The following is a Plus Edition article written by and copyright by Dick Eastman.

Genealogy web sites contain information about millions of deceased individuals. Yet sometimes you cannot find anything about the person you seek. Even with unusual names, you might not be able to find anything about a particular man or woman. Indeed, perhaps the information isn't yet published online; but, another common scenario is that the information IS online but the search engines haven't found that information and haven't indexed it. How is that possible? Perhaps ...

I want to thank the members of the Virginia Beach Genealogical Society for their wonderful hospitality on Saturday. I had a great time and can report that the society is a high-energy group! The Virginia Beach Genealogical Society (VBGS) invited me to give four presentations on Saturday, but they did not warn me that this group asks lots of questions! They were good questions, too. Society members and other guests seemed to be really "plugged in" to the talks on technology in genealogy that I presented. I love making presentations to an interested audience!

In the picture ...

I arrived home this afternoon from a trip to the Virginia Beach Genealogical Society, will spend a few days at home to do laundry, and then will head to Phoenix, Arizona, for a meeting next Saturday of the Family History Society of Arizona (FHSA). I will be making several presentations at the Society's annual meeting in Tempe. If you are in the greater Phoenix area and would like to spend next Saturday with a group of genealogists, please join us starting at 8:30 AM at the Arizona Community Church at 9325 S. Rural Road, Tempe. The FHSA Annual Meeting will follow my presentations. You ...

I have written before about the handheld VuPoint Magic Wand Portable Scanner. When I have demonstrated it in person, it always generates a lot of interest, including during a talk I gave this afternoon at the Virginia Beach Genealogical Society. Imagine my surprose when I returned to my hotel room a couple of hours later and found these are now available on eBay at a much lower price: $54.99 with free shipping. Keep in mind that these are refurbished units, so technically they are not brand new. However, each one includes a 14-day return policy with no questions asked plus a 90-day ...

The following was written by the Lancashire Family History & Heraldry Society:

The Lancashire Family History & Heraldry Society has just published the 1851 map of Lancashire.     This map of Lancashire 1851 is a MUST for anyone researching their Lancashire roots as it shows: Registration Districts of Births, Marriages & Deaths Registration Sub-Districts Parishes Townships Churches: all Anglican churches in existence in 1851 with their dedications and dates of their earliest registers. The map was first produced by Andrew Todd in 1983 and has been out ...

The following was written by the Irish Family History Foundation:

The Advanced Search facility is now available on All Ireland Searches on the main search page of www.rootsireland.ie. Please note that counties Limerick and Sligo do not participate in the Advanced Search facility and will be excluded from the results of an Advanced Search on the All Ireland site. The Advanced Search facility is also available for each county centres' data with the exception of Co. Limerick and Co. Sligo. Note that Standard search will continue to work across all counties. All-Ireland Search ...

The following was written by Sean Murphy:

Barack Obama's announcement on St Patrick's Day that he will visit Ireland in May once again draws attention to the number of US Presidents with Irish roots. The rise of Irish-America is underscored by the progressive increase in the number of Presidents with Irish ancestry, latterly including even those of Catholic stock. Thus while only 11 out of 28 Presidents from the institution of the office in 1789 until 1921 possessed elements of Irish ancestry, since Kennedy took office in 1961 every President bar one, Gerald Ford, has had some Irish ...

Two recent news stories speculate that the current UK census might be the last. The Economist (http://www.econ..._id=18335192) says "This year’s big, complicated census may also be the last." The Guardian (http://www.guar...o-we-need-it) asks "Do we actually need a census?"

Interesting stories. My thanks to Peter Hirtle for telling me about these stories.

 

Last week, I published an article entitled "Genealogy Meeting in Virginia Beach" in which I described my trip this weekend to Virginia Beach, Virginia. I will be speaking at the Virginia Beach Genealogical Society and am looking forward to this trip. Now Cindy Butler Focke of local the Virginian-Pilot newspaper has written an article about the seminar. If you are thinking of attending, you might want to read her article at http://goo.gl/Fey0w

The Virginia Beach Genealogical Society's web page may be found at http://www.root...com/~vavbgs/ and the conference brochure ...

The following is a Plus Edition article written by and copyright by Dick Eastman.

Would your genealogy or historical society like to accept payments on the web? Possible uses are to accept membership dues, to sell books or other materials, accept donations, or to accept registration fees for seminars and other events. Online payment processing may sound "high-tech" and complicated, but even the smallest nonprofit can easily implement procedures to receive payments through its website. Online credit card payments are the most accepted method of payment these days. ...

The Halton Digital Newspaper Archive is a new online resource is all about preserving community memory by indexing newspaper articles from the north part of Halton County, Ontario. The Archive builds on the indexing already performed by Halton’s public libraries but now provides much more convenient online access to community newspapers, an index previously available only on microfilm. The work began with Halton Hills volunteer Marshall Neilson who entered births, marriages and deaths from the back files of the Acton Free Press. He started that work in 1984 and over the next 10 ...

If you have been following the stories recently in this newsletter, you will know that quite a few of them revolve around genealogy applications on handheld computers. These devices include cell phones (or so-called "smartphones), tablet computers (such as the iPad), and handheld computing devices, such as the iPod Touch. I have long felt these represent the wave of the future. Apparently, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer agrees. Speaking at a the Houston Technology Center luncheon in Union Square in Houston's Minute Maid Park, Ballmer told the audience, "Don't get too used to the way ...

Just in time for St. Patrick's Day, an article in the Irish Emigrant Online describes efforts in August 2010 by six students at UMass Lowell. The students took part in a week-long dig with archeological experts Dr. Colm Donnelly and Dr. Harry Welsh of Queen’s University, Belfast as part of an ongoing study of the Irish who found their way to Lowell, Massachusetts before and after Ireland’s Great Famine. The findings of the dig, undertaken on the lawn in front of St. Patrick’s Church on Suffolk St. in Lowell, were displayed at the local UMass campus on Thursday ...

The following St. Patrick's Day offer was received from Irish Origins:

Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day this year with Irish Origins! Find your Irish roots this St. Patrick’s Day on www.origins.net, and save 20% on all subscriptions. Irish Origins provides a wealth of genealogical information to help you track down that elusive ancestor. Search through records dating as far back as the 1200s up to the late 1800s, including Griffith’s Valuation (complete with images and town plans), Census records, Wills, Electoral Registers, Militia Attestations, Directories of ...

Do you think that perhaps Ancestry.com might be planning to add a new web search engine to its list of services? The company has posted a "help wanted" ad for a contractor to "crawl relevant content for import into our web records collection" and to "help identify free online repositories of genealogical records, gather important information about these sources, and QA crawled data."

You can read the full job posting at http://tbe.tale...ws=1&rid=146 You can find a lot of other positions available at Ancestry.com, ...