Rockstar Genealogist votes roll in

There's been a huge response to the Rockstar Genealogist poll. Thanks to all who have voted. Thanks also to those who posted about the poll on social media, you've made a difference.

You may not recognize lots of names on the list. Most nominees are better known nationally, or even regionally than internationally. That shouldn't stop you voting for those that meet the criteria in your opinion - separate lists will be compiled for various sub-categories.

Kent History Centre Archives User Group

Interesting information from Celia Heritage for those in Kent or with Kent connections.

The next user group meeting is 12 o'clock on 15 October 2014 in the Library Meeting Room at Kent History and Library  Centre, Maidstone.The last meeting, scheduled for July, was inexplicably cancelled by KHLC and so this will be our first meeting since the end of April. Convincing management at the centre to make changes has, in many cases, proved hard work while even if they do agree these changes often take a long time to be put into effect due to local logistics. However, we are making progress, notably the return of the  displaced paper catalogues and indexes that were so useful at at CKS, has finally gone ahead.  At the next meeting we will be concentrating on discussing IT issues such as  the inflexibility and incompleteness of the online catalogue and the lack of visibility given to the archives on KCC’s website. The meetings usually last about 1.5 hours.  Please do come along and have your say. All welcome.

Irish Lives Remembered - September/October issue

The September/October edition of Irish Lives Remembered Genealogy e-Magazine is now live and can be read/downloaded FREE of charge via www.irishlivesremembered.com  or directly at http://bit.ly/1we2OIE.
Feature articles in this issue are:

• Tracing your Offaly Ancestors
• The Irish in Illinois
• The Irish in Australia

along with an assortment of news for the Irish genealogist.

Rockstar Genealogist(s) 2014: voting now open

Choose your favourites from nearly 150 nominees from the English-speaking genealogy world. Let them know you appreciate their contributions.
Help folks organizing a speaker program to know who is popular internationally and in different regions.
Tell your friends. Ask them to vote, suggest who to vote for and multiply the power of your vote.
What surprises will there be in this the third year of the survey?

Voting is now closed

Doing Well by Doing Good: My Heritage

Daniel Horowitz drew to my attention a TV segment which appeared this weekend on an Israeli prime time news show and well worth sharing. It featured an interview with MyHeritage Founder and CEO, Gilad Japhet, and showcased MyHeritage as a company that not only does well as a business, but also does good in the world.

The segment highlights some of MyHeritage's pro bono work, including helping to discover heirs for unclaimed assets confiscated during WWII, returning looted art to its rightful owners.

Rockstar Genealogist nominations now closed

Nominations are closed and voting will start on Monday.
Australia and especially Ireland outdid themselves in nominations - I'm hopeful this year there will be a separate Irish list, but it depends on enough people from Ireland coming to vote.
There weren't as many from Scotland as I hoped. Are they ready for independence?
By a slim poll margin Spencer Wells will be included.
Googling some of the nominations unearthed hidden gems of websites which I'll profile after the results are announced.

Reminder: Deadline for OGS Conference 2015 Speaker Proposals

Next Friday, September 12, 2014 is the deadline for receiving proposals for presentations at OGS Conference 2015: Tracks Through Time. Here's the Call for Speakers

How genetically identical are identical twins?

An identical twin accused of a crime based on DNA evidence has been know to escape conviction based on the argument that the DNA could have been from his identical twin. DNA tests at the time could not distinguish them.

Now an editorial in Investigative Genetics highlights how this is no longer the case based on an article: Weber-Lehhmann J, Schilling E, Gradl G, Richter DC, Wiehler J, Rolf B: Finding the needle in the haystack: Differentiating ’identical’ twins in paternity testing and forensics by ultra-deep next generation sequencing. Forens Sci Int Genet 2014, 9:42-46.

The study demonstrated that it is possible and feasible to identify somatic differences (mutations not inherited from a parent) between twins using massively parallel sequencing whereby whole human genomes can be sequenced in a relatively rapid time frame. Only five SNP difference were found but with these "the risk of false identification is infinitesimally low."

Surrey and Middlesex marriage records added to findmypast

Findmypast now have available the following record transcripts courtesy of the West Surrey Family History Society.

