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GeneaNet : Community : Genealogy Blog Thursday March 18, 2010

Genealogy Blog 


17 March 2010

Can Local Genealogists Link School Lunch Burgers And Chicken Sandwiches To Middle-School Obesity?

When Sacramento genealogists chart genograms, which are family medical histories down through the generations, what do they see as a common link? It's childhood obesity that runs in the family. And what's the link related to? That's where genealogy comes it. It's not only a nutritionist, but also a genealogist that can journal junk food lunches as family habit or tradition. But how healthy, really, are middle-school lunches locally? And do the kids really demand those menus? Or is it all about family habits through the generations? What do the latest studies show as links, but not actual causes of childhood obesity?

Can Sacramento genealogists predict better than nutritionists what local Sacramento schools serve kids for lunch and link the family history records to obesity by middle-school age?

Source & Full Story

12 March 2010

Six Generations Card Games

Fyodor Soloview's Six Generations Card Games, a uniquely developed product with museum quality artwork and genealogically and historically interesting mechanic, is a pleasant example of information coupled with entertainment, challenging the valuation of the card system of “Standard Decks” with Kings, Queens and Jacks.

This innovative pack contains a set of 72 cards with pictures of six generations of immigrants belonging to a family who came to the United States from sixteen European nations in the first half of the nineteenth century. The latest generation consists of the siblings Emily and Jacob, currently living in the United States; and the other five generations represent their ancestors.

As a genealogical and historical gift product, "Six Generations" has perfect usage in education, arts, museums, and homes.

Six Generations Card Games

5 March 2010

New Jersey Senate Panel Approves Bill Unsealing Adoptee Birth Records

Adopted adults would gain access to their original birth certificates and family medical history under a bill a Senate panel approved today.

The bill in one form or another has been before the Legislature since the 1980-81 session. Religious leaders, anti-abortion activists and the New Jersey chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union have successfully lobbied against it, asking lawmakers to protect birth mothers, who believed they had anonymity when they gave up their children.

But open-records advocates continue to argue that knowing their family history is a civil right.

Source & Full Story

17 February 2010

John, Bill And Tom Are Most Popular Names Of Past 170 Years

There have been more than 2million Johns since central records began in 1837, according to a four-year study of 134million birth certificates.

With naming trends influenced by religion and royalty, the most popular names have mirrored those of saints or monarchs.

And while John has reigned supreme for centuries, it could lose its position to William within a decade, as traditional names like Jack and Harry make a comeback.

The most popular girl’s name is Elizabeth, with 1.6million, closely followed by Mary. The data, compiled from the National Archives, also shows the marked difference in life expectancy through the decades.

Source & Full Story

1 February 2010

America's Last Surviving WWI Vet Celebrates 109th Birthday

America's last surviving World War I Veteran and local man Frank W. Buckles turns 109 years-old Monday.

The Charles Town resident was born in 1901 and was 16 when he talked his way into the Army driving ambulances and helping return prisoners of war to Germany.

Later as a civilian, he was captured by the Japanese and spent three years in a prison camp.

Mr. Buckles was born in Harrison County, Missouri.

Source & Full Story

13 January 2010

English Man, 91, Awaits 106th Grandchild

A Lincolnshire (England) great-great grandfather is awaiting the arrival of his 106th grandchild.

Ted Leeson, 91, from Grantham, has eight living children, 33 grandchildren, 61 great grandchildren and 11 great-great grandchildren.

Most of the family still live in the county, with the youngest being three-month old Cotie.

His great grandson Toby Fairbrother, 36, and his wife Zoe, 36, are now expecting their fifth child this week.

Source & Full Story

11 January 2010

Museum Curator To Experience Life Of Civil War Soldier

Brett Kelley's plans for two weeks in the Union Army include picket duty, 10-mile marches, improving defensive position and taking care of Twitter and YouTube.

It is not the Civil War of the 1860s.

Kelley, curator of collections at the National Civil War Museum in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, USA, will serve two full weeks standing guard at the museum in a fund-raising and consciousness-raising activity,

Kelley will be on duty Feb. 6 to 20 outside the museum, trying to experience life as a Civil War soldier. He will be housed in a wood-floored tent and cook meals in a cast-iron stove.

Source & Full Story

20 December 2009

Top Ten Genealogy News Stories And Genealogy Themes Of 2009

Genealogy In Time’s Top Ten Genealogy News Stories and Genealogy Themes of 2009:

Their number one genealogy news story of the year is:

We Now Know How Much We Don’t Know About Our Ancestors – One of the great frustrations about genealogy is that even after spending years researching your ancestors you can still get the feeling that you don’t really know all that much about them. Well, you might be interested in finding out that this problem also occurs well beyond the family level. As the two articles First Native Americans Arrived in Two Separate Migrations and Native Americans Have a Common Ancestry demonstrates, we still do not have definitive answers to some of the really big genealogy questions. So, the next time you feel frustrated in your genealogy searches, take heart. You are in good company!

