The Genealogy Guys Podcast & Genealogy Connection

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Fixed! Sep 30, 2008

Show notes

It looks like I was able to fix the problem with the missing interview. If you had already downloaded the bad version of episode #152, you should now be able to re-download it to get the corrected version. Sorry about the extra hassle!Drew

Problem with the last episode (#152) Sep 30, 2008

Show notes

It appears that the interview with Ann Mitchell didn't properly get included in the podcast episode, so I've deleted the episode and will re-upload it with a corrected version. Sorry for the problem!Drew

Interview problem Sep 30, 2008

Show notes

Oops...I'm getting reports that there is a problem with the Ann Mitchell interview. I'll try to figure out the problem. Drew

The Genealogy Guys Podcast #152 - 2008 September 28 Sep 30, 2008

Show notes

While George relaxes on a cruise ship off the Pacific coast of Mexico (ok, so he's doing some genealogy lecturing on the RootsMagic 2008 cruise), Drew handles the entire podcast himself (not even assisted by the cats). News items include the Louisiana Death Records Index for 1911-1956, a new partnering between 23andMe and Ancestry.com, GenealogyFreelancers.com (a new reverse auction company), the beta launch of Footnote's Footnote Pages service, the efforts by Google to digitize newspaper archives, the appointment of former eBay executive Eric Shoup as Ancestry.com's new Vice President of Product, the acquisition of Kindo by MyHeritage, the launch of Louis Kessler's new genealogy software review site GenSoftReviews, a site for those interested in access to Pennsylvania records (PaHR-Access), and Matt Combs' new "Surname Suggestion List" software.Additional listener e-mail asks about the proper etiquette for following up possible DNA surname project matches, how to get episodes of the Genealogy Guys Podcast onto a Zune mp3 player, why episodes of the Genealogy Guys Podcast have changed genres from "Speech" to "Podcast", feedback on the pronunciation of "Scituate" in Massachusetts, a query about genealogy software that would work with both a Windows system and an iPhone, a question about genealogy software designed to work with the new familysearch.org family trees, how a subscriber to Ancestry.ca got a database access problem resolved quickly, and some feedback about the new music used during the Genealogy Guys Podcast.Finally, Drew shares his interview with Ann Mitchell, Ancestry.com's expert on the new search facility, recorded at the recent Federation of Genealogical Societies' conference in Philly.

The Genealogy Guys Podcast #151 - 2008 September 16 Sep 17, 2008

Show notes

This week's news includes: The Association of Professional Genealogists (APG) recognized genealogists with achievement awards at the FGS Conference in Philadelphia; FGS also recognized two outstanding awards at the same conference; The Genealogy Seminar at the Allen County Public Library in Ft. Wayne, IN, is holding Military Symposium 2008 on 26 and 27 September, with speaker Marie Varrelman Melchiori, CG, CL, from NARA; the PublicProfiler site (http://www.publicprofiler.org/worldnames/Main.aspx) allows you to enter a surname and view a map showing the distribution across the world and statistics.Reader email this week includes: Loretta asks a question about the meaning of a tattoo; Sherry asks about locating older birth records in Texas and Indian Territory; Barb relates a story of how being in a particular place and time can inextricably alter your family history; and Barbara asks questions about Ancestry.com's World Archive Project. (Listen to the interview with The Generations Network's CEO, Tim Sullivan, in episode 150.) Drew interviews J. Mark Lowe, CG, at the FGS Conference. Mark is a candidate for president of the Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS). The Guys discuss the success of their local society's recent gala 50th anniversary banquet and annual Fall Seminar with Paula Stuart-Warren, CG.

