Wednesday, May 31, 2017

Tracing Your Scottish Ancestors

Our club library has a new item: I picked up a copy of the latest resource from Moorshead Magazines, the publishers of Internet Genealogy and Your Genealogy Today. The articles in "Tracing Your Scottish Ancestors" were written by Christine Woodcock, a Canadian genealogist with expertise in Scottish research.

Articles include "Finding Your Scottish Ancestors: The Basics," "What's in a Name?," "Genealogy Treasures in Scottish Libraries," "The Scottish Clearances" and many more. Plan to borrow this new resource next year!


Legacy Webinars for June

Legacy has an interesting variety of presentations for the coming month. Visit www.familytreewebinars.com to register for any of the selections. You can also view them for about a week following the original presentation.

Wednesday, June 7: Researching Your Minnesota Ancestors  (Beginner/Intermediate)

Friday, June 9: The Increasing Need for Foreign Language Indexing  (Intermediate)

Wednesday, June 14: How Harry Potter Can Teach You About DNA  (Beginner)

Friday, June16: What Now? Your Next Steps with Autosomal DNA Testing (Beginner/Intermediate)

Tuesday, June 20: Beating the Bushes: Using the GPS to Find Jacob Bush's Father  (Intermediate)

Wednesday, June 21: Virtual Family Reunions: Super Easy, Super Fun  (Beginner)

Wednesday, June 28: Canada's Top Ten  (Beginner/Intermediate)

Saturday, May 20, 2017

PERSI and FindMyPast

We plan to visit the Allen County Library in Fort Wayne, IN this summer. I had hoped to produce a list of periodicals to use before we arrive at the library. FindMyPast has the PERSI (Periodical Source Index) and provides "free" access on their website. PERSI is an index to the extensive collection of magazines and newsletters held at the Allen County Library--the largest in the country.

However, what is available on FindMyPast is the title of an article, the name of the periodical and the year of issue. Without a subscription you cannot see the volume or number of the issue for an article, so it is impossible to order anything that seems interesting or to make a list ahead of time.

So I signed up for a month at FindMyPast in order to see more information. PERSI is most useful for location searches, but the website was not very efficient to use in preparation for a visit. There were a few articles that had been digitized, but even then there was no way to access a specific page in a periodical. It was too cumbersome to flip to page 55 to see a list of marriages for a certain county in New York, for example. Most articles are not digitized at this time.

We do have a PERSI CD that was produced by Ancestry with a publication date of 1997. It might still be useful, but no articles printed in the past twenty years would be included! It seems that we will have to wait until we arrive at the library to use the index efficiently.

Wednesday, May 10, 2017

The Randy Majors Website

Randy Majors' website was listed in the 2016 Family Tree Magazine's 101 best websites, and the new issue of the magazine included an interview with him.

His website has interactive U.S. County Boundary maps and Historical World Boundary Maps. I entered a few of my ancestor's European villages with quick results. The Norwegian village map included interesting topographical features. U. S. county maps allow you to pinpoint current research locations such as courthouses, churches, cemeteries and libraries.

Another feature of the website is an "ancestor search" using Google Custom search which is supposed to be genealogy specific. However, I did not have much luck with the names I chose to enter. One referred me to an Ancestry family tree; another found an online tree--but not for the correct family.

His site is certainly worth a look: www.randymajors.com.

Tuesday, May 2, 2017

Legacy May Webinars

Legacy has quite the variety of webinars this month, from New York to Denmark to DNA. Read more about the presentations, register or watch on your own time at www.familytreewebinars.com.

Wednesday, May 3 - "Take Me Back Where I Belong: Transportation Records of the Freedman's Bureau" by Angela Walton-Raji  (Intermediate)

Friday, May 5 - "Discover the New Legacy Family Tree 9" by Geoff Rasmussen  (Beginner, Intermediate)

Wednesday, May 10 - "Introduction to Danish Genealogy" by Fritz Juengling  (Beginner)

Friday, May 12 - "New York City and State Government Vital Records" by Jane Wilcox (Intermediate, Advanced)

Tuesday, May 16 - "MAXY DNA: Correlating mt-at-X-Y DNA with the GPS" by Debbie Parker Wayne  (Intermediate, Advanced)

Wednesday, May 17 - "Remember Me: Lifestreaming and the Modern Genealogist" by Thomas MacEntee  (Beginner)

Wednesday, May 24 - "WikiTree: Free for All without a Free-for-All" by Eowyn Langholf  (Beginner)

Wednesday, May 31 - "The Great War: Researching Your World War I Ancestors" by Michael L. Strauss  (Beginner, Intermediate)