Genealogy information can be found in many places. Most
genealogists know about and use the various online sites that have
census records, vital records, pension application files, and
user-contributed family trees online. These are great resources but they
are not the only ones available to us. For instance, have you used
JSTOR? JSTOR
is an online library of hundreds of years of academic research and
presently contains more than 1,900 journal titles in more than 50
disciplines. The web site started in 1995 as a site containing back
issues of academic journals. Since then, JSTOR has grown to include
books and primary sources, and current issues of journals.
A quick search for “genealogy” on the JSTOR web site produced 105,889 “hits” to that word.
As always, I searched for some of the surnames in my own family tree.
Here is one that I found that can serve as a typical example of the
information found on JSTOR:
JOURNAL ARTICLE Eastman’s Maternal Ancestry: Letter from Charles Alexander Eastman to H. M. Hitchcock, September 8, 1927
A. LAVONNE BROWN RUOFF
Studies in American Indian Literatures
Series 2, Vol. 17, No. 2, Honoring A. Lavonne Brown Ruoff (SUMMER 2005), pp. 10-17
Published by: University of Nebraska Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20737262
Page Count: 8
JSTOR provides full-text searches of more than 1,900 journals and
more than a few of those are journals published by some of the most
respected historical societies of our time. Most of the journals are
published online on JSTOR about 3 to 5 years after publication in print.
However, if a journal’s publishers agree, journals may be published
even earlier.
Journals available in JSTOR typically do not contain lists of
individual residents of an area. However, they are very useful for:
Researching historical figures, places, and events
Finding state- and region-specific information and history
Learning about immigration patterns, political movements, and social issues of the day
Some of the available online journals include:
The Arkansas Historical Quarterly published by the Arkansas Historical Association
Massachusetts Historical Review
Michigan Historical Review
Virginia Magazine of History and Biography
Wisconsin Magazine of History
Tennessee Historical Quarterly
The above is an abbreviated list; there are many more.
JSTOR is a subscription web site although it is possible to read up
to three articles at no charge. Plans start at $9.99 per month or $99
per year if paid one year in advance. However, many libraries have
subscriptions to JSTOR so it is possible to gain free access by visiting
a local library in person or, in some cases, accessing JSTOR remotely
by first logging onto your library’s web site and using its “gateway” to
JSTOR. More than 7,000 academic institutions, public libraries,
research institutions, museums, and schools in more than 150 countries
have access.
JSTOR is available at: http://www.jstor.org.
"My
grandfather was caramel-skinned with black eyes and thick, dark hair,
and until he discovered that he was adopted, he had no reason to suspect
that he was not the son of two poor Mexicans as he’d always been told.
When he found his adoption papers, according to family lore, he pestered
the nuns at the Dallas orphanage where he had lived as an infant for
the name of his birth mother. Name in hand, at 10 years old, he hopped a
bus to Pennsylvania, met his birth mother, and found out that he was
actually Syrian.
At least that’s what we thought until my Aunt Cat mailed a tube of her spit in to AncestryDNA.
Genetic
testing suggested that my aunt’s genetic makeup was only a tiny bit
Middle Eastern—16 percent, not the 50 percent you might expect if your
father was a full-blooded Syrian, as my grandfather believed himself to
be. The rest of her Ancestry breakdown provided some explanation, but
mostly more confusion. While we typically think of the Caucasus as
countries on the Black and Caspian seas like Turkey and Armenia,
Ancestry’s test also said it includes Syria. According to Ancestry, the
Caucasus accounted for another 15 percent of my Aunt Cat’s DNA. What
about the other 20 percent? One line-item stood out as something my aunt
hadn’t expected, based on what she knew about either of her parents:
She was 30 percent Italian-Greek. My mother’s test revealed similar
results.
This caused a minor family scandal.My
grandfather’s mother was born in Pennsylvania, but she had lived in an
insular Syrian community that never really assimilated. She became
pregnant as a teen by her father’s best friend. The assumption had
always been that he was Syrian, too. If we weren’t who we thought we
were, well, then, who were we?
