Thursday, January 26, 2012

January Goals & Accomplishments!

I started the year out on the right foot and have pushed through the month of January trying to accomplish everything I set out to do!

I added to my goals the participation in the blogging meme, 52 Weeks of Abundant Genealogy. I might not post every week, but it's a project that can benefit genealogists of all skill levels.

Here is how January 2012, ended for me. 

January 2012 Goals

One Small Goal: Finish that photo album I started in December. Done, January 1st!
Close out the books for 2011, and get everything ready for the CPA. Done.

One Bigger Goal: Write 2 chapters for a study group lesson plan. This goal was changed out to creating the research plan, and film/book lists to view at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. Done.
Close the books for 2011 - review Quicken reports and get them ready for CPA, tax prep.As noted above, it was a real pain because of the bank changing ownership, but it's done!

One Long Term Goal: Review and begin tweaking the source citations to my KDP (Kinship Determination Project). I fly to Salt Lake City on Monday January 30th, and come home at the end of the week. I am  hopeful that between the meetings and the classes I'll be able to pull a lot of this together.

It all started here in December 2011, with Stephanie at Corn And Cotton: My Family's Story; Terri at Finding Our Ancestors; and Denise at Denise's Genealogy Journey.

Saturday, January 21, 2012

Press Release: Council for the Advancement of Forensic Genealogy (CAFG)


The Council forthe Advancement of Forensic Genealogy (CAFG) announces the first Forensic Genealogy Institute. It will be held October 25 through October 27, 2012, in Dallas, Texas, at the Wyndham Dallas Love Field hotel. 

This is an advanced course for professional genealogists, designed by working forensic genealogists.  The intensive twenty-hour course is scheduled from 9:00 am on Thursday through 1:00 pm on Saturday. This schedule accommodates late arrival Wednesday. Departure can be scheduled early enough Saturday to be home with family Sunday and back to business on Monday.  The class size will be limited to 25 enrollees to enhance the learning opportunity.

The Forensic Genealogy Institute offers twenty hours of significant hands-on instruction with real-world work examples, resources, sample forms, and work materials. The embedded practicum offers actual forensic case studies that will be covered from start to finish.  Those who satisfactorily complete the course will receive a Forensic Genealogy Institute Certificate of Completion.

The institute includes the following comprehensive modules:  Overview of Forensic Genealogy, Forensic Research Skills, Legal and Ethical Considerations, Probate/Real Estate Missing and Unknown Heirs, Missing Persons, and Business Aspects.

With over forty-five years of combined forensic genealogical experience, the core instructors are all full-time forensic genealogists who earn their living in the specialty: Michael Ramage, J.D., Certified Genealogist (sm), Kelvin L. Meyers, Leslie Brinkley Lawson, Dee Dee King, Certified Genealogist,  and teaching assistant Catherine W. Desmarais, M.Ed., Certified Genealogist.  Special guest instructors may also be announced.

Registration is $400 for Non-CAFG Members and $350 for CAFG Members and Mentor Program enrollees. The registration fee includes lunch on Thursday and Friday.  A $25 discount is offered for early registration through 27 March 2012.  A partial scholarship will be reimbursed to one non-CAFG attendee and two partial scholarships will be reimbursed to participants who are enrolled in the CAFG Mentor Program.

CAFG secured special room rates beginning at $109 plus tax.  Hotel reservations are available beginning January 27. The Wyndham is located near Love Field, which is served by Southwest, United, Delta, Continental, and Air Canada airlines.  Among its many free amenities, the Wyndham offers shuttle service to and from Love Field, parking, and WIFI.

More information about the Forensic Genealogy Institute is available at
http://www.forensicgenealogists.com/forensic-genealogy-institute.html.  From this page you may follow the 123.signup.com link to the Forensic Genealogy Institute registration page.

Sunday, January 15, 2012

52 Weeks of Abundant Genealogy - Week 3 Free Tools


Week 3 – Free Online Genealogy Tools: Free online genealogy tools are like gifts from above. Which one are you most thankful for? How has it helped your family history experience?  
  
Free online genealogy tools
I can't say just one is my favorite. I use all of these, each for different reasons. Each has a niche that the others don't have yet they all have real value. I hope you can find something among these that can add value to your research. Each one has a small piece of my family puzzle.

FamilySearch.org: www.familysearch.org
FamilySearch is doing such an outstanding job of putting more and more documents online for us, free of charge. Check back frequently as the documents are being put up at a pretty quick rate. If you'd like to see the site be more useful, help to transcribe records. A record set a day or even a week, helps. Please help if you can.

FindAGrave.com: www.findagrave.com
Every trip I take I come home and upload my photos to this site. I love that I can link all of the family members regardless of where they wandered off to and died, they all are linked together! I have nothing but good things to say about the people I interacted with over the years.

