Intellectual Property in My Family Tree

Annually, April 26 is World Intellectual Property Day, which was first celebrated in 2000.  It was established by the World Intellectual Property Organization to raise awareness of the impact of patents, copyrights, trademarks and design on daily life.  And some members of my family have patents and copyrights, so I'm going to celebrate them.

My cousin Al Lore, who worked as a chemist at DuPont, told me he holds five patents, relating to composition of matter and textile finishes (hospital nonwoven gown finish).  I was able to find three of them in the patent database by searching with Google.

Fluorine-containing terpolymers, as Albert L. Lore with Stuart Raynolds

Fluorosurfactant leveling agent, as Albert L. Lore

Oil- and water-repellant copolymers, as Albert Lynn Lore with Edward James Greenwood and Nandakumar Seshagiri Rao

I took chemistry in high school and got all A's, but I have to admit that I don't understand any of what Al's patents do.  I guess I'm not an organic chemist.

My cousin Sam Brainin, who was an electrical engineer, is in the database with one patent.

Space stabilization of a search pattern, as Samuel M. Brainin

My aunt Mary Meckler has written several books, for which she owns the copyrights, as far as I know.

The Magic of Tobias Twissle, as Mary Meckler

Aimsly's Attitude, as Mary Meckler

Tangled in Life:  A Lainey Kelso Mystery, as Mary M. Meckler

Everybody's Grandma, as Mary Meckler

Jangled Lives:  A Story of Love and Fear, as Mary M. Meckler

I had the pleasure of editing Tobias Twissle for my aunt.  I think I did some editing on Tangled in Life also.

My sister Stacy Fowler has cowritten two books.  I believe she shares the copyrights with her coauthor.

A Century in Uniform:  Military Women in American Films, Stacy Fowler and Deborah A. Deacon

Military Women in World Cinema:  A 20th Century History and Filmography, Deborah A. Deacon and Stacy Fowler

I know I have a thank you in the second book, because I translated several Russian titles and credits for Stacy.  I think I have a thank you in the first book also.

Maybe by posting this, I'll find out I have even more talented relatives!

I Found Out Where We Had Our Vacation!

It's amazing what you can learn once you find the right people to ask.

Back on November 8, I posted a series of photographs from a vacation my family took, probably around April 1970, when most of the photos were dated.  Some photos were at picnic tables, some by a tent, some by a lake, and some of different family members standing in front of rock formations.

I still remember that we visited Lake Mead when I was young, so that was my guess for the lake in the photos.  But I had no idea where the rock formations could be.  I threw the question out to anyone looking at the blog post.

No one posted any comments on the blog, but I did get several comments on my Facebook page.  One in particular, from my cousin's wife, suggested that the rocks might be at Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area in Nevada.  So I looked it up online, found an e-mail address for questions, and sent a link to my blog post, asking if anyone there could tell me if the photos were taken at Red Rock.

The person who first received my message said he would forward it to people at Red Rock to look at.  It took a couple of weeks, but a very nice person from Red Rock responded and said the photos didn't look like Red Rock, but maybe they were at Valley of Fire State Park, also in Nevada.  He sent me the URL for Valley of Fire's site.

So I visited the Valley of Fire site, found an e-mail address there to send questions to, and went through the same routine.  This person thought the photos did look like Valley of Fire, and he said he would forward them to staff at the park to see if they could find the locations.

This time I waited much longer.  I realized after three months that I had never heard anything back, so I sent a follow-up message.  My contact said he would poke the staff at Valley of Fire.

Three days later, a message came from a new person, someone at Valley of Fire.  She said yes indeed, those photos sure did look like they were at her park, and she was going to ask some staff members to try to find the locations.

And two days after that, woo hoo!  Not only did they find all three locations, they took photos of them while holding up printouts of my photos from 1970!  Look what they sent me:

First we have the photo of the Toyota station wagon, and then just the rock formation.

Here's the photo of my father, and next the same rock formation without the photo.

Last but not least, the photo of the three of us kids being held up in front of the same rocks, and the rocks by themselves.

And now I know that all of these photos were taken in the Seven Sisters picnic area at Valley of Fire State Park.  Since there were photos of us sitting at a picnic table, I'm guessing that table was not far from the rock formations.  I hope that the picnic tables from 1970 have been replaced by now, although I'm amazed that the rocks look almost exactly the same as they did 55 years ago.  I know geologic time is slow, but I would have expected more erosion.

