15 May 2014

Free Saturday Seminar at Riverton Family History Library

Saturday, May 17, 2014 / 9:00 a.m. - 12:20 p.m.

The library offers a free seminar the third Saturday of each month, except for July and December. An opening session is held at 9:00 a.m. featuring a keynote address. Following this session attendees are offered four choices of presentations at both 10:10 and 11:20 a.m. 
The address for the library is 3740 West Market Center Drive (13175 South), Riverton, Utah. If you take Bangerter Highway and exit at 13400 South, you will see the building to the northeast behind Home Depot and across from Kohl's.

9:00 a.m.

Keynote Address - "Let's Get Your Book Ready to Print"- Carol Holland

10:10 a.m.

"Ancestral Quest Basics: Getting Off to a Good Start" - Bud Wood
"Are You Your Own Brick Wall? Common Genealogy Mistakes and Their Solutions" -Beth Taylor
"Pictures Past, Present and Future" - Jens Nielsen
"In-laws and Outlaws: The Bylaws of Teaching Youth About Family Skeletons"- Janet Horvorka

11:20 a.m.

"Are Your Personal Genealogy FIles Messed Up? Are They Multiplying? Are They Lost? Do Your Photos Disappear?" - Bud Wood'
"The Tired, the Poor, the Huddled Masses, and the Wretched Refuse: U.S. Immigration, 1820-1954" - Beth Taylor
"Capturing My Ancestors' Lives: A Guide to Writing Family Histories" - Michael Grimshaw
"Tear Down This Wall!"- Scott Fisher

12 May 2014

New Features and Content from Ancestry.com

Over the last several weeks Ancestry.com has added some new features and some new content to their site. Check these out...

Ancestry.com New Features

New Paging Control for Sweden Church Records
The Sweden Church Records is an important collection for those doing Swedish research. This unique collection contains over 20 million images, but no name index.  You would typically browse or search by location and date to narrow down the images you need to evaluate.

Some of these images have hand-written cross references to other pages in the collection. These page numbers do not correspond to image numbers. We have implemented a Page Number control in the interactive image viewer that helps users get to the correct page number.




Save an Image after Browsing
Prior to this update, if you did any browse action after coming into the interactive image viewer - next page, previous page, changing a setting in the browse breadcrumb – and tried to save the image, your only option was to "Save to Computer" unless you opened up the Index panel, selected a person, and then clicked Save. There was similar, but worse, experience on the old Content Viewer.

Now, you can select the person (record) on the image that you want to save and select the person in the tree you want to save it to in one simple step.
  
  

Updates to sliding controls for search results

We are expanding the functionality of the sliding controls in your search results to allow more of the fields entered in the search form to be controlled by sliders – up to 10 fields. Additionally, we have improved the display of the fields entered that are not editable with sliders. With this update users can expand the section of fields below the sliders to see all of the entered search criteria.

 NOTE: These sliders actually save time in searching with Ancestry. They are exactly the same categories as previously available, but now you don't have to back up to the prior page, or edit the search, and then run the search again. It cuts out a lot of load time by performing the functions on the same page. 




Ancestry.com April New Content

U.S., Military Registers, 1862–1970 (update)

Records (new): 657,627

More men and women guarding the home front. 



London, England, Selected Poor Law Removal and Settlement Records, 1828–1930 (update)
Records (new): 72,000

We’re adding Bethnal Green Settlement records this month. According to the Guardian, while Bethnal Green has developed some trendy spots of late, including a boutique hotel, there are still “alleys that look like they’d do you mischief.”



Savannah, Georgia, Registers of Free Persons of Color,
1817–1864
Records: 11,329         

Prior to changes brought on by the Civil War, free persons of color in Savannah had to register with the city. An 1839 ordinance also required owners of slaves and guardians of free persons of color to register and obtain badges before permitting their charges to be employed. You’ll find those registers here.

  
Florida and South Carolina, Airline Passenger Arrivals, 1907–1957
Records (new): 17,518

Among the records from ships and planes being added in this update are alien and Chinese crew lists for vessels arriving at Charleston.
  

 
New South Wales, Australia, Butts of Marriage Licenses, 1813–1835, 1894

Records: 1,300           

Registers and butts for marriage licenses issued in New South Wales, Australia, 1813–1835, 1894. A butt is the portion of a certificate that remains in a certificate or license book. (It’s also the object of a joke. Which we won’t be making here.)


Texas, Naturalization Records, 1881–1992
Records: 219,154                   

This database contains original U.S. naturalization records from the state of Texas. For people applying to be citizens of the U.S., not Texas. Just to be clear.





New South Wales, Census and Population Books, 
1811–1825

Records: 55,887                     

Find out who was who, where, worked for whom, and owned what in these population, land, and stock books from New South Wales, 1811–1825. (While some of the records do count cattle, they are not listed by name.)



Isle of Wight, England, Methodist Registers, 1813–1937
Records: 17,241                      Images: 4524

How’s this for a curious fact: The Isle of Wight is the smallest county in England—at high tide. It was also home to various Wesleyan Methodist, United Methodist, Primitive Methodist, and Bible Christian congregations whose baptism and marriage records you can find in this collection. (Queen Victoria and Jimi Hendrix both visited the isle, but neither was a Methodist.)

