• Organizing, Preserving, Accessing & Sharing Your Genealogy Using Digital Document & Pictures
• Blogging Your Genealogy
• USA State and Territorial Censuses & Substitutes
• Using tax Records to Extend Your Genealogy

The March 7, 2010 Virginian-Pilot ran an article about the upcoming program. Following is a copy of it. The link to their page is limited to subscribers, but the illustration below should give you some idea of the great publicity the program is getting. That’s an interesting photo of me. I swear it shows all 5 of my chins!

Click on this link for more information about the seminar.

The following was received from Anastasia Tyler at Ancesty.com:

An hour doesn’t offer much time to delve into the research processes that genealogists used as they traced the family history of actress Sarah Jessica Parker for this week’s episode of Who Do You Think You Are? We sat down with the research team who worked on Sarah Jessica’s family tree to talk about what it took to find her elusive gold miner ancestor. I’ve recapped that conversation here:

First Steps First
Similar to Sarah Jessica Parker’s own assumptions at the beginning of the show, research on the tree began with vague ideas that her family was comprised of recent immigrants. The team first developed a skeleton of Sarah Jessica’s family history. “We documented every connection and every life event for her ancestors,” says Natalie Cottrill of ProGenealogists, who appeared with Sarah Jessica in the episode, “finding information about Sarah Jessica’s family in court records, newspaper articles, books, and personal letters published in books.” And that’s how they found John S. Hodge.

The First Nugget
The first clue about John S. Hodge’s life came from his son’s obituary, which stated that John S. Hodge died in 1849 on his way to California from Ohio. Since the death date came from an obituary written decades after John S. Hodge died, the team looked for primary sources recorded during or around the anticipated lifespan for John S. Hodge. For starters, the team wanted to determine why the ancestral John S. Hodge was going to California, as the son’s obituary stated. Considering the time period – 1849 – it seemed probable that John S. Hodge could have been heading to the California gold fields.

The Right John?
The search led to a John Hodge, who was the right age to be Sarah Jessica’s ancestor, listed as a miner in the 1850 U.S. Federal Census for El Dorado County, California. This record shifted research to determining whether the California John Hodge was the ancestral John S. Hodge, and the researchers turned to records associated with the 49ers. “We found a letter written by someone in Ohio to John S. Hodge, which had been published in a book,” says Natalie. “One of my colleagues tracked down the original set of letters, which provided more details, including information about John S. Hodge’s 1950 death.” Estate and other documents further confirmed that the ancestral John S. Hodge and the California miner John Hodge was the same individual.

If you missed the Sarah Jessica Parker episode of Who Do You Think You Are?, you can watch full episodes online at NBC.com. And you won’t want to miss former NFL football player Emmitt Smith set out to discover his slavery roots this Friday, March 12, at 8/7c on NBC. Lisa Kudrow said his episode is the most compelling of the seven (and, personally, I have to agree). Check out the teaser to the episode featuring Emmitt.

The book is selling at Amazon for $16.47 (Reg. $24.95).

Call for Lecture Proposals - “Pathways to the Heartland”
2011 FGS/ISGS National Conference - 7-10 September 2011

The Federation of Genealogical Societies and the Illinois State Genealogical Society are pleased to announce the official call for lecture proposals for our 2011 national conference, “Pathways to the Heartland,” to be held in Springfield, Illinois, 7-10 September 2011. The conference will explore the resources of America’s Heartland through a variety of regional and national topics aimed at engaging genealogists and family historians of all levels and experience. Topics relating to the Midwest, migration patterns, and religious and ethnic groups are encouraged. Wednesday, 7 September 2011 will include “Focus on Societies,” with lectures, focus groups, and other special events devoted to assisting genealogical societies, lineage societies, historical societies, and family associations succeed and thrive in their activities.

The program committee is specifically seeking new and dynamic proposals that will provide exceptional and unique educational experiences for conference attendees.