It's almost exactly 55 years ago, in fact.  I realized that we probably took this vacation during Easter break (yes, back then, before political correctness, it was Easter break, not spring break as it's now called), because my parents weren't really big on having us miss school unnecessarily.  Looking at the calendar for 1970, Easter fell on March 29 that year.  If I remember correctly (it has been a while, after all), Easter break was the week before Easter, so we would have been there during the week leading up to March 29.  And that was just last Saturday.  If Easter break came after Easter itself, then it's 55 years ago this week.

I'm so stoked that I was able to identify the locations for these photos, and also figured out when!  Next up, I think I'll see if the people at Lake Mead National Recreation Area can tell me where at the lake those photos were taken (the person who sent me the URL for Valley of Fire also sent me the one for Lake Mead).  I'm feeling lucky.

And I did receive permission to post these photos on my blog (because of course I asked; I didn't take the photos, so I don't own the copyright).  I'm still waiting on an answer from the park interpreter on whether she wants name credit for the photos.

Addendum, April 1, 2025:  The park interpreter has decided she wants to stay anonymous.  But I gave her a big thank you for helping me solve my mystery!

Whoops! A Tad Behind in Wrapping Up FGS Day 3

Where does the time go?  I just realized that I didn't finish reporting on this year's FGS conference, having failed to write about the last day, even though one of the best sessions took place then.  Shame on me!

I began my Saturday with a volunteer shift at the Association of Professional Genealogists booth in the exhibit hall.  We usually don't get a lot of people stopping by, but it's nice to have the resources available for those who want to ask about the organization.  As usual, most of the inquiries I fielded were about how to find a professional genealogist to help with research, but a couple of new BYU graduates with degrees in family history asked for advice on starting a professional genealogy business.  I'm happy to spend some time in the booth to help promote the primary American organization for professional genealogists.

During my time in the booth, I popped out a couple of times and spent some time looking in the exhibit hall for good deals to spend some free "dealer dollars" that I received with my registration.  I finally decided on one of those books for a grandparent to write down information about his life and give to a grandchild — my boyfriend wants to create memories for his younger granddaughter, and I thought this would be a helpful supplement to the time they spend cooking together — and a more general memory book focused on events on each decade from the 1930's to the current time.  It's always fun to get free stuff, and the books ended up costing me not even a penny.

After my shift was over, I zoomed over to catch a session in the first time slot.  As much as it pained me to do so, I did not attend Tony Burroughs' presentation on oral history.  While Tony is one of my personal inspirations as a genealogist, I have read quite a bit about taking oral histories, and I thought I would be better served to learn something new.  In that vein, I went to Tina Beaird's talk on Scottish Presbyterian Church records, and I'm glad I did.  I know a fair amount about religious records, but I learned some specifics about the Presbyterian records, which can include not only the sacramental records one would expect (births, marriages, deaths) but also confirmations, transfers, pauper records, school records, session minutes, suscription lists, and print publications.  Wow, that's a lot of places to find information about your family members!  And Tina was a good speaker, too!

After Tina's talk came the lunch break.  Near the end of the break, MyHeritage held a trivia quiz in their booth, with attendees who answered questions about flags correctly winning various prizes, including DNA tests and annual subscriptions.  I managed to eke out a three-month subscription by guessing the right answer for the flag of Papua Guinea.

I spent the afternoon learning more cool genealogy information.  Ari Wilkins talked about how former slaves, after Emancipation, used newspaper advertisements and the Freedmen's Bureau to try to reconnect with family members.  No study has been done to determine how successful people were, but it appears that for the most part they were not.  It seems that more researchers are successful nowadays in reuniting family branches by using DNA and tracking down cousins.

Janis Minor Forté spoke about strategies to identify slave owners and then using that information to reconstruct slave-era families.  I already knew the techniques she described, but it's always good to attend talks such as this because there are often little gems you find nowhere else.  Since I have not been able to move any of my family lines past the 1865 barrier, I need all the help I can get.

The final presentation I heard was Judy Russell, the Legal Genealogist, covering copyright myths, in her version of the top ten.  The most important thing I learned in this session was that something I had been told years ago was wrong.  I don't even remember where I learned it, but someone I trusted gave me incorrect information about copyrights on photographs.  After Judy's talk it became clear to me that having your photographs developed in no way reduces or negates your copyright in those photos.  The developer functions as a publisher does for a book.  I'm glad I never passed on that bad information to anyone else but annoyed at myself for not having analyzed it better.

