GeneaBabble

Just got this in my e-mail:

We told you it was coming up, and now it’s here. Starting right now, you can search all of our records absolutely FREE. Enjoy full, unlimited access for the next 3 days. It’s our way of saying Happy Holidays and helping you connect with family during the season.

So, I went to Ancestry and it had me give them my e-mail address because this offer is separate from your regular account. Then it wanted me to annoy my friends with the offer, but I skipped that part. The only parts of Ancestry I don’t have access to is (ironically) the map images and stuff like that. I have enough maps to keep me busy. Anyway, after signing up I was able to access them.

What’s the catch? I’m not sure yet, but I guarantee they’ll annoy the heck out of me for the foreseeable future.

I’m not going to do a full review of MapYourAncestors.com because there’s already a good one at StudentsOfDescent. I just wanted to point out that finding out how to register on this site is completely mystifying. In fact, I couldn’t figure it out until I read the post at StudentsOfDescent!

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about writing a program to link GEDCOM files and Google Earth and MapYourAncestors seems like a step in the right direction, but it’s a bit confusing and feature-poor.

So, I’ll make it easy for you. You can register here. You’re welcome.

Cemeteries are invaluable repositories of genealogical information. GIS is an extremely useful tool in genealogy. What happens when we combine the two?

Check out the St. Michael’s Cemetery Project, one of a number of projects that maps out cemeteries using GIS. Go to the map, zoom around and use the information tool to get low-down on who’s buried where. Imagine if every cemetery had this type of tool! Wishful thinking…

I haven’t really looked to see if there’s a list of cemeteries with GIS, but if I can’t find one then I’ll scour the net looking for everything I can find an provide a list. This is extremely useful and people need to be able to find such tools.

A good friend of mine found an old family Bible at a thrift store recently.  It contains some great genealogical information about a family I’ve never heard of.  But who cares?  This is the kind of stuff that keeps me going!  I’ll be meeting him at the library some time this week to look through it and see what interesting things we can discover about Youngstown in the 19th century.  He says it has some photographs and articles as well.

In other news, I’ve been doing some freebie work for a couple of friends and it’s really exciting to show them where their families came from.  Genealogy rocks!

I’m such a procrastinator. Instead of getting my dad’s estate account filed last year I kept putting it off. Well, I got an order to appear in probate court and file the account or they would do nasty, vile things to me. The appointment was this morning. I was all nervous thinking everyone was going to tell me what a naughty boy I am. Instead, I was the only one on time for the hearing and it basically consisted of, “Looks good! Happy Holidays!”

Anyway, I really prefer going to probate court to do RESEARCH! Please, kids, don’t procrastinate!