Free Updates
Navigation
Categories
| March, 2010 (19) |
| February, 2010 (30) |
| January, 2010 (23) |
| December, 2009 (19) |
| November, 2009 (27) |
| October, 2009 (30) |
| September, 2009 (25) |
| August, 2009 (26) |
| July, 2009 (33) |
| June, 2009 (32) |
| May, 2009 (30) |
| April, 2009 (39) |
| March, 2009 (35) |
| February, 2009 (21) |
| January, 2009 (29) |
| December, 2008 (15) |
| November, 2008 (15) |
| October, 2008 (25) |
| September, 2008 (30) |
| August, 2008 (26) |
| July, 2008 (26) |
| June, 2008 (22) |
| May, 2008 (27) |
| April, 2008 (20) |
| March, 2008 (20) |
| February, 2008 (19) |
| January, 2008 (22) |
| December, 2007 (21) |
| November, 2007 (26) |
| October, 2007 (20) |
| September, 2007 (17) |
| August, 2007 (23) |
| July, 2007 (17) |
| June, 2007 (13) |
| May, 2007 (7) |
Search
Archives
| | Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
|---|
| 28 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 1 | 2 | 3 | | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
More Links
|
 Friday, February 12, 2010
Genealogy News Corral: February 8-12
Posted by Diane
- 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.
- 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.
Ancestry.com | FamilySearch | Genealogy fun | Museums | Social History | UK and Irish roots
Friday, February 12, 2010 5:07:06 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00) 
|
|
Tuesday, January 05, 2010
NY Museum Offers Digitized National Guard Records
Posted by Diane
Got a New Yorker who served in the state’s National Guard? The New York State Military Museum and Veterans Research Center in Saratoga Springs has released of 53,671 pages of New York National Guard records, according to a Dec. 29 announcement.
The digitized records in PDF format include 197 issues of the New York National Guardsman magazine (published monthly from August 1924 to August 1940) and National Guard annual reports from the Adjutant General from 1858 to 1955
Many years of the Adjutant General records have a name index. Otherwise, there’s no search of the digitized records, so you’ll need to browse files for the years you’re interested in. Some of the files are pretty big and take a few minutes to download.
The center’s library also has rich genealogical resources offline, including 2,000 volumes of military and New York State history, more than 5,000 unit and soldier photographs, unit histories (some of this material is online), scrapbooks, letters, maps and more.
Free Databases | Military records | Museums
Tuesday, January 05, 2010 2:02:09 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
|
|
Friday, August 28, 2009
Genealogy News Corral: August 24-28
Posted by Diane
- Hundreds of genealogists—your truly included—are packing their bags for the Federation of Genealogical Societies Conference in Little Rock, Ark., Sept. 2 to 5. I’ll write more about the conference in a separate post next week, but in the mean time, you can check out the conference Web site and blog.
- The National Archives’ marriage records (1815 to 1866) from the Virginia Field Office of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands (Freedmen’s Bureau) have been digitized and are now available free at the FamilySearch record search pilot site.
- Subscription genealogy Web site Ancestry.com and its related international sites will be down for scheduled maintenance for about three hours starting Tuesday, Sept. 1 at 1 a.m. Mountain Time. Portions of RootsWeb, Genealogy.com, MyFamily.com and FamilyTreeMaker.com—which live on Ancestry.com servers—also will be unavailable.
- Mark your calendars for National Museum Day Sept. 26, when hundreds of museums across the country will offer free general admission to you and a guest when you present a Museum Day admission card, downloadable from this site.
- A Deerfield, Ill., documentarian has created a show called “The Legend Seekers,” which traces family legends of regular people. You can submit your family story at LegendSeekers.com, see others' stories and get research tips. Chicago-area residents can watch an episode on WTTW Channel 11 Aug. 30 at 12:30 p.m. and 3:30 a.m. Aug. 31. (It’ll also run on WTTW Prime—Comcast Channel 243—at 9:30 p.m. Aug. 31, and 4:30 and 9:30 a.m. Sept. 1.)
African-American roots | Ancestry.com | FamilySearch | Genealogy Events | Museums
Friday, August 28, 2009 4:20:36 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
|
|
Friday, July 31, 2009
Did Your Immigrant Ancestors Sail the Red Star Line?
