• Supermodel Cindy Crawford was spotted in the Connecticut State Library Wednesday morning, where onlookers said she was filming an episode of "Who Do You Think You Are?" NBC canceled the celebrity genealogy reality series after last season, but  TLC has picked it up. Singer Kelly Clarkson also is reported to have filmed for the resurrected series.

• FamilySearch has added more than 9.4 million index records and images this week from the United States, Canada, Colombia, Czech Republic, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Italy, Peru, Sweden and Venezuela. They include data from BillionGraves (search results link you to BillionGraves.com to see an image of the tombstone), Michigan death certificates (1921-1952), New York, Southern District US District Court naturalizations (1824-1946), and more.

You can search or browse (in the case of unindexed record images) these records for free on FamilySearch.org. Link through to each collection from here. 

• Get a new take on your Irish Famine-era ancestors with findmypast.ie's new online Famine Memorial. Launched to coincide with the National Famine Commemoration 2013 in Kilrush, County Clare, Ireland, the memorial gathers record collections—emigration, census, newspaper, criminal and land records, as well as directories—that highlight aspects of Irish life that were affected during the Great Irish Famine (1845-1852).
  
  You'll need to be a subscriber or use credits to view records, but the memorial also provides interesting background information about the famine that anyone can view.

• Family Tree DNA announced it has lowered the price of its mid-level maternal line mtDNA test, called mtDNAPlus, to $49. This two-thirds price reduction was made possible by a new squencing technique. The company also has lowered the price of its 12-marker Y-DNA test to $49. Order either test here.

Friday, May 10, 2013 12:49:18 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• FamilySearch has added 23.9 million indexed records and images to the free FamilySearch.org, with new browsable image collections from Belgium, Brazil, Colombia, England, Italy, Mexico and the United States. Notable collection updates include the 19.2 million document images from the new collection United Kingdom, WWI Service Records 1914-1920; 2 million index records from the collection US WWI Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918; and almost the 931,000 index records from the collection US New York Passenger and Crew Lists, 1925-1942. Search or browse these databases from the chart here.
  
  
• In case you missed it (and were wondering), Irish genealogy research company Eneclann has researched Tom Cruise’s roots. The actor's real last name is Mapother, but Cruise actually is a family name. His great-grandfather, born in 1876 to Mary Pauline Russell Cruise and her second husband Thomas O’Mara, took the surname of his half-siblings and thus became Thomas Cruise Mapother I. Read more and download a copy of the family tree here.

• The Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS) has formed a partnership with Deutsche Arbeitsgemeinschaft genealogischer Verbände e. V. (DAGV), an umbrella organization of genealogical and heraldic associations in Germany. So far no specific projects have been announced, but the two groups will “develop technical solutions to preserve and present records and to increase the mutual contact between both societies and their members.”  

• Houston-based genomics and genetics testing company Gene By Gene announced that a DNA sample submitted via National Geographic’s Genographic Project to its subsidiary Family Tree DNA suggests that the last common ancestor of all modern Y chromosomes lived as long ago as 338,000 years—70 percent older than previously thought.
  
  A DNA study project administrator noticed the unique sample, which came from an African American man living in South Carolina, in FamilyTreeDNA’s database. Read the full announcement on the Genetic Genealogist blog. 

Friday, April 05, 2013 1:44:27 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

• National Archives Theater with workshops on using British national archives resources
• Celebrity Theater with guests from the "Who Do You Think You Are?"
  
• Photography Gallery focusing on old family photos (and featuring our own Photo Detective and Family Photo Detective book author Maureen A. Taylor)
• Military Pavilion where experts from museums display artifacts and answer military research questions
• Ask the Experts area for 20-minute consultations with genealogy pros
• DNA workshop area

The Virtual Genealogy Conference is sponsored by

Wednesday, February 20, 2013 2:10:14 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

• FamilySearch has announced its US Immigration and Naturalization community indexing project is halfway to its goal of creating a free online collection of US passenger lists, border crossing records, naturalization records, and other immigration documents. Two months into the project, 85,000 volunteers have indexed more than 15 million records.
  
  FamilySearch hopes to have 30 million records indexed by the end of the year.  You can see what's been indexed so far and register to help out at FamilySearch.org/immigration.

• According to Ancestry.com, actor George Clooney is Abraham Lincoln's half-first cousin five times removed through Lincoln's maternal grandmother, Nancy Hanks. Then men also share a home state of Kentucky: Clooney was born in Lexington; Lincoln, in Hardin County.
  
  Most genealogists understand such connections aren't really big news—with every generation, each of us has exponentially more cousins, and some of them are bound to be famous (others are bound to be deadbeats)—but writing this little blurb let me gaze at photos of George Clooney.

• Our friend and frequent Family Tree Magazine contributor Thomas MacEntee is the subject of a recent Forbes article about turning your hobby into a job, which Thomas did with his genealogy hobby after unexpectedly losing his tech job in 2008. He's since founded the Geneabloggers website and the company High-Definition Genealogy. You can read the Forbes article here.

• Speaking of making money doing genealogy, the Board for Certification of Genealogists is offering new video testimonials from professional researchers to help you decide if certification is right for you. The site also has posted an hour-long seminar about what you can expect from the certification process (and what's expected of you). 

Friday, November 02, 2012 11:28:10 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

• Ancestry.com has released a new Ancestry Facebook app that helps you use Facebook to add to your Ancestry.com family tree. The app lets you use your Facebook credentials to log into Ancestry.com, get hints about Facebook members who may be family, add family members on Facebook to your Ancestry tree and send copies of your tree to those relatives (which they can use to start their own trees on Ancestry.com). Watch a video of how the app works and get the app on Ancestry.com.

Note that when you add information from Facebook to your Ancestry.com tree, you grant Ancestry.com permission to use the information according to its Terms and Conditions and Privacy Statement.

• Our Photo Detective Maureen A. Taylor's book The Last Muster: Images of the Revolutionary War Generation, will soon become a historical film! Visit LastMusterFilm.com to learn more about the project and how you can help the stories of the book's subjects come to life through a donation to the Center for Independent Documentary.

• FamilySearch is holding a Genealogists Say "Thanks!" video contest. Submit a video sharing an ancestral find in FamilySearch indexes and thanking FamilySearch volunteer indexers for their work. Five winners will each receive  a $25 Visa gift card and have their videos published on teh FamilySearch indexing Facebook page. The submission deadline is November 5; see the FamilySearch blog for contest rules and other details.

• British genealogy website Genes Reunited has added a Keepsafe feature where the site's members can store digital copies of their family records, photos and memories. Keepsafes can be public, private or shared with select others.  Also new are Relation Profiles, where members can view and edit details about people in their Genes Reunited family trees. Check out the recently revamped Genes Reunited here.

• Genealogists familiar with French Canadian family heritage won't be surprised by Ancestry.com's latest famous-roots discovery: Canadian celebrities Justin Bieber, Avril Lavigne and Ryan Gosling are related through a family connection going back 400 years. The Biebs is also 10th cousins three times removed with singer Celine Dion. You can read more about how these stars are linked and see it charted out on Ancestry.com's blog.

Friday, October 12, 2012 11:04:26 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• Chavez considered herself of mixed European heritage. She had roots in Spain's New World colonies going all the way back to the 1590s,  when an ancestor sailed to Mexico. In a surprise discovery, she learned many of her family were "conversos," Jews forced to convert to Catholicism, many of whom continued to practice Judaism in private. A large number of conversos left Spain during the Inquisition. Her grandmother's custom of turning a religious statue to face the wall hinted at the surprise—you can read more about this custom in Chavez' essay here.

• Grenier, who'd always identified with American Indian roots because of a story in his mother's family, discovered he had a conquistador ancestor in Don Juan de Oñate 's army (kind of the opposite of having American Indian roots).
  
  Grenier seemed shaken when his connection to American Indian heritage was in question, but Gates' team did find a 1663  record at the New Mexico state archives identifying an ancestor as "Indio." So he does have American Indian roots, just further back than he'd believed. I wonder if he'll still identify himself as being American Indian?

• Rodriguez is Puerto Rican through her father and Dominican through her mother. Gates described her tree as a "tangled web," provoking a hilarious reaction from Rodriguez. Her father's family intermarried repeatedly, likely in an effort to preserve "pure" bloodlines. Three of her third-great-grandfathers were brothers, and her great-grandparents were first cousins.
  
  Her surprise came on a trip to the Dominican Republic to learn more about her mom's family from a great-aunt. The aunt's parents—Rodriguez's great-grandparents—weren't married, it turns out. Her great-grandfather had a legal wife, and the two women raised the children together.

As in other episodes, DNA tests revealed guests' percentages of maternal ancestry from various parts of the world. You can read more about the tests and each person's results on the Your Genetic Genealogist blog.

Also as before, Gates emphasized that mixing between ancestral groups or "races"—in this case, colonial Spanish and American Indian peoples—was common. This is part of what makes the definition of American really pretty broad.

Good news: From Lisa Louise Cooke's interview with Gates in her Genealogy Gems Podcast, it sounds like a second season is already in production.

Watch the full episode on the "Finding Your Roots" website.

Tuesday, May 22, 2012 9:25:11 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [2]

On Friday's final episode of the NBC genealogy show "Who Do You Think You Are?" TV chef Paula Deen crisscrossed the state of Georgia tracing her maternal roots.

