Kimberly's Genealogy Blog

Ancestry.com formally launched the World Archives Project at the kickoff of the Federation of Genealogical Societies annual conference this morning. If you haven't yet heard of it, the World Archives Project is a global volunteer indexing initiative designed to enlist genealogists and family history enthusiasts to help create indexes from images of original historical records. For those of you familiar with FamilySearch Indexing, this is a similar type of indexing project. And before you get bent out of shape about a commercial organization enlisting volunteer labor, the indexes will be and remain free to the public on Ancestry.com. Active contributors (currently this means participants who help index 900+ records per quarter) will also receive free access to the original images, and those who already subscribe to Ancestry.com will be eligible for a discount on their subscription renewal - 10% off the annual U.S. Deluxe membership and 15% off an annual World Deluxe membership. It's unclear if you have to index 900+ records in each quarter preceding your renewal, or if you only have to index 900+ records sometime in the year prior to your renewal. Active contributors will also be able to vote on which records the project indexes next.

Along with the official launch of the World Archives Project, which has been in private beta for several months indexing Wisconsin Mortality Schedules and Nebraska State Censuses, the Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS) announced that they are the first organization to partner with Ancestry.com during this beta phase, offering a way for the members of the 500+ genealogical societies that they represent to become involved in digitizing and preserving important historical records from their local communities. Current available projects for volunteer indexing include Southern California naturalization indexes and the Alabama state census.

If you have any questions about the World Archives Project and the collaboration between Ancestry.com and FGS, I'll be meeting with Tim Sullivan, CEO of Ancestry.com early this afternoon. Please feel free to post your question in the comments below and I'll do my best to get an answer for you!

I don't get to genealogy conferences nearly as often as I would like, but thanks to my husband who juggled his schedule so he could work from home this week and take care of getting our three children everywhere they need to be, I'm sitting in the Pittsburgh airport right now waiting for my flight to Philadelphia and this week's annual conference of the Federation of Genealogical Societies. A genealogy conference is a wonderful learning experience, as well as a chance to network with your fellow genealogists and make new friends. I'm planning to take full advantage of the many lectures and presentations, as well as attend several luncheons. I'll probably also be making good use of the free laptop lounge in the conference hall to check my email (work still needs to get done!) thanks to the generosity of Dick Eastman. My biggest goal for this year, however, is to try and break out of my shyness and actually meet and talk to my fellow genealogists. If you see me there, be sure to say hi! I especially hope to meet some of my fellow genealogy bloggers.

I know it's not always easy or financially possible for people to make it to the large national conferences. But that doesn't mean you still can't enjoy the many benefits a genealogy conference can offer. Check with your local society or library, or browse my online genealogy events calendar to find a lecture, workshop or conference in your neck of the woods!

A team of geographers from University College in London have used data from electoral rolls and telephone directories to map the distribution of 10.8 million surnames around the world. The information collected in this study, which covers a billion people in 26 countries, is available on the Web site Public Profiler: World Names, allowing genealogists and others with an interest to view where different names have originated and how families have scattered across the globe through migration. It's basically a takeoff on the popular National Trust Names Web site which displayed the concentration of surnames across the UK.

Professor Paul Longley, who launched the site at the Royal Geographical Society's conference in London, said: "This websites broadens the previous one and looks at the distribution of names in 26 countries.

"A name doesn't just tell you who you are – but where you are, where you came from and where your family has gone."

Since I'm being accused of partisan politics, I thought I would lay out the questions and issues surrounding John McCain's birth on a U.S. naval base in the Panama Canal Zone and the role that plays in his status as a "natural born" citizen. My original blog post about Barack Obama wasn't meant to be political - my interest is purely in the family history of the candidates and the questions surrounding their status as citizens of the United States. America is home to so many immigrants from all over the world, that almost every family tree has been impacted in some way by the immigration, naturalization and citizenship laws in effect at various times through the country's history.

In John McCain's case, it doesn't really appear to be a question over whether he is or is not a U.S. citizen that is of concern. Instead it is a question of interpretation of the basic qualification layed out in the U.S. Constitution that a president must be a "natural-born citizen." In the case of John McCain, who was born in 1936, it was a retroactive 1937 law that conferred citizenship on children born in the Canal Zone after 1904 to American parents. Read more...

The ancestry of politicians always seems to interest people, but I don't think I've ever before seen the frenzy that's been brought about by the family tree of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama over the past year. At least once a month, it seems, the blogosphere is abuzz with some new question regarding his ancestry. The big one this month? Is Barack Obama really a U.S. citizen and, therefore, eligible to run for President of the United States?

In answer to these questions, the Obama campaign released a Hawaii certificate of live birth for Barack Hussein Obama in June - first to The Daily Kos, a "progressive" blog, and next to their own Fight the Smears Web site. Of course, this was then followed up by a flurry of bloggers who found a multitude of reasons why this does not appear to be an authentic certificate of birth. Some even say that he was born in and his birth registered in Kenya. By Hawaii law, certificates of birth are available only to family members - so none of the naysayers are able to check the facts for themselves.

