January Genealogy - Finds and Favourites

CanadaGenealogy, or, Jane's Your Aunt isn't a baby anymore. She is now five years old! Her first post was 3 February, 2005. Seems like yesterday, really.

I've planned to do a few new things on the blog this year. Other bloggers. like Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings are already featuring 'best of genealogy' posts of the month or week. I do appreciate those lists, but wouldn't want to do quite the same thing.

Since I spend quite a bit of time on the 'net, sometimes, it seems, just wandering around admiring little nuggets and niches here and there, I thought I'd share some of each month's 'finds and favourites' with my readers the first week of the next month. I'm hoping some links will be helpful, or that an occasional find will make you think, or perhaps even give you a genea-laugh. After all, some of my finds might be quirky, but you just never know when stray genea-information will come in handy, do you?

So here's January 2010's list of Find and Favourites - more than a baker's dozen here, in no particular order:

1. Backupify - The ever helpful Thomas MacEntee at GeneaBloggers wrote about Backupify, a new service to back up one's on-line data at websites like Twitter and, yes, I signed up! This will be added protection for my tweets and updates, but also for my Flickr photos and this blog. So far, Backupify works with Twitter, Google Docs, Wordpress,G-Mail, Facebook, Zoho, Delicious, Flickr, Basecamp and Photobucket.

Thomas mentioned an article about Backupify at Digital Inspiration too - excellent site for news and views about all kinds of practical web tools and technology. The free Backupify offer has now been extended to February 15, 2010, so do have a look and see if this might be helpful to you.

2. Black History, Library and Archives Canada – February is Black History Month and LAC introduced a new Black History Month portal page with links to Black History information at LAC and at outside sites. Glad to see this as I'm sure this type of portal page attracts new readers and researchers. I hope this one will be expanded over the next while.

3. Lost Cousins – The biggest genealogy news in January for me was that Lost Cousins has added the 1911 Irish census to its matching system. That census information is free from The National Archives of Ireland. (By the way, Library and Archives Canada was a key partner in the Irish historical census project and digitized both the 1901 and 1911 Irish censuses.)

Do you have ancestry from the British Isles? Are you not a member of Lost Cousins? Why not? You can register for free, or for under $20 Canadian, you can be a full member with additional benefits. Go to LostCousins.com to learn more about it and to register.

4. Who Do You Think You Are-Live 2010 – the UK's National History Show has added on-line 'What's Your Story' guides from The National Archives of the UK for those with ancestors who were in the Army, or who were criminals, divorced, Irish, Jewish or Scottish, and migrants. Attending this show sounds like a dream genealogy vacation indeed. WDYTYA -Live 2010 is February 26-28th in London, England. In case you can attend, several companies have 2/1 ticket offers, including S & N Genealogy and History Times .

5. Elevator history - I have to confess I've never thought much about elevator history, except to admire some of the older ones I've been in, for example, in the old Provincial Courthouse in Victoria, now the Maritime Museum, but here's a neat website, The History of Elevators, with links on elevator history, including the virtual Elevator Museum. You might find an elevator inventor in the family. (This website is courtesy United Elevator in case you need an elevator repaired in the greater Vancouver area of BC.)

6. Recipe Calculator from SparkRecipes - I've volunteered for a heritage cookbook project. (More about that later.) Here's a nifty calculator for the nutritional value of a recipe. Whoa! my Na used far too much butter! (But she was tiny!) I found this on-line calculator through Real Age.

7. A Book About Pub Names - the history of Britain as told through its pub signs - This is an e-book by Elaine Saunders who is on Twitter as @Book_About. I don't drink that much, but several of my relatives managed or worked in pubs and inns in England and Scotland. Elaine's blog, It's a Book About... hasn't been updated for a while, but there are some pub photographs there and she has a link to an excerpt from her book that's on-line free.

Now two Canadian genealogy/history blogs - via Loaded Web

8. Glengarry County - Do you have an interest in Glengarry County, Ontario and area, in Canada? Check out the Glengarry County blog which includes information about the genealogy publications of Alex W. Fraser (of Courtenay BC) and Rhoda Ross.

