Census Maps

I have run into times when researching someone’s birth I find out the state didn’t excite on that date. It turns out it was a territory or owned by Spain, Britain or Mexico. These maps would have really saved me some time http://www.us-census.org/states/map.htm

Photographing Headstones

This is a good project for you, a church, scouts, community or any group.

Things you may need:

• Camera, digital is best.
• Tripod for a sharper picture.
• Large sheets of paper and charcoal for weathered headstones.
• A brush & water for cleaning.
• Something to clear grass or weeds away from the face of the stones.
• A graphics editing program.

First visit the cemetery and find out which direction the stones are oriented. It is best to shoot the stone just as sunlight barely crosses the face and the inscription is still shaded. Might even be a good time to clean and clear anything that may of grown over the stone. There has been too many time I could of kicked myself for not sweeping off the stone or I have a weed going across the picture.

When the light is best have your camera on a tripod and use a timer or remote for best results. There is less of a chance of you shaking the camera when you take the shot. Most newer stones you won’t have to worry about light, but nothing is worse than getting home and you have an unusable picture. Zoom into the picture to make sure you have a good clear shot, and then move onto the next stone. After good light has past move to the stones that light isn’t an issue or the weathered stones. For the weathered stones use the paper & charcoal to make a rubbing of the inscription & photograph the headstone and rubbing.

http://www.sampubco.com/gpp/crop.htm is a good site for showing how to crop the picture to put it online, but first I like to make a good quality file for 4x6 digital prints. Picasa is my favorite http://picasa.google.com/ and it’s free and doesn’t effect your original. For prints I like original size with a quality 70, online 600 pixel width a quality of 40-50 or what ever the website requires.

Where to put the images would be the county website on www.usgenweb.org, www.findagrave.com, and if a state is available http://gpp.jlconsulting.com/. They all have limits on size of file or pixel size of the picture. This is why I recommend making a good quality 4x6 file, there are a lot of websites that have free space for your digital pictures. Make a public web album and people can download or order prints for themselves.

It is a wonderful feeling when someone thanks you for making a picture available.

Ancestry.com at the Bouse Library

Early this week the Bouse Library received an e-mail from Ancestry.com offering to sell the full Library subscription to them for $995. Almost 1/2 price. The offer expires on June 30, 2007 so they have to do it right away.

Since we had collected $674 between the winter Genealogy Classes, the money for shipping the books and the winter Computer Classes, the Friends of the Bouse Library Board offered to pay the difference and get the full library subscription this month. We will repay the Friends of the Bouse Library in the fall and winter to cover the difference of $321. Hopefully we will collect that via the genealogy classes, computer classes and donations next season.

The great thing about this is that more than 2 people can use it at a time. Also we are the only Public Library west of Phoenix that will have it available, which should (we hope) bring in more people. I would like to suggest they we see if we can get a donation box just for Ancestry.com placed in the Library to help cover the cost and maybe pay for it next year also.

As we had discussed earlier, access will only be available at the library. It will be open to anyone visiting the library, not just the Bouse Genies.

Also, this subscription price will set the cost we will have to pay in the future. We will not have to go back to the full $1700 price when we renew.

We will advertise the fact that it is available at the library and hopefully it will bring in more members or visitors.

Carol Brown

Note: The money has just been OK, will post later when it is up and running.

Free Genealogy Web Courses

BYU Independent Study Free Web Courses http://ce.byu.edu/is/site/courses/freecourses.cfm. There is a 1 time registration, then you just log in using your email address.

