A little blog on my genealogy thoughts.
When researching my extended family in old newspapers online, I found an extremely sad story. It was of grandparents driving in a car with their grandchildren when they collided with a gasoline truck. A three year old was badly hurt and later died at the hospital. News stories like these are so sad and difficult. My heart goes out to everyone involved. Rest in Peace, sweet little John.
I decided to look for some clues for one of my ancestors online in the user family trees on Ancestry.com. I don’t use those trees often since the quality is questionable, but I admit have found some trees had my dead-end lines filled in correctly. Not that I would just believe an unsourced tree, but the original records that I then dug into helped prove it. I know it was helpful since I wouldn’t have necessarily found my dead-ends in those records without the hints that the trees gave.
Anyway, I thought I’d work on a different dead-end today. We have multiple records (census, death, etc.) indicating that she was born about 1854 in Massachusetts. Tree after tree on Ancestry indicated that her mother and her father were both born and both died in England. I suppose her monther could have come to America, had her and then went back to England to die, but I find this pretty unrealistic. Should I fill in England for the locations on my tree as so many others did on the site? I think not (at least not at this time).
I hate how undocumented lineages are repeated over and over on Ancestry as if they’re accurate. I guess I’m on my own in solving this one.
On Saturday, FamilySearch announced that its volunteers had completed indexing the 1940 US Census. The remaining, unposted states are going through a quality review and will be posted in the next few weeks. 160,000 volunteers helped accomplish this monumental task.
The entire genealogy community is indebted to the volunteers that donated their time to make this wonderful resource available to everyone.
I personally would like to say thank you. Thank you for spending your time so I can spend less of mine. Thank you for removing the frustrations of looking through every page. Thank you for making it easier for me to find out about my family. Thank you!
My family just got back from a 4 day trip to my in-laws house in Lambton, Quebec, Canada. Is anyone else researching Quebec, Canada? Are you having trouble finding information on the cemeteries there? I have been. Even on the online maps, the cemeteries may be greyed areas, but they don’t say the name of the cemetery. It made it hard to research ahead of time where I wanted to visit.
While there, I got my “boys” to go to three cemeteries with me. I already knew where they were and had even briefly been to 2 of the 3. My husband didn’t understand why I was taking so many photos, but the first and last names all seem so common that once I get there I’m confused who I’m looking for. What’s the problem with taking lots of photos anyway? They’re all digital, so they’re free. I was already looking at all the stones so it didn’t take that much more time to snap a quick photo to study on the computer when I got home if it was a surname I was researching. Since the Drouin collection on Ancestry generally stops at 1930 (at least in the parishes I’ve been working in), the gravestones seem the easiest way to find the more recent dates. Maybe I should redefine “easiest”. Easiest given that you don’t mind driving 5-1/2 hours, have nice in-laws that let you use their house there for free and can whine enough to get your family to let you spend some time in the cemeteries. Ha-ha!
So, the verdict is in. I did take a lot of photos of people that I can’t connect to the family right now but I also found a number of his direct ancestors and siblings of them.
I’ve started working on putting them on FindAGrave already. That site is sure hard to use for Canada. It lumps all the provinces together so you can’t search on just Quebec when you’re looking for a cemetery. Also, the cemeteries are getting put in inconsistantly. Some are “Blah Cemetery”, some are “Cimetiere Blah” and others are “Cimetière Blah” (the last one with the accent is correct as far as the French goes, but not so sure it’s correct on FindAGrave). Then, the accents on the names are another whole matter. I guess I’m entering them without them, but I hate doing so. When I started to post the photos, I even found that someone else had listed some of the names that I took photos for, so I posted the photos to go with those listings and am glad I could help someone else.
If anyone knows of a great site to see maps of Quebec towns with the cemeteries displayed, please post it to the comments! That would sure help make the most of a limited amount of time if some of the location research could be done ahead.
I’ve been putting a lot of effort into posting stuff at FindAGrave recently. I have tons of cemetery photos, so I’ve decided to share. I’m working on Woodlands Cemetery in Cambridge, NY right now. I still have over 1,000 photos to post from that cemetery. I’ve added about 2/3 of the listings for that cemetery.
I’ve also made a few special trips over the past month to do volunteer photos for others. I’m glad to be able to help out that way.
Anyway, I’ve reached some milestones in the past week. I surpassed 3,000 listings and 2,000 photos posted. Yay for me! ha-ha.
