Saturday, July 05, 2008

PR-CANADA.net - More than 500,000 Jewish Names From United States, Canada, Germany, and Israel Now Online at WorldVi

PR-CANADA.net - More than 500,000 Jewish Names From United States, Canada, Germany, and Israel Now Online at WorldVi: "More than 500,000 records from hundreds of Jewish cemeteries across the United States, Canada, Germany, and Israel have been indexed and are now searchable at WorldVitalRecords.com through Jewish Data, a new partner of FamilyLink.com, Inc. The database also includes thousands of Declaration of Intention documents filed by Jewish immigrants as well as rare books, and other records.

“It’s exciting that our records will become more visible to a larger audience. WorldVitalRecords.com has become a very busy and popular website,” said Avraham Laber, President, Jewish Data. “A lot of people wouldn’t dream that it is possible to find our data online. We are happy to partner with WorldVitalRecords.com to provide this service.”

Jewish Data is the world’s largest online database of Jewish cemetery images.

“Our goal is to provide a home for Jewish records in order to help people study Jewish history and genealogy,” Laber said. “Here we have thousands of hours of research already done for people, and it only takes them a few seconds to access the records. If they would search for the same records on their own, it would cost them much more money and time.”

Some of the most popular databases in the Jewish Data collection include: Jewish cemeteries at Cypress Ave., Ridgefield, NY (100,000 images); Washington Cemetery in Brooklyn, NY (52,000 images); Jewish cemeteries in Newark, NJ (23,000 images); Jewish Cemeteries in Montreal, Canada (23,000 images); Jewish cemeteries in Israel (14,000); Jewish cemeteries in Germany, some going back up to 700 years ago (10,000 images).

“Jewish Data represents thousands of unique names gleaned from an eclectic range of sources,” said Yvette Arts, Director, Content Partnerships, FamilyLink.com, Inc. “Researchers will be pleasantly surprised by the richness of the data as they gather information from this collection to piece together their individual stories.”
"

Thursday, July 03, 2008

DNA tests as horoscopes?

the tests, which cost £75-£510, generally provided such vague information that they were little better than horoscopes, Which? reported.


Expensive online DNA tests are 'no more accurate than horoscopes' | Mail Online: "Expensive online DNA testing services which promise to unlock the secrets of your ancestors are a waste of money, a study has found.

And some offer sinister sidelines that include potentially alarming warnings about vulnerability to life-threatening illnesses, such as cancer.

The consumer group Which? has found that DNA testing websites, which are part of a booming industry in tracing family trees, are not as harmless as they may appear.

Some keep DNA records for up to 20 years or share them with outside companies for commercial benefit.

It is possible that a customer could find their DNA is matched with a stranger, proving a family link that perhaps had been kept a secret.

And it could throw up uncomfortable questions if the DNA profile of a father turns out to be different from that of his children.

Experts at Which? Computing sent DNA samples to four companies, two from a man and two from a woman."

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

BBC Heir Hunters

BBC - BBC One Programmes - Heir Hunters - Previous episodes: "Series following the work of heir hunters, probate detectives looking for distant relatives of people who have died without making a will"

new to me this morning - but series 2

Tuesday, July 01, 2008

FreeBMD Home Page

FreeBMD Home Page: "FreeBMD is an ongoing project, the aim of which is to transcribe the Civil Registration index of births, marriages and deaths for England and Wales, and to provide free Internet access to the transcribed records. It is a part of the FreeUKGEN family, which also includes FreeCEN (Census data) and FreeREG (Parish Registers). To search the records that have so far been transcribed by FreeBMD click on the Search button below.
The recording of births, marriages and deaths was started in 1837 and is one of the most significant resources for genealogical research. The transcribing of the records is carried out by teams of dedicated volunteers and contains index information for the period 1837-1983.

PLEASE NOTE: WE HAVE NOT YET TRANSCRIBED THE WHOLE INDEX. A breakdown by event and year can be viewed here

Upgrade to FreeBMD
In order to improve the service that FreeBMD provides, work is in progress to install additional hardware."

four servers now and Dave Mayall wrote:-
2 GHz dual core AMD-64 with 16G of RAM

2.5TB of hard disk space, as a RAID-5 array on 6xx 460 GB SATA disks
on a 3-ware 9000 series raid controller, supporting 100 MB/s data
transfer

gig-EN

FreeBSD 7.0

All in a 2U box.

We have 4 of these machines, which will shortly be supplemented by 5
machines from the old site (2 machines from the old site will be taken
out of service for much needed remedial work)

programming

Digerati Illuminatus: Customer input, Who needs it!: "For instance, if you are re-writing an existing product your existing customers may be concerned with keeping the new product exactly like the old product to minimize their learning curve and to allow them to maximize their use of the new product. Does this motivation, keeping the new product exactly like the old product, match the broader concerns for the future?"

Monday, June 30, 2008

UK Family History Online

FFHS - Home Page: "The Federation of Family History Societies (FFHS) is an educational charity which exists to represent, advise and support its membership of family history societies and other genealogical organisations world-wide."

from their newsletter - FFHS - Ezine - Introduction
see Federatiob Ezine: June 2008 No 9

The concept of Family History Online was born at the Federation of Family History Societies General Meeting at Chichester in 1998, where Chad Hanna explained how an online system could provide an alternative for a postal research services.

