Saturday Serendipity -- April 20, 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.  Many blogs this week wrote about Family Tree Magazine's 40 Best Genealogy Blogs for 2013.  See, for example, Heather Rojo's posting at Nutfield Genealogy.   Thomas MacEntee at the must-read GeneaBloggers provided one of the earliest postings of the selections and listed all 40 blogs with links to each blog site and to the Family Tree article announcing the selections.  And then there was the prolific and excellent blog of Randy Seaver -- Genea-Musings -- that provided the added service of mentioning other excellent blogs that he thought could have easily also been awarded the laurels.  Randy invited others to weigh in on blogs that were deserving, but were left off the 2013 list.  All three of these blogs were 2013 Best Genealogy Blog selectees -- and deservedly so!  I suggest you visit their blogs and surf the selectees and should-have-been selectees to discover some good genealogy sources.  

[BTW, I echo many others in registering my shock that Judy G. Russell's The Legal Genealogist was overlooked this year.  Her blog is another must-read in my opinion and I look forward to the correction of this oversight in 2014!]   

2.   Think you might have some Welsh ancestry?  Check out this article that was a pick in The Weekly Genealogist by NEHGS this week.

3.   My hard drive provides as much evidence of my pack rat proclivities as my genealogy work space does.  I have many years of emails in subject folders including one for NEHGS newsletters.  Before the name change in August 2010, what is now The Weekly Genealogist was called NEHGS eNews.  I hereby confess that I have issues stored going back to at least January 2008 and that occasionally I go back to re-read some or finally get to others that my email application tells me are still "unread."  Here is an article from the NYT Magazine that was a "Story of Interest" in the January 16, 2008 NEHGS eNews.  The teaser for the article is, “The dewy and innocent milkmaid at the center of Thomas Hardy’s tragic novel 'Tess of the d’Urbervilles' is destroyed not by rape or heartbreak; what does her in is genealogy.”  However, the title of the piece is "Ancestral Allure" and the five-year-old article is an interesting view of our hobby complete with some dashes of snark.  Have a read.

4.   Since the Carpenter side of my family had known abolitionists in their midst, I am always drawn to stories about these good souls who were definitely on the right side of history and many times provide examples of profiles in courage.  There were different kinds of abolitionists.  There were those who spoke out and tried to convince others and then there were those who were activists and put words into action.  Heather Kuhn Roelker shares two posts with us about her activist abolitionist ancestor Daniel D. Lightner.  I highly recommend reading both Part I here and Part II here. 

5.  After this horrible week of terror, tragedy and triumph in Boston, take a few moments to look at the re-post of a photo piece on April in Lexington and Boston provided by Barbara Poole at Life From the Roots.  Barbara posted last Sunday -- the day before Monday's marathon tragedy -- some beautiful photos she took in April 2011.  They remind us that this is what the Boston area is really about in April -- and will be again.  This year was a sad aberration created by mad men. 

6.   Always informative about the legal issues involved in genealogy and genealogy blogging, Judy G. Russell, The Legal Genealogist, gives us a cautionary word to keep in mind during our excitement over the recent launch of the "Digital Public Library of America."  All genealogy bloggers should take the time to read Judy's caution starting at "But . . ." 

7.  Geneabloggers just posted its weekly "New Genealogy Blogs" feature.  It contains an interesting new blog called "Ancestoring's Orphan Photos."  The new blog is devoted to posting photographs that have been orphaned -- meaning the people in the photos are unknown and the photographer is unknown.  You never know who you might find here, so it is worth a look for that reason -- or even if, like me, you just enjoy looking at old photographs.  
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Copyright 2013, John D. Tew

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _