The U.S. government was prepared to destroy millions of files documenting every person who immigrated to this country, or tried to, over the last century.

Instead, those records will be saved and the vast majority of them will be kept in the Kansas City area, providing invaluable information to historians, genealogists and the merely curious. They’re called A-files, as in alien registration files. They are the paperwork of the wretched refuse and the huddled masses and everyone else who yearned for a better life in America.

The minutiae of every great migration wave ...

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I’ve recently become more interested in my family health history. There is a distinct likelihood of genetic health traits being perpetuated throughout descendants. I was told many years ago that male baldness was a trait passed down from the mother’s side of the family. My mother wasn’t bald, and so I pretty much ignored this piece of information. Yet, my older brother is definitely losing his hair. I also learned about hemophilia, the genetic disorder that impairs the ...

The California Digital Newspaper Collection offers over 200,000 pages of California newspapers spanning the years 1849-191l: the Alta California, 1849-1891; the San Francisco Call, 1893-1910; the Amador Ledger, 1900-1911; the Imperial Valley Press, 1901-1911; the Sacramento Record-Union, 1859-1890; and the Los Angeles Herald, 1905-1907. All the issues are available online and can be viewed on your computer.

Additional years are forthcoming, as are other early California newspapers: the Californian; the California Star; the California Star and Californian; the Sacramento ...

Here is a trick for anyone who uses Google's Gmail service:

Here's a method of creating unlimited virtual addresses to make it easier to sort mail and identify spam. For example, you can create a separate email address for each account you establish with an online merchant, such as amazon or ebay or ancestry.com. It even works for this newsletter. As long as you set up a "catchall" address with your email provider, all of these will be forwarded to your main account, and you can use your email client to sort and filter these as you see fit.

You can do this with Gmail, ...

The Wall Street Journal has a great story that tells how genealogists can even save or prolong the lives of the people that mean the most: their loved ones.

In the article, Anna Wilde Mathews writes:

Heredity plays a strong role in many health problems, ranging from Alzheimer's disease to macular degeneration and immune-system disorders like Crohn's disease. Though scientists have discovered genetic markers tied to many illnesses -- and tests have been developed to determine which patients have such markers -- these currently account for only a small portion of the risk ...

The Cyclopedia of New Zealand was published in six volumes between 1897 and 1908 by the Cyclopedia Company Ltd. These books can provide a wealth of information to anyone researching New Zealand ancestry. They provide a lot of information about individuals and also are full of information about the areas in which your ancestors lived and provide much information about the lifestyles of everyday citizens.

Each volume deals with a region of New Zealand and includes information on local towns and districts, government departments, individuals, businesses, clubs and societies. ...

Work has started on the new cemetery at Fromelles, in northern France, which will provide a final resting place for around 400 British and Australian soldiers.

The troops died during the Battle of Fromelles in July 1916, with the bodies buried in a number of pits by the German army in the hours after the battle. In May 2008, after several years of painstaking research and investigation, five burial pits dating from the First World War were identified at Pheasant Wood, near Fromelles in northern France.  The pits, which have lain undisturbed for more than 90 years, are ...

The following announcement was written by the National Archives and Records Administration:

ST. LOUIS, June 12 -- The National Archives' National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) opened more than 6 million individual personnel files of former federal civilian employees from the mid-1800s through 1951. These records will be of special interest to genealogists, family members, researchers, sociologists, and historians.

Among the records are the files of prominent individuals who worked for the federal government, such as Walt Disney, Ansel Adams, Eliot Ness, Calvin Coolidge, ...

Guardianships, apprenticeships, adoptions, and bastardy bonds are four types of court records which can be used to demonstrate filiation, ascertain births, and identify maiden names. County, district, and state courts as well as private legislative acts constitute the primary source material that family historians have to examine in quest of the proverbial needle in the haystack. In the case of the latter, igniting the haystack and reducing the chaff to ashes makes the search much more ...

Carolyn L. Barkley has written an interesting article about wikis for genealogy. She describes the purposes of wikis and then mentions several genealogy wikis. She first mentions the Encyclopedia of Genealogy (which is sponsored by this newsletter) and then goes on to describe at length both WeRelate.org and the FamilySearch wiki, a “free online encyclopedia of genealogy information.”

You can read this interesting article at http://www.gene....com/?p=101.

Ireland's leading genealogical magazine has praised Limerick City Council's decision to become the first local authority to put its burial records online. And 'Ireland's Genealogical Gazette' believes it will help bring more tourists into the city.

The monthly newsletter of the Genealogical Society of Ireland says, Limerick City Council has most certainly thrown down the gauntlet to all other local authorities by its decision to utilise its archival and heritage resources as a means to promote an awareness, appreciation and knowledge of the social history of its ...

About once a week or so I receive an e-mail from a person who feels “ripped off.” Each e-mail comes from someone who expended a lot of time and effort collecting genealogy information about his or her ancestry and then decides to share the information with others. Some time later, that person finds the same information published elsewhere, apparently by someone else who “ripped off” the information from the first person. The usual questions are: “Is this legal? Can he ...

The following was written by Library and Archives Canada:

Available Databases in the Canadian Genealogy Centre room Library and Archives Canada 395 Wellington Street Ottawa, Ontario

The following databases are now available for consultation in the Canadian Genealogy Centre during opening hours:

Acadia Acadian-Cajun Family Trees

Newfoundland                Births, Deaths and Marriages from Newfoundland Newspapers ...