Family History/Genealogy - Introductory
FHGEN 68 — Finding Your Ancestors
FHGEN 69 — Providing Temple Ordinances for Your Ancestors
FHGEN 70 — Introduction to Family History Research
FHGEN 80 — Helping Children Love Your Family History

Family History/Genealogy - Record Type
FHREC 71 — Family Records
FHREC 73 — Vital Records
FHREC 76 — Military Records

Family History/Genealogy - Regional and Ethnic
FHFRA 71 — France: Immigrant Origins
FHFRA 72 — France: Vital Records
FHFRA 73 — France: Reading French Handwriting
FHFRA 74 — France: Genealogical Organizations and Periodicals
FHFRA 75 — France: The Internet and French Genealogy
FHFRA 76 — French Research: Paris
FHFRA 77 — French Research: Alsace-Lorraine
FHGER 71 — Germany: Immigrant Origins
FHGER 72 — Germany: U.S. Sources and Surname Changes
FHGER 73 — Germany: Jurisdictions, Gazetteers, and Maps
FHGER 74 — Germany: Reading German Handwriting
FHGER 75 — Germany: Calendars and Feast Days
FHGER 76 — Germany: Vital Records
FHHUG 71 — Huguenot Research
FHSCA 73 — Scandinavia: Jurisdictions, Gazetteers, and Maps
FHSCA 74 — Scandinavia: Reading Gothic Script
FHSCA 75 — Scandinavia: Church Records and Feast Days
FHSCA 76 — Scandinavia: Census Records
FHSCA 77 — Scandinavia: Probate and Other Records

Timeline and Map Views Searches

Google is experimenting with some different type of searches. What caught my eye was the Timeline and Map Views. It works best for the queries listed on their page http://www.google.com/experimental/, but I tried some of my own & thoroughly loved it!!!

The Timeline Search just add "view:timeline" to your search & it will categorize your results by date. Great if you just want to search a name during a certain period of time.

The Map View I don't see much difference in just plain old Google Maps. If you want to give this a test drive just add "view:map" to your search.

Maybe if enough people give feedback how much they like it they will get it fully functioning sooner.

Gravestone Photo Project

I really like this Gravestone Photo Project http://gpp.jlconsulting.com/ . I have found headstones or transcriptions here not found on some of the larger headstone databases. Also the women can be listed as married & maiden name, which really helps. The only thing I don’t like if you make a mistake after you upload a photo you have to contact the Webmaster to make changes.

One thing to remember if you want to add an image, do your editing before uploading. The built in editing in the program doesn’t do a very good job. The first time I uploaded some pictures they were too big & they ended up almost unreadable. Make sure the longest side of the image is no more than 450 pixels & make sure the file size is between 20-40 kb. Here are some tips for editing photographs of grave markers for the Gravestones Photograph Project http://www.sampubco.com/gpp/crop.htm .

The following states are currently using a version of the Gravestone Photo Project software:

• Arizona Gravestones
• Colorado Gravestones
• Illinois Gravestones
• Iowa Gravestones
• Maryland Gravestones
• Maine Gravestones
• Nebraska Gravestones
• New Brunswick Gravestones (Canada)
• New Mexico Gravestones
• New York Gravestones
• Ohio Gravestones
• Oregon Gravestones
• Pennsylvania Gravestones
• Virginia Gravestones
• Utah Gravestones

Copyrights In The Public Domain

I have been seeing copyrights on lot of microfilms & digital images where the original documents were published before 1923. So I set out to find out how they could copyright a public domain document.

First stop was to see what I could find out about copyrights as it applies to Public Domain. The only thing I could find was Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp. But I couldn’t figure out if it was dismissed due to “Fair Use” or because the reproductions involved no originality.

Then a kind Professor of Law put this topic in terms I could understand, “The content is not copyrighted and there is debate about even the image”.

Finally a response from the Library of Congress “Merely reformatting a work is not considered copyrightable authorship. There would have to be the addition of an appreciable amount of original copyrightable matter in order to support a claim to copyright, and, even then, the copyright would not extend to the public domain matter”.

We need to see these people putting on these copyrights as supplying us great service, and we shouldn’t copy their entire works to resell. But we should not have to feel like criminals sharing bits & pieces.

This article is not intended to define the law, but only to report my experiences.

Creating A Multi Page Documents With IrfanView

Some important documents are more than 1 page and it is nice to have it on 1 file. You will probably want to see if your scanner software comes with these options first.

