Genealogy Atlas host digital images of old American atlases covering the years 1750 to 1900. These maps are scanned from the original copies. Some maps years (not all) have cities, railroads, P.O. locations, township outlines and other features useful to the avid genealogist in North America.
Don't be alarmed that prices accompany the images. You can view the images online for free. The prices are in case you want to purchase.
Thanks to the GeneaBlogie for this post. Very interesting idea. Do I here "Library uses Genealogy to Shake Money From Family trees." Read the rest of GeneaBlogie here
Reunion is a genealogy software program that helps you to document, store, and display information about your family — your ancestors, descendants, cousins, etc. It records names, dates, places, facts, plenty of notes, sources of information, pictures, sounds, and videos. It shows family relationships in an elegant, graphic form — people and families are linked in an easy-to-understand fashion. Read more here.
Also, read Jeffery Battersby's review of Reunion, which he entitles "Superior genealogy program gets a complete overhaul."
California State Archives has launched "Minerva," to replace the state's paper-based method of keeping records. Minerva is a free service that gives people access to descriptive records which detail the Archives' ever-growing collection. In other words, Minerva is a online catalogue of finding aids and not a database of digitized documents. The catalogue will prove useful to those interested in research in the Golden State.
Provo, UT, May 17, 2007 --(PR.com)-- More than 4,500 FamilySearch Family History Centers throughout the world will now have free access to WorldVitalRecords.com’s genealogical records and resources, as a result of an agreement signed between FamilySearch (TM) and WorldVitalRecords.com.
WorldVitalRecords.com will provide a vast collection of genealogical materials including vital, land, immigration, and military records; newspapers, international databases, and a collection of reference material.
Often forgotten resource, the Access to Archival Databases (AAD) provides online access to records in a small selection of historic databases preserved permanently in NARA. Out of the nearly 200,000 data files in its holdings, NARA has selected approximately 475 of them for public searching through AAD. The data was selected because the records identify specific persons, geographic areas, organizations, and dates. The records cover a wide variety of civilian and military functions and have many genealogical, social, political, and economic research uses. AAD provides:
Holocaust survivors are venting their anger at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum over its unwillingness to allow immediate, unrestricted electronic access to the long-secret records of the International Tracing Service at Bad Arolsen, Germany.
Read the entire article by Edwin Black @ Washington Jewish Week
See related report in US News & World Report May 21, 2007 article "The Nazi Chronicles"
ProQuest CSA and LexisNexis, a provider of information and services solutions, are working together to add genealogical data from the LexisNexis U.S. Serial Set Digital Collection to HeritageQuest Online. The addition of the Private Relief Actions and Memorials and Petitions from the LexisNexis Serial Set collection serves the genealogy and local history segment of the public library market. Through a keyword search, researchers can access 480,000 pages of images contained within 150,000 U.S. Government documents dating back to 1789. Private Relief Actions and Memorials and Petitions have been drawn from the LexisNexis Serial Set, a collection of U.S. Government publications compiled under the directive of Congress, which captures American life from the early 19th century onward, from farming, to westward expansion, scientific exploration, politics, international relations, business, and manufacturing. It includes Congressional reports and documents as well as executive agency and departmental reports ordered to be printed by Congress.
Read more @ EContent
The Superior Court Cobb County Georgia official site grants you free access to the holding of the Clerk's office, located in the courthouse in Marietta, Georgia. The electronic records available on this site are the same as the official electronic records kept in the Clerk's Office.
Footnote.com released a collection of Revolutionary War documents available for the first time on the Internet. Featuring collections such as the Revolutionary War Service Records, Papers of the Continental Congress and Revolutionary War Rolls, Footnote.com is quickly becoming the leading source for original documents relating to the birth of the United States. Read more here.
Read a very interesting article posted on Anglo-Celtic Connections concerning the unintended consequence of digitization and its effect on genealogy tourism. Click Here.
Maybe another way of thinking about this is not get hung up on the word genealogy. After all what is genealogy - in a nut shell I define and teach it as family history within the larger context of a particular time and geographic location. Folks are researching how and where their particular family fit in the grand scheme of history. Market your tourism that way. Advocate for doing the research in the most convenient way and if that is digital through online subscriptions so be it. But develop and market local history and cultural activities. Give the researcher an experience. Become public historians; bridge the gap between the micro-history of genealogists and the macro history that provides fuller appreciation of the lives lived.
