Monday, September 23, 2013

ONLINE NATIONAL Archives of NORWAY


 From Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter:

The Online National Archives of Norway


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The National Archives of Norway has been digitizing thousands of documents for some time and continues to add more daily. Even better, all the digitized documents are available online free of charge.

Riksarkivet-og-statsarkivene
A wide variety of documents are already available, including census records, parish records, probate records, court records, and emigrant lists. These documents provide information about people's lives, in some cases going back to the 9th century.

Norway had mass emigration 100 to 120 years ago when roughly one-third of the population left the country. Many went to the United States with smaller numbers of emigrants to Canada, Australia, and elsewhere. The folks at the National Archives of Norway are aware that many English speaking descendants of Norwegian emigrants would like to research their heritage. As a result, the web site is available in both Norwegian and in English although the documents obviously will always be written in Norwegian. For those who never learned the language of their ancestors, a Norwegian-English dictionary can be a big help.

The Digital Archives of the National Archives of Norway can be found at http://arkivverket.no/eng. The starting page for parish records is at http://www.arkivverket.no/eng/content/view/full/629 and an example of a scanned register book may be found at: http://www.arkivverket.no/URN:kb_read?idx_kildeid=571&uid=ny&idx_side=-471. (Click on Control-Plus in a Windows computer or Command-Plus in a Macintosh to zoom in on an image.)

You also might want to check out the National Archives of Norway blog at http://dokumenteneforteller.tumblr.com/ that presents documents and photos related to a different theme every month. However, that blog is written in Norwegian.

Monday, August 26, 2013

3D Photography of Tombstones

---Excerpted from Society of Historical Archaeology Blog

Understanding Cemeteries through Technical Applications: An example from Fort Drum, NY


A few times each year, the SHA Technology Committee hosts Tech Week, an entire week devoted to certain technologies used in historical archaeology. This week, archaeologist Duane Quates was asked to gather blog posts about the use of technology in mortuary analysis.