IrfanView www.irfanview.net makes very nice multi page TIF & PDF files that are nice for archiving & sharing, the disadvantage is the Compression on the PDF files still leave rather large files. But if you use a PDF printer driver to make the PDF file you can make them small enough to email.

Steps for make a multi page TIF that some people prefer for archiving:

1. Open IrfanView.
2. Click “View”> put mouse over “Multiple Page Images”> and click “Create Multiple Page TIF”.
3. Click “Add Images” find the images you want> sort if needed> click “Compression” choose what you want> click “Browse” to put it where you want it on your computer> give it a “name”> click “Create TIF Image” and your done.

Steps for make a multi page PDF with IrfanView:

1. Open your TIF in IrfanView.
2. Click “Save As”> choose "Save as type: PDF - Portable Document Format".
3. In the PDF Settings Tab "layout" Page Format=Like Image. Page Rotation=none. Page Border=unchecked. Compression Tab=Activate Compression is checked.
4. Give it a name and click “Save”.

Steps for make a multi page PDF with a PDF Printer Driver:

1. Open your TIF in IrfanView.
2. Click “File”> “Print”.
3. 3. In Print Preview, Printer=your PDF Printer Driver. Choose “Portrait” or “Landscape” depending on your document. Print Size=Best fit to page, Mulipage images=Print all pages> Then click "Print". Just follow your PDF Printer Driver steps to finish.

TIF files that worked with Windows Picture and Fax Viewer:
*No compression (recommended)
*Original 909 KB - TIF 22.4 MB - PDF 9.36 MB
*With PDF Printer Driver it is 1.02 MB

*With Packbits compression
*Original 909 KB - TIF 18.2 MB - PDF 9.36 MB
*With PDF Printer Driver it is 1.02 MB

*With LZW compression
*Original 909 KB - TIF 15.7 MB - PDF 9.36 MB
*With PDF Printer Driver it is 1.02 MB

As you can see there is no difference on the PDF files but the using the PDF Printer Driver is much better for emailing. The difference is the PDF Printer Driver will leave a larger blank area because it is trying to fit it to an 8.5x11 page.

There are other commercial products that that work better but IrfanView is donation ware.

Newspapers On The Library of Congress Website

Looks like the U.S. Newspaper Program http://www.neh.gov/projects/usnp.html is starting to pay off. I have always liked Colorado & Utah's free digital newspapers. Now it looks like you will be able to access the digital papers from The Library of Congress website. Now in BETA, Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers http://www.loc.gov/chroniclingamerica/index.html only covers 25 papers in 7 states between 1900-1910, but this will be an interesting project to watch.

The Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers website will also let you find information about newspapers published in the United States from 1690 to the present in the Chronicling America Directory & tell you where you can find them.

Hoping to find the original digital newspaper websites for a larger database I was able to find these:
CA-http://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cndpsearch.pl
DC-not found
FL-http://www.uflib.ufl.edu/UFDC/UFDC.aspx?c=fdnl1
KY-http://kdl.kyvl.org/cgi/t/text/text-idx?;page=simpleext&c=kynews
NY-not found
UT-http://www.lib.utah.edu/digital/unews/index.html
VA-not found

Good site for finding world wide digital newspapers:
The International Coalition on Newspapers-http://icon.crl.edu/digitization.htm

Online Backup & Storage

After trying 2 online backup services that offer free accounts, Xdrive http://www.xdrive.com/ and Mozy http://mozy.com/, I see strong points in both. For accessing your files from another computer or sharing I must go with Xdrive, no online access to your files with Mozy. For automaticly backing up of importaint files I must go with Mozy, Xdrive is slow as tar. Mozy is much faster & you can restore you files to any point up to 30 days old. I think we can relate to adding wrong information in our genealogy, well if you catch it in 30 day you can restore your file back to the point you made the mistake. Another thing to concider is where Xdrive offers 5 Gigs of storage, where Mozy offers 2. If security is an issue nothing beats a good old fasion external hard drive.

