South Africa

Ancestry24.co.za: "Did you know? That the information on a death notice could either be perfect, semi-perfect or completely inaccurate and could send you on the wrong trail in tracing your ancestors? Make sure that you have other resources to complement and verify this information."

Ancestry24.co.za - main - what is this web site all about?: "On our web site you will find the following: (You will need to be a paid subscriber to access the main contents of this site, but you can use our great Learning Centre, Family Tree Builder and Forum Boards to help find your ancestors and relatives for free!)"

Become a Volunteer

Would you like to become a volunteer and help to capture data? Or do you have data that has been captured already that you would like to add to one of our databases?

Ancestry24's primary challenge is to make as much information as possible available to our users. Most of this information exists in paper format that deteriorates over time due to excessive use and handling. Making this available in an electronic format means it will be preserved for eternity. You can help us with this mammoth task.

By volunteering, you will receive digital images from which you capture the information and transfer it over to Excel Templates. This varies from Church Records, Death Notices, Inhabitants of the Cape etc. This is all done in your own time, and you can specify how many work you would like to receive.

Due to the huge amount of immigrants arriving in South Africa during the 1800's many family historians have found it hard to try and trace how and when their ancestors arrived in South Africa. Many of these immigrants that arrived came either on their own or with other family members that did not have the same surname as there own. We would like to try and capture as many ships passenger lists and church records as possible.

Most passenger lists were published in the daily newspapers in Cape Town. Many of these passengers listed were only the 1st, 2nd Class and Saloon passengers whilst the rest were usually never mentioned. You volunteering to help in transcribing this mammoth project will be beneficial to all Family Historians World Wide.

Church records in this country are also in many instances in disrepair and we would like to get volunteers to help transcribe important Church Registers before they disappear forever. Church Records are unfortunately not available that often to transcribe but should they become available we will need volunteers as well.

If you have ANY ships passenger lists that you would like to make available or know of anyone who has any, please let us know. The same also applies for hidden church records of any denomination whatsoever.

Ancestry24.co.za - volunteers - become a volunteer:

Ancestry24 Head Office
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Cape Town
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South Africa

Previous to their being disembodied

On Thursday, the 28th ult. the Royal Monmouth and Brecon militia arrived,
after an absence of some years, at Monmouth; their return warmly greeted by
the inhabitants; and on Saturday last the privates received their ultimate
discharge. Previous to their being disembodied, Lieut.-Colonel LEWIS,
(eldest son of Charles LEWIS, Esq. of St Pierre), addressed the regiment in
an appropriate speech, thanking them for their soldier-like conduct, and
observing, that the very few courts-martial that had been held, was the best
eulogy on the discipline of the regiment. As soon as he had taken his leave,
the men procured a chair, and taking the Lieut.-Colonel in their arms,
seated him in it; and elevating him on their shoulders, bore him in triumph,
preceded by the band of the regiment, round the town. In the course of this
procession, they met the Adjutant, Surgeon, and Serjeant-Major, whom they
immediately placed in chairs in the same situation, and carried them, with
the Lieut.-Colonel, to the head-quarters at Avery's hotel, where they
alighted amidst the cheering huzzas of an immense multitude of spectators
(it being market-day), assembled on this very novel occasion.

The Breconshire part of the regiment returned to their county town on Monday
last, headed by their noble Colonel and officers, with colours flying; they
marched into Brecon to the music of their celebrated band. After and elegant
address from the Commander, extolling their conduct during the war, and
expressive of his high senses of their military discipline and exemplary
behaviour under his command, they were disembodied, and regaled at his
expense with a plentiful dinner, in the Shire-hall. The youths of St Mary's
Church exerted their abilities on the occasion, by ringing a complete peal
of grandsire triples, consisting of 5040 changes, which was performed with
great steadiness in three hours and 27 minutes, being the second time of its
performance in Brecon. The non-commissioned officers and privates returned
to their respective homes, loud in their praises of the great kindness and
respect shewn them, particularly by their late noble leader.

transcribed by Lyn Nunn of Brisbane Australia from

The Cambrian 13 Jan 1816

and posted to :-
groups.yahoo.com/ monfh : Monmouthshire Family History.
and ROOTS-L Mailing Lists:-
MONMOUTHSHIRE, GLAMORGAN, and powys

Family Tree Maker 2008

Do go to this Family Tree Maker software Board - rootsweb.com
and read the cries of pain before purchasing

also Do you think Ancestry.com reputation has been hurt by FTM2008?

