"Takes a long time"

The Wall Street Journal ran an article about mining genealogical databases online that was forwarded to me by a friend. Of all things, one of the criticisms was that "it took a long time" to check through the various databases to find his ancestor, with a less common surname and a birth and death date. I wanted to laugh out loud! A few hours online to check Family Search, Ancestry, the Ellis Island database and the Jewish Genealogy database is nothing like the weeks, months and years that this process would have taken in the past! Remember scrolling through unidexed census pages for hours and hours? Remember typing letters to distant cousins hoping for a reply to fill in a missing name or date?

Perhaps this is one more piece of evidence supporting the "fast convenience generation" that lives and works with us today. If they can't get what they want in a few minutes, their attention is lost and they get frustrated. Why can't people be happy with the technological advances that have been made, making our research hours ever so much easier than they were even five years ago?!

Summer Family Weddings

One of the most fun of summer activities is the summer family wedding! Huge groups of extended family all together to celebrate a happy event. What a great way to update the family genealogy, not only on the new addition to the family and his or her ancestry, but also to keep up on the extended family news that you might not have heard about in the annual Christmas card newsletter. You can meet and mingle, as you make known the fact that you are interested in family history. It's good to have a small notebllok along to jot down notes, dates, names and maybe a few e-mail addresses of those you wish to contact. Who knows- you may even meet another "infected" family historian who can;t seem to stay away from the "hobby"! And take plenty of family pictures while you are all together! Who knows how long it will be till the next family event that draws you all to one place again?

Celebrating 150 postings!!!

I'm making this my 150th posting on my "Midwestern Genealogist" blog after a seven hour genealogy research trip yesterday, adding 51 new names to my databse today, and just generally being grateful to be home from vacation!

So now, I adjust my plans for the last third of the year, in terms of research, and for the first time ever, consider hiring a professional genealogist to help me with the colonial Huguenot line in South Carolina. Any suggestions or feedback? Would be happy to hear from you!

SUCCESS IN THE SEARCH!

Truman Presidential Library

I just got back yesterday from my vacation down to the Kansas City area, including a stop at the Truman Presidential Library in Independence, Missouri. The facility is run by the National Archives, of course, and the President and his wife are buried in the central area. The musuem is excellent, with documents, displays, timelines, oral histories, TV clips, and even a genealogy of the President's family, complete with pictures!

As an educator, I have utilized the wonderful online scanned documents from the Truman Presidential Library and been very satisfied. There are only eleven Presidential Libraries so far, and President Truman helped plan this one from the ground up. I had never been to a Presidential Library and I have to say, this was a great stop, even for my children.

Linkpendium

Linkpendium has reached its 5 million links mark! This site is the second largest web person edited site on the Internet and specializes only in genealogy. The postings are separated by surnames worldwide and by U.S. state and county postings. The vast surname postings online are collected for you in one handy place. For example, in checking one of my dead end lines, the Dupuy family of colonial South Carolia, I can check the variant spellings and the geographic locales the family is documented in quite easily. The links lead me to postings on Roots Web and other family websites. Five million links help us all to network and continue to improve our accuracy on our family history data!

Missouri Death Records 1910-1955

An online database of digitized death certificates from 87 counties in Missouri is online at http://www.sos.mo.gov/archives/resources/deathcertificates/

The site includes stillborns, which is helpful for researchers looking at gaps in the birth year sequence of children in families. Remember, on average, in the years before widespread birth control, a baby is to be expected every two years. I know that I have several families in other states, where having such a database online would be helpful in answering the question of whether there were other births or not.

You can search by last name alone, or limit your search by county. The digitized certificates are very clear and useful. The index is complete for 1910- 1955 and the state expects to continue to add to the database, which has been very successful with almost two million hits reported.

All on One Page!!!

You know keeping up with ALL of the latest genealogy news is tough! I found a site today to help us all out- all of your usual sites have links here on ONE PAGE!!!! Check out http://rssgenealogy.com.

You'll recognize the names- Ancestry, Family Search, Everton's, Cyndislist, Family Tree magazine, BYU Family History and Genealogy newsletter, Family Tree DNA, the Library of Congress, the National Genealogical Society, and RootsWeb, to name a few. The site is claerly marked, easy to navigate and user friendly. Pay it a visit today and I would suggest putting it in your "favorites".

Success in the Search!!!!!

Land Record Reference

Another handy site for genealogists working across various times and geographic places- the Land Record Reference at http://user.rcn.com/deeds/landref.htm. Everything is covered from terms on the land records, deeds, and plat maps to the Homestead Act of 1862. The articles and links are clearly marked and authors are noted as well on articles with titles. There are a few speciality articles for Midwestern genealogists on Ohio and Indiana, as well as links for the U.S. Geographic Name look-up and Find Law. One more to add to your "favorites".

Abebooks.com

Guess what? I found another way to combine my love of books and genealogy! Check out Abebooks.com. You can purchase quite a few current genealogical research books for $1 each plus your shipping charge, such as Your Official American Online Guide to Genealogy (2nd edition) , Netting Your Ancestors, Unoffical Guide to Online Genealogy, and Sams Teach Yourself e-Genealogy Today. More geographically specific books cost you more but could be your opening in the proverbial "brick wall".

You are able to search Abebooks by title, author, keyword or ISBN, if you know it. The page was easy to use. There is also an Advanced Search option. This was like Christmas early for me, since I haunt the local book stores clearance racks and go to the library used books sales and clean up hard cover books on history regularly!