Potential categories for submissions include:

 Focus on Societies
 Methodologies and Strategies
 Migration/Immigration
 Regions
 Repositories
 Record Types
 Technology
 Religious and Ethnic Groups
 Midwestern Records

Speakers are strongly encouraged to submit multiple proposals (more than four) as most speakers, if selected, will provide a minimum of three lectures at the conference. There is no limit to the number of proposals a speaker may submit.

Submission Requirements
Submissions should be sent in PDF, Microsoft Word, or RTF format. File names should include your last name, first initial, and proposal topic (ex: SmithJ - Organization).

Each proposal should include:

 Speaker(s) name
 Speaker(s) contact information (including mailing address, phone, fax, e-mail). Please add your website, if applicable.
 Prior speaking experience (speakers who have not spoken at a national conference are encouraged to submit a video, audiotape, or CD recording of a recent lecture by mail).
 Speaker(s) biography
 Speaker(s) brief brochure biography (50 word maximum)
 Lecture title (titles should not exceed 10 words: title your presentations carefully, as the title that is submitted is the title that will be used in the conference program).
 Lecture brochure description (40 word maximum)
 Lecture outline/summary
 Lecture audio-visual requirements (FGS does NOT provide LCD/digital projectors, computers, or Internet access for speakers).
 Intended Audience Level

Proposals should be sent electronically to program2011@fgs.org no later than 15 May 2010.

Additional Information
Speakers will receive compensation according to the FGS Conference Speaker Policy at http://www.fgs.org/conferences/speakerpolicy.php.
 
Camera-ready handouts are required for each lecture or workshop presentation and will be compiled in a syllabus distributed to conference participants. The deadline for submissions of syllabus materials is 1 April 2011. Guidelines for the formatting of the syllabus content will be sent to speakers. 
 
Invitations to speak will be issued in October 2010 and the deadline for acceptance and submission of a signed contract will be 1 November 2010.

Registrants had opportunities to attend lectures by both Ancestry.com and NEHGS staffers. They were also invited to bring in family papers, documents, and photographs for free scanning into electronic format by Ancestry.com. Ancestry states that they scanned more than 2,000 documents and photos for about 125 people. This breaks Ancestry’s all-time record for one day of scanning.

Registrants also had an opportunity to sign up for 15-minute, 1-on-1 consultations with expert genealogists from NEHGS and the Association of Professional Genealogists - New England Chapter. Over 500 consultations were given by more than 30 professional genealogists.

Tom also noted that ” …we organized the entire event in mid-December, giving us about 2 months of planning time to pick a venue and create the day’s events. Ancestry was incredibly pleased that we were able to help bring 700+ people to the hotel for the day. It should be worth noting that we had another 300 people on a wait-list, and the hotel receive more than 150 additional phone calls from people wanting to register.” I’ve been hearing for some time that the event was “sold out.” It’s nice to see the hobby of genealogy getting this kind of reception.

I was invited by someone at NBC Universal to be involved in a conference call (along with many others I’m sure) with Lisa Kudrow and Dan Bucatinsky of the upcoming NBC series, “Who Do You Think You Are?” Lisa Kudrow (maybe best known for her 10-year role as Phoebe Buffay in “Friends”) will be the host of the series, while Dan Bucatinsky is the Executive Producer. I’ve been looking forward to this for days, and called in about 10 minutes ahead of time to get settled.

Immediately I knew I had a major problem. I couldn’t understand a word that the young lady on the other end of the line was saying… The volume was okay, but her voice frequency was such that it was all mush…

After asking her to repeat several times, I realized that this call wasn’t for me, and backed out of it… So, I’m kinda’ bummed out…

However, I’m sure all is not lost, as I know some of my blogging compatriots are on the phone right now, and getting the scoop on what I believe may be the genealogical event of the decade…

This new series looks to me to be fantastic. I don’t plan to miss any of them - and that’s going to require having some of the programs recorded when I’m away. But I’ll do whatever I have to do…

Don’t miss “Who Do You Think You Are?”, premiering March 5 at 8 pm on NBC.

