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Heritage Books Archives: Massachusetts Volume 1 |
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| July 20, 1999 |
- Heritage Books Archives: Massachusetts Volume 1 Heritage Books is one of the best-known publishers of genealogy books. This company has been cranking out high-quality genealogy books for years. Their list of published works includes reference books, family histories, county histories, passenger lists, military roll calls, pension papers and almost everything else that is near and dear to a genealogist. Heritage Books has published both newly-written books and reprints of many of the "old standard genealogy reference books." In the past few years Heritage Books has been moving into electronic publishing on CD-ROM disks. I have reviewed several of their earlier disks in past newsletters and have been aware that the company has published still other works that I have not seen. However, I was surprised this week to find out just how busy the company is. Heritage Books is now publishing approximately one new genealogy-related CD-ROM disk per week! I recently obtained a copy of one of Heritage Book’s newer works, which is simply called "Heritage Books Archives: Massachusetts Volume 1." This CD-ROM disk actually contains every word from four different books previously published on paper: History of the Town of Essex, Massachusetts, from 1634 to 1868 - Rev. Robert Crowell. Essex was first settled in 1634 when it was part of Ipswich and was commonly known as Chebacco. An appendix contains marriage records for 1790-1827, deaths for 1790-1832, and several lists of college graduates, professional men, and officials. The original index covers the main text, and a supplemental index has been added which covers the appendix. (1868) Copy of the Old Records of the Town of Duxbury, Massachusetts, from 1642 to 1770 - George Etheridge. This essential reference provides a verbatim transcript of the early town books that were still extant in 1892, except for the vital statistics which were published separately. The work covers primarily land grants and transfers, and town meetings. (1892) History of Ipswich, Essex, and Hamilton (Massachusetts) - Joseph B. Felt. This is an unusually early town history, having been first published in 1834. Includes biographical and genealogical data, and discusses many aspects of the lives of the early settlers. An every-name index has been added to this edition. (1834) History of Taunton, Massachusetts - Samuel Hopkins Emery. This huge work provides a detailed history of the town with the usual sections on civil, ecclesiastical, and military affairs. There is a lengthy section covering all the wars from the French and Indian wars down through the Civil War with numerous rosters. The biographical section has dozens of accounts of leading citizens of the Nineteenth Century. Thousands of people are mentioned throughout the volume. There are several illustrations of buildings, and numerous engravings of prominent citizens. A surname index has been added to this edition. (1893) I have ancestors in both Ipswich and Essex in those years, so you know I was interested in this CD-ROM disk! The books on this CD-ROM are presented as graphic images, so you see the works just as they were originally published. They are intended to look and function very much like "real" books. Human-generated indexes of people mentioned in the books are included. There is no capability to search every word on the pages. However, you can use the electronic tables of contents to jump to a particular chapter and then "turn pages" within the chapter. The "Heritage Books Archives: Massachusetts Volume 1" CD-ROM does not have a printed user’s manual of any sort. However, I didn’t feel any need for one. There is a simple manual included on the CD-ROM disk itself as a text file, but I never found any reason to refer to it. The "Heritage Books Archives: Massachusetts Volume 1" disk uses Adobe Acrobat as its "search engine" and that is an excellent choice. Acrobat is undoubtedly the most popular CD-ROM application today and is available in Windows, Macintosh and several UNIX versions. If you do not already have this software installed on your PC or Macintosh, Heritage Books provides copies on the CD-ROM itself. A 16-bit version is available for Windows 3.1 and a 32-bit version is available for Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows NT. A Macintosh version is also included on the CD-ROM. Other versions of the software are available at no charge on Adobe’s website. PC users will find that the CD-ROM requires the following: IBM-compatible 386 or higher with a CD-ROM drive Macintosh users will need: System 6 or higher I spent quite a bit of time with the "History of Ipswich, Essex, and Hamilton." The CD-ROM contains an image of every page in the original book plus the searchable index of names mentioned earlier. The pages can be displayed on the computer screen as well as printed on almost any