Genealogy is like a jigsaw puzzle, but you don't have the box top, so you don't know what the picture is supposed to look like. As you start putting the puzzle together, you realize some pieces are missing, and eventually you figure out that some of the pieces you started with don't actually belong to this puzzle. I'll help you discover the right pieces for your puzzle and assemble them into a picture of your family.
Showing posts with label Washington State. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Washington State. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 14, 2022
Wednesday, July 6, 2022
Wednesday, April 27, 2022
Sunday, October 31, 2021
Halloween 2021 with Two Grandchildren
I spent a mellow afternoon with two of my grandchildren for Halloween. We didn't carve pumpkins, we doodled on them instead. Our artistic talents produced an alien, a cat, and a big screaming mouth with sharp, bloody teeth.
Then they modeled their costumes for me before they went to a safe, socially distanced Halloween candyfest. We had a cheerleader, a "regular extreme fire ninja", and my daughter-in-law as a reindeer. The cat and dog declined to dress up.
It was a very good afternoon.
Wednesday, July 21, 2021
Wednesday, January 20, 2021
Wednesday, May 13, 2020
Wednesday, April 1, 2020
Wednesday, December 25, 2019
Wednesday, March 13, 2019
Wednesday, December 26, 2018
Wednesday, October 31, 2018
Wednesday, December 20, 2017
Saturday, August 26, 2017
Brother, Can You Spare an Hour (or Two)?
It's time for another round-up of projects that are looking for volunteer help, whether in the form of transcriptions, information, or time. If you have an hour or two a week to spare or some specialized knowledge, maybe you're just the person for one of these requests.
As is becoming more and more common, several of the projects are asking volunteers to transcribe digitized information. McGill University in Montreal, Québec is hoping people will be interested in working on 150 years of meterological observations from the McGill Observatory. The focus of the Data Rescue: Archives and Weather (DRAW) project is studying the historical weather data to identify patterns and trends, but an article notes, “The Observatory ledgers are also full of interesting little notes about the daily lives of our ancestors." So if you had relatives living in Montreal, you can learn more about what their weather was like and how it affected them. The project site is still in a beta testing stage, but interested participants can sign up now and practice using the transcription tools.
Yale University's recent foray into crowd-sourced transcription work is all about the drama — Yale's School of Drama, that is, along with the Yale Repertory Theatre Ephemera Collection. The aim of the Ensemble @ Yale project is to create a database of Yale theatrical history. Volunteers can browse digitized programs spanning more than 90 years and transcribe play titles, production dates, and names of directors, cast, and crew. Once the first two collections have been transcribed and put into a searchable database, more Yale theater-related collections will be considered as additions. If you had a family member at Yale or are into theater history, this may be the project for you.
A transcription project more directly related to family history research is the one connected to the recently launched database of genealogical records for Ukrainians born between 1650 and 1920. The database is said to include information on more than two and a half million people, with plans to increase the total to between four and five million people by 2019. Documents used as data sources originated with the Tsardom of Muscovy, Russian and Habsburg empires, Poland, and the Soviet Union. The index is currently searchable only in Cyrillic, but a Roman alphabet search is planned for the future. (Remember, Google Translate understands Ukrainian and is your friend.)
If you register on the project site you can create a family tree. The transcription site provides instructions on how to do the transcription work, and lists locations and whether documents have been finished or are waiting to be worked on. Something I didn't find on the site is a list of what documents are being used, which would be useful for determining whether Jewish individuals might be included in the database.
There are enough volunteer transcription projects now that someone has created a page to aggregate them. It's on an education-oriented blog, and the focus is on students working with historical texts, but it's a nice collection of links conveniently grouped together.
A local request for assistance comes from the Vacaville (Calfornia) Heritage Council, which is looking for volunteers to take on projects such as scanning photo negatives, researching local history, organizing donated historical material, and various computer tasks. Some of the historical items that scream to be cared for are the Vacaville Reporter's newspaper collection from 1930–2006, microfilm of newspapers going back to 1883, and photo negatives. Interested individuals can contact council president Doug Rodgers at the e-mail address given in the article.
Three more local requests, these from museums in eastern Contra Costa County, California, were featured in a recent newspaper article. The Antioch Historical Museum, East County Historical Museum, and Pittsburg Historical Museum and Society have each received healthy donations of newspapers, microfilm, and other historical items that now need to be sorted and prepared for access. Contact information for each of the groups is in the article, if you have the time to help.
