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November 2009 Blog Posts (82)

Shall I upgrade to Windows 7?

The best thing I can say about Windows 7 after a few weeks of working with the program is that it is rather ordinary. There are no outstanding issues. There are no glitches or bugs. It just does the job an operating system is supposed to do. Now, as a genealogist, I have some other questions to ask.

What about the price? It is rather expensive, the prices at the larger retailers runs close to $300 with a few prices below that. The one big drawback is the upgrade from Windows XP is… Continue

Added by James Tanner on November 30, 2009 at 10:41pm — No Comments

Time to Write That Holiday Letter

The annual tradition of the holiday letter is a great way to keep in touch with our far-flung loved ones; an opportunity to update friends and family on career changes, family news and other achievements of the past year. Often it’s the only communication we have with some of our friends. Traditionally, these letters have earned the reputation as a vehicle for self-aggrandizement. Bragging about the clever things our kids have done or a laundry list of vacations and fabulous social occasions… Continue

Added by Stefani Twyford on November 30, 2009 at 11:51am — No Comments

Days With My Father by Philip Toledano

My son recently sent me a link to a beautiful website called “Days With My Father.” It is a beautiful and sentimental photo gallery done by a professional photographer with his writings about dealing with the final stages of his father’s Alzheimers Disease.

As someone whose work it is to preserve memories, I found this a beautiful and touching memorial. I sent it out to several of my friends who sent me back emails thanking me for sharing the link and how much they really appreciated… Continue

Added by Stefani Twyford on November 30, 2009 at 11:39am — No Comments

Family Tree Connection - Update (29/Nov/2009)

Family Tree Connection has added the following genealogy items to its database:

Pasdena Opportunity Club 1897-1920 - Opportunity Club, Pasadena - California. Organized 1897.

Boston Gentlemen's Driving Club 1906 Membership - Gentlemen's Driving Club of Boston, By-Laws, Rules and List of Members, 1906. This association…

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Added by Illya Daddezio on November 29, 2009 at 10:56pm — 1 Comment

Season's Greetings and It's cool outside.

Greetings one and all,

Since my computer still not working correctly I thought I would add my Season's Greetings to ye all at this time.

Family is visiting and medical things happening with family. Time is limited and it makes me remember to be thankful

for all that we have. We are blessed with a roof over our head, food to eat and clothes to wear. We also have a vehicle for transportation and some of the greatest friends and family in the world.

Reminicing… Continue

Added by Susi (Susan C Jones) Pentico on November 28, 2009 at 8:51pm — No Comments

Search strategy online for ancestors

What is the best strategy for searching online for your ancestors? Surprisingly, there are few simple rules that will lead to a dramatic increase in the reliability of the returns from a search with any search engine, be it Google, Yahoo, Ask, Alta Vista, Bing or whichever. These rules also work with nearly all of the online databases, including Ancestry.com, WorldVitalRecords and many others.

Before getting into the search rules, you must first understand tiny bit about a very… Continue

Added by James Tanner on November 28, 2009 at 5:09pm — No Comments

See your world (and history) in a new way

Many of the newer versions of genealogical database programs now contain some form of a mapping program. But the world of maps has changed and unless you have investigated the possibilities lately, you cannot imagine how interesting and dramatic the mapping world has become and you have missed the boat unless you know about 360 degree spherical views of places around the world.

How would you like to have this picture (and millions of others)?…

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Added by James Tanner on November 27, 2009 at 9:18am — No Comments

Indexes are hearsay

If a witness were testifying in court and began to relate a conversation they had outside of the court, the attorney for the opposing party would immediately object to the testimony on the basis of the hearsay rule of evidence. Almost uniformly in the U.S. court system testimony about what someone said, with a few specific exceptions, if inadmissible and objectionable. If the witness manages to say something about their conversation before the attorney can object, the Judge can order the… Continue

Added by James Tanner on November 26, 2009 at 8:22am — No Comments

Cades Cove Tennessee

Even though my wife isn't a member of genealogy wise I thought I would mention her Tennessee Tipton connection. My wifes mother had a professional genealogist do their family research some years ago and a book was written about the Tiptons from Tennessee,we donated one book to the Estill County Historical Society & gave another as a gift to her sister. (Of course now I wish we had a third book)

My wifes 5th or 6th great grandfather was William Tipton a veteran of the… Continue

Added by Ken Jones on November 25, 2009 at 10:10pm — No Comments

A Big Appetite, He must have loved Thanksgiving!

My mom found this little news clipping amongst her mother’s things. We finally figured out that the main character in the little story was her great grandmother’s brother. John Edwin Healey worked in the family business, Hoogerzeil Express Company. This was a Beverly, Massachusetts trucking and moving business started in the days before motorized vehicles. In the 1949 article it says he just celebrated his 92nd birthday, but I found him in the… Continue

Added by Heather Wilkinson Rojo on November 25, 2009 at 3:04pm — No Comments

My Heritage For Mac users

Any movement to make My Heritage download available for Mac users??

