Using GPS to Find an Outhouse

Today's genealogy-related post allows me to recommend to you the excellent Twelve Mile Circle blog. Among other things, it offers advice on how to find a bathroom at Old World Wisconsin.

Genealogy Can Be Rewarding

Mad Genealogist Brian Nichols is offering a reward for info on one his ancestors.

First of all the $500 is for absolute proof of the parentage of my Henry Nichols. I will be make a concerted effort at the same time to solve this before you. I will post all info I have now and will receive in the future on this blog. I will answer any questions posted honestly. Once a person has found the proof they have a choice of $500 paid by paypal, check or money order or if you are a professional genealogist I will post a ad on the top of all my main websites stating how good you are and a link to your services instead of $500 if you want. All my sites get about 10,000 visitors per day.

I was going to start offering $500 for answers to my Genealogue Challenges, but then I remembered that I need that money to buy food.

The War on Error

Regret the Error has posted a list of notable media errors and corrections of 2007, including these:

Most Delayed Correction
The New York Times:

A caption on June 8, 1944, with a photograph of Army officers at mess on the Pacific front, misspelled the given name of the first officer seated at the left side of the table. He was Col. Girard B. Troland of New London, Conn. – not Gerand. The error was called to the attention of the editors by his grandson yesterday.

The Trouble at Home Award
The Daily Miner and News (Kenora, Ontario):

Last week’s editorial had a major error in it that I must correct. I referred to my new granddaughter as three and one-half YEARS old. It should have read MONTHS old. Boy am I in trouble.

Blogger Seeks Blarney

Lisa at Small-leaved Shamrock has announced the birth of a bouncing baby blog carnival.

If you have a blog about your own Irish genealogy or about Irish heritage and culture in general, you are invited to participate.

Our first edition will be about something everybody loves: a good story. What is your favorite Irish story? Show us that you've got the gift of blarney. Here's the specific request:

Of all of the colorful Irish characters that you've learned about throughout your search for family history or your study of Irish heritage in general, surely you've come across some good stories. Share your favorite story about an Irish ancestor or other Irishman or Irishwoman with us on this, the inaugural edition of the Carnival of Irish Heritage & Culture.

If the only story you can think of concerns a man named "Paddy O'Furniture," keep thinking. The deadline for the first edition is November 19.

What's Delia's Defense?

As part of his ongoing effort to educate genealogists on the law, Craig has posted an interesting quiz over at GeneaBlogie. Until I find out the answers, I will not be publishing my grandmother's diary online.

Caching for Cash

Last October I mentioned that Ancestry.com was scanning the Web for biographical information. Kimberly Powell reports that the company is caching the content it finds behind its subscription firewall.

Ancestry.com is serving up copies of copyrighted work and, to make matters worse, selling this as one of their subscription databases. Because the pages are cached, they are also depriving the Web site and/or content owner of traffic and potential income.

In addition to the concerns Kimberly voices, I wonder if Ancestry.com allows webmasters to forbid caching, as Google does. Permitting website owners to easily opt out is both legally and morally advisable.

From reading my feeds I've learned that Janice at Cow Hampshire and Amy at Untangled Family Roots have both had their content scraped by Ancestry.com. Randy has also weighed in.

Update: "Based on community response," Ancestry.com has decided to make the Internet Biographical Collection free to registered users.

Berated PGs

The Wandering Author has posted a scathing critique of the APG on his blog. I don't have a dog in this fight, but some of the issues he raises (access to records, Lee's shabby treatment) are of interest even to non-PGs like me.

I expect this will prompt some hackle-raising on the APG list.

I Still See a Duck

The Generations Network's logo may not be a nervous green duck after all. So says the trademark application:

Description of Mark: The mark consists of a stylized lowercase letter "g", with the upper circular section of the "g" in a shape similar to one-half of a pair of reading glasses, and the lower circular part of the "g" in the shape of a leaf, adjacent to the words "THE generations network" in stylized fonts.

Subscribe to The Ancestry Insider to keep abreast of the latest duck-related genealogy news.

A Treat for Your Feed Reader

One of my favorite genealogy writers, James Pylant, has a new blog. Two posts and I'm already hooked!

Meat Shop Merits a Mention

I was tipped off today about this must-read post at The Ancestry Insider. I wonder if Ye Ol' Geezer Meat Shop sponsored the obit.

