The treasure hunt involves finding words hidden on the blogs of 15 genealogy bloggers who'll be reporting at the conference.

You'll find entry instructions on the RootsMagic website. Good luck!

We're joining in the RootsTech excitement with conference specials for everyone! You'll get 20 percent off select online genealogy titles at ShopFamilyTree.com.

Tuesday, January 31, 2012 1:39:57 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

• Our friend Photo Detective Maureen Taylor is holding a funny family photo contest. Upload your photo with a little information, and get your friends and family to vote it the "SOS" (Silly Old Snapshot). Prizes include a free photo consultation sponsored by VoiceQuilt.com, a copy of Fashionable Folks: Bonnets and Hats, and more. Get details here.

• Ancestry.com has added more than 7 million records from 300 years of Pennsylvania history. The records, from the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, are in the databases Pennsylvania, Naturalizations, 1794-1908 and Pennsylvania, Church and Town Records, 1708-1985.

• Subscription site British Origins has added the Middlesex Baptisms Index: 1538-1751, which records nearly 100,000 baptisms—about 300,000 names when you add in parents and sponsors—in Middlesex and London.

• Free genealogy search engine Mocavo has made two big hires: Michael Leclerc, who spent 15 years with the New England Historic Genealogical Society, as Chief Genealogist; and Ryan Hunter, a former Wall Street analyst who covered companies including Ancestry.com, as COO.

Friday, January 27, 2012 3:57:39 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

Run a web search or check the events section in your newspaper for events at museums near you, or tours of private homes. You also can browse the historic house museums in the MuseumsUSA directory. I did a little Web surfing, and my personal jet, if I had one, would fly me to these holiday houses:

• Belle Meade Plantation, Nashville Tenn. A Century of Christmas: 1853-1953, shows how Christmas celebrations here evolved from fresh greens and a simply decorated tree in 1853 to 20th-century electric tree lights and characters.

• Glessner and Clarke House Museums, Chicago. Two museums display different aspects of holiday celebrations. Clarke House exemplifies emerging holiday customs of the 1850s with simple decorations, and more elaborate decor at Glessner House reflects the growing interest in the celebration of Christmas.

• Pabst Mansion, Milwaukee. This beer baron's mansion features a nationally recognized Christmas display representing America's Gilded Age.

• Kimball House Museum, Battle Creek, Mich. A lovely Victorian house museum features lavish decorations.

• Aiken-Rhett House, Charleston, SC. This home re-creates the Victorian Age in its holiday decor.

• Mackenzie House, Toronto. This row house belonging to Toronto's first mayor is decorated in holiday greenery.
  
  
• Christmas at Arlington, Birmingham, Ala. Flowers transform this Antebellum home, built by one of Birmingham’s founders, into replicas of Christmas past.

• A Christmas Story House, Cleveland. So this isn't exactly pre-outdoor electric lights, but it's definitely nostalgic for those who remember Ralphie's quest for an air rifle and Randy's immobilizing snowsuit. You can tour the house where much of the 1983 movie was filmed and and get your own version of the Old Man's leg lamp.

Tuesday, December 06, 2011 11:37:24 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [1]

The presidential tradition of pardoning a turkey goes all the way back to …. 1989. Yes, George H.W. Bush was the first president to officially pardon his Thanksgiving turkey.

He sent Tom off to a Virginia petting zoo with the words “Let me assure this fine tom he will not end up on anyone’s dinner table. Not this guy. He’s been granted a presidential pardon as of right now, allowing him to live out his days on a farm not far from here.” (Thus ensuring that some other poor turkey ended up on the White House table.)

Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama have continued the pardons. Last year, the two turkeys Obama pardoned (one was an understudy for the official ceremony) went to live at Mount Vernon.

Some claim that Harry Truman pardoned the turkey given to him by the National Turkey Federation in 1947, but the Truman Library has found no evidence a pardon occurred.

In 1963, John F. Kennedy announced he wasn't going to eat the turkey he received, but he didn’t actually pardon it. Ronald Reagan spared a turkey, too, but merely joked about a pardon as he was questioned about the Iran-Contra affair.

On FamilyTreeMagazine.com, we bust five more Thanksgiving myths, including the one about the buckled Pilgrim hat of children’s stories.

And go here to read about the real first Thanksgiving in the New World.

Monday, November 21, 2011 1:57:09 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

Here’s how it works: Each day at 4 pm ET, 3 Central, 2 MT and 1 Pacific, we’ll announce the winner of that day’s giveaway and reveal the next day’s giveaway.

Each daily prize also will be on sale at ShopFamilyTree.com for that day only—so if you don’t get the giveaway, you can still snatch up a fantastic deal on tools to advance your research!

The daily giveaway for tomorrow, Oct. 1, is our FamilySearch Web Guide! Click here to sign up on our Daily Deal & Giveaway page.

Then just come back here tomorrow at 4 pm ET to see if you’ve won.

Want to buy the web guide? The sale is good until midnight ET tomorrow, Saturday, Oct. 1. Click here to buy now.

Friday, September 30, 2011 4:17:19 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

In 2001, Congress first passed a resolution introduced by Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, who wrote, "By searching for our roots, we come closer together as a human family."

Family history enthusiasts continue to celebrate Family History Month every October.

Here at Family Tree Magazine, we’ll celebrate with a Daily Deal & Giveaway: We'll offer you a great deal on a genealogy book, CD or other item every day during Family History Month—and a lucky someone will win the daily deal.

More information to come! Stay tuned to this blog and follow us on Facebook and Twitter to learn more about the Family History Month Daily Deal and Giveaway!

Monday, September 26, 2011 3:40:56 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

To enter, just e-mail us your name, phone number, and 500 words or less about why your family history should be chosen as the contest winner.

Did your ancestors embody the American dream? Were they important in shaping historic events? Is your family tree full of colorful characters? You tell us what sets your family apart.

Use the e-mail subject line "Family Tree-Abbott Press Publishing Contest" and send your entry by Sept. 30, 2011.

We'll pick one winner from the first 200 submissions. The grand-prize winner will receive a complete Premium publishing package from Abbott Press.

The first runner-up will win the Family Tree University independent study course Writing Your Family Memoir (on CD). A second runner-up with get a copy of My Life & Times: A Guided Journal for Collecting Your Stories by Sunny Jane Morton.

All entrants will receive a 25 percent discount off any Abbott Press publishing package.

Check out all the contest rules here. 

Tuesday, September 13, 2011 12:30:53 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

She and her daughter Christine were waiting with a sign at the airport when Birgit stepped off the escalator. 

I’ll bring you more of their story in an upcoming Family Tree Magazine.

Wednesday, August 31, 2011 11:27:31 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [7]

And by “exactly,” I mean “theoretically,” because:

• you never know what proportion of genes you ended up with from each ancestor after the DNA-combining process

• geopolitical developments and population shifts can mean ancestors' ethnicity is different from the country whence they came (Your ancestor from Russia would actually be German, for example, if he was one of the many “Volga Germans” who settled in Russia’s Volga River valley.)
  