“I guess we never knew the name
of Dad’s father,” my aunt told me, bemused. Suddenly it seemed as
though all along we had been missing a gigantic puzzle piece of
information about our family tree. At least, my aunt quipped, this was a
solid explanation for why she loved pasta.
It’s right there in the fine print of any consumer DNA test, if you bother to read it: DNA testing can come with identity-disrupting surprises,
be it an unexpected relative, genetic condition, or, in our case,
heritage. But something about this particular surprise didn’t feel quite
right."
My Aunt Catis
our family’s amateur genealogist, and she has logged hundreds of hours
both on Ancestry.com and in my grandmother’s attic, piecing together the
story of our family tree. She’s found countless third, fourth, and
fifth cousins with ties to Syria, but no one from either Italy or
Greece. In her twenties, she even visited my grandfather’s biological
mother and aunt. She recalled them passing around a hookah, yelling in
Arabic, and expressing repulsion at the American-style cold cut platter
served at a community function. Given how segregated the family was, it
seemed like a stretch, she told me, to imagine that anyone had ever had
so much as a friendly conversation with an Italian. I suspected
the error might lay not in my family narrative, but in the DNA test
itself. So I decided to conduct an experiment. I mailed my own spit
samples to AncestryDNA, as well as to 23andMe and National Geographic.
For each test I got back, the story of my genetic heritage was
different—in some cases, wildly so.
My
AncestryDNA test revealed that I, too, had geographic roots in the
Middle East, the Caucasus, and Southern Europe, along with the expected
big dose of Scandinavian from my very Norwegian father. Weirdly, though,
my percentages of Middle Eastern and Caucasus were almost as high as my
mom and aunt’s, though you would expect them to be closer to half.
It
got more confusing from there. My test through National Geographic
(which partners with the DNA sequencing company Helix for its test) gave
me even more links to the Middle East, with 16 percent of my DNA from
Asia Minor, 6 percent from the Persian Gulf and 9 percent something
called “Jewish Diaspora.” Unlike AncestryDNA, National Geographic’s test
assigns your heritage to broad regions instead of modern nation-states.
But I could infer that, according to National Geographic, I was less
Scandinavian based on my percentage of Northwestern European. I was also
more Southern European and, for fun, now had a good chunk of Eastern
European thrown in there, too.
23andMe’s
ancestry results were the most confounding of all. It found that I was
only 3 percent Scandanavian, a number that, based on my recent family
history, I know is flatly wrong. It also found I was only 5.5 percent
Middle Eastern and a whopping 62.6 percent Northwestern European. And no
Eastern European at all.
I also uploaded my 23andMe data to GenCove,
a small ancestry-test startup founded by scientists. Based on the exact
same data that 23andMe had crunched, GenCove reported that 8 percent of
my DNA was from the Indian subcontinent. 23andMe had found I had no
South Asian DNA at all.
Fourtests,
four very different answers about where my DNA comes from—including
some results that contradicted family history I felt confident was fact.
What gives?
There are a few different factors at play here.
Genetics
is inherently a comparative science: Data about your genes is
determined by comparing them to the genes of other people.
As
Adam Rutherford, a British geneticist and author of the excellent book
“A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived,” explained to me, we’ve got
a fundamental misunderstanding of what an ancestry DNA test even does.
“They’re
not telling you where your DNA comes from in the past,” he told me,
“They’re telling you where on Earth your DNA is from today.” Ancestry,
for example, had determined that my Aunt Cat was 30 percent Italian by
comparing her genes to other people in its database of more than six million people, and finding presumably that her genes had a lot of things in common with the present-day people of Italy. Heritage
DNA tests are more accurate for some groups of people than others,
depending how many people with similar DNA to yours have already taken
their test. Ancestry and 23andMe have actually bothpublished papers about how their statistical modeling works.
