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Following another brief hiatus (the reason to be presented in a future post), Saturday Serendipity returns this week with a very few recommendations for your weekend reading.
1. In my family trees I try to get photographs of ancestors and relatives at various stages of their lives to add an extra dimension to their life stories. This week The Weekly Genealogist newsletter of NEHGS mentions a photographic project that I found to be very interesting. In Faces of Century, photographer Jan Langer presents a collection of then-and-now photos of men and women in their youth and when they have lived an entire century. See an amazing sample of the photographs and learn more about the project, here.
2. As we know by now, the advent of DNA analysis has opened up a variety of new means for solving various puzzles in genealogy and other disciplines. This week The Weekly Genealogist also brings to us another example of DNA analysis providing new insight to a long-standing human puzzle
. . . Who were the people that built Stonehenge, and what happened to them? Read here about the fascinating huge gene study that appears to have arrived at a conclusion.
3. For history and map lovers, The Vault blog from Slate presents some intriguing 1938 - 1939 maps from Ken magazine. Ken only last for 16 months, but became famous for having published Ernest Hemingway's dispatches from the Spanish Civil War. The magazine was co-founded by Arnold Gingrich, a founder, publisher and editor of Esquire. See here three maps published in Ken that demonstrate how many people in the U.S. both feared and ridiculed the global rise of fascism in the 1930s.
4. The wait continues on FTM 2017. The March 31, 2017 planned release of Family Tree Maker 2017 by Software MacKiev has not happened yet. There are many folks "test driving" the software, but it apparently is not yet ready for prime time and general release. It is all explained here on what is NOT a progress report by MacKiev. Like many, although I have pre-ordered this new product, I choose to wait until all the testing is done and the "bugs" are worked out at MacKiev and with Ancestry. MacKiev was to meet with Ancestry yesterday (May 26th) and promises a progress report after that meeting. You can check at the link above for that progress report and others if the general release continues to be delayed. As the saying goes, "Good things come to those who wait." I continue to wait for what should be a wonderful product if and when it is ready for prime time.
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5. And speaking again of maps, the Library of Congress has now provided FREE access to the Sanborn Insurance Maps. These maps show buildings in U.S. cities and towns and eventually there will be some 500,000 maps available. Presently there are maps available online that were published prior to 1900, but maps will be added to the collection through 2020. These should prove to be very useful to genealogists tracing ancestors and relatives to places they lived and worked. Read more about the collection and get a link here at UpFront With NGS blog.
6. Marian Wood of Climbing My Family Tree blog has added two more posts to her helpful series Genealogy, Free or Fee. One provides a reminder to exhaust all the free information that resides in the hands and memories of family members. See that post here. The other post provides a comprehensive checklist of resources for information about ancestors. You no doubt have used many of the resources listed, but you will also find others you have perhaps never considered or forgotten about . . . and it is always handy to have a list at the ready. See Marian's checklist here.
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Copyright 2017, John D. Tew
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John, thanks so much for including my blog in your roundup of weekend genealogy reading! Much appreciated.
ReplyDeleteMy pleasure Marian. I think your series is very useful and should have as wide an audience as possible . . . and if I can contribute in some small way to give it an additional audience, I consider it a good deed. ;-)
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