GenealogyBlog

The following information was received this morning from Paul Nauta with FamilySearch:
There were over 150 new collections added or enhanced this week at FamilySearch.org. FamilySearch volunteers indexed over 120 million records — over 300 million new names — from original source documents to accomplish this great feat. The massive release was announced [...]

The following announcement is from Anastasia Tyler, PR and Events Manager at Ancestry.com:
The Ancestry World Archives Project is a collaborative effort that has allowed thousands of people around the world help to preserve history that might otherwise be lost. All records indexed through this effort are available for free to the [...]

28 September 2009: Volunteers with Rhode Island roots will be excited about the new indexing projects this week. The Rhode Island 1905 and 1935 State Censuses were added. New international projects for Argentina, Germany, Philippines, Spain, and the U.K. were also added.
Note: the links within the charts won’t work as they are just images [...]

The following news release is courtesy of Paul Nauta, FamilySearch:
28 September 2009 - Family researchers seeking their Mexican heritage have two million new records at their fingertips this week with an update to the 1930 Census collection. There are also new indexes and images for France, Italy, Slovakia, Argentina, and the United States. These [...]

The following are three data sets are recently completed projects that have been removed from the available online indexing batches and will now go through a final completion check process in preparation for future publication:

Argentina Censo 1869—Catamarca y La Rioja
Minnesota—1920 U.S. Federal Census
Minnesota Probate Court Wills 1849–1918

Current FamilySearch Indexing Projects, Record Language, & [...]

Thanks to Paul Nauta for the following info:
20 May 2009: Thirteen collections were added or updated on the FamilySearch Record Search pilot—over 3.5 million new records. International researchers will be excited to know that collections were added for Brazil, Czech Republic, and Italy.
In the United States, collections were added for Florida, Indiana, Massachusetts, New York, [...]

I’ve blogged twice about the destruction in Italy several days back. Once soon after the earthquake happened, with a photo of the purported State Archives, and later with further updates.
In a phone conversation this morning with Anthony Alioto, with Italianlaw.net, in San Francisco, he informed me that the picture referencing the flattened building in L’Aquila, [...]

There are many new, upcoming, and completed indexing projects to report in this update from Paul Nauta, with FamilySearch. Twelve of the projects below are new (see Current Projects). Included are three Belgian and two Argentina projects. The New York 1892 State Census project is exciting! New York has some of the best [...]

Over the last two days, I’ve been blogging the tragic loss of lives (now up to 260, including 16 children), and historic structures in the area of L’Aquila, Italy. I’m finding that most of the reporting, as well as the emergency aid, has centered on L’Aquila. However, the smaller communities in the area [...]

UPDATE: April 7, 2009: The full extent of the destruction of historic buildings, churches, archives, and such in the area of the regional capital of L’Aquila is impossible to gauge at this time. It’s said that getting around in the city of 80,000 is nearly impossible, due to rubble. The death toll is now over [...]

swissinfo has launched an interactive, multimedia special [website] aimed at people whose ancestors left Italian-speaking Switzerland for a better life abroad.
The second half of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th was a period of great upheaval as millions of Europeans migrated to North and South America and Australia. Italian-speaking regions of Switzerland were [...]

March 4, 2009: The FamilySearch indexing application is available in three new languages:

Italian,
Portuguese, and
Russian.

These languages are in addition to English, French, German, and Spanish. They have current indexing projects in all of these languages except Portuguese. They will be introducing a Portuguese project in the near future.
Volunteers can help with any of the [...]

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi received a gift Monday from her counterpart in the Italian legislature - the birth certificates of her grandparents.
”We know how proud you are of your Italian roots,” said Chamber of Deputies Speaker Gianfranco Fini as he presented the birth records of Pelosi’s Abruzzo-born grandfather and her Liguria-born grandmother, the Italian [...]

My friend, Jim Derheim has launched an archive of his photos online at www.europeanfocus.com. To see his work, click on the tab that says “Ancestral Villages Photography” (illustration below). It is visible at the upper right side of the page.
Since the site is a work in progress, there is also a full list [...]

You would think that where you have a civilization – seemingly living in an area for millennia – that DNA tests would show that them to be descended from ancient burials in the area. It seems this doesn’t hold true in central Italy.
“For the first time, Stanford researchers have used novel statistical computer modeling [...]