Steve’s Genealogy Blog

Today’s GuestBlog is written by Paula Hinkel of the Southern California Genealogical Society.

Deadline Alert
Southern California Genealogical Society Jamboree 2008
June 27, 28, 29 at the Burbank Airport Marriott

There’s still time to join us for Jamboree!  Don’t miss the largest genealogy conference on the West Coast.  Advance registration closes 15.  Of course you’ll be able to register at the door, but why not make life
easy and register in advance?

–The registration process will be a breeze.  You won’t have to wait in line to have your registration processed.  –You get to wear an official printed name tag. 
–You can purchase tickets for the special events.  These will not be available after June 15.

Seats are still available for all of the special events, including the Friday night banquet with Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak; Saturday Effective Society Management breakfast and panel discussion; Saturday evening’s  dinner with Dick Eastman; and the Sunday morning Presidential Genealogy with Chris Child and Gary Boyd Roberts of NEHGS.  Reservations for the meals will close on June 15. 

Don’t forget to register for the newly added events:
 - Hollywood Forever Cemetery, bus transportation and guided tour by cemetery historian Karie Bible. 8:30am-12noon on Friday, June 27.  Cost $30.
 - FREE Introduction to Genealogy taught by Beverly Truesdale 9:00am-12noon Friday, June 27.
 - FREE Kids Genealogy Camp taught by Starr Campbell, Hailey J. Campbell and Michael Melendez from 9:00am-12noon Friday, June 27.

In addition, we have arranged with Lockett Tours for a “Slice of the City” tourist bus trip on Thursday afternoon, June 26.  The tour is $30. Find all the details at http://tinyurl.com/59xjqd.

This year, the program will include speakers and lectures of particular interest to those researching German, Eastern European, and Jewish roots. These include John T. Humphrey on German records,  Peter Lande on “Holocaust Records as a Source for All Genealogists,” which includes how to obtain records from Bad Arolsen; Steve Morse on “One-Step Webpages”  and several others. 

Many well-known professional genealogists, among them Dick Eastman, Tom Underhill, Arlene Eakle, and Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak, will speak about online and traditional resources, tech applications for genealogy, including several DNA talks, German ancestry, genealogy applications for today, such as family health histories, dealing with family secrets and black sheep, finding living relatives, and more.

A featured session will be the first-ever Blogger Summit, which will feature seven of the leading genealogy bloggers:  Dick Eastman of Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter; Steve Danko of Steve’s Genealogy Blog; George G. Morgan, Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak of Megan’s Roots World and RootsTelevision, Schelly Talalay Dardashti of Tracing the Tribe, Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings. Moderating the panel discussion will be Leland Meitzler of GenealogyBlog.com.

Why not take the train to Jamboree and avoid $4 per gallon gas, traffic and parking?  For those coming from the San Diego area, The San Diego Genealogical Society has organized a group trip on the Pacific Surfliner. Contact Phyllis Quarg [phylbq@cox.net] for information on their group tour. The Burbank Airport Train Station is directly across the street from the Marriott, and the shuttle will pick you up at no charge.  Check out your transportation alternatives!

You can find full descriptions of speakers, lectures, evening events, and you can pre-register at this website: www.scgsgenealogy.com and the Jamboree blog at www.genealogyjamboree.blogspot.com

Save the Dates:  Woohoo!!  We are thrilled to announce that dates have been locked in for the next two years at the Burbank Airport Marriott Hotel and Convention Center in Burbank. Save the dates now for June 12-14, 2009, and June 11-13, 2010. How’s that for planning ahead?

Paula Hinkel
Co-Chair
Southern California Genealogy Jamboree
Southern California Genealogical Society

Barbara Poole, who has contributed several articles to this blog in the past, presents today’s article. She offers her experience in publishing family trees on the internet. Thanks, Barbara!

Should you publish your genealogical information on the internet for others to see?  I pondered that question many times before I submitted my GEDCOM to www.familysearch.org about five years ago.  Since that time, I have received a number of inquires via snail mail, as I had given my address (I don’t think email addresses were used then).  Even now, I receive letters with a question or two, and am amazed that these people took the time to write.  One even tracked me down using my address in a Google search and found out my phone number and called.  But I didn’t mind, as I know what it is like to really want to contact somebody immediately.  These people are kind and I’ve never had a problem.

