military and government libraries. Now we are proud to offer GenealogyBank, a collection of our best genealogical material and much of our exclusive content, to you at home.

Through GenealogyBank you will find obituaries and more, such as your ancestors' military records, newspaper mentions, and social security records. We hope you appreciate the unique breadth and depth of available content and enjoy using our clean, quick interface. For specific help, from finding more results to honing your search, visit the Help section

NewspaperARCHIVE.com - Search Old Newspaper Articles Online + freeb ie

UK events

GENEVA: The GENUKI calendar of GENealogical EVents and Activities

July 4 SoG, LND My Ancestor was a German Immigrant - Where did he come from?
July 5 SoG, LND Timelines: The Tudors
July 5 Redhill, SRY Family history using the Internet workshop at Redhill Library
July 11 SoG, LND My Ancestor Worked in the Theatre
July 12 SoG, LND Timelines: The Stuarts
July 14 SoG, LND What You Need to Know About Civil Registration
July 14 Reigate, SRY Who do you think you are? Free drop-in family history advice session at Reigate Library
July 14 Weston super Mare, SOM SWAG Family History Fair @ The Winter Gardens
July 18 SoG, LND Finding Marriage Records
July 19 SoG, LND Timelines: The Georgians
July 20 Poole, DOR Workshop Life in London 1800-1914
July 21 SoG, LND Beginner's Course 2 parts, concludes 28 July
July 25 SoG, LND Genealogy on the Palm
July 26 SoG, LND Timelines: The Victorians
July 27-29 Worcester, WOR Dalton Genealogical Society Gathering and AGM
July 28 Aylesbury, BKM Buckinghamshire FHS Open Da

my source:-

This calendar is being run jointly on behalf of GENUKI and the Federation of Family History Societies. Event organisers are encouraged to check this calendar when picking a date to avoid clashes with other events in the same area. They are also encouraged to submit an entry for this calendar as soon as a date has been booked so that other organisers know about it and can try to avoid it. y

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

online shopping bargains

at The Ancestry Store


Family Tree Maker Version 16
was $39.95
and now On Sale: $31.96

Social Networking

Survey Finds Social Networking Users Have Little Loyalty: "Network-hopping, widgets & links connect, cross-pollinate the social networking market

MySpace users are chronically unfaithful, according to Parks Associates' Web 2.0 & the New Net, a new report that focuses on the social networking market. Nearly 40% percent of MySpace users keep profiles on other social networking sites such as Friendster and Facebook. Loyalty among the smaller social networking sites is even lower, with more than 50% of all users actively maintaining multiple profiles.

These trends highlight a peculiar aspect of the market for social networking services. Nearly half of all social networkers regularly use more than one site; one in six use three or more. The result is an increasingly interlinked environment tied together by links, widgets, and the users themselves. “MySpace is a growing ecosystem and one that ironically now extends beyond MySpace itself,” said John Barrett, the lead author of the report, Web 2.0 & the New Net."

for a genealogist the supreme social net working site is entered via RootsWeb.com Home Page
here there are notice boards, trees, mailing lists user home pages, databases . . .

I started social networking by joining a dial up BBS in about 1995 and I soon I started to read and post to USENET too (see the archives Google Groups hugh_watkins@online.pol.dk from February 1996 to October 1998 when that email service ceased)

Family Tree • Genealogy • Ancestor • Ancestry • Family History: Genes Reunited has also been very effective and good value for money - as ong as you can be patient with all the newbie messages


Monday, June 25, 2007

mobile phone

Google Maps

The BlackBerry® 8800 smartphone from Cingular is one of several new open GPS experiences with Google Maps (check out some of the others by clicking the arrows on the right). Here's why we're so worked up about GPS:

Download Maps at www.google.com/gmm
on your mobile web browser

Hampshire Parish Registers

Welcome to Knightroots: "Welcome to Knightroots, a website on the Knight family and an online Hampshire genealogical resource. We are Linda and Tony Knight and we live near Southampton, United Kingdom and now have over 6000 names on our joint family tree. Our research interests include Hampshire, Dorset, Oxfordshire, Wiltshire, Warwickshire, Worcestershire, Sussex, Staffordshire and the Isle of Wight as well as Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Massachusetts and India."

One of the main features of this site is the online transcription section located in the Hampshire OPC section, designed to help other people searching for names in their family tree. We hope that you find this useful. Records are being added from our own resources, as well as transcriptions from other volunteers and donations of fiche. Please note that while some of the the transcriptions on this website are only partial transcriptions, there are some registers have been completely transcribed.