As
Ancestry puts it: “When considering AncestryDNA estimates of genetic
ethnicity it is important to remember that our estimates are, in fact,
estimates. The estimates are variable and depend on the method applied,
the reference panel used, and the other customer samples included during
estimation.”
That the data sets are primarily made up of
paying customers also skews demographics. If there’s only a small number
of Middle Eastern DNA samples that your DNA has been matched against,
it’s less likely you’ll get a strong Middle Eastern match. “Different
companies have different reference data sets and different algorithms,
hence the variance in results,” a spokesman from 23andMe told me.
“Middle Eastern reference populations are not as well represented as
European, an industry-wide challenge.”
As
a person of Syrian descent, the British genealogist Debbie Kennett told
me, my test was simply not going to be as accurate as fellow Americans
whose relatives skew more European. “The tests are mainly geared for an
American audience, and they tend to not have a lot of Middle Eastern
ancestry,” she said.
Likewise, Kennett said, because
relatively few English people have taken tests from American companies
like Ancestry or 23andMe, residents of the U.K. are likely to find less
useful results.
“A lot of
English people come up with a low percentage of British. My dad was only
8 percent British and most of his ancestors as far back as I can trace
came back from Great Britain,” she told me. “People in America come up
with much higher percentage of British, often.”
Another
anecdote that stuck with me came from my friend Alexis Madrigal.
Initially, he said, his Mexican family came up as Arab North African,
which was surprising. As 23andMe refined its test and its data set grew,
it also refined the results: Now, he was descended from Jewish people
from Southern Europe. The number of Madrigals in central Spain had long
led the family to suspect that their migratory path to Mexico had at
some point passed through this region. As more people took the test, the
picture of where his family was “from” changed. The Canadian
bioethicist Timothy Caulfield shared a similar story. At first a DNA
test revealed he was entirely Irish, but as the data set changed, he
gradually became less Irish.
When we talk about “ancestry,” we
also don’t always mean the same thing. Ancestry just implies people
you’re descended from. But when? In America, we often mean whenever our
relatives came to the U.S. On my dad’s side, I expected to see a lot of
Scandinavian, because just a few generations ago my great grandparents
came from Norway to North Dakota. On my mom’s side, my grandmother has a
relative that came to America on the Mayflower. Both are what come to
mind when I think of my “ancestors,” but they are separated by several
generations and hundreds of years in time. Rutherford pointed out that
if we went 5oo years back, my ancestors were probably from all over
Europe.
“You and I are probably fifth cousins,” he said. Where
your ancestors are from depends on what period in time you’re talking
about. Why don’t I instead say I’m 50 percent North Dakotan and 50
percent Texan?
Tests
also differ from one another because they’re simply looking at
different things. The results of ancestry tests aren’t based on a
reading of your whole genome. The vast majority of every human’s DNA is
identical to any other human’s. Ancestry tests look at SNPs, the places
on your genome where an individual letter tends to differ between
people and give us insight into characteristics like disease, ancestry,
and physical appearance. When an SNP occurs within a gene, then, in
science-speak, that gene has more than one allele, or alternate forms of
a gene that exist in the exact same place on a chromosome. To make
matters more confusing, some tests look at mitochondrial and Y
chromosome DNA, while others don’t.
The CEO of GenCove, the
company where I had uploaded my 23andMe data to get drastically
different results, told me that even though he expects a fair amount of
variability between algorithms, even he was surprised at how differently
his company and 23andMe had interpreted my DNA data. He asked me to
also upload my Ancestry data, and ran both data sets again after
GenCove’s algorithm had been updated. The results were all over the map.
“To be honest I’m a little confused about what’s going on,” CEO Joseph Pickrell told me. Each
testing company is looking at different alleles from different parts of
the genome, and using different algorithms to crunch that data. (You
can see a list of how company tests differ here.) It’s worth mentioning that genetics is also probabilistic: just because you have the gene, doesn’t mean you have the trait.