Death Proven More Popular Than Marriage

JDR at Anglo-Celtic Connections set out to find the top ten genealogy words in the 31,127,950 mailing-list messages archived at Rootsweb.

TEN: Death
Appearing in 2,736,649 documents, death was slightly more popular than marriage, which may say more about marriage than death. Both were mentioned more than birth.

NINE: Daughter
Despite there being more women than men genealogists, males were mentioned more often than females. Daughters were mentioned more than mothers; every mother is a daughter but not every daughter a mother.

600 Genealogy Blogs Found

The number of sites categorized at the Genealogy Blog Finder reached 600 tonight. (The footnoteMaven's Genealogy Bloggers' Quilt may someday fill the screen.) Here are some quick highlights:

A couple of familiar websites now have companion blogs: Cyndi's List and Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness. Look also for blogs from upstarts like Geni and soon-to-be upstarts like Family Pursuit.

I'm enjoying the transcribed diaries and letters that are popping up on the Web, on blogs like Grandma's Diary, Letters from Home - 1952, and A Burch Tree.

Miriam's AnceStories2: Stories of Me for My Descendants has weekly prompts for the family historian who needs prompting. Some of us need more than prompting. A cattle prod might prove effective.

My ancestors probably crossed paths with and owed money to those of Bill Ives (Ives Family History Blog) and Bill West (West in New England). The least I can do is mention their blogs.

Blogging without an audience is like talking to oneself incessantly—a practice that could get one committed to a hospital in the country. So let's make sure these newcomers get some visitors, and save their loved ones the long drive.

Five Blogs That Make Me Think

Against her better judgment, Dana Huff tagged me for a Thinking Blogger Award. After much consideration, I've decided to pass the honor along to five non-genealogical blogs that get my cerebral juices flowing.

1. Andrew Sullivan is gay, British, Catholic, and conservative—four terms which do not appear in my Match.com profile. But his is one of the few political blogs I read that produces more light than heat.
2. I've always been a visual learner. Back when I studied philosophy and my brain was still fully functional, I would sketch diagrams to help myself understand difficult concepts. Maybe that's why I enjoy indexed—Jessica Hagy's attempt to "make fun of some things and sense of others."
3. The right side of the brain needs attention, too. Lacking any artistic ability of my own, I visit Drawn! to wallow in self-pity. And, when finished, to appreciate the diverse talents of others.
4. Had I not gone to college to not become a philosophy professor, I would have gone to college to not become an economist. Freakonomics is the companion blog to the freakishly successful book, and never fails to stimulate my atrophied thinking muscles.
5. You may know John Hodgman as "PC" in those Apple commercials, or from his appearances on The Daily Show. Offscreen he is an accomplished author and humorist, and blogs at good evening. If you don't leave his blog confused, you will surely leave amused. Here's a sample:

   OF COURSE, shaking hands with a chimney sweep will not bring you luck. That is a myth perpetuated by Disney.
   
   BUT NOT LONG AGO I consulted a contemporary, non-top-hatted chimney sweep who, EVEN THOUGH HE LOOKS LIKE A NORMAL, UN-COCKNEY HUMAN, told me he is constantly accosted by old women looking to touch him and thus ward off their horrible fates.
   
   SPECIFICALLY, he said, women of Polish extraction want to pinch him as that is the custom for squeezing out good luck from a chimney sweep in that country.
   
   I LAMENTED this unfortunate occupational hazard, and then I briefly throttled him. We all have our traditions.
   
   That is all.

2,000 Posts and (Still) Counting

It took me about 10½ months to reach my 1,000th post here at The Genealogue, but only 9¾ months to reach my 2,000th. At this rate, in the year 2087 I will be publishing 1,000 posts per day—a remarkable feat for a man of 118.

As before, I want to take this opportunity to thank my loyal readers, and to heap scorn on my disloyal readers. Special thanks to those fellow bloggers who conspire daily to make me feel inadequate. People like Megan, Craig, Dana, Randy, Sharon, Janice, Jasia, Schelly, Lee, Joe, and Steve. Thanks also to the dozens of other genealogy bloggers whose feeds I consume, and to the hundreds more rattling their keyboards in hopes of being heard.

Harry McFry Investigates

The first chapters of Harry McFry Investigates: The Case of the Missing Family are now online. This is sure to become a blog noir classic.

