• Next Tuesday, the Journey Through Hallowed Ground Partnership will hold a tree planting ceremony in Gettysburg, Pa., to kick off its Living Legacy program: a plan to plant or dedicate a tree for each of the 620,000 soldiers who died in the Civil War.
  
  Taking part will be 7th- and 8th-graders from Gettysburg and Hartford, Vt., who've been researching and writing about soldiers from their hometowns. Each group will plant a tree to honor one local soldier, and the soldiers' stories will be available to smartphone users through QR codes on the trees. You can watch a video about the project here.

• The Federation of Genealogical Societies and the Preserve the Pensions project are holding a drawing for prizes, including a genealogy research road trip to either Salt Lake City (home to the Family History Library) or Fort Wayne, Ind. (home to the Genealogy Center).  All you have to do is enter your name. Drawings happen each day starting May 20; the research travel package will be given away May 24. Click here to learn more and enter.

• Ancestry.com has changed its search results page to highlight key features, load the page faster and require less "stuff" to be downloaded to your computer. The new design lets you filter categories with one click, gives you tabs (instead of a pulldown menu) to switch between the record view and category view of search results, and bolds database titles. See before and after screenshots on the Ancestry.com blog.

• In commemoration of the sesquicentennial of the Civil War, the Civil War Trust, History, and the Center for Civil War Photography are calling for submissions to the 2013 Civil War Photo Contest. Amateur photographers age 13 and older can enter in five categories by uploading photos to the Civil War Trust’s Flickr page and tagging them for the correct category. The deadline is August 16.
  

You’ll find the rules and entry instructions here.

• FamilySearch has added more than 1.7 million index records and images to its free FamilySearch.org record search (click on the Search link at the top of the site). The records come from Austria, Brazil, China, Germany, Hungary, Italy, New Zealand, Poland, Ukraine, and the United States. You can see the full list of updates and click through to search or (for as-yet unindexed record images) browse here.
  

• Ancestry.com will hold an Ancestry Day in Las Vegas on Saturday, May 11 (the Saturday of next week’s National Genealogical Society conference in Vegas). Registration for Ancestry Day costs $25; you can register and view the program here. 

• If you’ll be across the country in Washington, DC, during May, look into attending one of the genealogy records workshops at the National Archives. Topics include Civil War court martial records (May 15), nonpopulation censuses (May 18), and a genealogy clinic (May 18). You’ll find details here (scroll down to May).
  

• Ancestry.com has made its marriage records collection free to search through April 21 at midnight ET. These records are great sources for female ancestors' maiden names and sometimes the couples' parents' names, in addition to the marriage date and place. You'll need to register for a free account, if you don't already have one, to view records.

• ProQuest's Historic MapWorks Library Edition (link to it from this page) is free to at-home users through April 20 in honor of National Library Week. Here, you can browse by place or search for an address, keyword or GPS coordinates to find old landowner and other maps. (The landowner maps aren't indexed by name here, so you need to search for the place and then find the person's name on a map.) You can download maps and overlay the maps with Google maps to pinpoint the modern location.
  
  I searched for Colerain township in Ohio, in hopes of finding the location of my Depenbrock relatives' farm—and I found it. This is part of an 1884 township map; I've highlighted the farm.
  

The Depenbrock property borders on the land of my great-great-grandmother's brother's wife's family.

• Subscription genealogy website Ancestry.com announced on Facebook that its collection of marriage records will be free April 17-21 (so you have a few days to plan your research). You'll need to register for a free account to view the records.

• ProQuest offers databases you can usually use only in libraries that subscribe to the services, but during National Library Week this week, you can try out several of the databases at home for free. The one I see that most genealogists will be into is Historic MapWorks Library Edition, which contains maps dating back to the 1700s. I found my Depenbrock family's farm in Colerain Township, Ohio, on an 1884 land owner map in less than 5 minutes! Go here to link to this and the other free databases.

• UK and Irish genealogy website Origins.net is offering access to its collection of Irish directories from March 16 until March 18 at midnight GMT (that's about 8 p.m. ET in the United States). Recently added is Thom's Irish Almanac and Official Directory for 1845 to 1900. You could learn the person's exact occupation, as well as address and parish of residence. Note that the most "disadvantaged" classes—small tenant farmers, landless labourers and servants—are usually absent from these directories. Learn more about Origins.net's Irish Directories collection and start searching here.

