This week's news includes: the Vatican has issued a letter instructing all dioceses not to give any information to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, due to concerns about the Mormons' practice of posthumous rebaptism; a new Midwest Genealogy Center (see http://www.mcpl.lib.mo.us/genlh/mgc.htm) will open in Independence, Missouri, on 21 June 2008 with the largest collection of genealogical materials in the U.S.; DNA links have been found from the ancient "iceman" found in British Columbia in 1999 to at least 17 living people; an American couple touring in Germany visited a gasthaus in Binningen and were introduced to a relative -- a man who looked exactly like the husband. The men shared the same great-great grandfather.

Listen e-mail included: loss of HeritageQuest Online in the Satellite Beach, Florida, library; a thank you for our discussions of the Mozy (http://mozy.com/) computer backup facility; Catholic parish family books (Familienbuecher) in Germany; suggestions for locating information about Black Seminole people (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Seminoles and Seminole & Apalachicola Indian Records); a listener asks for help when his own DNA and that of his family members disagrees; teaching genealogy to and for kids; the occupation of "vanman" is defined; and the origins of the surname Turtle are discussed. [Drew referred to the book, A Dictionary of English Surnames: The Standard Guide to English Surnames by P.H. Reaney and R.M. Wilson, published by OxforndUniversity Press in 1995.]

George discusses the practical use of DNA in conjunction with genealogy, archeology, and geography in the research of the Lost Colony Center for Science and Research (http://www.lost-colony.com/). The "Lost Colony" was the second settlement on Roanoke Island on the Outer Banks of what is now North Carolina. It began in 1587 and it was there that Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the New World, was born on 18 August 1587. When the relief ships finally returned from England in 1590, the settlement was deserted, and a single word -- "Croaton" -- was carved into a post of the fort. Croaton was the name of one of the local Indian tribes. One suggestion is that the settlers were assimilated into one or more of the three tribes. The DNA testing and analysis being done by the Lost Colony Center for Science and Research is seeking to validate or refute this hypothesis, and the project is infinitely interesting.

News this week includees: Geni.com (http://www.geni.com/) announces new features, including a family timeline, posted links, send gifts, and the family Forest; Progeny Software offers its Charting Companion software to produce great-looking charts in color and with photos -- click here for more information; and the Allen County Public Library in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, is presenting a Military Symposium 2008 on September 26 & 27, 2008, with guest speaker Marie Varrelman Melchiori, CG, CGL, and more information is available from Genealogy@ACPL.info.

The Guys responded to listener e-mail: Find-a-Grave (http://www.findagrave.com/) does include graves in the UK and other countries; locating the physical address for a rural postal box in 1935; more about the downloadable PDF file at http://www.thegeneticgenealogist.com about what to do with the results of your genealogy test; Catholic priest's census records; findings in old address books; another look at Chicago Public Radio's March 14th podcast about the kidnapping of Bobby Dunbar; an article titled "To Catch a Thief" at Smithsonian.com (click here to the exact location) tells how Civil war buffs got onto the trail of stolen documents; and Drew discusses uninterruptable power supply (UPS) units.

In the News, The Guys review two new publications: Hookers, Crooks, and Kooks by Jana Sloan Broglin, and Kisses from a Distance by Raff Ellis. A baby's tombstone from 1894 is discovered on a houseboat in Charleston, SC.

George responds to a request about deed platting software: DeedMapper from Direct Line Software (http://www.directlinesoftware.com) sells for $99.00, while a free online deed platting tool is available for use at http://www.genealogytools.net. Drew follows up regarding the use of a final 'e' at the end of some surnames, such as Greene.

Chicago Public Radio's series, This American Life, has an interesting episode from 14 March 2008 titled "The Ghost of Bobby Dunbar" available as a podcast at http://thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1234. It is a terrific story!

Drew talks about the term "countryman" and its origins. He then discusses ordnance maps and their use. George suggests copying online obituaries from newspapers and from funeral homes' Web sites and from their online guest books. The Guys end the show with a discussion of church directories and church bulletins.

This week's news includes the following: Ancestry.com launches the Drouin Collection of 29 million French-Canadian names from, ultimately to include 37M names by mid-2008; Ancestry.com also launched the Former Colonial Dependencies Slave Register Collection, 1812-1834; RootsMagic has extended the early Bird Registration for this year's genealogy cruise to April 30th (see http://www.RootsMagicCruise.com); Wholly Genes has announced its genealogy cruise line-up (see http://www.WhollyGenes.com/cruise.htm); the My Genealogy toolbar is free and helpful for those researching their UK ancestors, and is at http://www.usefultoolbars.co.uk; and the National History Show will be held May 2-4, 2008, in Olympia, London, UK (see http://www.whodoyouthinkyouarelive.co.uk for information and tickets.)

The Genealogy Guys appear in their second episode of Down Under: Florida at RootsTelevision.com. Click here to see the new feature about famed Ringling Brothers circus performers, The Flying Zacchinis. You'll love it!