The Genealogy Guys Podcast #150 - 2008 September 8 Sep 09, 2008

Show notes

CELEBRATING OUR 150TH EPISODE!The Guys are celebrating the 150th episode of the podcast which began on 4 September 2005. Thank you for listening and sharing with all of us!This week's news includes: The Generations Network, Inc., announced that Ancestry.com has launched the World Archives Project, "a global public indexing initiative to give everyone the opportunity to help preserve historical records" at http://www.ancestry.com/worldarchivesproject/; Geni.com (http://www.geni.com) announced that the firm has exceeded 1 million unique visitors to the site; the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), working through the General Services Administration (GSA), has announced plans to lease a new facility in St. Louis, Missouri, to house the Military Personnel records Center, with occupancy scheduled for March 2010; Ancestry.co.uk (http://www.ancestry.co.uk/) has been chosen to host the most comprehensive historical collection of London records -- 77 million names -- covering 500 years (ca. 1500-2006) online, beginning in early 2009. The Pew Internet & American Life Project has released new results about podcasting, reflecting significant increases in downloading podcasts. (See the PDF report at http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Podcast_2008_Memo.pdf.)Links that were omitted from the show notes in Episode #149 include:- Scottish genealogy records : http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk- Indexes to Scotland's censuses: http://www.ancestry.co.uk- The General Register Office for Scotland (GROS): http://www.gro-scotland.gov.ukListener email this week includes: Randy bought a Sansa Fuse MP3 player to listen to the podcast; Amelia shared a podcast from BBC4 in England, at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/tracingyourroots.shtml; Barb shared another reason for the changing of names -- scandal (see http://www.rood.net/Gen1-2.pdf); Kay shares information about testing for Indian ancestry, and a genetic testing company called DNAPrint Genomics, Inc. (http://www.ancestrybydna.com); Sharon discovered a wonderful genealogist through a mailing list who shared huge amounts of genealogical data with her; and Barb discusses a "possible paternity event" in her husband's family.George reviews an excellent new book by Kevan M. Hansen, the new second edition of Map Guide to German Parish Records: Grandduchy of Baden, published by Family Roots Publishing Company.

The Genealogy Guys Podcast #149 - 2008 August 31 Sep 01, 2008

Show notes

A correction to last week's story about the death of a Confederate widow can be found in last week's show notes.The news this week includes: an update about the collapsed project to digitise the UK's GRO's Birth, Marriage, and Death records from 1837 forward; the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI) will be moving its office to a new home in central Belfast; the National Archives of Australia in Canberra plans to make almost all 7 million immigration records available online in the next several years (click here to learn more); and a new genealogy social network site, Genetree, is up and running at http://www.genetree.com.This week's rich collection of listener email includes: Sharon's use of Bloglines.com to catch all of here URLs for her day's work; Valerie wrote to say she is 24 and a listener to the podcast (another young listener!); Laraine wrote to discuss her confusing marriage and birth situations for her Putnam family; Tom asked for opinions about when to prune the family tree; Betty asks about the benefits of subscribing to Genealogy.com, and The Guys ask for feedback from listeners; the Grand Traverse Genealogy Society has published a CD of cemeteries in its area at http://grandtraverseregion.com/gtags/cem_rural_flier.htm; The Guys' latest episode of "Down Under: Florida" is "The Miltons, and George's case study titled "The Milton Family Tragedy" has just been published in Family Chronicle Magazine; Michael shares information about his ancestor, John K. Zacherle, a TV horror show TV host from New York who was a candidate in the 1960 presidential election (listen to an MP3 of his campaign ad at http://www.zacherle.com/President.mp3); Gus reports that his niece, Alyssa Skalski, is possibly the youngest listener to this podcast at age 14; Rich asks about the inability to upload PDF files to the Ancestry.com famiy tree; Ben Sayer provides a terrific primer at his blof site (http://MacGenealogist.com) about secrets to digitally restoring family photos and uses one of Drew's treasured family photos as an example (He uses iPhoto for Mac but there are certainly other excellent PC and Mac programs, but Ben provides an excellent overview.); Maureen discusses George's article for Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter titled "The Legacy of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic"; Roger (Marathon Man) discusses multimedia file usage in Family Tree Maker; and Sean shares an intensive blog article he wrote titled "10 Essential Steps to Protecting Your Family History Data".Drew discusses the genealogical stories about Today Show hosts Meredith Vieira, Matt Lauer, and Al Roker with expert genealogist Maureen Taylor.Don't miss joining us for our 150th Episode!

