Saturday Night Genealogy Fun: Where Were You in 2000?

For Saturday Night Genealogy Fun this week, Randy Seaver is asking us to reach back in our memories almost twenty years.  Let's see how I do compared to him.

Here is your assignment, if you choose to play along (cue the Mission:  Impossible! music, please!):

(1) Do you recall what you were doing in 2000?  Family, school, work, hobbies, technology, genealogy, vacations, etc.?  If this doesn't work for you, what about your parents?

(2) Tell us in a blog post of your own, in a comment on this blog, or in a Facebook post.

As usual, I am amazed at Randy's amount of recall.  This is what I could cobble together.

I was living in Oakland, California in the house I had bought in 1993.  I no longer had a housemate.  The friend who had cosigned with me to purchase the house had moved out in 1998.  In mid-1999 I had a friend who needed a place to stay, so I let him have the extra room.  By the time 2000 had rolled around, however, he was gone.  He had gone out drinking on New Year's Eve and had apparently spent the night with a young lady, who then took all of his money and disappeared — which is exactly what the housemate did for several months, being too embarrassed to admit what had happened.  I finally tracked him down three or four months into the year and got him to take all of his stuff out of the house.

In 2000 I had been working for the Seismological Society of America for two years.  I was the publications coordinator — at that point I was not yet editing one of the journals; my work was administrative only — and the "junior Webmaster" — I assisted the primary Webmaster with maintaining and updating the society's site.  I don't remember if I had learned HTML by that point or not.  I was probably doing only really basic stuff with the site.

The Seismological Society of America (SSA) is a scientific membership association.  Most members are seismologists and geologists, with a smattering of volcanologists and other geological specialties.  SSA holds an annual conference, as do many scneitific societies, where members and other attendees present talks and posters on recent research.  The 2000 conference was held in San Diego right after my birthday.  I remember there was a field trip of some sort to Old Town, which was enjoyable if somewhat touristy.  I also remember that was the year I met Shri Krishna Singh.

See, there was an international enclave of seismologists at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (National University of Mexico).  Certainly there were scientists from Mexico, but they also had Kostoglodov from Russia, a Japanese man whose name I've forgotten, and Shri Krishna Singh from India.  I met him in San Diego when I heard someone speaking fluent Spanish behind me, turned around to see who it was, and was momentarily nonplussed when I saw a man who pretty clearly seemed to be from the Indian subcontinent.  It took a few seconds for my brain to process, and then I realized who it had to be.  I had communicated with him by e-mail prior to that but had never met him in person.

(Years later, when I was with my stepsons' father, whose father was born in India, I contacted Shri to find out if he had any advice for doing genealogy research in that country.  He told me that after he had been a successful scientist for several years, he went back to India himself to try to find some record of his birth.  He was dismayed when he could find absolutely nothing and learned that his brother had literally made up a birth date for him when he started school.  He told me I was pretty much out of luck.)

In August I'm prettty sure I was in Milwaukee, Wisconsin for GenCon, the largest gaming convention held in the United States.  I don't remember whose booth I would have been working at.  It might have been Reaper Games or Pegasus Publishing.  I just learned from reading the GenCon page on Wikipedia that the 2000 convention was the first year that Hasbro owned it, having bought Wizards of the Coast the previous year right after the 1999 convention.

There's a good chance that I also attended the Origins Game Fair in Columbus in July.  That's another game convention, I believe the second largest in the United States.  Again I don't remember who I worked for.  If I did go, I probably visited my aunt's sister, who lives in Columbus.

It's almost guaranteed that I went to two of the three game conventions in Los Angeles run by Strategicon:  OrcCon over Presidents' Day weekend and Gateway over Labor Day weekend.  I don't know if I went to the Memorial Day weekend convention, Gamex; it was a significantly smaller convention, and it wasn't always cost effective to attend.

If I still had access to the e-mail address I used at that time, I could easily check on all of this.  Unfortunately, Eudora has not been supported for many years now, and I don't have access to the old files.

All of those conventions used to use up all of my vacation time, so I usually didn't do much additional travel other than that related to work.  I might have gone to one or two professional training seminars for SSA.

I was doing genealogy research back then.  As I recall, I had Family Tree Maker 3.0 for Macintosh (before Ancestry abandoned it!)  installed on my work computer.  I think I had upgraded my home computer to a 486 because I needed a hard drive to use the PC version of FTM I had discs for.

2000 was the year I began volunteering to help at the Oakland Family History Center, after having used the library for several years for research.  I kept helping people, so one day one of the staff asked, "Would you like to volunteer here?"  I said I wasn't Mormon, and he said it didn't matter, so I signed up!

That's about all I can recall for now.  Maybe something else will percolate up through my brain during the next few days.  If so, I'll post an addendum.

My Genealogy Mentor: Marge Bell, June 8, 1946–July 20, 2017

Enoch and Marge Bell, Oakland FamilySearch Library, June 15, 2017

It's likely that even in the genealogy world, not a lot of people outside the San Francisco Bay area knew Marge Bell.  But in the Bay Area, she was well known and appreciated for her contributions and knowledge.  She had been on staff at the Oakland FamilySearch Library for many years, and we all relied on her.

Marge had also been researching her own family history for years, and her research was of the highest caliber.  She deplored the state of online family trees, whether on Ancestry, FamilySearch, or somewhere else.  She was particularly aggravated when FamilySearch began its collaborative tree, which allowed others to "correct" your information.  Marge had meticulously researched her tree, and she knew that any information she posted was accurate.  While everyone else (multiple times over) had her distant female ancestor's father as one man, she was the apparently the first (and only) person who made the effort to search through the unindexed loose probate documents for the county to find the father was a totally different man.