“One
British company identified an allele in me that gave me ginger hair,
and 23andMe didn’t,” said Rutherford. “That’s a simple case where they
just used different alleles. That’s relatively simple to explain.”
And
sometimes, the algorithms might just get it wrong. Rutherford told me
his 23andMe test came back with a tiny amount of Native American DNA.
The finding actually linked up with one anecdote from his family lore,
about a relative of his father’s that was a Native American tribesman
and horse jumper in a British traveling circus.
“As
a geneticist, I am absolutely convinced that they’re not related,” he
told me. “It’s just statistical noise that happens to coincide with this
cool story.” Statistically, it’s unlikely that such tiny amount of
Native American DNA would have been enough to show up on Rutherford’s
test. A
big problem is that many of us have a basic misunderstanding of what
exactly we’re reading when Ancestry or 23andMe or National Geographic
sends us colorful infographics about how British or Irish or
Scandinavian we are. It’s not that the science is bad. It’s that it’s
inherently imperfect, an estimation based on how much our DNA matches up
with people in other places around the world, in a world where people
have been mixing and matching and getting it on since the beginning of
human history.
“You’re
creating different algorithms and you’re using different data sets as
your reference points, so it makes sense that you’re going to get some
different responses,” the Harvard geneticist Robert Green explained to
me, as I tried to make sense of my own DNA data. “It’s not that one’s
wrong and one’s right. It’s that there isn’t an agreed-upon approach to
pick the right number of markers and combine them mathematically.
Everyone is sort of just making it up as they go along.”
At
the continental level, said Kennett, ancestry testing is useful. It can
tell you pretty reliably whether you are African or Asian or European.
It can also reliably identify close familial relatives, as distant as
third or fourth cousins. Otherwise, Kennett said, “take it with a large
pinch of salt.”
Nearly everyone I interviewed for this story said
that, taken with the right mindset, ancestry DNA testing can be fun. As
more people take DNA tests and company data sets grow, the results from
those tests will also become more detailed and accurate. Anecdotally, I
saw this in my own results. Ancestry has the biggest DNA database, and
its interpretation of my DNA was also most in-line with what I expected.
“The
more people that take tests, the better the experience for all of us,”
an Ancestry spokesman told me. “Your DNA does not change, our science
does.” But consumer genetic testing companies have also fueled the
misunderstanding of their products, suggesting that those colorful
results reveal something profound about what makes you, you.
Take
this AncestryDNA ad about Kyle Merker, who, the ads explains, grew up
German, wearing a lederhosen and performing traditional German dances.
Then an AncestryDNA test revealed he was actually Scottish and Irish. He
bought a kilt.
Ancestry.com
is suggesting—quite heavy-handedly—that your DNA can define your
identity. A few changes to those As, Gs, Ts, and Cs, and all of the
sudden you’re river dancing. “Your
culture is not your genes,” said Caulfield. “But the message these
companies send is somehow where your genes are from matters. That’s not
necessarily constructive. The role of genes in who we are is very
complex. If anything, as genetic research moves forward we’re learning
that it’s even more complex than we thought.”
In truth, your
specific ancestors actually have relatively little impact on your DNA.
Some 99.99 percent of your DNA is identical to every other human’s.
We’re mostly just all the same. But instead of embracing our genetic
similarities, we cling to those differences as symbols of what makes us
unique. Consumer DNA testing tends to reinforce that—even though the
difference that one test reveals might not even exist in another.
“These
companies are asking people to pay for something that is at best
trivial and at worst astrology,” said Rutherford. “The biggest lesson we
can teach people is that DNA is probabilistic and not deterministic.” Your
DNA is only part of what determines who you are, even if the analysis
of it is correct. Plenty of people love pasta, with or without Italian
DNA.
If the messaging of consumer DNA companies more
accurately reflected the science, though, it might be a lot less
compelling: Spit in a tube and find out where on the planet it’s
statistically probable that you share ancestry with today.