Deen's parents died when she was a young woman, so not much family information had made its way to her. The show focused on her third-great-grandfather John Batts, a slaveowning planter and member of the Georgia legislature from 1857 to 1860.

Batts' son William (brother to Deen's great-great-grandmother Eliza Batts) fought for the confederates in the 12th Georgia regiment during the Civil War. The Georgia Archives actually had letters he'd written home, as well as letters from his commanding officer. These missives gave Deen an intimate view into William's experiences and his family's reaction after he was killed in action.

At Fold3—the first time I can remember this subscription site being shown on WDYTYA?—Deen finds John Batts' application for a pardon from the US government. Most of the South was covered by President Andrew Johnson's blanket pardon, but wealthy planters like Batts had to swear loyalty and provide documentation they'd freed their slaves.

Tax records at Emory University show John Batts' fate. Things went downhill for the family after an economic depression in 1873. Deen and a researcher note declining values of John's personal and real estate until 1879, when the records show all zeros. A newspaper article reveals that John, sadly, had committed suicide.

Although "Who Do You Think You Are?" won't be returning next season, GeneaBloggers reports that for the first time this season, the episode came in first for viewership in its time slot and was the third-most-watched show for the evening.

These two short videos show research not included in Friday's episode, about Deen's fifth-great-grandfather Joel Walker, an early Georgia settler in the Savannah area.

You can watch the full episode about Paula Deen's family history journey here.

Monday, May 21, 2012 9:27:01 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

Watch Michelle Rodriguez's Puerto Rican Roots on PBS. See more from Finding Your Roots.

Wednesday, May 16, 2012 1:06:56 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

So, the show: Actor and comedian Jason Sudeikis researched his dad's paternal line, discovering a legacy of sons who grew up without their dads.

A death record told Sudeikis his dad's dad, Stanley, died young, at age 32, from a fall, and shared a residence in Chicago with an unknown woman who was the informant on the record. A coroner's investigation shed more light on the situation: The woman was a cousin who testified that Stanley abused alcohol and slept in the park.

Court records showed Sudeikis his grandmother had filed for a legal separation from her husband because he'd abandoned the family. He'd never met Sudeikis dad.

It turned out he was living what he knew. In census and marriage records, Sudeikis found that Stanley's father, Stanley Sr., had abandoned his first wife (Sudeikis' great-grandmother) and married another woman in Connecticut. There was no record of a divorce from the earlier marriage.

Stanley Sr.'s father died in Pennsylvania in a mining accident when his son was a boy.

Not all family legacies are positive, but I like how this episode shows family history can be rewarding even when you're learning some sad truths. At the end of the episode, Sudeikis honors his dad for breaking a cycle, and being a great father even though he didn't have a model to follow.

You can watch this show online at the "Who Do You Think You Are?" website.

"Who Do You Think You Are?" | Celebrity Roots

Saturday, May 12, 2012 11:52:20 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [1]

Here's a video sneak peek at the show:

"Who Do You Think You Are?" | Celebrity Roots | Videos

Friday, May 11, 2012 2:58:07 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

Here's a little preview:

Watch "Who Do You Think You Are?" Friday at 8 p.m. Eastern/7 Central on NBC.

Wednesday, May 02, 2012 3:15:20 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

All three of the show's guests—Ruth J. Simmons, president of Brown University; Condoleezza Rice, former National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, and now on the faculty at Stanford University; and actor Samuel L. Jackson—grew up under segregation. Simmons' parents were sharecroppers; as a child she picked cotton alongside her brothers and couldn't attend school regularly until the family moved to Houston.

Condoleeza Rice was the only one of the three I knew much about, and I admire her for achieving such success despite living in a system designed to prevent her from believing that kind of achievement was possible.

All three also have family stories about white ancestors in their family tree, and identifying them was the focus of the episode.

The show showed some research in genealogical records, but concentrated on using genetic genealogy testing in confirming relationships. For each guest, a potential white cousin was tested.

In the case of Simmons, the test confirmed a relationship, and she and her brothers met the descendants of the man who owned the father of their great-grandmother Flossie.

Each guest—along with high school students participating in the Continuum Project—also took an admixture test, which evaluates percentages of African-American, European and Asian/American Indian heritage along either the Y-DNA line (for a man) or the mitochondrial DNA line (for a woman).

Some tests also can compare an African-American's DNA to that of members of African tribes that were the source of the slave trade, estimating what tribe the person's ancestors in that Y-DNA or mtDNA line came from.

You can watch the show online to see all the test results. Also check the Your Genetic Genealogist blog for a post with more details about the DNA testing in this episode.

My sense is that it's not so much which African tribe a person might be from, but just being able to say that they're from a particular tribe. I feel a certain pride and sense of belonging when I can tell people my ancestors came from Germany, Syria, England and Ireland, and that's missing for people descended from slaves.

• How exactly can genetic genealogy testing help in your genealogy research? Discover the truth behind six common genetic genealogy misconceptions with our guide, a $4 digital download from ShopFamilyTree.com.

Monday, April 30, 2012 11:02:22 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [3]

FindMyPast.com's Josh Taylor helped Lowe find him in the Daughters of the American Revolution Genealogical Research System, which lets you search online for a Revolutionary-era ancestor on which a DAR member's application is based, or for people named in the lineages in DAR applications.

(You can download our tutorial on searching the DAR database on sale for just $1.59 from ShopFamilyTree.com.)

But something was wrong: The application had been "closed" because it was discovered that Lowe's ancestor John Christopher East had been mixed up with a similarly named soldier.

Previews hinted at a twist in this episode. It came when a historian showed Lowe his ancestor on a list of prisoners who'd been part of Rohl's Regiment. A sparkle in the historian's eye hinted that he knew something, but only when he showed Lowe George Washington's personal papers did Lowe realize Rohl was a commander of German Hessian troops.

East (listed under his German name, Oeste Cristophe) was among the troops Gen. Washington defeated in the Battle of Trenton, when his soldiers crossed the Delaware River to surprise the Hessians at Christmas.

I remember learning in grade school about these 30,000 men the British hired to fight the Americans, and we kids thought that was pretty bad.

But Lowe's research revealed Cristophe as a sympathetic figure: Among the youngest of eight children, he wouldn't have inherited land or even had the means to marry in Germany. He took a risk in leaving for America at age 22—then staying (as about 15 percent of the Hessians did) after his release from prison.

This story has a happy ending. Taylor's researchers found Christophe on a list of Americans who paid a tax levied to raise money for the war. Lowe is descended from a Patriot after all and he was invited to apply for the Sons of the American Revolution lineage society.

• Learn more about lineage societies in this FamilyTreeMagazine.com article.

• Family Tree Magazine Podcast host Lisa Louise Cooke discussed the bounty of the DAR library in the July 2009 episode—listen free on FamilyTreeMagazine.com or in iTunes.
  

Monday, April 30, 2012 9:03:33 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

Watch "Who Do You Think You Are?" Friday on NBC at 8 Eastern/7 Central.

Thursday, April 26, 2012 11:58:13 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [2]

You can watch the episode online at PBS.org.

Though not related, the two had a lot in common: Both were expectig baby No. 2 at the time of filming, both have parents in the film industry, both have Eastern European Jewish roots on one side of the family, and both also have ancestors in America before the Revolutionary War.

Gates' team could trace the Jewish roots only to the third-great-grandparent generation, but for each actor's other branches, Gates unrolled an enviably long family tree with many generations. (See closeups on the Genea-Musings blog.)

Gyllenhaal learned how her family really got its last name. The story was that a Swedish ancestor created a beautiful book about butterflies and the king rewarded him with a wonderful home known as "Golden Hall." What really happened was that an ancestor took the name after being knighted during the Thirty Years' War.

But like many family stories, there was a grain of truth. Another relative had amassed a collection of beetles that later became world-renowned.

Each star also took a DNA test, and Gates prompted them to compare the roles of nature versus nurture in making up their being. My favorite question of the night was when he asked Downey "Do you think that what happened in your family tree between 1300 and 1965 [the year of Downey's birth] has shaped who you are?"

I do believe that our ancestors' successes and struggles affect the next generation, that each of us can't help but carry these experiences inside us. Genealogy is partly a way of figuring out what's in there.

BTW, in the July/August 2012 Family Tree Magazine, we'll have Gates' answers to five of our burning questions about his genealogy work.

• Family Tree Magazine Swedish Genealogy Guide digital download

• Family Tree Magazine Jewish Genealogy Guide digital download

Monday, April 23, 2012 3:30:02 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [9]

• Military records subscription site Fold3 has added records relating to the Sultana disaster. That's the steamboat whose boilers exploded April 27, 1865, killing 1,700 (mostly Civil War Union soldiers recently released from Confederate POW camps). The ship was carrying 2,200 passengers—far more than the 376 she was built for. Records include lists of former prisoners who survived and those who died. The records are free to search, at least for the time being.
  
  
• The Center for Jewish History (CJH) has announced a partnership with Jewish genealogy expert Miriam Weiner's Routes to Roots Foundation (RTRF). CJH will incorporate RTRF’s Eastern European Archival Database and Image Database into its online catalog, expanding access to genealogy resources from Belarus, Lithuania, Moldova, Poland and Ukraine. Weiner will serve as senior advisor for genealogy services at CJH's Ackman & Ziff Family Genealogy Institute.
  
