Genealogy Insider - Monday, May 21, 2012

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Who Do You Think You Are?" | Celebrity Roots | Civil War | Fold3

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

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Friday, May 18, 2012

Genealogy News Corral, May 14-18
Posted by Diane

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.

Ancestry.com | census records | FamilySearch | Genealogy Events | Genealogy societies

Friday, May 18, 2012 3:46:00 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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Thursday, May 17, 2012

Your Unofficial Guide to Ancestry.com Webinar
Posted by Diane

So you've got an Ancestry.com subscription, but you have a nagging suspicion that you're not getting your money's worth. You might still be missing that breakthrough genealogy record, or you could be frustrated by the sea of search results you get—some clearly not even close to being your ancestor.

Or maybe you're thinking about investing in an Ancestry.com subscription and wondering if it'll be worth it.

Our May 23 webinar will answer your questions and help you get the most out of your Ancestry.com membership. It's called Your Unofficial Guide to Ancestry.com: Tips, Hints and Hacks for Finding Your Ancestors. (Family Tree Magazine isn't affiliated with Ancestry.com, so this webinar won't be a commercial.)

The webinar will cover:

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!

Ancestry.com | Editor's Pick | ShopFamilyTree.com Sales | Webinars

Thursday, May 17, 2012 9:27:09 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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Wednesday, May 16, 2012

This Weekend's Genealogy TV Season Finales
Posted by Diane

This week's season finale of "Who Do You Think You Are?" is also the series finale, at least on NBC. In the show, chef Paula Deen learns about her family history in the Deep South. She discovers a senator, slave owners and family letters. Here's a short preview:

Watch the show at 8 p.m. ET/7 CT on NBC.

Sunday at 8 p.m. on PBS' "Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates Jr." actors Michelle Rodriguez and Adrian Grenier and author/journalist Linda Chavez explore their Latino roots. All share Spanish colonial roots, yet they self-identify differently differently: as American Indian, Puerto Rican, Dominican or simply Latino.

Here's a video preview of Rodriguez's discoveries.

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

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

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

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150th Anniversary of the Homestead Act: Genealogy Resources for Land Records
Posted by Diane

homestead act post Were your ancestors among the millions who claimed federal lands under the Homestead Act of 1862?

We're coming up on the 150th anniversary of this groundbreaking (pun intended) legislation that accelerated the country's westward expansion. Look for opportunities to learn more about your homesteading ancestors.

President Lincoln signed the Homestead Act into law on May 20, 1862. Beginning Jan. 1, 1863, a homesteader could receive up to 160 acres of public domain land by applying for a claim (which required a filing fee), improving the land, living on it for five years, and then filing for a patent.

Anyone who was 21 or older or the head of a family—women, immigrants and freed slaves included—who'd never taken up arms against the US government could file an application to claim land.

The first person to claim land under the act was Union Army scout Daniel Freeman on Jan. 1, 1863. The story is he'd met some officials of the local land office at a New Year's Eve party and convinced them to open the office shortly after midnight so he could file his claim before reporting for duty.

Homesteading ended in 1976 in most of the United States and 1986 in Alaska. The last claimant under the act applied for 80 acres on Alaska's Stony River and received his deed until 1988.

Only about 40 percent of those who ever filed completed the application process and received land titles. More than 2 million homesteads were granted, according to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Between 1862 and 1934, 10 percent of land in the United States was privatized under the act.

Use these links to research your ancestor's homesteading experience:

General Land Office Records Online
The BLM's General Land Office (GLO) was charged with overseeing the homestead application process. It's free to search for and view more than 5 million federal land patents issued since 1820. (If your ancestor applied for a homestead but never received title to his or her land, there won't be a record here.) You'll also find a reference center with a land records glossary, FAQ and more.

Using Land Patents
This free FamilyTreeMagazine.com article has tips for using the GLO online records website.

Nebraska Homestead Records
Fold3 is digitizing the National Archives' homestead records for Nebraska. You can search the collection, which is 39 percent complete, for free. The files, from the Records of the Bureau of Land Management, consist of final certificates, applications with land descriptions, affidavits showing proof of citizenship and more. And here's a video about the homestead records digitization project.

