Free Updates
Navigation
Categories
| January, 2009 (2) |
| 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 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 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 |
More Links
|
 Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Test Your Civil War Knowledge
Posted by Diane
Historic preservation | Social History
12/17/2008 3:11:59 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00) 
|
|
Thursday, November 06, 2008
Remembering Canadian Veterans, Re-Watching The War
Posted by Diane
We’re coming up on Veterans Day (in the United States) and Remembrance Day (in Canada), and our contributing editor Rick Crume told me about a neat remembrance of the 68,000 Canadians killed in World War I. Nights through Nov. 11, those names will be projected onto the National War Memorial in Ottawa and buildings elsewhere Canada, and onto the side of Canada House in London's Trafalgar Square. At the 1918 Vigil site, you can search for names of Canadians killed in the Great War to learn the person’s service number, rank, regiment, death date and the when the name will be displayed. Also marking Veterans Day, many PBS stations are re-airing Ken Burns’ WWII documentary The War. It had me riveted to the sofa last year when it first aired. Click here to search for broadcasts on your PBS station. You can get more veterans’ stories on the Veterans History Project's special Web site Experiencing War. (I got a chance to talk with Ken Burns recently, and I’ll share some of the conversation in a later post.) For more on military records, see the Genealogy Insider military records category and the FamilyTreeMagazine.com online toolkit.
Canadian roots | Military records | Social History
11/6/2008 8:18:09 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
|
|
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
Counting Your Ancestor's Vote
Posted by Diane
Free Databases | Research Tips | Social History
11/4/2008 11:00:39 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
|
|
Monday, October 13, 2008 Monday, August 04, 2008
Let the Games Begin!
Posted by Grace
Genealogy fun | Oral History | Social History | Videos
8/4/2008 1:48:15 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
|
|
Thursday, July 03, 2008
No Sign of a Cherry Tree
Posted by Diane
Archaeologists believe they've discovered George Washington’s boyhood home on the banks of the Rappahannock River in Virginia. For three years, they’ve been excavating foundations, stone-lined cellars and other remains of what’s likely an eight-room, one-and-a-half story residence. Those characteristics, as well as artifacts—wine bottles, figurines, wig curlers, a clay pipe with a Masonic crest (the first president was a Mason), and more—led to the conclusion the house is indeed that of Washington’s family. One thing missing: Any hint of the cherry tree young George supposedly confessed to whacking down. Read the full story in the New York Times.
Social History
7/3/2008 5:29:48 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
|
|
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Civil War Research and Events Updates
Posted by Diane
A few Civil War research and history news items to start your day: - The Western Maryland Regional Library has put the Antietam National Cemetery payroll for 1866-1867 online. The digitized and transcribed book bears names and wages of laborers who built the wall around the cemetery. You can browse or search (the search is in the upper right; choose the payroll database from the pulldown menu).
Entry is via the CWPT’s Flickr site. The deadline is Aug. 31, with prizes in four categories ranging from certificates of recognition to free Civil War conference registrations.
- This year marks the 145th anniversary of the Battle of Gettyburg, and more than 10,000 participants will stage a battle re-enactment July 4-6. Tickets range from $24 per adult for a day to $57 for three days, with lower prices for kids. Get ‘em at the Gettyburg Re-enactment Web site.
Celebrating your heritage | Military records | Social History
6/24/2008 9:55:23 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
|
|
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
New Database Shows You English Ancestors' Jobs
Posted by Diane
You might be able to learn whether your English ancestor was a clergyman, cowkeeper, winemaker, woolstapler or other tradesperson using the British subscription service FamilyRelatives.com’s latest addition. Pigot’s Trade directories of town and occupational information cover 27 counties back to the 1830’s (so, before official civil registration began). Records added to date cover 27 counties from 1830 to 1839. Directories contain descriptions of towns with population numbers, parishes and main trades and industries. They also list residents’ names and addresses by occupation. Search the directories by name or occupation, or browse by page. A subscription to FamilyRelatives.com costs 37.50 pounds—that's about $73.50. You can browse a name index to a few Pigot's Trade directories free from this RootsWeb-hosted site (there’s a search here, but it didn’t seem to be working). I dug up a few links to help you learn more about some of those archaic trades your UK and other ancestors practiced:
Genealogy Web Sites | International Genealogy | Social History
6/18/2008 2:02:14 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
|
|
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
6/6/2008 9:42:52 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
|
|
Thursday, May 29, 2008
"Last Doughboy" Honored on Memorial Day
Posted by Diane
Social History
5/29/2008 4:38:32 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
|
|
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
National Archives Opens Online Digital Vault
Posted by Diane
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is even more than a repository for the census, military and immigration records naming individuals. NARA also holds pieces of our nation’s collective history—and it just launched a new Web site to display them. Digital Vaults hosts historical photographs, maps, posters and document images from NARA’s file drawers.  You start with an array of small images. Click one and it swirls to the center (above). Click the magnifying glass under it for a closer look and details about it (below).  Then click another document or photo and the screen starts swimming
again until that selection surfaces in the middle. If you like an
image, more clicks add it to your Collection or link you to related
resources at NARA. Look to the left to see the Filter window, which lets you filter records by time frame, media type (such as Photo or document) and other parameters. Tags lets you view items tagged with certain topics. Click Pathways at the bottom of the screen to create a challenge for others to follow: You choose records or photos, and use the details about them to write clues about how your picks are related. Click Create to make a poster or movie using records from your collection or from preselected records, then save it or e-mail it to people. You also can click Search and find, say, all the immigration-, World War II- or Elvis-related items.