  
• nonpaternity events, such as adoption and children fathered—unbeknownst to you—by someone other than the person named in records

• a lack of documentation or incorrect documentation about an ancestor's origins

• all those ancestors yet to be discovered (unless you’ve found ‘em all)

With that caveat, figuring out Leo’s theoretical heritage combo involves first determining Mom’s and Dad’s percentages. Three of my husband's grandparents came from Germany and one from Hungary, so we'll estimate him at 75 percent German and 25 percent Hungarian. I'll go back to my great-grandparents’ origins: I’m half German, a quarter Lebanese (the source for my last name), and one-eighth each English and Irish. 

I just divided each of our percentages, added up the common German heritage, and came up with these numbers for Leo (I generated the pie chart online using Kids Zone): 

He’s pretty typical as far as American ancestry: In the 2000 census, German was the heritage most often claimed by Americans and by his fellow Cincinnatians. He also shares in the second- and fourth-most-commonly reported ancestries: Irish and English, respectively.

Download the Census Bureau’s Ancestry: 2000 report as a PDF here.

What's your theoretical heritage combo? 

Update: Apparently you can order a t-shirt boasting your ancestry pie chart from MeonaTee.com. Great idea! (Thanks to Megan Smolenyak for mentioning.)

Wednesday, July 13, 2011 9:44:05 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [9]

And the grand prize winner is … Patricia Skubis! Her long-lost Danish relative Tage will travel to the United States so they can meet in person for the first time. Patricia also will receive a year-long VIP membership to Family Tree Magazine and a three-year Premium-Plus subscription with MyHeritage.com.

Patricia belongs to a Danish family that immigrated to the United States in 1888. Another branch had headed for Australia in 1873. Skubis made contact 27 years ago with Alison Rogers from the Australian branch, but they were unable to find a connection. Here’s Patricia’s account of how it finally happened (look for more details in an upcoming issue of Family Tree Magazine):

In March of 2011, a family in Denmark researching the Thygesen name posted information on MyHeritage and I received a Smart Match notice. I wasn’t sure we had a match. The parents’ names were the same but the children did not match. So I asked the submitter for more information. With the additional information I thought we did indeed have a match.

I went online to the Danish Church Records [on the Danish archives’ website] and found Tyge Jørgensen’s children between Neils Madsen Thygesen, born in 1794, and my great-great-grandfather Martin, born in 1805. What a great surprise I received when I found that the next son after Neils was Peder Andersen Thygesen, the great-great-grandfather of Alison Rogers.

Tage and I are fourth cousins once removed. Our great-great-grandfathers, along with Alison’s, were brothers.

Each of our two runners-up will receive a digital subscription to Family Tree Magazine and a three-year Premium-plus subscription on MyHeritage.com. They are:

• Linda Mehlinger, whose mystery started with her Louisiana-born great-grandmother’s photo of a lady and five schoolgirls in a rickshaw being pulled by a Zulu warrior. Through research including searching the 1910 census on Ancestry.com and contacting other genealogists via a mailing list, she discovered a cousin in South Africa who had pictures of the same people.

• Pam Ingermanson, whose Norwegian ancestors settled in Idaho. After hours upon hours of research, she connected with a cousin who descended from a brother who ended up in Ohio. The branches of the family had lost touch over the years.

You can read the winners’ full stories, as well as those of other entrants, in their comments on the MyHeritage.com Blog. 

Thank you to everyone who entered this contest. Both our team at Family Tree Magazine and our contest partners MyHeritage.com were touched by your stories of reconnecting with family, and we're impressed by your diligent research. You’re truly an inspiration to your fellow family historians!

Thursday, July 07, 2011 9:05:15 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [5]

I had a picture I snapped of Leo with his dad printed on canvas (that’s why there’s a shiny spot on the left side of the picture—it’s the flash reflecting off the canvas), so it resembles a painting. I took advantage of a great sale at CanvasPeople.com, but other photo-gift sites such as Shutterfly and Snapfish can do this for you, too.

The frame (minus the glass and backing) came from our local Michael’s store, and the canvas is hung from a picture hanger tapped into the canvas stretcher.

You’ll get more ideas for displaying family photos from our Family Photo Essentials CD. 

We also suggest family history-themed gifts in this free “Giving Trees” article on FamilyTreeMagazine.com. 

Monday, June 20, 2011 12:37:27 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [15]

So in the interest of fairness this Father’s Day, Sunday, June 19, I browsed around for some ideas for a dad who likes family history. (I’m dying to include what my little Leo is giving his daddy, but I’m afraid of spoiling his surprise, so I’ll show and tell after Sunday.)

• A framed picture of dad with his kids or grandkids, or dad as a youngster with his dad, is a classic. Or I’ve heard about moms taking pictures of the wee ones wearing dad’s or grandpa’s shoes, tie and hat, and adding a frame. 

• If you’ve been doing genealogy research, put together some of the items you’ve found into an album (here are some ideas), or burn a CD.

• Finally have those old home movies transferred from reels or VHS tapes onto DVDs (get tips here), or scan his old vacation photos or slides and put them on CDs.
  

• If your dad is an old school, stoic kind of dad, and you want to get to know him better, get Questions to Bring You Closer to Dad: 100+ Conversation Starts for Fathers and Children of Any Age by Stuart Gustafson and Robyn Freedman Spizman for yourself. Then, treat Dad to a day of bonding.

• Lots of dads are military history buffs, so something from our Civil War Anniversary category would be just the thing. 

• Our Military Research Guide CD (that’s my grandpa’s WWII portrait on the case) or our on-demand webinar Online Military Records: Document Your Family's Service, presented by David A. Fryxell  would help him find his ancestors’ military records.
  

• A few years ago on a road trip, my parents and I enjoyed listening to the War Letters: Extraordinary Correspondence from American Wars audio book, edited by Andrew Carroll and read by familiar voices such as Tom Brokaw and Joan Allen. 

• If your dad likes to go exploring, ShopFamilyTree.com has travel books such as Georgia's Lighthouses and Historic Coastal Sites and Oregon Impressions. Just choose the state you want here, then click the subcategory Travel. 
  
  
• Help make a new dad’s life a little easier—so he'll have a little time for genealogy—with 50 Tips and Tricks for New Dads by Vincent Iannelli, MD
  

Monday, June 13, 2011 5:03:57 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [3]

The contest is open to interested individuals who’ve discovered new living family connections or long-lost relatives through their family history research. 

The winner will get an expenses-paid reunion with a long-lost relative from anywhere in the world, plus a year-long VIP membership to Family Tree Magazine and a three-year Premium-Plus subscription with MyHeritage.com. How’s that for a great prize? 

Two runners-up will win, as well: A digital subscription to Family Tree Magazine and a three-year Premium-plus subscription on MyHeritage.com.

To enter, submit a few sentences describing your discovery and what it means to you by commenting on the MyHeritage.com Blog,  the MyHeritage.com Facebook page  or the Family Tree Magazine Facebook page. The entry deadline is June 15.

Click here for the full contest rules and guidelines.

I can’t wait to see how researching your genealogy has helped you connect with distant family. Good luck!

Wednesday, June 08, 2011 9:40:35 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

Everyone’s invited to participate in the Great Illinois Genealogy Scavenger Hunt, going on now through June 30.

All you have to do is find information on Illinois genealogy resources—websites, databases, how-to articles, etc.—and say why a resource should be included in the Research Wiki.