Marge was my genealogy mentor.  She tricked me into teaching my first genealogy class, but she gave me advice and feedback throughout the time I was creating the presentation.  She came to that first class and let me know what went well and what could use some work.  Her recommendations always improved my work and made my talks better.  I can't imagine where I would be without the benefit of years of her advice and support.

Marge was also wonderful to brainstorm with.  She could offer a different perspective and new insights on difficult research problems that had me stumped.  Sometimes I was even able to return the favor.  We enjoyed bouncing ideas off of each other.

Marge announced she was moving to Utah about the same time I had begun to make my plans to move to Oregon.  She warned me that just because we each were moving didn't mean I wasn't going to hear from her when she had a question or wanted a second opinion.  Unfortunately, I won't be receiving any more messages from her.

Marge had just barely moved to Utah when her health took a turn for the worse, one from which she was unable to recover.  The genealogy community, especially that of the Bay area and the Oakland FamilySearch Library, has lost a tremendous resource and a dear, loving friend.

The Latest in Genealogy Journals

I realized I have been remiss lately in letting everyone know what interesting articles are being published in the journals for which I am the editor.  And now that I've added a new (to me) journal to the list, there's a wider range of stories!

The most recent issue of ZichronNote came out at the end of November.  Australian Dani Haski wrote about the status of Jewish record books in Egypt, a subject of interest to her because her ancestors came from Egypt.  Susan MacLaughlin discussed her roots trip to Lithuania, which she originally thought was going to be to France.  Vivian Kahn updated our membership on the latest additions to the Hungarian Special Interest Group database on JewishGen.org.  Debra Katz tried to entice people sitting on the fence to jump in the DNA research pool and see what they can learn.  Fred Hoffman wrote about some pitfalls of machine translation, including "swanky oxen" and "fetus farms."  And SFBAJGS President Jeremy Frankel and several other members shared their perspectives on the 2016 IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy, which took place in Seattle, Washington in August.

The Fall 2016 issue of The Baobab Tree was e-mailed to members in December (yes, when it was still fall, thank you).  We've had a glitch with the printer, so the print copy has not yet gone out, but it should soon.  The big story in this issue was the celebration of the African American Genealogical Society of Northern California's 20th anniversary, which was held at the September meeting.  Dera Williams wrote about the highlights of the day, and Jackie Chauhan contributed a list of some of the topics the society's speakers have addressed over the course of 20 years.  There's also a lovely photo gallery showing many of the attendees and honorees, including our beloved Electra Kimble Price and the ever-busy Ron Higgins.  Lavinia Schwarz wrapped up her three-part story about the research she did on her 2x-great-grandmother, a free woman of color in New Orleans.  A few AAGSNC members attended the 3rd International Black Genealogy Summit in Arlington, Virginia and had the opportunity to meet the Côte d'Ivoire ambassador to the United States.  And AAGSNC President Howard Edwards presented a plaque of appreciation to the Oakland FamilySearch Library in thanks for all of its support over the years.

My new baby is The California Nugget, the twice-yearly journal published by the California Genealogical Society.  This is my first issue, so there's been a learning curve, finding out about all the people and procedures involved.  It should be published this month.  Two things that will be new with this issue are a message from the president, currently Linda Harms Okazaki, in place of the previous message from the editor (because we all know I hate to write), and a regular column on genealogical methods by Rondina Muncy, CG.  In addition to those, Stella and Linda Allison wrote about their great-grandfather's sister, a Mexican immigrant to San Francisco who moved up economically from her beginnings in Mazatlán.  Scott McKinzie used DNA and old-fashioned paper research to determine who his grandfather was.  Joe Reilly and Tim Cox have stories about relatives who served and died in World War II.  Kathleen Javdani dove into research on her great-grandmother, trying to find if the information in a family narrative matched reality.  And Carolyn Ervin wrote about memories of her own great-grandmother, whom she was fortunate enough to meet shortly before she passed away.

There's a caveat, though.  (Isn't there always?)  To receive these fine journals, you need to be a member of the respective societies.  If you would like to read these articles, visit the San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society (for ZichronNote), the African American Genealogical Society of Northern California (for The Baobab Tree), and the California Genealogical Society (for The California Nugget) to join and you can be reading them soon.

There is a way around that membership requirement, at least on a per-issue basis.  If you have a story published in an issue, you receive a copy!

Have you had a breakthrough in your research, solved a family mystery, discovered a different way to use resource materials, or walked where your ancestors walked?  Do you have an interesting story about your family?  We would love to read about it in one of the journals.  Submission guidelines for The Baobab Tree (including deadlines) and The California Nugget (which will probably be updated soon) are available online, or you can send me a message regarding any of the journals, and we can talk about it! 

"Online Resources Regarding Enslaved Ancestors", July 30, Oakland FamilySearch Library

Dr. Charles Foy

A new talk has just been scheduled in Oakland!

Online Resources Regarding Enslaved Ancestors
Speaker: Dr. Charles Foy

Oakland FamilySearch Library
Saturday, July 30, 2016
10:30 a.m.-12:00 noon

Often genealogical research regarding African American ancestors ends with the 1870 U.S. census, as earlier records of enslaved peoples rarely contain surnames.  Despite this significant barrier to detailing black life in the Colonial and Antebellum eras, there are online resources that can enable one to develop a fuller picture of one's ancestors.  In this presentation Dr. Foy will discuss and demonstrate such online resources.

Speaker bio: Charles R. Foy is a social historian and an Associate Professor of History at Eastern Illinois University.  He specializes in uncovering the hidden lives of black mariners in the Age of Sail.  He continues to work on the development of a black mariner database that as of 2013 contains records on more than 24,000 black mariners and black maritime fugitives.