Learning
he was Syrian did not seem to impact my grandfather’s identity as a
Mexican man. And how could it? His life story was the story of so many
children of immigrants. His father, Manuel, had swum the Rio Grande from
Mexico to America in hopes of a better future. He worked as a waiter,
and my great-grandmother as a seamstress. At age 10, my grandfather was
sent to work at a Coca-Cola bottling plant to help the family make ends
meet. He lost a finger. Eventually, he met my blonde-haired, blue-eyed
grandmother and moved to California, hoping to raise their children
somewhere it would matter less that one of their parents spoke Spanish
as a first language.
But
me, I don’t even look the part. I’m fair with blue eyes. As a kid, I
remember wincing when my friend’s mom made xenophobic comments directed
at Mexicans, never suspecting her daughter’s fair friend had some
Mexican ties, even if they were not by blood but by heart. As an adult, I
learned Arabic and perfected my tamale-making, all in search of some
sort of an identity fit. When my grandfather was dying, I struggled with
the relationship between DNA and cultural identity. I wondered what
would become of my Mexican heritage, once my last living link to it was
gone.
In the end, I finally found the same wisdom my
grandfather never seemed to question. Sometimes your heritage doesn’t
have anything at all to do with your genetics—and I didn’t even have to
spit in a test tube to figure it out."
NOTE:This is a
slightly updated version of an article I published about a year ago. A
newsletter reader sent a message to me recently expressing
dissatisfaction with records that once were available online but
recently have disappeared. I am offering this republished article as an
explanation about why we should not be surprised when that happens. I
believe that every genealogist should understand why this happens so
this article bears repeating every year or two. Please feel free to
republish this article in newsletters, message boards, or forward it in
email messages as you see fit.
I will also offer a suggestion as to making sure you keep your own copies of online records that are valuable to you.
A newsletter reader sent an email message to me recently expressing
dissatisfaction that a set of images of vital records has been removed
from one of the very popular genealogy sites. Indeed, removal of any
online records of genealogical value is sad, but not unusual. Changes
such as these are quite common on FamilySearch, MyHeritage,
Ancestry.com, Fold3, FindMyPast, and many other genealogy sites that
provide digital images of old records online. Removal of datasets has
occurred dozens of times in the past, and I suspect such things will
continue to happen in the future. I thought I would write a brief
explanation.
In almost all cases, information of genealogical value obtained from
government agencies, religious groups, museums, genealogy societies, and
other organizations is provided under contractual agreements. The
contracts specify what information is to provided, how it is to be made
available, and what price the web site has to pay to the provider for
the records. All contracts also have a defined expiration date, typically 2 years or 3 years or perhaps 5 years after the contract is signed.
When a contract nears expiration, the two parties usually attempt to
renegotiate the contract. Sometimes renewal is automatic, but more often
it is not. Maybe the information provider (the government agency,
religious group, museum, genealogy society, and other organization)
decides they want more money, or maybe they decide they no longer want
to supply the data to the online genealogy service. For instance, in the
time the information has been available online, the information
provider may have learned just how valuable the information really is.
The information provider may decide to ask for more money or may even
refuse to provide the information any more since the provider may have a
NEWplan to create their own web site and offer the same information online on their own, new web site for a fee.
Sure, that stinks for those of us who would like to have
the information everywhere; but, it makes sense to most everyone else. I
am sure the budget officer at most any state or local government
archive thinks it makes sense.
Every contract renegotiation is different, but it is not unusual to
agree to disagree. The contract ends, and the web site provider legally MUST
remove the information from their web site. The same thing frequently
happens to all the other online sites that provide old records online.
Moral of this story: If you find a record online that is valuable to you, SAVE IT NOW!Save it to your hard drive and make a backup copy someplace else as
well. If there is no option to save, make a screen shot and save it on
your hard drive or some other place where it will last for many years.