First, visit the Illinois pages of the FamilySearch Research Wiki to see what content is already there (your submitted resources should be original). Then submit your resource using the entry form.

Prizes include a RootsTech 2012 conference registration and a one-year ISGS membership. In addition, a prize will be awarded each day between June 1 and June 30, 2011 to someone drawn at random. For complete details, consult the contest rules.

See a full description of The Great Illinois Genealogy Scavenger Hunt on the ISGS website.

Need ideas for Illinois genealogy resources? See our $3 Illinois State Research Guide digital download, the Illinois section of the Family Tree Sourcebook (which has research tips, resource listings and county-by-county records guides for every US state), and the other how-to products in the Illinois section at ShopFamilyTree.com.

Wednesday, June 01, 2011 8:57:42 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

The winner of the grand prize—a two-year Geni Pro account and a year of Famliy Tree Magazine—is Sadie Morgan of Rossville, Ga.

The second-prize winners, who’ll receive the Family Tree Magazine "Beginners Guide to Genealogy" digital download and a three-month Geni Pro Account, are:

• Kim Cotton
• Lori Pilla
• Laura Ramsay

We're contacting the winners to deliver your prizes. Congratulations to them, and thank you to everyone who entered. We enjoyed reading about how you got into genealogy! (You can see the entries on the Facebook pages for Family Tree Magazine and Geni.)

Thursday, May 19, 2011 11:00:34 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

The Library of Congress and Sony Music Entertainment created the National Jukebox website with 10,000-plus rare historic sound recordings produced in the United States from 1901 and 1925.

At the press conference unveiling the site, musician and actor Harry Connick Jr. performed “I’m Just Wild About Harry” (wish I could’ve been at that press conference!). You can listen to composer Eubie Blake’s version in the National Jukebox.

Search the recordings or browse by genre, artist, target audience (where you can click to the music of Germans, Swedes, Poles, Italians, Jews and other ethnic groups). Listen to recordings on a streaming-only basis. You also can access label images, record-catalog illustrations and artist bios, and create your own playlists.

"This collection includes popular music, dance music, opera, early jazz, famous speeches, poetry and humor. It is what our grandparents and great-grandparents listened to, danced to, sang along with," says Librarian of Congress James H. Billington.

The site represents the largest collection of such historical recordings made publicly available online for study and appreciation. In its agreement with Sony, the Library of Congress gets usage rights to Sony Music’s entire pre-1925 catalog.

I enjoyed George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue." What tunes are you listening to in the National Jukebox?

Thursday, May 12, 2011 12:24:33 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

Now through May 8, write a post on the Family Tree Magazine Facebook wall or Geni Facebook wall describing how you first got into genealogy.

One person who posts will be randomly chosen to win a one-year subscription to Family Tree Magazine and a two-year Geni Pro Account. 

Three runners up will win a copy of the Family Tree Magazine "Beginners Guide to Genealogy" digital download plus a three-month Geni Pro Account.

Good luck!

Here are the contest rules:

1. No purchase necessary.
2. Winners will be chosen randomly.
3. Odds of winning are directly related to how many people enter the contest.
4. One winner will be chosen to win the grand prize. Three will be chosen to win the secondary prize.
5. The contest starts at 12AM ET May 1st, 2011, and it ends at 12AM ET May 8, 2011.
6. You are responsible for anything in regards to the legality of entering a contest in the area in which you live.
7. Rules can be updated at any time without notice.
8. The winners will be notified via their provided contact information the week following the end of the contest.
9. The winners have seven days to claim their prize.
10. One entry per person.
11. You must have a free Geni.com account.
12. To be eligible to win, you must live in the United States.

Monday, May 02, 2011 1:03:17 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [1]

Mother’s Day is coming right up on May 8, so I’ve been dreaming up gift ideas a family history-minded mom might go for. Here are some I’ve come up with:

Framed photo: If you have one of those three- or four- (or more) generation photos of moms in your family, that would be perfect. Or a picture of you and your mom. Or maybe find pictures of you, your mom and her mom at about the same age, and frame them together.

Photo gifts: Use a digital photo and a website such as Shutterfly or Snapfish to create anything from coffee mugs to mousepads.

Family Tree: Create a decorative family tree with photos. You can use your genealogy software to do this, or download a decorative tree from a site such as FamilySearch, then print and fill it out. Several sites let you fill out a tree online and either print it for free or order a professionally printed version. Here’s our roundup of sites for generating or ordering a decorative family tree. 

Family history or memoir book: Try the fill-in book Family Tree Legacies  or Grandma’s Memories, which has prompts to help mom share her life stories. 

Mom advice: Books such as 150 Tips and Tricks for New Moms, All About Mom or A Cup of Comfort for New Mothers might have just the advice or inspiration a mom in your life needs.

Genealogy helps: You can find all kinds of items at ShopFamilyTree.com to help mom discover her roots. If you're not sure where to start, try a State Research Collection  for a state she’s searching in, or our Organize Your Genealogy Life! CD to help her keep her research shipshape. 

How are you honoring your mom this year?

Thursday, April 28, 2011 4:37:48 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

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]

My husband's ggg grandfather Conrad Tschummi—and his son, same name, served in a CT unit in the Civil War. The father made it home safely, but his son died of disease. I did research at our CT State Library and found they had the original handwritten records of the entire tour of duty listing injuries, deaths, pay, punishments for not following the rules—I could follow the entire tour by these original records. They are incredible and a find I never dreamed ever existed.

Due to the fragile condition of the large, rolled sheets of paper and the fact that they probably won't be safe to unroll many more times, I paid to have them copied by the library and now they are safely in a roll in a large mailing tube.

Anyone looking for Civil War documents, ask at the facility if they have any records kept off site like they do in CT. These were brought to me to read in an enclosed and guarded area and I actually had tears in my eyes as I read them.

To enter, like Family Tree Magazine on Facebook and share on our wall a few details about a Civil War ancestor, or a tidbit from our Life in Civil War America webinar or Life in Civil War America book. You can also enter by posting a comment on any Genealogy Insider blog post about Life in Civil War America (like this one).

Each Friday in April, a winner will be chosen from that week's comments and wall posts. The winners will each receive a copy of the Life in Civil War America book.

The sweepstakes started April 6, and runs through April 29.

Need more details? Read the official rules here

Friday, April 22, 2011 2:57:07 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [1]

Family Village lets you create a pedigree chart (or input data from the FamilyLink Facebook app) and “immigrate” ancestors from the chart into your Family Village. You can outfit them in historical attire, assign them jobs, and build out the village with houses, landscaping and more (including heritage-related items like international flags and the Eiffel Tower).

The game also searches several websites for free genealogy records related to the information in your pedigree chart, and let you import those records into a family library. You can invite Facebook friends into your village to check out the library.

Partnerships with additional providers of genealogy records and other content are in the works, says Jeff Wells, CEO of Family Village developer Funium. He cautions, though, that the game is “not a research tool.”

You can play Family Village for free, with the option to spend actual cash (in the form of “game dollars”) on some of your ancestors’ purchases. For example, every ancestor gets a newspaper printed on the day he or she was born. You’ll view the headlines, and you can buy a copy of the whole thing.