FTM 2008 is in fact a brilliant concept very poorly executed - may be in three or four years time?

Irish Genealogy

Irish Genealogy Search - Irish Origins ancestor records and Ireland maps

Some of you might find this useful-

If you have access to www.irishorigins.com (or another index to Griffiths
Valuation) then you can look up Griffiths Val to get a list of graveyards in
any county or parish in the 1850's.

Just enter "yard" in the name field and search. Dont use "grave" as this
will give you persons by the name Graves.
By the way, the reason graveyards are listed in Griffiths is that they were
exempt from paying rates.

John Malone from usenet
see also "Griffiths Valuation" - Google Search

onomastics

The branch of semantics that studies the etymology of proper names.

the branch of lexicology that studies the origins and history of proper names

AskOxford: Place Names:

"In fact all these names have original meanings that are not at all apparent from their modern forms. That is because most place-names today are what could be termed ‘linguistic fossils’. Although they originated as living units of speech, coined by our distant ancestors as descriptions of places in terms and their topography, appearance, situation, use, ownership, or other association, most have become, in the course of time, mere labels, no longer possessing a clear linguistic meaning. This is perhaps not surprising when one considers that most place-names are a thousand years old or more, and are expressed in vocabulary that might have evolved differently from the equivalent words in the ordinary language, or that may now be completely extinct or obscure."

AskOxford: History of Surnames: "The acquisition of surnames in Europe during the past eight hundred years has been affected by many factors, including social class and social structure, naming practices in neighbouring cultures, and indigenous cultural tradition."

American Name Society: "The American Name Society was founded in 1951 to promote onomastics, the study of names and naming practices, both in the United States and abroad. It is a non-profit organization that seeks to find out what really is in a name, and to investigate cultural insights, settlement history, and linguistic characteristics revealed in names."

Gymnastics with Onomastics

Here are some useful terms to describe the study of names:

onomastics - the study of names (in general)

anthroponomastics - the study of personal names

toponomastics - the study of place names.

Structure of names

There are many different ways a culture can structure a name, and the people who speak your language may use any of the following, or a different way besides > > > :CLICK HERE

memorial inscriptions

BBC NEWS | Technology | Scans reveal lost gravestone text
Illegible words on church headstones could be read once more thanks to a scan technology developed in the US.

Scientists at Carnegie Mellon university are making high resolution 3D scans of tombstones to reveal the carved patterns in the stone.

A computer matches the patterns to a database of signature carvings which reveals the words.

West Yorkshire Archive Service

Homepage

The West Yorkshire Archive Service exists to preserve the county's heritage of historical documents and to help members of the public make use of them. The Service is funded by the five Metropolitan District Councils in West Yorkshire, and forms part of West Yorkshire Joint Services.

The Service has its headquarters in Wakefield, and offices in Bradford, Calderdale (Halifax), Kirklees (Huddersfield), and Leeds. The Service also gives professional advice and support to the Yorkshire Archaeological Society, also in Leeds.

West Riding Registry of Deeds was established by Act of Parliament, and began registration in September 1704. The Registry was one of only five in England. Later Registries were started in both the North and East Ridings of Yorkshire and for the County of Middlesex, whilst the Bedford Level Corporation in Cambridgeshire had operated a Registry for the Fen area of East Anglia since 1663.