Just because you can see the record online today does not mean that it
will be available tomorrow.
Recently, the link I used in my research of the Ryder family,
freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~rclarke/page1/ryder.htm, no
longer pointed to the same Ryder branch. I entered the url in the
archive.org “Wayback Machine” and was pleased to find several dates
where archive.org had saved the information. I was back in business.
Basically, if you have a url that no longer works, try out the “Wayback
Machine”. It has over 300 billion web pages saved there.
The recent Hurricane Harvey, the present Hurricane Irma, and
Hurricane Jose presently in tropical waters that might head northward
all bring to mind questions, such as “How do I protect my personal
belongings and information?”
I cannot speak to protecting belongings. However, I have written many
times about preserving personal genealogy information that perhaps you
spent years accumulating. The same procedures will also protect your
family documents, insurance policies, photographs, and much more of the
paper we all accumulate.
Many of the people who live through hurricanes will lose all paper
documentation of their existence. Some cannot even not prove they ever
lived. This is where going paperless can help.
My suggestion is to make digital copies of ALL PAPER WORTH SAVING,
not just genealogy information, but also deeds or mortgage papers, bank
and money information, birth certificates, passports, discharge papers,
graduation and school records, medical records (especially if there is a
chronic health problem), family pictures, and more. The list goes on
and on. Scan each document and save each digital image to multiple
locations.
For instance, you might save the copy on a thumb drive and on an
external hard drive. That protects data lost from your computer but does
not provide safety when your entire house is damaged or destroyed. In
the case of flood waters, a burst water pipe, fires, or even the
destruction of an entire house, the only protection of data is: multiple
copies stored in multiple distant locations.
You can save the data to a thumb drive stored in a desk drawer at
work, saved to a hard drive or a thumb drive at a relative’s distant
house, or to a secure cloud-based file storage service. The choice is
yours to make. However, I strongly suggest you keep multiple copies both
at home and in other locations many miles away.
NOTE: This is for online streaming only--no downloads are available. For original site (Thomas MacEntee Blog) go to: http://www.geneabloggers.com/rootstech-2017-session-videos-now-available/
If you were not able to attend the amazing RootsTech 2017 Conference OR perhaps you were there, but missed a session, now you can
view the recorded sessions from the comfort of your home. Thanks to FamilySearch and RootsTech for making these education videos available! Wednesday, February 8, 2017 Sessions – click here!
Full Session: Innovator Summit General Session 2017
Liz Wiseman: Innovator Summit General Session 2017
Steve Rockwood: Innovator Summit General Session 2017
Ben Bennett; Craig Bott, Grow Utah; Heather Holmes, TapGenes; Nick Jones, JRNL, Inc; Robert Kehrer, FamilySearch: Industry Trends and Outlook
Cydni Tetro: Innovation: Best Practices and Applications
This grab-bag of free genealogy records keeps growing. Click the
Databases tab to search data from Southern states, military records,
small-town newspapers and the Guion Miller Roll index to Cherokee
tribal members. The latter supplements what was already a
must-bookmark site if you have Native American roots.
Though based in Indiana, this library’s online reach extends much
further—reflecting its status as the nation’s second-richest
genealogy library. Special collections focus on Native American,
African American, military and family Bible records.
More than 2,200 online collections (and growing) make this the
internet’s largest home to free genealogy data, with recent updates
spotlighting Italy, South America and US vital records. You can
share and record your finds in family trees and a “Memories
Gallery,” and get research help from the wiki.
Free to your home computer courtesy of your library card via
participating institutions, HeritageQuest is now “powered by” (but
not owned by) Ancestry.com. This partnership has dramatically
expanded its half-dozen collections to a sort of “Ancestry.com
lite,” including the complete US census, military and immigration
records, and city directories. Click Search and scroll all the way
to the bottom to unlock more US records as well as selected foreign
databases.
