What items should be preserved?

We all know that the usual items such as marriage certificates, birth certificates, etc. should be saved and preserved, but there are personal items we don't think of as "historical."  Our own professional and business papers, maps, audio/visual recordings, speeches and lectures, and diaries.

There isn't a time limit placed on things to make them historical documents.  Even if these items were created last week, it's important to keep them protected for the next 100 years. After all, our diaries are a record to hand down to future generations to share our life experiences. Wouldn't it be sad if they fell apart when someone tried to read them, or worse, they were lost and no one could share in your story? This year ArtisticAncestry.com will be sharing with you a new and better way to save your family histories and treasures!

Free Ancestry.com Weekend

This weekend only, Ancestry.com is having a free Immigration and Travel Weekend!  This is a fantastic opportunity to try out ancestry.com and to find the arrival records of your first ancestor to come to America.  Gather together the records you have and check out what they have available.  Just remember to check and double check their results.  They're good, but sometimes mistakes are made.

Preserving Audio/Visual Recordings

Archivists have the daunting task of trying to keep up with technology.  The national archives alone have over 360,000 reels of film, 275,000 sound recordings, and 110,000 video recordings.  But unlike the written word, technologies are constantly changing.  Think about sound recordings alone.  Thomas Edison started working on the wax cylinder in 1877 where a needle created the sounds, then in 1881 Charles Sumner Tainter created the first flat disc recording. Since then there have been various forms of records, 8 tracks, cassette tapes, compact discs, and now mp3s and jump drives!

As all of these new technologies are developed, the old technologies are quickly lost.  We must do all we can to keep up with new technologies in order to preserve the yesterdays treasures, but how often do you want to have to transfer your old treasures onto new technology? Then again, what good is it to have treasures if they are not shared with your families? This year ArtisticAncestry.com will show you a better way to preserve, refine and share your most treasured histories!

August 24, 1932

Seventy-nine years ago, a 35-year-old Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly nonstop across the United States.

Earhart, an early supporter of women's rights and a member of the National Woman's Party, was also a best selling author and a visiting faculty member at Purdue University to counsel women on careers.  She would disappear over the Pacific Ocean five years later while attempting to circumnavigate the world in a twin-engine Lockheed Model 10 Electra aircraft.

Who is the Amelia in your family tree? The brave woman who pioneered a pathway of courage and determination for the women in your family? .....

Making Donations

Civil War Battlefield Sites are disappearing at an astonishing rate.  The Civil War Trust is a battlefield protection organization that is committed to protecting as many of the Civil War Battlefields from development.  They are hoping to raise $40 million dollars this year towards the protection of those lands.

Many people look at a piece of land and see nothing but another open space for condominiums or businesses.  To an extent I do understand.  We cannot look at those spots and see the battle or the dead lying among the trees decimated by cannon fire, but I also know that the cause those soldiers for which those soldiers gave their lives make it an almost sacred land. 

FamilySearch on YouTube

The FamilySearch site has added another way to teach us genealogy lessons.  They have launched a youtube channel!  The first one was posted on August 4, 2011 and is called Genealogy in Five Minutes:  Learn from Family.  You can view it here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FQIASD4kqY.  They are planning 24 segments that will focus on genealogy tips and tricks!

The Pony Express

For 19 months, 2 weeks, and 3 days the Pony Express Riders passed news from St. Joseph, Missouri to Sacramento, California.  Originally it was created in April 1860 to swiftly pass information regarding the volatile slavery issue.  Newspaper ads for riders usually called for skinny men who were expert riders willing to face death.  Some ads even encouraged applicants to be orphans.
  

The Pony Express blazed a transcontinental path that proved it was possible to keep a trail open year round.  The transcontinental railroad was completed in Utah on October 24, 1861 effectively ceasing the need for the Pony Express.

Family Tree Magazine Photo Contest

Family Tree Magazine is giving one lucky person the chance to win $250 worth of archival-quality photo-organization supplies and a signed copy of the book Preserving Your Family Photographs by Taylor. Two runners-up will each receive a signed copy of the book.  All you have to do is take a picture of your photo collection with a short (150 words or less) plea for help or story about the pictures.  Then after you "like" their facebook page, upload your photograph of the photos along with your plea for help, or you can email it to them at ftmedit@fwmedia.com.  The Deadline is August 31, 2011 and the winners will be announced in the March 2012 issue of Family Tree Magazine.  Good Luck!

Taking Problems to a Broader Audience

Do you have facebook and twitter?  The two social media sites will hook-up and what is posted on twitter will also be posted on your facebook page.  However there are certain nuances of the twitter language that will make it possible for many people to respond even if they don't "follow" your twitter account.  You can add "#" in front of the word genealogy such as #genealogy and anybody who follows genealogy information will see your post and can respond to your question.

