Month: March 2011

This week’s installment of Who Do You Think You Are? with Steve Buscemi has an entertaining story about depression, suicide, servitude, and the Civil War … but it’s not about genealogy as it is generally understood. After a fairly standard, but solid beginning, with Buscemi talking to his parents about his maternal grandmother, the show… Continue reading WDYTYA Episode 206: Steve Buscemi

Google received a painful judgment from Judge Denny Chin on its $125 million agreement with the publishing industry. Judge Chin felt the agreement gave Google a “de factor monopoly.” Google had been sued by the Association of American Publishers and the Authors Guild in 2005. These groups objected to the fact that Google was in the… Continue reading Some Future Directions for Google Books

In going through family heirlooms, great and small, we came across a small trophy in the form of a cup. “O. F. D. / Cribbage Trophy / Won By / Hill & Hallen” I am not sure who the winners are, or what the year was, but my mother told me, years ago, that this… Continue reading Dead Men Don’t Win Cribbage Tournaments

ArkivDigital, the premier independent subscription-based genealogical research website in Sweden, will be free this weekend in celebration of Sweden’s “Genealogy Research Day” (March 19th). The site boasts 26 million records online in color. I have written about the site previously (“Review: Genline vs. Arkiv Digital“). The site is continuing to improve, and there is a beta… Continue reading Arkiv Digital: Free Weekend

To the left is a picture of my great grandmother, Alice Margaret Gregg (b. 29 Apr 1870, Nodaway, Adams, Iowa; d. 29 Mar 1919, Ord, Valley, Nebraska). She married the farmer Nels Johnson on 26 Sep 1888 at her father’s farm near Alliance, Box Butte, Nebraska). They had three children. She died just one month shy… Continue reading Wordless Wednesday: Alice Margaret Gregg

Mocavo, a new Internet search engine, launched today. Its focus is on searching free genealogical websites. It has gained the attention of the genealogy bloggers, showing up in Randy Seaver’s Genea-Musings (“First Look at Mocavo – A New Genealogy Search Engine“) and Dick Eastman’s EOGN (“Mocavo.com – A Genealogy Search Engine“). The site offers a… Continue reading Mocavo: New Genealogy Search Site

The keynote addresses for the RootsTech 2011 conference are now available for viewing on the RootsTech site: http://rootstech.familysearch.org/video.php These videos include: Jay Verkler – CEO of FamilySearch International – Opening Keynote “Warm-Down” Address (34:18) Barry Ewell – “Digitally Preserving Your Family Heritage.” This one seems a little over-the-top, and not really focused. Mr. Ewell knows… Continue reading RootsTech 2011: Keynote Addresses

I don’t know about you, but I am drowning in e-mail. Most of my non-day job e-mail goes into a couple of Google G-mail accounts. This is mainly because G-mail has so many features to help me sort, find, and respond to e-mail. First off, I get almost zero spam, because Google’s spam filters use… Continue reading G-Mail Smart Labels

I working to declutter my home and put valuable and rare genealogical documents in order. In this process, I have been going through some, until now, neglected documents that were passed down to me, and finding some surprises. I had been thinking about seeing what I could do about getting my grandmother Helen Harris’s divorce papers… Continue reading My Grandmother’s Divorce

Many genealogists are aware of historical newspapers, and search them out on NewspaperArchive.com, GenealogyBank.com, and the Library of Congress. But there are some important archival publications that are available with the original publishers. Harper’s Magazine has been publishing monthly issues since July 1850. Current suscribers to the magazine have access to all of the content… Continue reading Archival Publications: Newspapers and Magazines