News this week includes: the first ten years (1908-1917) of issues
of Chicago's historic Polish newspaper, Dziennik Zwiazkowy
(translated,
Alliance
Daily) has been digitized by the Center for Research
Libraries and is fully searchable at
http://ecollections.crl.edu, along with other
interesting collections; GenWed.com (
http://www.genwed.com/) is a new and growing Web site
that will help you locate free online marriage records, and you can
submit records for inclusion in the databases; and finally, on 30
October 2007, a gravestone has been set in St. Louis' Memorial Park
for George's great uncle, Brisco Washington Holder -- his brick
wall for over 20 years.
The Guys will be featured presenters at the Texas State
Genealogical Society Conference in Tyler, Texas, next weekend --
9-10 November 2008. More information is available at
http://www.rootsweb.com/~txsgs/conference.pdf and The
Guys hope you can drop by and say hello! George will be
autographing limited numbers of his latest book,
The Official Guide to
Ancestry.com.
Mister Edd in Cape Coral, Florida, asked for advice for websites
that help reunite people with old photos of their family members.
George suggested Megan Smolenyak's "Honoring Our Ancestors" site at
http://www.HonoringOurAncestors.com/orphanphotos.html
and DeadFred at
http://www.deadfred.com.
Drew's "Society Tip of the Week" was a recommendation of the use of
a Web site called SurveyMonkey.com at
http://www.surveymonkey.com/. Basic surveys for less
than 100 responses are free; other size responses are reasonably
priced for a monthly or annual basis. SurveyMonkey may be an ideal
way to allow electronic voting in society elections, conducting
surveys of members for preferred meeting and seminar topics, and
obtaining feedback on programs, projects, and other subjects.
George's "Web Site of the Week" is a new Web site called
GenDisasters at
http://www.gendisasters.com which contains dates,
descriptions, newspaper transcripts, drawings/photos of fires,
floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, train wrecks, bridge
collapses, and more, with dates spanning from the 1800s to the
1950s. The site is searchable by state and county, and browseable.
It is ideal for helping place your ancestors into historical
context with these calamitous events and/or to determine which
courthouses and other repositories may have been damaged and their
records lost or destroyed.
The Guys share a collection of entertaining epitaphs from
gravestones around the world.
Drew reviews a book by Andro Linklater titled
Measuring America, and then The Guys
discuss land measurement systems that have been used in the United
States.
Finally, Drew discusses how to deal with missing data, such as
maiden surnames, or no data whatsoever in your genealogical
recording systems.