MetaFilter posts tagged with genealogy

Events That Touched Our Ancestors' Lives

netbros — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 07:36:19 -0800

GenDisasters is a genealogy site, compiling information on the historic disasters, events, and tragic accidents of Canada and the U.S. that our ancestors endured, as well as, information about their life and death. Search is quite extensive and navigation is broken down by disaster type, including earthquakes, hurricanes, mining explosions, and dozens of other categories. You can also choose by state within the USA, for example Arizona, or province within Canada, i.e. New Brunswick. Finally, you may also browse a timeline that begins as early as 1755 and includes information as current as the Swan's Island fire in July of this year. Members are encouraged to report and add information to the ever-growing database.

The Genealogical Revolution Will Be Digitized

Knappster — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 12:37:11 -0800

For decades, the LDS church microfilmed old records of genealogical interest and stashed them in the Granite Mountain Record Vault for safekeeping. Copies could be ordered and viewed at local Family History Centers. Now, through massive digitization and volunteer indexing efforts, those records are starting to come online. It was once thought that it would take 120 years to scan the 2 million+ microfilm rolls housed in the vault, but by 2006 it was estimated that "much" of the collection would be digitized in "as little as 10 years" (some technical details here and here (both PDF)). A double-blind volunteer indexing project was launched, with 140,000 people signing up by May 2008. The fruits of their labor may be seen (and searched) on the FamilySearch Record Search pilot site. Partnerships with commercial companies and archives large and small will add to the collection records freshly digitized from the source, some of which may be indexed online but free to view only at Family History Centers and the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. The resources collected by the Mormons are available to genealogists of all faiths. There is no proselytizing at the Family History Centers, though church members will answer questions about Mormonism if asked. The Mormons' interest in genealogy stems from their belief in baptizing the dead by proxy—a practice disturbing to some people of other faiths. The LDS church has been criticized for baptizing Holocaust victims, and the Vatican recently directed Catholic dioceses not to allow Mormons access to parish registers. Mormons counter that the dead are only offered the option of baptism, and are permitted to decline.

web 2.0 Genealogy

dash_slot- — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 09:12:20 -0800

Kindo - Web 2.0 Genealogy

Forensic Genealogy

Upton O'Good — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 21:10:32 -0800

Can you tell this photo was taken at 4:52pm, on either May 5^th or August 10^th? Forensic Genealogy uses historical records and small clues in pictures learn as much as they can about old photographs of unknown provenance. Want to try it yourself? Check out their weekly quiz. via GAMES A full analysis of the horse photo is here.

Recreational Genetics

nowonmai — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 17:27:15 -0800

As advances in DNA testing allow us to discover our genetic origins in ever-greater detail, many people are making surprising discoveries. Especially in the melting-pot that is the USA. Of course there are always those who feel that access to such information about who we are will only lead to bad things

Every ruler everywhere, ever.

languagehat — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 15:31:26 -0800

Philosophy of History is what the page is called; it's by a philosophy professor, Kelley L. Ross, Ph.D., who's a libertarian and obsessed with Leonard Nelson and the Friesian School, whatever the hell that is. Never mind all that. If you scroll down past the essays and the Military History section and the calendars and the book reviews, you get to the Reference Resources. As he says, "Not all of history may be covered here, but a very extensive fragment of it certainly is." Take, as one tiny example, Margraves & Counts of Flanders. There's a longish introduction and a colored map, then there are lists of rulers and detailed genealogies accompanied by more text, then similarly for the Counts of Artois, the Kings & Dukes of Brittany, the Counts of Anjou, the Dukes of Normandy, the Counts of Blois & Champagne, the Counts of Toulouse, the Dukes of Aquitaine and Dukes of Gascony, the Lords & Counts of Foix, the Kings and Lords of Man, the Dukes of Marlborough and Earls of Spencer (including a detailed list of the Vanderbilts), the Dukes of Buccleuch, Grafton, & St. Albans, and the Dukes of Berwick & Fitzjames. That's one page. There are dozens and dozens of them. The Prime Ministers of the Dominions, the Kings of Bohemia, Hungary, and Poland, the Islâmic Rulers of North Africa, the Emperors of India, China, & Japan, all the way down to the Mangïts of Bukhara, 1747-1920. If you have any interest in history, This Site's For You.