Posted by Diane
The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation folks sent us a note on behalf of a future museum in Antwerp, Belgium, about the history of the Red Star Line.
The Red Star Line was a steamship company that transported thousands of European immigrants across the Atlantic between 1873 and 1935. Museum organizers are looking for individual stories and original photos that'll bring personal history to the museum.
If you know or are a descendant from a person who sailed the Red Star Line from Antwerp to settle in the United States, please e-mail museum staff.
The museum is slated to open in 2012, but the Web site is already up and
running.
Read more about the Red Star Line, get a list of ships and see photos on RedStarLine.eu. You can view postcards of ships and 1908 menu cards here.
The Belgian Roots Project explains how Red Star Line was a trade name, not a corporation. Scroll down the linked page for a fleet list, then click a ship name for a list of voyages and links to free passenger lists, when available.
immigration records | International Genealogy | Museums
Friday, July 31, 2009 1:53:03 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
|
|
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Free Database of 5,000 York, UK, Prisoners
Posted by Diane
York Castle Prison museum in York, UK, has posted an online a database of 5,000 people who were held there or were victims of crimes, mostly during the 1700s.
The database, which isn’t comprehensive, includes:
- Criminals sentenced to transportation to America, about 1705 to 1775
- Criminals executed at York, about 1710 to 1899
- Debtors who pleaded insolvency, about 1709 to 1813
You can download a fact sheet with details about the York prisoners database, how to search it and recommended resources (including a database of 123,000 convicts transported to Queensland, Australia).
The museum doesn’t have any original records on the prisoners, but the above-mentioned fact sheet tells you where to look for them.
On the York Castle Prison family history page, you can search the database for a name or keyword. You’ll learn the prisoner's name, date of imprisonment and source of the information, and perhaps a short synopsis of the crime (which may name the perpetrator's victims).
William the Conquerer built the original York Castle, which included a
jail, in 1068. A county gaol and women’s prison were added in the
1700s; the whole castle was a prison from 1835 to 1929. Now it’s a
museum with an interesting Web site that lets you explore the prison and introduces you to prisoners and
keepers.
See our online article for more help tracing British criminals in your family tree.
Free Databases | Museums | UK and Irish roots
Wednesday, July 22, 2009 1:35:56 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
|
|
Friday, July 17, 2009
Colonial Williamsburg and Other Places to Time Travel
Posted by Diane
My ancestors got here after Colonial days, but all the same I enjoyed an afternoon in Colonial Williamsburg earlier this week while visiting family.
The park covers 301 acres with 88 original buildings plus other reconstructed ones. I hadn’t realized Colonial Williamsburg isn’t an enclosed park—rather, it’s a historic part of the city of Williamsburg, Va., with streets closed to cars but otherwise publicly accessible. You can walk around outside and enter shops and restaurants for free; a pass gets you into the park’s other buildings (except private homes and offices) and exhibits.
On our whirlwind trip, we visited the courthouse
... apothecary
... blacksmith shop
... and the magazine and guardhouse, carpenter’s shop and gaol (jail). Exhibit hours vary, and special programs happen daily at different times and places, so if you’re planning a visit, check the online calendar.
You can see our ancestors’ world at living history centers around the country, such as Old World Wisconsin, Ohio Village, Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts and the Lower East Side Tenement Museum in New York City.
Find more museums here or run a Google search on “living history” and the city, county or state you’re interested in.
Celebrating your heritage | Historic preservation | Museums
Friday, July 17, 2009 3:39:10 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
|
|
Thursday, July 09, 2009
Fee-Free Weekends at Historic Parks
Posted by Diane
Want to immerse yourself in history but still save a few bucks this summer? Plan to visit a national park on one of these two entrance fee-free weekends:
You've got more than 100 parks to choose from, including Georgia’s forts Pulaski and Frederica, Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial in Indiana, Antietam National Battlefield in Maryland, Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument in New Mexico, and Fort Laramie National Historic Site in Wyoming.
Learn more about National Park Service fee-free weekends here.