Dr. Kimberly Jensen, a professor at Western Oregon University, is trying to find more information about The People's Bulletin, a black community newspaper published in Portland, Oregon. The only known surviving issue, from June 7, 1917, is Volume 1, Number 34, and is held at the University of California at Santa Barbara's Special Research Collections, as part of its “Portland [Oregon] African-American Collection, circa 1900–1970.” So far all documentation for the newspaper indicates only the year 1917, although June 7 was in the 23rd week of 1917, so the first issues should have come out in 1916. It's obviously a very rare paper; it isn't even listed in the Chronicling America directory. Anyone who can provide information about The People's Bulletin is asked to contact Dr. Jensen at the e-mail address given in the article linked above.
There are always lots of Irish projects going on. A releatively new one is Epic Journeys - Ellis Island, which aims to document the Irish experience going through Ellis Island. The project began in 2015 with a focus on the parish of Tulla, County Clare but has now expanded to other departure points in Ireland, including locations in the counties of Cavan, Cork, Galway, and Tipperary. The Web site is currently going through an upgrade, so contributions cannot be made through it directly, but they can be sent via an e-mail address on the site.
The Edmonds Historical Museum (in Snohomish County, Washington State) is asking its area residents, whether military veterans, current service members, or civilians, to come forward and share their wartime memories, from World War II through to the recent War on Terror. All interviews will be shared with repositories for permanent preservation, and participants will each be given a copy of the oral history interview to keep and to share with family members if desired. After November 2017, the interview project will expand to general memories of Edmonds and south Snohomish County. Details and contact information are in an online article about the project.
This one isn't directly genealogy-related, but identifying the person should help one family. Authorities from Orange County, California have put out a public request for help with their oldest cold case, who is a Jane Doe. "Jane" was found dead on March 14, 1968 in Hungtington Beach, California. She was estimated to be 20–30 years old, 5'2"–5'3", and about 130–140 pounds. More information about her case, including the clothing and items found with her, is on the Defrosting Cold Cases blog.
The last project I'll mention today has nothing to do with genealogy, but it just sounds really cool, so I want to share it. How would you like to transcribe magical manuscripts? The Newberry Library in Chicago is giving you that opportunity. The Book of Magical Charms describes how to care for toothaches, cheat at dice, complete a conjuring, and speak with spirits. How can you possibly pass that up? Atlas Obscura has an interesting article about the project, and you can visit the transcription project site to get started.
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| Flooding in Montreal’s Bonaventure Depot in 1886. Photo: George Charles Arless. Source: McCord Museum, Montreal, Quebec, MP-1999.6.1 |
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Yale University's recent foray into crowd-sourced transcription work is all about the drama — Yale's School of Drama, that is, along with the Yale Repertory Theatre Ephemera Collection. The aim of the Ensemble @ Yale project is to create a database of Yale theatrical history. Volunteers can browse digitized programs spanning more than 90 years and transcribe play titles, production dates, and names of directors, cast, and crew. Once the first two collections have been transcribed and put into a searchable database, more Yale theater-related collections will be considered as additions. If you had a family member at Yale or are into theater history, this may be the project for you.
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| Ukrainian family from Tyshkivtsi, Galicia, Austro-Hungarian Empire, 1890 |
If you register on the project site you can create a family tree. The transcription site provides instructions on how to do the transcription work, and lists locations and whether documents have been finished or are waiting to be worked on. Something I didn't find on the site is a list of what documents are being used, which would be useful for determining whether Jewish individuals might be included in the database.
-- >< -- >< -- >< -- >< --
There are enough volunteer transcription projects now that someone has created a page to aggregate them. It's on an education-oriented blog, and the focus is on students working with historical texts, but it's a nice collection of links conveniently grouped together.
-- >< -- >< -- >< -- >< --
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| 1903 Vacaville Reporter front page |
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Three more local requests, these from museums in eastern Contra Costa County, California, were featured in a recent newspaper article. The Antioch Historical Museum, East County Historical Museum, and Pittsburg Historical Museum and Society have each received healthy donations of newspapers, microfilm, and other historical items that now need to be sorted and prepared for access. Contact information for each of the groups is in the article, if you have the time to help.