• Ancestry.com is opening up its US passenger lists and border-crossing records through March 17—search here whether your ancestors came from Ireland or elsewhere. The search here initially netted zero results for my name search on Edward Norris born in 1827, but after I clicked Edit Search to bring up the advanced search window, and then clicked Search again, it worked.

• Ancestry.com has opened its AncestryDNA test to all US residents. From last May until now, the test was open just to Ancestry.com subscribers. This autosomal test analyzes more than 700,000 DNA marker locations and cross-references them with Ancestry.com's catalog of DNA samples.
  
  The AncestryDNA test also breaks down your ethnic heritage by percentage from 20 populations. See the September 2012 Family Tree Magazine for The Genetic Genealogist blogger Blaine Bettinger's take on the AncestryDNA test.

• Planning that long-awaited trip to the Family History Library (FHL) in Salt Lake City? Take note that the library will change its Saturday hours in April. Beginning April 13, the FHL's Saturday operating hours will be 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. (current Saturday hours are 8 a.m. to 9 p.m.).  “This change is being made so that valuable staff and volunteer resources can be allocated to other busier times during the week that have greater patron demand,” says library director Don Anderson.

• The National Genealogical Society (NGS) is seeking Official Bloggers for the 2013 Family History Conference, May 8-11 in Las Vegas. Bloggers can register at the NGS website to request “Official Blogger, NGS 2013 Family History Conference” designation.
  
  These bloggers will be able to use the NGS logo on their blogs and get access to the Media Center on the exhibit hall floor. Apply to be an Official Blogger for the  NGS 2013 Family History Conference here.

I know great genealogists who never share their research because they’re scared of source citations. They dread going back through their files to identify exactly where they learned a birth date or the name of Granddad’s church. They worry they didn’t copy down every little piece of publication information, like a volume number or editor’s name. And formatting footnotes sounds exactly NOT like the way they want to celebrate finding their family.
 
My presentation “Simple Tips for Solid Source Citations” focuses on a process of managing sources all the way through the research process to prevent most of those fears. What I'll show you is a way of thinking that makes us better researchers: more aware of our sources from the get-go, more organized and more confident in our conclusions.
 
First, I’ll talk you through the process of evaluating sources the first time you use them. I’ll talk about what information to gather, both from the source and about the source.

One valuable tip I share is how to find full source information on websites like Ancestry.com, FamilySearch.org and some less user-friendly data sites. You’ll see different ways of capturing source data, whether you’re a paper-based person or a paperless person (or a combination). I’ll show you how to store source data in a way that links it to the information you found in it, so you don’t scramble years later to put the two together.

Finally, I’ll talk about options when you’re ready to write—yes, we’ll talk a bit about footnotes and Why They Are Not So Scary.
 
By the end, you’ll know how to handle sources well and, better yet, you’ll want to! Don’t miss out on learning this core skill during the Virtual Genealogy Conference.

I love the idea of managing sources from the start—so you can evaluate how reliable the information is, easily create a source citation and keep that citation with the data you found. I'm looking forward to Sunny's video class!

The Virtual Genealogy Conference is sponsored by

• The National Archives is celebrating the 150th Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, which President Lincoln issued on Jan. 1, 1863 to free slaves in states that had seceded. You can go online to watch a video about what the proclamation meant and how the document is being preserved, see images of it, and find out about upcoming programs. Also learn about the Emancipation Proclamation’s history at the National Archives; Featured Documents website.

• An interactive online map—a companion to the PBS "American Experience" documentary The Abolitionistslets you explore the story of the abolitionist movement in America. Powered by History Pin, the Abolitionist Map of America has images, documents and videos from dozens of libraries, museums and other institutions.
  
  Cincinnati, located on the boundary of free and slave states, was a major Underground Railroad stop. Our Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County Genealogy Local History Department selected images and recordings on subjects such as the site of local antislavery newspaper the Philanthropist, the focus of two anti-abolitionist riots in 1836; and the Harriet Beecher Stowe House, where the Uncle Tom’s Cabin author lived with her family for various periods of time from 1833 to 1836. 

• Subscription genealogy site Ancestry.com has added collections to its African-American history records including Danish West Indies Slave Records 1672-1917 (these are also part of Fold3's Black History Collection, which is free in February) and U.S., Buffalo Soldiers, Returns from Regular Army Cavalry Regiments, 1866–1916. Explore Ancestry.com's African-American history records here.

