Archive for the ‘default’ Category

Last Saturday the 28th of October, I was invited to give a lecture in Albany at the Capital District Genealogical Society (CDGS,) the subject was on how to build a website and new wondrous data available on the Internet.

There was also a Computer Interest Group meeting that was held first that was led by Robert Plunz, where we learned of many new utilities and websites of interest for genealogists. Bob talked about and demonstrated how to download and install Microsoft’s brand new Internet Explorer IE-7 which has just been released. He emphasised that before you run the install utility that you should run a good anti-virus, anti-spyware, and any other nuiscance elininator programs that you have to be sure your system is very clean before you do the install of IE-7.

The following exciting news is in regard to the New York County Histories that are available now at Accessible Archives. More news to follow very soon!

These books have been digitized and are able to be searched by words or phrases.

If you should enquire about this service please tell them you saw it on Upstate New York Genealogy (UNYG) at http://www.ny-genes.com .

*FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE*

Historical Documents Available Online
from the New York State Library

The New York State Library in Albany has started scanning and posting on their website several very good research items. There will be a great assortment of them as time goes by but you can start right now with what I consider to be the very best book for New York State research, which is French’s 1860 Gazetteer of New York.

There are some excellent resources on-line now that are very helpful in looking at specific locations. These can be used to great benefit while looking at locations where ancestors used to reside. Though they were not designed with the genealogist in mind all you have to do is use a little imagination to see how they can be of use to you.

If you have not revisited your early family research, I would urge every one to do so. There are so many new resources coming on-line all the time that it is hard to keep up with them all.

Of course you must take everything that you find on the Internet with a very high degree of suspicion and you must attempt to locate original records from the new clues and document, document, document!

One of my favorite gravestones. This stone is among about one hundred Revolutionary War gravestones in the Old Salem Cemetery in Washington County, New York.

“In Memory of Capt. Edward LONG born October 22nd 1739 and Died October 18th 1792 in the 52nd Year of his Age. He Died Much Lamented by his Wife. ——– Pr. 12 Dollars” (***!!!***)

Does anyone know anything at all about the following people?

Bethia (HOPKINS) REYNOLDS, (unknown dates but probably flourished circa 1750′s-1850′s, most likely in Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont or New York.)

Or her sister, Sylvia (HOPKINS) PARKER, again unknown dates or location.

They were both sisters of Cynthia (HOPKINS) HULET (1775-1860) who was married on 28 Mar 1793 in Foster, Providence, RI., to Aaron HULET (1755-1835.)

Just returned from a very enjoyable long weekend.

Gave a lecture at the Heritage Hunters genalogical group in Saratoga Springs on Saturday and a repeat performance at the North Eastern New York Genealogical Society (NENYGS) in Glens Falls on Monday evening. I spoke on my collection of data on “Families of the Old Cambridge District”, which are the now towns of Cambridge, Jackson and White Creek in the South East corner of Washington county, New York. A good time was had by all.

Saturday, September 16th I gave a lecture at Heritage Hunters in Saratoga Springs on my collection of data from “Families in the Old Cambridge District from the Colonial Period through the U.S. Civil War Period.”

In case you missed it I will be giving a repeat performance Monday evening the 18th of September at the Crandall Library in Glens Falls for the North Eastern New York Genealogical Society (NENYGS.) Hope to see many friends there.

For those of you who have noticed that this blog has not been added to in quite a while, I want to assure you that all is well and I will be continuing to add comments from time to time but probably will not be as active as previous, due to the fact that I went back to work for a living and have a job that takes me out of town a lot.

For those of you who have noticed that this blog has not been added to in quite a while, I want to assure you that all is well and I will be continuing to add comments from time to time but probably not as active as previous, due to the fact that I went back to work for a living and have a job that takes me out of town a lot.

Keepin’ it clean. (The computer that is.)

Windows XP automatically creates a restore point from time to time so that if you ever get in trouble you can always return to the “good ole days,” say yesterday, when your system worked properly.

I like to go into system tools and create my own restore point whenever I have made major overhauls in the system. When you create your own you can attach a little message like “erased a lot of old files, defragged, ran anti-virus,” etc. When you save the restore point xp automatically gives it a time and date stamp. This has saved my biscuits a couple of times.

The latest news from LDS regarding their major digital conversion from microfilm to digitized computer images is explained in a very easy to understand description at: http://www.lds.org/library/display/0,4945,40-1-3384-9,00.html.

The church figured that the final conversion date would have been a few lifetimes away when this project first started, and then it went down to an estimate of 30 years, and now with new streamlined methods of conversion the completion of the project to convert just about all of their holdings is just going to be in the not too distant future.

You will note that on my website I have listed as one of my favorites http://news.nnylin.net which is an excellent free source of early newspapers of Northern New York State.