“OK, ma’am – I’m listening. What exactly is the problem?” There was another pause, before she went on “Someone’s stolen my family, and I don’t know what to do.” Her voice was soft as a silk scarf – but Harry knew that it was the kind of scarf that could be pulled around your neck, tied tight and, before you knew it you were done for. He wanted to meet this woman – a dame with a silky, soft voice that hid a threat wasn’t that common in Birkenhead, and he felt a curious need to see her.

Genius Genealogy

Albert Einstein's great-grandson is blogging at The Public Life of Charly Einstein. So, what's it like being descended from Time Magazine's Person of the Century?

Well frankly it is nothing special! At least it doesn’t feel all too special to me. From my experience people are rather disappointed by this. Of course it is special to be able to read about your own family in countless amounts of books (although the vast majority of authors about Albert Einstein seem to glorify my great-grandfather beyond a healthy sense for realism…). Generally the people I meet see in Albert Einstein a super-hero of the 20th century if not mankind. He seems to perfectly fulfill the public and individual desire for a super-natural being that stands above us morally and in any other way. Sometimes it appears to me that people think he is some kind of God. Therefore it feels like many look upon me as if I was a great-grandson of God. To be honest that is an extremely weird and alien feeling to me. [Link]

Blogging From the Beyond

Lorelle VanFossen has provided some useful tutorials on starting up a genealogy blog with WordPress. Her most recent post explains how to enlist defunct relatives as blog contributors.

Genealogy blogs often feature contributions from the dead. The dead need no passwords to contribute, but they still are contributing. The dead, in this case, are authors of some of the stories and poems we want to publish and they need to get the credit and attribution they deserve.

Thus, I have some authors who just happen to be dead, but they still need a byline on my genealogy blog. [Link]

It's Only Geneablogical

I've added to my blogroll three brand-new sites from three people who've confessed to occasionally reading The Genealogue, but who—for reasons I cannot comprehend—still think blogging is worthwhile.

• Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak ventures into the blogging world with Megan’s Roots World (she's also a contributor at 24-7 Family History Circle). Megan's already blogged about an upcoming Apprentice episode with an Ellis Island theme, and her take on the 2006 Ellis Island Family Heritage Awards—at which Tommy Lasorda revealed how narrowly he missed out on being Pope.
• Randy Seaver now writes at Randy's Musings, and has boldly transcribed a census entry too wickedly funny to be true (but is).
• And finally, Joe Beine—the guy behind Online Searchable Death Indexes & Records, among other indispensable sites—will be keeping us updated at Genealogy Roots Blog on what links he's added to his directories.

Genealogued Blogs 6

More proof that I have too much free time on my hands:

Back Home Again delves into Family Nicknames, and finds a Goose, Wobble, and Spick.

Berlindog Blog suffers a bout of [UGLY] Amnesia.

Random Genealogy plugs a blog that highlights our two favorite pastimes: Google Earth and Genealogy.

FamilyTrackers Blog recounts one couple's steps and missteps in researching Genealogy in England – A Hinde Family Adventure.

GenBlogger considers the possible union of Funny Names #2 - DRINKWATER and PASSWATER.

Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter tells us to check and recheck our sources, and then publish our family history in The (Online) Annals of Genealogical Research.

OakvilleBlackWalnut celebrates the news: FHL to Digitize Microfilm.

DavidLambertBlog.com gives tips for Locating the place of Burial in statewide Massachusetts VR’s (19th Century).

Legacy News asks the question: Should we really share our findings online? Their answer: "Absolutely!" My answer: "Proceed with caution."

Genealogued Blogs 5

After making your donation to the Red Cross, please consider sending a few dollars to Habitat for Humanity, and to the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Your contributions will help house families in need, and restore historic structures damaged by Katrina.

In case you missed these blogs while fleeing from danger or watching CNN:

Hurricane Katrina: Civil War Damage Assessment is cataloguing damage to our historical places and artifacts, and includes information on Conserving Rescued Artifacts.

RandomGenealogy.com offers timely tips for saving genealogical information from Disasters, Natural and Otherwise.

DavidLambertBlog.com sets the record straight on the recent Tomb desecration in Newburyport, Massachusetts.

Kindred Matters encourages us to Write Queries Worthy of Answers.

Stephen Bodio's Querencia explains why many people are eager to prove their Native-American ancestry in The Newest Indians, DNA, the Black Cherokee, and the Trail of Tears.

Kayo Kid has established his right to Irish citizenship, but knows It's a long way to Tipperary.

FindingFred.com's Random Thoughts include some unusual Family Connections.