Genealogy Web Sites | Libraries and Archives | Social History
5/28/2008 8:21:53 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
|
|
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Can You Identify This Object?
Posted by Diane
 Gold star to anyone who said “the remains of a wooden vessel in Florida’s Hillsborough River thought to be a Confederate blockade runner.” After two years of searching, underwater archaeologists from the Florida Aquarium have identified the object as the Kate Dale—one of three blockade runners owned by then-Tampa mayor James McKay. Confederate blockade runners stocked with goods snuck past Union blockades to trade with foreign countries. During the Battle of Fort Brooke in October 1863, troops from Union gunboats traveled up the Hillsborough River and burned the Kate Dale at her moorings, along with fellow blockade runner Scottish Chief. Read more about the discovery in the St. Petersburg Times.
Historic preservation | Social History
5/27/2008 4:09:04 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
|
|
Tuesday, May 06, 2008
200 Years of Children's Books on Display
Posted by Grace
Before Webkinz and Tamagotchis, children had to find amusement in analog activities, such as rolling hoops, kicking cans and—gasp!—reading books.  I recently stumbled across the University of Delaware's online exhibit " World of the Child: 200 Years of Children's Books," which gives an in-depth look at what kids read as well as the education philosophies behind the often dry books. You can view sample pages of instructional books, primers and poetry collections, as well as more modern pop-ups and storybooks. The explanations can give you a whole new perspective on your ancestors' childhoods: "Until the middle of the nineteenth century, all books for children were
religious books in the sense that all literature was seen as requiring
a stated moral perspective. Since fairy and folk tales, beloved by
children in both oral and written form, were seen as threatening to the
established moral order, a body of literature was developed to ensure
that children's reading would reflect the conservative Protestantism of
the time. The high infant mortality rate and large numbers of women
dying in childbirth, also contributed to the focus in children's
stories on pious lives and early deaths."
Sure is a far cry from Pokemon. Click here to browse the collection.
Genealogy for kids | Libraries and Archives | Social History
5/6/2008 9:46:30 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
|
|
Friday, May 02, 2008
San Francisco's Historic Mission Dolores Cemetery
Posted by Diane
Last week after talking about kids’ genealogy in Sacramento, Calif., I met up with my sister in San Francisco for a couple of days (she lives 20 minutes from me here in Cincinnati, but was also out West on business). One of my favorite sights was Mission Dolores, the popular name for the Misión San Francisco de Asís since it was founded June 29, 1776. The present mission chapel, built in 1791, is a block and a half away from the first location.  Still home to an active parish, it’s the oldest intact building in San Francisco—the thick adobe walls survived the 1906 earthquake. Next door is the Mission Dolores Basilica, first built around 1876 and rebuilt after suffering severe quake damage. The walled Mission Cemetery, final resting place for Ohlone, Miwok and other indigenous peoples as well as notable pioneers, is the only cemetery left within city limits.   The cemetery is smaller today than it once was, but has been restored with native plantings.  You can find known Mission Dolores burials listed at FindaGrave. Read a bit more about the cemetery’s past in the transcribed historical newspaper articles on SFGenealogy.com.