• The Cincinnati library's Genealogy and Local History Department also is one of many libraries offering African-American history and genealogy workshops this month, including a seminar (Feb. 9) and a class on Searching for Descendants of African American Civil War Soldiers (Feb. 23).Learn more here.

• The African-American Genealogical Society of Northern California in Oakland has a Black Family History Day on Feb. 10, with classes, one-on-one consultations and more. Learn more here.

• The African American Genealogical and Historical Society of Tennessee in Nashville is holding a research workshop Feb. 16. Learn more here.

• How to rein in the massive amount of information available on Ancestry.com
• Hints to set manageable search parameters for finding your family
• How to dig into individual databases for specific records
• Tricks and tips to make your search efforts more efficient and effective
• PLUS: Get a free PDF download of our Ancestry.com Web Guide

• Check with your ancestor's county board of elections, local library, town hall or historical society for information on old voter registration records in the area.

• The Family History Library (FHL) may have town or county lists of registered voters or those who paid poll taxes. Search your ancestral state archives website for voting, and try running a keyword search of the FHL online catalog on the town, county or state name and the word voting.

• Subscription website Ancestry.com has some voting-related records and digitized books, so if you're a member, run the same search of its online catalog.

• Kimberly Powell recommends additional voter registration record resources on her genealogy blog.  

• FamilySearch.org now has an index to the Great Registers of California.

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

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

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

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

• Did your ancestor attend Mercer University in Macon, Ga.? Now you can search an online archive of the Mercer Cluster, the university's campus newspaper.  The Mercer Cluster Archive, a project of the awesome Digital Library of Georgia, provides access to papers from 1920 to 1970. 

• The University of Wyoming Lab School's Tassakooma and Yearling yearbooks are now available online for the 1920s, part of the 1930s, and 1953 to 1964. Learn more about the yearbooks here. To access the online collection, visit the University of Wyoming Libraries catalog and then search for either Tassakooma or Yearling.

• Look for a new blog soon from the Library of Congress: To complement its Civil War in America exhibition, the LOC will debut a new blog in November to chronicle more than 40 folks from the North and South whose lives were affected by the war.
  
  Posts will use first-person accounts such as diaries, letters and published memoirs. “Bloggers” will include people such as Robert E. Lee, Clara Barton, Stonewall Jackson, William Tecumseh Sherman, Ulysses S. Grant,  Walt Whitman, Elizabeth Keckley, Eugenia Phillips and John F. Chase. You can find the blog starting Nov. 12 at blogs.loc.gov.

• Military records website Fold3 reached a milestone this week when when the site exceeded 100,000,000 images of historical records. Read more about this achievement on the Fold3 blog. The site, which launched in January 2007 as Footnote, has worked with partners including the National Archives, Allen County Public Library, FamilySearch and others to digitize records. Ancestry.com purchased the site in 2010 and last year rebranded it Fold3.com.

• Marian's Roots and Rambles (hurry—ends Oct. 19 at noon EST!)

• Genea-Musings (ends Oct. 21); this blog will hold a second contest Oct. 23.

• Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter (ends Oct. 31)

• Olive Tree Genealogy (Tuesdays and Thursdays through Nov. 2)

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

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

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

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

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

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

You'll need to register for a free account with the site in order to view the records. Click here to start searching.

Ancestry.com also is introducing a feature called the Ancestry.com Time Machine: Answer a few questions about your interests, and get back a video of what your experiences might be like in 1940.

• Danise Barzano, living in Ottawa in 1901, gave her occupation as "baseball field" (“terrain de baseball”).
• Saint John, New Brunswick, resident John Corbett offered his job title as “lunatic keeper” in the 1901 census.
• Also in 1901, Torontonian Mary Brown was a “pig nurse.”
• William H. Butler of Ottawa was a “bell hanger” in the 1881 census.
• Also in 1881, John Dade was working as a “lamp lighter” in Toronto.
• John Middleton, a 19-year-old resident of Algoma, Ontario, was listed as “criminal” in 1901.
• The 1901 occupation for Georgia Wilcox, a 38-year-old BC resident, was “idiot”—a historic reference for a patient in an asylum.