Though not specifically focused on genealogy, the nation’s library
has plenty to offer online, including the National Union Catalog of
Manuscript Collections, the American Memory collection and its own
comprehensive catalog.
Read all about the genealogical treasures stored at the National
Archives, order military and other records, and browse historical
maps and photos. Access to Archival Databases serves up files ranging from WWII enlistments to passenger lists for
millions of German, Irish, Russian and Italian immigrants.
Since its launch in 1996,
this modest website has grown into a useful collection of how-to
help and databases. It’s strongest on passenger records, heritage
groups such as Palatines and American Indians, and less-familiar
records, such as those for residents of orphans and almshouses.
This venerable free site still serves up how-to articles, databases
of surnames and US locations, mailing lists, pedigree files and much
more—making it an oldie but a goodie.
This volunteer site recently celebrated its 20th birthday with a
mobile-friendly update. Its state and county pages and special
projects remain as vibrant as ever. Just found an ancestor who lived
in, say, Stone County, Ark.? There’s a page for that, as for almost
every other place your family may have landed.
See the rest of our 101 Best Websites for Genealogy in 2017:
I haven’t had this in my hands yet but it certainly looks interesting. Here is the announcement from Pass It Down:
greetingStory™ makes it simple and fun to capture family stories one greeting card at a time.
Chattanooga, Tenn. (July 18, 2017) – Pass It Down,
an award-winning storytelling platform that makes it easy to digitally
record and preserve family memories, announced today the launch of its
first physical product, greetingStory™.
greetingStory™ reinvents the greeting card, making it easy to capture
family memories and handwriting, reconnect with loved ones and preserve
family stories.
“Our goal at Pass It Down is to create
innovative and affordable ways for every family to capture their
treasured memories,” said Pass It Down CEO and Founder Chris Cummings.
“Today’s technology allows us to simplify everything we do, and we think
capturing and sharing family memories should be no different. With the
launch of greetingStory™, families have an effortless, interactive and
effective way to capture each of their special memories, one question at
a time.”
greetingStory™ is great in its simplicity.
Each greetingStory™ card features a question on the cover, with
included tips and instructions from top biographers to help guide loved
ones in sharing their memories. The cards feature two prominent spaces
to share memories and to capture loved one’s handwriting. Every card
includes a QR code on the back, allowing the user to upload a loved
one’s story into the Pass It Down platform. The platform can also host
additional video, audio, text and photos, completing the story. A
complete story can be shared with the entire family, serving as a
permanent, digital memory book for everyone.
Families can choose between two options for greetingStory cards. Worldwide, Pass It Down offers greetingStory™ Memory Boxes that include 12, 24 or 48 cards and envelopes. In the US, Pass It Down offers a subscription model
where you can send a family member one, two or four cards per month.
Each card includes a pre-paid return envelope to send the card back to
the customer.
“Imagine being able to send your mom or
dad 24 cards a year, in a personalized envelope, asking about their life
and their legacy. We automate the process for families, and our
pre-paid return envelopes ensure that it is extremely simple for your
relative to get the cards back to you” said Cummings.
For more information about greetingStory, please visit www.passitdown.comor connect with Pass It Down on Twitter (@passitdown).
Family photos are where you find them!
A 12-year-old in Kansas recently found a hilarious card to give to
her grandfather for his 74th birthday. The card had a very old-fashioned
family photo on the front, with everyone looking very stern and
serious. On top it said, “It’s your birthday!” Her mother also laughed
when she saw the card. Then she stopped laughing when she looked closer.
A man in the photo looked a lot like her grandfather and of her
great-grandmother. The family gave the card to the 74-year-old man
celebrating his birthday. He got all excited as he realized the picture
was of his father, his grandmother, and of a number of his other
relatives! It was a photo he had never seen before.
In fact, the family eventually was able to locate the original photo
the card was made from. The family identified almost everyone in the
photo that was taken in 1906 at a wedding.