There are still a lot of people still adding information to this site, and it is forever free. Don't pass it by.

Linkpendium.com (from creators of RootsWeb): http://www.linkpendium.com/
From the people who brought you RootsWeb, we now have Linkpendium. They too are adding lots of information, and it is free. You can friend Brian (Wolf) Leverich on facebook or on Google+. He's not hard to find and has a wonderful sense of humor!

USGenWeb: www.usgenweb.org
If you are going to research in a place you've never searched before, start here. Visit the information about the state, and then pick the county of research. You'll be pleasantly surprised what gems hide here.

I told you about their newspapers last week. There's more gems in this site, but you have to figure out which ones are gems for your family research.


52 Weeks of Abundant Genealogy by Amy Coffin is a series of weekly blogging prompts (one for each week of 2012) that invite genealogists and others to discuss resources in the genealogy community including websites, applications, libraries, archives, genealogical societies and more.

Sunday, January 8, 2012

52 Weeks of Abundant Genealogy - Week 2

Week 2 – Paid Online Genealogy Tools: Which paid genealogy tool do you appreciate the most? What special features put it at the top of your list? How can it help others with their genealogy research?
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I offer this caveat first, there is no such thing as a perfect site or index. Each of these sites has valuable information that I can't easily access in any other way, that is why I pay for these subscriptions.

Ancestry.com: a blessing and a curse. A blessing when the search engine actually works that same way twice, a curse when the search engine won't locate something when I just looked at it!

GenealogyBank.com: My go-to newspaper site. Their collection is growing; there are thousands of newspapers yet to be scanned and OCRd (optical character resolution). But, it's still a very valuable resource for my work.

Southern California Genealogical Society: Being a member of this society (I live in Oregon by the way) allows me an affordable access to NewspaperArchive.com.

Non-paid: I just have to throw these in as they too are invaluable, and because I. LOVE. old. newspapers. I love new newspapers too! Newspapers are a tool I use in my work and I'm always looking for ways to access more of them.

Library of Congress (LOC) newspapers 1836-1922: See if your state of interest has had any scanning done yet.

And at the LOC site is the link for the U.S. Newspaper Directory, 1690 to date, by state. Here you can see all newspaper titles for each state, town name. Can be most helpful when you want to check to see if a particular community had a newspaper.

Friday, January 6, 2012

Follow up Friday: January Goals, Week 1

The new year is off to a strong start! I finished off that last item I had left from December 2011, the Brinkley photo album. Now all the photos have been scanned AND put in an archival safe photo album. That album took me more than 8 hours to finish up, but am I glad it's done. The other benefit is that since I've scanned all the photos they are easy to grab out of my Picasa photo album and post. So convenient!

I've also decided to participate in 52 Weeks of Abundant Genealogy, not as a goal but as a way to give back to the community. I don't know that I'll participate every week, but I feel that sharing the abundance only grows the community in a positive way. The Law of Attraction at work you know.

I'm now preparing the year end statements to close the financial books on 2011. My biggest issue to slow me down is that my credit union was bought last year and so all my downloads are not from one bank. I'll have to work to make sure all is in balance for the CPA!

As if that isn't enough to do, Rootstech is at the end of the month, and I'm going to be in Salt Lake City for a whole week! I still have prep work to do before I go. That entire week is going to be dedicated to working on my KDP (Kinship Determination Project).

So now I'm off to figure out how to work for a living and accomplish the above in 3 short weeks. Hoping your goals and plans are coming together for you.


52 Weeks of Abundant Genealogy - Week 1

There are a lot of genealogy blogs written for genealogists. It is my intention to be a bit more active at this blog and to give readers an opportunity to find a gem now and again amongst the posts.

This series 52 Weeks of Abundant Genealogy was started by Amy Coffin. You can read the announcement here.

I have several hundred blogs I follow, but most don't write something every day, so I can usually keep up. I do most of my reading while on the recumbent bike or in the evening when I am too tired to think much more. I use Google Reader and admit I'd be lost without it! It allows me to keep articles unread when they are so good I need a second read with a fresh mind!

Now keep in mind there are a number of different types of blogs. I write this blog for a wider audience than my blog I write for my family. That blog is for me to be able to put the family stories down "on paper" and preserve those stories for my family. I also include photos over there. If someone wants one of those photos, take away! I want them shared far and wide. Keep in mind other people don't feel that way about photos, so you might want to ask if you don't find any information on the site.

One of the blogs I always stop to read is written by Marian Pierre-Louis. She writes Marian's Roots and Rambles. She writes at least one blog post daily, and I make sure to try to keep up so my reading doesn't fall to far behind! I hope you'll enjoy her blog as much as I do!