I had a great time at this year's FGS conference and learned a lot.  I'm so glad I had the opportunity to go.

RootsTech 2018: Days 3 and 4

The second half of this year's RootsTech was just as much fun as the first half, and I continued to find opportunities to learn.  On Friday I was having trouble deciding which session to attend, and I finally went to Myko Clelland's talk on the "hidden" British and Irish gems on the FindMyPast site.  Great choice!  I particularly enjoyed learning about the older parish records available on the site, especially the marriage record of a deaf man in 1576, because it included a description of how the man communicated during the ceremony.  I didn't catch the groom's name, so I've sent Myko a message asking that, as I want to read the record myself (I've taken American Sign Language classes for many years and am always on the lookout for historical mentions of deaf individuals and communities to share with my teacher).  Hey, if anyone reading this happens to remember the groom's name in that record, please let me know!

During the lunch break on Friday I participated in a focus group for MyHeritage.  I can be very opinionated (which I'm sure will surprise everyone who reads my blog), so that was a lot of fun.  I was even asked to stay a few minutes after the others had left to give some additional insights.  I hope some of my suggestions turn out to be useful.

The big MyHeritage party was Friday evening, which was a blast, as usual.  I remember seeing Thomas MacEntee, Lisa Hork Gorrell, Jacqueline Henderson, Banai Feldstein, Debra Robinson, Michelle Goodrum, Leslie Lawson, Jamie Mayhew, Sheri Fenley, Dan Earl, Randy Seaver, and Robert and Alice Burch, and as usual I know I've forgotten people (I must be getting old).  Along with several tasty food offerings (was that actually a pork sausage served on the antipasti tray?) and yummy mocktails (I particularly liked the frozen mango lemonade), there was a hat-decorating station and a video set-up.  I, of course, wore the hat I decorated for the video.  (I learned that only Banai Feldstein and I took the time to sew the decorations on our hats; everyone else used glue.  I guess we wanted our hats to last longer than the party.)

Saturday morning started with a MyHeritage Friends breakfast, where attendees were asked to give our thoughts about the company's current and future directions.  MyHeritage really seemed to be trying to find out what its users think of its offerings.  Some of us started talking about a possible conference in New Orleans in October 2020.  Would you go?

I am very happy I went to Dan Earl's class on "Funeral Homes and Family History", which he had listed as being suitable for beginners but which covered a lot of interesting material about the history of funerals and of the funeral home industry.  He has an uncommon perspective on the subject, his father having owned a funeral home.  I learned some new stuff, which is always a good thing.

My session, on copyright and its impact on genealogists, was in the very last time slot on Saturday.  I had been joking that only half a dozen were going to show up, but I was happy to see about 30 people in the room, including artist and author Kathy Marshall, whom I know from the African American Genealogical Society of Northern California.  She even had a real-life copyright question she asked me and then allowed me to use as an example during my talk.  Many people asked good questions, and it was clear they were thinking seriously about how copyright issues could affect their work.

After that it was back home to Portland and my boyfriend, cats, and birds.  I'm glad I had the opportunity to go to RootsTech this year, and I hope I'll be back next year.

RootsTech 2018 Schedule Available

Even though I'm a speaker at next year's RootsTech conference, I did not receive a notification from FamilySearch that the schedule is now available online.  I'm lucky that I read about it in a couple of other bloggers' posts, so I headed over to find out when my talk is scheduled.

I am teaching one class at RootsTech 2018:

Online ≠ Free: Copyright Issues for Genealogy
Saturday, March 3, 3:00 p.m.
Session RT9427

So if you plan to attend the full length of the conference, think about coming to my session, in the very last time slot.  Registration is also open, so you can take care of that now, before you forget.  There is a huge variety of classes on the schedule, with something for just about everyone.  I look forward to seeing lots of my fellow genealogists in Salt Lake City at the conference!

IAJGS Conference, Days 3 and 4

It really is amazing how much you can cram into a conference schedule when you try.  Between speaker sessions, volunteer activities, and networking, I've been going steadily all day long every day.  But oh!, the things I'm learning!