Fort Drum, New York has a surprisingly rich history and the 13 historic cemeteries of Fort Drum are a profound reminder of the communities that existed prior to the Army’s acquisition of the now 107,000 acre military reservation in 1941. Current technologies such as LiDAR, GIS, database management software, and geophysical technologies, such as ground penetrating radar, magnetometry, and electrical soil resistivity are providing the base archaeologists with innovative tools to understand and mange these resources responsibly.
Figure 1: The grave of William Anderson and his wife Elizabeth
One of the many aspects of the cemeteries that I found interesting is that there are only two known African American gravestones out of 1802 known burials. One grave is that of William Anderson and his wife Elizabeth located in the Gates Cemetery near Historic Sterlingville. The second is that of Rachel, a former slave of James Leray, in the Sheepfold Cemetery. The graves in both of these cemeteries are very similar in that they are alone in the back of the cemetery, segregated from the rest of the burials.
Unfortunately the archaeological record of the base is very similar in its representation of the African American community. To date, the Cultural Resources Program at Fort Drum has identified 962 sites on the 107,000 acre military reservation. Over 65% of the recorded sites are historic. However, only two known sites are considered to have an African American component; the LeRay Mansion Slave Quarters and the Whitney Farmstead. The first is associated with James LeRay de Chaumont, a French capitalist and land speculator, whose family fortune was acquired largely from the transatlantic slave trade. The second is associated with a 19th century farmstead that, unfortunately, is poorly understood. This assemblage includes trade beads from Gambia, West Africa, as well as Lamoka points from the late Archaic Period.
The Fort Drum Cultural Resources Program manages and maintains the cemeteries of the post. Rachel’s marker is one that has given us the most concern. It is made of a poor quality marble that has frost fractured several times. Each time the Fort Drum Cultural Resources Program has repaired it with epoxy but unfortunately time and weather has taken its toll on the stone. The epitaph is no longer fully legible.
Figure 2: The grave of Rachel
In April 2010 at the Society for American Archaeology meeting in Sacramento, CA, while perusing the book room, I met Bill Mongon of Accurex, Inc. in the technology section of the book room. He was demonstrating a multi-lens camera that was capable of building a 3D model of almost any object. What I found fascinating was the system’s capability of finding minute details on objects that were not detectable by the naked eye. I asked if there were any field applications for the device. Bill suggested that he travel to Fort Drum and provide a demonstration by scanning Rachel’s grave stone. The demonstration at Rachel’s grave site went beautifully. The system performed perfectly in spite of a continual rain that drenched us. Fortunately, scanning Rachel’s grave stone took only 2 hours.
Figure 3: 3D scan of Rachel’s grave stone
In figure 3 the epitaph is very clear, which reads: “Rachel A good & faithful nurse. Died Jan. 10 1834.” The lower epitaph reads “This monument was placed in her memory by her loving children Vincent & Alexander LeRay de Chaumont & Therese de Gouvello.” Ironically, one year after this scan was done, while giving a tour of the cemetery I found the grave stone broken into several pieces by a large oak tree that had come down in a wind storm. Fortunately, we have the 3D scan of the stone allowing us to replicate it.
In 2010, the Cultural Resources Program at Fort Drum embarked on a new project to answer several pressing concerns about the cemeteries. First, we suspected that there were unmarked graves surrounding the two known African American grave markers. Military training had the potential to encroach upon the boundaries of the Sheepfold Cemetery where Rachel lies, with the new development and expansion of nearby training course. It was necessary to know, with absolute certainty, whether the boundary of the cemetery was accurate or if there were burials outside of the fence. Second, we also wanted to make a concerted effort to find whether there were other African American graves in the other cemeteries on the base.
To answer these questions, an inventory of our cemeteries was necessary and then the attributes could be compared. Once that was completed and the African American graves identified, geophysical surveys would be conducted in the vivinity. Unfortunately, the staff did not have the expertise or training needed to perform the geophysical surveys. Fortunately, I was able to acquire funding to hire an intern, Mike Sprowles, through the Oak Ridge Institute of Science and Education (ORISE) to complete the project.
Mike started the project by creating a database and developing the attributes that he intended to record. The database became something more than what was originally intended. His database can compare attributes of all 1802 burials and search for similarities. It also has the capability of tracking the conditions of each stone and is a perfect tool to manage the cemeteries. Finally, it is searchable by name and can be used by any member of the public for genealogical research. He finished the inventory in just 10 months and we publicly launched the database as a genealogy tool in October of 2012. He has surveyed both the Gates cemetery and the Sheepfold cemetery and found several anomalies consistent with unmarked burials near Rachel’s grave stone.
But I digress. I will let Mike explain this project in his own words in his blog post. Also, the Tech Week Blog will feature Dr. Michael Heilen of Statistical Research Inc., discussing the Alameda-Stone Cemetery in Tucson, AZ, as well as Katy Meyers, PhD. Candidate at Michigan State University, with her post on the spatial analysis of the Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Livingston County, New York. These posts have several things in common. All discuss the use of GIS and databases in their analyses. However, each is unique in how they demonstrate the advantages of these technologies in cemetery studies. The thing that excites me about archaeology’s use of technology is the surprising results one gets when applying various techniques to a particular problem. Technology has a way of finding answers to questions that you never intended to ask.

Thursday, August 22, 2013

Many New Announcements from FamilySearch


Many New Announcements from FamilySearch


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Fslogo_2013FamilySearch continues to make many changes and additions to its services for genealogists.Today was the first day of the Federation if Genealogical Societies' annual conference and FamilySearch took advantage of the event to make several significant announcements. I am not sure that I heard all of them but here are the ones that I heard, offered in no particular order:


DianeLooslejpgThe Family History Library in Salt Lake City has a new director: Diane Loosle. The official announcement was published in this newsletter earlier today at http://goo.gl/re29YG. In a short speech, Diane described several changes she is making at the Library. She seems especially interested in applying crowd sourcing to collaborative services in the Library, starting on Nordic Area. This is a dedicated space (replacing the previous Nordic counter) encouraging patrons to work together on common research goals. The Library staff will also be available, as always, but their assistance will be supplemented by others who are researching in the same areas.

