On the Road Again
I’d like to start this week’s newsletter by saying "Thank you" to the Tennessee Valley Genealogical Society in Huntsville, Alabama. I spent the weekend in Alabama as their guest and gave a talk at their meeting on Saturday. This is an active group that seems to really enjoy themselves at their Saturday meetings.
Travel to Alabama was traumatic; it should have been a simple trip from my home in New Hampshire to Huntsville with a change of planes in Washington, DC. However, US Airways managed to complicate that trip beyond belief by constantly canceling flights and re-routing passengers. After three canceled flights, I ended up spending Friday night in Charlotte, North Carolina, a city that was not in my travel plans. US Airways certainly had a lot of dissatisfied customers Friday night in Charlotte! The company wisely routed a bunch of their passengers to another airline on Saturday, and that airline was then able to transport all of us without further difficulties.
I arrived at the Huntsville airport and went straight to the Tennessee Valley Genealogical Society’s meeting. I walked in the door 5 minutes before the scheduled start of my presentation!
This newsletter has been written over a period of several days. Some of it was written before I left home. However, much of was done on my palmtop PC while sitting in airport terminals waiting for the next announcement from US Airways.
Proposed Changes to National Archives Fees
Rumors have circulated for several weeks about an increase in fees charged by the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. This week the agency made it official by publishing a proposed rate schedule beginning on page 24164 in the 25 April 2000 Federal Register. The register lists a proposed new fee schedule for reproduction of records in the agency’s custody.
The proposed rule includes changes to fees for self-service copying and the "fixed-fee" orders for certain genealogical records, including military service, pension, census, and passenger arrival records. The fee for self-service paper-to-paper copies will be 15 cents per copy. The fee for self-service microfilm-to-paper copies will be 30 cents per copy. Please read the proposed rule for further details.
Nobody likes higher fees for anything. However, this is the National Archives’ first fee increase in ten years for making copies of paper documents. The National Archives also reports that the proposed pricing for electrostatic copies signifies no change in fees for 90 percent of the copies sold nationwide.
A copy of the proposed rule is also available on the NARA Web site at: http://www.nara.gov/nara/fees-pro.html. Comments must be submitted to the NARA Regulation Comment Desk by 26 June 2000.
Ancestry Reference Library is Now Fully Searchable
This newsletter, including back issues, is available on the Ancestry.com Web site. I frequently receive e-mails asking, "How do I find past articles from the newsletter?" Now Ancestry.com has added a new search capability that makes the process much easier. Here is the announcement.
Ancestry.com has just made it easier than ever to find the reference information you need to help you locate your ancestors! The Ancestry.com Library is a free service of Ancestry.com and contains articles from the "Ancestry Daily News," "Ancestry" Magazine, "Genealogical Computing," and Ancestry.com online columnists Juliana Smith, George G. Morgan, Dick Eastman, Kip Sperry, Elizabeth Kelley Kerstens, and Drew Smith.
Now all of this content can be searched with a simple query. Search by word, keyword, exact phrase, or author. Keyword searches allow users to use Boolean operators to perform more advanced searches. The search box is located in the upper right corner of the library main page.
Content can also be browsed at: http://www.ancestry.com/library/archive.asp
Ancestry.com will continue to add to the 879 items already available for your reference use.
Confederate States Field Officers Database Now Online
The following article first appeared in the Ancestry Daily News:
The costliest war in the history of the United States, the Civil War involved hundreds of thousands of men on both sides of the conflict. Originally published in the early 1900s, this database is a listing of men who served the Confederate States as field officers. In addition to listing the soldier's name, it also provides the soldier's rank and military unit. It contains the names of more than five thousand men. For those persons seeking ancestors who may have served the Confederate States during the American Civil War, this can be a helpful database.
Source Information: "Memorandum of Field Officers in the Confederate States Service." Bethesda, MD: University Publications of America, 1900. The records in this collection were taken from a CD-ROM copy of microfiche records.
To search this database, go to:
http://www.ancestry.com/search/rectype/inddbs/4537.htm
Just a side comment: I must say the Ancestry Daily News is an excellent resource. Editor Juliana Smith and Associate Editor Megan Vandre do a great job of producing a daily newsletter. You can read it online at http://www.ancestry.com.
Downloadable Charts and Forms
Looking for some blank forms that you can fill in during your genealogy research? You can now download free high-quality blank forms online and print them on your own printer. These are as nice looking as the commercially available forms. You can obtain a pedigree chart (called an Ancestral Chart), Research Calendar, Research Extract, Correspondence Chart, Source Summary and Family Group Sheet.