Tuesday began with a Jewish bloggers brown bag breakfast.  It's a pleasure to meet people whose words you read in cyberspace and put faces to names.  I had a lovely time chatting with Lara Diamond (Lara's Jewnealogy), Emily Garber ([going] The Extra Yad), Israel Pickholtz (All My Foreparents), Ann Rabinowitz (JewishGen blog), Mary-Jane Roth (Memory Keeper's Notebook), Marian Wood (Climbing My Family Tree), and Barbara Zabitz (blog in progress).  Then it was off to learn more!

Well, it should have been.  In the first session I headed to, the speaker kept his head down and read directly from prepared notes, without looking up at the audience.  He also wasn't making any great revelations, so I quickly moved on and instead spent some research time in the resource room.  The second session was much better, though.  Alexander Beider spoke about the origins of Jews from North Africa.  His discussion covered the same types of linguistic and naming clues that he discussed in Monday evening's presentation, indicating origins from multiple locations in Europe and elsewhere.

From there I gave my third presentation of the conference, on where to find and how to access online Jewish historical newspapers.  I was really happy to let people know that there are now two free online OCR programs for Yiddish and that Google Translate handles Yiddish.  That makes a lot more historical Jewish newspapers much more accessible than they used to be.

On Tuesday IAJGS held a Tech Lunch, where people with technical and computer skills are asked to volunteer their skills in helping IAJGS.  It sounds as though there are plans for a Web site redesign and a desire to offer assistance to societies.  Something was said about encouraging everyone to be on Facebook also, but I still don't think that's a substitute for a good Web site.  Facebook is great for short term, but legacy material is lost.

The afternoon brought some interesting subjects.  Nicolas Coiffait has been researching the soldiers in Napoléon's armies and has identified more than 2,000 men he believes are Jewish.  He is continuing the research and trying to learn more about each man.  Eugenio Alonso spoke on how to research conversos and Anusim in the Caribbean by using documents from the National Historical Archive of Spain, many of which are available online for free.  He showed several examples that identified individuals as "judaizing", meaning that they were following Jewish practices.  He pointed out that he had even found two documents that specified the judaizers were black.  And that was the end of the day for me, because I had to head back to my room to reconstruct a presentation for later in the week (more on that in my next post).

On Wednesday I finally had the opportunity to "sleep in":  My first session didn't begin until 8:15!  (Hooray!)  And I had to be there, because I was the one speaking, on the subject of copyright and how it affects genealogy.  Unfortunately, far too many genealogists are still woefully undereducated on this subject, with significant numbers believing that if it's online it's ok to copy.  It was gratifying to have one person in the audience who understood already, but it was also good that people asked lots of questions, because that indicated they wanted to learn what they should be doing.  I'm very happy that the program committee accepted that talk for the conference.

We had a small but dedicated number who came to the JGS Newsletter Editors meeting.  Five people, including me, were there, representing four society publications.  Mostly it was another opportunity for networking, but we also did some brainstorming.  It's interesting that one group still has only a print publication, with no electronic version.

A session on the Yad Vashem Web site was supposed to show advanced ways to use other record sets besides the central database.  It didn't really deliver, but as a sample photograph the speaker used a wedding photo that accompanied a recent article in ZichronNote.  The photo is notable because even though it was for a wedding, the bride and groom, and in fact the entire wedding party, were wearing the cloth yellow Stars of David mandated by the German government.  Surprisingly, the speaker did not mention that.

Squeezed in between the end of the third morning session and the beginning of the group lunches, most of the SFBAJGS members here met for a quick photo to celebrate being at the conference.  While we had almost 50 members last year at the Seattle conference, this year we are a more modest thirteen, ten of whom came for the photo.  That isn't too bad!

San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society members in Florida

After lunch, my afternoon was spent at the IAJGS Annual Meeting.  I was the representative for my society this year, as the president was at home in California.  I've never been to the meeting before, so I wasn't sure what to expect.  I should have known — it was a standard bureaucratic meeting, including lots of reports, delays, and minor tiffs.  We did accomplish what we needed to, voting on bylaws and the next set of officers, and only ran about 15 minutes overtime.  It's unlikely that I'll be attending next year's conference in Warsaw, so someone else will have the pleasure of attending the meeting.

My day ended with one of the best parts of family history:  actually getting together with family.  I don't come out to the east coast often, so I always try to see family when I'm here.  I have cousins who live relatively nearby (75 miles away), in Daytona.  They drove out to the hotel, and we had a nice dinner together.  I even updated them on the latest research I'm doing on our grandfather.  They're as interested as I am in finding out who his biological father was.