Family Tree 2.0

muckster — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 23:00:58 -0800

Geni. Family Tree 2.0. [via]

Go west, young man

The corpse in the library — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 12:17:25 -0800

Where did your ancestors live in 1840? 1880? 1920? A nifty little map showing how names traveled across the US.

Search the Canadian Census

TimTypeZed — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 13:22:05 -0800

When Library and Archives Canada placed online images of the 1901, 1906 and 1911 census, Automated Genealogy provided opportunity for volunteers to transcribe names into a database. Now the two early documents (1901, 1906) and most of the 1911 are fully indexed and searchable with links to the original image pages. Further projects are underway to link names between the documents and to other online sources, such as The Halifax Explosion Book of Remembrance and the British Home Children.

Tom Hanks' Grandfather Was a Squirrel Inspector

kirkaracha — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 10:46:52 -0800

Who's Your Grandaddy? Ancestry.com "has compiled an online database of information on 500 million people, culled from every U.S. census record from 1790 to 1930" that "includes screen shots of the handwritten forms filled out by census-takers." Usually you have to pay to access the records, but they're providing three days of free access.

What's in a name?

davehat — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 00:56:01 -0800

The Surname Profiler Project Website. A recent research project based at University College London (UCL) has investigated the distribution of surnames in Great Britain, both current and historic, in order to understand patterns of regional economic development, population movement and cultural identity. Start a search here.

"Face the face, got to face the face"

Rothko — Mon, 12 Dec 2005 00:04:51 -0800

An awkward resemblance to a certain eigenface might get you pulled aside in Las Vegas. Prof. Hilbert is probably spinning in his grave.

Parallel Wales

selfnoise — Fri, 18 Nov 2005 10:13:11 -0800

Parallel Wales. They came from Wales, and settled in places called Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware. They brought new contributions to the American fabric, but also old names that took on new meanings. Now, more than a hundred years later, what echoes remain? (via Projects)

Benny's Postcards

strikhedonia — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 14:34:17 -0800

Benny's Postcards "is devoted to the postcards my grandfather collected from approximately 1906-1918. The collection is comprised of 435 postcards, most of which were produced in Russia, Poland and Germany." [coral cache]

One big American family

Asparagirl — Mon, 03 Oct 2005 21:40:55 -0800

The family trees of American politicians - There are those with very long blue blood pedigrees, and there are those with very short and unknown pedigrees. There are also some surprises, like a certain Democratic senator and possible '08 Veep pick being somewhat closely related to the current Veep, or that certain ex-mayors have family trees that were apparently a bit inbred back in the old country. Other fun tidbits: Newt Gingrich's father was illegitimate, John Kerry is related to the rabbi who created the Golem of Prague, Pat Buchanan is related to both FDR and Marilyn Manson, Wesley Clark's father was a Kohan, Martin Luther King was born Michael Louis King, and Gary Hart was born Gary Hartpence, which was in turn derived from an ancestor named James Eberhart Pence. (more non-politicians here)

"Jesus Christ - the genealogy code"?

PeteyStock — Mon, 02 May 2005 18:25:28 -0800

Echoes of DaVinci code? A scholar in Wales found (rediscovered?) a 400+ year old folio at Llandovery College in Wales that may shed light further light on the genealogy of Christ. Whether a hoax or not, 'tis always interesting what you may find hiding in the stacks when you're just perusing things. [via original article at Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter]

The Mathematics Genealogy Project

gramschmidt — Tue, 21 Dec 2004 09:30:29 -0800

The Mathematics Genealogy Project. A service of the Department of Mathematics at North Dakota State University, the project intends to "compile information about ALL the mathematicians of the world. [...] It is our goal to list all individuals who have received a doctorate in mathematics." Seven generations from one of my recent professors back to Gauss, six back to Felix Klein (of Erlangen Program and bottle fame), eight back to Jacobi, and nine back to Poisson and Four ier, then Lagrange, then Euler, then the Bernoulli brothers, then Leib niz, and then it blew up at infinity.

