Saturday Serendipity (June 25, 2016)

Here are a few recommended items of interest for your reading pleasure . . .

1.  This past week Diane Boumenot of One Rhode Island Family blog posted the 5th in her series of "8 Weeks to Better Rhode Island Genealogy Research." This installment focuses on town records, histories and newspapers. As I have said repeatedly -- if you have Rhode Island roots, Diane's series is a MUST READ and is a "keeper" that you should bookmark for consultation time and time again. You can read installment 5 here.

2.  Bill West of West in New England blog posted two interesting pieces this week about a possible fraudulent New Hampshire deed incident he discovered that involved his 8X great grandfather back in 1708. The posts are instructive too on the usefulness of Google searches to help solve genealogy puzzles. You can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.
  
3.   This week James Tanner of Genealogy's Star blog posted Part 2 of "The Law vs. Procedure and Civil vs. Criminal: What Genealogists Should Know About Court Cases." Together the two posts provide a nice primer on what "case law"is and how it differs from "procedural law." You can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here and learn why consulting only courthouse records might miss some valuable genealogical information contained in printed case decisions.  

4.  James Tanner seems to have also coined a new acronym "VLOGW" for "Very Large Online Genealogy Websites." Read here his interesting and useful thoughts on the addition of records to VLOGWs and look at his examples involving three VLOGWs.

5.   If you have any roots in Lowell, Massachusetts and are interested in doing some on-site genealogy research, then you need to read "Doing Genealogy in Lowell, Massachusetts? Here is Help" by Barbara Poole at Life From The Roots blog.  Barbara provides all you need to know -- from parking to available research materials -- with her usual photographic illustrations.

6.   Have you ever felt "cluey?" Since our personal and family histories are probably filled with examples of folks feeling "cluey" about various incidents, you quite likely have had such experiences and feelings yourself. "Cluey" is related to feelings of guilt and regret that stays with you for very long periods of time and perhaps even a lifetime -- and can never be undone. Read the poignant piece about "clueyness" here at Wait But Why blog. [WARNING -- the piece contains a couple of examples of unnecessary profanity that seems to be an increasingly common insertion into with no purpose other than to appear modern and hip. But the poignancy of the piece makes it well worth the read IMHO ("in my humble opinion").]

7.  UpFront With NGS blog provided a link this week to listen to Judy Russell (The Legal Genealogist) and Robert Charles Anderson (of The Great Migration fame) discuss with Jane Wilcox, host of The Forget-Me-Not Hour, the problems of plagiarism and fabrication in genealogy. See the post and get a link to the audio program here. [You can also read about this same program on Judy Russell's blog, The Legal Genealogist.]  UpFront also posted this week about the recent availability of the 1950 Census Enumeration District maps. Read the post and get links here.

8.  And finally, The Weekly Genealogist newsletter of NEHGS highlighted two stories this week that I found particularly interesting. The first is about mailing children via parcel post (direct link to the story here) and the second is about a DNA-based challenge to the British class system and the inheritance of titles, which you can read here.
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Copyright 2016, John D. Tew

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