My commentary on days 1 and 2 of the conference is here, and that for days 5 and 6 is here.

Top 10 Posts of 2016

It is very close to the end of the year, and it's natural to look back at one's work over that time.  This year's most viewed posts fall somewhat between the results from last year and those of the year before.  In 2014 the top posts covered a wide range of topics, while in 2015 the list was solidly populated by Who Do You Think You Are?  This year half the list is WDYTYA, and the other half is all over the place.  So it appears I still have my mandate, but people are reading other topics also.

Tied at #10 are an episode of Who Do You Think You Are? (no surprise), the one about Scott Foley, and a post about one of my family mysteries, the question of whether the biological father of my grandfather Bertram might also have been the father of Bertolet, the daughter my great-grandmother had three years after her husband had died.  It's nice to see that a story about my family can compete with WDYTYA.

The next two are more episodes of Who Do You Think You Are?:  Katey Sagal at #9 and Chris Noth at #8.  They were were within just a few views of each other.

Coming in at #7 is when I worked out several generations of my female ancestors' ages at death, one of my posts for Randy Seaver's Saturday Night Genealogy Fun meme.  (The corresponding post about my male ancestors' ages at death had a 10% lower viewing count, possibly because it was published a week off schedule.)

I am very happy to see that the post about photos of "contraband" scholars that were appraised on an episode of Antiques Roadshow placed high, at #6.  I keep hoping that someone will find a photograph of an ancestor in that collection.

Returning to Who Do You Think You Are?, the episode with Aisha Tyler placed #5 on the list of most-viewed posts.  She was the opening episode for this year's season and generated a lot of interest.

A big surprise was that how many place names appear in my Family Tree Maker family database came in at #4.  This was another Saturday Night Genealogy Fun post, which certainly helps garner more viewers, but that's a pretty narrow topic.

Neoklis Girihidis

Another surprise, but a good one, was that one of my posts about opportunities to volunteer or share information placed #3 on the year's list.  The number of views was significantly higher than any other volunteer post.  I suspect one of the projects particularly caught people's attention, but I have no idea which one.  I hope it was the one about the Greek man looking to contact the Jewish boys he helped escape during World War II.

This year the highest an episode of Who Do You Think You Are? placed was again #2.  My review of the Lea Michele episode was extremely popular, even though I wasn't able to post it until more than a month after the program aired.  I transcribed all the documents that were shown, however, and I'm sure that helped bring in readers.

Warming my little editor's heart, the #1 post on my blog this year was about copyright.  Yes, the post wherein I chastised two genealogical societies (not by name, of course) for abusing others' copyrights was well ahead of #2, by a good 10% more views.  I hope the post helps people think more carefully before they just copy things from the Internet and put them into their society newsletters.  No, just because it's on the Internet does not mean it's free, and the author didn't put it there so you could copy it.

Now that I've gone through the list, the final surprise is that not a single post about newspapers made it into the top 10.  Considering that two did last year (and three were in the top 12), I wonder what happened.

I checked to see how many episodes of Who Do You Think You Are? were aired this year:  a grand total of six.  And five of those made it into my top 10.  For some reason, Molly Ringwald didn't interest people anywhere near as much as the other celebrities.  But now I know why other topics were able to do as well.

I wasn't able to compare the number of shares this year, because Blogger/Google no longer seems to provide that statistic.  The most commented-on post was another Saturday Night Genealogy Fun one, where Randy asked everyone to write about their most recent unknown ancestor.  That generated almost 40 comments, most from a very generous woman who looked for newspaper articles to help me in my search.  It worked — I think I've identified my grandfather's father.  I'm now searching for a likely Y-DNA candidate for testing.

Something that has not changed since last year is my overall most-viewed post.  That, now with about 67% more views than the runner-up (Lionel Ritchie on Who Do You Think You Are?, the same as last year), is the discussion of the potential of gaining citizenship through descent for people wishing to reclaim ancestral connections.  That post about citizenship is also far in the lead in the number of comments, with more than 150.

Copyright Confusion

It seems that misunderstanding of the difference between attribution and permission is still common among genealogists. While preparing the current issue of the CSGA Newsletter, I encountered two societies that didn’t appear to understand that permission is required to reprint anyone else’s copyrighted material.

