News and Updates

Who Do You Think You Are on NBC will be kicking off the third season On Friday, February 3rd at 8/7 Central time. Watching the trailer has me quite excited to tune in for this season. Call me a sentimental or whatever you want, but these programs are the PERFECT example of why I do what I do in the genealogy field. If this season is anything like previous seasons I promise.. No, I guarantee that at least half, if not almost all of the episodes will in the least entertain, touch you and might even move you.

Pardon the passionate introduction to this program (for those of you not familiar with the series), but if you’re so inclined this might be one of the best shows to watch with your family. This season begins with the ancestry study of Martin Sheen. Anyone interested in family tree research must tune in for this program that is sure to be an inspirational show. The introductory video preview can be seen here:

I’ve included a short description of the individuals below and a link to their Wikipedia page because everyone is always curious about who some of the individuals are. The names are in no particular order and do not correspond to the order of the episodes:

Martin Sheen – Actor with a long career from 1967 to the present. Father of well-known actors Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen.
Blair Underwood (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blair_Underwood) Actor best known for his roles in The Event, LA Law and other television titles. He has also appeared in dozens of other television shows and motion pictures.

Marisa Tomei – Requiring little introduction this sweetheart began appearing in As the World Turns in 1983 followed by several other appearance before breaking out big for the film My cousin Vinny in 1992, earning her an Academy Award. Still active in film and still making people smile.

Helen Hunt – Another incredibly well-known actress, Helen is widely famous for the television series Mad About You and feature motion pictures such as Twister, As Good as It Gets, What Women Want and many others.

Rob Lowe – Excuse the book prop (I’m not being compensated for it) but the connection between Rob Lowe and the Sheen/Estevez family from the first episode is one of the many fascinating parts of his recent book Stories I Only Tell My Friends – is Excellent. The film and TV star has a resume too long to list but we’ll say it begins with the movie The Outsiders in 1983 and the television film Drew Peterson: Untouchable from this year.

Edie Falco – Best known for her multi-award winning performance in the HBO series The Sopranos has also appeared in numerous other television and film works.

Reba McEntire – The unmistakable voice of Reba returns to television in the third season of Who Do You Think You Are. This country music icon and well-respected actress won’t be acting or singing this time (is there a song involved?) – We’ll see the real Reba McEntire as she follows the clues to bring her back to her roots.

Jerome Bettis – A.K.A The Bus is one of the most well-known Pittsburg Steelers of the generation, playing ball in Pittsburgh from 1996 to 2006. A first round draft pick in 1993, retired after winning the Super Bowl in 2006. The 6th-leading rusher of all time in the NFL will be exploring his genealogical past with up this season.

Rita Wilson – Well-known actress and wife of over 20 years to Tom Hanks will likely be investigating her family tree overseas with roots in Greece and Albania. First appearing in an episode of The Brady Bunch in 1972, she has been a highly successful actress, Broadway performer, musician and film producer.

Rashida Jones – Daughter of Quincy Jones, Rashida has made a name for herself. This Harvard graduate has starred in many recent television and movie efforts you might have heard of such as The Office, Boston Public and a movie called The Social Network.

Jason Sudeikis – Saturday Night Live and 30 Rock star also appeared in films such as What Happens in Vegas and in Horrible Bosses.

Paula Deen – Celebrity cook and restaurateur, author of numerous cookbooks and occasional guest judge on television reality series Top Chef.

Visit the NBC Who Do You Think You Are web page here.

We will be discussing the episodes here on Geneosity.com from this post and we are looking forward to your comments.

A frequent complaint in genealogy research is “I would love to learn about my family tree but I can’t afford professional help or the fees all these websites charge”.     The amount of money you can spend is inversely proportional to the combined volume of time you’re able to spend doing it AND how resourceful you are.   Money and time must be spent and that is just a fact.   Play it smart, however, and there are some great things that can be accomplished with relatively little money. (more…)

The annual Federation of Genealogical Societies conference was held from September 7th-10th at the Prairie Capital Convention Center in Springfield, Illinois. The conference was a terrific event featuring a generous list of exhibitors of all kinds and provided DOZENS of presentations from highly respected people in the genealogy community DAILY.

If you missed the conference this is one that I will highly recommend attending in the future if you’re able. Booths for FamilySearch.org, Ancestry.com, Achives.com and many, many other businesses and organizations were equipped with great personnel to answer questions. I met lots of people, visited a lot of booths and attended some of the many speakers that delivered a wealth of great information. The conference was well worth the trip and I’m thankful that I attended.