Dr. Foy is in the Bay Area for a couple of weeks and generously offered to give this talk while he is here.  The talk is free, and everyone interested is welcome to attend.

A Push to the Finish for the Freedmen's Bureau

Last year I wrote about the Freedmen's Bureau transcription project, the effort coordinated by FamilySearch to create an (almost) every-name index to all the surviving records created by the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands.  FamilySearch had already digitized the records and placed them online.  What was needed next was to create the index.

Unfortunately, the genealogical community has not jumped onto this project with the same enthusiasm it had for the 1940 census.  I don't remember how long that took, but I think it was something like four or five months?  We're nine months into the Freedmen's Bureau project now, and it's only about 64% complete.

The project was started last year on Juneteenth.  FamilySearch is hoping that enough volunteers can be energized to finish the transcription in time for this year's Juneteenth celebrations.

Remember, these records are so important in black family history research because they are one of the most easily accessible primary sources that can indicate the last owner of a formerly enslaved individual.  Many of the records created by the Freedmen's Bureau directly asked for the name of the last slave owner.  That owner's name is critical to finding more information about the individual prior to Emancipation.

And these records are helpful even if your ancestors were not Freedmen!  Judy Russell, the Legal Genealogist, posted about how the records are useful to anyone doing Southern research.

New "indexing parties" are being organized to help get us to the finish line.  At the Oakland FamilySearch Library, we have three scheduled for April:
Thursday, April 14,  3:00-9:00 p.m.
Thursday, April 21,  3:00-9:00 p.m.
Monday, April 25, 3:00-9:00 p.m.

If you haven't used the FamilySearch indexing software yet, we'll have volunteers on hand who will be happy to teach you.  We'll also have people there who have worked on these records already, who can give advice on working with them.

If you think working with a group on this sounds good, come over and join in!  The library is at 4766 Lincoln Avenue in Oakland, California.

If it's difficult for you to get to the library, you're not in our area, or you just would prefer to work on your computer, we've got you covered:  You can help from the comfort of your own home!  Go to http://www.discoverfreedmen.org/, where you'll find the information you need to transcribe at home, maybe while wearing bunny slippers.

C'mon, guys, we can do it!

2016 Black Family History Day

This is the sixth year that the African American Genealogical Society of Northern California and the Oakland FamilySearch Library are partnering to to offer a Black Family History Day in honor of Black History Month, with this year's event taking place on Sunday, February 20, 2016.

The family history day is scheduled for 1:00–5:00 p.m. at the Oakland FamilySearch Library, 4766 Lincoln Avenue, Oakland, California.  There is no charge to participate, but we encourage you to preregister, so that we will have a better idea of how many attendees to expect.

A short introductory workshop will be the first stop for new researchers, who will then receive help in creating their initial family tree information.  After that they will enjoy one-on-one assistance in learning how to do research and and look for documents about their family members.  More experienced researchers will have the option of going through the workshop or heading directly to the one-on-one research stage.  It's a good idea for all attendees to bring copies (please leave your originals safely at home!) of any documents you already have with you, so they can be used as references during your searches.

I will be one of the AAGSNC volunteers helping people with one-on-one research.  I'm looking forward to assisting attendees in doing research and hope we make some wonderful discoveries.

FamilySearch, Otto Frank, the British Library, and the Sartorial Splendor of Viennese Jewish Men

Did you participate in FamilySearch's 2014 Worldwide Indexing Project?  That was an organized effort to have as many people transcribe (because the volunteers aren't actually doing any "indexing") at least one batch of records from FamilySearch over a two-day period.  This year the effort is being called the Worldwide Indexing Event, it has been extended to one week (August 7–14), and the goal is to have 100,000 volunteers submit at least one batch each.

Remember, all of the free searchable databases on FamilySearch.org are there because volunteers donated their time and transcribed digitized microfilm.  This year there is a particular emphasis on transcribing records in languages other than English.

We're talking about having a group of staff members come in to the Oakland FamilySearch Library for another brunch and indexing party, as we did last year.  Why not get your friends together and do the same?  I hope we have chocolate again!

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Anne Frank

The Sydney Jewish Museum and the Netherlands' Anne Frank House are searching for letters from Otto Frank, father of Anne Frank.  The father of the famous diarist received a large amount of correspondence in the years following the English publication of The Diary of Anne Frank.  Most were written by girls the same age as Anne or older.  While the Anne Frank House has retained all the letters sent to Otto, his replies were not copied or archived.

If you or someone you know wrote to Otto Frank and still has his letter written in response, please contact Anne Slade in Australia at 0418 670 352 or by e-mail.

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Dr. Wilhelm Solf was the first governor of German Samoa and later was the German ambassador to Japan under the Weimar Republic.  After his death in 1936, his widow, Johanna Solf, presided over the Solf-Kreis, a circle of anti-Nazi intellectuals, in her salon in Berlin.  Solf and her daughter, the Countess So'oa'emalelagi "Lagi" von Ballestrem-Solf, hid many Jews and provided them with documents to emigrate to safety.

Most members of the circle were arrested and executed after attending a tea party in Berlin on 10 September 1943.  The guests had been betrayed by a Gestapo spy.  The Solfs were interned in Ravensbrück and narrowly avoided death because of delays in their trial and the subsequent approach of the Red Army, which led to their liberation.

Now, New Zealand author Michael Field is seeking survivors or descendants of survivors who escaped the Holocaust through the Solf Circle.  Michael wants to tell the story to a wider English-speaking audience and is seeking more information.  Anyone with information should e-mail him.

