Wednesday, April 30, 2008

ancestorsonboard.com

Taken directly from the ancestorsonboard.com website:

Passenger lists with over 24 million records from ships sailing to destinations worldwide.

Findmypast.com, in association with The National Archives, is proud to present
ancestorsonboard, a new database featuring BT27 Outward Passenger Lists for long-distance voyages leaving the British Isles from 1960 right back to 1890.

With ancestorsonboard, you can search for passenger list records of individuals or groups of people leaving for destinations including Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, South Africa and USA featuring ports such as Boston, Philadelphia and New York. Passengers include not only immigrants and emigrants, but also businessmen, diplomats and tourists. Images of the passenger lists are available to download, view, save and print."

You may also sign up for their RSS feed of Live News Updates or register for email updates. Either way, this resource is sure to be a big help to many people researching passenger lists both old and more recent. But, be warned, there are fees involved to view the transcript and/or image involved. Without a subscription, it's 5 units for the transcript and 30 units to view the image.

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Thursday, April 24, 2008

Voici Ma Famille/That's My Family

Dick Eastman has a great entry for the new Canadian Genealogy Search Engine on his blog, Voici Ma Famille/That's My Family. It's a combination of free and fee databases, and the site is the creation of the Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec and is maintained by them, Library and Archives Canada and Council of Provincial and Territorial Archivists of Canada. To learn more, visit Eastman's post here.

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Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Some Genealogy Humour

I recently received this bit of genealogical humour via one of my many mailing lists. I had to post it for everyone to enjoy, and I hope you do because it's SO utterly true!

Enjoy!

1852 NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS

TO SOLVE GENEALOGICAL MYSTERIES.

It is New Year's Eve 1852 and Henry Hydenwel sits at his desk by candlelight. He dips his quill pen in ink and begins to writes his New Year's resolutions.

1. No man is truly well-educated unless he learns to spell his name at least three different ways within the same document. I resolve to give the appearance of being extremely well-educated in the coming year.

2. I resolve to see to it that all of my children will have the same names that my ancestors have used for six generations in a row.

3. My age is no one's business but my own. I hereby resolve to never list the same age or birth year twice on any document.

4. I resolve to have each of my children baptized in a different church -- either in a different faith or in a different parish. Every third child will not be baptized at all or will be baptized by an itinerant minister who keeps no records.

5. I resolve to move to a new town, new county, or new state at least once every 10 years -- just before those pesky enumerators come around asking silly questions.

6. I will make every attempt to reside in counties and towns where no vital records are maintained or where the courthouse burns down every few years.

7. I resolve to join an obscure religious cult that does not believe in record keeping or in participating in military service.

8. When the tax collector comes to my door, I'll loan him my pen, which has been dipped in rapidly fading blue ink.

9. I resolve that if my beloved wife Mary should die, I will marry another Mary.

10. I resolve not to make a will. Who needs to spend money on a lawyer?

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