Diane also will continue efforts started earlier to bring the library to remote patrons via online resources.

Paul_NautaPaul Nauta, Manager of Public Affairs for FamilySearch, gave a brief presentation on  "Where FamilySearch is and Where it is Going." Amongst the numbers he gave that I was able to scribble down:
  • Almost 3 billion names are now online at FamilySearch.org with approximately 1.7 million more being added every day.
  • FamilySearch now has 237 camera teams in the field in locations all around the globe. The plan is to expand that number to 500 within a very few months.
  • FamilySearch is about to start new Family History Discover Centers, first in high traffic locations in metropolitan  area. Assuming these first efforts are successful, similar Family History Discover Centers will be added in 3 to 5 other cities worldwide in the next 12 months. Some of these centers will have Oral History Recording Studios, (one is already installed at the Riverton, Utah, Family History Center). These audio and video studios will encourage any interested person  to describe their life experiences to be recorded for posterity. Some people will prefer to sit alone in front of a camer, giving a monologue, while others my wish to be interviewed by a family member or an interested friend. The plan is to capture their life stories on audio and video, storing the results on your own flash drive that you take with you. Initially, no copy is kept by FamilySearch but the plan is to add that later as an option; you can agree to give a copy to FamilySearch or not. Total cost for use of the Oral History Recording Studio is $8 for one hour or perhaps a bit longer. That fee pays for the pre-formatted flash drive that will be supplied by FamilySearch. Plan on an hour for the video plus perhaps an additional 15 minutes or so for the technicians to copy the video to the flash drive.
  • 950 million names are now online in the new Online Family Tree with about 42,000 more names being added every day. The new Online Family Tree was heavily promoted within the LDS community but given little publicity elsewhere. However, FamilySearch managers have been pleasantly surprised to find that non-LDS contributors have added about 27% of the data.
  • 700,000+ patron-submitted family photographs are now online with an additional adding 5,000 or so photographs being added daily.
  • A new service was announced: you will soon be able to take your old family photographs to a local Family History Center near you and use the high-speed scanner there to digitize stacks of photos. The software will upload the photographs to your personal area on FamilySearch.org. You can later sort and label the photographs as well as add stories or biographies to the photos as appropriate, either at home or back at the Family History Center. The software is available today. The new scanners are being sent to local centers and personnel will be trained soon. NOTE: You don't need to visit a Family History Center to upload photos. You can do so from home, using your own scanner. The new, high-speed equipment at local Family History Center is simply a convenience for those who do not own scanners or for anyone who has lots of pictures to upload. Apparently, you can insert a stack of photographs into a scanner, press a button, and the images will be scanned at a high resolution very quickly.
  • Many of the sessions at RootsTech 2014 will be available via live streaming in 60 satellite locations around the world, in 10 languages. It is expected that 120,000 remote, but live, attendees will be watching.
  • FamilySearch Indexing: Since 2006, more than 1 billion names have been indexed by 140,000+ volunteers but still more volunteers are needed, especially for overseas records.
  • How to explain indexing: a new video is now online on FamilySearch.org. The video was played to an large audience last night before the FGS conference opened. It is a short cartoon with no words but with graphics and text available in 10 languages. After watching the video, anyone should be able to understand the benefit of indexing.
--excerpted from Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter 

Saturday, July 20, 2013

PERSI to leave HeritageQuest and go to FIndMyPast but link to Articles

PERSI Finds New Home on FindMyPast.com



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A few days ago I published an article speculating that PERSI would soon move to one of the FindMyPast sites. That has now been confirmed by the following announcement from Findmypast.com:
Partnership with the Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center adds 2.5 million records dating back to 1800