  
• Besides adding 1940 census records and coordinatng the 1940 Census Community Project, FamilySearch has continued adding other records to the free FamilySearch.org. The new resources include seignorial records from the Czech Republic; city records from Nördlingen, Bavaria, Germany; church records from Estonia, Portugal and Slovakia; and marriages from New Jersey. See the updated colelctions and click through to them here.
  
  
• Remember to watch "Finding Your Roots With Henry Louis Gates Jr." this Sunday at 8 p.m. ET on PBS, which will feature actors Robert Downey Jr. and Maggie Gyllenhaal. The European-immigrant stories in both stars' pasts are common to many Americans.
  
  
• NBC's "Who Do You Think You Are?" tonight will repeat the popular Reba McEntire episode. Next Friday will be an all-new episode featuring actor Rob Lowe.

Friday, April 20, 2012 12:41:19 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [4]

I was relieved to learn at the very beginning of that Kevin Bacon's caveman hair is for a movie role. Wondering about it would've been distracting.

Both come from distinguished New England families. A few years back I read the book In My Blood: Six Generations of Madness and Desire in an American Family by Sedgwick's uncle John Sedgwick. I was glad to see him interviewed for this episode, and unsure what work the show's researchers would have left to do.

But they did discover something new: Family patriarch Theodore Sedgwick, a prominent lawyer in Colonial Massachusetts, owned a slave. This was surprising because he took on the case of a slave named Mumbet who sued for her own freedom, claiming that the new Massachusetts constitution made all men free—and she won.

Kevin Bacon's Quaker ancestor also owned slaves, though Gates pointed out that at least his will directed they should learn to read and be freed at age 35.

Gates' visit to a high school classroom demonstrated how little-known it is that slavery was so widespread in the northern colonies. I didn't realize that Quakers hotly debated the issue of slavery before setting themselves against it.

Sedgwick also took a DNA test revealing that she is half Jewish, and she seemed to express relief. But at the beginning of the show, she was described as half Jewish through her mother, so I didn't understand that emotion—perhaps some explanatory scenes were edited out.

And the big drumroll: Gates revealed to the couple that they're ninth cousins once removed (which is very, very distant). Even without the news reports coming out before the show, I would've seen this one coming a mile away, as soon as Sedgwick said at the start of the episode "My biggest fear is that we're cousins."

Monday, April 09, 2012 8:52:53 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [1]

In this preview, she tries to find out the identity of an unknown figure on her family tree.

Here's another preview:

Friday, April 06, 2012 8:21:02 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [1]

This is a more-recent search than in most episodes, which made it closer to home for the celebrity.

Wilson’s father, who passed away a few years ago, was born in 1920 in Oraion, Xanthi, Greece.

There was a lot to be sad about in this episode. Bulgaria occupied Xanthi dring World War II. Required to serve in the military, Allan was imprisoned for a petty crime.

After he was paroled and settled in Bulgaria, he married and had a son, Emil—news to Wilson. His wife died when the baby was three days old, and Emil died at four months.

After attempting to leave the country, Allan was detained by the occupying Communists and sent to a labor camp. This information was in a file in the “Secret Files Commission.” A guard’s report detailed his escape.

When Wilson traveled to Greece to meet her father’s brother for the first time, he gives her a letter Allen wrote from America. He was making good money, going to school and having fun. It was the perfect hopeful ending for a tearful show.

If you missed it, you'll be able to watch it on NBC's website.

Got Greek roots? Here's our free online Greek Genealogy Toolkit. You'll find more Greek research advice in the May/June 2012 Family Tree Magazine, which starts mailing to subscribers in April.

Friday, March 30, 2012 9:06:44 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [3]

Remember to watch "Finding Your Roots With Henry Louis Gates Jr." this Sunday evening at 8 p.m. ET on PBS. It'll feature the family histories of tv journalist Barbara Walters and Geoffrey Canada, president of the Harlem Children’s Zone.

Bonus: You'll also see  New England Historic Genealogical Society senior researcher Rhonda McClure in action solving Canada's ancestral mysteries.

Here's a preview video in which Canada visits the farm where his enslaved ancestor Thomas lived.

Watch Both Sides of Slavery on PBS. See more from

Friday, March 30, 2012 11:32:25 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

Here, she meets her uncle for the first time. Word of advice: Grab a tissue.

Incidentally, Bulgaria can be a difficult place to research genealogy, as we pointed out in the September 2007 Family Tree Magazine. If your ancestors hail from there, this show may hold some valuable tips.

Thursday, March 29, 2012 12:03:45 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

Last night’s "Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates Jr.," traced several ancestors of Harry Connick, Jr., and Branford Marsalis. (Watch it here if you missed it or look for a rebroadcast this week on PBS.)

The show spent quite a bit of time on the two men's childhoods and friendship in New Orleans. I was especially excited to see them at the Musician’s Village, a Habitat for Humanity community the two sponsor and where I got to help build houses several years ago. The show also has Connick and Marsalis playing at Preservation Hall, which I visited on the same trip.

Back to the genealogy: Gates presented Harry and Branford each with a “Book of Life,” basically, a scrapbook of the records the show’s researchers found.

Researchers discovered that Marsalis’ surname came from a white Dutch slave owner in Mississippi. A son of that man's slave married Marsalis’ great-great-grandmother Lizzie—but her son Simion, Marsalis great-grandfather, was three years old when that marriage took place. Simion’s father was likely Lizzie's previous husband, a man named Isaac Black.

I was glad we saw an archivist looking... and looking ... and looking for records of one of Marsalis' ancestors at the New Orleans Public Library and in cemeteries before he finally found something. That's reality.

Connick was relieved to learn his Irish ancestor, a famine immigrant named James Connick, didn’t own slaves—but was disappointed that he fought for the Confederacy for three years.

Gates explains that it wasn't necessarily because James supported slavery. His work would've dried up during the war, and there may have been no other way to make a living. The researchers found a military pension record for James, though it doesn't seem to indicate what kind of injury he might've suffered.

Connick's fifth-great-grandfather, David McCullough from Pennsylvania, was an infamous privateer on the ship Rattlesnake. He captured ships in the West Indies and would send the bounties back to the United States. The British crown had a 5,000-guinea reward on McCullough's head.

To demonstrate how varied our heritage is, Gates had black friends from his local barbershop guess their percentages of African, White and Indian heritage, then had them take DNA tests (the show didn’t explain margins of error). Most weren't too far on their white and black percentages, but had overestimated their American Indian blood. 

Immediately after the Harry Connick Jr./Branford Marsalis episode was another featuring Newark, NJ, mayor Cory Booker and US Rep. John Lewis. I had to get to bed at that point. You can watch this one online, too.

"Finding Your Roots With Henry Louis Gates Jr." is airing Sunday nights at 8 ET on PBS.

Monday, March 26, 2012 11:18:35 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

Hunt's family tree seemed full of distinguished ancestors. She starts with her great-grandmother Florence Rothenburg—a name later changed to Roberts, which a historian explains would’ve made life easier for the Jewish-American family—in New York City in 1900.

After her husband died, Florence took her four small children to Pasadena, Calif., a move that seemed strange for a newly widowed woman. But it turned out that California was home for Florence.

Florence’s father was one of the Scholle brothers, clothiers who started out in New York. Florence’s father (Hunt's great-great-grandfather) William Scholle opened a branch in San Francisco to serve the Gold Rush pioneers.

He built the business to the point he was listed in a newspaper article about local millionaires. In 1890, he was an investor, along with Isaias Hellman, Levi Strauss and others, in the Nevada Bank (it merged with Wells Fargo in 1905).

That was Hunt’s dad’s mother’s family. Next, in Portland, Maine, she learns about the paternal side. Her great-great-grandmother was Augusta Hunt, a local leader in the Women’s Christian Temperance Union.

Hunt was almost reluctant to learn more—her impression of the WCTU was that of a group of teetotalers who wanted to restrict everyone else’s freedoms. But a historian explained the extent of alcohol abuse at the time and the suffering it caused, particularly for women and children.

As part of the WCTU, Augusta supported a variety of causes, including female suffrage—and she lived long enough to see the 19th amendment passed. An obituary stated she was the first woman in Portland to cast her vote.

I noticed Hunt's voice-overs in this episode would say “I’m meeting so-and-so, whom I’ve asked to research my ancestor so-and-so.” Past episodes have been presented more as a collaboration between the celebrity and researcher (whether or not that was actually the case), with the celebrity doing more active searching. I wonder if this is a new approach?

I appreciated all the history in this episode and the lesson to learn historical context before making assumptions about your ancestors. Ironically, early on we learned that Hunt’s grandmother—Augusta’s daughter-in-law—was killed by a drunk driver when Hunt’s dad was 5 years old.

The scene in which Hunt goes home to share everything she learned with her dad didn’t make the final episode. For those who love this part of the show, here’s the deleted scene:

If you have New York City ancestors, check out our New York City Research Guide, a digital download in ShopFamilyTree.com.

Monday, March 26, 2012 9:52:20 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [1]

• Looks like I'll be parked in front of the TV for a fair portion of the weekend. Tonight on "Who Do You Think You Are?" watch actress Helen Hunt explore her roots. Here's a video preview:

• And Sunday, March 25 at 8 p.m. ET, "Finding Your Roots With Henry Louis Gates Jr." premieres. Watch a video preview here. 

• The International Society of Family History Writers and Editors Excellence in Writing competition is accepting entries now through June 3, with a discount on the entry fee if you submit before April 15. You can enter published or unpublished genealogical works in one of five categories. Winners receive a cash prize and a certificate. The awards presentation will take place during the Federation of Genealogical Societies Conference in Birmingham, Ala., Aug. 29-Sept. 1. Get more information on the ISFHWE website.

• Archives.com has hired genealogist Megan Smolenyak as its Family History Advisor. She'll start immediately, talking about the 1940 census. Smolenyak was formerly chief genealogist at Archives.com competitor Ancestry.com.

• FamilySearch added more than 6.3 million new, free records online this week for Australia, Brazil, Canada, Caribbean, Czech Republic, England, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, and the United States. See the list of updated collections and link to each one here.

Friday, March 23, 2012 9:09:23 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

Gates, a Harvard history professor who's hosted previous genealogy shows for PBS including African-American Lives and Faces of America, will explore the roots of 24 well-known Americans including Harry Connick Jr., Barbara Walters, Kevin Bacon, Condoleezza Rice, Sanjay Gupta and Martha Stewart.

Here's the twist that makes this show different: Each episode will feature a pair of celebrities "bound together by an intimate, sometimes hidden link." DNA testing takes over where paper trails leave off.

The staff of the New England Historic Genealogical Society and Johni Cerny, co-author of The Source: Guidebook for American Genealogy, contributed research to the series.

You can watch several clips on the show's website, including this extended preview:

Watch Extended Preview on PBS. See more from Finding Your Roots.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012 7:51:12 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

In this episode, former Pittsburgh Steelers player Jerome Bettis visits Kentucky to learn about his mom’s roots. He didn’t trace as many generations as in some other episodes, but I liked the attention spent on each person.

Bettis, an African-American, turned to newspapers for details not documented in official records. He found references to court cases for his great-grandfather being struck by his boss, and in a separate incident, his great-great-grandfather being hit by a train.

The deck was stacked against each man in his case, but Bettis discovered in court records that his great-great-grandfather Abe Bogard won his complaint against the Illinois Central Railroad. Bettis actually got to talk to someone who remembered hearing about the case from men employed by the railroad at the time.

One of my favorite aspects of this episode was the way a Western Kentucky University history professor showed Bettis how to trace his family into slavery. Presuming that the name Bogard was taken from a former owner, Bettis found a white Bogard family in the area and checked will records and slave dower lists (reports of slaves women had inherited).

They found a Jerry and Eliza, with a son Abe. I can’t imagine the feeling that would hit you when you see a record showing that your family members were owned by other people, and monetary values placed on their heads.

The owner, Joseph Bogard, willed Bettis’ ancestors to his wife. After she died, Abe and his parents were sold off to separate owners. The good news is that the 1870 census, the first US census to name former slaves, showed the family was reunited.

Here’s a Western Kentucky University article about the professor’s work with Bettis. 

Here’s a FamilyTreeMagazine.com article about making the jump from freed slaves in the 1870 census to enslaved ancestors in the 1850 and 1860 slave schedules. 

Saturday, March 10, 2012 10:17:27 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [2]

I'll be watching as part of our Virtual Conference viewing party (even though Bettis played for the Cincinnati Bengals rivals, the Pittsburgh Steelers).

In this video, Bettis visits the land where his enslaved third-great-grandfather lived and worked.

Thursday, March 08, 2012 8:56:21 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

I watched the show online, which is a bit of a problem for me because I want to sit there and do research, so then I had to watch it again. The ratings are already out and apparently this episode did the best of any so far. Who doesn't love Reba McEntire?

Here’s the full episode if you still need to watch it:

She started the show at her family ranch in Oklahoma and traveled to Aberdeen, Miss.; Raleigh, NC; Oxford, NC; Tappahannock, Va.; and England in pursuit of her mom’s family tree.

I was surprised to see Josh Taylor (formerly of the New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS), now of FindMyPast.com) walk into the library in Aberdeen. This scene was in the clip I posted Friday, but I had assumed they were at the NEHGS library in Boston.

One theme is McEntire’s discovery of her family’s slave-owning past. When she’s confronted with her fourth-great-grandfather’s life as a slave trader, I like what the archivist says, that slavery is part of all of our histories.

Later, she learns the same ancestor’s grandfather (McEntire’s sixth-great-grandfather) came to the country as a 9-year-old indentured servant. He was one of the fewer than half of all indentured servants who lived long enough to become free citizens—and became successful enough to purchase land.

When she learned the boy’s father put him on the ship, McEntire cautions herself against drawing early conclusions. Good for her: Before making judgments about an ancestor’s actions, it’s a good idea to learn the context of their lives.

I like the variety of records used in this episode (though we didn’t see where Josh found his information). Censuses, obituaries, land records, tax records, newspapers (she used GenealogyBank at the Granville County courthouse, but they didn’t show the name of the site), slave bills of sale, deeds, baptismal registers and more.

Monday, March 05, 2012 8:40:29 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [7]

You can read a litle about McEntire's ancestral journey in this Tulsa World article (McEntire grew up on a ranch in Chockie, Okla.).

Here's a preview of the show in which McEntire learns family information from D. Joshua Taylor, formerly of the New England Historic Genealogical Society and now chief genealogist at FindMyPast.com.

Taylor explains a bit about why names appear spelled differently in historical records and hints at some "very interesting things" happening in one of the counties where an ancestor of McEntire's lived—I guess we'll have to watch the show to find out what those things are.

And here's McEntire in Chesire, England, searching for records on an ancestor who was baptized there in 1688—and seemingly sent away to the American colonies at just 9 years old.

Watch "Who Do You Think You Are?" on NBC tonight at 8 /7 Central.

Friday, March 02, 2012 8:40:37 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [3]

Here's a short preview for the show.

 

Watch Preview on PBS. See more from Finding Your Roots.

Thursday, March 01, 2012 10:44:12 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [7]

This was my favorite episode so far. More of it took place in libraries and archives than the previous episodes, with lots of looking at records and historians guiding us through their meaning. Second, the profound impact this research had on Underwood really came across.

After taking an Ancestry.com DNA test to help trace his paternal side (which his brother Frank has researched in genealogical records—I wonder if Frank has read Family Tree Magazine?), Underwood crisscrossed Virginia from Richmond to Lynchburg and back (and forth again) to trace two branches on his mom’s side.

Among his discoveries in censuses and registers of free “negroes” was a free African-American ancestor, Samuel Scott. Scott owned two slaves, who we learn were probably his own parents.

Due to an 1806 law regarding freed slaves, the parents would’ve had to leave the state or risk being sold back into slavery if Samuel had not purchased them. This shows how important historical context can be when you’re interpreting historical records about your family.

(PS: This website has more information and some transcribed indexes of free African-Americans in Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina.)

In another branch was an ancestor, Sawney Early, who was institutionalized in the 1900 census. From newspaper articles, we learn about Sawney’s disputes with white neighbors who’d arrived after the war. Sawney was described as wearing odd clothing and believing himself to be the “second Jesus.” He shot a man’s cow that had wandered into his corn, and was himself shot several times. A historian explains Early was likely a “conjuror”—a spiritual leader and healer in slave communities.

At the end, the DNA test results come in and Underwood’s Y-DNA is a match to a man in Cameroon, so he and his father visit their African cousins. The cousin said he took a DNA test in 2005 for a project to connect people in Cameroon to families in America (I wonder if this was the National Geographic Genographic Project). 

A couple of things I want to point out: The DNA testing was very appealing and made it look easy, but I wonder what the chances are of finding such a clear match.

And the show seemed to give up when Sawney Early couldn’t be found in the 1860 census, when he was probably a slave. There are strategies to trace slaves using the 1850 and 1860 censuses, even though they’re not named, and you also can use resources such as wills and estate records and African-American genealogy websites such as these. (Perhaps the researchers tried these methods and came up empty-handed.)

The episode showed that African-Americans can have success tracing their roots in records and through DNA, and it showed how meaningful the journey can be.

Related resources from ShopFamilyTree.com:

• Who Do You Think You Are? The Essential Guide to Tracing Your Family History by Megan Smolenyak
  
  
• Hey, America, Your Roots Are Showing by Megan Smolenyak 
  
  
• African-American Genealogy Value Pack (on sale through the end of February)
  

Saturday, February 25, 2012 11:14:48 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [28]

• This week, the free FamilySearch.org added 2.8 million records for the United States, Canada, England, Hungary, Italy and Russia. Of note are the 900,000 records of Hungary Reformed Church Christenings. See the list of new records and link to each collection here.

• Actor Blair Underwood—star of this week's "Who Do You Thnk You Are?" episode—will appear today in a commercial promoting Ancestry.com’s support of Big Brothers Big Sisters. If you join Ancestry.com through the link www.ancestry.com/donate between February 24 and 29, Ancestry.com will donate 20 percent of proceeds to the Big Brothers Big Sisters mentoring program.

• Findmypast.co.uk today announced a project to digitize the 3.5 to 4 million historical records from the Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies in England. The records cover parish churches and bishops' transcripts, spanning 1538 to 1990 (1910 for baptisms and 1928 for marriages).

Findmypast.co.uk also added 359,000 records of UK merchant seamen records covering the years 1835-1857. Its sister site findmypast.ie added Petty Sessions order books—court records from the lowest courts in Ireland—from 1850 through 1910.

• Military-focused historical records subscription site Fold3 has published the Index to Compiled Service Records of Union Soldiers for four states (Ohio, New York, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania), with more to come. This collection provides digital images of the cards you'll find transcribed in the National Park Service's free Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System database.