Because of an article in the NEHGS eNews of January 3, 2007, called Drawing Attention to Your Book or Article by Helen Schatvet Ullmann, CG, FASG, I went a step further by submitting my tree to RootsWeb.  I listen to Helen, as I’ve known her about 10 years and know she wouldn’t say something she didn’t mean.  In her article, she mentioned that she submitted to RootsWeb a GEDCOM with a lot of members of her Peter Mills line (she had just published a book on this family).  Because she submitted this GEDCOM to RootsWeb, her book sold out.

After all the years of doing my genealogy, I wanted to share my information with a wider group of people and with people who could contact me immediately via email.  Submitting a tree is rather simple; and, if you prefer to remain anonymous, you can use a pseudonym as a contact name. I used my real name.  Why use a pseudonym like Smith, if I want to touch base with a Poole?  In my case, I use a separate email account just for the RootsWeb site, so mail about my genealogical information on RootsWeb is sent to a separate email account, not to my primary email account.

With RootsWeb, you can choose whether or not to allow others to directly download your information into a reader’s file, but I decided not.  If someone wants my information they’ll need to enter it into their file manually.  Also, I didn’t include information on living relatives, and I didn’t include notes.  You can remove your tree or update whenever you want, and I do so weekly.  Very little effort is involved in updating my information, and I know my tree is pretty much up to date.  Not only will the information you upload to RootsWeb be incorporated into Ancestry’s WorldConnect database, but others can find your information on Google.

In the past, I found information published by other people; now it was time to give back and share what I have.  Many people are unwilling to share their information.  Sometimes, I wonder why they are even doing it if they are unwilling to share.

I’ve recently had several, unresolved problems with Family Tree Maker (FTM), and so I decided I also wanted my information available to me.  Now, when I’m at another computer or location, it is easy to access the information I’ve uploaded.  Photos included in my file did not upload, but all the data transferred beautifully.  Because of my RootsWeb site, I have been contacted by at least 1-2 persons a week.  All have either asked for a little information or shared some really valuable information I didn’t have.  Most people want to share accurate data about the lines they are researching, and this has all worked in my favor.  The positive outweighs the negative.  Actually, I can’t think of a negative and that is probably why RootsWeb is so popular.  Granted, you have to sift through the databases to find what you are looking for, but heck, the information is free, and is even more valuable if the submitter included sources.

Recently, I discovered another place to keep my information - Personal Family Trees on Ancestry.com.  I uploaded the same GEDCOM to Ancestry.com that I had previously uploaded to RootsWeb.  The features of Ancestry’s Personal Family Trees are really nice, and you can either keep this tree to yourself or share it with others.  For now, I restrict access to my Ancestry Personal Family Tree to myself.  The ability to upload a Personal Family Tree on Ancestry is a free feature for subscribers, and I was able to upload all 30,000 names in my database.  The Personal Family Tree feature is being updated, as it has only been available since July 2006.  According to Ancestry, “1,000,000 members started a tree (March 2007).”  I love the automatic timeline feature in Personal Family Trees that automatically calculates the age of a person at the time of each life event entered.  Researchers can also upload photos to Ancestry’s Personal Family Trees, but not to RootsWeb.  Notes uploaded to Ancestry Personal Family Trees may only be viewed by the submitter. As with RootsWeb, you can view your tree from another location or computer by logging on to your Ancestry.com account and then clicking on the My Ancestry tab.  Your information is right there, no need to open up FTM, if you didn’t want to.

If you have ever worried about a hurricane, major storm, flood, or other disaster which could wipe out your genealogy data, storing your data on RootsWeb or Ancestry.com could be a life saver.  Granted, many of us backup to CD’s, but often they are near the computer and could be destroyed along with the computer in a natural disaster.  At least the information on RootsWeb and Ancestry.com is stored on servers many miles from me.

The other day, I was merging information into my file and I was quite confident in what I was doing.  While merging, I noticed that the parents of one of the people in my file were missing.  I thought I really messed up the merge process and inadvertently deleted some data.  I quickly went to the tree I had uploaded to Ancestry.com, pulled up the records for that individual, and sure enough, I never had his parents in the first place!  Fortunately, I only had to worry about 2 minutes before I knew I was OK and the merge was fine.  If I hadn’t submitted my tree, I would still be trying to figure out who James Mead’s parents were.