“The FamilySearch Record Search pilot include millions of indexed records, and is expanding each month. When you perform a search in Live Roots, you will see a link to the FamilySearch Record Search feature in the “Available Partner Services” section. You also have the ability to search a specific collection within the Record Search pilot from the corresponding resource page. Resources from the pilot are cataloged in Live Roots as soon as they are posted online.”

Since you can search specific sites within live roots by searching individual Live Roots partner databases, I tested the search by going directly to the Live Roots Search & Preview page, and then searching for the surname “Daffern” in the FamilySearch.org Record Search box.

Twelve seconds later, I had numerous hits, including many entries from the Texas Death Certificates, 1900 U.S. Census, 1920 U.S. Census, and England Marriages, 1700-1900. Choosing the entry for Martin L. Daffern, Patty’s cousin, I was able to drill right on down to his death certificate. It took a few seconds to load the Certificate, but when it came up, it was great!

Try it out yourself at: http://www.genealogytoday.com/roots/live.mv?xc=RootsSearchPage&xo=lrdoc&xz=search.htm

Did you ever read the story or see the movie, Mrs Wiggs and the Cabbage Patch? It was an interesting but sad story about poverty-bound people that was produced in the 1930’s. The junior high school I attended drew some of its students from the Cabbage Patch in Louisville, Kentucky. That is where the real Cabbage Patch was situated.

One day in a math class, a girl from the Patch area had had enough of this education stuff. She was two years older than the rest of us because she had flunked out of everything at least twice. Now Frances was sixteen years old and very uncomfortable among us little kids.

Our math teacher, Mr. Holland, was a nice man. I had been able to determine that because I attended other classes he taught. He was not a career teacher, either. After school each day he attended the very large Southern Baptist Theological Seminary that was within a few miles of the school. He was destined to be either a Baptist preacher or missionary. I never knew which. But I did know that he had to temper his statements because he was very evangelistic and did not want to turn anyone away from God. So he couldn’t say what he really thought, sometimes. The day I have in mind, during the cooler part of the year 1945 (we wore coats), he got a real test of his emotional stability.

Mr. Holland asked Frances for her homework. She stood, looked him right in the eye, and began, “Mr. Holland . . .” and those were the last words I can repeat here. I had two older brothers so I knew most of the words she was saying and most of their meanings, too. But I never had heard a female say them. I still haven’t, some sixty-five years later.

Frances called this preacher-in-training everything in the book. And I mean her book, which was considerably thicker than mine. He stood there, taking it all in. When Frances finished and the class was in a state of shock, Mr. Holland said evenly, “Frances I am sorry you feel that way.” He continued with a few more conciliatory words as he took out of his desk a document that today would be known as a referral slip. Soon Frances was gone from the classroom and we found out later, the school. No doubt she found her way to a job in a hamburger joint or a factory or some other institution that did not require much in the way of an intellectual background.

It is a sad story. But not many wept for poor Frances and her situation. She was just one kid out of many whose destiny was predetermined by the sixth grade. Mr. Holland was concerned and did not take Frances’s words lightly. Not because of the words themselves, but because of what the words said about the girl and her future.

As we look back into our genealogies we probably do not see many Frances types hidden among the generations. What was it that constructed the path that led to us and not to some fugitive from the Cabbage Patch in your home town? (I am not willing to concede that President Lincoln outgrew his own cabbage patch. That is because his parents were poor only financially and not poor socially or spiritually.)
Somehow our parents and their parents and so on managed to instill in us certain principles that we may not be aware of. Perhaps we tend to forget about these principles as we collect data. It may be that we are too interested in a person’s college degrees or big bank accounts or some kind of notoriety to take notice of the things that made them useful human beings, part of a huge tapestry that formed the most productive and generous nations the world has ever seen.

One hidden part of this nation’s success was beyond our control. Yet, it worked in our favor. Our extreme democratic notions led to a diverse population and intermarriage among various groups that would not have gotten together in some other country or in this country, if it were less democratic and more rigidly structured socially. It was this nation’s huge gene pool. Mixing of our genetic materials for ten to fifteen generations led to a large, intelligent and productive population. Biologists have told me that “hybrid vigor,” a term used to describe special strengths in a corn crop that result from mixing genes, also applies to human beings. They said that hybrid vigor was in American genetic makeup.