You can do all of this at:
http://www.ancestry.com/save/charts/ancchart.htm
World’s Largest Known Family Tree
I have written several times in recent weeks about the work of Professor Brian Sykes at Oxford University. He seems to be making new announcements every week. Now ABC News has a story about his identification of seven ancestral matriarchal groups from which all Europeans appear to be descended. Further, all seven of the genetic groups appear to be descended from the "Lara" clan, one of three clans that still exist today in Africa.
The seven Europena groups include Helena in the Pyrenees, Jasmine in Syria, Katrine in Venice, Tara in Tuscany, Ursula from all across Europe, Valda originally from Spain but later moved to northern Finland and Norway, and also Xenia, believed to be from the Caucasus Mountains.
You can read the ABC News story at:
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/science/
DailyNews/daughters000420.html.
It is an interesting story, but I will warn you that not all geneticists agree.
Gwent FHS Special Millennium Seminar
The Gwent (Wales) Family History Society is holding a Special Millennium Seminar, "Stepping Forward - Looking Back", on Saturday June 3rd at County Hall, Cwmbrân, South Wales. Space is limited, so it is important to make reservations in advance.
One thing in the announcement that interested me was the note that there will be a "Family History Event" for children aged 7 - 11, to be led by a company specializing in Theatre in Education and in Heritage Interpretation, and this will introduce the children to Family History. I have published announcements of hundreds of genealogy meetings and seminars, but I do not recall ever having one for children in this age group.
To fund the seminar, the Gwent Family History Society has been awarded a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund. As a result, there is only a nominal charge of £2.00, towards the cost of lunch and refreshments. Those wishing to attend should apply for a Booking Form, enclosing an SAE, to Gwent FHS (SEMINAR), 2 Forest Hill, Gilwern, Abergavenny, Mon, NP7 0DY.
This seminar heralds the start of a special FH Millennium week in which displays will be mounted, help-desks manned, and genealogy on the Internet demonstrations given in the principal libraries and museums throughout the old county of Monmouthshire. It will culminate in Gwent FHS's Annual Open Day, which this year will be held at the County Hall Cwmbran.
The Texas Slavery Project
The Texas Slavery Project seeks to recover the names and biographical information for every slave who ever lived in Texas. Historian Eric Walthers heads a coalition of academics, historians and students determined to document each of the estimated 250,000 slaves held in Texas.
The era of slavery was considerably shorter in Texas than in the rest of the South -- human property was illegal under Mexican law, which governed the land until 1836. But during the 29-year gap between the Republic of Texas, then statehood and abolition, the use of slaves multiplied faster in Texas than any place else in the nation. Between 1850 and 1860, the number of slaves exploded by 300 percent. "We've got the numbers," Walthers said. "Now I want faces and names."
Throughout the rural South, the remains of slavery linger: crumbling barracks, historic museums and restored plantations. Not so in Texas, where slavery was generally short-lived; where the living was rough and farms generally smaller; and where Walthers believes people remain more apt to destroy and rebuild than to preserve.
"There's almost no physical remnant of the slave past in this area," he said. "When we find something, we just go right over it in true Texas fashion." Unlike many slave descendants, Houston elementary school teacher Naomi Grundy knows a bit about her ancestors. An enterprising aunt investigated -- and concluded that Grundy's great-great-grandmother arrived in Lavaca County when a Virginia cattle rancher named West moved to Texas. "But we're lucky," she says. "Most (slave descendants) can only go back to their grandparents. The rest gets lost."
Walthers' aim is fairly modest: a biography, just a sentence or two long, will suffice, at least to begin with. The sketches are pulled from thousands of dusty pages, records locked up in remote courthouses and public libraries, including the 1860 Census, thick books labeled "Marriages of Free Persons of Color," and Works Progress Administration interview transcripts.
The scraps of data are cross-referenced, sent to Walthers and posted on the Internet. The job of mining the records is immense -- 100 researchers throughout the state have volunteered to check local documents.
You can read more about this fascinating project and check the records already available at: http://www.texasslaveryproject.uh.edu
Halbert’s is Back, Sort of…
I have often written about Halbert’s, a company using a Bath, Ohio mailing address that sold so-called genealogy books. In fact, these books were simply collections of names and addresses from telephone books, supplemented by very generic "How to get started in genealogy" information. These "books" sold for up to $40.00. The same company also sold "family coats of arms" that were usually fictitious.