The game adheres to Facebook privacy standards, wells says, with privacy settings you can adjust.

Wells got the idea for Family Village when his family didn’t share his excitement over his genealogical finds. “We wanted to do something that would end up being a segue way for people who don’t have the interest to get involved in family history,” he says.

According to Wells, 300 million people play social games each month, and 3 to 4 percent of those players spend money on the games. He’s hoping genealogists’ spouses and teenagers will get interested in Family Village and learn more about their heritage.

Will you play Family Village? Do you think it'll appeal to those already into genealogy, or will other people get hooked on it, too?

Tuesday, April 19, 2011 10:45:08 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [10]

Here’s what my lovely coworkers had waiting for me on my first day back: 

I’ve eaten, slept and breathed family history for the past seven and a half years on staff at Family Tree Magazine. That’s in my job description.

But while I was on maternity leave, my genealogy life was a lot more like yours: Reading news blogs and searching online databases when I had a few minutes, finding someone to watch the baby while I squeezed in trips to the FamilySearch Center (baby Leo even accompanied me on a short microfilm-requesting stop). I'd watch "Who Do You Think You Are?" on Hulu in the middle of the night while I was up with the baby.

I’ll do another post about what I discovered on that FamilySearch microfilm. But I definitely feel more one with you!

I hope you can offer some advice: How do you fit genealogy into your everyday life? When do you squeeze in your online and library research? Thanks!

Tuesday, April 12, 2011 10:04:00 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [13]

• Submissions should be between 1,000 and 2,000 words.
• Essays should tell the story of a real tradition, including:

• What is the tradition?
• Who started it and when?
• What cultural or regional background does the dish or tradition represent? (for example, is it a US regional specialty or a product of your ancestry in Germany, Sweden, Mexico, etc.?)
• What does the tradition mean to you and your family?

• Submissions should include the recipe described in the story and a family photo—of the original chef, people described in the story or yourself. (Pictures of the dish itself may be submitted but likely will not be published.)

• Essays must be in Microsoft Word (.DOC or .RTF) or plain-text format (.TXT). Do not paste your essay into the body of the email.
• Photos must be in JPG or TIFF format, with a resolution of 300 dpi or higher.
• Your name, mailing address, phone number and email address must be included in the email message and the essay document.

Monday, April 04, 2011 12:59:36 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [7]

We've got a special digital edition coming out today, April 1 -- and you can vote on which cover you like best! Click the image above to see it larger. And here's a sneak peek of the inside:

Click the image to see a larger version and read all the insider tips about the 1940 census. You can download a copy the 1940 Census cheat sheet to share here. (To help interpret some of the markings, you may want to watch this video.)

By the way, happy April Fools Day! :)

And here's some real census advice:

• Looking Forward to '40
• Online Census Secrets CD
• Family Tree Magazine's May 2010 special census issue

Friday, April 01, 2011 9:05:04 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [3]

There’s been a lot of buzz lately about the new and innovative RootsTech conference in Salt Lake City. (Check out my blog about it here.) The wide range of family history and technology developer classes was something we really haven’t seen in mainstream genealogy conferences. And the exhibit hall was hands-down the most exciting high-tech genealogy space (and most expensive!) that family historians have ever seen.

It was quite amazing considering it was a first time event for FamilySearch. As Jay Verkler commented in my interview with him, they fully expected to make a few mistakes here and there, and strive for continuous improvements. The commitment has been made: RootsTech will be an annual event, and it will just get better and better.

While FamilySearch’s RootsTech roared onto the genealogy scene, it was the Who Do You Think You Are? Live event in London (Check out my blog about it here.) that featured a simple and yet very effective technological component: hands-on computer access.

As I scoured the vast aisles of the Olympia Conference Centre, everywhere I looked attendees were not just browsing exhibits, but they were also interacting with them. While there were banks of computers provided by FamilySearch in both the Internet Café area and the Family History Library area of the exhibit hall at RootsTech, a hands on experience was not the norm at most vendor booths. Of course, the challenge for vendors is that power hookup at events like these can be quite costly, and yet exhibit stalls from the largest to the smallest seem to be able to pull it off at Who Do You Think You Are? Live.

Having the ability to put their hands on keyboards, test drive software, search for ancestors kept attendees fully engaged and prolonged their stay at each stall. The level of engagement achieved at WDYTYA? Live is a great role model for future RootsTech conferences. Perhaps FamilySearch can work to negotiate lower fees in exchange for a larger number of power and Internet hookups. As so often happens with technology, it’s the access and hardware that tend to be the biggest hurdles, as there is no lack of interest or innovation!

And speaking of innovation, check out my newest video interview with Mike Dowdle of GenerationStation. Mike is the perfect example of someone who saw a need, had an idea, and succeeded in converging technology and family history into a cool new website tool.

You can view many more videos recorded at the RootsTech 2011 conference at the the Genealogy Gems Podcast Channel at YouTube.

Friday, March 11, 2011 10:10:53 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

Diane's on maternity leave for a few more weeks, but that hasn't stopped her from continuing her genealogy research. She brought baby Leo with her on a recent trip to a Family History Center to request some microfilm. I am sure he was a very popular guy! Look at those hands -- he's just itching to get his mitts on some microfiche.

If you're planning on taking a trip to a Family History Center for the first time, you've got to read our article "Family History Central" (available to Plus members) from the January 2011 issue of Family Tree Magazine.

FamilySearch | Genealogy for kids | Genealogy fun

Friday, March 04, 2011 11:05:28 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [2]

So what's the prize? Four lucky winners received Discover Your Roots Kits, which include a bookazine for genealogy beginners, a Family Tree University course, a subscription to Family Tree Magazine, our State Research Guides CD and the Family Tree Pocket Reference eBook — a $205 value.

We loved interacting with you all on Facebook and the blog. And while the sweepstakes is over, we hope you keep in touch.

Thursday, March 03, 2011 9:41:54 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [1]

So what's the prize? Four lucky winners will get Discover Your Roots Kits, which include a bookazine for genealogy beginners, a Family Tree University course, a subscription to Family Tree Magazine, our State Research Guides CD and the Family Tree Pocket Reference eBook—a $205 value!

You can enter each week in February, by doing one or both of the following things:

1. Comment here on the blog during "WDYTYA." You could write about a technique or resource you learned about from the show, or (if you missed the show) something you're looking forward to learning about your own genealogy.
2. "Like" Family Tree Magazine on Facebook, and comment on or "like" our statuses about "WDYTYA."

We'll pick a winner each Monday and post their name here and on Facebook. 

Tuesday, February 22, 2011 5:00:31 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [18]

With all the anticipation of the first ever RootsTech conference, it’s hard to believe it’s already come and gone. Here are some highlights from this year’s conference that I hope inspire you to attend next year. (Block out February 2-4, 2012 on your calendar!)

Microfilm Distribution: As a member of the media, I had the rare opportunity to see how hundreds of thousands of microfilm rolls make their way around the world each year.  The Family History Library distribution center is the size of 19 football fields and stores 725,000 film copies, each copy averaging 100 feet in length.  Films are stored in huge automated shelving systems holding trays of film that are tracked and accessed by computer. Even though there is a goal to digitize all microfilms held by the FHL, there will always be a need for microfilm distribution because of copyright restrictions. 