Source & Full Story

You can also read:

Native Americans Descended From A Single Ancestral Group, DNA Study Confirms
First Americans Arrived As Two Separate Migrations, According To New Genetic Evidence
American Indian DNA Links to Six “Founding Mothers”

15 December 2009

University of the West of England Launches Largest Ever Study Of UK Family Names

A major new research project led by the University of the West of England (UWE, Bristol) is set to create the largest ever database of the UK's family surnames. The database, which will contain the meanings and origins of up to 150,000 UK surnames, is to be made publicly available and will be of enormous interest to home genealogists, family historians, and anyone interested in learning more about their family name.

The research is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) with a grant worth in total £834,350. The project will be carried out with the technical collaboration of the Faculty of Informatics at Masaryk University, Brno, in the Czech Republic.

The project will begin in April 2010 and will last four years. It is planned to have the database available online for public consultation from 2014.

Source & Full Story

9 December 2009

Your Family Tree Awards 2009

Announcement by Your Family Tree:

The Your Family Tree Awards are back, and this year they're bigger and better! New for 2009, you get to decide who wins our coveted prizes.

Our Awards reward the websites, companies and products that have done the most for family history over the past 12 months. We've picked 12 categories - including best census/BMD website, best family history software, best storage products and many more. We've also shortlisted the frontrunners in each category. We're asking you to vote for your favourites. Whoever receives the most votes in each category will win the coveted gong.

To vote, simply click here. We'll announce the winners in YFT 88, on sale 26 February.

Source

20 November 2009

WWII Bomber Pilot's Victoria Cross Fetches Record Price

A Victoria Cross awarded to a 21-year-old World War II bomber pilot has sold at auction for £335,000.

The VC, which was presented to Flight Lieutenant Bill Reid in 1944 by King George VI, was bought by an anonymous bidder, setting a new record price.

Flt Lt Reid, from Crieff in Perthshire, was given the VC for his part in a bombing raid on Germany in 1943.

He flew his Lancaster bomber 200 miles towards its target over Düsseldorf despite being wounded in two attacks.

Source & Full Story

17 November 2009

Digging Into the Science of That Old-Book Smell

If you have torn yourself away from the virtual library that is the Internet long enough to visit a real library, you know that the smell of old books — musty, slightly acidic, even grassy — is instantly recognizable. But is it quantifiable? And if so, might old-book odor prove useful to librarians and conservators charged with preserving collections?

Matija Strlic, a researcher with the Center for Sustainable Heritage at University College London, thinks it might. With colleagues in Slovenia and with the assistance of the National Archives of the Netherlands, he has published proof-of-concept research that shows that it is possible to understand both the composition and condition of old paper by analyzing the volatile organic compounds they emit.

Source & Full Story

13 November 2009

World’s Oldest Woman Lives In Turkey’s Diyarbakır

Halim Solmaz, a resident of Diyarbakır’s Beşiri district, is purportedly 125 years old, which if true would make her the oldest known person on the face of the earth.

İrfan Ertaş, the head of the local birth registry directorate, confirms the record of Solmaz’s age, saying: “According to our records Halim Solmaz was born in 1884 and is still alive. She lives in [Beşiri’s] Bismil [neighborhood].” Solmaz’s identification card says she was born on July 1, 1884, and according to reports she had seven children (four sons and three daughters) and is grandmother to 54 and great-grandmother to 150.

Source & Full Story

9 November 2009

Four US Veterans Receive Legion Of Honor For Service During World War II

Four proud old men gathered yesterday at Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall and Museum to receive France's highest award, the Legion of Honor, for helping to liberate that country from the Nazis 65 years ago.

Felix Cistolo, 88, of Ellwood City; Martin Tougher, 87, of Forest Hills; Francis Culotta, 91, of Whitehall; and Ross DiMarco, 87, of Uniontown; were ordinary young men caught up in the greatest maelstrom of the 20th century.

Each rose to the occasion, advancing field by field and house by house across the French countryside, forcing the Germans back to the Fatherland and destroying Hitler's Thousand-Year Reich.

Source & Full Story

4 November 2009

Family Name To Be Preserved At Former St Edmond's Hospital Site In Northampton, England

A room in the former St Edmond's Hospital site will be named after the great-grandfather of a woman from Northampton who has desperately tried to keep her family name alive.

Jenny Cotton-Howells, aged 47, of Abington, Northampton, has won the recognition for George Cotton, a Northampton surgeon in the 18th century.