Homestead National Monument of America
This national monument near Beatrice, Neb., explains the Homestead Act and its impact on the United States. Click the History and Culture link to learn more about the act, see its text, view maps, "meet" well-known homesteaders and more.

BLM: Commemorating 150 Years of The Homestead Act
This BLM site has a Homestead Act timeline; videos about historic homesteads, building a frontier home and more; and a Q&A.

National Archives: Ingalls Homestead Records
This article from the National Archives' Prologue magazine (Winter 2003 issue) discusses my favorite homesteaders—the Ingallses and Wilders of Little House on the Prairie fame—and shows portions of the families' homestead records.

Family Tree Magazine resources to help you research your ancestors' land records (whether federal records such as land entry case files or local records such as deeds) include:

Research Strategies: Using Land Records, a Family Tree Magazine article digital download from ShopFamilyTree.com
Land Records Research Value Pack, a discounted package deal in ShopFamilyTree.com that includes the above Using Land Records article, our Land Records 101 Independent Study Course and two video classes on platting your ancestors' property.
Land Records 101: Using Deeds, Plats, Patents and More, an instructor-led Family Tree University course that shows you how to do genealogy research in all types of land records

Fold3 | Genealogy Web Sites | Land records | NARA | Research Tips

Wednesday, May 16, 2012 10:36:46 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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Sunday, May 13, 2012

NBC Won't Renew "Who Do You Think You Are?"
Posted by Diane

Next week's "Who Do You Think You Are?" season finale with Paula Deen has turned into a series finale: NBC opted not to renew the show for a fourth season.

We still may be able to catch the show elsewhere on TV. In a statement on the cancellation, Tim Sullivan--president of Ancestry.com, a partner in the series--said that his company and the show's producers, Is or Isn't Entertainment and Shed Media, are looking at other avenues of distribution.

See what shows were canceled here.

NBC's 2012-2013 lineup is here.

"Who Do You Think You Are?"

Sunday, May 13, 2012 10:15:46 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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Saturday, May 12, 2012

"Who Do You Think You Are?": Not All Family Legacies Are Happy
Posted by Diane

The young woman I bought coffee from this morning (before heading to our booth at the National Genealogical Society conference in Cincinnati) was talking about last night's "Who Do You Think You Are?" and how she wants to check out the exhibit hall today. Which is what we hope the show will do--be the spark that takes someone's interest in family history and turns it into action.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Friday, May 11, 2012

Tonight on "Who Do You Think You Are?": Jason Sudeikis
Posted by Diane

Actor and comedian Jason Sudeikis, known for his performances on "Saturday Night Live," is the guest on this week's "Who Do You Think You Are?" on NBC. Episode promos promise "one shock after another" in Sudeikis' family tree.

Here's a video sneak peek at the show:

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

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

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Thursday, May 10, 2012

Ancestry.com Adds 10 Billionth Record
Posted by Diane

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.

Ancestry.com | Genealogy Web Sites

Thursday, May 10, 2012 4:53:42 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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1000memories releases ShoeBox App for Android, ShoeBox 2.0 for iPhone
Posted by Diane

1000memories today launched its ShoeBox app for Android and a redesigned version of the app for iPhone. The app is designed to make your phone a sort of portable scanner: You "scan" a photo by snapping a picture of it, then upload the photo to your 1000memories site.

ShoeBox can auto-detect the edges of a photo and crop and straighten it. Users can add dates, names, locations and other information about the picture.

The newest version of the app for Android and iPhone lets users seamlessly organize scans into different collections and instantly share them with certain people using their mobile devices and the 1000memories site.

We blogged about the October 2011 debut of Shoebox for the iPhone here. Following that launch, ShoeBox became one of the top three free apps in the photography category and top two in the family history category.

ShoeBox is available in the Apple App Store or Google Play store.

Thursday, May 10, 2012 9:39:45 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)

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