Celebrating your heritage | Museums | Social History
Thursday, July 09, 2009 7:01:30 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
|
|
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Ellis Island Hosts Stars, Expands Museum
Posted by Diane
Our lucky New York-based colleague Guy LeCharles Gonzalez attended the Ellis Island Family Heritage Awards yesterday. He got the scoop on the latest Ellis Island exhibits and rubbed elbows with the stars (well, at least he was in the same room).
Here’s Guy’s report:
Emilio and Gloria Estefan (below) accepted the inaugural B.C. Forbes Peopling of America Award in a star-studded 8th Annual Ellis Island Family Heritage Awards ceremony yesterday, hosted by actress Candice Bergen in the historic Great Hall on Ellis Island.
The awards celebrate the lives and work of individuals who immigrated to America and their descendants; with the Forbes honor going to those who arrived through a port other than Ellis Island. It reminds us that America continues to be the destination for those seeking freedom, hope and opportunity.
Accepting the award alongside her husband, musician Gloria Estefan noted the common denominator shared with the day’s other honorees—Joe Namath, Eric Kandel and Jerry Seinfeld—that no matter where they or their families had come from, or when, they all sought to escape some form of tyranny. In America, they’d found a home where they could live freely and pursue their dreams.
Sponsored by the Forbes family in honor of patriarch B.C. "Bertie" Forbes, the Peopling of America award is also named for the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation's newest project: the Peopling of America Center.
The center will expand the Ellis Island Immigration Museum to include the entire panorama of the American immigrant experience—from native American groups to today's New Americans, whose numbers are growing exponentially.
The new center is an ambitious $20 million effort to make Ellis Island even more compelling and relevant for the coming decades, with the goal of telling all of our stories about being and becoming Americans.
Its precursor, the Peopling of America exhibit, is in the Great Hall's former Railroad Ticket Office, where immigrants could make travel arrangements to their final destinations in the United States. Several displays visually chronicle the more than 60 million people who’ve come to the United States, voluntarily and by force, since 1600.
This map details sources and destinations of the Atlantic slave trade:
This exhibit compares immigration (blue arrows) to emigration (red arrows) by decade:
Other displays include an interactive Map of Diversity, which can show the number of people in each state who claim a certain race or ancestry (based on US census data); maps and charts of historical immigration patterns; and the American Flag of Faces, a "living and interactive exhibit" to which anyone can add a photo (names and captions are searchable online).
See more photos of the ceremony and the Ellis Island Immigration Museum here.
Celebrating your heritage | immigration records | Museums | Social History
Wednesday, May 20, 2009 4:16:27 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
|
|
Sunday, July 06, 2008
Iowa's Libraries and Museums Assess Flood Damage
Posted by Diane
Freelance writer Dana Schmidt, of Ames, Iowa (you may remember her as a former Family Tree Magazine staffer), sent us this report about how the recent recording-setting floods have impacted libraries in her state:
Now that it’s been a couple weeks since rivers flooded parts of Iowa, we’re beginning to get a clearer picture of how devastating damages are in some libraries, and how other libraries escaped the worst.
In hard-hit Cedar Rapids, where the Cedar River crested at about 31 feet—nearly 20 feet over flood stage, beating the former high set in June 1851—nearly 5 feet of water submerged theground floor of the Cedar Rapids Public Library. According to a State Library of Iowa report, floodwaters rose three bookshelves high and humid conditions have contributed to the loss of the library’s entire adult book collection. The Cedar Rapids Gazette also reports magazines, journals and reference books, which were housed on the ground floor, are likely ruined, and the library may remain closed for a year.
The Czech and Slovak Museum and Library in Cedar Rapids also suffered. Ten feet of water surrounded the building and rose to the ceiling inside. According to the state library, about 20 percent of the museum’s artifacts were removed before the flood, but little of the remaining collection will be salvageable. Museum staff continues to update the Web site with recover news.
Inside Iowa’s New Hartford Public Library (near Waterloo), 18 inches of water covered the floor; it’s expected the building will need to be gutted. The library lost 82 percent of its collection.
In Iowa City, the University of Iowa’s Main Library managed to keep its collection dry, despite basement flooding. Cedar Rapids’ African-American Museum also was affected, but more than 90 percent of its collection is expected to survive. The museum's online flood timeline tells about the museum’s collection preservation efforts.