9. You might find a Canadian environmentalist in the family tree. (No pun intended for British Columbians, or loggers either.) The Great Green North blog by Ryan O'Connor is 'Exploring the History of the Environmental Movement in Canada' apparently starting with Pollution Probe in Toronto in 1969 and SPEC, the Society for Pollution and Environmental Control, in Coquitlam, BC, 1969. He seems interested in many groups, although the focus of his university research, he says, is Toronto.

10. The Doegen Records Web Project - Tionscadal Gréasáin Cheirníní Doegen - Stories, prayers, vocabulary, recorded in Irish dialect by Dr Wilhelm Doegen and his assistant, Karl Tempel, from 1928-31 on-line. A project of the Royal Irish Academy Library. Browse by recording titles, speaker's names, and speakers' origins (115 from Connacht, 17 from Leinster, 120 from Munster and 144 from Ulster). Many of these recordings, if not most, are under a Creative Commons License.

11. The Marriage in Ireland 1660-1925 Project at the Queen's University, Belfast, aims to publish a major study on Ireland, north and south, focused on families below the wealthy landowning classes. This will be of interest to those researching family in Ireland. More about this later, I hope. Via the newsletter of The Women's History Network of the UK. Professor Maria Luddy who is Co-Director of this project has already written much on women in Ireland. Follow her link on the Marriage Project page to see her titles, and also links to The Directory of Sources for the History of Women in Ireland and Women in 20th-Century Ireland: Sources from the Department of the Taoiseach, 1922-1966, both of which are on-line.

12. Ulster Heritage DNA Project - there's information on the Ulster Heritage Magazine's blog about the Ulster (in Ireland) DNA projects, (Y and MtDNA) managed by Barry R. McCain of Oxford, Mississippi and Jim McKane of Wiarton, Ontario, Canada.

13. Canadian Gravemarker Gallery - this is a now a perennial favourite of mine. I still have some real concerns about the future of many personal genealogy websites, but I certainly admire Canadian Gravemarker Gallery founder, Murray Pletsch of North Bay, Ontario. With volunteers, he now has over 500 cemeteries listed with thousands of photographs on-line free, and has had thousands of visitors since the site opened ten years ago, originally as the Northeastern Ontario Gravemarker Gallery. There's a free newsletter you can sign up for and links to free e-mail cemetery lists.

14. Scanfest! The best genealogy event on-line in January was 'the return of Scanfest'! A big thank you to Miriam Robbins Midkiff of AnceStories: The Stories of My Ancestors who organizes this. At Scanfest this time, I scanned a group of postcards that my great uncle sent home while he was working in Africa. As we scan, we chat and share tips and ideas. If you'd like to see what we're up to, go to the ScanFest link to see a replay.

15. Vintage Toronto - Here's another blog find this month; it's all about vintage Toronto postcards and their stories. I have only a few Toronto postcards myself, but I would certainly like to learn more about them.

16. WANTED! U.S. Criminal Records Sources & Research Methodology by Ron Arons - A Twitter link to a favourable review of this book on Leland Meitzler's Genealogy Blog caught my eye, and yes, I want it. Wouldn't I love to find a criminal or two in the family - more records! It's a bit more expensive to ship to Canada, but contact the author if you're interested. Free on his website are photo galleries for Sing Sing Prison and some of its Jewish inmates and an inmate database. Both Leland Meitzler and Ron Arons are on Twitter, as @Lmeitzler and @RonArons, respectively.

17. Arcalife - new at Arcalife in January - Dr. Nick Barratt is now guest blogging on the Arcalife blog. Arcalife, a British Columbia, Canada company, has a website meant for sharing and storing your family and individual histories. There are tiered memberships from free to lifetime. The lifetime option allows members regular access to the website's family history features and its innovative tools, like the Life Cube and also upgraded storage, and will enable members to pass on their digital estate.

And, that's it till next month!