Added by Paul Priems on November 25, 2009 at 1:48pm — No Comments

Swiss records digitized online

Although Switzerland is one of the smaller countries in Europe, many people in the U.S. can trace their ancestry to Swiss immigrants. Except for collections of individual Swiss family files, there have been very few actual Swiss source documents online and especially those with free access. Now in its worldwide reach, FamilySearch's Record Search announces the first online Swiss records. In an announcement dated November 24, 2009 Record Search added Switzerland, Schaffhausen Church Records… Continue

Added by James Tanner on November 25, 2009 at 7:51am — No Comments

Family History Notes: My Fathers Side

My Father’s Mother -Cecelia Jacquinot Halley

My grandmother is 93 years old and was a great help to me. She lives in New Jersey so most of our conversations were by phone. We spent many hours talking about family history; I enjoyed her stories of how she grew up on a Kansas farm. One night asking her questions about her family. She was telling me about the church she was baptized and married in. I went online to research the church and found an article Legend of Greenbush… Continue

Added by Kathleen Melendez on November 24, 2009 at 9:49pm — No Comments

Family History Notes: My Mother's Side

Both of my mother’s parents are deceased so I relied on her for information. We got as far as her mother’s parents and their children then we were stuck. One of my grandmother’s sisters was still alive so I wrote to her asking if she would help me with the family tree, hoping she would remember me, I have not seen her for years. She did and she was very helpful. She wrote down everything she knew; her parent’s names and birth dates, even her mother’s maiden name! Her brothers and sisters birth… Continue

Added by Kathleen Melendez on November 24, 2009 at 9:43pm — No Comments

Family Stats: Your Family's Facts and Anecdotes, All in One Place

Have you ever wondered who is your oldest living relative, or what is the most common birth month of your family? How about who married the youngest, who had the most children, and whose marriage didn't make it?

Now you can access all this information easily with Family Statistics, MyHeritage.com's new analytics… Continue

Added by Daniel Horowitz on November 24, 2009 at 4:54pm — No Comments

Hundreds of thousands of new records online

With the winding down of the introduction of New FamilySearch to U.S. Temple Districts, FamilySearch has apparently turned some of its resources towards increasing the number of records available on Record Search. An announcement on November 23, 2009 indicates that Record Search has just added over 250,000 images to the Brazil Catholic Church Records collection. Here is a description of the records from the FamilySearch Wiki:…

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Added by James Tanner on November 24, 2009 at 8:27am — No Comments

Kreative Blogger Award Thanks to Heather Rojo at Nutfield Genealogy, Angela at What Was Their Story and Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings for nominating me for the Kreative Blogger award. Apparently, …

Kreative Blogger Award

Thanks to Heather Rojo at Nutfield Genealogy, Angela at What Was Their Story and Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings for nominating me for the Kreative Blogger award. Apparently, this is sort-of a chain letter kind of thing but I'll go along for the ride. Here is my list of seven things about myself:

Read… Continue

Added by James Tanner on November 23, 2009 at 8:31pm — No Comments

The Other Mayflowers, Voyage 5

The Wreck of the "Angel Gabriel"

The Great migration was an exodus of Puritans from England to New England between 1620 and 1640. During this time John Winthrop sailed on the “Arabella” and wrote his famous sermon about the “City on a Hill” during the voyage. Most of my ancestors arrived in this period, on many ships, mostly unrecorded by passenger lists. One ship carried the most ancestors (besides the Mayflower), and that was the… Continue

Added by Heather Wilkinson Rojo on November 23, 2009 at 9:41am — No Comments

A disaster averted

During the recent upgrade of my operating system from Windows XP to Windows 7, I began transferring files from my old computer to a new one. As part of the transfer, I checked one of my old journal files. Now, there needs to be a little bit of an explanation here. I started writing a weekly/daily journal about 35 years ago. The first few years the entries were handwritten, but over time, I changed to keeping my journal on the computer. Printed out, my journal would be thousands of pages. A few… Continue

Added by James Tanner on November 23, 2009 at 8:35am — No Comments

Where to find your family's stories online - part 1, Digitized Texts

(The following is from my presentation in SecondLife on Nov. 19th, at the Just Genealogy fire pit. And as always, all sites I mention are on my toolbar, under Publications tab (http://relativelycurious.ourtoolbar.com - completely free)

It’s always exciting to find a birth, marriage or death date on one of your ancestors. So many online resources are becoming available now that make filling in those blanks… Continue

Added by tami osmer glatz on November 23, 2009 at 8:32am — No Comments