Cheryl Palmer asked me to post something she wrote to commemorate the first anniversary of my blog. Cheryl was the very first person to post a comment on my blog on April 18, 2006, the same day I wrote my first article. As the first person to post a comment, I think it’s appropriate for Cheryl to write a GuestBlog to launch my second year. Thanks, Cheryl!

I hope I am the first to congratulate Steve on the one-year anniversary of his blog site! I believe the first day he posted his site was April 18, 2006.

I “met” Steve through an online genealogy class. Even though we live approximately 45 minutes from each other, we have yet to meet in person. Through our class I found Steve to be friendly and helpful. I instantly took a liking to him! Several of our classmates still stay in touch and we have a great rapport. Through one of our communications on that particular site, Steve mentioned he was contemplating starting his own site. With some encouragement, and I don’t think he needed much; he had his site up and running.

I have followed his site and watched it grow. He has accomplished in one year what I wish I could accomplish in maybe, 5 years? A week or so ago, I was searching through his site, mostly at some of his beginning postings. The beginnings of anything you choose to do are always a little nerve racking, wondering how to accomplish what you wish to accomplish. I am sure Steve had his concerns about how to do this and make it work the way he wanted to.

He has shared the information of his family, along with many pictures and always with   sources. He has taught many of us, but I am not sure he knows how much he has actually done that.

Steve has devoted time every day to post to his blog, even when he had a guest blog; he was the one who posted it! He is making quite a name for himself with this site. I find his name almost everywhere I go on the Internet, concerning genealogical blogs and such. He has been praised for his work from accomplished professionals and us amateurs alike. He has had “guest” appearances on pod casts, and in other blogs. His blog link is located in most blogs I attend.

Steve has “met” a lot of people through this site. Many doors have opened for him. From new family to bloggers to pros, he has gotten around!

I personally do not have Polish ancestors, but I have to tell you, I keep up with Steve’s site as much as possible. I enjoy his site; he is so organized, dedicated and professional. He is a hard worker and thoroughly enjoys what he is doing, and it is obvious. I learn, share his frustration, joy and accomplishment. I appreciate all his hard work and the fact that he chooses to share with us. I love the pictures, the “sharing” of his trips, and what he learns as he goes along.  

Yes, I am a Steve Danko fan, and congratulate him on one marvelous year! I look forward to reading his blogs, and I try to do that daily. As long as they are free, I will be there!

Thank you Steve for your contribution to the genealogy world. I hope you have enjoyed it as much as I have enjoyed your site! Here’s to another fantastic year, can’t wait to see what it will unfold!

HAPPY “FIRST” ANNIVERSARY

Cheryl Palmer

After posting the information on the Skowronski / Dymek / Danko gravestone in Notre Dame Cemetery, I received a message from George G. Morgan, well-known genealogy author and lecturer.  Many people are familiar with George through the online classes he teaches, his “Along Those Lines…” column, and the Genealogy Guys Podcast he hosts with Drew Smith.

In his message, George provided some interesting information about cemetery medallions:

Thanks for the response on your blog about the medallion on the grave
in MA.

I am really a cemetery addict — a taphophile of the first magnitude — and have photos of tens of thousands of cemetery markers from all over the world that I’ve taken or that have been taken for me by great friends.

I hadn’t seen that particular medallion in recent times. However, I did go back and found a couple of examples. I suspect that they, like the Confederate Cross of Honor stakes that the UDC placed on Confederates’ graves, have been stolen (or removed by cemetery workers ‘cleaning’ the graves).

BTW, in my hometown in NC, there was a terrible rash of cemetery vandalism about a decade ago in which the vandals pried DAR, SAR, Mayflower Descendants, Masonic, Eastern Star, and other bronze medallions from footstones and tried to sell them for scrap.

Fortunately, several scrap metal dealers contacted the police and more than a dozen people were arrested, tried, and convicted of felony destruction of property and grand theft.

Thanks, George!  I have to admit, I really haven’t paid much attention to the medallions in cemeteries.  I’ll have to correct that slight!

