Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter

John McColgan, Boston’s city archivist, and a team of four other city workers and archivists are preserving the hundreds of messages and other items left at Copley Square in the wake of the bombing. Thousands of notes were left by people from all over the world. Items to be preserved include notes on paper, paper chains, flowers, crosses, candles, photographs, scores of pairs of running shoes, stuffed animals, hundreds of baseball hats, and more, all left in Copley Square. The fragile keepsakes will be moved to the city archives in West Roxbury, where the items (except for the flowers) will... Dick Eastman

Rick Aschmann has created a web site quite unlike any other I have ever seen. Rick describe it this way: "Some people collect stamps. Others collect coins. I collect dialects." The web site contains hundreds of audio and video samples of speech all over North America. In each case, Rick has captured the accent of a native (more specifically, someone who was raised in a particular location, though not necessarily born there, and whose dialect clearly represents that place). Did your ancestors speak like this? I grew homesick just listening to accents from Maine! While this is a hobby for... Dick Eastman

The following announcement was written by Coret Genealogie: This week the website Genealogie Online reached 20 million profiles. Genealogie Online is a Dutch service which allows genealogists to easily publish their genealogical data and images. Over 5000 genealogists use this service to publish their data. The result is multi-language website with a lot of freely searchable information about ancestors. The focus of Genealogie Online isn't solely on quantity. Bob Coret, who runs this service from his one-person business Coret Genealogie, also puts the quality of genealogical data in the spotlight. Genealogie Online automatically performs genealogical sanity checks on the data... Dick Eastman

The following announcement was written by FamilySearch: May 7, 2013 FamilySearch Adds to Collections for BillionGraves, Canada, Italy, Peru, Sweden, and the United States FamilySearch has added more than 9.4 million index records and images this week from BillionGraves, Canada, Colombia, Czech Republic, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Italy, Peru, Sweden, the United States, and Venezuela. Notable collection updates include the 3,368,091 index records and images from the U.S., Michigan, Death Certificates, 1921-1952, collection, the 2,187,206 images from the new U.S., New York, Southern District, U.S District Court Naturalization Records, 1824-1946, collection, and the 848,610 index records and images from the BillionGraves... Dick Eastman

The following announcement was written by the sponsors of the Monaghan-focused Family History initiative: Monaghan, Ireland, Tuesday, May 7, 2013 A unique Monaghan-focused Family History initiative is being organised as part of The Gathering 2013. It will provide two 4-day training courses within the county for tourists tracing their Monaghan ancestors. The project is entitled ‘County Monaghan Genealogy – home to the little hills’. It will give participants information on the genealogical sources available, the cultural history of County Monaghan and the diversity of origin of its people. The courses will take place in North Monaghan from Monday to Thursday,... Dick Eastman

In the January 25, 2013 newsletter, I described new software that keeps files in sync on two or more different computers. It operates a bit like Dropbox except that no data is ever stored on a web server belonging to someone else. All data is stored only on computers you specify, such as at your home and at your office or any other locations you specify. It also works well to make sure you have the same copies of files on both your desktop and laptop computers or on any two or more other computers. All data is encrypted before... Dick Eastman

By the time you read these words, I should be en route to Las Vegas to attend the annual conference of the National Genealogical Society (NGS). This annual conference is always one of the larger, and better, genealogy conferences of the year. Holding it this year in Las Vegas is a great idea, in my opinion. Las Vegas is well equipped to handle all sorts of conferences, large and small. Visitors to Las Vegas can always find things to do so everyone is invited to bring family members along. If I have time this week, I hope to take in... Dick Eastman

The following announcement was written by the Troy Irish Genealogy Society: A new data base on the Troy Irish Genealogy website - www.rootsweb.com/~nytigs/ identifies the 240 different newspapers that were published in Rensselaer County starting in 1787 up to the present day. To see this new data base, click on RESOURCES and then click on NEWSPAPERING IN RENSSELAER COUNTY. The newspapers prior to 1880 will be especially valuable to genealogy researchers as they predate the New York State Law on centralized reporting of death and marriage records.These early death and marriage records may be available nowhere else except possibly in... Dick Eastman

As many genealogists already know, DNA has many uses. It can help you trace your family tree and find distant and not-so-distant relatives. Even the body found under a a parking lot in Leicester, England, was not positively identified as that of Richard III until DNA from the body was compared to living descendants of one of Richard's close relatives. Different DNA markers can identify medical problems, often before other symptoms appear. In some cases, DNA helps to prolong or even save lives. In some cases, DNA can even predict the future. Scientists can now determine whether a fetus has... Dick Eastman

Many genealogy organizations are upset that our elected officials and other bureaucrats want to delete Social Security Numbers from the Social Security Death Index (SSDI). Genealogists have protested that eliminating those numbers will actually help commit fraud, not prevent it. Now new proof is given in an article in the ConnectionNewspapers.com web site. One new form of fraud targets recently-deceased home owners without requiring Social Security Numbers. Con artists recently used online death records, including Ancestry.com and the D.C. property tax database, as well as in-person visits to search court records at local courthouses, to locate vulnerable properties where they... Dick Eastman