Inside the microfilm distribution center at the Family History Library.

Flip-Pal Mobile Scanner: One of the winners at this year’s conference was the Flip-Pal Mobile Scanner. Many a happy genealogist clutched their new portable workhorse, and those that didn’t already have one were muttering quietly that they really needed one. Having acquired a Flip-Pal scanner myself not long ago, I can say that the buzz was warranted. Look for the Family Tree Magazine review of the Flip-Pal scanner in our May issue, on newsstands March 8.

The Media Center:  I felt a bit like Maxwell Smart in the Cone of Silence from "Get Smart," as I conducted interviews in the glass cubicles at the center of the exhibit hall. The cubicles weren't sound proof, but they provided a convenient place to record audio and video while still capturing the ambiance of the place.  One of my first interviews was with Patricia Van Skaik of the Cincinnati Public Library, who won the Most Distinguished Presenter award for her Saturday presentations. The media center was a stroke of genius on the part of the organizers. It gave podcasters and bloggers the room and tools we needed to get the word out.

Lisa interviewing Patricia Van Skaik in the media center.

Interviews: Curt Witcher, manager of the genealogy deptartment at the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Ind., also sat down with me for an in depth interview. He sees technology converging with genealogy, and his keynote address was quite a hit from sounds of between-session banter. Watch our conversation below:

You can see more from RootsTech at the Genealogy Gems YouTube channel. Click subscribe while there and you can receive email notification as they are posted.

Virtual Presentations Roundtable: I wrapped up the whirlwind three-day conference as a panelist in the Virtual Presentations Roundtable. Thomas MacEntee pulled together a panel of experienced webinar presenters, including editor of Family Tree Magazine Allison Stacy, Photo Detective Maureen Taylor, DearMYRTLE, Geoff Rasmussen and Marian Pierre-Louis.  Not only did we provide tips on how societies can hold their own virtual presentations, but the session itself was a virtual webinar.  And to top it off, the RootsTech folks streamed the session live on the RootsTech website!

RootsTech made a bold leap onto the conference scene, and from every indication, it’s here to stay.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011 11:13:43 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [2]

So what's the prize? Four lucky winners will get Discover Your Roots Kits, which include a bookazine for genealogy beginners, a Family Tree University course, a subscription to Family Tree Magazine, our State Research Guides CD and the Family Tree Pocket Reference eBook—a $205 value!

You can enter each week in February, by doing one or both of the following things:

1. Comment here on the blog during "WDYTYA." You could write about a technique or resource you learned about from the show, or (if you missed the show) something you're looking forward to learning about your own genealogy.
2. "Like" Family Tree Magazine on Facebook, and comment on or "like" our statuses about "WDYTYA."

We'll pick a winner each Monday and post their name here and on Facebook. 

Monday, February 14, 2011 3:23:22 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [7]

• Love Bully, a 20-year-old woman born in Upper Canada, living in Dover, Kent, Canada West.
• Cupid Martin, a 35-year-old man originally from the United States, working as a yeoman in Raleigh County, Ontario.
• Amor Moran, a 24-year-old Irish-born woman found living with her siblings in a Montreal house with four other families.
• Venus Antahia, a 60-year-old widower who lived alone in Laprairie, Canada East.
• The first name of Valentine shows up 580 times. One hundred people have Valentine as a surname.
• Fourteen people have Amor as first name, while 18 have Amor as a surname.
• Nine people were named after Paris, the city of love.
  
  

• Love Burns, 13, can be found living in Harbourville, Nova Scotia, in 1871 Canada census.
• Lover Woo can be found at 91 Elgin St. in Humboldt, Saskatchewan, in the 1911 Canada census.
• Bad Heart Lasuisse, a 70-year-old Sioux widower, can be found living with five family members in the Territories in the 1901 Canada census.
• Romance Turrell married John Obrien on Christmas Day 1878, according to Ontario marriage records.

Monday, February 14, 2011 11:08:57 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

So what's the prize? Four lucky winners will get Discover Your Roots Kits, which include a bookazine for genealogy beginners, a Family Tree University course, a subscription to Family Tree Magazine, our State Research Guides CD and the Family Tree Pocket Reference eBook—a $205 value!

You can enter each week in February, by doing one or both of the following things:

1. Comment here on the blog during "WDYTYA." You could write about a technique or resource you learned about from the show, or (if you missed the show) something you're looking forward to learning about your own genealogy.
2. "Like" Family Tree Magazine on Facebook, and comment on or "like" our statuses about "WDYTYA."

We'll pick a winner each Monday and post their name here and on Facebook. 

Tuesday, February 08, 2011 10:04:49 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [30]

So what's the prize? Four lucky winners will get Discover Your Roots Kits, which include a bookazine for genealogy beginners, a Family Tree University course, a subscription to Family Tree Magazine, our State Research Guides CD and the Family Tree Pocket Reference eBook -- a $205 value!

You can enter each week in February, by doing one or both of the following things:

1. Comment here on the blog during "WDYTYA." You could write about a technique or resource you learned about from the show, or (if you missed the show) something you're looking forward to learning about your own genealogy.
2. "Like" Family Tree Magazine on Facebook, and comment on or "like" our statuses about "WDYTYA."

We'll pick a winner each Monday and post their name here and on Facebook. Good luck, and happy watching!

This contest will run until Feb. 27, 2011. Official rules can be found here.

"Who Do You Think You Are?" | Genealogy fun

Friday, February 04, 2011 2:13:25 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [59]

Being a family historian, I of course plan to record all the baby excitement for posterity. But I couldn’t find any baby books I really liked—ones where I could include all the information I want, add pages and pictures, and save keepsakes. So I’ve been putting together my own, and I wanted to share it in case it inspires ideas for your own babies or grandbabies:

First, I flipped through baby books at the store and googled baby book pages to get ideas for what type of things I’d want to write down (baby shower info, the baby's “firsts,” etc.). I ended up relying mostly on these printable pages, customizing them to my needs. I'll add a family tree chart, too.

I and went to the store for a cute binder (not vinyl, which isn't photo-safe), some acid-free cardstock and polypropylene envelopes. Here’s the binder:

The polypropylene envelopes (red was all I could find) got hole-punched and hold cards and other mementos:

I set up the pages in Word with fonts and borders I like (leaving a wider margin on one side for hole-punching), and printed them on the cardstock to fill in by hand. (You could type everything, if you want.):

An envelope on this page keeps baby shower memorabilia:

I also can print photos to include. A couple of tips for expectant families: Scan ultrasound images because the originals tend to fade quickly. Also, a friend advised me to take some cardstock to the hospital because the staff might make extra footprints for me.

Friday, January 21, 2011 8:48:03 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [1]

Venison and wild fowl are the only two foods historians know for certain were consumed at the meal. And the men sent to capture fowl could’ve snagged small, seasonal birds such as quail, pheasant and duck, instead of the harder-to-catch wild turkey.

So why do we make such a big deal out of the Thanksgiving turkey? Why doesn't Grandma serve up venison on her best platter every November?

