Ideas, Opinions, Genealogy, and Book Reviews
Mystery, thriller, and genealogy all in one fascinating story. The book is The Family Tree by Steph Mullin and Nicole Mabry. It centered around the hunt for a mass murderer with an important genealogy mystery also at the heart of the story.
I did not know what to expect but was very glad I tried it. I thank Netgalley for a chance to read this book before publication.
Continue reading “The Family Tree”
Before getting to the shipwreck off Ireland, let me tell you where I read about it. After all the shipwreck is old news and there’s no rush in getting to the story.
I live just outside West Chester, PA and I signed up for emails from a downtown West Chester business association. Even retired guys try to keep up with what is happening locally. Continue reading “Shipwreck off Ireland 1822”
I’ve been delving into New York City history today. Yesterday I found out I had made a wrong assumption in my genealogy and I figured today I should figure out what really happened.
Early this year I wrote about my great grandfather William Ready. He died of injuries resulting from a case of reckless blasting on Christmas eve 1895. I had just always assumed the blasting had something to do with creating the New York City subway system.
I was wrong. Continue reading “Reckless blasting in New York City history 1895”
I’ve long been a fan of Ancestry and several other websites for genealogy which I’ve mentioned here but oddly one that I use regularly has not been mentioned here that I can recall.
That site is http://www.findagrave.com/ or Find A Grave. Frequently when I know the names of husband and wife and where they live, I can easily find date of death and often additional information and frequently an actual picture of the grave. Of course I check to see if the information there is consistent with everything else I know.
Or sometimes I know less than that and Find A Grave gives me the first hint on things to check out. It is a wonderful site and is run by volunteer genealogists. Now Find A Grave has been purchased by Ancestry.com. Apparently the site will remain free but have the support of Ancestry behind it so we can expect further improvements
What will change at Find A Grave?
•The short answer is: nothing. The site will remain free and continue to operate as it has for the last eighteen years. I (Jim Tipton, Find A Grave’s founder) will continue to run the website but will have the support of a full, dedicated Find A Grave team at Ancestry.com – so the pace of updates / improvements / new features should accelerate. The familiar administrators that many of you have come to know over the years will remain and continue in the same capacity.
This is from the announcement and FAQ on Find A Grave. Read it if you’d like to know more about it.
I am trying out GenealogyBank right now. I suppose I would have rather had a free trial but they charge for a 30 day access trial. The GenealogyBank search box to the right is free to use and gives you an idea of the site but you do need to pay to actually see the old newspapers, historical documents and books in their collection.
Most of the papers are from the U.S. but there are Irish American newspapers with information on Ireland and that is of interest to me. In fact, I’ve found a few worthwhile items there during this trial.
So far I’m a few days into the trial and feel it is well worth the fee for looking. They do have quite a collection and I have found quite a bit in a few days.
So if you think this might be of interest, look around. I’ll be writing more about my experience with GenealogyBank. I just noticed that I hadn’t posted in about a week and want to let you know what I’ve been up to.
Dick Eastman in his Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter has posted an article called How to Create EPUB Files for use in eBooks.
Since an EPUB has many advantages over the the PDF or even paper copies may be using now, you might want to consider it. The article goes into these advantages. But perhaps more importantly, it tells you how you can do this for free or with other paid options if you prefer that route.
Normally this article is available to customers of the paid version of the newsletter but this article is offered as free EPUB download to all who read the shorter version in the free newsletter online.
I read the article last night on my iPhone with the free Bluefire Reader app.
The St. Louis Public Library has an online index to the obituaries published in the St. Louis Post Dispatch. So if you know or think your ancestor may have had an obituary published there, check out this index at http://www.slpl.org/slpl/gateways/article240117800.asp .
My thanks to HeartlandGenealogy where I ran across this.
FamilySearch.org has long been one of my favorite genealogy websites.
They have plenty of records and more are indexed everyday by a large number of volunteers. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also known as the Mormons) are well-known in the genealogy community for having a large numbers of genealogy records and sharing them with the wider community.