Do you live in Iowa? click Comments (below) to tell us what you saw.
Libraries and Archives | Museums
Sunday, July 06, 2008 9:42:59 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
|
|
Friday, June 06, 2008
48 Hours in Washington, DC
Posted by Grace
While planning a trip to our nation's capital to see friends, I focused mainly on coordinating schedules and figuring out where to eat. But the day I left, I suddenly got really excited about all the museums there are in the District. Although 48 hours doesn't give you a lot of time to explore, I managed to spend time in two great museums: the Newseum and the National Portrait Gallery.
The Newseum, a museum dedicated to the history of news and journalism, just opened its impressive new building at 555 Pennsylvania Ave. in April. That's the First Amendment inscribed into the front of the building.
 Its six levels are packed with interactive exhibits and small theaters. My friends and I spent about four hours looking at everything, but I could have spent another day there easily. Especially in the area full of historical front pages (as seen at right). Declarations of war, unthinkable events and tragic assassinations are displayed alongside incredible achievements, joyous milestones and other turning points in our world's history.
The same hall is lined with mini-exhibits of various aspects of journalism, such as the contributions of black Americans, women and others to the field, and the changing face of the news business. (The Palm Pilot of blogger Jim Romenesko is on display, for example.) The section devoted to coverage of Sept. 11, 2001, was also really
impressive. What looks like a sculpture is a twisted chunk of the radio
tower formerly atop the World Trade Center. The walls are lined by front pages from Sept. 12, and videos show news coverage from the day.
Although journalism nerds like myself will probably appreciate the Newseum most, anyone with a taste for history will enjoy spending a few hours there.
The National Portrait Gallery is an absolute powerhouse and a must-see museum even if you're not well-versed in art history. With free admission, there's no reason not to stop in when you're in Washington. The newly reopened atrium (above) is pleasantly cool and quiet even on sweltering summer days.
One big highlight of the collection is the permanent "America's Presidents" gallery. My personal favorite was Norman Rockwell's depiction of Richard Nixon. And it's interesting to see John F. Kennedy's portrait is the only openly abstract painting in the bunch. It's incredible to think the building, which originally housed the US Patent Office, was almost demolished in the mid-1900s. Its endless corridors and galleries are absolutely gorgeous, and the art it contains is a true national treasure. If I'd had a little more time to spend in DC, I would have visited the National Archives, Cooper-Hewitt and the Natural History Museum. Next time!
Museums | Social History
Friday, June 06, 2008 2:42:52 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
|
|
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Haunting Holocaust Albums Online
Posted by Grace
Tracing the Tribe pointed us in the direction of a US Holocaust Memorial Museum online exhibit of haunting scrapbooks from the Auschwitz concentration camp complex. Very few photos of Auschwitz during wartime exist, and what makes these even rarer is the subject matter. SS-Obersturmführer Karl Höcker, was stationed at
Auschwitz from May 1944 until January
1945. One section of the online exhibit compares the SS-centric album with the only other known album from Auschwitz, which contains haunting photos of prisoners. Höcker's album contains no pictures of prisoners at all. On a somewhat related note, I saw " The Counterfeiters" recently, which is a fictionalized retelling of Operation Bernhard. The Nazis used prisoners at Sachsenhausen to forge British banknotes, eventually producing nearly 9 million of them. The movie, which won Best Foreign Film at this year's Oscars, takes some liberties but is really interesting. Read more about Operation Bernhard here. Update: Click Comments for the Tracing the Tribe blogger's news about Yad Vashem's May 1 online photo archives debut.