Image002LOS ANGELES (July 19, 2013) – Findmypast.com, an international leader in online family history, today announced a partnership with the Allen County Public Library (ACPL) Genealogy Center to revolutionize the PERiodical Source Index (PERSI), the world’s largest and most widely used subject index for genealogy and local history literature. As part of the partnership, findmypast.com is enhancing PERSI, most notably by linking thousands of individual genealogical periodicals and resources to the index, allowing the original content to be accessed and connected digitally for the first time in the history of PERSI.
Image006During the past 30 years, the ACPL Genealogy Center has created more than 2.5 million searchable records in PERSI, indexing every article from more than 8,000 different periodicals, including magazines, newsletters and journals, according to location, topic, surname, ethnicity and methodology. In the coming months, findmypast.com will launch the most complete version of PERSI online. Once launched, findmypast.com will work in tandem with the Genealogy Center to provide frequent updates to the collection as new entries are added.

PERSI has become an essential tool in helping genealogists and family historians locate valuable information, and this new partnership with findmypast.com will transform PERSI into an even more powerful resource.  Findmypast.com subscribers will be able to search and view digitized images of the articles, allowing unprecedented access to the information contained in these periodicals.

“We are proud to partner with The Genealogy Center of the Allen County Public Library to continue indexing and offering PERSI – an essential tool for genealogical research,” said D. Joshua Taylor, lead genealogist for findmypast.com. “This is an ideal partnership given findmypast.com’s expertise in digitizing records and Allen County Public Library’s continual dedication to adding new records to the index. We look forward to working together to once again revolutionize the way genealogy and local history literature is accessed.”

“Partnering with findmypast.com represents an exciting opportunity to grow PERSI into an extremely relevant twenty-first century discovery tool for genealogists worldwide,” said Curt Witcher, ACPL Genealogy Center manager. “Having the ability to provide much more frequent updates and link index entries to serial issues is a real game-changer, not only for genealogists and local historians but also for the librarians and archivists who serve them.”

The future of online search through this partnership aligns with findmypast.com’s Society Data Initiative, a joint project between the Federation of Genealogical Societies and findmypast.com to preserve, digitize and provide access to the rich resources created by family history, genealogical and historical societies over many decades.

PERSI, and each periodical to be linked over time, will be available across all international findmypast sites, to personal subscribers and library users.

Findmypast.com’s expertise at digitizing historical records and uniting communities provides the tools to help people connect with their past.

To learn more about findmypast.com or to get started on your own family history:

About findmypast.com
Findmypast.com, owned by brightsolid, provides complete and relevant records for online family history and genealogy research. Findmypast members worldwide share our passion, and rely on our expertise to help them discover the roots to their family tree. Our accurate search tools and data featuring unique and core U.S., English, Welsh, Scottish, Irish, Australian and New Zealand records dating back as far as the 7th century, help both professional and budding genealogists find their past. Findmypast.com works closely with the genealogy community, including local libraries, archives, societies, and other organizations from around the world, to preserve, digitize and provide access to historical records and genealogical publications. To learn more, visit www.findmypast.com, the findmypast.com blog, Facebook or Twitter.

About The Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center
The ACPL Genealogy Center is a unique and valuable family history resource in serving both the Northeast Indiana and global genealogical communities.  With one of the largest research collections available, the ACPL Genealogy Center incorporates records from around the world. The Genealogy Center is active in several initiatives to make significant public domain portions of its collection available online. Its professional staff provides a wide range of programs and individualized reference services.

About brightsolid
Findmypast.com is owned by brightsolid online publishing, a British-owned world leader in online genealogy, with over 45 years’ experience in family history and a record of online innovation in the field of family history nearly two decades long. With nearly 18 million registered users across its family of online genealogy brands, brightsolid hosts more than a billion genealogical records from across the globe.