The purpose of the West Riding Registry was to allow freeholders publicly to register deeds relating to their property. This was of great importance to the many small businessmen in the Yorkshire cloth trade who used their property as a security on which to borrow money. Registration was soon seen to have clear advantages and so became customary in the West Riding. Between 1704 and 1914, some one and a half million deeds were registered. The growth of owner occupation led to an even greater rate of registration, adding several million more deeds in the sixty years before the closure of the Registry in 1970.

Further information may be found in:
F. Sheppard and J. Belcher ‘The deeds registries of Yorkshire and Middlesex’ Journal of the Society of Archivists vol. 6, no. 5 (1980)

Download Registry of Deeds Information Leaflet (PDF)

We hope to apply for Heritage Lottery Funding to scan the tithe maps of Yorkshire which we hold here at West Yorkshire Archive Service. We then aim to create a database of the accompanying apportionment information and make both the map and text available to view on-line.

Irish Deaths

Irish Death Notices and Obituaries

This page is an index of 54,102 obituaries of people who were born and/or died in Ireland, or whose deaths were mentioned in Irish newspapers. The actual obituaries are not necessarily available online. They have been indexed from newspapers all over the U.S. and Canada, as well as Ireland and elsewhere, including 25,056 entries from The Cork Examiner of the 19th and early 20th century, and 1,947 entries from the 19th century [New York] Irish-American. Refer to the Publications List to identify the source.

The Irish Death Notice Index has just been updated with the addition of
695 entries, bringing the total to 54,102, including 25,056 entries from The Cork Examiner

Dennis Ahern

Tithe Maps Online

e-Mapping Victorian Cheshire: Cheshire's Tithe Maps Online:

"Almost 500 Cheshire tithe maps are now available online. Together with the information recorded in tithe apportionments, they are a unique record of land ownership, occupancy and use in Cheshire 150 years ago.

Copyright

You are free to print from this website for the purposes of private study or research for a non-commercial purpose only. The copyright and intellectual property rights in some images is owned by third parties and the responsibility for identifying copyright holders and securing necessary permissions to use an item rests ultimately with the person or persons desiring to do so.

If you wish to distribute any images displayed on this website (publication (including a website), exhibition, etc), you must contact the Cheshire and Chester Archives and Local Studies Service.

http://www.cheshire.gov.uk/recordoffice/tithemaps/tithe_copyright.htm

Cheshire County Council - Record Office Home

"

NGS Conference 14-17 May 2008

NGS Conference in the States & Family History Fair 2008
Kansas City, Missouri,USA

Local Hosts:

Missouri State Genealogical Association

Mid-Continent Public Library

Northland Genealogical Society

APG Heartland Chapter

Johnson County, Kansas, Genealogical Society

The National Genealogical Society, Arlington, Virginia, USA

Hyped Web Stories

Hyped Web Stories Are Irrelevant (Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox): "The fads and big deals that get the press coverage are not important for running a workhorse website. To serve your customers, it's far better to emphasize simplicity and quality than to chase buzzwords. . . .

we're in the midst of Web Bubble 2.0, !!! . . . .

Finally, the value of Wikis extends far beyond such highly publicized free-for-alls. Intranet Wikis, for example, are typically much more interesting. Several recent Intranet Design Annual winners employed Wikis for lightweight content management. Because these are internal solutions, you don't hear nearly as much about them. However, these practical Wikis are much more important than the overhyped ones: An intranet Wiki is an example of the trend toward simplified collaboration and non-bureaucratic workgroup support that will change the way we all work in the future. . . . .

The Wikipedia's most exciting aspect is that it's a highly interlinked hypertext. Most of the time, if you visit for one article, you end up reading five, because the richness of associative links lead you to more and more interesting information that you didn't even know you wanted. Sadly, the Web has generally lost its foundation as hypertext, and most sites offer only heavily regimented navigation that's tied into an official information architecture. Usually, there's little in the way of associative, "see also" links and local navigation. Wikipedia shows the benefits of reverting to the view of websites as hypertexts. . . . .

