RACING DOWN the RIVER -Brief Genealogical Notes

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From Brenda Legate, Packet Editor:
Just a brief note to remind you that the deadline for submissions to the upcoming issue of the Packet is April 15th. I know that may be a time when folks are more worried about finishing their taxes than anything else, so please feel free to send your submissions in early!!! lol I'm looking forward to hearing from you!
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The Indiana Genealogical Society's 2010 annual conference will be Saturday, April 10 at the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne. Dick Eastman, author and creator of Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter, will be the featured speaker. Registration at the door will be $40 each. The Indiana Genealogical Society will hold a Seminar on Friday, April 9 at the Allen County Public Library, in conjunction with the 2010 annual conference. The theme of the seminar is "Preservation From The Bottom Up." Topics will cover preservation on the personal level, as well as the society, county and archive levels. The Allen County Public Library's Genealogy Center will be open from 6 pm to midnight on Friday, April 9 for conference attendees.
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From Dick Eastman's Blog:
No Small Change by David Ferriero, U.S. Archivist, he is the head of the National Archives and Records Administration. It is an interesting article and I find it especially interesting that the Archivist is using a blog in an attempt to directly reach the audience that his agency serves. He refers to himself as "Collector in Chief." David Ferriero's blog may be found at http://blogs.archives.gov/aotus/

The Pew Research Center recently published a report, “The Impact of the Internet on Institutions in the Future,” in which it found that 72 percent of experts agreed with the statement: By 2020, innovative forms of online cooperation will result in significantly more efficient and responsive governments, business, non-profits, and other mainstream institutions. That optimism agreed to by the experts indicates their belief that the internet will prompt institutional change...
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From Don Counts:
There will be a special marker dedication in honor of "Our Real Daughter" Mary Forbes Gano Cobb. Date: Sunday 25th April 2010 at 2:00 EST. New London Cemetery, 2104 County Road S 766 W Howard County, Russiaville IN. RSVP Rebecca Anne Shelton, bek@evansville.net by 11 April 2010.
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From TSGS President, John G. West:
Remember to attend our ~
13 Apr 2010 Annual Dinner Meeting 5:30-6:30 p.m. Dinner & Fellowship Sirloin Stockade, 4610 Bellemeade Ave. 6:30 p.m. Welcome Remarks & Awards 7:00 p.m. Program "EVANSVILLE DURING THE DEPRESSION" Presented by Mr. Harold Morgan, Historian.

RACING DOWN the RIVER -Brief Genealogical Notes

Cemeteries are the newest wedding sites...


As genealogists we have spent a lot of time in cemeteries, what do you think of this idea?

BROOKFIELD, Wis. - Cemeteries such as the Wisconsin
Memorial Park in Brookfield, Wis., have begun hosting
weddings as part of a new service trend, industry officials
say. Stewart Enterprises Inc. spokeswoman Denise Wester-
field, whose company operates the Brookfield cemetery, said
funeral homes make an ideal wedding site given the changing
perception of death in society, the Milwaukee Journal
Sentinel reported Wednesday. "Funerals are becoming much
more a celebration of life than a dark event, so why not
have your wedding at a funeral home?" Westerfield said.
Jessica Koth, National Funeral Directors Association spokes-
woman, said a growing number of cemeteries and funeral
homes have begun expanding their businesses to include
everything from weddings to bar mitzvahs. "It's something
that more and more funeral homes are looking at, whether
they're remodeling existing facilities or building new
additions," Koth told the Journal Sentinel.

-Submitted by Don Counts

RACING DOWN the RIVER -Brief Genealogical Notes

Interactive Vietnam Memorial

Footnote.com is a website that provides access to numerous historical documents. The site includes social networking features to allow for input from users in order to enhance the materials available on the site. While free material is available on the site, most of the documents require a subscription to view (or, can be purchased individually). One of the free collections available on the site is their interactive Vietnam Memorial, created digitally by stitching together more than 6,000 images. (http://go.footnote.com/thewall/)


Each person listed on the wall has an individual record where further details about their service and the conditions on their death can be viewed. One of the pieces of information available for each person is also their hometown of record. A search on "Evansville" reveals 57 men. Of course, there may be other Evansville soldiers who may have been living elsewhere at the time of enlistment and thus not have Evansville as their hometown of record.


