Saturday Serendipity (March 19, 2016)

The recommended items of interest for this week are as follows . . . 

1.   As March and Women's History Month comes slowly to a close, I'd like to introduce (or perhaps re-introduce) readers to Nate DiMeo's excellent history podcast called "the memory palace." A former colleague introduced me to this audio podcast a few years ago and I keep coming back to it time and again to listen to new episodes (especially when on long road trips). Nate mines the annals of little known, obscure historical events and the people involved in them. And like all history sources, we genealogists never know when we might come across a nugget to enhance our family genealogies. I highly recommend the memory palace and as a contribution to Women's History Month I provide this link to Episode 76: Mary Walker Would Wear What She Wanted -- a 9-minute sample of the memory palace and a poignant reminder of the obstacles faced by women in 19th Century America.

2.  How cool is it to discover that a historic Colonial house built in 1692 that you have seen (but never up close until recently) was owned by the brother of the wife of your 2nd cousin, 7 times removed? It is pretty darn cool when you find out who the cousin was!  To find out, read Barbara Poole's post here -- complete with photos of the house -- at Life From The Roots blog.

3.  And how cool is it when a genealogy-minded Good Samaritan reads a piece on your blog and then sends you a day book and other items that belonged to a sought after relative? Read here Diane Boumenot's post and see photos of the items and the relative at On Rhode Island Family blog.    

4.  James Tanner at Genealogy's Star blog has two posts this week about preparing to search a graveyard. If you have ever thought about doing such a search, you would be well advised to read both posts.  You can read Part One here and Part Two here. 

5.  We genealogists always pay attention to surnames -- and to given names when looking for specific individuals -- but how often do we know or pay attention to middle names?  Often middle names are family surnames and they can provide very useful clues for our research. Now there is a resource for discovering middle name frequency over the last twelve decades (1880-2000). Thanks to UpFront With NGS blog, you can read about this resource and get a link to the database here. 

6.  And finally for this week, Judy Russell at The Legal Genealogist blog has reprised a very interesting and useful post -- first published two years ago -- about providing a citation to an image.  You can read the post here. 
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Copyright 2016, John D. Tew

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