I did some googling. The pilgrims’ countrymen in England would dine on goose at special meals. Americans who later took up the tradition of celebrating Thanksgiving may have substituted one big bird for another, because wild turkeys were more abundant here than geese.

In addition, large birds were a lot more affordable than giving everyone steaks or butchering all the laying hens. This quote about how the turkey became popular at Thanksgiving, from an article by Michelle Tsai, explains it well:

Among the big birds, turkey was ideal for a fall feast. Turkeys born in the spring would spend about seven months eating insects and worms on the farm, growing to about 10 pounds by Thanksgiving. They were cheaper than geese, which were more difficult to raise, and cheaper by the pound than chickens.

Americans started eating turkey for Thanksgiving in the mid-1800s, after Godey’s Lady’s Book editor Sarah Josepha Hale began a campaign to make Thanksgiving a national holiday. At the time, the holiday was celebrated mostly in New England on a different day in each state.

Hale published editorials and wrote to several presidents. Finally, in 1863, Abraham Lincoln—hoping to boost the war-weary country's morale—supported legislation establishing Thanksgiving as a national holiday.

Supposedly, Hale popularized a holiday menu of turkey, stuffing and pumpkin pie. But nostalgic images of the Pilgrims and Indians sitting down to a huge feast didn’t enter popular consciousness until later in the century.

Wednesday, November 24, 2010 9:18:37 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [2]

Family Tree University | Genealogy fun

Friday, November 05, 2010 3:48:11 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

This is my favorite stone—we found this unfortunately named lady in a local cemetery.

(See more funny tombstones from the book—and pictures other folks have submitted—at GraveHumorBook.com.) 

And I love our skull-people alter-egos (that's me, fourth from left):

You can get even more skull people in our 2011 Grave Humor Desk Calendar. 

Grave Humor is available from ShopFamilyTree.com. (Until October 31, you can use the code HISTORY10 to save 15 percent.)

Wednesday, October 27, 2010 10:00:14 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• Peter Scarborough, proud soon-to-be owner of the 2011 Family Tree Magazine Genealogy Desktop Calendar: My goal for 2011 is break a brick wall in my wife's family by finding the surname of her great-great-great-grandmother. This has eluded us for many years.

• Marisa, proud soon-to-be owner of the 2011 Civil War Desk Calendar: My goal is to get old photographs scanned! I want to keep copies in their corresponding "people" folders and also add them online so far away family members can enjoy them.

• Rebecca Morgan Kinnie, proud soon-to-be owner of the 2011 Grave Humor Desk Calendar: I want to determine if my great-great-grandfather actually died while fighting in the Civil War, or if he deserted. This would explain why he was named the father of my great-grandfather, who was born eight years after he supposedly died!

Peter, Marisa and Rebecca, please e-mail us your mailing address by next Tuesday, Oct. 19, so we can send your calendar.

If you’re not Peter, Marisa or Rebecca and you want your own calendar, you can use the discount code HISTORY10 to get 10 percent off the calendars at ShopFamilyTree.com.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010 12:04:57 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• The Family Tree Sourcebook (available now for pre-order)
• Family Tree VIP membership
• 10 Years of Family Tree Magazine commemorative DVD
• Live and recorded genealogy webinars
• Google Earth for Genealogy DVD
• RootsMagic genealogy software
• Books from Genealogical Publishing Co.

Monday, August 30, 2010 10:14:32 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [3]

• See funny tombstone photos (some from the book, some sent in by our fellow funny gravestone enthusiasts)

• Meet the author, Mr. M.T. Coffin.

• Download free Grave Humor wallpaper for your computer, iPhone or iPad

• Submit photos of the funny gravestones you’ve encountered in your cemetery adventures

• ... and, of course, buy a copy of Grave Humor for your very own (on sale now for $8.79!) 

Thursday, August 26, 2010 9:01:45 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• Friday the 13th is a relatively recent phenomenon: The earliest known documented reference is in an 1869 biography of Italian composer Gioachino Rossini: “If it be true that, like so many other Italians, he regarded Friday as an unlucky day, and thirteen as an unlucky number, it is remarkable that on Friday, the 13th of November, he died.”

• In 1907, Thomas W. Lawson published a novel called Friday the Thirteenth about a stockbroker who orchestrates a financial panic on Wall Street by preying on people's superstitions.
  

• Many consider Friday a bad day to begin a project or a journey. In Scandinavia, Friday was known as "Witches' Sabbath." Author Charles Panati writes that the Norse goddess of love and fertility, Frigga, was banished and called a witch when Norse and Germanic tribes converted to Christianity. Every Friday, she met with eleven other witches and the devil (for a total of 13) to plan the next week’s misdeeds.

• In numerology, the number 12 symbolizes completeness, whereas 13 is an irregular number that ruins the completeness.

• Every month that begins on a Sunday will contain a Friday the 13th. Friday the 13th occurs at least once but no more than three times per year on the Gregorian calendar.

• The fear of Friday the 13th is called friggatriskaidekaphobia.

• Spanish-speaking cultures fear Martes Trece, Tuesday the 13th. In Greek culture, too, Tuesday the 13th is a day of bad luck.

Friday, August 13, 2010 11:04:32 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [1]

• These are the readers’ momilies featured in the September 2009 Family Tree Magazine.

• … and these are even more sayings that readers submitted to our Forum (anyone can read them, but you must be a registered Forum member to post a reply).
  

• “For crying out loud!”
  
  
• “Hold your horses” (and its close relative, “Don’t lose your britches”)
  
  
• “If [fill in name of childhood friend]’s mom said she could jump off a cliff, would you want to jump off a cliff, too?”
  
  
• “I could’ve yelled from here.”
  
  
• “Do you think someone’s going to steal your dinner?” (when I was hunched over my plate)
  
  
• We were never allowed to eat suckers in the car, because “If I have to stop suddenly, it’ll go through the roof of your mouth.”
  
  
• “You have until the count of three…”
  
  
• “A birdie’s going to come and sit on your lip" (when someone was pouting)
  
  
• “I have eyes in the back of my head.” (My sister says this to her kids, too, and her youngest thought for years that she really did.)
  
  
•  “I don't have a favorite. You’re all my favorites.”

Friday, May 07, 2010 8:58:42 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

Some 20,000 people attended the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints-sponsored Celebration of Family History Thursday night in the LDS Conference Center Auditorium.

 It was a spectacular presentation that combined music from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra at Temple Square, video shorts showing real people talking about what family history means to them, and talks from LDS president Henry B. Eyring and historian David McCullough. McCullough is the author of the books The Johnstown Flood, 1776, John Adams and others. Each element flowed smoothly into the next, in a seamless and inspiring program.

This is a picture I took with my phone before the celebration got underway:

One of my favorite moments came after a video about a man whose family came to appreciate their Scottish heritage when one young son decided to take up the bagpipes. The video’s sound faded as the choir launched into Amazing Grace and out marched a quartet of bagpipers—including the real live boy in the video, now all grown up.

Hearing McCullough was a real treat. Growing up in Pittsburgh, he said, all the kids would make gravy lakes in their mashed potatoes, use a fork to break the side and say “Johnstown Flood” as the gravy flowed into the peas—having no idea what they were talking about. That tragic flood was the topic of his first book.

