Mark Your Calendars!

Washington, D.C. Field Trip

We are trying to determine if there is any interest in exploring the possibilities of a field trip to Washington, D.C. in the Fall of 2016.

The National Genealogical Society is traveling to Washington next month for an educational and research trip.  We are thinking about something similar as far as an agenda. Obviously, we will be doing it on a much smaller scale - but, at the very least, would like to include a trip to the Library of Congress and the National Archives to include a personal tour for the group and access to genealogy research materials.

If you would like to take a look at the NGS agenda you can access their website by clicking here.  In the meantime, please take a look at the poll in the right-hand column of this blog and VOTE. Whether or not we start exploring this trip is going to depend on how much interest exists.

The poll closes at the end of November and we will update you with the results as soon as they are counted!

17 Genealogy Things To Do If You Only Have A Few Minutes

I love posts like this!  This one comes from Diane Haddad at FamilyTreeMagazine.com.  She posted it back in September of 2014 and I found it stashed away in my Evernote inbox.  This is a great little list of things you can get done in a short amount of time.  Click on the Family Tree Magazine link above start getting more genealogy stuff done.

It's amazing what you can do in 5 minutes!

New Family Tree Legacy Educational Website

For those of you who are looking for courses, classes, seminars and other genealogy-related education, it doesn't get much better than Legacy Family Tree. They often offer free seminars, but access to many (most) of their educational resources require membership.  I do not have an annual membership because I don't attend that many courses. What I do instead is periodically check out what is coming up and if there is something I really want to sign up for, I get a $9.95 membership for just that month. That means I am paying $9.95 for a course.  Not a bad deal.

They have just launched a new education website. You can find out more information about Legacy Family Tree resources by clicking here.

The 1939 Register

Ellie Burnaford was kind enough to share this link to the 1939 register.  For any of you digging for your roots in the U.K., this could be a very valuable resource.  It will be become public and searchable on Monday 2 November on FindMyPast.

This register is a comprehensive survey of the civil population of England and Wales.  The lives of 41 million people, captured in one day in September 1939.  It provides and interesting snapshot of a nation on the eve of war.

The survey contains the names addresses and occupations of everyone in England and Wales at the time and was used as the basis for rationing, identity cards and, in post-war Britain, the NHS.  Want to know where your family was and what they were doing when the register was taken?

To read the original announcement on FindMyPast, click here.

Hope you will check it out!

300 Awesome FREE Things

Just before I left on vacation, I cleaned out my Evernote Inbox.  This is the place where I stash everything I come across that I want to do something with "later".  When I started purging - I had 172 notes.  I started with the oldest and worked my way up to the newest and found this little gem.  I had forgotten all about this "TheNextWeb" post.  So here it is!

Scroll through the list and see if there is anything you can use!

Happy Hunting!

Building A Genealogy Reference Library

For those of you who are looking for a nice list of reference materials for your genealogy library, Linda Stufflebean recently did a great post on her blog Empty Branches on the Family Tree.  Hope you will take a moment to check it out and see if any of these references might help you out.  Some of them can be found at our local library - or can be purchased on Amazon as a used book.  

Happy Researching!