He helped many people at the Northampton Union Workhouse, the former St Edmond's Hospital site in Wellingborough Road, and was known to not eat until the poor had eaten first.

The Cotton name has been passed down through generations. Jenny's father was also George Cotton.

Source & Full Story

3 November 2009

ITV's Sale Of Friends Reunited Could Breach Competition Law

ITV was told today that it might not be allowed to sell Friends Reunited, even for a £145 million loss.

The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) ruled that ITV’s attempt to sell Friends for £25 million to the owner of two genealogy sites could breach competition law.

ITV must now convince the Competition Commission to allow it to sell off Friends, which the broadcaster bought for £170 million and once hoped would make a viable British competitor to Facebook before its profits collapsed. Friends’ most successful property is its Genes Reunited genealogy site, but because Brightsolid, the prospective buyer, owns FindMyPast.com and 1911 Census.com the OFT is worried about the reduction in the number of players in that sector.

Source & Full Story

29 October 2009

Family Welcomes Home Remains Of WWII Airman In Ontario, California

For two decades after her son's bomber went down in the Pacific Ocean during World War II, Vella Stinson faithfully wrote the U.S. government twice a month to ask if his body had been found — or if anyone was looking.

The mother of six strapping boys went to her grave without the answer that has finally reached her two surviving sons 65 years later: the remains of Sgt. Robert Stinson are coming home.

Military divers recovered several pieces of leg bone from the wreckage of a B-24J Liberator bomber found at the bottom of the ocean off the coast of the island nation of Palau. DNA testing showed the femur fragments belonged to the 24-year-old flight engineer who died in combat on Sept. 1, 1944.

Source & Full Story

6 October 2009

Vote for GeneaNet Genealogy Blog for Family Tree Magazine’s 40 Best GenealogyBlogs!

Many thanks to all of our readers for having nominated the GeneaNet Genealogy Blog for Family Tree Magazine’s 40 Best GenealogyBlogs!

The voting is done by category with the following categories being listed:

• All-around: These bloggers give you a little (or a lot) of everything: news, research advice, their own family stories, photos, opinions and more.
• Personal/Family: These blogs primarily cover the blogger's (or, in a case or two or more, bloggers') own research and ancestors.
• Local/Regional: Most posts in these blogs cover resources, genealogy events and history for a city, town, state or region.
• Cemetery: These blogs focus on cemetery research, gravestone photos and the like.
• Photos/Heirlooms: Content on these blogs is primarily about sharing, researching and preserving family photos and/or heirlooms.
• Heritage: Here, blog content focuses on a particular heritage group, such as African-American, Jewish or Irish.
• News/Resources: Blogs in this category deliver a range of genealogy news and information about new resources.
• How-to: These blogs have instructional content on genealogical resources and methodology.
• Genealogy Companies: Blogs in this category are written on behalf of a genealogy company, and contain helpful information on the company’s products.
• Genetic Genealogy: Blogs that are primarily about genetic genealogy and family health history.

Voting takes place from Oct. 5 to Nov. 5, and you can vote more than once.

The GeneaNet Genealogy Blog is listed in the News/Resources category.

Click here to get voting!

25 September 2009

World's Oldest Man Celebrates 113th Birthday

Walter Breuning, The World's Oldest Man,was born on born Sept. 21, 1896 in Melrose Minnesota and inherited the title of "World's Oldest Man" when Henry Allingham of England died last July 18. Breuning moved to Great Falls in 1918 with the expansion of the railroad and worked in the railroad business for 50 years. He says he stays healthy by eating just two meals per day and exercises by strolling the halls of the retirement home with the aid of a walker. Breuning, born in Melrose, Minnesota, also revealed that he takes one aspirin a day.

Walter Breuning speaks to guests during his 113th birthday party in the Rainbow retirement home ballroom, Monday, Sept. 21, 2009, in Great Falls, Montana. World's oldest man Walter Breuning celebrated his 113th birthday on September 21. The American supercentenarian blew the candles and gave a brief talk at the Rainbow Retirement Community in Great Falls, Montana.

Source & Full Story

Lausanne, Switzerland, Industrial Archives Fire Still Raging

Firemen were still fighting a fire after 24 hours, at a storage space where some 50,000 industrial companies’ archives are kept by the company Secur-archiv, 24 Heures reported late Friday afternoon 25 September.

The fire, noticed Thursday afternoon by two employees who called fireman after seeing flames at the Avenue de Provence company, is now being doused with water, says the newspaper. The company took over the storage area seven years ago from UBS, it reports, which also kept records there, but no longer does.

Source & Full Story - Photo Gallery (in French)

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