• Quiz: match up old-fashioned jobs with what the work entailed
• Genealogy Q&A: What's a smack owner?
• 21 old names for occupations
• top 10 sources for finding your ancestors' employment information

• December 2011 Family Tree Magazine, with a guide to researching the employment of ancestors in the railroad, mining, automotive and other industries
• April 2005 Family Tree Magazine (digital edition), with a guide to researching ancestral employment records of all sorts.

• Now that the 1940 Census Community Project is complete (just a few states remain to be processed) FamilySearch's next big volunteer indexing project is the US Immigration & Naturalization Community Project, which will make passenger lists, naturalization records, and other immigration-related records free to search on FamilySearch.org. If you want to participate, visit familysearch.org/immigration to learn more about the project.

• British genealogy subscription and pay-per-view website FamilyRelatives.com has relaunched itself in an upgraded beta website. The site's new "at-a-glance" design should help users easily find the site's record collections.
  
  And in September, it'll launch Family Tree Connect, social networking features such as photo-sharing, personal calendars, family tree building and cloud access.

• Subscription genealogy site Ancestry.com has announced it won't release a new version of Family Tree Maker this year. Instead, it'll make key updates to the current version, Family Tree Maker 2012, and release those updates free (so you need to be on Family Tree Maker 2012 to receive the updates). You can read more and see what the first of these "bonus" updates will be on the Ancestry.com blog.

• FamilyRelatives.com has more than 850 million records from more a dozen-plus countries including Australia, Canada, England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, New Zealand, United States and the "Rest of the World" (ROW). Records include parish records; births, marriages and deaths; military records, trade directories and more.

• The Federation of Genealogical Societies has published a new edition of its Bylaws Workbook: A Handbook for New & Established Societies, compiled by Marcia S. Lindley and revised by Roberta “Bobbi” King. This workbook will help genealogical societies create bylaws that prevent confusion and disagreement. It's available for purchase on Amazon.com.

• Arkansas
• Missouri
• Pennsylvania
• Rhode Island
• Washington, DC
• West Virginia

Want to improve your genealogical skills and connect with other family historians—all from the convenience of home? Check out Family Tree University's Fall 2012 Virtual Genealogy Conference, taking place Sept. 14-16. Early bird registration ends Friday, Aug. 10 at 11:59 p.m.—just enter code FTUVCEARLY at checkout to save $50!

Want to improve your genealogical skills and connect with other family historians—all from the convenience of home? Check out Family Tree University's Fall 2012 Virtual Genealogy Conference, taking place Sept. 14-16. Early bird registration ends Friday, Aug. 10 at 11:59 p.m.—just enter code FTUVCEARLY at checkout to save $50!

• I wanted to point you to the Ancestry Insider's interesting post about indexing errors on 1940 census websites. The Ancestry Insider has seen more user complaints about Ancestry.com's index than FamilySearch's, and I'd have to echo that observation (mostly in blog comments and on Facebook). His post includes Ancestry.com's answers to questions about its indexing and auditing processes, and the index augmentation that helps users find records despite indexing difficulties.  

• Love family and food and home cooking? In her Genalogy Gems podcast episode 137, Lisa Louise Cooke interviews Gena Philibert Ortega about her new book From the Family Kitchen and how to dig into your family's food history. You'll find the podcast episode here on the Genealogy Gems website. See more of their interview in this video and take a peek at an old Toas-Tite sandiwsh toasting utensil here.

• This fall, the National Archives will open its new New York City location in Lower Manhattan, in the Alexander Hamilton US Custom House at One Bowling Green (the former facility was on Varick Street in Greenwich Village). The new location will expand the facilitiy's usefulness for research and education, with a welcome center, research center, learning center for school groups, exhibition space and public programs area. Read more about the new location here.

• Military records subscription site Fold3 has released a new collection of Navy Casualty Reports, 1776-1941, documenting deaths of US Navy personnel in wartime and in accidents outside of war.
  
  The casualty reports include records of those who were killed, injured, wounded, diseased or imprisoned, but most report only deaths.The records include four titles: Deaths Due to Enemy Action (includes deaths during the Civil War aboard the Cincinnati and in Andersonville prison, and more), Drowning Casualties (1885-1939), Lost and Wrecked Ships, Explosions and Steam Casualties (1801-1941), and Ordnance Accidents, Aviation Accidents, and Miscellaneous Records. This collection is currently free to search.