Friday, February 24, 2012 2:36:25 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [5]

In this preview clip, a genealogist guides Underwood through finding family in the 1860 census on Ancestry.com—and Underwood realizes his African-American ancestor Delaware Scott was free in 1860, and owned real estate.

And check out this article, in which Underwood talks about filming the show and meeting relatives in Cameroon.

The episode airs at 8 p.m. Eastern/ 7 p.m. Central on NBC.

If you're researching African-American roots like Underwood, you'll find expert research advice in our African-American Genealogy Value Pack, on sale in ShopFamilyTree.com during Black History Month.

Thursday, February 23, 2012 8:52:57 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [4]

Spoiler alert! Don’t read if you don’t want to know what happened on Marisa Tomei’s episode of “Who Do You Think You Are?” on NBC.

I missed some of tonight’s “Who Do You Think You Are?” and here’s why:

But I did see that she started out at home in New York, where her mother retold the family legend about how Marisa’s great-grandfather Leopold was killed in a bar by a jealous husband or someone he owed money to. That was the story Tomei wanted to find out about.

In Italy, Marisa was at first thrown off track by a cemetery record that said Leopold had died of an illness. That would have been a major bummer after all the murder mystery buildup.

But later (after the part I missed except to notice the beautiful Italian scenery and Marisa Tomei’s enviable wardrobe), newspaper articles and court records show that Leopold was killed by a business partner who'd been fired. The man hired a fancy lawyer and got off with a minor charge, then disappeared.

I think my favorite part of the episode was the letter a cousin wrote to Marisa to share memories of Leopold’s wife Adelaide. What a dream that would be.

If you missed this episode, you can watch it on the show's website.

See our "Who Do You Think You Are?" page for beginning research resources including our free downloadable Getting Started Cheat Sheet, plus show news and tweets.

If you have Italian roots to research, consult our $4 downloadable Italian Genealogy Guide and the book Finding Italian Roots: The Complete Guide for Americans by John Philip Colletta.

Friday, February 10, 2012 9:57:28 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [3]

Tonight on NBC's “Who Do You Think You Are?” actress Marisa Tomei explores her roots in Italy and tries to unravel a murder mystery in her family.

Here’s a preview video of Tomei receiving a letter from her 83-year-old Italian first cousin twice removed.

Of course we'll blog about the episode right here.

Ready to research your own Italian roots? Consult our $4 downloadable Italian Genealogy Guide and the book Finding Italian Roots: The Complete Guide for Americans by John Philip Colletta.

And see our "Who Do You Think You Are?" page for beginning research resources including our free downloadable Getting Started Cheat Sheet, plus show news and tweets.

Friday, February 10, 2012 8:48:52 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [2]

I got Leo settled into bed just before 8, so I got myself settled on the sofa to watch the premiere episode of “Who Do You Think You Are?” season 3, featuring Martin Sheen.

Sheen’s Irish-born mother died when he was 11. I was kind of hoping this show would start like others, with a trip home—Sheen grew up in Dayton, Ohio, northern neighbor to my Cincinnati hometown—but we moved right into the stories of Sheen’s two revolutionary uncles.

His mother’s brother was an activist during the Irish Civil War of 1922 to 1923, but, it turns out, not on the side Sheen thought: He was opposed to the Irish Free State and the Anglo-Irish Treaty.

Sheen’s father’s brother Matias stood up against Gen. Francisco Franco for the Spanish republic in the Spanish Civil War from 1936 to 1939.

Sheen visits prisons where each man was held. The show draws strong parallels with Sheen’s own social activism.

Next, Sheen delves farther back into his father’s family. He learns the names of his fourth-great-grandparents—and that his fourth-great-grandfather had several children with another woman (prompting a “Whoops!” from Sheen). The man also was a judge prosecuting a young woman in the community who’d had an affair, probably with a cleric.

And the better-than-fiction twist: This young woman’s descendant married the judge’s descendant –branches on the family tree from which Sheen sprang.

If you share Sheen’s Irish heritage, check out our Irish Heritage Research Guide digital download or the Irish Research 101 and 201 Family Tree University classes. 

Your ancestors hail from Spain, like Sheen’s paternal branch? Consult our Spanish and Portuguese Research Guide digital download.

Friday, February 03, 2012 10:01:15 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [1]

Here's a quick preview of season 3 (I know that's not Martin Sheen below):

I was already excited about the season, but even more so after a media conference call with Sheen on Monday. He was brimming over with enthusiasm about the ancestors he discovered through the show. You'd think he met them in person.

I asked about the location where he felt most connected to his roots, and he spoke about the cathedral in Tui, Spain. (You can see it here.)

"That is a place that I have visited many times since 1969, when I made my first trip to Spain and to visit my father's community. And I only learned during this last trip with "Who Do You Think You Are?" that my great- great-great-great-grandfather is buried in that cathedral," Sheen said. "And I never knew that.

"In fact I used to walk over his burial spot in the cathedral. Everybody did. You are just walking along. And when I got to the show—I don't think it is included in the show—but they showed me where it was. I was not aware until we did the show of how intricately connected my heritage was with that town and specifically that cathedral."

The Martin Sheen episode starts tonight on NBC at 8 p.m. ET (check your listings for local times). If you miss it, you'll be able to catch it on Hulu and on the show's website (which is probably how I'll see it, unless a certain one-year-old observes his bedtime to the minute).

Of course we'll be blogging all about it. Keep up with this season and get our beginning genealogy guidance—for yourself or for friends who get inspired watching "Who Do You Think You Are?"—on our "Who Do You Think You Are?" landing page.

Friday, February 03, 2012 9:49:03 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

Actors Martin Sheen, Marisa Tomei, Blair Underwood, Rob Lowe, Helen Hunt, Rashida Jones, Jason Sudeikis, Rita Wilson and Edie Falco; musician Reba McEntire; former NFL running back Jerome Bettis; and TV chef Paula Deen will be featured this season.

The premiere is Friday, Feb. 3, at 8 p.m. on NBC.

You can see the full press release on the GeneaBloggers blog.

Friday, January 06, 2012 3:20:11 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [3]

• PBS' Winter-Spring 2012 lineup includes a 10-episode celebrity genealogy series called "Finding Your Roots With Henry Louis Gates Jr." premiering Sunday, March 25 at 8 p.m.
  

Gates will delve into the genealogy and genetics of famous Americans including Kevin Bacon, Robert Downey, Jr., Branford Marsalis, John Legend, Martha Stewart, Barbara Walters and Rick Warren. The show's website is here, though is hasn't yet been fleshed out with any content.

• A few updates to the genealogy web search engine Mocavo.com: You can now upload files to your account using Dropbox; just follow these instructions on the Mocavo.com blog. Also, if you log in before you search, you can mark off Mocavo.com search results you've already looked at with an "I've Read This" button, and you can rank matches as “The Person I’m Looking For," “Maybe A Good Match," “Not Who I’m Looking For” and “Broken Link.”
  

Finally, the site has introduced Mocavo Plus, an advanced version the site's developer says will get you more-relevant matches with features such as wild card searching, date-range searching, GeoSearching (in the US) and more. Subscriptions cost $9.95 per month or $79.95 (a sale price) per year.

• The California State Genealogical Alliance (CGSA) has started two new blogs: the CSGA Blog, with a goal to keep the California Genealogical community informed, and the Csgacopyright blog, which helps the genealogical community understand copyright issues. Learn more about the CGSA on the organization's website.

• The National Archives and Records Administration has launched "Know Your Records" online videos from the popular genealogy how-to workshops hosted at its facilities on topics such as such as census, immigration and military records. Catch the videos on the archives' YouTube channel.

• The New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) announced its schedule of upcoming workshops at its Boston research library. If you'll be in the area, you can learn about the library's resources, local history, researching African-American ancestors and more (NEHGS also is organizing a research trip to Belfast in May). Check out the schedule on the AmericanAncestors.org website.
  

• Genetic testing site 23andme, which provides test-takers with medical- and ancestry-related analyses, has generated some controversy in changing site policies. Now, those who let their 12-month subscriptions lapse will lose access to their Relative Finder matches, Health Reports and other features that rely on their genetic data. They'll still have access to the raw data. Read more about the controversy on the Your Genetic Genealogist blog.

Thursday, January 05, 2012 9:42:06 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

We had a great tour guide, a National Park Service ranger who says his colleagues call him Ranger Santa in December (you'll see why a few pictures down).

Here’s the house Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln bought in 1844. They lived there until Lincoln was elected president, when they rented it out and moved to Washington, DC. Robert Lincoln, their only surviving son, kept the home as rental property and donated it to the state of Illinois in 1887.

Here’s the house as it looked in 1860, in a historic image on display at the visitors’ center.

This is the Lincoln’s doorbell.

The rear parlor is where a committee from the 1860 Republican convention formally notified Lincoln he’d been nominated as the party’s presidential candidate.

In the living room, Lincoln would sprawl out on the floor (most of the furniture was too small for him) with his kids and the family dog, Fido.

Upstairs in Lincoln’s bedroom, Santa Ranger pointed out how high the 6”4’ Lincoln’s shaving mirror was hung.

The stove in the kitchen at the back of the house is the one Mary Todd Lincoln used. Our guide pointed out some of the log cabins Lincoln lived in as a boy were no bigger than this kitchen.