This is an update to an article published two days ago. I have added a few details, such as the menu, the price, and the URL for the order form. Tickets are now available at http://eogn-2013-las-vegas.eventbrite.com! I would like to invite you to a dinner for EOGN Newsletter readers, their guests, and other genealogists, to be held at 7:30 PM Pacific Time in Las Vegas on Saturday evening, May 11. That will be a few hours after the close of the annual conference of the National Genealogical Society. NOTE: This is not an official event of the NGS and is... Dick Eastman

The following is a Plus Edition article written by and copyright by Dick Eastman. Two weeks ago I described the easiest way to start a new blog (web log): sign up for a service that hosts blogs on their own servers. The process is simple. You can publish your first articles within a very few minutes after opening an account. The drawback is that people can only read your blog by going to some other company's web server. Last week I described how to install blog software on your own web server. The advantage is that the blog remains on... Dick Eastman

What may become a major genealogy site has been announced. Genealogy Karma hopes to replace an earlier web site that has been missed by thousands. Many of us used Bridgett and Doc Schneider's Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness (RAOGK) web site. The site went offline in 2011. Sadly, Bridgett passed away a short time later. Several people have tried to create replacements for RAOGK but none of the new sites have achieved the popularity of the original. Now a commercial company has created a new web site with similar aims and has dedicated the site to the memory of Bridgett... Dick Eastman

An article by Jill Krasny, published on Mashable.com, states: "People curious about family history spent a whopping $2.3 billion on genealogy products and services last year, according to a study by market research firm Global Industry Analysts. They took most of their work to sites like Ancestry.com, which charge between $22.95 and $34.59 per month for access to billions of pertinent records. One-on-one consultations set them back $2,000 to $5,000 per session, depending on the length and complexity of the project, a spokesperson told Mashable. Despite those sites' popularity, 'it’s perfectly possible to do everything without spending a dime,' says... Dick Eastman

Here is a sign of the times: one town in New Jersey is converting to all wireless telephone service. Hurricane Sandy destroyed many of the telephone lines and hardware all around the town. The cost of purchasing new copper wire, new hardware, and the labor to install all the new equipment is in the millions of dollars. Instead, Verizon realized it would be much cheaper to provide wireless telephone service to everyone. The new Verizon Voice Link service will connect each home's wired and cordless telephones to the Verizon Wireless network. There will be no copper wires running from telephone... Dick Eastman

This is great news for Nook owners and potential Nook owners! If you own a Nook HD or HD+ tablet, you probably already know that it runs the Android operating system "under the covers." That is, Barnes & Noble added a great, user-friendly menu system on top of the Android operating system, then has sold Nooks at lower prices than most other Android-powered devices. While easy to use, the one big drawback to the Nook has been that you could only add new applications from the Barnes & Noble app store. That app store only contained a small subset of... Dick Eastman

The Ontario Genealogical Society's annual conference will be held on the Durham College campus in Oshawa from May 31 to June 2. The society's Durham branch is hosting this year's event. The theme of this year's conference is "Pulling Up Stakes and Putting Down Routes," wherein members of the society help explain the importance of the way a person's ancestors got to where they lived as part of their story. Organizers are expecting between 500 and 700 attendees. Attendees can choose from 55 presentations and seminars over the three-day event. Featured speakers include experts from Canada, the United States, and... Dick Eastman

FamilyTreeDNA announced a big sale on DNA testing on April 18, 2013. You can read that announcement at http://goo.gl/q1U1y. The sale was supposed to end on April 22nd. However, today the company offered the following announcement: With the end of the DNA Day promotion, we (Bennett and Max), considered how to continue offering the best prices, yet keep control in the lab to avoid delays from high volume. Since demand is directly related to prices, we decided to implement a temporary price rollback whenever lab capacity allows us to do so. Despite an extremely successful sale, we believe that with... Dick Eastman

The following announcement was written by Findmypast.com: Newly added collection documents hundreds of years of significant life events and media headlines LOS ANGELES (May 1, 2013) – Findmypast.com, an international leader in online family history, has published more than 23 million new records and 121 million pages of U.S. and world newspapers to its already extensive collection of historical records. New records, including Irish birth, marriage and death records, highlight important life events for our ancestors. Researchers can find their ancestors in a newspaper article among thousands or find their grandfather’s military service documented through World War II Enlistment Records.... Dick Eastman

Have you ever tried to help a non-computer-expert friend or relative troubleshoot a technical problem by talking with them over the phone? It is almost impossible. I have participated in many conversations similar to the following: "OK, click on the red icon. Now scroll down. Click on the that says 'Open Recent.' What do you see now?" Yes, it can be done but there is a much easier way. Customer support professions have used remote desktop programs for years. Using such software means that both people in the conversation can see the same things on one computer at the same... Dick Eastman