• Alaska
• Arkansas
• Idaho
• Massachusetts
• Minnesota
• Missouri
• New Mexico
• North Dakota
• Oklahoma
• Rhode Island
• South Dakota
• Utah

“We’re not used to thinking of ourselves as small”, says Chris van der Kuyl, CEO of brightsolid, the world’s second largest genealogy company. “Our ambitions are big and the launch of findmypast.com is a major market entry. The truth is that it’s a growing market, with plenty of room for both of us.”

“We aim to become the go-to family history site, first for Americans of British and Irish descent, and eventually for all Americans”, says van der Kuyl.

• Alabama
• Arizona
• California
• Georgia
• Hawaii
• Indiana
• Kansas
• Kentucky
• Michigan
• Montana
• Nebraska
• New Hampshire
• Oregon
• Washington
• Wisconsin

• The National Genealogical Society (NGS) has partnered with military records subscription site Fold3 to offer its members a discounted Fold3 rate: NGS members can subscribe to Fold3 for $39.95 per year, and Fold3 will donate 30 percent of the sale back to NGS. To take advantage of the offer, NGS members should visit this members-only page of the NGS website and log in with their member information.

• Ancestry.com announced it has added its 2 millionth active current subscriber. Ancestry.com has given that lucky person, Yvonne Ocheltree of Collierville, Tenn., a complimentary lifetime subscription. Learn more about this milestone and Ocheltree in Ancestry.com's press release.

• The George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum has launched a new website hosted by Southern Methodist University, where the library will be located. The site features highlights from the library's collections, as well as online exhibits about President Bush and First Lady Laura Bush. You'll also get an early look at the still-under-construction library and museum, scheduled to open in Spring 2013.

• Princeton University has posted online the Sid Lapidus '59 Collection on Liberty and the American Revolution, more than 150 digitized pamphlets, books and prints from the American Revolution era. They include Thomas Paine’s pamphlets “The Age of Reason” and “Common Sense,” and John Adams’ essay "A defence of the constitutions of government of the United States of America." Use arrows to turn each document's pages like a book.

You can find Princeton's other digitized materials (which include historical postcards and photos of the university—interesting if an ancestor went there) in its digital library, too.

• US Sons of the American Revolution Membership Applications, 1889-1970
• Daughters of the American Revolution Lineage Books
• Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Application Files, 1800-1900
• Historical Newspapers, Birth, Marriage & Death Announcements, 1851-2003

• Revolutionary War Pension Files
• Revolutionary War Service Records
• Bounty Land Warrants
• Revolutionary War Muster Rolls

• Pennsylvania
• Ohio (yahoo!)
• Tennessee
• Virginia
• Colorado
• Vermont

• Alaska
• Arizona
• Colorado
• Delaware
• Florida
• Hawaii
• Idaho
• Kansas
• Louisiana
• Mississippi
• Montana
• Nevada
• New Hampshire
• Oklahoma
  
• Oregon
• South Dakota
  
• Utah
• Vermont
• Virginia
• Wyoming

• Alaska
• Arizona
• Colorado
• Delaware
• Florida
• Hawaii
• Idaho
• Kansas
• Louisiana
• Mississippi
• Montana
• Nevada
• New Hampshire
• Oregon
• Utah
• Vermont
• Virginia
• Wyoming

• Ancestry.com: You can search name indexes for Delaware, Maine, Nevada and Washington, DC. A chart on the 1940 census page lets you see indexing progress.

• FamilySearch.org: FamilySearch's volunteer indexers so far appear to be outpacing the paid contractors Ancestry.com and MyHeritage are using. You can search 14 states/territories by your ancestor's name: Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, Nevada, New Hampshire, Oregon, Vermont, Virginia, Kansas, Utah and Wyoming.

FamilySearch.org's indexing progress map colors searchable states orange. To search, click the state on the map.

• Archives.com: At this 1940 Census Community Project partner site, you can search name indexes to the same states available at FamilySearch. To access the unindexed portion of the census, this site sends you to the National Archives' 1940 census site (which Archives.com designed and hosts).

• FindMyPast.com: As a 1940 Census Community Project partner, FindMyPast.com has the same states indexed as FamilySearch (though Alaska, a territory in 1940, is missing from the color-coded map on the home page). Update 6/1: FindMyPast also now shows Hawaii, Louisiana, Mississippi and Montana as searchable, though these states are not yet searchable on FamilySearch.org. Look for that to change soon.
  

• MyHeritage: Here, you can search a name index for Rhode Island, and a partial name index for New York.