The first society had included an article in its newsletter that I thought had useful information for the CSGA membership, so I wrote and asked for permission to reprint it. During the course of the discussion, the other editor realized the article was not original to the society and no attribution had been given to its author (much less had permission been requested to reprint it). An erratum is planned to correct the lack of attribution, but I doubt permission (albeit belated) will be requested, or an apology offered, for reprinting the article as it was.

The second society asked if I could reprint an article about the society that had been published by a newspaper. Permission had not been granted or even requested from the publisher. The person who made the request did not appear to realize that this permission needed to be sought. When I explained that I would not reprint the article without the permission, a request was sent to the publisher. That publisher requires nonprofits to pay $150 for permission to reprint an article. Needless to say, neither CSGA nor the society in question was prepared to pay that amount, and the article will not appear in the newsletter.

Unfortunately, neither of these situations is uncommon in genealogy today. Many people believe that “if it’s on the Internet it’s free”, and they can reuse those items at will. Others believe that as long as correct attribution is given, everything is fine. Neither of these beliefs is correct. Anyone who has written something has copyright to it, giving the author the exclusive right to determine if someone else may reprint that material. While most genealogists do not pursue anything against persons or organizations that have reused their materials (even though they can and sometimes should), commercial entities, such as the newspaper that published the article about the society in my second example above, often do. When genealogical editors and individuals republish copyrighted material without permission, they open themselves and their societies to possible legal action.

Coincidentally, at the fall CSGA Seminar, scheduled for October 29, 2016 in San Mateo and hosted by the San Mateo County Genealogical Society, one of the talks will be on copyright issues in genealogy. If you are unsure what you should be doing when you want to reuse someone else’s copyrighted material, or if you believe everything on the Internet is free to use, I recommend you come to the seminar. Details about the time and location of the seminar, which is free and open to the public, are available on the CSGA blog.

An excellent source of copyright information that is readily available night and day, and that is often geared specifically to genealogists, is the Legal Genealogist blog.  Judy Russell writes a lot about copyright and wants everyone to know what they should be doing to share information but protect authors' rights.

Own a Piece of History

A common dream among genealogists is to have photographs of ancestors and other relatives.  I recently found two vendors on eBay selling photos that previously belonged to newspapers, wire services, and photography agencies.  While most of the photos are of celebrities, athletes, politicians, royalty, and other well known individuals, several are of more "everyday" people.  Maybe one of your relatives can be found there?

One of the sellers is Historic Images.  He scans historic photos for newspapers and then is permitted to sell the originals.  The images he posts are clean and clear; he adds watermarks to make downloading them less attractive.  Most of the photos he sells have typed descriptions on the backs.  He gives a lot of information about the photo but doesn't always list all the names that show up in the descriptions.  He also has an eBay store with Buy It Now items (photos that did not sell in auctions) and a regular sales site online.

I started watching his auctions regularly after a photo with my aunt's uncle showed up.  I search every so often for the name McStroul, as it is unique to that family and if I get a hit I know it's them.  I was able to buy this one for the family (Fred McStroul is in the front row, far right):

Some recent examples of ordinary people that caught my eye:

1931:  French war orphan Pierre C. Waters and his grandmother
Pierre's father was killed in "the war" (presumably World War I).  Apparently his mother and stepfather, Magnon, had also died.  His grandmother, Mrs. Elizabeth Waters, traveled to France and legally adopted him, then brought him to New York.

1933:  Coran Capshaw, clerk of the vestry of the Church of St. Mark's-in-the-Bouwerie
Capshaw didn't like the then-rector of the church and was photographed in conjunction with an election by parishioners of a new vestry.

1946:  Tess Klein complains about elevator operators' strike
Tess, of The Bronx, was working at 10 East 40th Street (Manhattan, I believe) and had to walk up eleven flights of stairs before posing for her photo.

1946:  George Kriloff, a conductor with the Pennsylvania Railroad and a second photo
Kriloff was not working due to a nationwide railway strike.  He was 29 years old and lived at 1216 26th Avenue, Astoria, New York.

Not everyone is named in the photo descriptions, though.

1965:  Policeman at World's Fair guards Indonesian entrance
Indonesia decided it would not participate in the 1965 season, so its people were barred from entering the Indonesian pavilion.  The policeman was not named, but it's a clear photo of him.

A sampling of the more famous individuals whose photos are currently listed are musician Benny Goodman; New York Mets pitcher Jerry Koosman and manager Casey Stengel; New York mayor William O'Dwyer; Canadian hockey player Walter "Babe" Pratt; Marion Roberts, Legs Diamond's girlfriend; and American Communist Jacob Stachel (whose name does not appear in the item description).