More info:
Xdrive http://www.xdrive.com/
Mozy http://mozy.com/

Family Tree Guide

Family Tree Guide http://www.familytreeguide.com is a nice website were you can put your genealogy. It is similar to other web based PHP genealogy programs, but you don't have to have your own website or do any of the setup. More information on the features can be found here http://www.familytreeguide.com/home_features.php.

Things I like:

• You get you own web address ie. name.familytreeguide.com.
• Several different way to view people; Individual, Pedigree, Descendancy, Relationship Calculator, Timeline.
• You register others for your account so you can collaborate.
• The advanced search you can search names, dates, places, notes & more.
• You can even add histories, documents, and photos.

Things I didn’t like:

• You are supposed to be able upload a gedcom to update your file, but I tried to replace my gedcom to take out photo links in my file but was unable to. I ended up deleting the file & then uploading the edited gedcom as new.
• The only way to add contact info was to put my email in the footer.
• The biggest problem is the defalt is no event/facts (census, moved, etc...), but all I had to do was select them to be allowed & reupload the gedcom.

Need Extra Storage Space?

Dead Site!!!!

3 sure things in life are death, taxes & hard drive crashes. Xdrive http://www.xdrive.com/ is an online storage service offering 5 Meg of free storage. There are a lot of free photo storage services out there but what I like about this is you can store other files.

Here are some things you can do with Xdrive:

• Better secure your important files - photos, video, music, and more.
• Keep your digital photos in full resolution.
• Prevent bounced e-mail - share very large files without a problem.
• Schedule Automatic Backups of your important files.
• Share folders with others for just viewing or to work collaboratively.
• Access your files anytime through any web connection.
• Organize, edit and stream music playlists through any Web connected PC.

"Xdrive Desktop" acts as an auto backup of certain folders on your hard drive, but I found it slow as tar. The slide show you can add music & email an invitation out to people to view it, myself I don't like giving emails of friends to free services. The things I really like about this service is backing up your bookmarks. You can also upload groups of files or folders & download them just as easily. Downloads are grouped together as a ZIP file so you will need to uncompress them when done.

Should you find 5 Gig just isn't enough try putting your pictures on AOL Pictures http://pictures.aol.com, that is unlimited storage & can be accessed from Xdrive.

One last piece of advice locks & security only keep honest people honest, put confidential information online at you own risk.

Arizona Obituary Index

Mesa Regional Family History Center has a very nice obituary index on their website http://www.mesarfhc.org/. On this index you get names, age at death, newspaper, section, page, and date. Most of the hits I got were in the 1990s & 2000s, some are in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, the oldest I found was the Arizona Miner 1864.

There was no list of what papers they have or time period, but here is what I was able to find:
Apache County Reporter
Arizona Daily Star
Arizona Daily Sun
Arizona Miner
Arizona Republic
Au-Authm Action News
Casa Grande Dispatch
Cottonwood Journal Extra
Daily Courier
Daily News-Sun
East Valley Tribune
Eastern Arizona Courier
Gazette
Mesa Tribune
Navajo County Pioneer
Navajo Times
Payson Roundup
Phoenix Gazette
Prescott Daily Courier
Prospector
Republican
Scottsdale Tribune
The Spectrum
The Sun (Yuma)
Tucson Citizen
Verde Valley News
White Mtn Independent
Yuma Daily Sun

Obituaries, Genealogy Treasures

One of the best places to get you over a hump in your genealogy are obituaries.

Start with dates off the Social Security Death index or other death indexes or cemetery records. With that you can get a death date and a possible death location.

Next check your local library website & see if they offer NewsBank or other national newspaper databases, they are good for recent obituaries.

Next check the newspaper websites for the county they died in. Smaller newspapers are more likely to keep a free obituary archive longer than the bigger cities. My experience, the bigger cities obituaries usually windups on NewsBank after 30 days or other pay sites.