In the August 29, 1998 newsletter I described my visit to their mailing address at 3687 Ira Road, Bath, Ohio. There was no indication of a company named Halbert’s at that address. Instead, I found a tiny building that was simply being used as a mail drop. In fact, the "company" existed at the parent firm of NUMA Corporation in nearby Akron, Ohio. NUMA, in turn, is a division of the Cendant Corporation of Parsippany, N.J.
Halbert’s was originally founded by members of the Halbert family, but years ago they sold the company to larger corporations. Over the years, companies like NUMA and Cendant ran the mail order business but always retained the original Halbert family name.
In the Sept. 11, 1999 edition of this newsletter I reported that Halbert’s was being closed by the parent company. Elliott Bloom, spokesman for Cendant, blamed "the result of consumers having access to a greater amount of general data on the Internet." I still get e-mails frequently claiming that Halbert’s has re-appeared, but so far, every one of these claims has turned out to be false. Even though Cendant tried to find a buyer, Halbert’s remains out of business.
However, newsletter reader Judy Janes found an interesting Web site this week. Gary Halbert is now selling stock market advice. He authors "How To Make Up To 15 Profitable Trades Every Single Day The Market Is Open."
In his advertising in Investor's Business Daily, Gary Halbert brags, "I wrote the most widely mailed sales letter in history. It revealed how you could purchase (from my company Halbert's Inc.) a copy of your family crest and the history of your last name. Ever hear of that letter? More than 600,000,000 of them have been mailed." He also brags that the company he sold was later sold to another company for 90 million dollars.
Gary Halbert is now operating under the name of Cherrywood Publishing at 3101 S. W. 34th Ave., Suite 905-467, Ocala, FL 34474. He lists a telephone number of 305-534-7577 and FAX 352-861-1665. He is selling investment advice at http://www.ghlstockalert.com
Home Pages Highlighted
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:
Warlick-Edwards-Carson-Elliott Family information:
http://www.warlick.ourfamily.com
County Donegal, Ireland records, including cemetery inscriptions, birth, death, and marriage facts, muster rolls and much more:
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~donegaleire
CONDLEY family Web site dedicated to William CONNELLY/CONDLEY and Anderson CONDLEY, ancestors and allied families who migrated from County Cork, Ireland in the 1700's to Halifax, VA:
http://www.familytreemaker.com/
users/f/a/m/Debra-K-Walker/index.html
McManigle Family, including various spellings:
http://www.321website.com/members/
home/data/kristinehurd/mcmanigl.htm
Campobello Island, New Brunswick Canada, Genealogy Page. Information includes 1851-1881 census, family genealogies, partial cemetery transcriptions, vital statistics, historical notes, church history & military information:
http://www.rootsweb.com/~nbcampob/
Day family of Buckingham County Virginia, researched back to colonial Virginia.:
http://virginiafamilytree.homestead.com/virginia.html
Mendocino County, California Indexes - At present there are indexes for burials, cemetery districts, census, great registers, marriages, deaths, and burial permits, all sorted by surname:
http://www.pacific.net/~pcarna
Moellinger & Allied Families Genealogy:
http://members.xoom.com/marilynlane/
Genealogy data on the Chapman family of Smyth Co VA, the Kincaid family of Fayette Co WV, the Smith family of Floyd Co VA, and the Weddle family of Floyd Co VA:
http://www.zyworld.com/Kbaker/VAwvancestors.htm
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.
If you would like to submit news, information or press releases for possible inclusion in future newsletters, send them to roots@compuserve.com. The author does reserve the right to accept or reject any articles submitted.
DISCLAIMER: This newsletter is being written and sent via e-mail at no charge. I expect to write one new issue on a more or less weekly basis. However, life sometimes interferes, and the need to earn a living may create an occasional delay.
COPYRIGHTS: The contents of this newsletter are copyright by Richard W. Eastman. You are hereby granted rights, unless otherwise specified, to re-distribute articles from this newsletter to other parties provided you do so strictly for non-commercial purposes. Please limit your re-distribution to one or two articles per newsletter; do not re-distribute the newsletter in its entirety. Also, please include the following words with any articles you re-distribute:
The following article is from Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter and is copyright 2000 by Richard W. Eastman. It is re-published here with the permission of the author.
Thank you for your cooperation.
Dick Eastman Online