At dinner time in the 1940s, his hard-of-hearing dad (who detested president Franklin Delano Roosevelt) and his equally hard-of-hearing grandmother (who believed that next to Jesus, FDR was the best human being to walk the earth) would debate the New Deal at unforgettable levels.  

McCullough spoke about the importance of history and the wonderfulness of journals as sources. If you want to be immortal, he advised the audience, keep a journal, and when you think the curtain’s about to come down on your life, give it to the Library of Congress. Your journal will be famous because it will be the only one in existence from this era.

To get to know your ancestors, besides studying their records and reading what they wrote, you should read what they read, McCullough said. There’s no such thing as a self-made man or woman—we’re all made from the people before us and the people before them and the people before them. There’s no such thing as the “forseeable future,” our ancestors no more knew how things were going to turn out that we know.

The phrase shouldn’t be “gone but not forgotten,” he said, but rather, “if not forgotten, then not gone.”

You can read more about the Celebration of Family History here  and here , and see a  video about it here. 

Friday, April 30, 2010 10:24:57 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

During the morning rush at our National Genealogical Society booth today, someone looked at the July 2010 Family Tree Magazine and said “Oh, I saw your guy!”

What guy? I’m pretty sure we didn’t bring a guy.

A little while later, Sherlock Holmes walked into the booth. It was Tim Firkowski, a professional family history detective (and creative marketer) dressed to promote his business, The Genealogy Assistant. 

In a purely coincidental turn of events, Tim looked exactly like our July cover! See:

Thursday, April 29, 2010 12:00:31 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [2]

The hunt celebrates the new Discovering the Civil War exhibit opening April 30 at NARA’s Washington, DC headquarters. It’ll send participants scouting for answers across the National Archives' social media sites, including more than a dozen Facebook pages and Flickr, YouTube and Twitter sites.

Visit NARA’s main Facebook page Monday for the scavenger hunt kickoff.  Those who complete the hunt and submit their answers will be entered into a drawing for four Discovering the Civil War t-shirts from the NARA gift shop.

For more details and rules, see NARA's facebook page.

Saturday, April 24, 2010 5:00:18 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• Neat website alert: The Ministry of Food goes with an Imperial War Museum London exhibit about the British public’s adaption to food shortages during World War II. You can see photos from the exhibit, check out Ministry of Food publications on gardening and cooking, and watch video clips.

And here’s a blog by a woman who’s living for a month on a 1940s British ration diet. 

• And another one: Go to What Happened in My Birth Year for a fun way to see top movies, books and events from the year you were born. Thanks to ResearchBuzz for the heads-up on this site.
  

• Ancestry.com has improved Collection Filters in the New Search. When you’re in the Advanced Search, a pull-down menu lets you give priority to matches associated with various countries or ethnic backgrounds. See how it works on the Ancestry.com blog.

• FamilySearch added records from five new states to the 1910 and 1920 US censuses on the free Record Search Pilot Site. FamilySearch Indexing has started new projects to index records from Germany, Spain, Jamaica, Norway, Alaska, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana and Iowa. Interested in volunteering to be an indexer? Click here.
  

Friday, February 12, 2010 12:07:06 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

"There is not a day or night, nay not an hour, but I wish to fold you to my heart.”

“It seems to me, to myself, that no man was ever before to any woman what you are to me.”

"The Old Year is passing. … It found me careless of the here & the [hereafter]—it leaves me with faith in the one & hope for the [other. It] found [me. my ] heart scorched, bitter, barren, loveless—& leaves it filled with softening, humanizing, elevating love for the dearest girl on earth, Livy—& I, the homeless then, have on this last day of the [die dying] year, a home that is [pre priceless], a refuge from all the cares & ills of life, in that warm heart of yours, & am supremely happy! And so with grateful benediction I give [Godspeed] to this good Old Year that is passing away. If I forget all else it has done for me I shall still remember that it gave me your love, Livy, ..."

"… something whispers to me—perhaps it is the wafted prayer of my little Edgar, that I shall return to my loved ones unharmed. If I do not my dear Sarah, never forget how much I love you, and when my last breath escapes me on the battle field, it will whisper your name. ... How gladly would I wash out with my tears every little spot upon your happiness ..."

“I still believe that my sweetheart is the ideal woman…”

Friday, February 12, 2010 9:42:42 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

• Christmas card sent in Alaska in 1938, from the National Archives’ Digital Vaults
  
  
• 1924 Christmas card featuring Abraham Lincoln, from the Library of Congress American Memory Collection. It won second prize in the National League of Women Voters’ world peace-themed Christmas card contest
  
  
• Salvation Army bell-ringer in 1903, from the Library of Congress
  
  
• Kids at a Christmas party, dated between 1910 and 1930, from the Denver Public Library
  
  
• Women decorating a Christmas tree in a factory, about 1904, from the Library of Congress
  
  
• Christmas tree lot in New York City, dated between 1885 and 1895, from the Library of Congress
  
  
• Nurses filling candy bags for children at Chicago’s Cook County Hospital in 1909
  
  
• Holiday crowds in downtown Chicago in 1927, from the Library of Congress
  
  
• Outdoor decorations in Denver, from the Denver Public Library

Tuesday, December 22, 2009 3:41:15 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [1]

• Get familiar with your camera’s settings ahead of time so you’re not fiddling with buttons as the Kodak moments happen around you

• It’s easy to forget your camera when you also have to remember all the presents and the green bean casserole, so get it ready to go. Charge the batteries, find the extra ones and make sure there’s room on the memory card.

• Take a lot of pictures, trying the same scene zoomed in and out, and with and without flash. The beauty of digital photography is that you can look at the pictures later, decide what to keep and get rid of the bad shots.

• Get close to your subject to avoid background distractions.

• If you’re taking pictures of holiday lights at night, the flash can overwhelm them and harshly illuminate people in the foreground. Try switching to your camera’s nighttime setting—but you’ll also need to use a tripod or steady the camera against a fence rail or table to avoid a blurry shot. This article has more tips on tricky nightime lighting situations.
  

• Some digital cameras have a delay after you press the shutter, so you may need to anticipate a shot and click the shutter a split second early.

• Learn your camera’s timer feature so you can take a photo of the whole gang together. Position people at different levels (some sitting, some standing) and take plenty of shots to increase the chances of everyone’s eyes being open at the same time. This article has more tips on group portraits.
  

• Feeling creative? Here are some neat photo effects you can try with a digital camera.
  

• I love this list of holiday photo ideas for pets. Now I just have to find a box big enough for Janie to pose in.
  

• Professionals Critique Family Photos (free article)

• Photo Digitization Tips (free article)

• Family Photo Essentials CD with tips on taking photos, preserving them in albums, safely organizing them and researching old pictures (on sale at ShopFamilyTree.com)

• Photography how-to books from ShopFamilyTree.com
  

Monday, December 14, 2009 10:21:04 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

• Perennially popular gifts for genealogists, from inexpensive to a little pricey

• Maureen A. Taylor’s gift ideas for photo fanatics

• How to create a family cookbook

• Family Tree Magazine Plus members can access this article on making photo gifts using online services 

• Our very own how-to books, CDs and other helps for your genealogy friends (or wanna-be genealogy friends). You can sign up for our e-mail newsletter to learn about specials in ShopFamilyTree.com. 