Leveraging the social networking aspect of the site, I went through this list of 57 men and put links from their Footnote Pages to their FindAGrave listings when I could find them. In some cases, I even added obituaries as I found them in online newspaper collections, such as that of Private First Class, Douglas R. Harp (1943-1968) . Harp graduated from Reitz High School in 1961 and was a US Marine.


Take a moment to explore The Wall. If you know any one who died in the Vietnam War, contribute a story or comment to that person's page on Footnote. If we leverage the social networking capabilities of resources such as Footnote, we make them all the more valuable for all of us.

- Submitted by Taneya Koonce.

RACING DOWN the RIVER -Brief Genealogical Notes

There are a lot of Internet sites, email lists, bulletin boards, etc. that genealogists of similair interests or of the same family (some of these may be interest in the same location... such as a county or region of a state). There are an increasing number of new Internet social interacting networks... I think twitter.com may be the newest. Add to this FaceBook.com, MyFamily.com, Genealogy.com, RootsWeb.com and MySpace.com and you have a variety of great ways to communicate & interact with large groups of people with the same or similar interests... these can be used for groups of genealogists to better communicate and aid in their research efforts.

Best of all most of these are free to use (MyFamily.com now has a small annual fee for the site owner - only) & you can start up your own site! Check out some of these networking ideas & see if it may benefit you & your friends/family... especially with your genealogical research.

Submitted by JGWest

RACING DOWN the RIVER -Brief Genealogical Notes

Alice Warner sent this to the KYGENWEB email list: Recent WKU Folk Studies graduate Mary Koegel as developed this really cool educational website on Kentucky history. It is a virtual timeline... you click on the colored dots to see what they have concerning that highlited time. Once you get to that page some of the captions are blue and hyperlinked so you can go to the next sub-topic. Check it out! http://kdl.kyvl.org/kyleidoscope.htm

From Virginia Aldridge ~ Just a note to let everyone know all 291 images from Volume 25 are now online. I am continuing to work on attaching the names to the images.
http://freepages.history.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~thetiethatbindsour/van_mar/vol_25_index.htm

Don Counts sent this link to me from The Evansville Courier & Press concerning events for May and National Preservation Month: http://www.courierpress.com/news/2009/apr/26/may-is-national-preservation-month-here-is-a-of/


We now have over 100 unique visits to our regular TSGS Web Site from countries outside of the United States! Here is a ClustrMaps view of the European hits.




The small red dots represent 1-2 hits and the next size are for 3-99 hits. Ireland has 21 hits with United Kingdom having 10 unique visits.

- Compiled by JGWest

RACING DOWN the RIVER -Brief Genealogical Notes

More Notes...

From Chris Myers ~ The Evansville Public Library has some very high resolution scans of Photos and a couple of early City Directories online.
http://evpl.org/research/digitalcollections/

Don Counts honored as a "HERO" in The Veteran's Voice [December 2008]. http://www.theveteransvoice.com/Hero.html

Reminder ~ Tomorrow night TSGS will hold its monthly membership meeting. Please come meet with us , you do not need to be a member to attend our meetings. At 6:30 PM for the HELP Session, Becky West will make you laugh and make you cry as she tells you her "Journey to the Beginning" - her adoption story. She has a lot of "how to" and some entertaining short stories. Connie Conrad will present the program for our regular meeting that starts at 7:30 PM. Her power point presentation "So You Think It Doesn't Exist" will entertain and inform you of ways to find elusive records. Stop by our meeting at Willard Library and tell me what you think about our blog.

Follow-up on the photo submitted by Don Counts concerning J.D. Ritzy's Fantasy of Lights, the annual event raised $142,000 for the Easter Seals Foundation for the Evansville Rehabilitation Center.