One of the greatest contributions that I brought home was the USB flash drive included in my welcome packet that contains the syllabus for every presentation at the conference. The conference syllabus is over 500 pages (PDF format) of material covering every session. Not only do I have my personal notes from the sessions that I was able to attend but I have the outlines, references, website links and many of the tables and illustrations from all of the sessions. There were at least five other sessions that I would have loved to attend but could not – but on the flash drive I have the syllabus from the ones I missed, and each contains a terrific amount of material. Audio files recorded for most of the presentations are also available to be ordered online. See www.fgs.org for details.

A family tree researcher in the United States often overlooks or is unaware that we are capable of searching area specific search engines. Google, Yahoo and Bing along with many of the other search engines focus on the local relevance of searches as a high priority. While it is simple to locate information in California while you are sitting in New York, several of the results and sponsored links on the results page will still be local in nature because. As a genealogy researcher, however, you’ll be fascinated to learn that if you were searching for something in Ireland or Great Britain from New York there’s another secret method you should be trying. Your genealogy research in other countries can truly be attempted online.

Google has a dedicated site designed specifically for literally hundreds of places. Google.com is the most popular version of their search engine, serving most of the English speaking world – in the United States anyhow. There are various other Google search engines serving other countries that can be very helpful. For instance, if you’re searching for sites pertaining to the Walsh family but you’re really hoping to locate potential family members in Ireland you may be better off searching Google’s side dedicated to Ireland. So, keying in a search on Google.com for “walsh family tree” will net similar results as if you search the same terms from www.google.ie (Ireland). You will however, find a button to click at the top of the search results page that offers the same search but only pages from Ireland. The same goes for searching Google.co.uk (Great Britain), Google.com.au (Australia), Google.fr (France) and so on.

There are also search engines that exist in other countries (many available only in the foreign language native to that country). Russia has a search engine called Yandex. Another search engine called Buscapique covers several areas including Mexico and Central America, Brazil and several other areas. If you’re interested in seeking out other search engines specific to a region or a country you may just search your favorite search engine for “search engine Germany” or whatever area you’re looking within. A useful resource is the Big Search Engine Index which can be found at http://www.search-engine-index.co.uk/

Breaking through the language barriers can be difficult but one of the best tools around is Google Translate. If you use Google and have a custom home page then one option you have is to include Google Translate on your home search page. If you don’t have it then look it up. It has proven useful over and over again. It will translate entire paragraphs at once and even recognizes non-arabic alphabet letters and characters such as Chinese. Try this and you’ll quickly pick up on the main words that signal the type of record you’re looking for even if you don’t have any prior knowledge of the language.

Frequently you can also find English versions of websites. Look for forms of the word English on a site nearby the navigation items along the top or sides of a page and click on it.

Genealogy research in Ireland can be uniquely challenging. Since public records only began being collected in 1864 it can be very difficult to locate the origins of individuals that lived even into the mid-1900s. Public records of Irish births, deaths and marriages prior to 1864 do not exist. There are, however, existing church records, wills, property and land records for periods prior to 1864. There are a number of ways to locate this information if you know the approximate dates and location of residence at the time. (more…)

Do you own any old pictures that were taken of famous people, taken at historic events, or snapshots of groups or individuals being honored for something special? Please forward scans or other electronic copies. A clear digital photo of the old documents works nicely too.

The Shoot ‘Em Up project also aims to collect and exhibit the names of those honored for just about anything, including plaques on walls and building faces, monuments, and inscriptions found anywhere.  Names engraved or on plaques at the police department, fire department, schools, churches, clubs, at the lodge or anywhere individuals were recognized. Any old group photographs complete with names. Old bulletins, leaflets, books, booklets, pamphlets are also welcome but must include the cover and the copyright page so that we can obtain permission to use them. Any publication submitted must be dated in some way, and should be of antiquity.  Shoot it with your camera, your phone;  It doesn’t matter as long as the names are legible.   If you don’t see anything like this on any regular basis and want to join the fun, do a cemetery drive-by and capture a few headstones.  Show that you’re outgoing and drive through rattling off a handful of pictures.

All pictures submitted must include the location, anything additional you can tell us about the picture and a date taken.  Be as specific as possible.  Capture the entire inscription so that we know what the names are being displayed for.

Correspondence should be sent to “shootem” at geneosity.com
Please forward electronic files to the email address with the descriptions and other information and we will post it to the site as soon as possible.

—————————————————————–
Post below includes photos and the names listed of a Civil War Memorial located at Mt. Hope Cemetery in Sidney, Illinois.

Something that happens too often is that while researching your family tree we find ourselves looking at the image records over and over again. That’s something that I do frequently. I always prefer to review the original record when it’s not too inconvenient to do so. Original image records are one of the greatest things brought to the internet for genealogy research. Things that can be seen with your own eyes are the handwritten records of the census, voter registrations, draft cards, passport applications and more.

(more…)