As far as I know, Christopher, my first cousin twice removed, is my family’s youngest genealogist.  He started researching his ancestry when he was about 9 years old, and now that he’s in high school he’s become quite an accomplished genealogist.  He wrote an article for this blog explaining how he got involved in researching his family history.  Here is his story:

I began researching my family almost eight years ago now. The earliest notebook I have is dated October 1998- that’s the month that one night at dinner I showed my grandparents a list I had been making of all of the relatives in my family that I knew of. It was at that time that my step-grandfather brought out his pedigree that traced his family history back into the 1700s, and that’s how it all began.

At that time I began picking the brains of all of my relatives, I was only about nine years old. When I began doing my research I began on my mother’s side because the information was more readily accessible to me than my fathers side. My mothers mother luckily had already collected some information from relatives in the early 1990s before my great-grandmother and her brother Paul Charron had died. She also had a list of rough birthdates and death dates from her uncle Joe Danko for members on her fathers side. The information that my grandmother had was the basic facts that I used to start my research on my mothers side of the family.

One night in 1999 my mother received a phone call from her cousin Stephen Danko, who was working out a family tree for his father. I wonder if he was surprised when she had told him that her ten year old son could give him more information about her own family than she could. Every now and than Steve and I chat to keep each other up-to-date on our family. Steve even helped me in researching information on sides of my family that he is not a relative of. He has been very helpful and my family tree wouldn’t be nearly as plentiful as it is without his most appreciated help and research.

I have learned a lot about Genealogy just by searching for family members online, at courthouses, churches, and cemeteries and by interviewing family members. About five years ago I found a distant cousin and fellow genealogist Kelly Townsend through Ancestry.com. She had traced my mother’s maternal grandmother’s family back into the late 1500s in France. We began chatting, and after about a year of correspondences we finally met at a cemetery where our relatives were buried. About a year afterwards my grandparents, grandaunt, and I attended the Patenaude Family Reunion in Montreal, Canada. Kelly is just one of a few of my distant cousins that I have found.

While looking into standard ways of documenting sources, I realized that Family Tree Maker is a savior at documenting sources. Without that software my information would probably never be as organized as it is. Sometimes I think to myself, if I have gotten this far and I’m only seventeen now, imagine how much more I will know and understand about my family years from now. Genealogy has even gotten me interested in learning about genetics! Researching the history of my family has also taught me to appreciate my own family more, and I will continue to study my family history because after all it is a project that can never be complete.

Christopher and I get together now and then to compare notes and do some collaborative research in New York or Massachusetts.  Since I live in California and Christopher lives in Florida, we usually meet at the ancestral family homestead in Albany, New York.  Both Christopher and I grew up in the same house in Albany, although the times each of us lived there were separated by 29 years.

Christopher probably knows when his great grandfather bought the house the Albany (I think it was in the 1940s).  The house is still in the family; it’s now owned by Christopher’s older brother William.

At age 17, Christopher has 8 years of genealogy research experience under his belt, and his family history research has led to a new interest in genetics.  Perhaps Zoe Williams should interview Christopher for her column someday.

At the September meeting of my local genealogy society, I brought some magazines I had received free from the FGS (Federation of Genealogical Societies) Conference held in August, in Boston for 4 days.  All 4 magazines were current editions and were familiar to me, but none of which I subscribe to.  Some of the club members enjoyed looking through them and even pulling out the inserts to order a subscription.   When I got around to reading them recently, I realized how different they were from one another.  The magazines were Everton’s Genealogical Helper, Family Tree Magazine, Ancestry and German Life.   I thought I would give a little input on how the first three differ from one another.  
 
Everton’s Genealogical Helper, has been around for about 50 years, had over 176 pages of articles, queries and surname index.   What I really liked was the large print, a calendar of upcoming genealogy events throughout the world, a Beginner’s Corner section, review of books, and the major topics are on the cover with page number.   Their website is http://www.everton.com and you receive 6 issues a year for $27.  This is a little less than the cost in 2000.    This is an old publication with a new editor and the Heritage Quest magazine has been combined into the Genealogical Helper. 
 
Family Tree Magazine (not affiliated with Family Tree Maker software) also comes out 6 times a year for $24.   Their website is http://www.familytreemagazine.com.  The two state research guides are nice (for Texas and Rhode Island), but at that rate, it will take years to complete this series, or maybe not, since I don’t know when the series began.
 
