It's time for this week's Ancestry Quick Tip Jamboree! Thanks to everyone who has sent in a Quick Tip. Please keep them coming so that we can keep this tradition going. You can send your tips to: ADNeditor@ancestry.com
Quick Tips may be reprinted, with credit to the submitter, in other Ancestry publications, so if you do not want your tip included in a publication other than the Ancestry Daily News and Ancestry Weekly Digest, please state so clearly in your message.
Have a great day!
Juliana
Historical Commentaries
Many of us know by now how railroads changed the concept of time in the U.S. But did you also know how they and airplanes changed our reading habits and our relationship to other travelers and the landscape? That's the topic of the October 7, 2003, commentary on technology and life by Bill Hammack, a chemical engineering professor at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. You can find this and past weekly commentaries at his website!
Since he also does these once a week for our great local public radio station, WILL-AM 580, you have the option of hearing the commentary through your computer. Past programs are archived and accessible. You can also have the text arrive by e-mail once a week, or even order a collection on a CD for a gift or for listening while you drive. They are short, memorable, and have won six national awards. And, they are often great background information for understanding my ancestors' lives, not to mention my own.
Susan Hopkins
Urbana, Ill.
Three Tips for the Price of One
I am sending three tips that might be very helpful to researchers.
1. When you go to a place to research, be prepared to spend longer than you intended, for you will probably find something you did not expect which will pique your interest.
2. While city directories can be very helpful, they, like census records, can have errors. One of my wife's ancestors appeared in the census as "Bellie." Her name was actually "Bettie," and the census taker obviously failed to cross the ‘t's.
3. The Chattanooga-Hamilton County Bicentennial Library (Tennessee) has an index of obituaries, which appeared in the local daily newspaper from 1896 to the present. If the person you are researching died within several miles of Chattanooga, including nearby Georgia and Alabama, you may find an obituary. Neither Knoxville nor Atlanta has such an index, nor do most of the small towns I have checked. I have used this index a great deal. While the index is not online, the library's website is www.lib.chattanooga.gov.
Roy L. Howard
Make Note of Cemetery "Neighbors"
When visiting the cemetery, look not only for your ancestors who are buried there, but look around at the tombstones adjacent to your ancestors. Sometimes ancestors are buried next to other ancestors. They may not have the same name, but still may be related. Just a little tip on searching.
Darlene Kneaves
Restoring Old Family Albums
Do you have one of those old family photo albums filled with wonderful small pictures held in by the corners? From what I have seen, most of them have black pages about 11” x 17”. My album is further complicated in that all of the mounted pictures have been glued in place!! I tried a bit of modern technology with fantastic success. I took the pages to my local sophisticated copy shop and had the pages copied full-size on quality heavy paper. The results were fantastic, and I am now mounting the copies in a modern album. It's a wonderfully simple way to save this family treasure. The copies must be made from the original pages—copying the copy resulted in serious deterioration in picture quality.
If the old album does not identify the pictures, an artist's white pencil on the black original works very well and appears nicely on the copy. I suggest taking a page or two of the album to the copy shop to determine the shop's capability. Copying machines for this type work are all laser so that the expected life of the product is substantial.
Woody Walker
Ancestry Quick Tip