--excerpted from Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter 

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

80,000 DIGITIZED FAMILY HISTORY BOOKS ONLINE FREE

From Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter June 20, 2013

More than 80,000 Digitized Genealogy and Family History Publications are Now Available Online -- FREE


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One of the greatest genealogy resources available today is the huge collection of digitized genealogy and family history publications from the archives of some of the most important family history libraries in the world. When I travel to various genealogy conferences and societies, I am often amazed at how many genealogists are unaware of these free resources. Not only are the books and other publications available free of charge, you don't even have to pay for gas to visit these libraries!

These digital books are available at:
Google Books
Archive.org
Allen County Public Library
Brigham Young University Harold B. Lee Library
Brigham Young University Hawaii Joseph F. Smith Library
LDS Church History Library
Family History Library
Houston Public Library - Clayton Library Center for Genealogical Research
Mid-Continent Public Library - Midwest Genealogy Center

[MOST OF THE COLLECTION can be searched by clicking here]

 
The menus and the search methods will obviously vary from one site to another. However, a few minutes spent exploring each site's holdings could pay big dividends.

I will say that most newcomers search only for names. In fact, I'll admit that I do the same on my first search on a new web site and I suspect a lot of other experienced genealogists do the same. However, after exhausting the search for names, most experienced genealogists start looking for other search terms. I always look for locations. Many times, I have been successful at finding some tidbit about an ancestor by searching for the county or the town in which he or she lived, even after a search for the person's name produced no results at all.

One of my more successful searches came from searching for the name of the small town in which my great-great-grandparents lived. I knew he was a farmer so I searched for his name plus the name of the small town in which they lived. I was rewarded with a scanned digital booklet of only 42 pages, printed in 1842, that listed all the farmers in the county, along with a detailed description of the farm and even the assessed value of the property. It listed the total acreage of their property, the number of acres under cultivation, the number of acres of woodlands, the number of barns and outbuildings, how many head of cattle, sheep, and swine that they owned, and even the number of chickens. It also listed the crops they sold. I learned a lot more about my great-great-grandparents in that small booklet than I ever found in census records!

When searching old books and other printed information, you have to be creative. You should search not only for locations, but also for fraternal organizations, religious affiliations, veterans' organizations, labor unions, and anything else you can think of.


Monday, May 20, 2013

770 Connecticut Cemeteries Online at Godfrey Memorial Library (one of the free Scholar websites at your nearest FHC)

May 19, 2013

Sunday, May 5, 2013

Mocavo's GENEALOGY KARMA -- modeled after RAOGK



Mocavo Announces Genealogy Karma

Back in 1999, a fantastic resource was established to bring together members of the genealogy community all around the world. The brainchild of Bridgett and Doc Schneider, Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness (RAOGK) was created to help genealogists collaborate with the genealogy community to document their research, while also offering genealogists a way to give back to a community that had helped them in the past. RAOGK quickly turned into a global organization. The group’s volunteers were able to help thousands of genealogists make progress in their family history research.

Bridgett Schneider courtesy of RAOGK Wiki

The ROAGK website went offline in 2011 because of a computer disaster. Sadly, Bridgett Schneider passed away later that year, and the website was never able to come back online. In tribute to Bridgett and Doc Schneider and all of the participants in RAOGK, many volunteers have created programs similar to ROAGK to help bring together the expertise of the genealogy community. Doc and Bridgett’s legacy and the efforts of thousands of volunteers inspired us to create a place for researchers to come together and collaborate to help other members of the genealogical community.   



Today, at Mocavo, we are excited to announce the launch of Genealogy Karma. Modeled after Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness, we hope to empower the Mocavo community and connect researchers all around the country. If you’re looking for documents, records, or photos from an ancestor who lived far away, we will connect you with family history volunteers who can do this research for you in other cities. Likewise, if you’d like to give back to the Mocavo community and have a little time to donate, you can sign up as a volunteer.


To begin visit www.mocavo.com/karma