Ancestry Magazine was very impressive, and I will subscribe to it.   The glossy pages, nice color pictures, articles (although rather short…maybe to hold your attention), and few advertisements are the pluses.  The contributors are well known in the genealogical community.   Their web site is http://www.ancestry.com and click on store tab; I had to type magazine in product box.  Their price is similar to the others, 6 issues for $24.95.   I especially enjoyed the article on the Evolution of Family History, a 10 year history.   Some interesting things that began in 1996 were: there were 100,000 websites and 14% of Americans using the internet; Ancestry.com, RootsWeb.com, FamilyTreeMaker.com  and Cyndi’s List began.  Other milestones during the 10 year span to date were included, now jump to 2006 where there are over 11.5 billion web pages and 77% of Americans are now online.
 
Recently, I found some old copies of three magazines (1994-2001), they were Everton’s Genealogical Helper, Heritage Quest, and Genealogical Computing.   Obviously some of the articles are outdated, but some still pertain today, such as: Source Documentation: Is it Time to Change the Standards (pertaining to the internet); Genealogy Made Inexpensive; State and Federal Census articles.   I wish I had seen the 7 page article about Albany, NY area Churches and Synagogue Vital Records many years ago, what a useful source that would have been for me.   I also wondered what happened to a Lexington company that in 1994 made Quinsept, a “software that works for generations.  The most exciting genealogical research system available.”   Sure glad I didn’t buy that!
 
There are now two new genealogy magazines focusing on using the internet for research.  In a past newsletter, I discussed Internet Genealogy magazine http://www.internet-genealogy.com (where you can download a free copy).  My fourth issue arrived a few weeks ago.  I continue to like this magazine.

However, I love Digital Genealogist, a magazine that just came out.  Digital Genealogist will be in PDF format, so you print what you want.  They are offering a free issue, and it prints out at 42 pages.  Go to http://www.digitalgenealogist.com and check it out.  I loved the first issue of Digital Genealogist for a few reasons.   First, it is very easy to read & is colorful and second, it is nice to know some of the writers personally.  I see Joshua Taylor every time I go to NEHGS and Laura G. Prescott will be speaking at our club in 2007.  So now you can download free issues of two different genealogy publications, or print just the pages that interest you.

Many thanks to Barbara Poole for contributing her column on genealogy magazines as today’s GuestBlog!

Today’s article is written by Barbara Poole, who kindly offered to write about her experiences at the FGS Conference, and then surprised me with the report that my Blog was featured in one of the lectures at the conference! 

I, myself, will be attending the Annual Meeting of the Polish Genealogical Society of America later this week, so I’ll be taking a few days off from writing this blog to get ready for that conference.  Enjoy Barbara’s report!

As a favor to Steve Danko, the owner of this site, I am giving him a break for a day or two by writing about the Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS) Conference held in Boston last week. This is my 3rd guest blog on this site and the FGS Conference was the 3rd large genealogy conference I’ve attended.  I know from personal emails that Steve has been anxiously waiting for this report and I know he will be surprised at some of the things I am sharing here.

The annual FGS Conference was held in Boston beginning August 30, 2006 and lasted four days.  Because this conference was held close to where I live (over an hour commute), I wanted to take advantage of attending many lectures and volunteering as much as possible.  On Tuesday, Aug. 29 (the day before conference), I spent much of the day at the convention center spending assembling conference materials and inserting them into the black canvas briefcases for the attendees.  These briefcases were strong enough to hold the syllabus, a four-volume set of about 1200 pages - a volume for each day.  My bag, books & printed materials weighed 8 lbs., so I built up some muscles during the convention.

There was a nice group of volunteers, some of whom I already knew through the New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) or through genealogy clubs.  Meeting new people through volunteering is a bonus. Two volunteers were from California, and they spent time helping out when they could have been doing something fun in Boston.  At 3 p.m. on Tuesday, early registration began, and attendees could pick up their registration packets and bags.  There were so many people who wanted to get their hands on the goodies immediately.  Fortunately, I was able to get mine early - a benefit of volunteering!!!

