Saturday, March 16, 2013

Saturday Serendipity -- March 16, 2013



Saturdays often allow a more leisurely approach to life than work days. I can more easily post links to some blog posts or other materials I have discovered during the week, or even to those discovered during a Saturday morning coffee and extended surfing of the blogosphere/internet.

Here are a few serendipitous discoveries from this week that I commend for inclusion on your reading list.

1.   Diane Richard at  Upfront With NGS provides a link to Family History Daily and a February 28th  post by Vi Parsons for a reminder about the usefulness and limitations of family Bibles in genealogy research. 

2.  Do you know anyone who collects reasons to be concerned about privacy and social media such as Facebook?  Read Judy Russell's March 13th piece about privacy on Facebook at The Legal Genealogist -- and then you can pass it on to folks to add to their collection. 

3.  BUT, every coin has two sides, so for a story about the positive power of social media and Facebook, read a piece from The Daily Beast highlighted this week by NEHGS's The Weekly Genealogist -- "An Auschwitz Survivor Searches for His Twin on Facebook." 

4.  And The Weekly Genealogist scores another hit with its link to a very interesting story about a twenty-something amateur genealogist who not only extends the earliest known instance of the word "scalawag," but does so by finding it linked to one of his New York ancestors!  Check out "The Original Scalawag" by Ben Zimmer from the March 10th Boston Globe.

5.  While many of us know how thrilling it is to discover an artifact or story associated with a distant ancestor, how many have had the extraordinary thrill experienced by Jana Last?  Jana reports on finding the signature of her 4x great grandfather at Jana's Genealogy and Family History Blog on March 12th.  But what is so super cool about this particular signature is . . . well, you really have to go here and have Jana herself tell you (and show you) all about it! 

6.  Making cousin connections is one of the great benefits of genealogy blogging (as I found out and reported on February 11th here at The Prism -- Finding A Cousin -- Kismet, Karma, Fate or Simple Serendipity Made Possible By The New Golden Age of Genealogy?), but read about the connection Diane MacLean Boumenot made with a fifth cousin and the information and photographs that came her way as a result.  "Old Kilmorack Cemetery" posted March 11th on Diane's One Rhode Island Family is worth a read and a look.

7.   And last, but not least by any means, is a moving tribute by a grandson to his grandmother during this National Women's History Month.  On March 8th at West in New England,  Bill West reprises his very first blog post from over six years ago -- February, 2007.  Meet and see Agnes McFarland, a truly "Fearless Female," in Bill's piece titled simply and lovingly, AGGIE.  [Oh . . . and you might want to briefly read about "St. Vitus Dance" here.  I learned about something in addition to the bravery and determination of a young Irish-American woman thanks to Bill.]      
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Copyright 2013, John D. Tew
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4 comments:

  1. My pleasure Bill! That post of yours was quite moving. Since I missed the original posting years ago, I am glad you decided to post it again this year -- and as I said, I learned something new.

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  2. John,

    Thank you so much for including my blog post in your list today! It's an honor and I really do appreciate it.

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  3. This is a great list with some of my favorites, along with some blogs that are new to me. Thanks for sharing.

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