-- >< -- >< -- >< -- >< --
-- >< -- >< -- >< -- >< --
There are always lots of Irish projects going on. A releatively new one is Epic Journeys - Ellis Island, which aims to document the Irish experience going through Ellis Island. The project began in 2015 with a focus on the parish of Tulla, County Clare but has now expanded to other departure points in Ireland, including locations in the counties of Cavan, Cork, Galway, and Tipperary. The Web site is currently going through an upgrade, so contributions cannot be made through it directly, but they can be sent via an e-mail address on the site.
-- >< -- >< -- >< -- >< --
-- >< -- >< -- >< -- >< --
This one isn't directly genealogy-related, but identifying the person should help one family. Authorities from Orange County, California have put out a public request for help with their oldest cold case, who is a Jane Doe. "Jane" was found dead on March 14, 1968 in Hungtington Beach, California. She was estimated to be 20–30 years old, 5'2"–5'3", and about 130–140 pounds. More information about her case, including the clothing and items found with her, is on the Defrosting Cold Cases blog.
-- >< -- >< -- >< -- >< --
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| Detail from The Book of Magical Charms |
Monday, May 15, 2017
Northwest Genealogy Conference: Another Busy Time Coming Up
The conference runs over four days: Wednesday–Saturday, August 16–19. The first day is free classes in two tracks, beginning genealogy and society management. Then each day has a featured speaker: Diahan Southard on August 17; Daniel Earl on August 18; and Kenyatta Berry on August 18 and as the banquet speaker on August 17.
This conference is only half as long as IAJGS, so I don't have the luxury of only one talk per day. Instead, I have two each on Friday and Saturday:
Friday, August 18, 2017
U.S. Immigration and Naturalization, Parts 1 and 2
Saturday, August 19, 2017
Online Resources for Jewish Genealogy
Using Online Historical Jewish Newspapers for Genealogical Research
It'll be nice to have two sessions for my immigration and naturalization class. I cover so much material in that, and it's impossible to cram it all into one normal session time. But I'm very disappointed that my talks on Saturday are at the same times as two by Janice Lovelace, and I won't be able to hear either one. At least I can go to her Thursday presentation.
Wednesday, April 6, 2016
More Newspapers Online!
• Ontario, Canada: The Newmarket Public Library (in the York region of Ontario) apparently provided ten newspapers to create the Newmarket's Digital Newspaper Project (free).
• China: In 2014 the complete North China Daily News, 1850–1951, was digitized, but only three years were available, and those through a ProQuest subscription. Now it appears that access to the entire collection is available. This is a paid site and might be institutional only.
• England: The Daily Mail for 1994 to the present can be freely read.
• England: The Teesdale Mercury, an independent newspaper from County Durham, has been digitized for 1855–2005 (free).
• Germany: Der oberschlesische Wanderer is online at two sites, one German (33 years between 1833 and 1936) and one Polish (42 years between 1828 and 1938), with different coverage between the two. Both are free and have images only with no search.
• Hungary: The Arcanum Digitheca has ten newspapers and is a pay site.
• Hungary: Zalai Közlöny ("Zala Gazette") for 1862–1945 is free.
• Hungary: Eger, a magazine with political and other content, has been digitized for 1863–1944 (free).
• Hungary: The Hungaricana Library has several newspapers and can be used with an English or Hungarian interface (free).
• Hungary: The Middle and Eastern European Digital Forum has about a dozen German-language newspapers covering the 18th–20th centuries (free).
• Iran (new country!): A collection at the University of Manchester has been digitized for three historical periods (free). A recent article discusses the collection and its importance.
• Ireland: The Ballymun Concrete News was a local paper published from 1998–2006 that emphasized positive stories about its area, a Dublin neighborhood (free)
• Isle of Man (new category) - The Manx Newspapers and Publications site, which includes World War I German-language internment facility newspapers, was formerly listed under England (pay).
• Northern Ireland (new category): Two Belfast links were moved from Ireland and into a new Northern Ireland subheading under the United Kingdom (free).
• Poland: The Lodz/Litzmannstadt Ghetto Chronicle was not actually a newspaper, but it has detailed information about the day-to-day events in the ghetto (free).
• California: The Clovis Roundup has two online archives, one a monthly listing on the paper's site and the other via Issuu (free).