Fountain, Stanley Park, Vancouver - Treasure Chest Thursday

The Fountain, Stanley Park, Vancouver, BC, Canada. 'Linen' postcard; coloured, unused. The Coast Publishing Company, Vancouver, BC. (C.P. 128). Late 1930s? Private collection.

The Stanley Park fountain in Lost Lagoon was opened in 1936 to celebrate Vancouver's Golden Jubilee. The coloured light displays were an original feature. The fountain was restored in 1986 - for Expo, the World Exposition on Transportation and Communication.

The Tacoma Public Library has another Stanley Park postcard [ID # Fleming-131] showing a different view of the fountain - from the same company and likely from about the same time period. For more about The Coast Publishing Co., see Postcards of the Coast Publishing Company, Vancouver, British Columbia by Lee Dowsley and Roma George, with Chris McGregor. For more information on this book, see the Vancouver Postcard Club website.

This postcard could be a submission for the 17th Edition of A Festival of Postcards as the theme this time is LIGHT! If you'd like to enter this on-line Festival, see the details at the Festival headquarters at A Canadian Family, Deadline: February 28th, 2010.

And if you need to start to scan your family postcards, or want to scan more postcards, why not join the first 2010 ScanFest on January 31st. Details and tips for scanning are up now at AnceStories The Stories of My Ancestors.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - My Other Interests

It's Saturday night - time for Genealogy Fun - and this week Randy Seaver at GeneaMusings has challenged genea-bloggers to tell all - that is, to tell about our "other" hobbies or interests outside of genealogy and family history research, writing, speaking, etc.

Well, it's true that there aren't many days that I'm not researching at a library or archives, or teaching or speaking about, or at the very least thinking about genealogy and family history, but like Randy, I do have a life, honest!

I too have friends and a family and there are two special fuzzy critters here, Odette and Gilles, who share their home with us. I collect postcards, I love old buildings, I travel when I can, although almost always that has something to do with family history and genealogy. No beaches for me, when there's an archives or a library somewhere nearby!

And right there - a library - a clue!

Deborah Sayles Library, Pawtucket, Rhode Island, USA. Opened in 1902, still a library, the Pawtucket Public Library, and now in the U.S.A's National Historic Register. Coloured postcard, unused; Published by the Rhode Island News Company, Providence RI, Leipzig, Dresden. Private collection. For another view, see the Library Postcards blog.

As some know (especially from my tweets) I do spend a significant amount of time each week reading - on the bus, on the train, waiting in line, even while watching the odd TV show (a Murdoch mystery tonight). I read a fair bit of history, but most of my very favourite authors write historical mysteries. A few would be Gillian Linscott for her series of English suffragette Nell Bray mysteries and, of course, Maureen Jennings and her Canadian mysteries set in 1890s Toronto and featuring detective William Murdoch, then there's authors Kate Ross and Barbara Hambly, and David Liss, Arturo Perez-Reverte....

People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading. Logan Pearsall Smith, Life and letters, v. 5, no. 27 (August 1930), Afterthoughts, page 71.

For years now, I've been eicuthbertson, as a member of BookCrossing. We register books on the BookCrossing site, read them, comment on-line, then release the books, usually in a public place, so others will find them and enjoy. Through BookCrossing, I've met good friends and been introduced to books I'd never have known about or considered reading otherwise. BookCrossers have a lot of fun - we meet in person or on-line to share books and participate in book related activities. Today in fact I posted a BookCrossing Challenge to promote Canada's Freedom to Read Week, February 21-27, 2010.

To choose a good book, look in an inquisitor’s prohibited list. ~John Aikin,
Memoir of John Aikin: M. D. by Lucy Aikin, (Philadelphia: Abraham Small, 1824), page 312.

Vancouver House Historian James Johnstone on CBC Radio One - Jan 15 - Celebrating a Jazz Anniversary

Did you know that jazz great Jelly Roll Morton once lived and played at the Patricia Hotel in Vancouver? CBC Radio One's 'On The Coast' will be broadcasting from the hotel on January 15th, 2010 from 3 to 6 pm to commemorate the 90th anniversary of one of his shows. There's a concert in the evening too.