The last Abraham Lincoln descendant, Robert Todd Lincoln Beckwith, died in 1985. He was the grandchild of Robert Lincoln, the only son to survive into his 20s.Think you're related to the Lincolns?

Get a quick look the Lincoln family tree here.  You can see more detail on Abe Lincoln's ancestors here. Click the links for first generation (Abraham Lincoln), second generation (his parents, Thomas and Nancy Lincoln), etc.

These websites will help you research potential presidential roots.

Here’s a fun fact our guide shared: Abraham Lincoln didn’t have a middle name. Find other First Family facts here.

Wednesday, September 07, 2011 9:28:23 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [4]

• Canadian subscription site Ancestry.ca, in partnership with The British Postal Museum and Archive, has added a database of Post Office Appointment Books, 1737-1969. The 1.5 million records name British Post Office employees, including the “femails” who kept the office open during wartimes. (These records also are on Ancestry.com.) 

• Our local Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County has launched a website that lets you explore the first panoramic image of an American city (Cincinnati, of course). You can zoom way in on the daguerreotype to see remarkable detail of storefronts, steamboats, streets and more along two miles of the city’s Ohio Riverfront. Click yellow markers on the image for pop-up windows with information about places depicted.

• British genealogy subscription site FindMyPast.co.uk, with the Society of Genealogists, has added a Business Index Collection listing Britain's shopkeepers, businessmen and women, and captains of industry from the early 1890s through 1927.

• The new Black Sea German Research site is for those tracing families who migrated from Germany, Alsace, Poland or Hungary to the Black Sea region of South Russia (now Ukraine) in the early 1800s. Search a database of names, upload your GEDCOM and share historical information at this free, volunteer-run site.

• NBC is re-running “Who Do You Think You Are?” season 2 episodes Saturday nights this summer. Check your local listings if you missed an episode or want to watch your favorite again.

Friday, July 22, 2011 2:14:46 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [8]

You can watch the show on VH1’s website. If you watch, there are some bleeps in a rap at the beginning, but the rest of the show is clean. And good.

In the show, 50 Cent (aka Curtis Jackson), who grew up in New York City, travels to Edgefield, SC, where his mom’s family came from. At a reunion, the family talks about what the segregated town was like in the 1950s.

50 visits Edgefield’s genealogical society. The librarian (who had to have been briefed ahead of time, but did such a good job of being nonchalant that I wondered) pulls the WWI draft card of 50's grandfather Will Jenkins from a "Jenkins File" (the society keeps surname files on local families). She also helps 50 use the census on microfilm to find Will’s father Peter, and Peter’s mother Jane.

In the 1870 census, Jane was living with a local prominent citizen, probably her former slaveowner. 

50 also visited the Old Edgefield Pottery museum, with vessels created by “Dave the Slave,” who incorporated sayings and dates into his work. The proprietor refers to Dave as the first rapper.

The show didn’t shy from a bit of confrontation: At Oakley Park Museum,  50 and a woman identified in a caption as being from the Daughters of the Confederacy discuss the symbolism of the Confederate flag.

She also tells him about the Red Shirts, a precursor to the Klu Klux Klan, and advises him to study history to learn about “Mongolian slaves” in South Carolina. Interesting. There’s some uncomfortable giggling when 50 gently challenges her about these slaves and how slaves were treated.

Later, at the Edgefield County Archives, the archivist shows 50 the slave inventory for Jane’s owner, R.G.M. Dunovant, son-in-law of prominent citizen Whitfield Brooks. The archivist finds a reference to Jane, daughter of Adrene, in Whitfield’s will. If that’s 50’s Jane, Adrene is his fourth-great-grandmother. 

The archivist introduces 50 to a woman who’s researching what she calls the brutal side of slavery. In contrast to the woman he met earlier, she acknowledges the treatment of local slaves and gives an example from a coroner's report detailing the death of a slave.

50 next meets a Dunovant descendant, who asks 50 about his career, compliments his song “In Da Club” (the one that says “Go shorty/It’s your birthday”) and gives him a piece of Edgefield pottery. 50 says it’s a turnaround from the days his family talked about, when black people always used the back door at whites’ homes.

You don't have to be a fan of rap or a member of VH1's typical demographic to like this show. 50 Cent has a tough image as a rapper, but you don't see that here. To me, the show feels a little younger and a little less refined than 'Who Do You Think You Are?" which makes it very approachable. You learn about both one person's genealogy and how it ties into what was happening locally and across the country.

For some behind-the-scenes insight, here’s a Vanity Fair article by David Kamp, the writer who did the genealogy research. 

Did you watch “50 Cent: The Origin of Me”? Let me know what you thought.

Tuesday, May 24, 2011 3:26:19 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [3]

Fulmoth Kearney (“Falmoth Cainey” on his passenger list), age 19, arrived in New York March 20, 1850.

This Irish Times article explains how the connection was made to Obama’s Irish roots through professional researchers in the United States and local church officials in Ireland. 

There’s even a song about the president’s ancestry: “There’s No One As Irish As Barack O’Bama” by Ireland’s Corrigan Brothers. 

The song is the soundtrack for a documentary called Barack Obama's Irish Roots,  which just premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. You can see a promo clip here. 

You can get Irish genealogy tips from the articles in Family Tree Magazine's Irish Research Toolkit or download our $4 Irish Genealogy Guide.

Monday, May 23, 2011 9:30:52 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [1]

• A new website called Unknown No Longer: A Database of Virginia Slave Names will launch in September. The site will contain free, searchable information about enslaved Virginians named in manuscripts at the Virginia Historical Society. Read more about the project here. 

• FindMyPast.co.uk has completed its two-year project to make the English and Welsh birth, marriage and death records on its site easier to use. This final installment of the project makes more than 85 million death records searchable at once, with as little as a surname. The site’s death records include England & Wales deaths, 1837-2006; British nationals who died overseas, 1818-2005; British nationals armed forces deaths, 1796-2005; and British nationals who died at sea, 1854-1890.

• The Holisso Center, a research facility for Chickasaw Nation history, will open May 28 at the Chickasaw Nation Cultural Center in Sulphur, Okla. The Holisso Center also has technology to repair and preserve damaged historical materials.
  

• The latest celebrities found to be relatives: Lady Gaga and Madonna, who share roots in Quebec (if you have French-Canadian roots, you’re probably also related to both women),  and Johnny Depp and Queen Elizabeth. Also, genealogists from Irish historical research company Eneclann have identified President Obama’s closest living Irish relatives in Ballygurteen, Co. Tipperary. 

Friday, May 20, 2011 4:05:58 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [1]

• Puritans who settled in New England
• Quakers (often Welsh) in Pennsylvania
• Scots in mid-Atlantic states (some in Virginia)
• Anglican “cavaliers” in Tidewater Maryland, Virginia and South Carolina.

Having a sizable number (50 to 100) of immigrant ancestors in one or more of those areas is a good indication you have royal roots. Also look for ancestors with gentry-level occupations such as a wealthy farmer or merchant, governor, minister or military officer.

If you suspect royal roots, your research strategy will be similar to that of any ancestry: Work backward generation by generation, keeping an eye out for the link to a royal family. But watch out for forged published genealogies, which might've been created as families tried to prove distinguished heritage.

Here are some free FamilyTreeMagazine.com articles with royal roots resources:

• Tips and resources for tracing royal connections 
• Royal research websites
  
• Using Burke’s Peerage and Gentry, a resource for tracing titled families 
• Researching coats of arms 
• Resources for heraldic genealogy 

You’ll find our guide to researching royal roots in the Spring 2011 Discover Your Roots (also available as a digital issue). 

And check out the books Colonial Americans of Royal & Noble Descent: Alleged, Proven, and Disproven by Patricia Scherzinger and, for more-distant royal links, Blood Royal: Issue of the Kings and Queens of Medieval 1066-1399: The Normans and Plantagenets by T. Anna Leese. 

I'd love to hear about your genealogical connections to the royal family!

Wednesday, April 27, 2011 9:36:01 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [3]

Americans can watch the wedding, taking place at 11 am in London (6 am on the US East Coast), on several network and cable channels. Of course, coverage of pre-wedding events will start much earlier. Here’s a website to help you plan your tv viewing. 

I love to see a girl become a princess as much as the next person (maybe more), but sleep is precious in my house these days, so I’ll be snoozing away at 6 a.m. if the baby lets me.

Do you plan to watch? Are you related to any British royals? How'd you do on the quiz?

Later this week, I'll post some resources to help you discover your royal roots.

Update: Geni shared this royal family tree (complete with longest-lived royals and other fun facts) with us. Have a look!

Tuesday, April 26, 2011 12:40:19 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [1]

The show follows 50 Cent to South Carolina, where his family lived before migrating to New York City in the 1950s. He visits relatives, investigates his roots at the Edgefield County Archives and meets the descendants of slave owners.

From the press release: “50 also learns that in the years following the Civil War, his ancestors faced the infamous ‘Redshirts,’ the precursors to the KKK, giving him a new perspective on the violence he encountered as a young man in Queens.”

VH1 promises to show a different side of the hard-edged rapper, whose albums include Get Rich or Die Tryin' (2003) and Before I Self-Destruct (2009).

Born Curtis James Jackson III in the South Jamaica neighborhood of Queens, New York City, he was 12 when his mother was murdered, he served prison time for drug-related charges and he survived being shot nine times at close range.