The other person selling the same types of photos has the username NordicPix.  The standard paragraph he puts on every listing includes, "International Magazine Services photo archive. IMS was a editorial press photo archive in Scandinavia founded in 1948 but evolved from older archives that have images in the collection also. The archive is in great condition and been in storage for a long time and the images in the collection are now being sold off one by one. The images in this archive where distributed in only 10-15 copies around the world at the time and many copies have been lost or damaged during time, each copy from the collection is therefore very rare and unique."

This seller has a similar mix of photos, but from what I've seen, the majority of the photos do not have much, if any, description on the back.  Sometimes the seller adds a paragraph of historical information about the subject of the photo if it's a famous person, particularly if the photo itself doesn't have much info on it.  The names of ordinary people usually don't appear on the photos at all.  The locations also are often not identified.

Here are some of the everyday people whose photos are currently available:

1940's:  10-year-old Boris, a Soviet child who had already earned a medal as a messenger with the Red Army

1971:  Emmanuel Vitria, French heart patient

undated:  dentist Vladimir Komarov

undated:  a mother (maybe Thost?) reading to her children

undated:  a man using a microscope outdoors in the snow

Some of the famous people featured in NordicPix's photos are French general and politician Charles de Gaulle; Brazilian soccer player Jose Germao; and South Vietnamese Chief of National Police Nguyễn Ngọc Loan.

Both sellers make it clear that all they are selling is the physical photographs.  No copyright is transferred by the sale.  A few of the photos available predate 1923 and are therefore in the public domain.  Many of the photos fall into the 1923–1963 period when copyrights had to be renewed to remain active, and odds are that most of these photos probably are no longer copyrighted, but that's up to you to determine.

Due to the fact that neither of these sellers has complete identifying information for all of the photos in their descriptions, to really get an idea of what they have, you have to browse their listings on a regular basis.  I have found some interesting photos that way that never would have come up on a search.  It's also interesting to see the photos of famous people.  I bought a photograph of baseball player Hank Aaron for my brother, because Aaron was his favorite player.  I also found a photo of Ellis Island from right before it was closed, which I bought for myself.

I have no financial interest in either Historic Images or NordicPix, and neither seller in any way contributed to this article.  I'm just a geeky genealogist who likes photographs and wanted to let others know about these interesting resources.  I hope you find a great photo of a family member!

Thank You to the Calaveras Genealogical Society!

I had a fantastic time on Saturday with the Calaveras Genealogical Society.  This was the first time I have taught an all-day seminar.  Everyone was welcoming and very enthusiastic about genealogy, and they treated me great.  People had lots of good questions, and I think I even helped the society figure out how to handle a copyright problem with one of the older issues of their newsletter.

I will admit that I was a little — just a little, mind you — nervous on Friday.  People were going to come and listen to four separate classes from yours truly.  I've gotten enough good feedback over the past few years to know that I am a reasonably entertaining speaker, but four classes might be something entirely different.  But I was just about ready.  Everything was set up, my presentations were waiting for their final tweaks, I had even planned what I could grab for breakfast and eat in the car Saturday morning.

Then things started going wrong.

When I tried to start my car on Friday morning, it wouldn't turn over.  Wouldn't even make little clicky sounds.  All I heard was the "Sounds of Silence."  This did not bode well, as beautiful Murphys, where the Calaveras County Genealogical society meets, is a mere 132 miles from my home.  Not exactly easy walking distance.

But my car obviously didn't want to make the trip, so off it went to the mechanic, and I got on the phone to all my friends, searching for a car to borrow.  My back-up plan was to look for the least expensive rental available, but someone was generous enough to let me use his van, which even has air conditioning.  Hooray!  I could make it to Murphys!

Friday evening, I was looking over the four presentations, trying to make sure I had made all the updates I wanted.  Everything was looking good again, and I started to relax.  Until I remembered the oversize handout for one of the talks.  Which I had made 40 copies of earlier in the week.  And which were sitting in a box on the back seat of my car.  At my mechanic's garage.

Oops.

I was going to have to leave at oh-dark-thirty on Saturday morning to get to Murphys on time, so I couldn't go to the mechanic before I left.  I sent a panic message to my contact person at CGS and let her know that I would have the electronic file with me, if there was a copy place close enough that handled 11x17.  I also hunted around for older handouts for that class and found fifteen copies of the oversized page, which I immediately stuffed into my computer bag.