Vancouver's House Historian, James Johnstone, will be on this special edition of 'On The Coast' talking about the history of the city's East End. He's been researching the East End for years, but wanted to learn more about the Patricia Hotel before the show and now has a very useful, well illustrated post on his blog, When An Old House Whispers..., about the hotel, illustrating, in effect, how to start researching a Vancouver building.

There's a nice comment there about his use of the British Columbia Genealogical Society's book - Vancouver Voters, 1886: A Biographical Dictionary. This was the culmination of the Society's Vancouver Centennial project; society members researched everyone named on the first City of Vancouver Voter's List. It's a massive book, 892 pages of genealogical and historical information. If you're interested in the early history of Vancouver, or of the Lower Mainland, you should have a copy at hand. If you'd like to purchase one, please contact me or see the BCGS website: www.bcgs.ca as there are a limited number of copies still available.

Upcoming Genealogy & Gaelic Classes - Vancouver Area

Coming up at the Community Centred College for the Retired - Burnaby BC. You need not be retired to register for these classes!

Beginning this week - 8 week sessions with 8 - 2 hour classes

Genealogy with M. Diane Rogers (Mondays)
Internet Genealogy with M. Diane Rogers (Wednesdays)

Also of special interest -

Gaelic with Murdo MacIver (Fridays)

Many other classes available, including these that may be of interest to genealogists and family historians: Digital Photography, Digital Photo Albums, Hands on Technology, Creative Writing and various languages - Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, French, Sign Language.

Community Centred College for the Retired,
in the historic Alan Emmott Centre,
6650 Southoaks Crescent, (just off Kingsway),
Burnaby, BC V5E 4M7
Telephone: 604-517-8732
Website: http://www.cccrburnaby.org

New Year's Genea-Resolutions - 2010 - Carnival of Genealogy

New Year Arithmetic

It only takes one figure more to change the sum of Time's long score;

To your life's record may it add Good Fortune and subtract the bad:

And as with others you divide may Best of Luck be multiplied!

Post Card, unused. Made in U.S.A. Marked 402 but no publisher or artist's name, except a K circled. Divided back; private collection.

New Year’s Resolutions! is the topic for this Carnival of Genealogy.

Yesterday, Tara Calishain of Research Buzz wrote a post about Wolfram/Alpha that prompted me to calculate the number of days I've already spent on the earth - 22,314 days! Where did they all go? Or better yet, what did I do with them?

No wonder so many of us think about resolutions each year.

(I recommend following ResearchBuzz, by the way, great info about search engines, and about on-line information collections. Yes, it still is Follow Friday.)


As usual, I’ve written out a few resolutions for this brand new year, and from what I hear, a record number of other genea-bloggers have been doing this too. It will be most interesting to see what everyone’s plans are.

I write out objectives for myself for almost every week as we go through the year. These include genealogy, but I try to keep my main goals for each year to a few - all, I hope, manageable ones.

Again, as in 2009, I expect 2010 to be fairly busy – mostly with genealogy, but not necessarily my own. I’m very active in my local genealogical society right now as President and Editor of the British Columbia Genealogical Society and I took on more genealogy teaching last fall at the Burnaby Community Centred College for the Retired. I enjoy these activities and believe I'm making the world a bit better place for genealogy, but I will set aside time too for my personal genealogy research as I did in 2009.

For 2009, my personal genea-resolutions were to:

1. Scan more photos and scrap more photos - about my brother and myself. Attend two scrap nights; schedule some time for fun photos to mix with the older ones.

2. Blog on a more regular schedule; have two posts and two 'Wordless' posts in reserve for each blog by mid-February.

3. Host a Carnival of Genealogy.

4. Have some Newdale pages on-line by 9 February 2009.

5. Produce Islay CDs as family gifts.

6. Follow DearMYRTLE's organization checklists.

7. Save trees and energy by using less paper! Buy two power bars to use in my office area.

Considering my sometimes crowded schedule, I feel I did quite well in 2009, although one goal had to be postponed as I’ll mention below.

