Saturday Serendipity (August 9, 2014)

The following are recommended for inclusion on your reading list this weekend: 

1.  Having just posted an obituary this past week, I recognize the value of finding these bits of genealogy gold.  Kenneth Marks of The Ancestor Hunt blog, has done us the service of formalizing a list of 30 different kinds of information you could find in the obituary of an ancestor or relative.  Read Kenneth's post here.  

2.  This week, UpFront With NGS gave a well-deserved shout out to one of the bloggers I follow. It was  for a 2013 post on how to use RootMapper.com.  Jana Last of Jana's Genealogy and Family History blog posted on October 15, 2013 about the ability to use RootsMapper to visually represent the migration routes of one's ancestors. This is a colorful and easily grasped graphic as Jana demonstrates in her post.  You need to have a Family Search account to use the RootMapper application.  Have a look at Jana's demonstration here.  

3.  Randy Seaver of Genea-Musings blog has an interesting post responding to Russ Worthingon's questions about recording data from Census Records . . .  What Census data do you record and how do you record it?  You can read Randy's response here and get a link to Russ Worthington's post originating the questions.  

4.  Is the exploration of DNA evidence now properly considered an element of the first factor of the Genealogical Proof Standard (GPS) -- to conduct a reasonably exhaustive search?  The Legal Genealogist, Judy Russell, weighs in on this question and, as always, provides an informative and thoughtful post on the question here.  

5.  Early in my career working for a firm in the Washington, D.C. area, I had many occasions for doing research at the Library of Congress (LOC) on Capitol Hill. Among the resources I used in those days before computers and digitized databases came into being, was the newspaper reading room in the John Adams Building of the LOC.  The reading room had a copy of every newspaper published in the U.S. and usually had them available within a couple of days of publication.  They also maintained a library of back issues in the non-public stacks that could be called up for viewing. Now James Tanner of Genealogy's Star blog has a post the reminds me of this great resource as a tool for genealogy research -- and it is available on line at the LOC website.  Read about this tool here. 

6.  Denise Levenick at The Family Curator blog, has come up with a short summer reading list for those interested in genealogy.  See Denise's picks here.  

7.  Having just returned from a trip to Iceland a few weeks ago, I found the post "Little Secrets AboutScandinavian Research" on K.C. Reid's Deeper Roots Genealogy blog  interesting.  The comparative table for Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden was particularly useful.  I thank Jana Last for her mention of the post and I am going to update my post of this past Thursday to suggest readers go to  K.C. Reid's post for additional information on Scandinavian naming conventions/laws. 

8. What were the odds? As part of a World War I commemoration project in Stockton, England, a group of young girls in Brownies selected the name of one of the 1,245 sailors and soldiers from Stockton who died in The Great War. Keira Wilson was given the name of William Brown and did she get a big surprise!  Thanks to a tip from The Weekly Genealogist of NEHGS, you can read about it here. 

9.  An finally, for those who were around and remember the events of Watergate (and for those who were not around and do not remember), today marks the 40th anniversary of the only resignation by a sitting U.S. President.  At noon on August 9, 1974, Richard M. Nixon resigned as President and the only unelected President of the U.S., Gerald R. Ford, took the oath of office. I was in downtown Philadelphia at the time of the resignation and every store had a radio or television tuned to minute-by-minute progression of the transition of power. 

It is time for our annual summer trip to the Adirondacks, so Saturday Serendipity and The Prism will be on hiatus this coming week.    

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Copyright 2014, John D. Tew

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