Aside from hybrid vigor, then, how did we get to be us? We are a group of people who have leisure time and extra resources to devote to a study of our ancestors. That is, we are able to read and write, stay out of jail, analyze documents and do detective work until we find out who our ancestors were (and we often find they were a lot like us). How did our families and their families pass on the wisdom it took to be fairly successful in life and to acquire the tools we needed to be able to put together a story of those who came before us?

Some will tell me that I am talking about a special category of attributes—perhaps a subset found in sociology or anthropology, but I am not convinced that is true. Besides, academics can ruin any subject by draining every bit of joy out of it. Also, a study of principles handed down from generation to generation is probably more limited and less convoluted than academics want to deal with. They need large, important-sounding subjects that will get them congressional grants so they can write important sounding books.

I wish that on our genealogical forms there was a place to list for each individual, favorite philosophers, favorite books, favorite heroes in history, favorite music and art that the individual enjoyed. But that is asking a lot. I know some of these things about my father, but not about his father.

Long before my father, in the Christian West the only book people had was one or another version of the Bible, which was handed down complete with personal family records. But there was a period when Bibles were not available and Bible stories were told and retold with delightful inaccuracies. (Some Christian groups were not encouraged to read Bibles.) We can be sure that Bibles and Bible stories had quite an effect on our ancestors. But there had to be more.

Outside of Christian groups the Torah and the Koran were two other holy books that influenced people. There were philosophers such as Kahlil Gibran and psychologists such as Freud who were favored by the modernists of their time. Every recent generation since Guttenberg probably had its favorites.

It just seems that the likes and dislikes of our ancestors in the “humanities world” would shed light on and provide clues to influences that led us to be the way we are. And how we avoided the Cabbage Patches that are always around us.

By first light, one of the greatest calamities and perhaps most dastardly crimes in the city’s 324-year history was at hand — and a middle-aged bureaucrat by the name of Wheeler B. Melius was well into his finest hour.

Not long after 4 a.m., 130 years ago this morning, flames were spotted leaping in the County Clerk’s Office on the south side of City Hall — a stately domed structure designed and built not 50 years earlier according to the plans of architect Philip Hooker.

The alarm sounded at 4:12 from a box at the corner of State and Eagle streets and citizens and fire crews began descending on the scene at the foot of Washington Avenue.

So began a desperate, see-saw struggle to first save the seat of government, the pride of the city and, if not that, then at least the treasure trove of historical records inside. At stake was more than 200 years of history dating to the earliest Dutch settlement here on the shores of the Hudson River.

Read the full article by Jordan Carleo-Evangelist.

Thanks to Pat Morrow for alerting me to this very interesting article.

Each volumes of the series does the following:

• Identifies the parish where an ancestor worshipped based on where they lived.
• Gives the FHL microfilm number for the family’s parish records.
• Identifies nearly every city, town, and place that included residents.
• Visually identifies church parishes for Lutherans & Catholics in each district.
• Identifies adjoining parishes in case an ancestor attended an alternate parish.
• Aids in area searches, particularly across district or regional borders.
• Provides visual identification of search areas in which to look for a family.
• Helps in determining proximity of one area to another.
• Aids in determining reasonable distances of travel from one area to another.
• Identifies population centers in each parish.
• Identifies archives, repositories, and other resources.
• Aids in identification of the location of minority religions.

For deatils and an every-place index, see: http://www.familyrootspublishing.com/store/product_view.php?id=16

Today I received an email from a man named Vic who is writing a book. He thanked me for help that I have given him over the past two years. And it is true. I gave him family photos and inside information that he could never have gotten any other way. I had the only copies. And the hero of his book, or at least one of the stars, was gay and had no descendants to leave information to.