For 2010, my goals in brief are

1. To finish scanning my older family photographs (and some documents) and to scrapbook some more.

2. To have research plans for local repositories and libraries on the go each month, and to be ready for research in Toronto, Ontario in May.

3. To continue blogging, and to host at least one Carnival, if possible.

4. To work towards getting my Newdale pages up on-line and to produce some CDs (ones I’m happier with) to give to family, and to put more photographs on-line to share.

5. To continue working on organization and energy-saving too (mine and the world’s).

Here's a bit more about my 2010 goals with a recap of 2009.

1. Scanning and scrapbooking 2010: Last year, I wanted to scan more of my older family photographs and I certainly did that, although due to other commitments I wasn’t able to attend many Scanfests. I realize I’ve gotten a long ways with this project, but I do miss those Scanfest chats. I intend to attend more in 2010 and to finish these scanning projects. I was given a digital frame for Christmas, (thank you, S!) and will soon have more ancestors on my mantel.

I did do more scrapbooking in 2009; I even attended those two crops. I tried a few digital projects, but didn’t like this nearly as well as working with ‘real’ things, so won’t likely pursue that. Will keep working on my vintage scrapbooking in 2010 as I can. You might see some projects yet here on my blog.

2. Travel plans 2010 – I didn’t make it out of Canada this year, but I had fun and learned a lot at the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia conference in Medicine Hat, Alberta and at other sessions in British Columbia, like the British Columbia Historical Federation conference in Nelson, and the Megan Smolenyak seminar in Surrey put on by the British Columbia Genealogical Society (BCGS).

This year, I’m looking forward to a number of local events already, including the Stephen A. Morse seminar in March (co-sponsored by the Jewish Genealogical Institute of British Columbia and the BCGS - details soon) and the Women’s History Fair in April, both in Vancouver. Then in May there’s the BC Historical Federation conference in Vancouver and the Ontario Genealogical Society conference in Toronto which I’m planning to attend. While in Toronto, I’ll be researching my BATTICE, PEEL and ROGERS, WHITE families at the City of Toronto Archives and the Ontario Archives.

3. Blogging 2010: I continued to blog regularly about genealogy, here at CanadaGenealogy and at The Graveyard Rabbit of British Columbia. I especially enjoyed doing the Sombre Sunday and Treasure Chest Thursday posts and will be continuing these.

I participated in a good number of Blog Carnivals, and was a Carnival host, in March for the Carnival of Central and Eastern Europe’s on ‘Female Ancestors’ and for September’s Carnival of Genealogy on ‘Family Reunions’. I’ve joined two blog rings, Blogging For Ancestors and the Geneabloggers WebRing. Participating in both rings and carnivals introduces me to many other bloggers and readers and, usually, is a lot of fun. I've been getting many more comments on my posts, and I am regularly reading other blogs and commenting on them in turn. I also wrote an article for Shades of the Departed, and participated in A Festival of Postcards.

I’d like to take time to blog more and to participate in more Carnivals in 2010 and will work on scheduling myself so I can do that. I do have some blog posts in reserve now, so that’s a bit less ‘pressure’. I’d like to encourage others to participate in blogging and other on-line activities more during 2010. (I love Twitter! and it blends well with blogging.) I started a British Columbia genealogy group on GenealogyWise this year and I have some ideas for CanadaGenealogy in 2010 which you will hear about later. As an example, I just recently noticed that someone else in BC is interested in guest blogging and I’m going to investigate that for myself and for CanadaGenealogy.

4. Sharing more information on-line 2010: My Newdale web pages are still on hold, for reasons beyond my control at the moment. This is the only 2009 resolution I really had to leave undone, but, I have done more research, scanned many more photographs, and in 2009, even found ‘new to me’ historical postcards which I’ll be showing soon enough. When things don’t work out when and how one wants, I think it’s important to be flexible enough to move on to work on another goal for the time being, so that’s what I did. I made some photograph CDs, but wasn’t that happy with them, so I’ll be working on that again. And, after attending the BCGS fall series on ‘Writing Your Own History’ with Moira Connor, I intend to produce at least one booklet on my family this year.