printer. However, the search mechanism only searches the index; it cannot search for every word on every page. I did a number of searches on surnames of interest to see how the CD-ROM operated. I searched on the name DOW. This turned out to be a simple ASCII search for those three letters. While it did find all the references to anyone with the last name of Dow, it also found many references to "Widow" such as "the Widow Jones" or "Mary, widow of John Smith." The search also found other surnames containing the same three letters, such as Downes. This seems to be a minor annoyance. Once the image of a page is displayed on the computer screen, the user can zoom in or out to provide several different degrees of magnification. This is useful when trying to decode less than perfect images take of the original book that was printed 165 years ago. I printed several pages on my old laser printer; they were easier to read than photocopies made from the original book. I was a bit disappointed to find that I could not "cut and paste" to the Windows clipboard. Those functions have been disabled on this CD-ROM disk. The "Heritage Books Archives: Massachusetts Volume 1" is a winner. The four books have all been recognized as some of the "genealogy standards" for many years. This collection of four books would cost several hundred purchased in printed form. The CD-ROM version costs $32.00 in U.S. funds plus appropriate taxes and shipping charges. For more information about the "Heritage Books Archives: Massachusetts Volume 1" CD-ROM or about any of Heritage Books’ other products, look at: http://www.heritagebooks.com The July 12, 1999 issue of Newsweek Magazine has a fascinating article that should interest all genealogists. The article title is "History: We're Losing It" with a subtitle of "They told us digital data would last forever. They lied. How do we save the past before it all disappears?" The article talks about preserving important documents, pictures, sound recordings, movies and other items of historical and genealogical interest. It focuses primarily upon the high-tech arena. For instance, how about those home videos you recorded on tiny VHS-C videotapes? Within a few years there may be no equipment available that will play those tapes. Remember the BetaMax? The same article is also available online at Newsweek’s website. Look at: http://www.newsweek.com/nw-srv/issue/02_99b/printed/us/st/ty0102_1.htm - French-Canadian Genealogy Books Online Do you have French-Canadian ancestry? If so, you have to see this site: "Collection numérique de livres d'histoire, de bibliographie, de généalogie, téléchargeables de la Bibliothèque Nationale du Québec." In English, that is "Scanned collection of history, bibliography, genealogy [French] books, downloadable from the National Library of Quebec." The online website has more than 200 downloadable scanned old French-Canadian books on parish histories, settlers’ biographies, genealogies, and more. I noticed that all 7 volumes of the well-known Tanguay French-Canadian Genealogy Dictionary are there as well. (Look under "G" for "Dictionnaire généalogique des familles canadiennes depuis la fondation de la colonie jusqu'à nos jours." This set of 7 volumes sells for several hundred dollars in print form, but you can access them online at no cost. To see all the volumes available, look at: http://www.rootsweb.com/~canqc/livreabc.htm My thanks to Roger Hetu for letting me know about this valuable resource. New websites with refreshing ideas seem to appear daily. I found one this week that will be of interest to many genealogists. It is called Your Past Connections and is billed as "the site that is dedicated to helping people find original items and memorabilia from their family's past." In reality, this site is an online "lost and found" service for families. The following is a quote from statements on the Your Past Connections site: How does this site work? At the heart of this site is a database of items that have been discovered at auctions, estate sales, flea markets, yard sales and from other sources. These include (but are not limited to): letters How do these items get into the database? Some items have been found and submitted by the staff at Your Past Connections. However, most have been found and submitted by people just like you from all over the world! How do the items get reunited with their "families"? Submitters of "Available Items" specify an asking price, which is displayed in the search results. Sometimes, the only cost requested is the cost of postage. When someone searches the database of "Available Items" and finds an item that they would like to acquire, they fill in a form on this site and an e-mail message is automatically sent to the person who owns the item. From then on, arrangements for payment and shipping are made between the two parties involved. Your Past Connections only sets up the initial contact and does not charge either party for this service. You can also look at "Requested Items" to find