Listeners share lots of great information, including: "Catholic: Under the Hood" videocast about the Sicily-Rome Cemetery, resting place of WWII soldiers; print labels for your family heritage CDs and DVDs using Light Scribe software and disks (http://www.lightscribe.com/); search the Web site for the funeral home that recently handled arrangements for an individual -- they often have more detailed obituaries than the newspapers, guest books, and even photographs; a suggested reference for understanding land records and land platting is E. Wade Hone's book, Land and Property Research in the United States (Ancestry Publishing); The Guys offer tips for breaking through brick walls; and George responds to a request about his research on his great-uncle, Brisco Washington Holder.

George reviews and recommends three books:

Capturing Memories: Your family Story in Photographs by Maureen A. Taylor (Ancestry Publishing: 2007)

Bibliographic Checklist of African American Newspapers by Barbara K. Henritze (Genealogical Publishing Co./Clearfield Company: 1995 and Reprinted 2008)

Bad Baby Names by Michael Sherrod and Mathew Raybeck. (Ancestry Publishing: 2008)

The Genealogy Guys Podcast will take a short break while the Guys enjoy a Caribbean cruise with family and friends.  We'll be back the week of April 14!

Drew addresses proving relationships using mitochondrial DNA. He then discusses two genealogical books on the subject of DNA. They are: DNA & Genealogy by Colleen Fitzpatrick and Andrew Yeiser (published in 2005 by Rice Book Press) and Family History in the Genes by Chris Pomery (published in 2007 by The National Archives in Kew, Richmond, Surrey). Both are available through Amazon.com.

This week’s news stories include: Roots Television at http://www.rootstelevision.com has won four Telly Awards in its first year in business; the National Genealogical Society has announced the appointment of Pamela K. Boyer, CG, CGL, its Education and Publications Director; and WorldVitalRecords.com (http://www.worldvitalrecords.com) has added 300 new databases from the Godfrey Memorial Library and will add 300 more each week this month.

Listener e-mail includes discussions concerning: “The Vision of Britain” system holds the full text of three 19^th century gazetteers at http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/index.jsp; LDS Family History Center personnel can provide expert advice to you before you reach the point of hiring a professional researcher; a listener asks for opinions about the National Genealogical Society’s online course, “Introduction to Genealogy”; genealogy of U.S. presidential candidates is a topic of worldwide discussions; another recommendation is made for creating CDs/DVDs of family history information; the recessive gene responsible for red hair is declining and is expected to be obsolete by 2100; Arphax Publishing Company publishes excellent quality family maps by state and county, and can be found at http://www.arphax.com; and additional information about District of Columbia records is offered.

 

This week’s news includes: NBC has purchased rights to create an American version of the popular BBC reality series, Who Do You Think You Are?; NARA recently announced the availability of nearly 9 million WWII U.S. Army enlistment records at its Web site, but be aware that there were many records that could not be scanned – and the collection is therefore incomplete; Sen. John McCain’s new book, Hard Call, indicates his descent from Scottish heroic warrior Robert the Bruce, but the claim has been termed “baloney” in the British press by professional genealogists; Jacksonville Public Library in Florida has begun an “ASK a Librarian” online chat service; I.R.I,S., Inc., (at http://www.irislink.com) has two new portable scanners of note.

Listener e-mail topics this week include: Genealogical Publishing Company’s new CD by Michael Hait, titled The Family History Research Toolkit, has PDF format forms into which you can type information or use the forms for transcription purposes ($19.95 USD); a discussion of professional research services and researchers (Board for Certification of Genealogists at http://www.bcgcertification.org/ and the Association of Professional Genealogists at http://www.apgen.org/ and the International Commission for the Accreditation of Professional Genealogists at http://www.icapgen.org/) are three resources); missing census images at Ancestry.com were reported through the online Help facility and will be handled; a question about searching databases that are added to sites incrementally, and not wasting your time doing the same searches on the same data; an early pilot of the LDS’ online databases is available at http://search.labs.familysearch.org; use of Google’s My Map feature to create maps of cemeteries and other locations in a specific area; scanning photos using Google’s Picasa feature; Washington, DC, records storage repositories for that jurisdiction; and issues concerning placing one’s genealogical data online.

In this week’s news: NARA (http://www.archives.gov) posts free passenger lists online, including Russian, Italian, and German lists to east coast ports; 1871 England and Wales census images are now complete on British Origins (http://www.britishorigins.com); The Generations Network, Inc. (http://www.tgn.com), parent of Ancestry.com, RootsWeb, Genealogy.com, and other entities, announced that they will move RootsWeb onto the Ancestry.com domain, using http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com, and that there should be no changes to the online experience of users – and that RootsWeb will continue to be free; and WorldVitalRecords.com (http://www.worldvitalrecords.com) now has over 1 billion names at its site.