You can read the details in an article in the Epoch Times web site at: http://bit.ly/2taHCeC.
My thanks to newsletter reader Karen Parker for telling me about this story.
A huge database of people born in the
territory of contemporary Ukraine between 1650 and 1920 became available
online this week. Its opening crowned the four-year efforts of
activists to digitize, systematize, and assemble countless entries from
historical documents—but is not the final point of the project.
The database includes 2.56 mn people and
is expected to reach 4 to 5 mn in 2019. The access to its contents is
and will remain free of charge. The sources of data are manifold: birth
registers, fiscal and parish censuses, lists of nobility, voters, the
military, and victims of repressions, address directories, and other
documents produced under the Tsardom of Muscovy, Russian and Habsburg
Empires, Poland and the Soviet Union. A Roman-letter version of the data
index is reportedly to be enabled in the coming months.
All the users who register profiles on the project’s website pra.in.ua
can construct their own family trees. Nearly 18 thousand trees have
been created in the first couple of days following the official
inauguration of the site.
You can read the full article at: http://bit.ly/2tbqm9k.
I normally look at web sites and make a quick evaluation before I write about them. However, the web site at https://pra.in.ua/
is in Ukrainian, not one of my languages. I will simply mention the
site and leave it to you, the reader, to decide how useful it is for
you. I assume you can read Ukrainian. I did attempt to use Google Translate but the results were mixed. For
instance, I wondered if there is a fee to use this site. Google
translates reports, “To support the project financially. We have access
to the database free of charge, but to base the project developed and
increased resources are needed.”
O)n a different web page, Google Translate provided the following
words: “Access to the database is free. All costs of creating the
portal, its administration, technical support, development, work with
documents and content indexing database implemented entirely by
donations from outside users.” The Ukrainian births database is available at: https://pra.in.ua.
The article in the EuroMaiden Press reports, “A Roman-letter version
of the data index is reportedly to be enabled in the coming months.”
This
announcement shouldn’t surprise any genealogists. The end of microfilm
has been predicted for years. Microfilm and microfiche has become harder
and harder to purchase. Most of the manufacturers have stopped
producing microfilm and microfiche so the companies and non-profits that
release information on film have been forced to abandon the media.
Over 1.5 million microfilms (ca. 1.5 billion images) have been
digitized by FamilySearch, including the most requested collections
based on microfilm loan records worldwide. In addition, many records
that FamilySearch has not yet published can be found online on partner
or free archive websites. FamilySearch plans to finish microfilm
digitization by 2020.
The following is an extract from the announcement from FamilySearch:
On September 1, 2017, FamilySearch will
discontinue its microfilm distribution services. (The last day to order
microfilm will be on August 31, 2017.)
The change is the result of significant
progress made in FamilySearch’s microfilm digitization efforts and the
obsolescence of microfilm technology.
Online access to digital images of records allows FamilySearch to reach many more people, faster and more efficiently.
FamilySearch is a global leader in
historic records preservation and access, with billions of the world’s
genealogical records in its collections.
Over 1.5 million microfilms (ca. 1.5
billion images) have been digitized by FamilySearch, including the most
requested collections based on microfilm loan records worldwide.
The remaining microfilms should be
digitized by the end of 2020, and all new records from its ongoing
global efforts are already using digital camera equipment.
Family history centers will continue to
provide access to relevant technology, premium subscription services,
and digital records, including restricted content not available at home.
JSTOR
is an online library of hundreds of years of academic research and
presently contains more than 1,900 journal titles in more than 50
disciplines. The web site started in 1995 as a site containing back
issues of academic journals. Since then, JSTOR has grown to include
books and primary sources, and current issues of journals.
This
announcement shouldn’t surprise any genealogists. The end of microfilm
has been predicted for years. Microfilm and microfiche has become harder
and harder to purchase. Most of the manufacturers have stopped
producing microfilm and microfiche so the companies and non-profits that
release information on film have been forced to abandon the media.