Read more about the show and 50 Cent on VH1’s blog.

Monday, April 25, 2011 12:19:30 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [2]

• 6,300 hours of research went into the series
  
  
• An average of more than 425 hours of research went into each show
  
  
• Researchers did preliminary work on more than 20 trees, then whittled that down to 7 due to the celebrities’ schedules
  
  
• A core team of 30 genealogists worked on the episodes, aided by scads of others who visited archives, did record lookups and more.
  
  
• Places the crew researched around the world that didn’t make it into the show include Germany, England, Ukraine, Russia, Ireland, Korea and Canada
  
  
• Repositories visited included the New England Historic Genealogical Society, Massachusetts Historical Society and other state archives, local courthouses, public libraries, churches in New York City and France, and synagogues in Ukraine.
  
  
• Filming all seven episodes took 9.5 months

Saturday, May 01, 2010 2:12:54 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [4]

Spoiler alert! This post reveals details about the Brooke Shields episode of “Who Do You think You Are?” so don’t watch if you haven’t seen the episode and you want to be surprised.

The theme tonight: how genealogy can help you understand—and forgive—your ancestors, and how it can give you a sense of belonging.

Tonight I sat back on the couch and flipped open the laptop in preparation for learning about Brooke Shields family history. At the beginning (after the annoyingly long series promo), Shields talks about her childhood: Modeling by 11 months old, then acting in movies. (Read more about her career on the “Who Do You Think You Are?” website.) Her parents, who divorced by the time Shields was 5 months old, she says, “were the antithesis of one another.” She describes her dad as aristocracy and mom as working class. “I never knew where I belonged,” she says.

She heads to Newark, NJ, where she was born but about which she has no early memories. Shields doesn’t know anything about her mom's parents, other than her grandma’s name, Theresa Dollinger, and the fact she had a sister.

“I think my grandmother was horrible to my mother and I started disliking her at a very young age,” Shields says. How sad.

She meets Michelle Chubenko, a genealogist specializing in New Jersey family history. They search birth certificates on microfilm. They find Theresa's and learn her mother’s name, Ida. Next, they look for the sister. Excellent strategy.

Surprise! Ida had two other children! Brothers John and Edward were born in 1910 and 1914. John died in infancy. But what happened to Edward?

Shields is eager to find out. “You feel like you’re a detective,” she says, which is exactly what I think so many people like about genealogy.

On a busy street, she meets historian Tom McCabe. He shows her a 1910 image of the same street, where Theresa Dollinger lived as a child.

Chubenko has more vital records to show Shields. Ida, Theresa’s mother, died of uterine cancer when Theresa was 10. Shields realizes her grandmother probably had to be an adult and a “parent” to her younger siblings at a young age.

Another tragedy: Edward died by accidental drowning at age 13—presumably while in Theresa’s care. Chubenko gives Shields an article about the drowning, and she goes to the spot where it happened. Local boys were bathing in the river on a hot day, and Edward couldn’t swim.

Shields' feelings toward her grandmother have turned to empathy. We’re seeing how understanding your ancestor’s lives can help you forgive them.

Next, we follow Shields to research her father’s family at the New York Historical Society, where genealogist Gary Boyd Roberts has prepared a family tree. Shields' father died in 2003, and she doesn’t know much about that side, but she believes they were well-off in Italy.

Giovanni Torlinia, her 5th-great-grandfather (I think; could be off by a great or two) who died in 1829. It’s thought Giovanni’s father Marino changed the family name to Torlonia. Shields wants to know what came before, and travels to Rome.

She visits the building where her ancestors had a bank, as a crowd gathers to gawk. Marino Torlonia was a cloth merchant who supplied the invading French, and he opened up the first private bank in Italy with branches in several countries. He became wealthy enough to buy properties, including one near Rome, and Shields tours Villa Torlonia. It’s an opulent palace filled with murals and sculpture.

We’re looking at a record (I didn’t catch what it is) showing Marino Torlonia’s origin in France.

She goes to the region of Augerolles and learns from another expert Marino was actually born in France as Marin Torlonias. An abbott who Marin worked for was exiled and Marin helped him escape to various places in Europe, ending in Rome. They’ve found THE house, a humble stone structure, where the family started. Shields feels a connection—she loves France and was a French literature major in college.

She explores another branch of her dad's family: Christine Marie, who has the tantalizing word “royale” after her name on a family tree. Shields searches Ancestry.com while on the train (I was beginning to worry the site wouldn't make an appearance!) and learns Christine was born in the Louvre, which used to be a royal palace.

She meets Charles Mosely, a expert on royal genealogy. He tells Shields she’s related to Henry IV through Christine Marie. In the Saint-Denis cathedral, they visit a chamber storing the hearts of many French kings. Shields climbs onto a shelf and touches the container with Henry IV heart, as Mosely stammers, unsure whether to stop her. Don't try this at your local museum, kids!

At Versailles, which Louis XIV built, Mosely tells Shields Louis XIV—grandfather of Henry IV—is her first cousin many generations removed. Mosely ticks off a list of other royals Shields is related to. She’s amazed.

“Being able to find your place in the grand scheme of things—there’s something empowering about that. By going on this journey, I feel more complete as a person.” I think even if your roots are a lot more humble and pedestrian than this—more like Shields’ mother’s side, perhaps—you’ll feel empowered when you know the people who came before you.

Friday, April 02, 2010 8:17:25 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [5]

• Tonight on “Who Do You Think You Are?” watch actress Brooke Shields reconnect with her royal past. Take note of the new episode schedule, which inserts a repeat and a bye week:

April 2: Brooke Shields
April 9: Sarah Jessica Parker (Repeat)
April 16: No episode
April 23: Susan Sarandon
April 30: Spike Lee

• You might’ve seen this already, but I thought I’d mention: The New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) in Boston discovered that talk show host and rookie American Idol judge Ellen DeGeneres is related to superstar Madonna. You can watch Ellen talk about the findings on her March 31 show.

• New sources in the Missouri History Museum’s Genealogy and Local History Index include portage lists (payrolls) and wages account for several steamboats, graduation programs and more. You can search the index, which references people and companies primarily from St. Louis, online; if you find an ancestor’s name, you can order a copy of the original document.

• The Brigham Young University library has posted data from the Mormon Immigration Index CD (originally published in 2000) in a searchable database. Data come from immigrants’ accounts, passenger lists and other resources documenting Europeans (especially from the British Isles) who became Mormons and immigrated to the United States.

• For those of you who are LDS church members, the subscription family tree site OneGreatFamily is launching a new web site called OneClickTempleTrip.com that taps into “New FamilySearch” for a quick and easy way to identify ancestors you can take to the temple for ordinance work. (New FamilySearch is a family tree site available to many LDS members; it eventually will become available to the public.)

Friday, April 02, 2010 11:41:28 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

Matthew Broderick’s first step in this week’s episode of "Who Do You Think You Are?" was to talk to his sister, who shared details about his paternal grandparents and started him on his journey. Information from family members can be priceless when researching family trees, but what happens when family members aren’t immediately accessible? That’s the scenario the research team faced when they started researching Matthew Broderick’s tree.

 One of the fantastic things about the format of Who Do You Think You Are? is that the celebrities really are starting out with what they know. We watch them on screen learning information from their families or from records for the first time. Likewise, the research team started out only with the information that the celebrity knew.

A Common Ancestor
For Matthew Broderick’s tree, the researchers had the name of his paternal grandfather, Joseph Broderick, and a few other clues about Joseph’s life. Using these facts, the researchers set out to discover more about Joseph Broderick.

They quickly ran into somewhat of a brick wall. “When we started the research for Matthew’s tree, all we knew was that his paternal grandparents were Joseph Broderick and May Martindale,” says genealogist Krysten Baca of Ancestry.com. “We were quickly stuck; there were many Joseph Brodericks and not enough information to determine who the correct ancestral Joseph was.”

Don’t Overlook Anything
But Matthew was able to provide the research team additional clues – his grandfather Joseph Broderick was a postman in New Hampshire. The occupation was a small, perhaps seemingly insignificant detail, but in this case it broke down the brick wall. Immediately after learning this information, the team found a record for a James Joseph Broderick working in the Post Office in Manchester, NH.

This record matched Matthew’s tree in three ways: (1) the name Joseph Broderick, (2) the location of New Hampshire, (3) the occupation of postal worker. In addition, Matthew’s father was named James Broderick. Based on these pieces of information, the team hypothesized that James Joseph Broderick was the ancestral Joseph Broderick, Matthew’s grandfather.

Breaking through the Brick Walls
Focusing on this hunch, the researchers looked for additional records about James Joseph Broderick of Manchester, New Hampshire. The records they found matched the few additional details known about the ancestral Joseph Broderick and allowed the researchers to confirm that James Joseph Broderick was indeed Matthew’s paternal grandfather.

The records gave the team another brick-wall-breaking clue—an alternate name for Joseph’s wife. Previously the researchers knew her only as May; the additional records listed her as Mary. This information allowed further discoveries about Mary and her life before she married James Joseph Broderick.

Of course, Matthew’s sister held some of this information all along. But similar to many researchers’ experiences, sometimes research begins before family members can be consulted. “If this case proves anything,” says Krysten, “it’s that even the smallest clue could be the key to unlocking a family tree.”  

If you missed this week’s episode of "Who Do You Think You Are?", you can watch it online.