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Weinberg and Applebaum families in Macclesfield

The short-lived Macclesfield Hebrew Congregation flourished from 1941–1946 in Cheshire, England, following the arrival of evacuees, refugees, and firms which moved up from the London area. The firms included Belmont Textiles (the Belmont/Lazarus families), Osband Knitwear, Offenbach, BJ Friend, H&I Franklin, V&E Friedland, A. Goldstein, and possibly Halle.  The congregation was the most northerly outpost of the United Synagogue and had its own rabbi as well as its own branch of the Women's International Zionist Organization.

Basil Jeuda of Macclesfield is currently researching the congregation.  He hopes to mount an exhibition in 2016 for the 70th anniversary of its end, to celebrate Jewish life in the area during World War II. If you have any information, photos, memories, or other memorabilia, please contact Basil via e-mail or write to him:
Basil Jeuda
Sandringham Road,
Macclesfield SK10 1QB
United Kingdom

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Jonathan Kaplan, a first-year Ph.D. student at the University of Technology in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia is focusing his research on the social, sartorial, and aesthetic roles of Jewish men in Vienna (and other towns in cities in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire) during the late 19th and early 20th centuries (roughly 1890–1930).

He is trying to create a digital database of photographs and ephemera from this era for his research.  If you have family photographs, advertising materials, or other relevant items that you are willing to share with Jonathan, please contact him.

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Would you like better access to knowing about the holdings of the British Library?  The library has launched LibCrowds, a platform for crowdsourcing library projects.  The first project, Convert-a-Card, is dedicated to the retro conversion of printed card catalogs into electronic records in order to make them available to a worldwide audience via the ExploreBL catalog, which already includes nearly 57 million records.  The initial focus of Convert-a-Card is the Asian and African collections.  (But I still like hard-copy card catalogs . . . .)

Freedmen's Bureau Records Events at Oakland FamilySearch Library

On June 19, 2015, the 150th anniversary of Juneteenth (when the Emancipation Proclamation was finally enforced in Texas), a major media event took place in Los Angeles to announce that all records of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (commonly called the Freedmen's Bureau) have been digitized and placed online at FamilySearch.org.  The event also was used as a platform to encourage participation in FamilySearch's indexing (transcription) of the records to create a searchable database, which will make the records far more accessible than they have been in the past.  The digitization project was a joint effort of FamilySearch, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Afro-American Historical & Genealogical Society, and the California African American Museum.

The records are extremely important in black family history research because they are the contemporary primary source that indicates the last slave owner of a formerly enslaved individual.  In many of the records created by the Freedmen's Bureau, one of the questions asked was "What was the name of your last owner?"  That owner's name is critical to finding more information about the individual prior to Emancipation.

The difficulties with using the Freedmen's Bureau records to date have been numerous.  Very, very few of the records had indices.  Though the complete collection is available on microfilm at every branch of the National Archives, the quality of many of the records was poor when they were microfilmed, and searching on microfilm was tedious and headache-inducing.  And that was after you figured out in which part of the collection you should start your search, an adventure in and of itself.  Some of the records had been digitized previously — some were on Ancestry.com, FamilySearch.org, and the Internet Archive — but no one site had all of them, and not all of them were searchable.

I'm on staff at the Oakland FamilySearch Library.  The people putting together the June 19 event actually wanted our library to be part of that event, but our director thought we needed a little more lead time to make sure we would be prepared.  Well, we've gotten organized, and now we're going to have a media event.

On Thursday, July 16, 10:00 a.m.–12:00 noon, the Oakland FamilySearch Library, 4766 Lincoln Avenue, Oakland, California, will host the Northern California event to celebrate the completion of the digitization of the Freedmen's Bureau records on FamilySearch.org.  All members of the genealogical community are welcome to attend the event.

In addition to the celebration event, the Oakland FamilySearch Library (OFSL) has scheduled five sessions to explain how to transcribe the digitized records to create searchable databases and to sign up volunteers to help with the transcription project.  This is the same class being offered five times; you only need to attend one.  Genealogists in particular are being encouraged to join in transcribing the records, though everyone can help.  You will have choices about the records you work on, and maybe you will discover your own ancestors in the process!  You will also be helping make it easier for other researchers to find their lost family members.

The scheduled sessions are:
Thursday, July 16, 11:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m. (same day as the celebration event)
Friday, July 17, 2:30–3:30 p.m.
Saturday, July 18, 10:00–11:00 a.m.
Wednesday, July 22, 7:00–8:00 p.m.
Tuesday, July 28, 7:00–8:00 p.m.

All sessions will be taught by Kim Miller, OFSL staff member.

Please help make these records searchable for everyone.  I cannot overstate the importance of the records for helping identify enslaved ancestors' former owners, a key piece of information needed to be able to trace those ancestors prior to Emancipation.  Tony Burroughs, the well known black genealogist and author of Black Roots, mentioned in a recent keynote presentation that in all the research he has done, only about 15% of emancipated slaves took their former owners' last names.  That means that 85% of us need the information that can be found in Freedmen's Bureau records.

You don't have to wait for the library event to help; you can actually start transcribing records today if you want to.  Information about the indexing project and how to contribute is available at

http://www.discoverfreedmen.org/

The purpose of the July 16 event is to help publicize the importance of the records and the effort to transcribe the records and create the index.  The transcription work itself is an ongoing effort.

If you want to watch a recording of the June 19 event, it is available on the Freedmen's Bureau Project Web site.

In addition to all the regular media coverage of the digitization and transcription projects, Judy Russell, the Legal Genealogist, explained how the records are important to everyone doing Southern research, not just those with formerly enslaved ancestors.  And Danica Southwick wrote a great article about the project for the Jackson Sun prior to the media launch.