The conference began on the following day.  Now, this was not a small conference, it was huge!  It was hard to pick one lecture to attend when the choices could be as many as 19 selections for one particular hour!  A total of 379 lectures were offered for the four day period!!  What did I enjoy?  The lectures of course, but I also enjoyed seeing people I knew, not only from my area, but from other places, as well.  I saw two people I knew from Washington, DC, one of whom is a genealogist who worked at the DAR when I did, and who got me started on the hobby (I didn’t even know she was going to be there).  You never know whom you will see at a conference.  While on the registration desk, several people came up to me and inquired if somebody was either registered or had checked in.

On Thursday morning, while waiting for the exhibit hall to open, I saw Cindy Rowzee, an instructor for a number of online classes through MyFamily.com.  Both Steve and I took several of her classes, and that is how he and I met.  Cindy and I went into the exhibit hall together, heading to Ancestry.com’s exhibit, and later I ran into her two more times, now like old friends.

The exhibit hall is the place where attendees have the opportunity to meet the vendors and find out about new products and services.  I learned that ProQuest will be adding 6,000 new books to their book section of HeritageQuest next month.  The Ancestry.com booth had new books, and the authors were there signing them.  Another instructor Steve and I know from the MyFamily.com classes, George Morgan, was there signing his book, so I said “Hi!” for Steve and me.  I chatted with the author of Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter, Dick Eastman, whom I’ve met a few times in the past.  Dick was interested in seeing this blog, so I promised to send him the address this week.  I also met the publisher and editor of Internet Genealogy magazine Mr. Halvor Moorshead.  Since Mr. Moorshead wasn’t too busy, I told him that I loved his magazine and how I had mentioned it in my previous guest columns on Steve’s blog.  Well, he checked out my articles, and was impressed.  He wrote down the URL, so who knows what will happen!

It really is fun seeing what is being offered to genealogists.  FamilySearch.org was there as were many other vendors, too many to name all.  Some vendors were offering door prizes and attendees received 30 coupons to fill out and then decide where to place them.   Among the prizes were a $50 gift certificate for Barnes & Noble, a seven-night stay in Salt Lake City, many specific books and other things.  Most of the exhibiters gave away pamphlets, brochures, candy, pens, and staple removers.  I was lucky enough to pick up free issues of three recently printed magazines and a free CD with a 30-day trial of The Master Genealogist software.

On Wednesday, I attended a lecture about blogs entitled Dear Genealogy Diary: Today I Made a Great Discovery by Drew Smith.  As Drew was setting up his presentation, I saw that he had Steve’s blog on the screen!  Steve had asked me to say “Hi!” to Drew, and with Steve’s blog on the screen, it made it very easy for me to introduce myself.  As it turned out, a good part of the lecture was on Steve’s site.

If you’re interested in reading more about the FGS conference, I know Dick Eastman will have something on his newsletter at http://blog.eogn.com, and George Morgan and Drew Smith will be talking about the conference on the Genealogy Guys Podcast at http://www.genealogyguys.com.

Even if you couldn’t attend the conference, you can still listen to many of the talks for just $1.99 per lecture by going to http://stores.lulu.com/fgs2006.  What a great deal!  In the past, I had to buy cassettes, and the cost was much higher than this.

I hope in the future many of you can get to a conference.  Every year, there are several large conferences presented by different organizations.  Next year, the National Genealogical Society (NGS) at will hold their conference in Richmond, Virginia, and FGS will hold their conference in Fort Wayne, Indiana.  But, you don’t have to go to a large conference, since there are many smaller conferences being held all the time, all around the country.  Often, the same speakers will present the same lecture at both a large national conference and a small local conference.  As a case in point, Diana Smith presented a talk on Why Use Those Blankety-Blank Forms? at FGS, and will present the same talk on October 7, 2006 at the Fairfax Genealogical Society’s 3rd Annual Genealogy Fair.  Since most lectures take a lot of time to prepare, the same talks are often presented at multiple events and in multiple locations.

Even though this FGS conference lasted four days, an attendee could register for just a single day or for the entire conference.  Many, or I really think most, of the attendees went by themselves.  Almost everybody I knew went alone.  Very few people knew one another in the lecture halls; so in essence, everybody was doing their own thing alone.  Dress was very casual, I began the first day wearing low flats, the next day it was sandals and the other days I was in sneakers.  There was so much walking, and I have blisters to show for it.  These lectures are for all levels, beginner and advanced, with a wide range of topics.