  
San Juan, Puerto Rico, Passenger and Crew Lists, 
1901–1954 (update) 

Records (new): 1,236,035

We’re adding 1.2 million new records to this index to manifests of aliens arriving at San Juan and Ponce, Puerto Rico. In them, you might discover anything from where these folks came from to details on their luggage.
  

Brazoria County, Texas Marriage, 1870–2012 

Records: 210,399       

Brazoria County bills itself as the place “Where Texas began.” Since these are Brazoria County marriage records rather than birth records, we can’t confirm that. 





New South Wales, Australia, Convict Applications for the Publication of Banns, 1828–1830, 1838–1839
Records: 3,309           

During these early years of New South Wales history, convicts who wanted to marry had to get official permission. Applications can provide everything from name and age to an applicant’s sentence and year of arrival or even comments on his (or her) character. Plus, these folks lived in places with great names, like Bathurst, Sackville Reach, and Field of Mars.
  

Manchester, England, Non-Conformist Births and Baptisms, 1758–1912
Records: 197,227  
     
Manchester, England, Non-Conformist Marriages, 1758–1937
Records: 103,637       

Manchester, England, Non-Conformist Deaths and Burials, 1758–1987
Records: 97,860                     

Manchester has been inhabited since the Romans pitched up in 79 A.D. John Dalton came up with atomic theory in Manchester. Rolls and Royce met here. And it’s the birthplace of the oldest professional football league on the planet—as well as these free-thinking folks who told Henry VIII they didn’t want to be a part of his new church, thank you very much.


Germany, Confederation of Jews, 1930–1944 

Records: 1,662

The Confederation of Jews in Germany (Reichsvereinigung der Juden in Deutschland) became a repository for thousands of documents that have been recorded on microfiche. This database contains a list of people with files in the collection and the relevant fiche number.


Germany, Sachsenhausen Deaths, 1938–1942 

Records: 1,504

In the early years of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Oranienburg, north of Berlin, deaths in the camp were recorded at the Oranienburg civil registry office. Including these.




Pennsylvania, Death Certificates, 1906–1962
Records: 2,477,238    

The thing about death records like these is they provide a summary of a life: name, address, gender, race, age, parents’ names and birthplaces—you get the idea. Our first installment to this database includes records for 1906–1924. 





02 May 2014

UVTAGG Family History Meeting and Classes- Come Join Me!!

The next regular, second-Saturday-of-the-month meeting of the Utah Valley Technology and Genealogy Group - UVTAGG will be on Saturday, 10 May 2014, from 9 am to noon in the LDS "Red Chapel", 4050 North Timpview Drive (650 East), Provo.  Information about the Group, meeting location,  main presentations, classes, and class notes are available on their website  http://uvtagg.org. 

The main presentation this month at UVTAGG by Sue Maxwell is titled ANCESTRY - READY, SET, GO!  HERE'S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW.  Whether you have a personal subscription to Ancestry.com, use the Library Edition at a local library or Family History Center it is important to understand how Ancestry.com functions and what it can do to enhance your family history experience and make the most of this incredible opportunity to do research at home.  All members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will soon have access to Ancestry.com at home through their login to FamilySearch. Learn about all that Ancestry has to offer so you will be prepared to utilize its varied tools and features. Come see how the interface will work when the new features are released to all members.  

Sue Maxwell is a genealogist and blogger specializing in teaching, training and mentoring others to help their computer skills, software, family history, and genealogical research. Her focus is on helping others find the joy in identifying and learning about their ancestors.  Sue is actively involved in the genealogy community, former Vice President of Utah Genealogical Association (UGA), a member of NGS and UVTAGG where she is a speaker and trainer.  She and her husband are serving as Area Family History Advisors for the Church and serve 17 stakes in Sandy, Utah. She teaches at Family History Centers and at the FamilySearch Library in Riverton. She recently presented at the Regional Family History Conference in Rexburg Idaho to about 1000 attendees. She has served as a Director, Trainer and Tech Support for a local Family History Center and maintains her blog, Granite Genealogy. This blog focuses on training, information, and materials and helps people keep up to date on what's going on in Family History.  She retired after a 27-year career in management in the utility industry.

After the main presentation the following classes are scheduled.  Check the meetings page at http://uvtagg.org/ for last minute changes or additions.  

(1)  Ancestry.com: Strategies for Effective Searching, by Sue Maxwell

(2)  German Research:  Online Resources, by Laurie Castillo;  

(3)  Ask An Expert (Personal Help), by Don Engstrom and Finn Hansen;  

(4)  Video of last month's main presentation,  Using State Archives and Local Libraries Online, by Luana Darby; 

(5)  Ancestral Quest, by Gaylon Findlay; 

(6)  Organizing Media Files with RootsMagic, by Terri Tyler; and 

(7)  Legacy, by Dean Bennett. 
 
There will be no Mac class this time, though several of the above classes are "Mac-compatible."

All meetings of UVTAGG are open to the public whether members of the Group or not. The Group has the goal of helping individuals use technology to further their family history and there are usually about 100 attending the monthly meetings on the second Saturdays.