Museums | Social History
Wednesday, April 30, 2008 2:37:49 PM (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
|
|
Friday, March 21, 2008
Smithsonian Develops Photo Initiative
Posted by Grace
The Smithsonian possesses more than 13 million images in 19 museums and 700 collections,
organized by discipline. In the past, it's been difficult for researchers—and even curators—to know where all the images pertinent to a topic might be found. The Smithsonian Photography Initiative aims to change all that, making the institute's massive collection accessible for the general public and inviting history fans to get involved.  One facet of the initiative, click! photography changes everything, is a repository of essays on how the medium has altered the world we live in. Right now, 100 experts' musings can be found on the site; in the fall, click! will invite the public to submit images
and comments. ( Click here to read about our Photo Detective Maureen Taylor's translation of her own grandmother's wedding portrait and how it changed her perception of Nana from a static portrait to a living woman.) Enter the Frame encourages Web site visitors to " tag" Smithsonian photographs to make them more easily searchable. When you tag a photo, you apply keywords that describe the image. This could include dates, locations, seasons, topics, descriptions of people in the photo, objects in the photo, etc. For example, the photo at right (from our Photo Detective blog) might get tagged with mourning, black dress, woman, gloves, seated, veil and hat. Click here to see a list of all the Smithsonian Photography Initiative projects, including click! photography changes everything and Enter the Frame. You can read more about the benefits of tagging in Family Tree Magazine's May 2008 Toolkit article "Tagging Along."
Historic preservation | Libraries and Archives | Museums | Social History
Friday, March 21, 2008 8:29:47 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
|
|
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Online exhibit reveals lives left behind
Posted by Grace
Until the 1960s, being institutionalized for psychiatric reasons was often a life sentence. Willard Asylum in Upstate New York, which opened in 1869, housed more than 50,000 patients during its operation, and nearly half of those died there.
After Willard Psychiatric Center, as it was later named, closed in 1995, staffers found hundreds of abandoned suitcases and trunks belonging to former residents. A state museum curator arranged to have the trove of trunks and artifacts moved to a warehouse, where Darby Penney and Peter Stastny encountered them in 1999. Along with a photographer, they selected a few of the suitcase owners to research, and the results became a major New York State Archives exhibit, now available to view online at www.suitcaseexhibit.org.
Using the contents of the trunks, including photographs, immigration papers, newspaper clippings and other ephemera, as starting points, Penney and Stastny were able to create comprehensive biographies of nine suitcase owners, which you can read on the Suitcase Exhibit Web site. The profiles are deeply moving. Many of the stories of how the suitcase owners came to be institutionalized are shocking. One patient was committed because her employers described her as "odd, tactless and domineering."
"The Lives They Left Behind" exhibit is on display through Jan. 31, 2008, at the Science, Industry and Business Library in New York City. Visit the library’s Web site for more information. (The exhibit travels to Auburn, NY, and Flint, Mich., next year. Visit the Suitcase Exhibit Web site for details.) The accompanying book, The Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases From a State Hospital Attic, is being released in January.
P.S.: If you have an ancestor who was institutionalized, you might find our Now What? Blog post on finding records from state hospitals useful.
Museums | Social History
Wednesday, December 12, 2007 8:24:02 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
|
|
Monday, November 26, 2007
Museum Displays Hair Mementos
Posted by Diane
Happy Thanksgiving! Over the holiday I got a whole bunch of hair cut off and mailed it to Pantene Beautiful Lengths, which makes wigs for women undergoing chemotherapy. If I were around a couple of centuries or so ago, I would’ve used the hair to create mementos for loved ones. In this once-popular practice, women wove locks into elaborate wreaths and jewelry, sometimes with beads, embroidery floss and photographs. You can see more than 400 hair wreaths and 2,000 pieces of hairwork jewelry (rings, bracelets, watch chains, brooches, etc.) at a museum in two rooms of an Independence, Mo., cosmetology school. Read more about it in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Photo Detective blogger Maureen A. Taylor says hair was a common remembrance of friends and deceased relatives. In the August 2002 Family Tree Magazine, she wrote about the
19th-cetury hair clipping-and-autograph album belonging to Helen Marion
Adams of Fairhaven, Vt. “Very simply, hair does not decompose; thus the friendship lasts beyond the grave,” Taylor says. People can get creeped out by the thought of hair locks separated from their owner. The hair museum’s owner says some visitors can’t complete their tours. I’m not sentimental about my own trimmed ponytails, but keeping hair for a memento doesn’t seem odd to me. As a baby, my dad had beautiful curls my grandma couldn’t bear to cut. When my grandfather finally prodded her into it, she saved every last curl in a shoebox we still have.
Museums | Social History
Monday, November 26, 2007 4:20:30 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
|
|
|