Breathe breathe breathe.

On Saturday morning there was a response to my message saying not to worry, we could figure something out.  Much calmer than I was.

It was a lovely drive to Murphys.  Amazingly enough, not a lot of people out on the freeways and highways super early on a Saturday.  After I turned off I-5, lots of open pastureland with lots of cows, and then very suddenly a treeline and climbing up into the Sierra Mountains.  Gorgeous scenery and twisty turny mountain roads that would have had me white-knuckled only a few years ago (I learned to drive in Florida, where everything is flat and straight), but which now just make me slow down a little.

After driving through several small towns (some with populations of only a couple hundred) — Copperopolis, Angels Camp, Vallecito, Douglas Flat — I saw the sign for Murphys.  It looked like there was good signage; every intersection appeared to have street signs.  I looked for the sign for Bret Harte Drive, which Google Maps had told me was where I needed to take a left turn.  But I didn't see it.  And then Murphys was behind me and I was headed further into the Sierras.

Whoops.

I pulled over at the first turnout and called Linda.  No surprise, I had passed the turnoff.  Once I turned around and headed back, I discovered that Google Maps had lied to me:  There is no way to turn left on Bret Harte Drive when you're headed east on the highway.

Note to self:  Don't trust the new, "improved" Google Maps.

After that things improved a lot.  I found the LDS Church and even got there on time!  I learned that there was a place right across the street that could copy the handout.  It took almost no time to set my computer up.  And a good crowd of people was there to listen to me talk about some ways to do genealogical research they might not have thought about yet.  They even laughed with me when I told them about the adventures I had gone through on my way there.  I couldn't have asked for a nicer group for my first time as a seminar speaker.  My most sincere thanks to a wonderful audience!

Calaveras Genealogical Society 2015 Spring Seminar Registration Is Open

When I announced in January that the Calaveras Genealogical Society had chosen me to be the presenter at its 2015 spring seminar, I promised to post when I learned about registration details and if there was a fee.  And now I know:  If you preregister, which requires your check to be received by April 16, it's $25 for Calaveras GS members and $30 for nonmembers; registration includes lunch.  Registering at the door is also $30, but I don't know if you'll get the lunch.  The information hasn't been posted on the Calaveras site yet (because the Webmanager is on a jury for a trial), but I have the registration flyer available on my site for downloading.

The four talks I'll be giving are:
• Reconstructing Family Information When You Start with Almost Nothing: A Case Study
• Get Me to the Church on Time:  Finding Religious Records
• Where There's a Will:  Probate Records Can Prove Family Connections
• They Wouldn't Put It on the Web If They Didn't Want Me to Use It:  Copyright Issues for Genealogy

The seminar will be on Saturday, April 18, at the LDS Church, 400 Bret Harte Drive, Murphys, California.  Several people have told me how beautiful it is in the area, so come for the scenery and a great day of genealogy!

My First All-day Seminar!

I am so excited and proud!  I have been selected by the Calaveras Genealogical Society to be the presenter at this year's annual Family History Seminar.  They've chosen four of my talks for the seminar:

• Get Me to the Church on Time:  Finding Religious Records
• Where There's a Will:  Probate Records Can Prove Family Connections
• Reconstructing Family Information When You Start with Almost Nothing: A Case Study
• They Wouldn't Put It on the Web If They Didn't Want Me to Use It:  Copyright Issues for Genealogy

All of these focus primarily on the U.S., although there is some discussion of records from other locations.  "Finding Religious Records" is mostly about Christian church records and includes some information about Jewish and Muslim records.   "Where There's a Will" describes the probate process and the types of family relationships that can be documented.  The case study shows the methodical research steps taken when I started out with a town name, one person's last name, a married woman's first name, and a third person's occupation (but no name) and slowly built up a seven-generation family tree.  The final talk addresses some of the commonly seen problems with how Internet users readily "borrow" information.

The seminar will be on Saturday, April 18, at the LDS Church, 400 Bret Harte Drive, Murphys, California.  More information should be available soon on the CGS site.  I don't know yet if the seminar is open to the public or if there is a fee for attending, but I'll post when I find out.

The speaker for last year's seminar was Steve Morse, so I have a big act to follow.  But I'm looking forward to this great experience!