Black Family History Day, February 15, 2015

The African American Genealogical Society of Northern California, with the support of the Oakland FamilySearch Library, will hold its seventh Black Family History Day on the Sunday of Presidents' Day weekend, February 15, 2015.  The society's event, created to celebrate Black History Month, began in 2011.

The family history day will take place from 1:00–5:00 p.m. at the Oakland FamilySearch Library, 4766 Lincoln Avenue, Oakland, California.  There is no charge to participate, but it helps if you preregister, so we have a better idea of how many people to expect.

New researchers will attend a short introductory workshop and then receive assistance in creating their initial family tree charts.  From there they will go to one-on-one assistance and start to learn how to do research and search for documents about their families.  Attendees who already have some research experience will be able to go directly to the one-on-one research stage.  Whether you're a beginner or already have done some work, it's a good idea to bring copies (please leave your originals at home!) of the information you have so it's at hand if you need to check it.

I have helped at every Black Family History Day since the first one, and I will maintain my perfect attendance record by being there this year also.  (Lucky for me, it's the day after RootsTech/FGS ends, and I was able to schedule my return flight for late Saturday.)  I really enjoy helping people learn how to find their family histories, so I'm looking forward to another fun day of family discoveries!

So You Want to Learn How to Do Swedish Research?

We are lucky at the Oakland (California) FamilySearch Library to have very strong support for Swedish family research.  Along with some subscription databases not available at most FamilySearch Centers, two members of our staff have a dedicated day each week for Swedish research.  One or both of them are available all day to assist beginning and experienced researchers with their Swedish family history.

Last year our library was part of the tour the SwedGen team made through the U.S.  That was for an advanced research seminar.  This year we are hosting a beginning Swedish research class on Saturday, October 18, 2014, from 10:30 a.m.–12:00 noon.  If you have wanted to start your Swedish research but weren't sure what to do, this class is for you.  It is designed not only to help you find your ancestors, but also to get in touch with living relatives.

The class is free, but preregistration is required.  Send a message to wolofson@yahoo.com.

The Oakland FamilySearch Library is at 4766 Lincoln Avenue, Oakland, CA 94602.  There is a large parking lot available.  Public transportation is more difficult, but AC Transit has one line that goes up Lincoln from the Fruitvale BART station.  Information on how to make that connection is in my post on using BART to get to East Bay genealogy research locations.

Randy Seaver's Genea-musings Saturday Genealogy Poll

Today Randy Seaver posted a genealogy poll on his Genea-Musings blog.  I don't often answer online polls like this, but I found his questions interesting.  The Mission Impossible music isn't playing in the background here, but these are my answers:

a)  Which genealogy software programs for your computer do you use (e.g., Family Tree Maker, Reunion, GRAMPS, etc.)?
The program I use regularly is Family Tree Maker, PC version 16.  I also have installed and use to varying degrees PAF 5.0, Legacy Family Tree, Reunion, and Mac Family Tree (yes, I'm "computer bilingual").  I even used to use the old Mac version of Family Tree Maker!

b)  Which online family trees have information submitted by you - in either a separate online tree (e.g., Ancestry Member Tree) or a universal (collaborative) online tree (e.g., WikiTree)?
I have no family trees posted online anywhere, and I advise others to do the same.  I don't want my family tree information appropriated, inappropriately linked, and/or mangled by people who don't do good research.  (A good genealogy friend of mine had her entire tree copied with no attribution by a Ph.D. student, of all people!)  I do, however, have a family research page on my own Web site with the names and locations I am researching, and family members have found me that way, which shows you don't need to put a tree online to collaborate with family.

c)  For which subscription genealogy record providers (e.g., Ancestry) do you have a subscription?
The only site for which I have a paid subscription is FindMyPast.com, because the paid version shows the newspaper images, which the FHL Portal version does not.

d)  Which FREE genealogy record providers (e.g., FamilySearch) do you use regularly?
At home I use FamilySearch extensively, along with FindAGrave, Google, JewishGen.org, Library and Archives Canada, RootsWeb, USGenWeb, many newspaper and genealogical society sites, and any site that includes information I am looking for.  I also regularly visit my local LDS FamilySearch Center (which in my case happens to be the Oakland FamilySearch Library) and use the databases available through the FHL Portal, which include 19th Century British Newspapers (a Gale database), Ancestry.com World Edition, Fold3, Godfrey Library, Newspaper Archive, and more, and which are free to use in the library.  The Oakland FSL also has individual subscriptions to GenealogyBank, VitalSearch, and Newspapers.com, each available on only one computer.  I also use Steve Morse's One-Step Webpages, but it isn't actually a records site, just a better way to search on other sites that do have records.

e)  How much time do you spend each week doing actual genealogy research online?  [Note:  not reading, or social networking, but actual searching in a record provider].  Estimate an average number of hours per week.
I probably do a minimum of about 20–30 hours of online research every week.

f)  How much time do you spend each week doing actual genealogy research in a repository (e.g., library, archive, courthouse, etc.)?  Estimate an average number of hours per month over, say, a one-year period. 
The amount of time I spend doing on-site research varies from week to week, but it probably averages out to about 5–10 hours per week.

g) How much time do you spend each week adding information to your genealogy software program (either on your computer or online)?  Estimate an average number of hours per week over, say, a one month period.
I have no online trees so spend no time adding information to them.  (That's one way to save time!)
 
h) How much time do you spend each month at a genealogical society meeting, program or event (not a seminar or conference)?  Estimate an average number of hours per month over, say, a one-year period.
I attend several meetings and programs from different organizations.  It's probably about 9 hours per month, assuming about six programs per month at one and a half hours each.

i) How much time do you spend each month on genealogy education (e.g., reading books and periodicals, attending seminars, conferences, workshops, webinars, etc.)?   Estimate an average number of hours per month over, say, a one-year period.
This is another hard one, because of the number of hours spent at conferences.  Maybe about 20 hours per month on average.

j)  How much time do you spend each week reading, writing and commenting on genealogy blogs, websites, and social media?   Estimate an average number of hours per week over, say, a one-month period.
This is probably about 13 hours per week.  A good chunk of that is writing for my own blog, of course!