Genealogy Scrapbook

I recently saw a beautifully created genealogy scrapbook.  The creator was wanting to scrapbook not only her ancestor's lives, but her journey into finding them.  There were pictures of headstones and the cemetery gates, photos of her ancestors if at all possible, and a timeline of their lives at the bottom of each person's page.  She also included her own story of finding that particular ancestor, or if it was an ancestor she knew a story about them. 


 In one instance, she had searched for one relative for two years, when she finally found her, my friend had a librarian in the family history center take a picture of her with the record to add to that scrapbook page.  

Soon with Artistic Ancestry.com you will be able to create your Family History scrapbooks online then share them with your families online. Imagine all your work and creation downloaded to each grandchild's phone or computer or iPad! We are working hard to bring it to pass!

Reverse Genealogy

Sometimes when you have hit a genealogy stumbling block it helps to go back and use another method to find a lost relative.  For example, you may find your great-great-great grandfather in the 1880 census, but you can't find him in the 1870 censes even though he would have only been 15 at the time.  He should have  still been living at home, but there is no sign of him.

If you've tried everything else you can think of, go back to the 1850 census.  Find the names of all of HIS father's brothers and sisters and follow them through the census records.  It's possible at the time of the census, your great-great-great grandfather was working or apprenticing with an uncle at the time.

Historical Reasons for Moving

Generation after generation live, work, and grow in one small community, then all of a sudden you lose track of them.  What happened?  Did one member of the family just feel too closed in my a sudden increase in the local population?  Were your relatives forced out of the location?  Or was there a disaster that forced them to find another place to live?


If you read historical books/newspapers from the area where your relatives were, it might give you clues about what caused them to leave.  Some events forced large portions of a population to find new homes.  It could be that the Great Chicago Fire destroyed their home or that they left New York City in the wake of the cholera epidemic in 1848-1849 or perhaps the government forced them to leave their homes to give the lands to the Indians.  

In today's times, families may have left their homes because of Hurricane Katrina, a tsunami, or because the economy forced them to find a job in another city. So if you are wondering where they went to try looking at the newspapers of the time and place. It is amazing what you can find!

Genealogy Grants

Archives.com is giving away a $1,000 grant to a paid subscriber to help fund a research project.  According to the announcement, Archives.com is looking for any project that "contributes to the promotion and advancement of family history research and preservation.”  


This could include document preservation, promoting historical events, taking time off of work to help with record transcription, or any other number or genealogical causes.  If you're working on a project and don't quite have the necessary funds to finish it, consider applying for the grant, you just never know what such a bold move can bring in return, but it might me your best idea made available to the world.

Civil War Love Letters

At the historyhappenshere.org website, they are posting old love letters from the Civil War.  It is amazing to read what was important to the soldiers and their wives during those tumultuous times.  Here everything from the details of battles and camp life to information on running the farm and to whom the wife should sell the wheat are available to enjoy.   


The letters from the sweethearts inspires me to write letters to loved ones.  With telephones, email, and even internet chatting, it's so easy to get hold of family and friends that the art of letter writing is starting to disappear.  Information gleaned from old letters has helped many genealogists add to their family tree and it would be a true pity to never have letters as a resource again. Do we need to begin keeping an electronic diary of our lives for our descendants?

Social Media Fun

Facebook has launched a new game to play on their social media site called Family Village.  It allows to you upload a pedigree chart, create a town for them, and assign your ancestors jobs.  The game will also search genealogical sites for free information related to your pedigree. 

This game is free with options to make purchases with real money if desired.  You can invite your "friends" in to view the library of records you've downloaded about your pedigree.  In a way, it's the next best way to bring generations together until ArtisticAncestry.com comes online!

mtDNA

One of the newest trends in genealogical research is to continue charting your family tree, but to also chart only those people who share your mitochondrial DNA, that is the DNA that you inherit directly from your mother.  This DNA is not exclusive to just one person.  Every child and grandchild and so forth of a woman will share the same DNA.  This sampling shows how people in a region are related.

 There are companies now that will run your mtDNA for you and websites are just developing now where you can upload your mtDNA sequence to it, it will compare your sequence with other members of the website, and let you know if there are any relatives in their database.  This makes me wonder, though, at what point technology has gone too far? Will our genealogies be tied together not by family lines but by genetic code?

Special Deal from Treasure Maps Genealogy

From now until August 11th, Robert Ragan of Treasure Maps Genealogy (www.amberskyline.com), is offering a special deal for  his Pajama Genealogy courses.  For a one time fee of $37, you can have immediate access to his online courses, ebooks, video clips, etc.


With this one time fee, you get access to all of the updates and new materials added.  This is a lifetime fee, there are no monthly recurring charges to maintain access to his Pajama Genealogy information!!!