The Genealogy Guys Podcast #148 - 2008 August 22 Aug 23, 2008

Show notes

This week's news includes: Alberta Martin [Oops, correction, this should have been Maudie Hopkins], 93, the last widow of a Civil War veteran, died Monday, 18 August 2008, in a nursing home in Enterprise, Alabama; Footnote.com (http://www.footnote.com) has announced membership price increases effective 1 September 2008 ($11.95 per month or $69.95 annual membership); American scientists have studied 32 people who lived through the 1918 influenza pandemic and have found that antibodies in their blood still protect them against the virus; and The Genealogy Gems Podcast, hosted by Lisa Louise Cooke, celebrated its 50th episode with an interview with NPR Radio's Prairie Home Companion actor Tim Russell, and featured comments from other podcast hosts, including The Guys.This week's listener email includes: the distinction between the words "immigration" and "emigration"; Patti opines about a family case in which mt-DNA testing might be used to refute the family myth that a female ancestor had Indian blood (and high cheekbones); more favorable comments about The Guys' newest episode of "Down Under: Florida" at RootsTelevision.com -- "The Miltons"; the oldest family tree dates back 3,000 years in the Lichtenstein Cave near Dorste, Lower Saxony, Germany, and Y-DNA samples taken from some of the 20 skeletons there have produced a match with 2 local villagers; Rich shares an interesting way of digitizing your photos in an article by David Pogue from the New York Times (click here to access the article); Kay asks George about his Cleveland (Bradley County) Tennessee connections; in the UK, a government-sponsored contracted project with German company Siemans to scan all of the birth, marriage, and death records in the GRO has collapsed less than half way through; Sharon asks for suggestions on how to better organize and focus her research; Gus asks for suggestions for finding his grandfather's burial location in or near Virginia, Minnesota; and Jason believes that, at age 26, he may be our youngest listener, and he is interested in career opportunities in Genealogy.Drew discusses his research into an Italian immigrant and his family members, and spelling variations that he uncovered.

The Genealogy Guys Podcast #147 - 2008 August 14 Aug 15, 2008

Show notes

This episode is dedicated to our dear friend, Tom Ryder, who passed away today in Port Charlotte, Florida.This week's news includes: Ancestry.com extends its global reach to China with an exclusive partnership with the Shanghai Library - the new site is http://www.jiapu.cn; and Ancestry has also added extensive new content, including Bremen, Germany, ships and sailors databases (in German).A new episode of "Down Under: Florida" has been released at RootsTelevision.com, starring The Guys. Click here to go directly to the episode about "The Miltons." Note: The Genealogy Guys Podcast's fans at Facebook.com got an email as soon as the new episode was released!Listener email this week included: Roger (Marathon Man) shared information about school censuses and cited a database of these from Kent County, Michigan, at http://data.wmgs.org/SchoolCensus/ with samples to view; Confederate service records are available and accessible at Footnote.com (various states are still being added); Kay shared another family story about a son who acidently shot his father; a listener asked about how to locate Web pages that have disappeared, and The Guys provided some methods, including the use of the Wayback Machine (http://www.archive.org/), a part of the fascinating Internet Archive; Richard shares a response from the Millennium Corporation about available genealogy software it produces for mobile devices; the USCIS has established a new genealogy program for obtaining immigration and naturalization records, rather than requesting them through the Freedom of Information Office - click here to go to the USCIS site; Connor has compiled an index to newspaper records and asks advice for how to disseminate the information; Laraine writes about her experiences visiting her old hometown of Marietta, Ohio, and the importance of citing sources; the Fulton County Genealogical Society has a new home for its genealogy collection in the Evergreen Community Library in Metamora, Ohio. In last week's episode, George reviewed a new book by Timothy N. Pinnick, Finding and Using African American Newspapers. Unfortunately, he included an incorrect URL for Tim Pinnick's website. It should have been http://www.blackcoalminerheritage.net. It's been corrected in last week's show notes, but please visit his site for details about the great little book.Drew discusses his new volunteer assignment as editor of the Federation of Genealogical Societies' Delegate Digest, an monthly email newsletter sent to the delegates of FGS member societies. This is a great benefit to having your society be a member of FGS.Drew also discusses CAPTCHAs (corrected spelling), the images containing letters and numbers that we all type in at Web sites to provide security from hackers. People are now working with OCR'd books to interpret problem characters and making the indexes correct.