Ancestoral research tool

davehat — Sat, 13 Nov 2004 03:26:30 -0800

Today, the National Archive made over 5 million records of World War I Medal Cards available online. Search for an ancestor, or an historical name. As an example, here's Winston Churchill's record [pdf]. It costs £3.50 to download an image such as this, but the search function is thorough. I tracked down a relative from a general search of my surname.

Studies on the genealogy of the main Disney characters

Orange Goblin — Sun, 30 Nov 2003 14:03:15 -0800

Disney Character Family Trees

Genealogists Know Where the Bodies Are Buried

jengod — Tue, 07 Oct 2003 14:57:01 -0800

The Best-Kept Data-Superpower Secret on the Web RootsWeb is one of the older sites on the Net, and has one of the densest data collections, but it gets very few props. Almost all of the (we're talking terabytes here) data is a.) free; b.) user-contributed. It was open-source and public domain when Linus Torvalds, bless his soul, was still muddling through high school. Sugar-daddy site Ancestry.com does a lot of advertising, but you hardly ever heard about homely, brilliant RootsWeb. RootsWeb hosts many of sites that make up the WorldGenWeb Project, a loose network of genealogical and historical data repositories organized by locality, from the AfghanistanGenWeb through the USGenWeb all the way to the ZimbabweGenWeb. Rootsweb's Social Security Death Index UI is excellent--use it to search for a record amongst 70 million available. The WorldConnect database offers up the family trees of 298,212,965 people. Remember the domain, because after this when you Google, you'll be impressed (I believe) by how many content-heavy sites are hosted by RootsWeb. Any other RootsWeb-hosted sites that MeFites enjoy?

Ellis Island Immigration Records

BitterOldPunk — Mon, 14 Jul 2003 11:12:10 -0800

Got roots? The American Family Immigration History Center has made available online the passenger manifests for all the ships that docked at Ellis Island from 1892 to 1924. It's searchable by name, and you can look at a photostat of the actual page of the manifest. I found my great-uncle (Demetrios Calisperis, from Samos, Greece, debarked Ellis Island Nov 1907, at age 11 -- hiya, Uncle Jim!). Free to register and search. Paid membership lets you build a family scrapbook about your ancestor that can be searched by other researchers.

Genealogy, Family Skeletons and Black Sheep

MiguelCardoso — Sun, 23 Feb 2003 20:15:23 -0800

There's One In Every Family: You know that uncle whose name can't be mentioned at table, without loud swallowing, dark looks and deathly silence ensuing? The shady New Orleans grandmother whose photographs have been hastily removed from the family album, though the red stain from one of her garters remains? Call them black sheep or family skeletons, the Internet keeps making it easier and easier to dig them up and out. Outing your forebears and close family members has become an up and coming thing. In other words: I'll show you my black sheep if you show me yours.

swift — Thu, 15 Aug 2002 22:16:27 -0800

Don't say nobody told you. Here is NARA's Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, showing every comment, every bill signing, every communication, executive order, and interview the president has made: everything that goes into the history books...

vacapinta — Sat, 11 May 2002 21:08:34 -0800

I am descended from Charlemagne! And you are too. I found tantalizing ideas in this Atlantic Interview of Steve Olson. Unfortunately, his Atlantic article is not available (for free, anyways). He mentioned, in the interview, the work of Humphrys and Chang. A fwe Google searches later, among a labyrinth of pages about Royal descents, I FOUND! what I was looking for [More inside]

Lanternjmk — Fri, 08 Feb 2002 10:42:08 -0800

Muhammad O' Ali. Geneologists have uncovered his Irish roots. His great grandfather was an Irish emigree who married an African American woman in Kentucky.