Last notes, my husband went with me on Saturday to check out the exhibit hall.  The hall was free for the public, and I saw many people there, learning about genealogy.  So in closing, the FGS conference was a wonderful experience, and I truly hope you will all be able to attend a genealogy conference soon.

Barb Poole has written another article for today’s Blog.   Someday Barb and I will have to actually meet each other!  Here’s Barb’s GuestBlog:

I wrote a piece about a new genealogy magazine in Steve’s blog of May 20th, in which I wrote, “A new genealogy magazine has arrived on the scene; it is Internet Genealogy and can be ordered as a hard copy or downloaded from the internet (different prices for each). To order go to http://www.internet-genealogy.com/ and you can see the specifics as well as download a preview issue.” This is an update, which may be beneficial to some, whether you subscribe or not.  The editor/publisher of that magazine asked for suggestions from the subscribers as to what they wanted in the magazine.

One suggestion was to have all the websites listed in that issue of the magazine to be on one page, so you could go to that page and see all the links listed, and not look all around for them.  However, the magazine went one step further and now has on their website all the links that were mentioned in that particular issue.  If you go to the site listed above, you will see a section listing the links for each magazine (both past and current issues) and the link will take you to that webpage.  No more typing out the addresses. And, these sites give you an idea of what the magazine has covered thus far.  In addition, if the links change, the company will change them as well on their homepage.  So far, there is a pretty impressive list of genealogy sites.

My second recent find is a site called WorldCat, which I got from a message board, out of Canada. It is the first I have heard of it, but is a site I will use many times over.  This is what I received, ” Google is easily accessed, but WorldCat’s locations of 1.3 billion items in 10,000 libraries around the world previously have been available only through institutional access.  It’s become available to the public here and now. It’s FREE and simple to use. Just type in a book name or author and it shows which library holds that book. Just go to: http://www.worldcat.org/ .”

On a personal note, I put in titles of three books and not only did they appear, but it gave the name of the library and the distance from where I live (Massachusetts).  For an example, I put in the book title New England Marriages prior to 1700 and there were 381 hits.  The closest library that has the book is the library in Lexington, 13 miles away, and the furthest is Alaska, all of 3,349 miles away from me!  With this information, you can either go to or contact that library or see if you can get it through the inter-library loan process.

Note from Steve:  to learn more about WorldCat, you can listen to George Morgan and Drew Smith discuss WorldCat in their August 13, 2006 Podcast.

Today, I’m pleased that Barb Poole has written another GuestBlog for this site!  Thanks again for your contribution Barb! 

Podcasts, what are they?

Ok, let’s get the definition of Podcast out of the way first.   According to my question to www.ask.com, I wrote “What does Podcast mean?”  They reply was short and to the point.   Podcast means A sound file distributed by a podcasting server.  I don’t think we need to worry about the server, but a sound file I do understand.  Just be sure to have your sound turned on!

Googling the words Podcast + genealogy, generated 400,000 hits on June 24, 2006.   I suspect that list will grow as time goes on.  This does not mean there are 400,000 separate podcasts; some of the more popular sites are mentioned in different blogs or web pages, so the same podcast could be mentioned several times.   To find a more specific site, you can add more words in your search engine, subjects such as Italian, Canadian, organizing, filing, or Polish (the words podcast + genealogy + Polish will give you Steve Danko’s blog.

I am only going to discuss two of the well known genealogy podcasts.  The first one listed below has been around for quite a long time, and the second much more recent.   Each is uniquely different.  One has just the sound of the speakers; the other has visuals to go along with the lecture.  There are many other podcasts out there; you should be able to find some which meet your needs.

A very popular podcast is http://www.genealogyguys.com/  in which George G. Morgan and Drew Smith discuss news items, have interviews and answer listener’s mail.  There is also a short advertisement from their sponsor.   The two interact well with one another, and a discussion outline is provided as well.  Their voices are soothing to listen to, and it is a joy to listen to them while doing something else, either at the computer or away from the computer.  