Now you can search many more digitized newspapers from microfilm at www.fultonhistory.com

This site is brought to you by Thomas Tryniski who tells me that he worked as a consultant on the Northern New York Newspaper Project.

Here is a list of the current papers that he has on his site, all fully searchable.

Essex County Republican 1852-1854

Let’s give credit, where credit is due…

Near the end of last year a furor arose from many of the subscribers to the Godfrey Library on-line resources. www.godfrey.org – Horror of horrors, Godfrey was canceling, or being dropped by, some of the data bases that they provided to their $30 per year “Godfrey Scholar” subscribers. Some of you may remember that I have written about Godfrey both in blogs and on my website favorites and have called it “the best bargain on the Internet!”

From Cynthia Van Ness (Betty Barcode) and Anne Van Camp
at RLG.org comes the GREAT news that there is a new on-line
search service for fabulous and rare collections of documents,
books, letters, manuscripts, and holdings of hundreds of
unique depositories of materials that you will be able to use
in your genealogical and historical research. The best news
is that it is FREE from now until May 31st. Take advantage
of it because you WILL find materials that you never would
have known existed, and where they are held, and how to
access them!

Our friend Bill Hecht has been busy as usual scanning and putting wonderful items on the web. He recently put up the large Tompkins County Land Ownership Map for 1866. He does this on his own initiative and it is a tremendous service for researchers. These huge wall maps are extremely rare and if found today they are usually in very poor condition. Most of the ones that are extant are in libraries, historical societies, and county clerk’s offices. They show the roads of the day with all of the properties named by the owner or occupants. When they were created the individual towns were canvassed by men who actually walked the roads, measured them with distance wheel measuring devices, and interviewed the owners and researched property records to attempt to be as complete and accurate as possible.

If you have German ancestors that came from South Western Germany, there is a new search site at the Baden-Wurttemberg Archives where you can do some serious searching for persons that were recorded as emigrating from there. You get the persons’ name, year of emigration, recorded destination, and the last residence. The website is in the English language also which is a big help for those of us that do not speak or read German.

As I have written about before one of my heroes is Ginny Buechele. Ginny led a campaign for a couple of years to demand that the Dutchess County Executive and the County Legislature fill the empty vacancy of County Historian. If you want to follow the whole event you can read the rootsweb Dutchess County archived messages. It is a lesson in civic duty and perseverance.

Well this is exciting!

Some parts of two of the New York State Censuses are starting to show up at Ancestry.com.

If you are a subscriber to Ancestry, and you go to BROWSE, CENSUS, then go down until you find: New York State Census Collection, you will see that 1880, 1892 and 1905 show up.

Received an email from a new newsletter subsriber, Jack Eaton, who has very generously volunteered to do look-ups for people that have an interest in Chenango County. His father was a Supervisor in the Town of Pitcher, and he has some scarce publications that might benefit someone working in that area. He will do look-ups in the 1902 Chenango Co. Directory, and in a small booklet listing County, City, Town officers in Chenango Co. in 1951, issued by William S. Barnes, County Clerk.

You can reach Jack at j702ea@yahoo.com .
If you take advantage of his generous offer please tell him you read it at www.ny-genes.com

Darci has added a very nice item to her website for those with early Mohawk Valley families and those interested in the Battle of Oriskany. Here is a list of all of the known men that participated in the battle with reference to their town of origin. http://darcisplace.com/darci/roster-updated.htm

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For those of you who have written to us about the change in the UNYG website, we finally figured out what had happened and have repaired it. The domain name had run out and we did not know it because the email address that we used originally is no longer valid and they had no way to notify us. Anyway, all should be back to normal in a few hours. The newsletter is coming out real soon now.

Have you ever had a great day?

Well I had a GREAT day last Friday!

I had to go to Albany for family reasons and then got to spend a half a day at one my favorite places, the NYS Library and the NYS Archives. I actually got quite a lot accomplished in such a short time. It is good to have your ducks in a row now when you travel to do research, due to the cost of fuel and other expenses. I like to eat.

Arizona has put their births, deaths and marriage records on-line. Read about it here http://www.kold.com/Global/story.asp?S=4314278

Now this is the way all states should present their vital records.

We are working on our second newsletter now and it should be out soon. Subscibe now if you have not yet at http://www.ny-genes.com

The New York State Historical Association will be offering three workshops on Genealogy Research:

Genealogy Part I, from 10 a.m. to noon, Wednesday, April 5; Genealogy Part II, from 10 a.m. to noon Thursday, April 6; and Researching with Census Records, from 10 a.m. to noon Wednesday, April 12.

Workshops will take place at the Research Library, Lake Road in Cooperstown. For hours or admission cost, call (607) 547-1470.

Those who intend to visit Special Collections should call in advance and make an appointment.