They have long been shared via their Family History Centers but with the advent of the internet have shared their resources online. I assume most know this, but I should add that use of these resources is for the general public and no church membership is required. In fact, I don’t recall ever been being asked about church membership.
There is certainly a lot of new stuff including family trees, helpful videos, documentation, and assistance. You are asked to set up a free account to do somethings. I’ve had my free account for years and plan on exploring the newer aspects of this website.
Oh, and if you want to volunteer to help this free site help more people, I’m sure they would welcome the help.
So check out https://www.familysearch.org/. It should be fairly simple to find stuff from the home page but in case you have problems, here is a link directly to their Help Center.
William RIEDY of Rathkeale was born around 1861/1862 and emigrated to New York City about 1880. He married Mary O’BRIEN (ca 1863-1918). His parents were Edward or Edmund RIEDY and Mary SCANLAN (we think). Her parents were Patrick and Bridget O’BRIEN.
His last name is spelled Ready in some documents and Riedy in others. The spelling Reidy is also used quite frequently.
William became a US citizen on 8 Oct 1890 in the Superior Court of the City of New York. On December 24, 1895, he was injured in a blasting accident and died about a month later.
The 1852 Griffith’s valuation found Edward RIEDY on a 25.5 acre farm in Riddlestown (townland), civil parish of Doondonnell, Rathkeale, Co Limerick. The farm was leased from Gerald Blennerhassett. This farm may have been around TallyHo Lodge.
More details are on my website.
I just got an email from Fold3. Fold3 holds many documents of historical and genealogical interest. The emphasis is on military records but there are many others. Fold3 just added a set of records called Navy Casualty Reports, 1776-1941.
I had tried a free trial, stayed on for a year, but decided it wasn’t worth it for me after that. But I think I may try again.
But your family and situation are surely not the same as mine. So give it a try. By the way, it really was easy to leave paid membership and go to free membership. Of course, the free membership is the lesser of the two and many documents are called premium images and these are reserved for paying customers (after all, free doesn’t pay the bills). But with free membership you can search and see what is available.
But I think the best deal is to take the free trial and see what they have, including the premium images. If you think there is enoough there to be worth the price, just continue. But if not, simply inform them and move to the free membership. It doesn’t cost to look. You might find stuff duing the trial.
One of the things I had disliked during my trial was I thought the search function was kind of clunky (to use the technical term). A recent Fold3 blog entry discusses the improvements in searching. Here is a link to the Fold3 blog.
My brief experience indicates the search is much better now.
Fold3 just added a set of records called Navy Casualty Reports, 1776-1941. Despite the name which would make you think these are Navy seamen only this includes both seamen and others who died in Andersonville Prison. These free offering may change from time to time so you might want to check periodically if you elect not to keep your paid membership.
I currently have the free membership and found a record on the death of Wiliam Greer on the USS Maine when it was blown up in Havana harbor in 1898. Oddly, Fold3 does not have the Spanish American War as a category but you can search by year or year range. Since this event led to the war but was not part of the war, I don’t know if it would have been included in that category even if they had one.
Earlier this week I visited the National Archives at New York City (NYC) twice. I was very pleased with my visits. I was looking for naturalization records of 2 people in my family tree. Both were naturalized in NY courts in the late 1800s. I had located the relevant index record on ancestry.com that I had all the information I needed. I was almost 100% certain that the 2 index entires I found were my guys.
I simply registered, requested the records, examined them a few minutes later, and then bought copies for 75 cents per page. Unfortunately, the courts of the 1800s did not seem to require very much information so there were only 4 pages of records available and I bought them all. Therefore, the total bill came to $3.00 and I had copies of the whole court record for both. I learned only a few things I had not known from the index so that was disappointing but still well worth 3 bucks.
By the way, you are under no obligation to buy the copies if you don’t want them. But who would not want them if they were the people you are looked for. Still, nice to know in the event that the record turns out not to be the person sought.
The National Archives at New York City is in the process of moving so all records are not there but the naturalization records are there. Here is the National Archives press release.