One of the first podcasts I listened to was through the New England Historical Genealogical Society (NEHGS) web site: http://www.newenglandancestors.org/. The lecture was called Who Was Your Mother’s Mother’s Mother’s Mother? by Julie Helen Otto, a genealogist at the Society.  This is a free lecture, and technically is a Macromedia presentation, not a podcast.  Listening to this was like being in a lecture hall, as there were slides & graphics, as well as an outline and the length of time shown for each topic (you always knew how much time was left).   In addition, It is very easy to press replay or skip a topic.  On another note, I know Julie personally and was very impressed with her lecture, I must tell her that.   If the icon for this lecture is not on the home page (it will probably be removed when the next new lecture is posted), just go to the Education Center tab and you will see archived lectures, including several for Getting Started in Genealogy.

I am thinking that this might be the future for some genealogy seminars at conferences.   Instead of purchasing the lecture on a tape cassette, you would pay for the lecture when you download it.  The last large conference I attended, I ordered a set of 9 cassettes (you normally can’t attend each lecture you want to hear as there are too many being held at the same time), and so buying them was the next best thing.   The worst thing was having to wait around after the lecture for the cassettes to be copied.  Then you had to carry them home in an already stuffed suitcase!

It should be noted that Podcasts are not just for genealogists, people in other professions use them too, but of course we like to think they were developed just for us, as were blogs, emails, message boards, chats and computers!

Today, I’m presenting a GuestBlog from Kathy Smith who found my Blog just before she left for Dubiecko, Poland.  The night before she left for Poland, Kathy called me and we had an interesting conversation about my trip to Dubiecko several years ago.  Here’s Kathy’s GuestBlog on her trip to Dubiecko along with some of my photographs when I was there a few years ago. - Steve

I have just returned from my trip to Poland. I’ll give you a brief summary of my visit to Dubiecko.

Let me back up and say that my uncle visited the area two or three times before he died. He was our family historian and he was curious about his mother - my grandmother. There was a suspicion she might have been Jewish, but it was not spoken about in the family. It was something like a “family secret.” Apparently, he collected some anecdotal information about my grandmother’s family along the way.

My grandmother’s maiden name was Pilch. I knew that there were Catholics and Jews with the surname “Pilch” at the turn of the century. I also knew Dubiecko was half Catholic and half Jewish at the turn of the century. It was a typical Polish Shtetl. During my uncle’s trips, he couldn’t find any official information about my grandmother’s parents who were peasant farmers. He kept a “dead” end, so to speak.

The Florian Gate in Kraków 

Unfortunately, I didn’t speak to him about his family tree research. I wasn’t too interested at the time. His daughters gave me the names and addresses of possible ancestors or friends of family.

The Cloth Hall (Sukiennice) in Kraków

I flew to Kraków on May 20′th 2006. When I arrived in Kraków, I contacted Adam Jędryka. I hired him to drive us to Dubiecko and act as a translator. We only had one day to look around, so my expectations were not high.

Mural in the Church in Dubiecko

Before we hit the road from Krakow to Dubiecko, we phoned the church in Dubiecko to inform them of our arrival. However, we were unable to get through by phone. No answering machine. For the sake of adventure, we just took off to see what we could see.

View from the Cemetery to the Church in Dubiecko

When we arrived at the village we went directly to the church. No answer.

So, we head for the Roman Catholic cemetery. It was a busy place. There was someone tending to the graves. There were a few visitors. The graves had flowers, and candles and shrines. We found all the headstones of the Kolanos (my maternal grandfather’s ancestors) and Pilch (the name of my maternal grandmother). Curiously, we could not find the graves of my great grandmother, great grandfather or any of their 8 children who were born and died in the area.

The Catholic Cemetery in Dubiecko 

The church opened at 4:30 PM and we glanced through some records but with so little time - we could not find anything, much as I expected. In order for me to continue the family history work started by my uncle, I would consider hiring Adam to help me.

Baptismal Font in the Church in Dubiecko

Out of curiosity, we went to find the Jewish cemetary but it was deserted. We thought we might find my ancestors there. What a shock! There was no evidence of graves or gravestones. It was just a big piece of overgrown weeds. The headstones had been removed by the Nazis. They were used to make a road. There was no evidence of the Synagogue in Dubiecko. The few Jews who did not leave the area before the holocaust were shipped off to concentration camps. There is absolutely no evidence that Dubiecko was once a thriving Jewish community.