out what other people are looking for and to place requests for long-lost items from your family that someone may find in the future. I decided to take a look at the site to see how it operated. I first searched for any items relating to my own surname, but that did not reveal any "hits." I then searched on the name Clark and found several items listed. Here is one typical listing: BRYANT/CLARK, Ance The site seems to be limited to surnames only. I tried to search for any items related to the town of Dexter, Maine. However, I could not find any method of searching by location. For those who do not want to keep checking the site every few days, Your Past Connections also offers an e-mail notification service. You can ask for an e-mail every time the database grows. You can specify that you want to be notified when 5 new items are added to the database or 10 items or 25 items. However, you cannot specify by surname. For instance, I could not find any method to specify "Notify me when anything is added to the database relating to the EASTMAN family." All in all, I would say that Your Past Connections is an excellent service. It is a free service that is supported by advertising. Keep in mind that some of the items listed may be offered by dealers who expect to make a profit. In a few minutes of searching, I found numerous items that were listed as free. On the other end of the spectrum, I also found one old map made in 1792 with a $120 asking price. You can find Your Past Connections at: http://www.pastconnect.com/ I had a chance to use Bluebloods this week. If you haven’t heard of this product, you might be surprised to learn that BlueBloods is a CD-ROM database of royal and related lines of nearly 38,000 individuals connected through blood, through marriage, and through other relationships. Most of the listed individuals are rulers or nobility, along with a few individuals of historical note. The CD-ROM includes family information about 18 U. S. Presidents, 8 Popes, 50 Saints and many of the original Mayflower passengers. Whenever possible, the data also includes spouses, children and parents. Relationships are shown and, as you might expect, these relationships are often tightly interwoven. The data on the BlueBloods CD-ROM was compiled from published data and is thought to be correct. However, many of these bloodlines have been debated for years by leading genealogists, so it is wise to always verify the data by using other sources. The BlueBloods CD-ROM is designed to be an educational tool, not necessarily a genealogy research tool. If you do connect to one of these lines, it is your responsibility to verify dates, places, and relationships by consulting other sources. BlueBloods should never be considered a primary genealogy source. The CD-ROM actually contains identical data in many different formats: Family TreeMaker 3.4, Family Origins for Windows version 5.0, Personal Ancestral File version 30, The Master Genealogist version 3.0, Brother's Keeper 5.2F for Windows, and Cumberland Family Tree for Windows format. Of course, later versions of those programs will also read data in the format of earlier versions. If your genealogy program is not on the above list, you still have one more choice: GEDCOM. Since each database is in the format of your favorite genealogy program, you do not need to learn any new commands. I assumed that it would be easy to use these databases: simply open your genealogy program and then tell it to open the database on your CD-ROM drive. However, I did stumble a bit over the software versions of the genealogy programs. I used The Master Genealogist version 4.0 for Windows and attempted to open the database on CD-ROM. Keep in mind that the database is in version 3.0 format. When TMG version 4.0 attempted to open the 3.0 database, the newer program asked if it should update the database to version 4.0 format. I clicked on "Yes." Of course, the CD-ROM is a read only disk so when the program tried to write the newly-converted database back to the CD-ROM, it generated all sorts of errors. To avoid this problem, I copied the original database from the CD-ROM disk to my local hard drive. I then used The Master Genealogist version 4.0 to open the database copy on the local C: drive. The conversion went smoothly. I then used the program commands that I already knew to search the database and to move up and down pedigree charts. I could also print any reports that my genealogy program can produce. You should be able to do the same in almost any modern genealogy program. This CD-ROM disk will appeal to many historians as well as to genealogists. The BlueBloods CD-ROM sells for $39.95 plus $4.95 shipping. California residents also need to add another $3.48 for tax. The producer does not have a Web address or an e-mail address listed in its advertising. The BlueBloods CD-ROM is available from: Irresistible Programs I have written in the past about online telephone directories for a number of countries. These directories can be useful