The concept of the online system proposed by Chad, really gained momentum at the FFHS general meeting in September 2001. Chad's prototype system was presented and accepted at the Warwick General Meeting spring 2002.

FamilyHistoryOnline, entered beta testing with three societies in the months before Christmas and went live on Christmas Day 2002. Data was added at an average of a million records per month and adding data from the National Burial Index and the 1881 census index helped create a critical mass of useful information and today FamilyHistoryOnline holds 326 databases containing over 67 million records.

There were several enhancements over the years, more flexible searching with excellent support for wild-card characters, and then images with gravestone inscriptions particularly in mind, but with hopes that census images might follow.

To allow for greater data investment, increased marketing and to raise the profile of the FamilyHistoryOnline data, the FFHS has entered into a partnership with Findmypast.com. whereby the data will be hosted on their website. We are convinced that transferring the operation to Findmypast.com will be a positive move for the Federation and the contributing societies.

We would like to take the opportunity to thank everyone for their help and support over the years with FamilyHistoryOnline

Chad Hanna & Gillian Stevens
The Family History Online Team



Family History Online: "Findmypast.com (formerly 1837online.com) was the first company to make the complete General Register Office (GRO) birth, marriage and death indexes for England & Wales available online in April 2003. It is part of the Title Research Group, which has been providing professional genealogical services for over 40 years.

Following the scanning and indexing of over two million images from the GRO, this UK company launched the first web site to allow the public easy and fast access to the complete indexes, which until then had only been available on microfiche film in specialist archives and libraries. In April 2007, findmypast's parent company Title Research Group received the prestigious Queen's Award for Enterprise: Innovation 2007 in recognition of their achievement.

Findmypast.com has subsequently digitised many more family history records and now offers access to over 500 million records with a few dating as far back as 1664. This allows family historians and novice genealogists to search for their ancestors among comprehensive collections of military records, census, migration, occupation directories, and current electoral roll data, as well as the original comprehensive birth, marriage and death records.
Why transfer the data to findmypast.com?

The Federation of Family History Societies and its publication company will not be able to invest sufficient time and money in the considerable"

Sunday, June 29, 2008

Census of Ireland

National Archives: Census of Ireland 1911: "the household returns and ancillary records for the censuses of Ireland of 1901 and 1911 are in the custody of the National Archives of Ireland"

About the census: "The National Archives of Ireland has established a research partnership with Library and Archives Canada to facilitate digitisation, indexing and contextualisation of our 1901 and 1911 census records. Library and Archives Canada have a world-wide reputation in the field of document digitisation, and have already successfully digitised and partially indexed the Canadian census returns 1901, 1906 and 1911. As a fellow national archival institution, Library and Archives Canada share our values in relation to preservation of, and access to, our documented heritage."

The records for 1911 are being digitised first, then those for 1901.

1911 will be prepared first because the film is better quality than 1901, and we will be initially focussing on urban areas because of the present difficulty of finding one’s ancestors in cities without a precise address.

The order in which counties will be made available, starting in December 2007, with 1911, is:

  • Dublin
  • Kerry
  • Antrim & Down
  • Donegal
  • Cork
  • Wexford
  • Galway
  • King’s County (Offaly)
  • Limerick
  • Mayo
  • Waterford
  • Armagh
  • Carlow
  • Cavan
  • Clare
  • Fermanagh
  • Kildare
  • Kilkenny
  • Leitrim
  • Londonderry (Derry)
  • Longford
  • Louth
  • Meath
  • Monaghan
  • Queen’s County (Laois)
  • Roscommon
  • Sligo
  • Tipperary
  • Tyrone
  • Westmeath
  • Wicklow
About the census: "The returns for 1901 and 1911 are arranged by townland (the smallest division of land) or, in urban areas, by street. The 1901 census lists, for every member of each household; name, age, sex, relationship to head of the household, religion, occupation, marital status and county or country of birth. The census also records an individual’s ability to read or write and ability to speak the Irish language. All of this information is given on Form A of the census, which was filled in and signed by the head of each household. Where the head of the household could not write, his or her mark, usually an X, was recorded and witnessed by the enumerator.

The same information was recorded in the 1911 census, with one significant addition: married women were required to state the number of years they had been married, the number of their children born alive and the number still living.

In addition to returns for every household in the country, both censuses contain returns for police and military barracks, public and private asylums, prisons, hospitals, workhouses, colleges, boarding schools and industrial schools among other institutions.

The returns for both censuses also give details of houses, recording the number of windows, type of roof and number of rooms occupied by each family. Each house is also classified according to its overall condition.The number of out-offices and farm buildings attached to each household is also given. This information is recorded by the enumerator, who provided summaries of the returns for each townland and street, including the religious denomination of occupants. These summaries include a list of heads of household, thus providing a nominal index for each townland or street."

Search the census records for Dublin 1911

Browse by place

You can also search the census records by place, and view your ancestors' neighbors, or get information about the place they lived in. Click here for help with browsing.

Royal Irish Constabulary Roll

Royal Irish Constabulary Roll - Google Search
a tip by John Patrick from Rootsweb GLA and MON lists
If there are any list members with connections with family,etc, who were
connected with the Irish Police and were killed you might find this helpful.