I noticed that one question Randy didn't ask is how much time we spend just talking to other people about genealogy!

Indexing (Transcribing, Really), British Maps, Scots, and Australians

Will you be participating in the FamilySearch Worldwide Indexing Project?  (Even though it's actually transcribing, not indexing, as any true indexer will be happy to explain to you.)

All of the searchable databases for the genealogy records available on FamilySearch.org are thanks to volunteers who transcribe information from digitized microfilm.  In 2012, FamilySearch had a 24-hour marathon session where 49,025 volunteers participated by transcribing or verifying records.  This year, on July 20 and 21, FamilySearch is trying to beat the record number of volunteers that was set in 2012.  They hope to have 50,000 people participate this time, which actually shouldn't be that difficult, since they were so close last time.

How about getting a bunch of people together and making a party of it?  That's what we're doing here in Oakland!  Several staff members from the Oakland FamilySearch Library are having an indexing party on Monday.  We're getting together for brunch and transcribing.  And we'll probably have lots of chocolate to munch on while we're working.

It's really easy to get started.  Everything you need to know is right here.  To be counted in the official total, all you need to do is submit one batch of records.  Of course, if you want to do more, no one's going to complain ....

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Similar to the New York Public Library appeal to crowdsourcing to identify details in 19th-century atlases that have been digitized and placed online, the British Library has uploaded more than 3,000 maps from 17th-, 18th-, and 19th-century references to Flickr and is now asking volunteers to help identify locations on the maps.

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The Gordon Highlanders' Museum has photographs of unidentified Gordon Highlanders from World War I.  As an experiment, the museum has teamed up with ScotlandsPeople to see if they can find anyone who can identify the men in a small number of photos.

They have created a Web page that showcases six photographs of the 7th Battalion (the Deeside Battalion) of the Gordon Highlanders.  The photos depict the 7th Battalion in the UK:  in Scotland, leaving for Bedford in August 1914, or training there until May 1915.  None of them depicts the 7th Gordons in France.

If you think you can identify anyone in the photos, please send a message to the e-mail address listed on the Web page.

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A research project at the Jewish Holocaust Centre in Melbourne is focused on Alfred Bergel (1902–1944), an artist and art teacher from Vienna.  He was one of the important figures in the cultural life of Terezín.  He was used by the Nazis to forge famous works of art.  He also worked as a painter and taught children and young people drawing, art history, and art appreciation.  He died in Auschwitz.  Today, his name and works are mostly forgotten.  If you have any information to contribute to this project, or want more information about it, please contact Mareike Montgomery at mareike.montgomery@gmail.com.

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The Destination:  Australia Web site, a project of the Australian National Archives, wants to draw on the stories of the people and family members featured in the photographs showcased on the site to create an in-depth history of Australia’s postwar immigration.  They are looking for people to share immigration stories related to the more than 21,000 photographs from a promotional series taken by the Department of Immigration since 1945.  You can tag people you know, tag where they came from and went to, add descriptions and comments, and comment on others’ contributions.

Black Family History Events

Researchers working on black family history can attend two upcoming genealogy events in the greater San Francisco Bay area.  The first is Black Family History Day, taking place this coming Sunday, February 16, from 1:00–5:00 p.m. at the Oakland FamilySearch Library, 4766 Lincoln Avenue, Oakland, California.  The event is free and is presented by the African American Genealogical Society of Northern California (AAGSNC) and hosted by the Oakland FamilySearch Library.  This is the fourth year that AAGSNC and the library have worked together on the event, held in celebration of Black History Month.  Attendees can participate in genealogy how-to workshops and receive one-on-one assistance with their research.  More information, including a link to preregister (always a good idea!), is available on the AAGSNC Web site.  I will be one of the volunteers helping people with one-on-one research assistance.

Not too far away, on Saturday, March 8, the 9th annual African American Family History Seminar will be held from 8:30 a.m.–4:00 p.m. at the Sacramento FamilySearch Library, 2745 Eastern Avenue, Sacramento, California.  This event is sponsored by Sacramento City Council member Bonnie Pannell, the California Black Chamber of Commerce, the Sacramento Convention and Visitors Bureau Juneteenth Committee, and the Sacramento FamilySearch Library.  It looks like there will be twenty classes this year covering a range of topics, from Reconstruction to newspapers to cemetery records and more.  The seminar doesn't have a Web site, but you can download the registration flyer from my site.  I'll be teaching two classes in Sacramento:  using online historical black newspapers, and finding women's maiden names.

Classes can be a great way to help you make progress with your research, and the different perspective another person can give in individual research sometimes makes a huge difference.  See if one or both of these events fits in your schedule, and maybe you'll be the one making a huge leap in your research this year!

2014 Black Family History Day and Other Upcoming Events

This past week I have been very busy with running around, going to meetings, and doing research, but I wanted to let everyone know about some events coming up in the San Francisco area that are of interest to genealogists.  Maybe I will see some of you there.

The African American Genealogical Society of Northern California will be holding its 2014 Black Family History Day on Sunday, February 16, 1:00–5:00 p.m., at the Oakland FamilySearch Library, 4766 Lincoln Avenue.  While this is a particularly good way for beginners to start researching their families, it is also helpful for those who have already done some research to learn new techniques or get some help to break through a brick wall.  The page still has information about the 2013 days but should be updated soon.  And even if it doesn't get updated, come anyway!  I'll be one of the volunteers helping attendees with their research.