To go to my contributor page, click here
I’ve recently been enjoying the free newspapers at Fulton NY Postcards (don’t let their website name fool you). They have tons of old New York newspapers scanned and available for browsing or searching. This includes papers from Glens Falls, New York. I even found some need obituaries from other areas of New York too.
I was particularly taken by this gem that I found about my second great-grandfather, Deranzel Henry, who rescued a drowning boy in the Battenkill River.
Since I’m writting about free access, Footnote is giving free access to their newspaper collection this month, so make sure to go do some searches before May is over.
In my last post when I was discussing the New Hampshire vital records project (which the births are now indexed and online on Family Search), I mentioned that I was hoping for Vermont to be next.
Well, although it’s not free for all on Family Search, I did receive a promotional email from Ancestry.com stating that Vermont vital records were coming soon. I’m excited that this great resource will soon be available. Horray!
In the meantime, did you know that the Vermont State Archives are willing to look up a record for you for free? Click here and then chose the Informational Copies link on the right to download a form to fill out and email back.
They’ve often emailed the record back within a week of my requesting it. Kudos to Vermont! I wish more states were as kind to genealogists as you are.
I have to admit I’m a bit excited. FamilySearch’s indexing project has started working on NH births up to 1900. I like that I can work on a project like this that will help so many and that this is not a database that is repeated over and over on the Internet. I’ve refused to index the federal census records for exactly that reason. I want to work on the projects that will provide new information for people.
New indexers are always welcome. It’s an easy way to give back to the genealogy community. Please see FamilySearchIndexing find out more.
So, as I happy work away trying to get these records indexed, I have to admit that I’m hoping that they’ll do Vermont next, or maybe New York. 
I thought I’d give an update to the FTM 2009 free upgrade situation. The afternoon of my last post, I received an email from The Generations Network apologizing about the situation. They said that their store was overwhelmed and that they’d have it resolved in a few days, at which time they’d issue a new coupon.
A few days later, I did receive the email with a new coupon. It had a link and said that I had to order through it. When I clicked on the link, it said that I had to wait over 2 hours for my time in the store. I promptly went directly to the store in another browser window, ordered the upgrade and the coupon worked. I’m so glad that I didn’t sit there and wait.
I was very pleased that they even gave free shipping. The free upgrade was absolutely free! I didn’t expect that.
Although there were so many problems getting my order in, the upgrade was shipped very fast. I had expected to wait a month or so, but I received it last Thursday. I’ve got it all installed and it recognized the database that I had pulled into FTM 2008. I can’t speak on features since I use Legacy instead of FTM now but will probably fool with it sometime.
I have to say that the Generations Network faltered but did deliver (at least the physical product, not sure on the promises that they gave with the software). Thank you Generations Network.
I switched from Family Tree Maker to Legacy Family Tree software to record my genealogy a few years ago. It was a big transition, mostly for the user interface and how to do typical things like sourcing, which was much different but easy once you know how. Legacy helped me standardize my information and included a lot of error reports that I still use often. I could not believe the crazy stuff that FTM did with my data and it took me months of clean up. I’m not kidding–I spent all winter cleaning up data and I still work on it off and on to this day, 1-1/2 years later.
I found Family Tree Maker 2008 at BJ’s for $19. I decided to buy it, more for the postcard collection CD that came with it than for the software. Although it had a neat new interface, it seemed like their big selling point was their online printing of books, which is not something I’m interested in. It also did not pull in GEDCOMs properly from Legacy in any format. I had a long list that I forwarded to the FTM developers. Most reviews that I read online of the software raved about it–not for the program but more for records they found on Ancestry.com which comes bundled with different versions.
Well, the Generations Network knew people were unhappy with the new software (which was missing most of the printing options and therefore not very useful) and nicely offered to give registered users of FTM 2008 a free upgrade to FTM 2009. I received the email last night, clicked the link and their website wasn’t functional. I thought I’d go on and see how much they were going to hook me in fees and shipping to get this. I would have much rather had a download, but they don’t seem to be offering it.
This morning when I try to get on the site, I get the message “Due to the high popularity of our FTM 2009 free upgrade offer, we are unable to fulfill your order at this time. Please check back later. Thank you, The Generations Network, Inc.” If I go straight to the store, it won’t accept my coupon. It seems like the full price of $39.95 for an upgrade of this software is rather steep, especially when they’re giving it away for free.
It’s kind of laughable. They’re trying to make it up to people and then tell you “sorry”. Way to go, Generations Network!