• Over 200,000 records from the Surrey Marriage Index 1500-1841 showing the place and date of marriages and whether the marriage took place by licence or banns. 
• 8,588 Surrey strays marriage records spanning 1565 to 1846. Surrey strays refer to people from Surrey who married outside the county.  
• 33,275 marriage records from Middlesex dating from 1811 to 1840. 

In addition, from the Eastbourne Family History Society, come 708 burial records from the Church of St. John, Bodle Street Green.

Help the Society for One-Place Studies

Kirsty Gray is asking for our support so that the Society for One-Place Studies can receive a £500 grant to peruse a mapping project. The society application is short-listed with a better than 50/50 chance of getting an award - if enough people vote for them.

Find our about the proposal at http://www.skiptongrg.co.uk/apply-for-funding/whos-applying/south-west/ then vote to register your support.

Rockstar Genealogist nominations end Saturday

It's been encouraging to see a slew of nominations coming in for the Rockstar Genealogist poll. Thanks to those who sent them in. The number has tailed off, I'll cut off receiving nominations on Saturday  -- which of course won't stop people sending in more when the voting opens -- along with the comment "how could you have missed ....."

Candidly I'm doubtful about some of the nominations. Just as with musicians not every talented genealogist, no matter how hard they work, is a rockstar. I'm going to cull the list, and have already done so for some nominations where googling the name and genealogy produced nothing but an entry in Geni. Neither will I provide links for nominees, a rockstar doesn't need them. Just google the name if you want.

Find A Grave, Ancestry and the BBB

Almost a year ago Ancestry.com announced it had acquired Find A Grave. Now Ancestry is listing collections for Find A Grave as a recent additions: 4.3 million International, with 2.6 million Canadian, 1.6 million UK and Ireland and nearly 900,000 for Australia and New Zealand. Ancestry's catalog also shows 105 million US records. That doesn't quite add up to the over 121 million burial records claimed at the Find A Grave site.
According to the Utah Better Business Bureau Find A Grave has an F rating. That's based on 17 complaints filed and failure to respond to 3 complaints which were not resolved. Complaints are mostly about problems with the product of service, likely inaccurate information.
A large number of complaints doesn't necessarily mean a poor rating. Ancestry.com maintains an A+ rating despite having 468 complaints in last 3 years, mostly about billing.

OGS Toronto: Industrial England Workshop

November 1st sees the next in the series of major one-day workshops mounted by OGS Toronto Branch, in conjunction with the Canadiana Department of the North York Central Library, an "exploration of the social, economic and cultural effects of the Industrial Revolutions on the lives of English people from 1750 to 1900."

The keynote speaker, Kirsty Gray who wowed attendees at the last OGS annual conference, will give three presentations. Lorri Busch, Lynda Chiotti, Lauren Goldstein, Paul Jones, Carol Nichols and, Linda Reid will also be speaking in what looks like a most interesting selection of presentations. Check them out at http://torontofamilyhistory.org/learn/workshops/industrial-england-workshop/

These workshops frequently sell out so check it out and register early, by September 18 to receive the early-bird discount.

Spencer Wells - Rockstar Genealogist?

I received a nomination to include Spencer Wells in the Rockstar Genealogist survey. It was my pleasure to attend his recent keynote presentation at the recent Institute for Genetic Genealogy event in Chevy Chase. He has spoken at Rootstech and will give the Keynote Address at Genetic Genealogy Ireland 2014.

Googling you find him described as population geneticist, author, National Geographic explorer in residence and as "building a family tree for humanity."

Merriam-Webster defines genealogy as "the study of family history" and  "the history of a particular family showing how the different members of the family are related to each other."

Your advice please. Is Spencer Wells a genealogist? Should he be included in the Rockstar Genealogist poll?

Please provide your advice by responding to the poll below.

Speaker handouts from WDYTYA? Live in Glasgow

Find a few sets of speaker handouts from Who Do You Think You Are?Live in Glasgow 29-30th August 2014 posted by the Society of Genealogists here .They are:

Else Churchill (Friday 29 Aug 2014) Surname Searching.Finding Pedigrees Online, at the SoG and other libraries

Else Churchill (Saturday 30 Aug 2014) Scottish Sources in the Library of the Society of Genealogists

Bruce Durie  (Friday 29 Aug 2014) The Future of Professional Genealogy (link pending)

Bruce Durie (Saturday 30 Aug 2014) Heraldry Why It Matters

George English (Saturday  30 Aug 2014) Removing Dry Stane Dykes - Breaking Down Scottish Family History Brick Walls.