• I’m kinda partial to this one: Family Tree Legacies, a book Family Tree Magazine editor Allison Stacy and I put together for recording all kinds of family history information—not just names and dates, but also family stories, news articles, house history, military service details, where people lived and more.
  

Thursday, November 05, 2009 9:07:21 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [2]

• Uncle Sam isn’t just a character: During the War of 1812, Samuel Wilson of Troy, NY, provided the army with beef in barrels labeled U.S. The letters stood for United States, but people joked they referred to "Uncle Sam." The term came to mean the federal government; depictions of Uncle Sam appeared starting in 1852. In 1961, Congress officially saluted “Uncle Sam Wilson” as the “progenitor of America's national symbol."

• You can morph into Rosie the Riveter with rolled-up sleeves and a red handkerchief in your hair. The name was popularized in a 1942 song, but there wasn’t any one Rosie. The most famous image we associate with Rosie the Riveter, J. Howard Miller’s “We Can Do It!” poster, isn’t her. Miller created the poster for the Westinghouse Co.’s War Production Coordinating Committee, and it was posted at the Michigan plant for only two weeks in February, 1942. He didn’t intend for it to portray Rosie.

Read more on the Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front National Memorial Park website.

• Most Viking costumes involve a horned helmet, but in reality, Viking helmets never had horns, according to the American Museum of Natural History. Instead, these Norse explorers and warriors wore conical leather hats as they raided the European coast from the late 8th to the early 11th century. Fun fact: Vikings were quite clean for the time—they bathed every Saturday. Get more Viking fact vs. fiction here.
  

• The witch of popular culture—black robe, pointy hat and warts a lá the Wicked Witch of the West—got her start in Shakespeare’s MacBeth and the fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm. But those accused of witchcraft in the Salem witch trials of 1692 and 1693 looked like anybody else. The series of trials resulted in the hangings of 14 women and five men. Another man was crushed to death under stones in an attempt to force him to enter a plea.

Learn more about the trials and see related historical documents in the Famous American Trials website.

• Vampire costumes are big this year, thanks to the book Twilight and the movie based on it. The name of late 19th-century novelist Bram Stoker’s fictional vampire, Dracula, was inspired by a real historical figure: Vlad III (aka Vlad the Impaler), Prince of Wallachia, born in Transylvania in the 15th century. His Romanian surname, Dracula, meant “son of the dragon;” Vlad’s father had joined the Order of the Dragon.

• Thanks to Treasure Island, Peter Pan, Pirates of the Caribbean and other popular depictions, pirate costumes sport colorful bandanas, jewelry, an eye patch, a stuffed parrot and maybe a hook or wooden stump. Your typical early 18th-century pirate dressed for the most part like sailors did. The parrot cliché probably arose because many pirates benefited from the trade in exotic animals; the eye patch and hook/stump because of the risky profession. See more theories in this pirate Q&A.
  

Wednesday, October 28, 2009 10:02:24 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [1]

All-around
These bloggers give you a little (or a lot) of everything: news, research advice, their own family stories, photos, opinions and more. There’s no one quite like the Genealogue, so we thought about that blog for awhile. It landed in this category because the Genealogue posts a satirical take on genealogy news, holds occasional research challenges and blogs about his own family history every so often.

Personal/Family
These blogs primarily cover the blogger's (or, in a case or two or more, bloggers') own research and ancestors. Family historians write what they know and what’s important to them, so this is our biggest category.

Local/Regional
Most posts in these blogs cover resources, genealogy events and history for a city, town, state or region.

Cemetery
These blogs focus on cemetery research, gravestone photos and the like.

Photos/Heirlooms
Content on these blogs is primarily about sharing, researching and preserving family photos and/or heirlooms.

Heritage
Here, blog content focuses on a particular heritage group, such as African-American, Jewish or Irish. We had some tough decisions in this category, as some family-related genealogy blogs by nature also examine that family’s ethnic heritage.

News/Resources
Blogs in this category deliver a range of genealogy news and information about new resources.

How-to
These blogs have instructional content on genealogical resources and methodology. In some cases, bloggers wrote about their own research and ancestors, but framed posts in an instructional manner.

Genealogy Companies
Blogs in this category are written on behalf of a genealogy company, and contain helpful (but not overly advertising-oriented) information on the company’s products, as well as other resources.

Genetic Genealogy
Blogs that are primarily about genetic genealogy and family health history.

Monday, October 05, 2009 9:37:39 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [4]

• The National Genealogical Society (NGS) has launched a blog called UpFront With NGS, which will complement the society’s monthly e-mail newsletter of the same name. News will be posted regularly on the blog, so you don’t have to wait for the e-mail, and you can leave comments on the blog posts.
  

• Ancestry.com is hosting a free webinar to demo its recently released Family Tree Maker 2010 genealogy software. The webinar is Sept. 30 at 8pm EDT. Learn more about the webinar and link to the registration on Ancestry.com’s blog.
  
  
• The McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College has a Web site companion to its special exhibit of the Becker Collection: Drawings of the Civil War Era. The drawings by Joseph Becker and others from Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Weekly depict the Civil War, construction of railroads, Chinese in the West, Indian wars, the Chicago fire and more. You can browse drawings by date, place, subject, artist or reference number.
  
  
• Irish-ancestored people, take note: As posted by Dick Eastman, all counties have been added to the National Archives of Ireland's 1911 census Web site. Later this year, you’ll start seeing 1901 census records. The 1901 and 1911 censuses are the only surviving full Irish censuses open for research. Read what’s special about Irish censuses on Dick’s blog.
  
  
• Last, I wanted to point out this fun post by Randy Seaver (a re-post of his earlier post, which I missed the first time around) with links to lists of funny/strange place names.
  

Friday, September 11, 2009 11:16:06 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• Post your entry to the Ancestral Anniversaries thread in the Talk to Us Forum. (To help combat spammers, forum registration is required for posting. You can register by clicking here.)
  
  
• Please keep your entry under 125 words, so we can include more stories in the magazine.
  
  
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• By submitting, you give Family Tree Magazine permission to feature your contribution in all print and electronic media.

Tuesday, September 01, 2009 1:18:42 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [1]

• The image must be dated before 1920 and not show any individuals still living (we don't want to upset any of your more-modest relatives).
  
  
• The image must be high-resolution (at least 300 dots per inch) so it will reproduce well in print.
  
  
• The image must show people (five or fewer is best, that way we'll be able to see everyone).
  
  
• Include your e-mail address and/or phone number with your submission—we'll need to be able to get a hold of you if your image is chosen.

Thursday, August 27, 2009 8:36:48 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [3]

• “toddler’s crayon”
• “fossilized chocolate cake”
• “worry stone” (over those unsolved brick walls, we presume)
• “paper weight”
• “scrubber to get your pen started” (huh?)
• “thumbprinter thingie”
• “It’s used to help you separate papers. You rub your fingers on it so you can easily rifle through your records”
• "a secret listening device"
  
• “a template for drawing circles for names on your family tree”
• “a starter for the center of your family tree”

Wednesday, August 12, 2009 2:05:30 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [2]