Finally ask for a lookup on mailing lists, message boards, http://raogk.org/ or http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~obitl/ are good. But if no one gets back with you try emailing that county’s library & find out if they keep newspapers on microfilm and if they can mail you a copy. There might be a small fee involved, but usually not much.

Why is this document important? It is most likely to give you clues on your ancestor’s life, ie… Son or daughter of, born, married, survived by, where they lived and what they did in their life.

Ancestry.Com Free Databases

Looking at free databases on http://www.searchforancestors.com/ancestryfreebies.html, I see several interesting databases but most are already free on http://rootsweb.com/. To test it out I tried the WWI Civilian Draft Registrations. I had to register which was easy enough (just had to give a name and email address), but only got an index and only 1 of 3 brothers came up. So it is not as complete as the pay database, but worth taking a look at.

Update: I just got my 1st Ancestry SPAM from signing up. If you want to try this be warned!!!

Family Roots Radio

An new genealogy internet radio show has popped up http://www.familyrootsradio.com/ , hosted by Kory Meyerink. It is played on VoiceAmerica every Thursday at 1PM Pacific. To make things easier you can listen or download it and listen it at your convenes. I found the first two shows very interesting & educational.

Arizona Genealogy Birth and Death Certificates

Arizona has Birth (1887-1930) and Death (1878-1955) certificates online at http://genealogy.az.gov/. The nice thing is you can view the actual images online. You have the option to include Father & Mother's name in the search, good for birth certificates or narrowing down death certificates. And to limit the search by county & year range, helpful if you know the county but not the exact year.

County Boundaries

If you need to find a county boundary for a state & can’t justify spending the money for a book or a program, HeritageQuest has made it easier. They have put maps online from “Map Guide to the U.S. Federal Censuses”, 1790-1920, By Wiliam Thorndale and William Dollarhide.

On HeritageQuest, click browse in the census area. Pick a year & a state, and then click “View State Map”. You will be able to view that year’s county boundaries (black lines) & currant boundaries (white lines). Just plot the current location & compare it to the one for that year.

To find out if HeritageQuest is offered from your local library website or one in your state please visit http://www.eogen.com/HeritageQuestOnline .

Genealogy Training Cource

With Carol Brown
9:30 am- 11:30 noon Tuesday’s & Thursday’s
January 9, 2007 - February 8, 2007
(Except as noted)

Sign-up at the library

Everyone Welcome

At the Bouse Library, 44031 Plomosa Road
Cost is $5.00 per class

Each week Carol teaches two different aspects of genealogical research followed by an open discussion session. All class are approximately 2 hours in length. You do not have to attend every session. You can choose the topics you wish to attend.

• January 9 - Class 1 - Beginning Genealogy, Record Organization and Source Citation
• January 10 - Class 2 - Computers and Genealogy on the Internet
• January 16 - Class 3 - Census and Social Security Records
• January 18 - Class 4 - Researching in Libraries and Court Houses
• January 23 - Class 5 - Immigration and Migration Patterns
• January 25 - Class 6 - Genealogical Societies and Magazines
• January 30 - Class 7 - Over Coming Dead Ends
• February 1 - Class 8 - Preponderance of Evidence
• February 6 - Class 9 - Researching in Military Records
• February 8 - Class 10 - Sharing Your Family History

Free Medical Dictionary

Trying to read some of these Death Certificates I just couldn’t make out the cause of death. I found this medical dictionary very useful http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/. One of the causes of deaths I was able to make out the first letter & the end of the word. I was able to limit my search to “Ends With” then look for a word that started with the letters, and was able to find the word I wanted. These are some of options to limit your search, "Word/Article", "Starts with", "Ends with", and "Text".

The Free Dictionary website http://www.thefreedictionary.com/ has more than just medical definitions: Dictionary/thesaurus, Computing dictionary, Medical dictionary, Legal dictionary, Financial dictionary, Acronyms, Idioms, Columbia encyclopedia, and Wikipedia encyclopedia.