Read more...

Genealogy always seems to have a way of pointing out just how small our world really is. As diverse as their backgrounds may seem now, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and his vice-presidential running mate, Joe Biden, can both trace their roots back to shoemakers from Ireland. Continuing the irony, Obama's 4th great grandfather, Joseph Kearney arrived in America on April 25, 1849, and Biden's great-great-grandfather, Owen Finnegan, arrived just a month later, on May 31, 1849. Both men were joined by their wives and children in 1850.

Learn more about these interestingly tangled trees on Megan's Roots World blog. She always finds such interesting family stories!

1918 was a year of tragedy, marking both the final year of World War One and the worst infectious disease outbreak in human history. Most are aware that WWI had a devastating impact on our ancestral history, claiming an estimated 16 million lives. The influenza epidemic of 1918, however, killed an estimated 50 million people, nearly a fifth of the world's population. Yet, it is rarely afforded more than a footnote in the historical accounts of the time.

If you have ancestors who died or disappeared from your family tree between 1918 and 1919, then they may have been victims of the deadly flu pandemic. Do some research into the history of the area your ancestors were living at the time to learn if they may have been affected. Read newspaper reports from your ancestor's communities to learn about the effects of the flu outbreak in the area. Even localities that successfully escaped with few influenza-related deaths left behind an interesting history, as can be seen in the many photographs, articles, and memories documented online in the Influenza Digital Archive from the Center for the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan. Additional firsthand acounts of the influenza epidemic include the Pandemic Influenza Storybook from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control; this interesting account of how Vick's Vaporub was used in staving off Influenza from the Family Oral History blog; and Winding Sheet and a Wooden Box, the first-hand account of Navy nurse Josie Brown.

After you learn the approximate time period when the flu outbreak hit your ancestors' communities, it's worth following up with a search for death certificates, making note of the listed cause of death. Many death certificates from that time period, however, are missing important details such as the cause of death or burial location. This is especially true in areas with a high death toll where many victims may not have been seen by a medical practitioner.

While I applaud any effort to get school students interested in genealogy, I can't help but cringe every time I get an email from a student who needs to know the meaning of his surname for a school project. There are so many better applications of family history as a learning tool - oral histories, immigration, DNA.... One teacher who recently contacted me takes his students on annual field trip to Ellis Island where they learn about the immigrant experience, and search for names on the Wall of Honor. Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., from the PBS documentary series African American Lives, speaks about the many opportunities for using genealogy and DNA research to "revolutionize the way we teach history and science to African American students." For teachers who don't want to get into student family histories and the emotional finds that can sometimes uncover, there are also options - including researching an influential figure from the local community, or interviewing local WWII veterans and preserving their stories.

What ideas do you have for incorporating genealogy in the classroom? Share them below in the comments. Let's help get students excited about the past!

Similar to a series they ran back in 1999, the Today Show on NBC is once again running a family history series - taking each of the Today Show hosts back to explore their roots. Meredith Vieira was first up this morning, as she was the only anchor not around for the previous "Finding Our Roots" series. The segment took a look back at her four immigrant grandparents, and also her memorable trip this summer to the Azores islands, located almost 900 miles from the coast of Portugal, for the first visit since her ancestors left the area for New England about 100 years ago. There she was able to learn what life was like for her great-grandparents, tour three old family homes, examine old family photographs and meet some living relatives. Meredith even learns how to correctly pronounce her surname! Genealogist Maureen Taylor and Ancestry.com even got a special mention and thank you from Meredith Vieira for their work on her family history.

You can view video from today's 13 minute Meredith Vieira genealogy segment on the Today Show Web site. Tomorrow's piece takes a look at Matt Lauer's ancestry, followed by Al Roker's African American and Ann Curry's Japanese roots.

One of my favorite female ancestors, Henrietta Meares, left little behind to mark her time on this earth. She was the second of three wives of Mack Crisp in Edgecombe County, North Carolina, but only for a short time. Henrietta died of typhoid fever at the tender age of 24, along with a new infant child, only a few short years after her marriage. She left behind two children, born before vital records were enacted in North Carolina, along with several step-children from Mack's previous marriage. She wasn't really married long enough to end up mentioned in land and court records. Her tombstone only reads "Henrietta, wife of M. M. Crisp."

Despite few records, Henrietta was easy to identify as a second wife. I was lucky in that regard. I had her first name (although not her maiden name) from my great grandmother (her daughter). She married in 1897 and the county has a record of that marriage. She died in 1901 so she appears with her husband, daughter, and step-children in the 1900 U.S. federal census. She is buried in the Crisp family cemetery among other Crisp family members, although her husband is buried elsewhere - and her tombstone gives her dates of birth and death.

Whenever you uncover a wife's name in your research, it is prudent to question whether she was the only wife - not all are as easy to identify and document as Henrietta. The wife that you have discovered may or may not be the mother of any or all of your ancestor's children. This is especially true in the time before census records listed family members by name, or identified family relationships.

Census records, especially, are full of clues to a potential second (or third) marriage: Read more...