The Guys respond to many listener e-mail topics: the correct pronunciation of Haaretz, the largest newspaper in Israel which is beginning a new start-up genealogy social network, is ‘Hah-AH-retz’, which is Hebrew for “The Land.”; university databases and the possibility of accessing them remotely; missing census page images at Ancestry.com for Decatur County, Indiana; the availability of the 1846 Slater’s Commercial Directory of Ireland at http://failteromhat.com/slater.htm.

The Guys continue discussing listener e-mail about DNA and Drew continues his discussion of the topic to try to educate us all.

George delivers a lot of news this week: the New England Historic and Genealogical Society (http://www.newenglandancestors..org) has received a large gift of photographs from the family of Thaxter Spencer, including an unknown 1888 photo of Helen Keller and her teacher, Annie Sullivan; the Library of Congress’s digital preservation program has a new e-mail newsletter and you can subscribe by clicking here; NARA is soliciting comments from the public by 9 April 2008 regarding a proposal to enter into a non-exclusive agreement with The Generations Network, Inc., owners of Ancestry.com, to digitize and expand access to record holdings in NARA’s custody (see http://www.archives.gov/comment/tgn-preamble.html); Dublin’s Glasnevin Cemetery’s registers are about to be placed on the Internet, and more information is available at http://www.cigo.ie; Genealogical Publishing Company (http://www.genealogical.com) has partnered with FamilyLink.com, Inc. (http://www.familylink.com) to make their databases available on WorldVitalRecords.com (http://www.worldvitalrecords.com); Haaretx, Inc. (http://www.haaretz.com/) announced with Famillion (http://www.famillion.com) the launch of a new genealogy and social network search engine aimed at connecting the Jewish people worldwide; MyGreatBigFamily.com (http://www.mygreatbigfamily.com) launches enhanced social networking websites for families; GenealogyBank (http://www.genealogybank.com) has added the first 20 Hispanic newspaper titles for 4 states to its online historic newspaper collection, covering the period from 1855 to 1956, and will add many more, ultimately covering the period 1808 to 1980; an ID thief is caught and imprisoned in New Zealand for fraud in the theft of thousands of dollars in student loans for deceased children whose birth certificates he had obtained.

The Guys read and respond to listener e-mail on many topics: George misread the URL for the multimedia presentation software called Passage Express (which should be http://www.passageexpress.com); a listener and the Web Marketing Director of NewspaperArchive.com provided information about and a free trial of their site at http://www.newspaperarchive.com; information is shared about the HP MediaSmart Server for compact file backups and extensive hard drive installation; a free site to convert files into other formats is available at http://www.youconvertit.com); the True Lover’s Knot will be featured in the May issue of Real Simple magazine (http://www.realsimple.com); Newberry Library in Chicago is working on a project to document and then digitize all state and county boundary changes in its Atlas of Historic County Boundaries Project (AHCBP) and has 23 states available online at http://www.newberry.org/ahcbp/; a listener shared the image of an 1880 census Enumerator’s Daily Report to Census Office form that he purchases on eBay; and one listener shared information about her ancestry and, in particular, shared her related photos that she has uploaded to the Shutterfly photograph file sharing site at http://www.shutterfly.com.

The Guys continued with listener e-mail on the subject of genealogical DNA testing and will continue next week again with another descriptive discussion.

This week's news includes: condolences to the family of Chuck Knuthson, a great genealogical speaker, researcher, and former board member of FGS, GSG, and other organizations; Halvor Moorshead, head of Moorshead Magazines [Family Chronicle, History Magazine, Internet Genealogy, and the new Discovering Family History] is retiring and has sold the company to staff members Ed Zapletal and Rick Cree.

Listener e-mail includes: Greek genealogical research links are available at Cyndi's List (at http://www.cyndislist.com/greece.html) and at Kimberly Powell's column at About.com (at http://genealogy.about.com/od/greece); a request for help reading an occupation on a 1920 census schedule for Flint, Michigan, draws a unanimous opinion from The Guys [Quarry]; thanks for suggestions for recording an interview with a mother who transcribed contents of a now-lost Bible; an explanation of the source for information used by a census enumerator to complete a mortality schedule in the 1880 census; and a true life story of backing up one's data.

Drew describes and discusses Mark Tucker's brilliant Genealogy Research Process map and textual description at http://www.ThinkGenealogy.com. It is derived from concepts of the Board for Certification of Genealogists and by Elizabeth Shown Mills, expert on the genealogical proof standard and author of Evidence Explained, the new and definitive book concerning citation of genealogical evidence.

Drew discusses the use of dictionaries to locate the definitions of older, more obscure terms found in historical and genealogical documents. The example he cites is the term, "Fresno," a piece of equipment once used for scraping road surfaces.

The Guys discuss databases for historical newspapers and more recent (ca. 1980 to present) newspapers. The companies discussed are LexisNexis (the Nexis portion); NewsBank's "America's Genealogy Bank" database; and ProQuest. Newspaper databases may be available through your local public library and/or your local college or university library. Drew discovered that sometimes the newspapers available in a database inside the library are greater in number than when you access the database remotely from outside the library. This can be due to differences in licensing contracts. George encourages listeners to check out all the databases available through their libraries.