Follow Friday Newsletter: 8 July 2011

This Week in Genea-Blogging

Can I redo my education?

At Climbing My Family Tree, Jenn describes how she is incorporating genealogy into her children’s home schooling curriculum in “Genealogy for Kids: Family Tree Notebooking Page.” And there is a bonus in the post - check it out! She follows this up with “Genealogy for Kids: Cemetery Scavenger Hunt.”


A post that really struck home with me

Was Melissa Manon’s “The Value of Cultural Knowledge” at ArchivesInfo. I love that she is teaching her daughter how to think critically and question information that is passed off as fact. This post made me reflect on how much knowing the cultural context has helped me in family history research and how much more cultural knowledge I have acquired through my research.


An outstanding angle on Independence Day

For the 4th of July Leah at Leah’s Family Tree honors some of her “non-combatant” ancestors who did their part in making the United States of America great in “America in My Family Tree.” A perceptive take on our celebration of independence.


A neat map

Presented by A Postcard a Day: “Curiously juxtaposed USA.” Check it out; there are some really excellent town name juxtapositions! You will probably have to click on the map to be able to read the names - it’s worth it.


A neat idea

Presented by Denise Barrett Oleson at Moultrie Creek Gazette: “Build an online family journal with Posterous.” Denise makes an effective case that this is the perfect platform for the technologically-challenged, so I’m definitely interested!


For the rest of you Kentucky-heads out there

J. Mark Lowe has started a series on “Kentucky’s Revolutionary Land Grants - Part 1” at Kentucky & Tennessee Stories. Map included.


A pro with wildcard searches

That’s Lorine McGinnis Shulze at Ask Olive Tree Genealogy a Question. In “Hiding in Plain Sight,” she outlines a case study demonstrating how she finally traced the family of an ancestor with a difficult-to-spell Eastern European name. Brava!


Why don’t we have movies and shows like this already?

At The We Tree Genealogy Blog, Amy Coffin sends up both Hollywood and the genealogy community. And we are laughing hysterically. Read “If Genealogists Ran Hollywood.”


What would you include on the list?

Another thought-provoking post from Marian at Roots and Rambles: “The Top 3 Changes in Genealogy.” Agree/Disagree/Anything to add?


Effective message-boarding

Is described by Deb Ruth of Adventures in Genealogy in "Heard on the Message Board.” She gives some tips for writing an effective query and lists some of the main genealogy message boards.


Last, but never least

Do NOT miss reading the entries for the 107th Carnival of Genealogy - The Seasons of Genealogy at West in New England, hosted by the inimitable Bill West. Outstanding!


For more suggested blog reading,

Check out “Follow Friday on a Saturday” at Cheryl Cayemberg’s Have You Seen My Roots?, “Follow Friday: This Week’s Favorite Finds” at Jenn’s Climbing My Family Tree, “Follow Friday Gems” at Deb Ruth’s Adventures in Genealogy, “Best of the Genea-Blogs” at Randy Seaver’s Genea-Musings, “Week in Review” at John Newmark’s TransylvanianDutch, and “Monday Morning Mentions” at Lynn Palermo’s The Armchair Genealogist.


This Week I Started Following These Blogs:

365 Days of Genealogy

Greenealogist’s Corner

Unsolved Histories: Adoption and Forensic Genealogy


Thank-You Corner

My thanks to Patti Browning of Consanguinity for leaving a comment on my “Seasons of Genealogy” post to let me know that if I do get to go to Dallas on a research trip I might want to visit the Southwest Branch of the National Archives over in Fort Worth! You bet I’d like to! Thank you for the information, Patti!

I’m very happy to see that one of my favorite bloggers has returned to posting: Amy at They that go down to the sea celebrates the 4th of July with one of the discoveries she made: “Independence Day and genealogy.”


My Research Week

Since “What I Learned Wednesday” (which was yesterday, as I am writing this Thursday evening), there has actually been a little bit more research action.

1. I continue to eat crow concerning the usefulness of shaky leaves on Ancestry Public Member Trees (PMTs). Last night I decided to input a few relatives on the Matlock line, and for the Luney M. Goforth and Malvina Isabella Gracey family that leaf led me to the 1900 census, where I had not been able to find them before. They are listed there as Lemey M. Gofnok and Milvley I. Gofnok. Well, as if their names weren’t already unusual. In turn, I found the oldest of the five children, Thurza, who I knew must exist from the 1910 census (5 living children). However, she wasn’t on the 1910 census with the family, so I didn't know her name or whether she was a boy or a girl; I figured she was already out of the house. And, using her unusual first name and the birth states for her and her parents, I found her with her husband Doc Pitts on the 1910 census. So, I admit it, a shaky leaf helped. I don’t think I would have found the Gofnoks without its help (though I have done some imaginative census searches in my day).

2. Blogger put me into the “new-new” Blogger in Draft today. I didn’t like it, and actually could not navigate to it by selecting “New Post” or “Design.” Turns out they have the URL scrambled, so I just unscrambled it and got into the new version of Blogger in Draft - which I didn’t like. I like to think of myself as traditional, but you can call me primitive (I don’t like New Search, either). So I unchecked the “Make Blogger in Draft my default” box. Still, there seem to be some scrambled posts with messed up pictures, which I have put back into draft form until I can fix them up. Bleghh.