I’m in the town of Gas­to­nia, North Car­oli­na, on the road to the Insti­tute of Genealog­i­cal and His­tor­i­cal Research at Sam­ford Uni­ver­si­ty in Birm­ing­ham, Alaba­ma. This will be my third year in a row at Sam­ford, hav­ing attend­ed in 2008 to study mil­i­tary records with Craig R. Scott, CG; Rick Sayre, CG; et. al. Last… Con­tin­ue read­ing On the Road in Gas­to­nia, North Car­oli­na

Today’s news includes the report of the dis­cov­ery — at an estate sale in Char­lotte, North Car­oli­na — of a slave-era pho­to of two young boys, one iden­ti­fied as “John,” and anoth­er uniden­ti­fied, pho­tographed by the Math­ew Brady stu­dio, prob­a­bly by Brady’s assis­tant Tim­o­thy O’Sul­li­van. It’s a stun­ning pho­to­graph. One can see the toll slav­ery… Con­tin­ue read­ing Slave-Era Pho­to Found

I read an inter­est­ing arti­cle in the Cana­di­an Press enti­tled “ ‘Geneal­o­gy tourists’ hit Salt Lake City library in search of fam­i­ly tree”. It’s an inter­est­ing piece, espe­cial­ly the sec­tion about Car­la San­tos, an assis­tant pro­fes­sor of tourism at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois at Urbana-Cham­­paign, who makes the point that every des­ti­na­tion is a geneal­o­gy des­ti­na­tion… Con­tin­ue read­ing Geneal­o­gy Tourism

I find tech­nol­o­gy exhil­er­at­ing, ener­vat­ing, and some­times just plain hys­ter­i­cal. A few months ago, I post­ed a bunch of images that I had had scanned by Scan­Cafe into a Google Picasa account. There’s a fair­ly new fea­ture in Picasa where the soft­ware rec­og­nizes faces and you can tag them with names. As you go along,… Con­tin­ue read­ing Ances­tors on My Cell Phone

My great great grand­fa­ther, Robert Wash­ing­ton Gregg (1843–1910), was known as “Gyp­sy” Gregg because he trav­eled so wide­ly. I have been cat­a­loging these trav­els. An account of what I have found so far fol­lows. Each new loca­tion is high­light­ed in red. Accord­ing to his Civ­il War pen­sion file, Robert W. Gregg was born in Ohio… Con­tin­ue read­ing Robert Wash­ing­ton Gregg (1843–1910)

I vis­it­ed the Mar­com Fam­i­ly Ceme­tery in Mor­risville, North Car­oli­na today. The Mar­com Fam­i­ly Ceme­tery is on the cam­pus of Cis­co Sys­tems, Inc., near the bas­ket­ball court by Build­ing 1, right off the inter­sec­tion of Davis Dri­ve and Kit Creek Road in Mor­risville. It’s a small, pri­vate ceme­tery that the for­mer own­ers of the land… Con­tin­ue read­ing Mar­com Fam­i­ly Ceme­tery

It’s entire­ly pos­si­ble that I’m miss­ing some­thing when I look at the Archive.com web­site. This new genealog­i­cal site launched in July 2009, and while it is attract­ing a lot of hits, it remains pret­ty unknown among the most avid geneal­o­gists. (Quant­cast esti­mates that they have over 900,000 view­ers a day.) In offer­ing com­pli­men­ta­ry 3‑month access… Con­tin­ue read­ing Review: Archives.com

Ver­sion 8.0 of TNG, The Next Gen­er­a­tion of Geneal­o­gy Site Build­ing looks to be a major improve­ment in speed, usabil­i­ty, and design. In case you do not know about it, the TNG pro­gram is a PHP/MySQL-based geneal­o­gy data­base that allows you to build advanced web inter­ac­tion for your genealog­i­cal data sim­ply by upload­ing a GEDCOM… Con­tin­ue read­ing TNG v8.0

I find it dif­fi­cult to be over enthu­si­as­tic about Ever­note, the web­site and desk­top appli­ca­tion that promis­es to “remem­ber every­thing.” It has a slick and easy to use inter­face, per­forms well, and often in the back­ground, and allows you to cre­ate con­tent, such as notes, to include images and even whole pages from the web,… Con­tin­ue read­ing Ever­note

I vis­it­ed the Durham Coun­ty Reg­is­ter of Deeds, 200 East Main Street, Durham, NC 27701–3649 to sur­vey their mar­riage records. The office is quite acces­si­ble. It is in the mid­dle of down­town Durham, with ample, rea­son­ably priced park­ing in a park­ing struc­ture next door. The Reg­is­ter of Deeds is in the base­ment of the old… Con­tin­ue read­ing Mar­riage Records Sur­vey: Durham Coun­ty, North Car­oli­na