Thursday, April 19, 2012

FamilyTreeDNA sale starts tonight - DNA Day

For those who attended my Genetic Genealogy talk last weekend, here's some welcome news.

FamilyTreeDNA.com
is having a short sale. Nearly all the offerings will be on sale, including upgrades that were not on last year's sale. The sale begins at 6 PM April 19th and concludes at 11:59 PM on Saturday the 21st (Central time, U.S.)

No coupon required this time. Prices on the website will be adjusted.

For more information, check out FamilyTreeDNA's Facebook page or see CeCeMoore's latest post at Your Genetic Genealogist. If you're interested in the uses of DNA for genealogy, I do recommend following Your Genetic Genealogist.

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

My Genealogy Smile for the Day....sigh

Yesterday and this morning I had a look for newer databases on Ancestry. Among these I noticed 'Border Crossings: From Mexico to U.S., 1895-1957'. Not too long ago I had found and published the names of a few people who went from Vancouver, BC to Topolobampo, Mexico in 1894. I thought I'd have a look to see if later they went to the US. And indeed, I may have found one and some relatives of another.

As I often do though, I thought I'd see how many in this database were listed as being born in Canada. I was surprised to see quite a few and even more surprised to see many were shown as born right here in British Columbia.

Very soon, I realized though that someone (or something) has confused "B.C., Mexico" (B.C. being the State of Baja California, Mexico) with "B.C., Canada" (B.C. being British Columbia, Canada).

Oh, dear! This is even sillier than that confusion of the birthplace "SOM" (for Somerset, England) being indexed as Somalia. That got fixed in a hurry as I recall.

I did send a note on to Ancestry, so will watch to see when this gets corrected. It does look to me as if there are more mistakes in this indexing - not all "Que"s mean Quebec, for instance, but - you really just have to laugh...don't you? Que Sera, Sera!

[Edited to add this note: Just in case you are wondering - Ancestry seems to be saying that 78,460 people in this database were born in British Columbia, Canada. Now a very few probably were, but the vast majority I've looked at seem to be saying they were born in Mexico. One fellow even gave his birthplace as "Agordo, Italy, Province of BL". Yes, that "BL" could be taken as BC but "Italy" is really clear.]

Sunday, April 01, 2012

Canadian Immigration - Crew Lists

Yesterday, I volunteered at 'Nordic Spirit 2012: The Lives They Left Behind', a two day event in Burnaby, BC sponsored by the Scandinavian Cultural Society. This continues today at the Scandinavian Community Centre and features photographs, storytelling for children, displays and talks illustrating life in the Nordic countries from 1850 to 1950. Today there will be a talk on 'Scandinavians on the Titanic'.

At the BCGS Scandinavian Genealogy Group table we are doing quick lookups and offering advice to get people started on their own family history research. Do come and see us if you attend today.

My last post included a link to my recent handout for Canada Census and Immigration Research. To those who were interested, I've offered copies of this.

One question was asked about crew lists. The handout doesn't mention these, but there is a great source for Canada related crew lists and that is Newfoundland's Memorial University's Maritime History Archive. And Dave Obee's CanGenealogy Immigration resource page, recommended highly in my handout, does include a link to the Maritime History Archive.