So for now they are still at Varick and Houston streets in Manhattan but the big move is expected in a few months. Here is a link to the National Archives at New York City so you can get the latest info and you can easily get from there to the main national archives page in case you are interested in another location.
The people there were so helpful and recommended an external site (the German Genealogy Group ) with a naturalization index. Two evenings later, I was checking on that site and found a potential match for John Tracey and decided to revisit the NYC National Archives to be sure.
Since the index record did not have all the info they needed to find the original court record, they checked the record on Fold3. With the info I had found on the German Genealogy Group website, they easily found the index in Fold3 which had additional information. It had both the information they needed to find the court record but also enough info that I knew this was not the John Tracey I has looking for. So I did not get the record I hoped to find. But it was not a wasted trip as there plenty of other things to do.
I had initially thought I’d title this post “Not my John Tracey” but it is really about the NYC archives and how nice and helpful the staff and volunteers are so I decided on “My visit to the National Archives at New York City”.
Certainly worth a visit if you are interested in genealogy and visiting NYC.
A couple months or so ago I bought a Chromebook . For those who not familiar, it is a small computer, very light, highly secure, and it starts up very quickly. Here are the specifications of my model .
My ChromeBook model has both WiFi and a small data plan from Verizon. I use it mainly as a WiFi but the Verizon connection is nice because there are a few occasions when you need to connect but just can’t find WiFi. Since the many of the functions do not work if you lose your WiFi connection, the data plan is very helpful. My understanding is that it is a prepaid plan (and you paid for it with your chromebook) and it is renewed every 30 days by either Google or Samsung. So if you use all your data for the month you have the option of buying more data from Verizon or just waiting until the next 30 cycle.
So after that lengthy introduction, I can get down to why I was writing to begin with. I am spending a few days in New York City and decided I would use the time to look up some genealogy stuff. I have my family tree on Ancestry and thought the Chromebook would be a great way to have my genealogy with me in case I needed to look something up.
Of course you could just do things the old fashioned way and write down what you need, But if you are in a place with lots of information, you could decide to look up someone or something which was not anticipated. In my experience that happens alot when you are in places with lots of information.
For example now I am sitting in the library of the New York Historical Society. I had requested a few items (books and manuscripts) this morning before I came. (This part of the post was writen while I was waiting for my requests.) And depending on the results, I can access the online catalog and request more with my Chromebook (since they have WiFi here). This is particularly nice if you find something unexpected and wish to follow-up. I can also take notes with my Chromebook.
I visited the New York City main library (5th Ave and 42nd St) and made good use of their WiFi. The National Archives in New York (Houston and Varick Streets) does not have WiFi but they do have public access computers. I did use the verizon connection with the Chromebook to briefly check some information I had on the Google Drive but should have thought to write down.
It was a very nice genealogical visit to New York City and I made good use of the Chromebook. I’ll havee to write a bit more about this visit and the Chromebook. I have uploaded this to my blog from Google drive with my Chromebook.
I went to Green-wood Cemetery in Brooklyn to find the grave of my great great grandmother and instead found a stone that lead me to the story of a murder. And a potential tie between my Greers and members of the Peerage.
I was looking for the grave of my great great grandmother named Ruth Greer. I knew her son (actually a stepson, William Greer) was buried in Green-wood Cemetery in Brooklyn and so I looked there. They have an online database of burials which makes it easy to check.
I was pleasantly surprised to find a Ruth Greer buried there (section 4, lot 21072) about the time we thought our Ruth may have died. So that was the easy part. Continue reading “Murder and Suicide in Broadway Hotel dateline 1887”
Yesterday, I posted a notice on free access to genealogy records.
The Genea Musings Blog has posted step by step directions on subscribing to this offer.
I had some problems with the search yesterday. But that could be just because they were overloaded due to the free offer. But I will add the customer service was great. They answered my email within hours. See Dick Eastman’s post on problems that occur with some of these promos and advice on handling them.
http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2009/08/why-online-promos-often-fizzle.html