Serendipty “Friday” (today is Thursday)

Reason? I’ll be the least among four speakers at Heritage Quest Research Library’s OctoberFest on Saturday, October 10th. As it’s a 6-hour drive from Spokane, I’ll be heading over on Friday.

If you live near Sumner, and are not signed up for this exciting day, I don’t think it’s too late. Click to www.hqrl.com for information.

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Hubby and I attended a wonderful presentation last evening from the Spokane Chapter of the American Archaeology Association. Dr. Robert Neyland told us all about the H.L. Hunley, the Confederate submarine that sank the U.S.S. Housatonic and then sank herself.

Dr. Neyland related how Hunley had been found and recovered (in 2000) and was now undergoing restoration (which will take another 8 years!). Read all about it at www.hunley.org.  The most fascinating part was when he explained the recovery of the eight crew members…their bones and artifacts. At the above website they have posted photos of the cranial-face-feature reconstructions of all eight men. After all the forensic work was done, these veterans were buried under the Confederate flag in a Charleston, SC, cemetery and several descendants attended the event.

If you think you, or somebody you know, might be a descendant of a sailor aboard the H.S. Hunley, do some Googling and you’ll find plenty of exciting information on this particular brave ancestor.

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Did you know:  The membership of every organization is made up of four types of bones:

1.  Wish Bones  —  These “bones” sit around and wish every one else would do the work.

2.  Jaw Bones  —  These “bones” do all the tal king but little of the work.

3.  Knuckle Bones  —  These “bones” knock everything that everybody else tries to do.

4.  Back Bones  —  These “bones” are the ones who get under the load and do all the work.

Which kind of “bone” are you????

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Above the entrance to the University of Colorado Library is this carved phrase:  “He who knows only his own genealogy remains always a child.”   Isn’t that an interesting homile to be carved over the door of a university library?

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Just discovered a new-to-me website that will help in the finding of local or still-alive people. Give it a try at www.blackbookonline.com.  The home page describes this as “the free public records search site.”

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Another way-cool website that my brother shared with me is this….. Google this phrase:  “22 Maps and Charts that will surprise you.”  Posted by Ezra Klein on 11 Mar 2015, he explains:  “A good visualization helps you see what the data is telling you. The best visualizations help you see things you never thought the data would tell you. These 22 charts and maps were, at least for me, in that category: all of them told me something I found surprising. Some of them genuinely changed the way I think about the world.”  Really, now, try it you’ll like it.

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Have you heard of Thomas MacEntee’s The Genealogy Fairy? Thomas explains:  “Back in March 2015, I announced a new concept as part of my genealogy business: The Genealogy Fairy. I have seen a huge increase in business revenue related to affiliate marketing and I wanted a way to say thankyou to those who continue to support my business and believe in what I do to improve the way we search for our family history. 

What Thomas has done is to set aside 5% of affiliate income for some type of grant program. These Genealogy Fairy grants are open to all genealogical and historical organizations, especially non-profits, and to individual genealogists who seek to fund specific projects related to genealogy and family history. 

If this offer intrigues you, click to www.genealogybloggers.com/update-genealogy-fairy.com. Or just Google “the genealogy fairy.”  What a good guy to make such a great offer.

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Been wanting to make a family book? An ONLINE family book? Like with Shutterfly?  I was just introduced to the Olive Tree blog:   Olive Tree Genealogy, created by Lorine in February 1996 was started to bring genealogists FREE genealogy records. Olive Tree Genealogy has more than 1,900 pages of free genealogy records to help you find your brick-wall ancestors and build your family tree. In a post of 1 Sep 2015, Lorine pointed to three YouTube tutorials on how to do a family book using Shutterfly. Why not take a peek?

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Unserious Thought for Today:  Broken pencils are pointless. 

Cyndi Ingle Visits Eastern Washington

Cyndi Ingle, of www.CyndisList.com fame, was the presenter at  annual Fall Workshop of the Eastern Washington Genealogical Society.  And she was, of course, wonderful.

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As she arrived into Spokane on Friday, and had never been to the Eastern Washington Branch of “our” Washington State Archives, I arranged tours for her. Here is Cyndi with Lee Pierce (red shirt), archivist for the “downstairs” or paper archives part of the facility out on the EWU campus in Cheney, and with Harold Stoehr (green shirt) who manages and maintains the “upstairs” or digital archives part of the building. They were both so very gracious and informative and both Cyndi and I thanked them profusely for their time.

Cyndi was especially impressed with these two wrapped sets of disks………. Harold took us into the very innermost vault and let Cyndi hold the external backup to the entire contents of the state’s digital archives.  (Don’t panic; there are multiple backups.) Cyndi was big-eyed-impressed with being able to hold such a treasure in her hands.