Irish Roots: There was no mass emigration from Ireland

I don't often find myself disagreeing with John Grenham. His latest column is one such occasion.

He's certainly right, if being a bit picky over wording, when he writes "There was no such thing as mass migration, only the accumulation of tens of thousands of individual and family decisions."

Those individual decisions did not necessarily mean the migrant came because there was a family member or friend who had already migrated as his examples suggest. I can think of two cases in my own family, admittedly not from Ireland, where that was not the case. One of them is me.

Newfoundland Sailors in the Great War

Prolific Newfoundland historian and author Robert Parsons has a new book Courage at Sea: Newfoundland Sailors in the Great War, "a collection of more than forty World War I stories involving the Newfoundland Royal Naval Reserve and the Newfoundland merchant seamen who delivered goods to Europe in aid of the Allied war effort. Many foreign-going vessels carrying Newfoundlanders were apprehended en route by German U-boats and shelled, torpedoed, or boarded and bombed. Some of the crews were let go, but others were less fortunate."

One place to order online is www.shopdownhome.com/item.php?id=3337

More Rockstar Genealogist nominations

Several names have been added to the Rockstar Genealogist nominations list at http://anglo-celtic-connections.blogspot.ca/2014/09/rockstar-genealogists-2014-who-you-you.html. I'm finding I left out some obvious names. It's good to see new (to me) people being nominated. If they're new to you feel free to Google them.

Special thanks to Randy Seaver who mentioned nomination during the Mondays with Myrt Google+ hangout. A suggestion from that discussion has been added, and for those poor souls who don't know that DearMyrtle is actually Pat Richley-Erickson that's added as well.

There's room for more nominations.

Based on your votes the rockstar genealogist results last year were: Overall (International), Australia and New Zealand, Canada, UK and Ireland and US based on the country of affiliation of the voter.

This year I intend continuing that and adding, numbers warranting, a ranking of those nominated for the first time this year - rising stars, and of rockstar genetic genealogists.

Do you know someone who should be nominated but is not yet included? Send in a nomination by leaving a comment at http://goo.gl/XZqI0F. Include a note if you'd prefer the nomination to be anonymous and the comment will not be posted.

Rockstar genealogist publicity thanks

Thanks to Kirsty Gray (@TheKirstyGray, first off the mark), Jill Ball (@geniaus), Gail Dever (genealogyalacarte.ca/), Ken MacKinlay ( @kmwebott), @BIFHSGO, Thomas MacEntee (hidefgen.com/), @GuildOneName, Mondays with Myrt (http://blog.dearmyrtle.com/p/mondays-with-myrt.html), @familytreemaguk, Karen Clare ( @cloudfamhist), @ARebelHand, @RememberMe_RT,  @jacqistevens, @CeliaHeritage, @DebbieKennett and Karen Cummings @CummingsPFH for publicizing that nominations are open for Rockstar Genealogists 2014.

Nominations and corrections, thanks Randy, are being added to the list as they are received.

Genealogy: back to school

On this day when we start to put away summer gear (in the Northern hemisphere), students and teachers get out the books, and parents breath a sigh of relief.

Genealogists don't need to feel left out.

The (UK) National Archives has posted a series of webinars well worth spending some time with. On the menu:

An introduction to emigration sources for family historians, given by Mark Pearsall, a Family History Records Specialist at TNA;

An introduction to medieval and early modern sources for family historians, given by Nick Barratt, head of the Medieval and Early Modern team at TNA;

Army musters – more than just accounts, given by William Spencer who is The National Archives’ Principal Records Specialist in military history;

Tracing British battalions or regiments during the First World War, given by David Langrish, a member of the TNA military records team.

Also available is Cloud storage and digital preservation, a recording of a webinar with reduced sound quality and of less direct interest for genealogy, given by Neil Beagrie, Andrew Charlesworth and Paul Miller.

Kudos to TNA for finding a way to respond to repeated comments about the lack of the visuals in podcasts.