Cemeteries | Historic preservation | Social History
5/2/2008 9:03:39 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
|
|
Thursday, May 01, 2008
Missouri Opens Digitized Records Site
Posted by Diane
Missouri has launched a kind of one-stop shop for finding digitized historical records, abstracts and indexes from the state archives as well as libraries, universities, historical societies and other repositories throughout the state. The Missouri Digital Heritage Initiative divides collections by subject area (some record sets appear under multiple topics). Genealogical material is mostly in the Family and Faith category, but you’ll also want to explore Military Records, Newspapers, Sports and Recreation and other topics. (To see a lineup of all the record sets, click All Collections at the bottom of the Collections main page.) What will you see? Photos, maps, birth and death records, naturalization records, coroner’s inquest abstracts, a state supreme court case index, newspapers, Civil War letters and more. Here’s an ad page from an early 1900s Hannibal, Mo., city directory:  A few collections, including penitentiary and some land records, are still in progress. Some items are hosted on Missouri Digital Heritage; for other collections, you’ll be taken to partner sites. All the records are accessible free. The Missouri Digital Heritage Exhibits section links to online exhibits about the Missouri State Lunatic Asylum, the state fair, Lamar, Mo.-born Harry Truman’s Whistle Stop Campaign, and more. Another feature you won’t want to miss: The link to Missouri’s Local Records Inventory Database, where you can search inventories of local government records located primarily in county and municipal offices. You won’t find information about your ancestors in this particular database, but you can find out what office holds the records you need and what years are available. Search on a county name and keyword such as birth or probate.
Genealogy Web Sites | Public Records | Social History
5/1/2008 9:59:12 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
|
|
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
4/30/2008 9:37:49 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
|
|
Friday, March 28, 2008
Favorite Sites: Ohio Heritage, Tenement Tour, Animated History
Posted by Diane
I wish I had time to thoroughly examine all the cool sites I come across every day (or maybe I should say, I wish I were more resistant to the temptation to surf). So instead of bookmarking and then forgetting about today’s finds (and later on, wondering why my Favorites list is so darn long), I’ll share a few: - Growth of a Nation: This 10-minute animated movie, complete with a voice-over reminiscent of my 7th-grade history teacher, nicely sums up the United States’ progress from 13 Colonies to a country with 50 states.
Now, to go clean out some of those Favorites ...
Genealogy Web Sites | Social History
3/28/2008 4:45:15 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
|
|
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
RIP Phone Book, 1878-20??
Posted by Grace
Phone books can be great resources for confirming locations of your recent ancestors, but those big yellow doorstoppers are dying a slow death, the online newsmagazine Slate reports. They've come a long way since the first phone directory, a one-pager listing all 52 telephone subscribers in New Haven, Conn., debuted in 1878. (The Slate article describes many more mentionable moments in phone-book history.) The hefty, floppy books were created as vehicles for companies to sell advertising, and last year, 615 million directories were printed in the US, creating revenues of $13.9 billion, according to the Yellow Pages Association. But more and more cell phones are unlisted, and many people turn to the Internet to find phone numbers—especially people under 30. (For example, the last time I used a phone book was when the electricity in my apartment went out and I couldn't find the number I needed by text messaging Google.) For more phone fun, OldTelephoneBooks.com has many old pictures of telephone books, and some are listed for sale. You can browse by country, state and city.
Genealogy fun | Social History
3/26/2008 4:19:10 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
|
|
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
3/21/2008 4:29:47 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
|
|
Monday, March 17, 2008
Got Irish Roots?
Posted by Diane
Happy St. Patrick's Day! A few numbers to help you appreciate the occasion: - 30.5 million US residents who claim Irish ancestry
- 4 million population of The Republic of Ireland
- 22.5 percent Massachusetts residents with Irish ancestry
- 4.8 million immigrants from Ireland admitted for US residence since 1820
- 100 pounds of green dye added to the Chicago River St. Patrick’s Day, 1962 (the year that verdant tradition began)
- 3 million spectators at New York City’s annual St. Patrick’s Day parade
- 52,000 number of Irish immigrants who arrived in New York City in 1847
- 372,000 total population of New York City in 1847
- 107 years Boston has held an annual St. Patrick’s Day parade (Beantown witnessed the country’s first recorded St. Paddy’s Day celebration in 1737)
- 9 places in the United States named Dublin
We’re all Irish on St. Patrick’s Day, but if you’re Irish every other day of the year, too, the March 2008 Family Tree Magazine Irish research guide—and our online Irish Toolkit—will help you trace those roots back to the Emerald Isle.
Family Tree Magazine articles | International Genealogy | Social History
3/17/2008 10:56:07 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
|
|
Thursday, February 28, 2008 |