The California Historical Society (CHS) will host a reception on Sunday, January 26, 2:00–4:00 p.m., to celebrate the opening of a bilingual exhibit about Juana Briones (1802–1889), an important early settler and entrepreneur in the San Francisco Bay area.  The exhibit will run from January 26 through June 8, 2014.  Part of Briones' original 1850's home was saved from destruction, and CHS has a project to help preserve it.

Remember the 1992 movie A League of Their Own, about women playing professional baseball during World War II?  According to the baseball scholars who will be speaking at the San Francisco Public Library (SFPL), women's baseball began at Vassar in 1866!  SFPL will host a panel discussion on women's baseball titled "Linedrives and Lipstick:  The Untold Story of Women's Baseball", also to be held on Sunday, January 26, this from 1:00–4:00 p.m. (decisions, decisions).  The panel will include baseball scholars David Block, Jean Ardell, Dorothy Mills, Leslie Heaphy, and Monica Nucciarone.  The accompanying exhibit at the library will run from January 25 through March 16, 2014.

2014 Is around the Corner

Other than simply looking at the dates on my calendar, I have another way to tell when the new year is coming:  Many genealogy groups suddenly start scheduling their talks for the upcoming year.  I am happy to say that I was one of the beneficiaries of the scheduling whirlwind, and in one week I was scheduled for eleven presentations in 2014, by the Oakland FamilySearch Library, California Genealogical Society, and Sacramento African American Family History Seminar.  Most of the talks will be topics I have spoken on previously:  newspapers (online, black, and Jewish), maiden names, Jewish genealogy, and vital records.  But I will also be adding presentations on new subjects, including cemetery and probate records.  Probably the most unusual of the talks will be part of a new series offered by the California Genealogical Society:  genealogical research that took on a life of its own.  That talk will be about some research I conducted for someone else, but I became so fascinated by the man at the center of it that I've continued to look for information about him, on my own dime.

I really enjoy giving talks and sharing knowledge with others interested in genealogy.  I also always learn from the people who attend my presentations.

Here's wishing everyone a happy, healthy, and productive new year, with lots of answers to genealogical questions.  And if you come to one of my talks (here's the schedule), please come up and say hi!

Genealogy Research in the East Bay via BART

A death certificate from
the Oakland History Room

I've previously written about using BART to travel to genealogical research locations in San Francisco.  It's time to give equal attention to the East Bay.  Since I live in Oakland I often drive to these places, but parking in downtown Oakland and Berkeley is comparable to San Francisco, so being able to take BART lets you avoid that mess.

The first stop on our East Bay research tour is Lake Merritt station.  Follow the exit signs toward 9th Street, and you'll see a very large sign that says "Superior Court."  Exit at that corner, and when you come up above ground, you'll be at the corner of 9th Street and Oak Street.  That puts you five blocks from the main branch of the Oakland Public Library, four blocks from the Alameda County Administration Building and Superior Court, and three blocks from the Alameda County Clerk-Recorder.

If you're taking a train from Pittsburg/Bay Point, Millbrae, or SFO, you need to transfer to a Fremont or Dublin/Pleasanton train get to the Lake Merritt station.  Instead of waiting for a connecting train, you might want to get off at the 12th Street/Convention Center station, though it's a longer walk.

Similar to the San Francisco Public Library, the Oakland Public Library has two important resources for genealogists:  the Oakland History Room and the Newspaper and Magazine Room.  The History Room is on the second floor of the library and has information and records primarily about Oakland, but also for other cities in Alameda County.  Probably the most significant items are original Oakland birth and death certificates from 1870–1904, before the state of California began collecting vital records, but you can also look at a complete collection of Oakland city directories (1869–1943); Alameda County voter registers (1867–1944); Tax Assessor's block books for Oakland (1877–1925); various Sanborn fire insurance map books from between 1882–1951; photographs of Oakland, Piedmont, and Emeryville; vertical files of newspaper clippings; several local high school yearbooks; information on the origins of street names for Oakland and Berkeley; and more.  There are indices to several local newspapers and to articles in books and magazines.  Staff will do free look-ups and will mail you copies of items for a small fee.  The Newspaper and Magazine Room, which is at the other end of the second floor from the History Room, has the complete historical run of the Oakland Tribune on microfilm, along with many other local newspapers, including a significant number of black newspapers.

The Alameda County Administration Building houses the Superior Court records office and the Tax Assessor.  The records office, on the basement level, holds probate and civil indices and microfilms.  If the records you want to look at have not been microfilmed, they'll have to be retrieved from storage, which can take several days.  Unlike San Francisco, there is no charge to request records from storage.  Also, some records may be housed at different courts.  Criminal records apparently are treated similarly.  The Tax Assessor's office is on the first floor.  You can walk in and ask the nice people there to look up who owns a property.  I've been told it's possible to get complete tax records for a property, but I haven't done that myself (yet).

The Alameda County Clerk-Recorder holds birth, marriage, and death records from 1905 to the present and land records dating back to the 19th century.  There are no restrictions on who can order an informational copy of vital records in California, but more recent records may have some names, such as the medical examiner on a death record, redacted (privacy laws).  The Recorder section has computerized and microfilm indices and records for land transactions and fictitious business name registrations.  A computer with an in-house index for vital records includes records that occurred after the published indices end.

The 12th Street station is the closest one to the African American Museum and Library at Oakland (AAMLO).  Exit toward Ogawa Plaza and then head west on 14th Street.  AAMLO is about four blocks away.  AAMLO is a great resource for researching the black communities of the Bay Area and California.  It has diaries, oral histories, videos, newspapers, and other materials relating to local people and organizations.  It also has general resources relating to black history in the United States and important historical individuals.

