Archive for the 'Hints & Tips' Category

Historical Projects Puts Tombstones in Focus

Thursday, May 4th, 2006

Roger Wolfe, a reporter for 9News (Denver, CO), has written an article, Historical projects puts tombstones in focus, about the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution working on digitally documenting all of the tombstones in Weld County. They then place the images/information online, for other genealogists to access.

Genealogy Project Earns Girl Scout Gold Award (Highest GS Award)

Wednesday, May 3rd, 2006

The Patriot News (PA) has word that a family genealogy project has earned a Girl Scout a “Gold Award”, the highest award a Girl Scout can receive. Emily Clemens of Troop 368 (Penn Laurel Girl Scout Council) not only researched her family’s history, but gave a presentation/workshop on her genealogy project as well as how to use the genealogy information.

Who Was Henry Ferriss and Where is He Buried?

Wednesday, May 3rd, 2006

Denise Crosby asks Who was Henry Ferriss and where is he buried?, in The Beacon News (Illinois) about a lost tombstone that almost ended up in the city dump.

If any of that sounds familiar, they could use some help in identifying who Henry was, and where he ended up at. Denise’s contact information is linked at the at the article above, or perhaps contact the Aurora Historical Society. It’s a genealogy mystery worth solving, so that Chapin can get the tombstone out of his truck.

The 1841 UK Census and Interest In It

Monday, May 1st, 2006

According to Maija Palmer of the Financial Times, half a million genealogists visited Ancestry.co.uk after they placed the 1841 census. Apparently this was the first “comprehensive” census in the UK, which led to this rush.

Open Platform Preferred for Digital Archives

Monday, May 1st, 2006

Aliya Sternstein has an article on FCW.com, Open platform preferred for digital archives, about the government taking steps to make sure that future historians, genealogists, researchers, etc., will have access to current and future government and national archives.

Yahoo’s Babel Fish

Thursday, April 27th, 2006

Yahoo has updated their translation site - babelfish.yahoo.com. If you need webpages or snippets of text translated, such as historical documents or newspaper articles, you can paste them in (either the URL or the 150 words of text) and it’ll spit out the translated text.

Very handy when working with international records.

Update: From a genealogical perspective, Yahoo inherited Babel Fish from Overture, who bought it with AltaVista. This is the actual, official launch under the Yahoo brand.

It’s All Relative: Getting Down To It

Thursday, April 27th, 2006

Schelly Talalay Dardashti has a very interesting article, It’s All Relative: Getting down to it in Ynetnews, if you happen to be into Jewish genealogy. It’s about an upcoming Jewish genealogy conference that is huge.

Google Maps Has Street Maps For Most/All of Europe

Tuesday, April 25th, 2006

According to Google Maps Mania, Google Maps has added street maps for most/all of Europe - good news for those who use the service in their look-ups and what not. Some people are saying that not all parts were updated, although it maybe more of a localization/server issue (i.e. the changes haven’t been pushed out to the servers they are using).

Google Maps Europe.

You can read more (as well as the changes) here.