The 1940 census records also are available on FamilyLink.com, which MyHeritage purchased last year. You'll need to register for a free account on the site (if you don't already have an account there) to view the records.

• Ancestry.com updated its collection of U.S. Marine Corps Muster Rolls. This collection, which contains records from 1798 to 1958, now contains more than 39 million records. They include muster rolls (regular lists of those present in a given unit), unit diaries and personnel rosters.

• The New England Historic Genealogical Society announced that its Newbury Street Press title The Descendants of Judge John Lowell of Newburyport, Massachusetts, by Scott C. Steward and Christopher C. Child, has won two awards. The National Genealogical Society presented Child with its 2012 Award for Excellence: Genealogy and Family History Book. The Connecticut Society of Genealogists honored both authors with its 2012 Literary Award, Grand Prize for Genealogy.

• The National Archives at San Francisco has officially opened to the public more than 40,000 Alien Files or A-Files on immigrants to the United States. The case files were originally created at immigration offices in San Francisco; Honolulu; Reno, Nevada; Agana, Guam; American Samoa and other US territories. The records were transferred to the National Archives from US Citizenship and Immigration Services in 2009. Millions more A-files will eventually be opened to the public—the files are closed for 100 years after the birth date of the person named in the records.

A-Files created at other immigration offices are kept at the National Archives facility in Kansas City, where 300,000 cases were opened to the public in 2010. 

• A DNA study of Melungeons—a dark-skinned, mixed-heritage group historically residing in Appalachia—has found genetic evidence that these families descend from sub-Saharan African men and white women of northern or central European origin. Researchers think the population mixing could have happened among black and white indentured servants in mid-1600s Virginia.

According to an Associated Press article, the finding has been controversial among Melungeons, some of whom believe they have Portuguese or American Indian ancestry. Read more about the findings (and how researchers thinks the claims of Portuguese heritage arose) in this news article.

• Subscription genealogy site Ancestry.com announced that its 1940 census index for the state of Maine is now searchable free on the site. The site also has 1940 census indexes for Delaware, the District of Columbia and Nevada.

• In addition to its six state indexes for the 1940 census (Colorado, Delaware, Kansas, Oregon, Vermont, Virginia), the free FamilySearch.org has added online records for Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, England, France, Germany, Hungary, Indonesia, Italy, Netherlands, Peru, Poland, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, United States, Venezuela and Wales.

US records come from Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Montana, New York, Ohio, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia and Washington. You can see all the new or updated collections and link to them here.

• The Southern California Genealogy Jamboree is coming up June 8-10 at the Los Angeles Marriott Burbank Airport Hotel. Besides the classes and the free exhibit hall, highlights include one-on-one consultations with members of the Southern California Chapter of the Association for Professional Genealogists, three-hour Genealogy World roundtable discussions and a DNA Interest Group that can help you interpret genetic genealogy test results.  

• The National Genealogical Society (NGS) has announced that the 2013 NGS Family History Conference, will take place in Las Vegas, Nevada, May 8–11. The conference hotel and venue will be the LVH−Las Vegas Hotel & Casino (formerly the Las Vegas Hilton). Online conference registration isn't yet open. 

• How to efficiently navigate Ancestry.com
• Tricks for finding the record collections you need
• Search tips for locating hard-to-find ancestors in Ancestry.com databases
  
• Things Ancestry.com doesn’t tell you (like the limitations of its collections and how many freebies are on the site)

The Your Unofficial Guide to Ancestry.com webinar takes place May 23 at 8 p.m. Eastern (that's 7 p.m. Central, 6 p.m. Mountain and 5 p.m. Pacific). It's presented by David A. Fryxell, a veteran genealogist and a Family Tree Magazine contributing editor.

We'll help you start finding the genealogy answers you need in the world's largest genealogy database website. Register for Your Unofficial Guide to Ancestry.com now to take advantage of our $10 off early bird special!

Subscription genealogy website Ancestry.com announced the addition of the site's 10 billionth record today.

The announcement pointed out that its collection, which has grown 150 percent in the last three years, "is larger than those of all other online family history sites combined." On average, the site has added 55 million records a month since the website went online 15 years ago.

The earliest digitized records are wills executed in London in 1507. The earliest record indexes date back to marriage licenses and probated wills in Dublin from 1270. The most popular collection remains the US census.