The ClustrMaps counter on our regular TSGS Web Site tells us that the site has been visited by people from 8 countries outside of the United States since 14 December 2008. And the old counter registers over 54, 660 "hits" since it started in 1997. The site usually gets fairly low hit numbers, but since we developed the blog and added a few more things to our site, the numbers have climbed significantly. Around Thanksgiving we reached the 52,000 mark which means that in about 6 weeks, the site has had over 2,660 hits! See our site at: http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~intsgs/index.html

RACING DOWN the RIVER -Brief Genealogical Notes

The Photo Album on the TSGS Web Site has a new page for the 14 Jun 2005 Flag Day TSGS Monthly Meeting. The program was “Flags Over America” presented by John G. West and assisted by Becky West & Don Counts. The above photo shows some of the fun at a TSGS meeting. Becky pokes the flint lock musket at John surprising John while Bettie Cook laughs on the left. There are several photos of the program with photos of the Color Guard presenting the Colors for the Pledge of Allegiance and the installation of the 2005-2006 TSGS Officers. Take a look at the officers and see all the flags at: http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~intsgs/photos3.html

Former TSGS President Virginia Aldridge released last night that there are now 100 images from Vanderburgh Co., IN Marriage Applications Volume 25 online.
http://freepages.history.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~thetiethatbindsour/van_mar/vol_25_index.htm

Former TSGS President Don Counts suggests that when reading old records this might help to know what the definition of words and terms were during that period of time. Entire 1828 dictionary online at:
http://1828.mshaffer.com/

- Compiled by JGWest

RACING DOWN the RIVER -Brief Genealogical Notes

We have added a few pictures of our 2008 Christmas Social to the TSGS Web Site (see link below the next photo or you can click on our TSGS Cruiser graphic in the right-hand column). Larry Goss, look at that spread! Everyone had a good time talking and snacking. Former TSGS President Don Counts almost ate as much as I did.




We have added several photos of the 2008 TSGS Seminar presented by Pat Gooldy of Ye Olde Genealogie Shoppe on the TSGS Web Site: http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~intsgs/index.html
- notes from TSGS Webmaster John G. West


We got a couple great hints for "The Daniel Hicks Mystery" from a few days ago (see comments for that article).


In yesterday's article, I forgot to include the Surname Group Rates for Genetic DNA Testing for the Family Tree DNA company. I corrected it later in the day, if you read the article early go back and check the reduced prices.

RACING DOWN the RIVER -Brief Genealogical Notes

Actually, I will be racing UP the Ohio River from Evansville to Cincinnati in just a few minutes. We are going to see the grandkids for Christmas, but we have to be back Sunday night. I wanted to leave this message: “The Kentucky Historical Society will continue to add all volumes of Kentucky Ancestors up to the four most recent issues on a periodic basis on this page for general use.” Go here:
http://history.ky.gov/sub.php?pageid=118&sectionid=3

The Kentucky Historical Society has some neat stuff planned for Kentucky's Abraham Lincoln. Go to their index (home) page: http://history.ky.gov/index.php

It is sort of unique that TSGS covers the three home states of President Lincoln, all of which have great Lincoln celebrations going on for his 200th. Year celebration of his birth in 1809. I grew up near the Spencer County line in Warrick County, not far from Lincoln's boyhood home. - by John G. West

RACING DOWN the RIVER -Brief Genealogical Notes

Genealogical Links and Notes

From Don Counts – Footnote (the place for original historical documents online) announces huge WWII records archive now online at http://www.footnote.com/

From Willard Library – Super Web Site updated with many new features and greatly enhanced look. TSGS announcements & basic web page included. Easy access to Willard's genealogical databases & HeritageQuest and much more! Go to: http://www.willard.lib.in.us/


From Becky West – Adoption.com provides some great resources & news concerning all phases of adoptions. Good section on Adoptees, Birthparents & Search. Site has an Indiana page and, even, an Evansville page with interactive forums. See: http://news.adoption.com/

From Pinkston Gregory III – Cyndi's List is THE genealogical resource “links” page and much more! If you are not familiar with this site, you need to click the link to see it immediately: http://www.cyndislist.com/