Cyndi hails from Puyallup and we here in Washington are very proud of our own home-grown bigwig celebrity in the world of genealogy. I was happy to show her some “eastern Washington” resources in person, especially our one-of-a-kind Washington State Digital Archives.

Serendipity Friday — 2 October 2015

Did your ancestors settle in western states and were first landowners? If so, you can find the information about their land at www.historygeo.com. Arizona, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Washington, and Wyoming land records were recently added to the database. I don’t have ancestors in those states but I did find great-great-grandfather in Kansas. Doing a search on some surnames of those I know settled in these areas produced a lot of results. Check this database for your ancestors. Read the article about these 3.3 million original landowners added to historygeo.com.

Blog.historygeo.com/2015/06/08/western-states-added-to-first-landowners-project/ –

(Jeanine Barndt is the Head Librarian for the Heritage Quest Research Library in beautiful downtown Sumner, Washington; this bit is from the HQRL Newsletter for Fall 2015.)

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I learn history best from historical fiction. And to my ken, some authors of this sort are better than others. Edward Rutherfurd is one of the best, in my opinion. The following blurb from his book New York gives a brand new insight into those old Civil War soldier photos that we prize so highly…. The year is 1863 (page 413) and then 1871 (page 488):

“His photographic  studio  was well equipped….. like the other photographers on the Bowery, his bread-and-butter business in recent years had been taking quick portraits of young men standing proudly, or sheepishly, in their unaccustomed uniforms, before they went off to fight again the South. Quicker than the old daguerreotype to take, easy to reproduce on paper, he’d  get thirty a day sometimes. It paid the rent. At first, these small “carte-de-visite”-size portraits had seemed jolly enough, like taking someone’s picture at the seaside. Gradually, however, as the terribly casualties of the Civil War had mounted, he had realized that the dull little portraits he was taking were more like tombstones, last mementoes, before some poor fellow vanished from his family forever. And if he tried to make each humble one as splendid as he could, he did not tell his customers the reason.”

The character was explaining why he didn’t get a photo of Lincoln speaking the Gettysburg Address…… Lincoln was so brief and:  “It had been no easy business getting a picture in the Civil War. The photographs were always taken in 3-D, which meant that two plates had to be inserted simultaneously into a double camera, one to the left, one to the right. The glass plates had to be quickly cleaned, coated with collodion, then, while still wet, dipped in silver nitrate before being put into the camera. The exposure time might only be a few seconds, but then on had to rush the plates, still wet, into the mobile darkroom. Quite apart from the difficulties of having people in motion during the seconds of exposure, the whole process was so cumbersome that taking pictures of battlefield action was almost impossible. “

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Continue reading

Archives Month at Washington State Regional Archives

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Archives Month celebrates WA bridges

If it’s October, then our State Archives is celebrating its annual Archives Month. This year’s theme is Washington’s historic bridges, those indispensable links for moving people and goods around the state. I’m a big fan of our bridges and have my favorites, as I’m sure you do.

I want to give you a head’s up that as part of the month-long celebration, the main State Archives in Olympia and the regional branches in Bellevue, Bellingham, Cheney and Ellensburg will host open houses or Basics of Historical Research workshops on Saturday, October 24. Contact the State Archives at (360) 586-1492 or research@sos.wa.gov for more information about these events. Another research workshop will be held October 10 from 9 a.m. to noon at the Floyd Norgaard Cultural Center in Stanwood. For more info about the Stanwood workshop, contact Janette Gomes at the Northwest Regional Archives at janette.gomes@sos.wa.gov or (360) 650-2813.

A great-looking free poster helps commemorate Archives Month. The poster (shown here) is available in the State Archives headquarters in Olympia, the front desk of our Executive Office at the Capitol and at all regional Archives branches, as well as several local historical societies, universities with archives/library collections, museums and heritage centers. Get your poster while supplies last! If you want to see the digital version of the new poster, just go here. The poster was designed by Archives’ own Benjamin Helle.

 

If you want a larger version of the poster go here: http://www.sos.wa.gov/_assets/archives/2015ArchivesMonthFINAL_300_5x7.jpg

Seattle Genealogical Society Tip of the Week

TIP OF THE WEEK – WORLDCAT

Suppose you just learned about a book on a subject or a family that you were researching, a book that you had not heard of before?  Wouldn’t it be great if there was a quick & easy way to find the library closest to you that had that book?!

Well, there is.  It’s called WorldCat and it’s the world’s largest library catalog, literally a global catalog of library collections.

On this website, https://www.worldcat.org/, you can enter the title or the author of the book to find a list of libraries that hold that book.  By entering your zip code, you can quickly determine whether a nearby library has that book.  Seattle Public Library, the King County Library System, the University of Washington libraries and the Fiske Genealogical Library are all participants in WorldCat.  (The SGS Library is not at this time because the costs have been deemed too great.)