The United States Public Health Service supervised the Cadet Nurse Corps Program to train nurses during the war. The records name more than 124,000 women between the ages of 17 and 35 who participated in the program. Eighty-five percent of all nursing students in the United States were a part of the Cadet Nursing Corps. (Read more about the Cadet Nurse Corps program here.)

The Corps was non-discriminatory; members included American Indians, African-Americans and even displaced Japanese Americans.

The records include corps membership cards. Different versions were in use over the time period, but usually include at least the name of the cadet, serial number, name of the nursing school or hospital, address of the school, and dates attended.

You can search this collection at Ancestry.com/nursing.

Looking for a WWI Red Cross Army Nurse? Get research tips on FamilyTreeMagazine.com.

The analysis cross-references your DNA information with test results from people around the globe (drawn from the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation's database) to help you learn more about your ethnic background and find distant cousins. When there's a genetic match in Ancestry.com's DNA database, your tree will automatically be compared to that person's.

In this guest blog post, genetic genealogist Blaine Bettinger, who tried out the new autosomal DNA test, sheds more light on what's special about it.

The new service comes after a year of planning and beta testing, says Ancestry.com president and CEO Tim Sullivan. “We think AncestryDNA has created a unique and engaging experience that will provide existing Ancestry.com subscribers with an entirely new way to make amazing discoveries about their family history."

AncestryDNA is currently available by invitation only to Ancestry.com subscribers for $99. The service should become available to the public later this year.

You can sign up to be notified once that happens at AncestryDNA.com. 

Archives.com: At this 1940 Census Community Project partner site, you can search name indexes to Colorado and Delaware. To access the unindexed portion of the census, this site sends you to the National Archives' 1940 census site (which Archives.com designed and hosts).

FamilySearch: Digitized records are available here for all US states and territories.

FamilySearch just announced that more than 85,000 1940 Census Community Project volunteers have already finished indexing 20 percent of the census, and thousands more volunteers sign up every week.

Not all the indexed records are available to search online yet. FamilySearch's indexing progress map colors searchable states orange; so far, you can search name indexes for the states of Delaware and Colorado. To search, click the state on the map. (I clicked on Kansas and tried a search because Community Project partner FindMyPast.com has a Kansas index, but the results were people in Colorado.) 

FindMyPast.com: On this 1940 Census Community Project partner site, digitize records are available for most states. Records for Texas, California, Utah, Tennessee, Minnesota, Wisconsin and several others are missing. You can search name indexes for Delaware, Colorado and Kansas—except for Kansas, they're the same states as for FamilySearch, because it's the same index.

MyHeritage: Records for all states and territories are available now for free. This site introduced the first searchable index, for the state of Rhode Island, but hasn't added any other states since. MyHeritage also has updated its mobile app so you can search 1940 census records from your iPhone, iPad or Android phone.

The 1940 census record images also are available on FamilyLink.com, which MyHeritage purchased last year. You'll need to register for a free account on the site (if you don't already have an account there) to view the records.

National Archives: Records for all states and territories are available here for free.

Until the acquisition goes through the regulatory approval process, the companies will continue to operate as separate entities. It's unclear how long the process could take.

In a conference call last night with the genealogy media, Archives.com CEO Joe Godfrey and Ancestry.com president Tim Sullivan addressed issues of concern to many family historians.

Here, I've summarized their comments as they relate to some of the questions I've been hearing from genealogists:

Is Ancestry.com just trying to eliminate a competitor?
Archives.com's parent company Inflection is focusing on public records and people-searching (it owns the people-searching website peoplesmart), diverging from Archives.com's historical records mission. Godfrey and Sullivan say this acquisition makes sense for all parties.

Current plans call for Archives.com to remain largely as is. "We see a different experience in Archives.com. It's priced and positioned differently [from Ancestry.com]. It's another important service that we can continue to invest in," Sullivan says. He vows to invest in Archives.com's content and technology.

The acquisition gives Ancestry.com the opportunity to offer a genealogy product at a lower price point (Archives.com subscribers pay $39.95 a year, to Ancestry.com's $155.40).

Nor is the acquisition a response to the entry into the US genealogy market of companies such as brightsolid (owner of findmypast.com) and MyHeritage, Sullivan says. He emphasized a positive view of the genealogy category's growth and the increase in competition, saying it's an indication of the health of the category.

Sullivan says Ancestry.com may work with Inflection in the future, describing the potential opportunity as "tremendous."

