• New records this week on the free FamilySearch Record Search Pilot  include an index to Cheshire, England, Non-conformist records (1671 to 1900), and index to the 1895 Minnesota state census, and images for the 1905 New York state census (the index is still in progress).

New indexing projects are underway for Italy, New Zealand, Perú and the United States; volunteers who can help with foreign language projects are needed. Go to the FamilySearch Indexing site for more information.

• Library and Archives Canada’s online Canadian Genealogy Center—one of our 101 Best Web Sites for 2009—released an index of 206,731 Canadians naturalized from 1915 to 1932. You can use the information in the database to request the original naturalization records.

• The International Association of Jewish Genealogists conference is coming right up Aug. 2-7 in Philadelphia. Besides genealogy classes and an exhibit hall, you can use a Resource Room stocked with research materials and computers. Extracurriculars include walking tours, bus tours and cemetery research trips. Visit the conference Web site for registration information.

• A Twitter retweet from @mdiane_rogers led us to a free database from professional genealogy firm Price & Associates of indentured immigrants who arrived between 1607 and 1820. You can search by first and last name, date and place of of birth, and other parameters. Sources of the information are listed on the site.
  

• Ancestry.com has upgraded its “hinting engine” for FamilyTreeMaker. Now a faster, higher-capacity engine will automatically search Ancestry.com and display a leaf next to a name in FamilyTreeMaker's pedigree and detail views if there's a potential match. The new engine also searches Ancestry Member Trees instead of One World Tree data.
  

Friday, July 24, 2009 7:25:54 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [1]

• Historical records subscription site Footnote is giving away several lifetime memberships. To be eligible, you have to create or find an I Remember page on Facebook (using Footnote’s recently released app) and get five people to click the I Remember button for that person. See more details here.

• British subscription and pay-per-view site Familyrelatives.com added more than 200,000 Canadian civil service records from 1872 to 1918. The records reveal the civil servant's name, position, department, length of service, salary and date of appointment. The earliest ones also provide civil servants' national origins and religion.

• FamilySearch has added a total of 3.5 million-plus new records to 13 collections on the free FamilySearch Record Search pilot. The additions come from Brazil, the Czech Republic and Italy; and the US states of Florida, Indiana, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina and South Carolina.

• The State Library of North Carolina and the North Carolina State Archives have posted a free collection of North Carolina family records including nearly 220 family Bible records and the six-volume Marriage and Death Notices from Raleigh Register and North Carolina State Gazette: 1799-1893.
  

• NBC’ continues to string along genealogists eager to see its “Who Do You Think You Are?” The on-again, off-again series didn't make it onto the network's fall lineup, but still may show up as a mid-season replacement, according to California-based Genealogy Gems blogger Lisa Louise Cooke.

Friday, May 22, 2009 9:38:34 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [0]

• Subscription genealogy site Ancestry.com launched a collection of German phone directories dating from 1915 to 1981. The books, which are, of course, in German, list names and addresses of more than 35 million people who lived in Germany’s major cities, as well as many businesses. 
  

• British subscription and pay-per-view site FindMyPast.com added merchant seaman crew indexes with 270,000 names of seafarers between 1860 and 1913. British ships created these lists every six months, including everyone from captains to able seamen, from engine room staff to stewardesses.

• The 1916 census of Canada is now available free at Family History Centers through their on-site Ancestry.com service. (Meaning this census isn’t on the FamilySearch pilot site—you must go to a Family History Center to search it.)
  

• The National Archives granted its first Excellence in Genealogy Awards to Myron McGhee of Decatur, GA, who took first place, and Stephanie D. Smith of Richtor Park, IL, who took second. Read about their entries on the archives’ Web site.
  

• The heritage travel Web site Go With a Purpose launched a new section called Go Connect, where users can upload photos with their reviews of historic destinations. Learn more on the site’s blog.

• A late addition: The New England Historic Genealogical Society is adding digitized back issues of the journal The American Genealogist, to its subscription databases at NewEnglandAncestors.org. Vols. 1 through 8 (published as Families of Ancient New Haven) and Volumes 9–13 (dated from 1933 through 1937), are available now in separate databases. Additional volumes will be added. NEHGS memberships start at $75.

Friday, May 08, 2009 7:02:07 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)    Comments [0]