Our next stop is the 19th Street station in Oakland, the closest station to the California Genealogical Society and Library (CGS), as Kathryn Doyle pointed out in my post about San Francisco genealogy locations.  You can follow the exit toward Broadway and 20th or the one toward 20th; either way you'll have to cross a street (20th for the former, Broadway for the latter) to get to the corner with the beautiful green I. Magnin building.  Then walk up Broadway two blocks, cross one more intersection, and turn left to enter the old Breuner Building, where you will find CGS on the lower level.  CGS has resources not only for California but for the entire United States, as so many people came to California from other places.  Its extensive library includes books, manuscripts, and microfilm.  It also offers genealogy classes throughout the year, including an introduction to genealogy the first Saturday of the month.  Several databases are available on the Web site and in the library.  The library is open to all, but nonmembers must pay a $5 user fee, except for the first Saturday of the month.

Continuing further up the Richmond line (but passing MacArthur and Ashby stations), the Berkeley station puts you not too far from Bancroft Library on the University of California campus and in easy walking distance of the Berkeley Public Library and the Berkeley Historical Society.  If you're going to Bancroft, exit the station via the plaza escalator.  Go east on Center Street, cross Oxford, and enter the campus on Grinnell Pathway.  Turn left on Campanile Way.  After about three "blocks" distance, you'll come to Doe Library; Bancroft is on the east end of the building, with the entrance on South Hall Road.  Bancroft is primarily an archive, with collections of Western Americana, Mark Twain papers, the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, and the university archives, among others.  It also has a significant photograph collection, much of which is being digitized.  Generally, you need to page materials ahead of time (which is a whole separate post!), but some reference materials are on the shelves.

To go to the Berkeley Public Library, follow the signs at the Berkeley station to exit at Shattuck and Allston on the west side of the station.  When you come up above ground, walk south one more block and you'll be at the library.  The big attraction for researchers here is the Berkeley History Room, which has city directories and phone books, Berkeley High and University of California yearbooks, Sanborn insurance maps, the Berkeley Daily Gazette from 1894–1983, oral histories, photographs, maps, and more.

For the Berkeley Historical Society, exit the Berkeley station through the plaza escalator and head west two blocks on Center Street.   The society's History Center has a library and an archive.  I've been told it has Berkeley High School yearbooks (including some years that the Berkeley History Room doesn't have) and a photograph collection, but I haven't actually made it there yet to see for myself.

One very important genealogical location that BART doesn't reach directly is the Oakland FamilySearch Library.  The closest station is Fruitvale.  When you exit the station, to the right is a large board listing the AC Transit buses that leave from the station.  The board also has a handy map showing the bays from which each bus departs.  Currently the #39 bus will take you to the corner of Lincoln Avenue and Monterey Boulevard (but AC Transit has changed this route several times, so the specific bus line might be different when you go).  From there walk back down the hill a little to the entrance of the LDS temple campus and follow the signs to the Visitors' Center/Family History Center (the former name of the FamilySearch Library).  The library is on the lower level of the building.  Before you walk in, make sure you enjoy the beautiful view of the bay.

The Oakland FamilySearch Library is a branch of the LDS Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah (the mother lode of genealogy libraries).  It is a noncirculating genealogy library with almost 10,000 print items, 38,000 microfilm reels, and 10,000 microfiche.  The collection has a strong regional focus, so you will find lots of records about California (particularly the Bay Area Portuguese community), but there is something for almost everyone here.  The San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society (SFBAJGS) regularly donates publications and microfilm, so the library has a significant number of Jewish research resources.  The 75 computers have access to more than a dozen subscription genealogy Web sites, including Ancestry.com, FindMyPast.co.uk, NewspaperArchive.com, and Fold3.com.  Classes are offered regularly, and several genealogical groups, including SFBAJGS and CGS, hold meetings, classes, and events in the library.

A really interesting set of records is at another location that requires you to take an extra step after getting to the BART station.  Go to the Hawyard station and take the shuttle to California State University of the East Bay.  In the university library's special collections is a set of original Alameda County voter registration forms from 1875–1925.  Most of this type of record around the country were destroyed, so these are unusual survivors.  This particular set includes a record for author Jack London.  The library also has collections of historical slavery documents and World War II Japanese relocation materials.

So far I've only discussed Alameda County locations, but Contra Costa County is also in the East Bay.  I don't know of anything you can get to directly by BART, but some core repositories are reachable by BART and a bus connection.  The Contra Costa County Clerk, Superior Court, and Historical Society are all in downtown Martinez.  The best way to get there by BART is to go to the Walnut Creek station and take the County Connection #98X (express) line to the Amtrak station, which is only a short walk from the three locations.  You can also take a bus to Amtrak from Pleasant Hill (#18), Concord (#16, #19), and North Concord (#28/627), but the bus lines from those stations take significantly longer.

The Contra Costa County Clerk's office has birth, marriage, and death records, land records, and fictitious business name filings.  Searchable indices are online and on computers in the clerk's building.  The Superior Court records office holds records for closed cases, which are what genealogists usually deal with.  The Contra Costa County Historical Society's History Center is an archive with photographs and original documents relating to the history of the county.

I realize it seems as though I'm giving Contra Costa County short shrift, but I don't know of other genealogy research locations that are easily BARTable.  For example, the Plesasant Hill branch of the Contra Costa County Library has a genealogy collection, and members of the Contra Costa County Genealogical Society volunteer at the library and help people with their research—but the closest station is a mile away on the other side of the freeway, and I didn't see a direct bus connection.  If you know of other BART connections, feel free to post a message letting us know!