Will the sites be too similar?
Sullivan and Godfrey say there's some overlapping content on Archives.com and Ancestry.com, but that how the user experiences each site's content is different and will remain so. "One thing we won't do is make Archives.com like the Ancestry.com user experience," Sullivan says.

"Even though some content might overlap, the way it is presented will have different value propositions to different users," Godfrey adds.

What will happen with the 1940 Census Community Project?
The project, whose partners FamilySearch, Archives.com and FindMyPast.com are recruiting volunteers to index the 1940 census, won't be affected, say both men.

Godfrey encouraged volunteers to continue indexing. "Nothing will change as far as the partnership, and nothing will change as far as making the index available for free," he says.

Sullivan says that when FamilySearch was seeking partners in this volunteer indexing project, Ancestry.com leadership discussed it at length and ultimately decided that "it wasn't structured in a way that completely was in sync with what we wanted to do with 1940."

He added that Ancestry.com would support Archives.com's participation in the project.

Does this form a monopoly?
They couldn't elaborate on the regulatory approval process for the acquisition, but neither Sullivan nor Godfrey foresees problems. "We're doing this for the right reasons. There's no negative for consumers," Sullivan says.

Archives.com is owned and operated by Inflection LLC, a Silicon Valley-based technology company.

Since Archives.com’s launch in January 2010 (before that, the site was called Genealogy Archives), the site has grown to more than 380,000 paying subscribers who pay approximately $39.95 a year. Archives.com offers access to more than 2.1 billion historical records, including birth records, obituaries, immigration and passenger lists, historical newspapers, and US and UK censuses.

Inflection secured the contract with the National Archives to design and host the archives' website for the 1940 census records, released April 2. Archives.com also is a partner in the 1940 Census Community project, which has FamilySearch volunteers indexing the 1940 census. Ancestry.com is using a paid contractor to create its own 1940 census index. I'm curious to see what happens with this.

From Ancestry.com's press release: "This transaction will enable Ancestry.com to add a differentiated service targeted to a complementary segment of the growing family history category. In addition, Ancestry.com will welcome a team of talented engineers, digital marketers, and family history innovators into the Ancestry.com fold and also gain access to a proprietary technology platform that has supported Archives.com’s rapid growth."

Upon completion of the transaction, which is subject to customary closing conditions, including expiration of the HSR waiting period, Ancestry.com will continue to operate Archives.com separately retaining its brand and website. Many Inflection employees are expected to join the Ancestry.com team.

We'll bring you more on this story as it develops.

• Ancestry.com: Record images for all US states and territories are available free, as are searchable name indexes for Delaware and Nevada. An index for Washington, DC, is "in process." A chart on the 1940 census page lets you see indexing progress.

• FamilySearch: Digitized records are available here for all US states and territories.

The name index for the state of Delaware is now completed and available to researchers. Search Delaware here.

You can use the map at FamilySearch's 1940 census site to see the indexing progress of the 1940 Census Community Project. The darker the state, the more records volunteers have indexed. The completed indexes will become searchable free on FamilySearch, as well as its commercial partners Archives.com and FindMyPast.com.

• MyHeritage: Records for all states and territories are available now for free, as is an index to all of Rhode Island. MyHeritage also has updated its mobile app so you can search 1940 census records from your iPhone, iPad or Android phone.

The 1940 census record images also are available on FamilyLink.com, which MyHeritage purchased last year. You'll need to register for a free account on the site (if you don't already have an account there) to view the records.

• National Archives: Records for all states and territories are available here for free.

• Ancestry.com : Record images for all US states and territories are available free, as are searchable name indexes for Delaware and Nevada. An index for Washington, DC, is coming soon.

• FamilySearch : Available record images are Alabama, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington

You can use the map at FamilySearch's 1940 census site to see the indexing progress of the 1940 Census Community Project. The darker the state, the more records volunteers have indexed. The completed indexes will become searchable free on FamilySearch, as well as its commercial partners Archives.com and FindMyPast.com.

• MyHeritage : Records for all states and territories are available now for free, as is an index to all of Rhode Island.
  
  MyHeritage also has updated its mobile app so you can search 1940 census records from your iPhone, iPad or Android phone.

The 1940 census record images also are available on FamilyLink.com, which MyHeritage purchased last year. You'll need to register for a free account on the site (if you don't already have an account there) to view the records.

• National Archives : Records for all states and territories are available here for free.