Monday, March 29, 2010 8:01:00 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [4]

Seasoned researchers know that discovering the slavery roots in a family tree can be time consuming and difficult -- perhaps even seemingly impossible. But, as Emmitt Smith's story shows on this week's episode of "Who Do You Think You Are?," African-Americans can discover their heritage. The genealogy team who worked on Emmitt's tree shares a behind-the-scenes look at how they made the jump from post-1870 records to pre-Civil War records as they documented Emmitt's enslaved ancestors.
 
Post-1870 Research
Vital records, census records and other primary sources allowed the research team to document Emmitt's family tree back to great-great-grandparents -- William Watson and Victoria Puryear. A 1900 census record from Monroe County, Ala., indicated William and Victoria were both born in Alabama during the Civil War. These facts suggested that William and Victoria could have been born slaves, and perhaps their parents as well.
 
Since Victoria and William were born in the early 1860s, it was likely that records created post-1870 could shed some light on their parents. Vital records were especially helpful here; Victoria's death certificate included the names of her parents, Prince Puryear and Annie McMillian.
 
The 1870 census added clues: Prince Puryear and his family (including young Victoria) were listed in Monroe County, Alabama. Additional Puryear households were also found on the same census page. The ages for the heads of the Puryear households made them potential brothers of Prince. These heads of households also had the same racial designation as Prince -- mulatto. Finally, one of the households listed a 55-year-old mulatto woman born in Virginia named Mariah Puryear. "Our first thought was 'Could Mariah be Prince's mother?'" says genealogist Joseph Shumway of ProGenealogists. If the answer was yes, if Mariah was Prince"s mother, then Mariah would be Emmitt's fourth great-grandmother.

Pre-Civil War Documentation
The research team needed to establish whether Mariah Puryear from the 1870 census was Prince Puryear's mother. Slave research involves looking at records pertaining to the slave-holding families. Vital records were not kept for slaves, but slaves may be mentioned in records created when the slave owner dies and in records pertaining to deeded transactions. So the research team first had to determine the identity of the slave-holding family. Once found, the family's records could reveal further information about Prince Puryear's family and his potential connection to the woman named Mariah.
 
Emancipated slaves, in general, didn't stray too far from their most recent owner's property. In addition, many former slaves retained the surname of the former slave holders. So the researchers turned back to the 1870 census, looking for white families in the same vicinity as Emmitt's Puryear ancestors. Interestingly enough, there was a white Puryear family living in Monroe County, Ala. This family, potentially, could have been the slave-holding family.
 
The Puryears, like many slave owners, had extensive real estate, so the team looked for the family's land records, deeds, and probate records. In the Monroe County probate records (on microfilm at the Family History Library), the researchers found probate records pertaining to the 1850-51 estate of Mary Puryear. The inventory of Mary's property was a key document. In it she listed Mariah and her children, by name: "Mariah and children Henry, Mary, McTom, Victoria and Prince Albert." Henry and Thomas were the names of two potential Puryear brothers who appeared on the same 1870 census page with Prince and Mariah. The inventory "matched the information we"d found in the census," says Joseph. "With the combination of names and location, there was no doubt."

Further records showed that Mary Puryear was the widow of slave owner Alexander Puryear and helped to solidify the connection between Prince, Mariah and the Puryear slave-holding family. "There are records out there," Joseph concludes. "Just be persistent."

Monday, March 15, 2010 8:48:21 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

Sarah Jessica Parker (SJP) and her brother are joking about being related to a Mayflower passenger. I smell foreshadowing.

SJP's father is Eastern-European Jewish, but she has lots of questions about her mother’s side. Her mother born and raised in Cincinnati’s German Community (just like my mom’s dad). SJP visits her mom and learns her great-grandmother's last name was Hodge.

SJP goes to Cincinnati's Clifton Public Library, about 10 minutes from where I am right now, meeting with genealogist Natalie Cottrill. (Read more about her visit in this Cincinnati Enquirer article.)

SJP’s great-grandfather John Hodge is reported dead in 1849 in a newspaper article, but appears in the census in California the next year.

First Ancestry.com commercial.

Now she’s at the Museum Center, formerly Cincinnati’s Union Terminal train station (a great place to visit if you're ever in town), meeting with UCLA history professor Stephen Aron.

Hodge invested $200 in a gold-prospecting company. He left for California, leaving his wife (whom he may or may not have known was pregnant). It’s neat to see SJP’s genuine excitement and curiosity. Now off to California.

I’m concerned viewers will think you actually have to visit every place your ancestors lived in order to research. That might make it even more fun and exciting, but it’s definitely not required!

John Hodge did die after he arrived in California. Sad.

SJP says it's “extraordinary” to think your ancestor was part of such a profound event in history. That’s what I love about genealogy.

Now Josh Taylor from the New England Historic Genealogical Society is telling her about John Hodge’s family. 1849 to 1635 in 15 seconds flat.

Now we’re on to the Massachusetts Historical Society. (You can read more about the MHS visit here.)

SJP is looking at an online index and sees the word “warrant” by her ancestor’s last name. Cut to commercial!

I love the little review after every commercial break.

SJP’s ancestor Esther Elwell was arrested for performing witchcraft against her neighbor, Mary Fitch, causing Fitch to die. SJP is so surprised, she’s stammering.

Another commercial break!

Whew! SJP’s relative was arrested near the end of the trials, and ended up never having to go to court. She lived to age 82.

I feel like there should be a disclosure telling us how many hours and how many people all this research took. But, I really enjoyed watching someone else enjoy the process of genealogy. It was fun watching along with my Facebook genealogy friends. I think the show told a great story, introduced us to (or reacquainted us with) historical events, and got across how meaningful family history research can be.

Update: For more details on how the research into SJP's ancestry was done, see our March 8 post.

Friday, March 05, 2010 9:20:21 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [8]

• The New England Historic Genealogical Society discovered that President Obama and the just-elected Republican Senator from Massachusetts, Scott Brown, are 10th cousins. You can read about the finding on Kimberly Powell’s About.com Genealogy blog.

• Historical newspaper and records subscription site GenealogyBank added newspapers from 10 states: Connecticut; Iowa; Michigan; New York; North Carolina; Ohio; Oregon; Tennessee; Texas and Virginia. See the full list on the GenealogyBank Official Blog.

• Miriam Robbins Midkiff, who created the Online Historical Directories site, has started a similar Online Historical Newspapers website with links to online collections of historical papers organized by state and county.

• A coalition of preservation groups including the Civil War Preservation Trust, National Parks Conservation Association, National Trust for Historic Preservation and Preservation Pennsylvania are opposing efforts to open a casino a half-mile to the south of Gettysburg National Military Park. Click here to read the announcement and see a map of the proposed casino location.
  

Friday, January 29, 2010 3:53:56 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

See more "Faces of America" clips on PBS’ YouTube channel.

Wednesday, January 06, 2010 2:01:43 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [2]

• I read an interesting post on the Archives Next blog about NARA’s record digitization agreements with firms such as Footnote and Ancestry.com. The blogger outlines possible good, bad and ugly outcomes when NARA is finally legally able to post online the record images obtained through contracts with third parties. 

• Pedigree database subscription site OneGreatFamily ($59.95 per year) plans to improve its search function by installing the Perfect Search Database Search Appliance from Perfect Search Corp. Each week, OneGreatFamily makes more than 18.8 trillion comparisons of names, dates and other details in members’ family trees, says CEO Alan Eaton. The new search tool should increase searching capability, improve indexing, and to deliver results faster.

• The New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) has added several genealogical journals to its online subscription ($75 per year): Besides its own New England Historical and Genealogical Register, they are The American Genealogist, The Connecticut Nutmegger, New Netherland Connections and The Virginia Genealogist.

• Also from NEHGS: Fellow actors, Boston natives, best buddies and  People magazine sexiest men alive Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are 10th cousins once removed. Their common ancestor is William Knowlton of Ipswich, Mass., a bricklayer who died in 1655. Read the full story in the Boston Herald.

Family Tree Magazine Plus members can read our article about Matt Damon’s roots—including his link to Ralph Waldo Emerson—here. 

Friday, October 16, 2009 2:49:28 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• FamilySearch and Svensk Arkivinformation (part of the National Archives of Sweden) are starting a huge project to create a free online index to 418 million names in Swedish parish registers of births, christenings, marriages and burials. Volunteers will index registers from the start of recordkeeping (between 1608 and 1686, depending on the parish) through 1860.

• StoryCorps will bring its mobile oral history recording booth to the Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS) conference that starts Sept. 2 in Little Rock, Ark. See the FGS blog for details on booking a time slot and preparing to tell your story.

• Heritage Travel, a subsidiary of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, is launching a free online travel community called Gozaic with several “circles” for those interested in history-related travel. Those include Civil War Buffs, Abraham Lincoln, Family Heritage Travel, Journeys into Hidden America and others. Visit the pre-launch site to learn more.

• On a celebrity baby blog this week, actor/producer Lisa Kudrow describes her next project as “a genealogy series in which we take stars to their ancestral landmarks ... different countries and places where they see documents and they see homes or buildings or things that have to do with their family.” (Scroll to the bottom of the post to see the full statement.)
  

Maybe the postponed US version of “Who Do You Think You Are?” will see the light of our TV screens. (Last we heard, it didn’t make NBC’s fall lineup, but might show up as a mid-season replacement.)

Friday, August 21, 2009 12:13:47 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [2]