The Genealogy Guys Podcast #146 - 2008 August 4 Aug 06, 2008

Show notes

This week's news includes: archaeologists are actively working to locate the identities of everyone interred at Fairview Cemetery, an African American cemetery in Staunton, Virginia; DNA Heritage (http://www.dnaheritage.com/) has succeeded in overcoming a patent claim in the U.K. that will allow them to continue providing genetic genealogy testing; Tribal Junction (http://www.tribaljunction.com/) has announced a new social networking and genealogy connections site; Synium Software (http://www.synium.de), makers of MacFamilyTree software, has announced the release of MobileFamilyTree, an app for Apple iPhone and iPod Touch products -- the app is $4.99 at the Apple iTunes store (http://www.itunes.com); Leister Productions (http://www.leisterpro.com/), makers of Reunion genealogy software, has announced that it is working on a version of Reunion for the iPhone and iPod Touch and, when ready, will offer it as an app in the iTunes store; Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/) and the Library of Congress (http://www.loc.gov) have been collaborating with a project called "The Commons" at http://www.flickr.com/commons/ where people can view photos, comment on them, and tag them. The Commons provides access to the LOC collection and more are being added, making this a premier destination on the web.Digital Genealogist, a terrific online e-zine, is published 6 times a year and delivered to your e-mailbox in PDF format. Both of The Guys write articles for DG and are joined by some of the greatest, most technology knowledgeable people in the genealogy community. Learn more at http://www.digitalgenealogist.com/. Our listener email this week includes: Tim Skinner, whose e-mail we read on episode #143 (7/7) concerning using Google Maps to trace ancestors' movements, wrote again to ask us to share the Web address (http://www.familytreeassistant.com) for his software, Map My Ancestors; Judy wrote to ask about the wisdom of adding digitized photos to Family Tree Maker and other programs; Michelle asked if NARA had information about substitute soldiers for both the Union and Confederate armies; Tim wrote about he availability of genealogy-specific back-up sites; Bill also wrote to tell us that FamilySearch (http://www.familysearch.org) has published Ohio Death Records (1905-1953) in their Record Search Pilot; Patti reports that she has been working on the Home Study Course offered by the National Genealogical Society and that, as a result of refocusing on her source citations, she has made a huge breakthrough AND has been doing the Genealogy Happy Dance; and Sharon is a new fan and asked for The Guys' recommendations for the best genealogy database software program. Joel Weintraub, an association of Steve Morse and the One Step Website, wrote to describe another technique for digitizing microfilm. View the article at Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter of 19 February and please read the comments, especially those of Joel's.George reviewed a great new book by Timothy N. Pinnick, Finding and Using African American Newspapers. George has been aggressively promoting the addition of African American newspapers and publications to libraries' and archives' collections. The John F. Germany Public Library has been trying to obtain copies of African American newspapers on microfilm and microfilm from the University of Florida's libraries in Gainesville, and has met with resistance and refusal for several years. I and other people believe that the hoarding of such materials and refusing to allow for replication (at the JFG's offered expense) is an unconscionable act that prevents the open access of information to the originating community. Tim Pinnick's book is an excellent reference for every genealogical library collection and for every African-ancestored individual who seeks to learn more about his or her ancestors' records as included in newspapers. More information and an extract of the book are available at Tim Pinnick's website at http://www.blackcoalminerheritage.net and atGregath Publishing Company at http://www.gregathcompany.com/. Congratulations, Tim, on a very fine addition to our reference resources!The Guys talked about three conferences at which you can meet one or both of them.

The Federation of Genealogical Societies Conference will take place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on 3-6 September 2008. Online registrations end on 22 August 2008 but registrations will continue on-site at the conference. Look at http://www.fgsconference.org/rebate/ to learn about society discounts when multiple members of your society attend!
The Florida Genealogical Society (Tampa) will celebrate its 50th Anniversary with a full-day Fall Seminar with the fabulous Paula Stuart-Warren giving four excellent lectures. Paula is a master genealogical researcher, author, and speaker. She also will provide the dinner speech at the Gala 50th Anniversary Banquet the night before. (Seating is limited.) For more information, please visit the FGS Tampa website at http://fgstampa.org.
The Florida State Genealogical Society will hold its annual conference on 14 and 15 November at the Sheraton - Orlando North in Maitland, Florida. The featured speaker is Jana Sloan Broglin, vice president of the Federation of Genealogical Societies, author, and nationally-recognized genealogical expert and speaker. Ms. Broglin will be joined by The Guys and 5 other great speakers for a wonderful two-day genealogical conference. For more information, please visit http://www.flsgs.org/.

Stay tuned for The Guys' 150th episode in just a few weeks. We have some surprises for that episode!

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