The most important story of them all gets almost no hype: we're seeing more and more simple websites that meet customers' needs and thus generate substantial business value. Often the sites that do nothing special are the best: it's more important to focus on doing basic things right than to chase the latest fad. "

Consumer Genetics

New Era of Consumer Genetics Raises Hope and Concerns - New York Times

Some people can eat slabs of steak and butter without gaining weight or raising their cholesterol levels. Others assiduously shun fats and still have a high risk of heart disease. The different response to diet is determined in part by one's genes.

Now scientists are beginning to apply genetics to diet, a new field known as nutritional genomics, or nutrigenomics. In the near term, the study is expected to reveal how particular diet ingredients affect health. The ultimate goal will be to tailor one's diet to genetic makeup. . . .

Pharmaceutical companies are working on a related field known as pharmacogenomics, with the goal of developing so-called personalized medicine. It is known that people with certain genetic variations will not receive benefit from certain painkillers or will suffer serious side effects from a dose of a cancer drug that helps other . . .

Nutrigenomics would expand the idea of personalized care into the consumer world. . .

Already there are some examples. People with phenylketonuria, a rare inherited disease that leads to mental retardation, can avert problems with a special diet low in proteins. People with a particular gene variant cannot digest milk.

The advent of consumer genetics is also raising concerns. Already some small companies are offering vitamins or dietary advice customized to people based on genetic tests. Customers swab the inside of their cheeks with cotton to obtain their DNA.

But many experts say not enough is known yet to support the claims of these companies. ''I'm really skeptical that this is going to lead to health benefits at the stage of knowledge we're in,'' said Dr. Ronald M. Krauss, a senior scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who was the chairman of the dietary guidelines committee of the American Heart Association.

The companies defend their tests. ''This is not voodoo; this is science,'' said John R. DePhillipo, chief executive of GeneLink, of Margate, N.J., which is developing customized vitamins and skin products based on gene tests. NuGenix, a company owned by Mr. DePhillipo's children, recently began selling customized vitamins at $300 for the test and a one-month supply.

take care - they just want your money

Norwegian naming practices

ANCESTORS FROM NORWAY

In November, 1996, an interesting article was posted by Glenn Murray to the Norwegian genealogy newsgroup no.slekt. It was one of about 50 postings in a thread on various aspects of the patronymic naming system, some of which I have translated for this article. Glenn's posting clearly shows how our ancestors considered the farm name to be an address, and not a surname:

"..... That the use of a farm name changed from time to time is very clearly shown in an example that I know of -- a contract from the farm Espeland in Sør Fron. At the top of the document, the buyer wrote his name using the farm name from another township [where he had been living]. When he signed the document, the transaction was in his mind completed, and he signed it using the farm name Espeland!"

Harald Ormbostad wrote another post in this thread. He mentioned that:

"I researched a person in the 1700's who had three different farmnames in the course of about three and a half months. I discovered all three of these in the churchbook for the municipality where he lived: In the churchbook it says that when Anders Evensen became engaged, he was using the farm name of his father's farm, where he was born. At his wedding -- three weeks later -- he was using a different farm name, because he had, during that three week time period, obtained a job as a farm laborer, and had moved to a farm a few kilometers from the farm where he had been born. Three months after the wedding, his child was baptized. On that date he was using a third farm name, because when he got married he had leased a "husmanns plass" - a cottage at a third farm......."

Discussions - no.slekt | Google Groups

from 1999 see

Usenet
no.fritid.slektsforsking.diverse no.fritid.slektsforsking.etterlysing no.fritid.slektsforsking.it

No-Fee Resources

10 No-Fee Resources for Climbing Your Family Tree Online: "As the Webmaster of a genealogy website, I m often asked if it s possible to find family tree data that doesn t come with a price tag. My answer is yes! My favorite no-fee sites are: . . . ."

Nancy Hendrickson is the Webmaster of Genealogy-and-History.com, and the author of Finding Your Roots Online.