LONDON – Ancestry.co.uk will post 3 million names of slaves held across the British Empire in the early 19th century, putting hundreds of thousands of pages of searchable information online to help slaves' descendants research their past.
The project will use registers that the British government created between 1813 and 1834 in an effort to stamp out the slave trade by ensuring plantation owners did not buy new slaves. Britain abolished the trade in 1807. Slavery itself was outlawed in the colonies 17 years later....
Read more here.
Informative article By By info@associatedcontent.com (Tammy Evans) on the use of GEDCOM files. Read more here.
Magnolia Plantation Foundation to Sponsor AH Sister Site Lowcountry AfricanaThe Magnolia Plantation Foundation, the not-for-profit component of Magnolia Plantation and Gardens in Charleston, SC has agreed to fund a sister website to Africana Heritage called Lowcountry Africana. The website will debut in March of 2008. Lowcountry Africana will be entirely dedicated to records that document the family and cultural heritage of African Americans in the historic rice-growing areas of South Carolina, Georgia and extreme northeastern Florida, an area that scholars and preservationists have identified as a distinct culture area, home to the rich Gullah/Geechee culture.
The Lowcountry Africana website will be a treasure trove of primary documents, book excerpts and multimedia that further document and explore the dynamic cultural and family heritage of the Lowcountry Southeast. Access to the entire content of Lowcountry Africana will always be 100% free.
Website features will include:
• Searchable database of primary historical documents of interest to genealogists, historians and other scholars
• Key Archive pages: a place where archives with major holdings on Lowcountry plantations can share birth, death and other records of enslaved people and communities
• Key Researcher pages: a place where key Lowcountry researchers share content of their choosing with readers
• Sponsored Family Foundation Pages: a place where major slaveholding families share plantation records • Family tree files (GEDCOM files) containing information on family lineages constructed from plantation records, with associated documents, photographs and multimedia. Readers will be able to download family files and print custom reports to build books on their family's history.
• WPA slave narratives, indexed and fully searchable
• Book, film and music excerpts from key researchers of Gullah/Geechee heritage
• Searchable name indices from books on Lowcountry history and genealogy, to help researchers target useful resources
• Photo gallery of historical Lowcountry photographs
• Teachers' resources and lesson plans for using the primary documents on Lowcountry Africana in the classroom.
• Free membership that will provide readers with an online storage locker for their favorite Lowcountry Africana and Internet content, for fast retrieval
• A custom Internet search engine geared to search only sites with content pertaining to the Lowcountry
• Lowcountry Lives: an area of the website where we tell life stories, both remarkable and mundane, of slaves, freedpersons and enslaved communities of the Lowcountry
• Feature of the Month: an area of the website where we highlight documents or photographs of interest, an article about a particular aspect of the Lowcountry African American experience, or newly discovered archives
• Family Stories: a page where readers can share and preserve family history and memories
• News items of interest to researchers of all things Lowcountry
• Forums/message boards where readers can interact and share research and advice
• Conservation Efforts: a place where readers can learn about efforts to preserve Lowcountry cultural resources and landmarks
• Links Page with referrals to related Internet resources
• Blog – an informal online journal where we share the ins and outs, highs and lows of our archival research, and share new insights gained from ongoing research Magnolia Plantation and Drayton Hall were home to the Drayton and Grimke families of Charleston.
The Drayton family is not only sponsoring Lowcountry Africana, but also opening their family archives for study and interpretation. We will reconstruct the lineages of Drayton family enslaved communities and enter the lineages into family file software. This research is one component of "From Slavery to Freedom," a comprehensive interpretive center for African American history that Magnolia is now developing. Our goal is to make Lowcountry Africana the definitive research guide for tracing African American ancestry in the Lowcountry. How You Can Help: We will be gathering records from South Carolina, Savannah, coastal Georgia and St. Augustine for the website's searchable database.
Thanks to Myrt for the heads up on this DearMYRTLE, your friend in genealogy - http://blog.dearmyrtle.com/