5. Organization and energy saving 2010: I did follow DearMyrtle’s Organization Checklists as posted for the first half of the year and used some of her older checklists the rest of the year. Of course these are all on-going exercises!

And, I’ve tried to be conscientious about saving paper and ink and electrical energy too. I think I’m well into those habits now, although I still have some odd piles of paper to worry about....oh, well.

I’m now using a newer, smaller backup drive and late in 2009, I bought a new laptop which I’m still learning about, and, for Christmas, I received a netbook. (Thank you to J, C, C & S!) This was in my 2009 plans (and dreams). Having the netbook may radically change the way I do research even at local archives and libraries as I am always on public transit and hesitate to carry my heavier laptop every time. This netbook is so light I imagine it will be with me much of the time, but it will certainly be a blessing when I’m away researching.

I’ll be spending a bit of time early in the new year ‘organizing’ myself with the three computers. (For those who want to know, the new laptop is Amy, the netbook is Minnie - such an apt name for a little computer. My older, trusty everyday laptop’s name is Maggie. Amy was my Na, my maternal grandmother; Minnie and Maggie were her sisters. There is a really old desk top here too – but she says her name is ‘just old & tired’.)

I routinely write out my ‘to dos’ for each week which includes my genealogy to dos – documents to look up, things to order – but I’m going to keep a fuller descriptive list in front of me each week this year – drawn from my research plans. Robert Ragan of Treasure Maps Genealogy (he’s the Pajama Genealogy Guy) wrote an article recently on how genealogists can best use personal planners. I’m going to try his ideas, so instead of a list of unrelated activities, I’m going to include a small block of tasks for the week based on who or which family I’m working on during that time. I think it will give me a better perspective for the week, if nothing else. (And I just got a fun pad of coloured planning notes – for accomplishments – Today, Tomorrow, Weekend, Near Future, Someday, and, Maybe Never! I’ll be using that too.) That 'Someday' will keep me positive and the 'Maybe Never!' will keep me smiling!

Now, do tell, what are your genealogy goals for this year?

Identifying Photos; Learning about Fashions - The Costume Gallery Library - free till Jan 3 2010

Eight images of an unidentified woman, shown in different poses. Described as all taken on one glass negative and at one operation, 1870, Ontario. Photographer R. R. McLellan. Canada. Patent and Copyright Office, Library and Archives Canada, PA-031478

When researching photographs of people, it's often very important to date the clothing they are wearing. Looking at other photographs from different time periods will help you work out a time frame for the image. The Costume Gallery is one of the on-line resources I recommend.

Penny Ladnier, owner of The Costume Gallery, has a special offer for access to her websites that's good till Sunday, 3 January 2010, at 10 pm EST. Whether you're hoping to identify one particular photograph or you're interested in the history of fashion, you'll find much of interest at The Costume Gallery and its related websites.

Some of these resources are free, but usually access to the Libraries and to certain other areas on Penny's 13 websites are by subscription only. Till Sunday, this is free. LOGIN using: cg2003 and the PASSWORD: neb7am66
in lower case with no blank spaces before, in-between, or afterwards.

Penny's main Costume Gallery website has just been updated and the Library now has over 5,000 pages. It's the 14th anniversary for The Costume Gallery, so there is a sale on subscriptions too till 14 January 2010. See the main page at The Costume Gallery Library for details, if you're interested.

The same passwords are also good till Sunday for these associated sites:

Costume Slide Shows:
www.costumeslideshows.comwww.fcdatabase.com (use only the password)
Past Hair Styles:
www.pasthairstyles.com
Past Designers:
www.pastdesigners.com
Past Hats:
www.pasthats.com
Past Communion History - Check the logo photograph here as Penny is working to return this image to its family:
www.communionhistory.com
Antique Brides:
www.antiquebrides.com

For more about Penny E. Ladnier see her profile here.

Penny also offers a service called Fashion Foto-Date. For $10, you can have a date analysis of the clothing shown in a scanned family photograph.