Viewing this data cannot ever replace checking the original data and from a verification point of view, researchers should ALWAYS endeavour to view original registers whenever and wherever possible. There is no overall index to the data and if you are unsure as to which Parish your ancestors may have come from, you may be helped by the baptism, marriage and burial indexes produced on cd by the Hampshire Genealogical Society

In addition, you may view free of charge, over 500 of our own photographs of many Hampshire historical locations so that you can view the various places that your ancestors lived, married, went to school, worked, prayed and .... died.

We also include external links both on individual parish pages and in the links section. (We cannot guarantee or be liable for material contained in external web sites)

Ancestry Weekly Journal

from my email:-

Do you wait until you have concrete proof of a relationship to share a find with another family member? While you definitely don't want to pass off an unproven theory as fact, it's a good idea to share some of your hunches with other family members.
Let them know that you're still trying to prove a relationship, but share the interesting stories.
They may be able to help you prove or disprove your theory, and getting them involved in the hunt may spur their interest and inspire them to join you in your family history quest!

Watch Those Surname Prefixes
As a worker in the LDS extraction program, now called Family Search Indexing, I can corroborate John McCall's "Quick Tip" of May 21.
When recording surnames with prefixes they are always separated from the rest of the name and apostrophes are left out (i.e., McCall becomes Mc Call and O'Hara becomes O Hara).
Note also that given names were often abbreviated and they are recorded as they were originally entered into the census or other record. Therefore, "Wm" is recorded that way and not expanded to William, and "Elizth" is not expanded to Elizabeth.
Marilynn Boosinger Willits, California


AWJ Editor's Note: Excellent tip! Depending on where you search, it's a good idea to search surnames both ways.
With given name abbreviations, some searches, like those at Ancestry, will often associate them with the full name and see it as a match, but it's always a good idea to try variations.
And don't overlook initials in place of given names as well.

Watch the vowels, especially if your ancestor came from a foreign land. I have a relative named Ubbo in my family. When I searched Ancestry, I could not find him. I did, however, know when he was born, when he immigrated to the states (from Germany), and when he died. One day I decided to widen my search, and I found him with the first name Obbo.

It would seem that many entries in the U.S. census are very dependant on how the name was heard by the census taker, especially in older censuses.

If you have a suggestion you would like to share with other researchers, send it to: Juliana@Ancestry.com.

To subscribe visit the Online Help Center Copyright © 2007, The Generations Network, Inc.

Sunday, June 24, 2007

thanks Myrtle but

DearMYRTLE, your friend in genealogy: French genealogy collection doesn't debut at Ancestry.fr

WORLD'S LARGEST FAMILY HISTORY COMPANY LAUNCHES FRENCH WEBSITE
24,000 historical collections, including the largest French-Canadian database online with more than 12 million names, available immediately / French collection underway


The largest international network of family history websites, the Ancestry network, which has websites in the U.S., UK, Canada, Australia, Germany and Italy, today continued their march into Europe with the launch of their French website, www.Ancestry.fr. Their Italian website, www.Ancestry.it , launched last month.

Un albero genealogico online rappresenta un modo perfetto di organizzare e condividere le informazioni sulla propria famiglia, conservandole per le generazioni future. È facile: basta inserire qualche dato su di sé, sui parenti viventi e sulle generazioni recenti. Dopodiché, Ancestry.it effettuerà una ricerca automatica in milioni di documenti storici per recuperare informazioni dettagliate sulla famiglia.

Français - version bêta on Ancestry.ca
Trouver des dossiers de recensements, de naissance, de décès, de mariage et autres.

Ancestry.fr - Dossiers généalogiques et d’histoire de famille: "Commencez votre arbre généalogique.
Observez son développement.
Un arbre généalogique en ligne est parfait pour organiser et partager tout ce que vous savez sur votre famille — et le préserver pour des générations futures. C'est facile : Veuillez simplement entrez quelques informations sur vous, les membres de votre famille en vie et les générations les plus proches de vous. Après cela, Ancestry recherchera parmi des millions de dossiers historiques pour trouver plus de renseignements sur votre famille."

looks ok to me now

oops

The Descendants of Louis XIII (en anglais)

well welcome anyway

Somerset parish registers

Portbury Hundred: "This Home page includes links to North Somerset Records which records hundreds of Somerset names. Church Records and Parish Chest information will be updated regularly."

newly added the early Portbury marriages 1592-1616.