for finding long-lost cousins or other people with a particular surname. This week John Dymond informed me that "BT (British Telecom) has caught up with the rest of the civilized world and put the entire UK Phone database online." This telephone listings database has been available on CD-ROM disks for some time, but the purchase price was so high that private individuals would not buy it. The same information is now available at no charge on British Telecom’s website. However, there is a significant drawback to this new site. Unlike most other online telephone directories, BT’s search engine insists on the specification of at least the first 4 characters of an "Area" as well as the subscriber’s name. This will make it of limited use to genealogists. I tried to do a search of all the EASTMAN entries but found that I had to also enter the name of a village. Then the search engine would return all the entries for that name in that village and in surrounding areas. There is no method of searching the entire database at once. Even with this limitation, there will be some use for genealogists. To look at the British Telecom online database of telephone listings, go to: http://www.bt.com/phonenetuk/. - Oregon State Library to Close Temporarily Are you planning to conduct genealogy research at the Oregon State Library building in Salem, Oregon? If so, check your calendar closely. The following announcement is from the Willamette Valley Genealogical Society: The Oregon State Library building in Salem, Oregon, is currently under construction to provide earthquake resistance and other needed repairs and improvements. Although most of the work is being done with minimal impact to the public, it will be necessary to close both the reference and genealogical research rooms from August 16 to September 17th, 1999. The staff of the library and the volunteers from the Willamette Valley Genealogical Society, Inc, sincerely regret any inconvenience this may cause you. However we know all will appreciate the air conditioning, carpets, and other improvements. Until we reopen on the 17th, if Oregon is your primary genealogical research interest, we suggest you try the nearby Oregon State Archives. Should you have any questions, please contact Jim Willhite Librarian, Willamette Valley Genealogical Society at jwillhit@orednet.org - South African Genealogy Book Anne Lehmkuhl is a well-known South African genealogical researcher and publisher. For about two years, Anne has been publishing "Generations", a South African genealogy newsletter. Now she has combined the main articles of past issues and published them in book form. Here is the Index of articles: Christmas in early Cape Town. For more information about this new book, contact Anne Lehmkuhl directly at: lkool@citytel.net - Divorces Increase as Marriages Decrease I doubt if anyone is surprised by this article’s title: "Divorces Increase as Marriages Decrease." Everyone knows that. However, a recent study by Rutgers University's National Marriage Project provided statistical proof. Some interesting conclusions can be drawn from this data. The researchers conducting the study found that Americans have not given up on marriage as an ideal, but statistics show a precipitous drop since 1960 in the number of couples who actually walk down the aisle. "The institution of marriage is in serious trouble," said David Popenoe, who co-wrote the study, "The State of Our Unions: The Social Health of Marriage in America," with Barbara Dafoe Whitehead. "The current generation has grown up in the midst of the divorce revolution, so they are extremely wary and cautious about entering into marriage," Whitehead told Reuters, commenting on the report. The report said Americans are less likely to marry than ever before; those who do marry appear to be less happy than previous generations, and despite a small drop in the divorce rate, nearly 50 percent of all marriages will end in divorce. According to the report, the number of marriages per 1,000 unmarried women aged 15 or older dropped to about 49.7 in 1996 versus 87.5 in 1960. At the same time, the number of unmarried couples living with each other rose to 4.2 million in 1998 versus 439,000 in 1960. The following is a list of some of the genealogy-related World Wide Web home pages that have been listed recently on http://www.rootscomputing.com. Some of these sites may charge a fee for their services: The Dragoo Family Association, Huguenot families from France in the 1660s to Bristol, England in 1687 and to America in 1701: Cloud, Hadley and Harvey families: Eck family genealogy: Thorpe's, Rosencrans's and Cook(e)s, in Kansas and New York: Cobb fmily of Mcduffie County, Georgia: Genealogie Quebec & France Roots Genealogy: To submit your home page to this newsletter, enter the necessary information at: http://www.rootscomputing.com/register.htm. Due to the volume of new Web pages submitted, I am not able to list all of them in the newsletter.
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