I was glad to give Vic the information. It was given to me by a woman named Betty. I thought it was kind of poignant that I met the woman who loved my second cousin Bill all her life. Even though Betty was married and lived a fast-paced social life she loved a gay man who could not return her affection. They were kids together in Kansas City’s more upscale area, and always kept up with each other over the years until Bill died in 1967.

In one pile of papers Betty gave me, there is a hand-written note made by a wealthy New York City resident who said that Bill was dead and that he had notified one of the Roosevelts, Rosa Ponselle, André Kostelanetz, Lily Pons and other luminaries of the New York philharmonic and Metropolitan Opera set. Betty was one of that group with Cousin Bill. Such names were important in the 1940’s, 1950’s and 1960’s in New York City.

Bill treated Betty well and was always a gentleman toward her, as far as I could tell. Her husband was a lawyer for a world famous psychologist, so he was no novice among well-known people. Although in photos he does not seem pleased to be in Bill’s presence. Some kind of tension dwelt among them.

I wish I had known Bill. While he was a stranger to me, Bill’s mother and my mother were not only cousins, but friends. I lived a thousand miles away and never got to know cousin Bill or his mother.

At this point in my life I have written 9.75 books and know I will not get to write about Cousin Bill. There is no reason for me to squirrel away information the writer Vic needed for his book. Betty was glad to find me, a family member who wanted information about Bill, and I was glad to hand copies of it to Vic for his use. So the passage of such genealogical data could be described as a study in gratitude.

What would I have done if I were intending to write about Cousin Bill? I know that his former partner and the guy who inherited Bill’s wealth lives within 50 miles of me today. He won’t talk to me, but if he did, I might be inclined to write a saga about Bill, his rather wild ancestors and how the family line ran out with Bill in 1967. I thought about it long and hard, but decided to let it go in favor of other projects.

If I were writing about Bill, I would tell the author Vic that I was working on such a project and he would understand. Still, I might be willing to share some specific items with him, but much less than I wound up sharing. And my conscience would not be damaged.

After all, I don’t owe the rest of the world’s writers my materials. To share or not to share—that is the question. But it is not a moral imperative. I share a lot as it is. As time goes on I find I have shared a great deal of information without knowing it. I find my data in corners and crevices of the Internet. I do not put information on the ‘Net, so I know that someone else took it, called it his or her own, and left it out for all to see.

In spite of “forced sharing,” it seems to me that genealogists are a grateful lot, quite often helping each other with information about techniques and copies of things. As I think back some twenty years when computer information was not as freely available as it now is, I recall the folks at the local LDS family history library in Pasadena, California. It was bursting at the seams with books and films and people who were eager to help me get started. I have not forgotten how nice they were. While visiting there, I helped a lady find her Polish Jewish ancestors and even connected her with Leland Meitzler who published one or two of her research articles in his magazine. She was a better writer than I was, unfortunately, but I managed to overlook that because she had good information to share.

We sometimes owe our progress to other people. One of my genealogical maxims is “The secret to genealogy is finding the person who has done all the work.” When that person is generous, our jobs are much easier. Fortunately, I have found a bunch of those people. Even more fortunately, those people were right in their facts. So I can accurately say that I owe most of my progress to other people.

I give credit when I can and I obtain permission to reproduce the property of others. The fact that I did not find all my materials myself does not keep me up at night. I sleep well because I know who recognized the importance of the information and who melded it all together into one persuasive story. That takes a small amount of talent and sometimes courage to stick your neck out with a reasonable hypothesis when everyone else is hiding behind a collection of “I don’t knows” and “no real proofs.”

I even think I know the real author of this article. And I’m going to sleep well tonight.

It includes a terrific video promoting the program. I think you’ll like it. And yes, the video is preceded by one of those irritating video ads…

And Megan just tweeted that she’s now gotten a copy of a new companion book that she’s written for the series… Cool…

Hold your curser over the illustration of Josh Taylor and Sarah Jessica Parker on the left for a bit of “Who Do You Think You Are? trivia. Then click on it to see the video.

Click on the illustration to see it at the NEHGS website.