• California: Newspapers from the Glen Park neighborhood have been added to the collection of San Francisco neighborhood papers available on the Internet Archive (free).
• California: An obituary index for Tulare County for 1859–2012 is available through the Tulare County Genealogical Society (free).
• Iowa: The Daily Nonpareil for 1857–1964, which was digitized by NewsBank, can be read online by Council Bluffs Library cardholders.
• Michigan: The Caro Area Public Library has placed the digitized Tuscola County Advertiser for 1868–1942 on a site with Caro High School yearbooks for 1922–2006 (free).
• Missouri: Newspapers.com, the online newspaper site owned by Ancestry.com, has digitized the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for 1874 to the present as a pay service.
• Missouri: On the other hand, the St. Louis Public Library has free obituary indices for the Post-Dispatch for 1880–2014 and for the St. Louis Argus, a historical black newspaper, for 1915–1919, 1921–1927, and 1942–1945 for free.
• New Jersey: The Asbury Park Press for 1905 to the present has also been digitized by Newspapers.com as a pay service.
• New Jersey: The Plainfield Public Library has an obituary index for the mid-1920's through the mid-1980's for the Courier News available as PDF downloads (free).
• New York: Obituary indices for the Suffolk Times (1920–present) and for obituaries found in the Gildersleeve scrapbooks (1915–1982) are online courtesy of the Mattituck-Laurel Library (free).
• New York: The Queens Library has The Wave of Long Island for 1896–1900 online with somewhat limited flexibility of access (free). Click the link, click the plus sign by "Newspapers and Periodicals", then click the plus sign by "The Wave of Long Island" to see the individual years.
• North Carolina: The Salemite, the student newspaper for Salem College, a women's college in North Carolina, is online for 1920–1990 (free).
• Ohio: The Ottawa County Exponent for 1897–1957 is online at the Oak Harber Public Library (free).
• Pennsylvania: The University of Pennsylvania newspaper, the Daily Pennsylvanian, is online for ranges of years between 1885 and 1995. I believe the plan is eventually to digitize all years.
• Texas: Another student newspaper, The Lariat of Baylor University, has been digitized for 1900–2015 (free).
• Washington: Green River Community College's newspaper, the Green River Current, is available from 1965, the year the college was founded, through 2015 (free).
• West Virginia (new state!): The first item for West Virginia is an obituary index for Parkersburg and Wood County newspapers for 1841–1890, 1896–1902, and 1930–2007 (free).
Other Newspaper News
It isn't digitized, but it's worth noting that the only known surviving copy of The Colored Enterprise, dated December 15, 1897 (issue #15), was discovered when a time capsule in Asheville, North Carolina was opened in June 2015. An article about the discovery said the newspaper and other items in the time capsule will be held in a collection at the state archives.
Sunday, March 13, 2016
My Summer Speaking Trifecta
This is the first time I'll be speaking at Jamboree and IBGS, and my first time attending IBGS. I'm really looking forward to these educational opportunities and the chance to get together with so many other genealogists. I'm going to have a lot of fun this summer!
Sunday, February 14, 2016
2016 International Jewish Genealogy Month Design Competition
The primary means used to publicize IJGM is the winning design chosen from the annual competition for that year. The design needs to celebrate Jewish genealogy and help promote genealogy as a hobby. It will be available to organizations and individuals to help promote IJGM, primarily as posters and flyers.
This year's design competition officially began on January 25, 2016, and the deadline to submit an entry is June 20, 2016. Submission requirements are available on the IAJGS Web site. Each entry must be submitted by an IAJGS member organization, but the artist does not need to be a member of the organization.
Wednesday, December 30, 2015
Friday, December 25, 2015
Christmas Eve 2015
I think I have decided that spending Christmas Eve with my grandchildren is one of the best things I can ever do with my time. These are some of the highlights.
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| The "sticking out tongue" contest |
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| Everyone keeps an eye on the baby going into her playpen. |
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| No, I don't want my picture taken right now! |
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| Group photo with Dad, fighting for camera time |
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| lots of love for baby sister |
The first presents opened were new pajamas for Christmas!
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| The present bonanza in full swing |
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| A cool wooden car from Cuba! |
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| Matching dolls from Cuba |
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| A four-generation photo that will stay in the family |
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