If no nearby library has the book, you can still obtain information from a library that does have it, via interlibrary loan, or by requesting photocopies of relevant pages. WorldCat can also be used to search for all books on a given topic or subject, thereby discovering books that you didn’t know about before

Seattle Genealogical Society News

Coming Soon!

SGS 2015 Fall Seminar
Saturday, October 17
Nordic Heritage Museum
There is only a little more than 2 weeks before the SGS 2015 Fall Seminar on Saturday, October 17.   Don’t miss out on your chance to hear nationally renowned genealogist and widely acclaimed speaker Dr. Tom Jones present “The Family History Detective: Finding Solutions to Your Toughest Research Problems.”

The four seminar presentations include:  •Can Complex Research Problems Be Solved Solely Online?
•Five Ways to Prove Who Your Ancestor Was (Some Reliable and Others Not Reliable
•Inferential Genealogy: Deducing Ancestors’ Identities Indirectly
•Solving the Mystery of the Disappearing Ancestor

Register now!  Mail or bring in the seminar registration form you recently received or register online by visiting http://www.seattlegenealogicalsociety.org/content/2015-fall-seminar-registration  Deadline for ordering a lunch is October 13.

Seminar registration fee: $50 for SGS members, $60 for non-members

Special Interactive Classes Taught by Dr. Tom Jones
Sunday, October 18
Seattle Genealogical Society

Only 12 spots remain available for the Sunday special classes.  Register now to secure your chance to work with Dr. Jones in a small group setting.  The two classes include:  •Research Questions and Hypotheses: Planning an Exhaustive Search
•Finding Immigrant and Migrant Origins
Special class registration fee: $35 for SGS members, $40 for non-members

Go to http://seattlegenealogicalsociety.org/fallseminar for full details on our fall seminar and special classes.

See you at the seminar!

BOARD POSTPONES PUBLICATION OF THE SGS BULLETIN

Despite our best efforts over the past 6 months, we have been unable to find someone to fill the currently vacant position of Director of Publications. Continue reading

Whitman County Gen Society News Flash

WCGS

Whitman County Genealogical Society

Saturday, October 24, 8:30 – 1:30, with lunch

is hosting a seasonal seminar featuring:

Janet Norby: Salem Witch Trials and Their Consequences for our Country. Janet utilizes information about personal ancestors who participated in the trials and searches for an understanding of the cultural influences that
prompted them to do so. With discussion to follow.

Jill Nock and Barb Crossler: DAR presentation includes historical background, info on their chapter, types of service that can be proven, documents needed and places to search. With discussion to follow.

Barbara Bradley Petura: Preserving Genealogical Research & Family History for Future Generations. Barbara will give us ideas and show us internet sites where we will be able to enter our research for others to find and expand on in years to come. With discussion to follow.

Date: Saturday, October 24, 2015
Times: 08:30 am: Registration
09:00 am-10:00 am Janet Norby: Salem Witch Trials
10:15 am-12:15 pm Barb Crossler and Jill Nock: DAR
12:30 pm-01:30 pm Barbara Petura: Preserving Genealogical Research &
Family History for Future Generations
Lunch: 12:15 pm-01:30 pm during Barb Petura’s talk we will have a soup lunch with a vegetarian option
Place: Ridge Pointe Clubhouse, 1402 SE Fancy Free Drive, enter from 900 Bishop Blvd. (which is across the street from the Hospital’s red Emergency
Entrance sign), then turn left immediately

Cost: Pre-Registration, by October 17: $30.00 including lunch & snacks
Registration, after October 17 or at the door: $35.00 including lunch & snacks

If you have any questions or need more information contact President, Sue Kreikemeier at:
aerocraft@completebbs.com or 509-635-1303
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REGISTRATION FORM:
Name: ___________________________________
Email: ______________________________________ or Phone: _________________
Make checks payable to W.C.G.S and send to: WCGS, P.O. Box 393, Pullman, WA 99163…….For planning purposes, please have pre-registrations in by October 17.

Kittitas County Gen Society News Flash

 

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Kittitas Co. Genealogical Soc. Meeting  —  Monday Oct 5 at 7 pm

NOT AT 413 N Main, Ellensburg NOT

MEETING IS AT HAL HOLMES CENTERRUBY ST & 2ND AVE, Ellensburg WA

We’ll have VERY GOOD Program and Refreshments, as usual.

 Thanks to Erik Bakke for suddenly trying to adapt our computer to Hal Holmes, as our former meeting room no longer available?

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Call Mary Christensen at 509-925-9104 if you could substitute occasionally  in our genealogy library to help keep our library open 10 am – 4 pm Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday.

Training will be provided and this new knowledge could be what takes you “up to the next level” in YOUR family history research