Have you been waiting to take the Utah South Area Family History Training Center week day classes? Their Five Day Class gives you intensive Family History Training, which also includes training on new FamilySearch. I just learned that they have openings right now for all classes. Class dates for 2008 are: July 7-11, Aug. 4-8, Aug. 25-29, Sep. 15-19, Oct. 6-10, Nov. 3-7, Dec. 1-5 The class runs Monday through Friday from 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM (with an optional Extraction class on Wednesday night from 7:00 PM to 8:30 PM) The five-day intensive training course offered by the Utah South Area ...

Oregon Statewide Biennial Genealogy Conference Saturday, July 19th, 2008 Lane Community College Center for Meeting and Learning 4000 E 30th Ave, Eugene, OR 97405 Featuring Cyndi Howells of Cyndi’s List For info: gco2008conference@yahoo.com

Kathryn Larcher sent me a link to this article about the discovery of George Washington's boyhood home.Artifacts from the Washington period were crucial. These included wine bottles, knives and forks, pieces of small figurines, wig curlers, bone toothbrush handles and a clay pipe with a Masonic crest that just possibly was George’s. Fragments of an elaborate Wedgwood tea set, presumably belonging to Mary Washington, showed that the family’s fortunes had revived after the hardships immediately following the father’s death. [Link]In related news, archaeologists in New ...

DearREADERS, Since I"ve been telling you so much about my Union Civil War ancestor, William Gist FROMAN, lately, I may as well report the mysterious and thought-provoking tidbits I"ve uncovered about his second marriage. That"s the one to my ancestress who was 39 years younger according to the 1900 US federal census enumerations and information about her birth found in both her father and husband"s Union Civil War pension files.

This woman was given to mighty creative fibbing throughout her life including ...

FamilySearch Support just sent this out to all registered Family History Consultants.

Personal Ancestral File (PAF) is free genealogy software offered by FamilySearch. Millions of people have used PAF to do family history work. Over the years, many other genealogy software programs have been introduced by commercial companies. Most of these programs can work with PAF and GEDCOM files, and they offer additional features that PAF does not have.

The last major update to PAF was PAF 5.2 in 2001. Since then, FamilySearch has been developing a web-based genealogy system that ...

My friend Jackie Bergstrom just sent me the url to a site that shows a slide presentation of all the LDS temples in the order they were dedicated. I thought some of you might like to see this site too. http://www.ldschurchtemples.com/slideshow/ Whenever I receive a link to a great website I always go poking around to see what else they have on their site. The main page is www.ldschurchtemples.com . This site is really great for giving you photographs of the temples. You also can find out news, schedules and interesting facts about the temples. I had once been looking for some great ...

PDF joins Open Document Format (ODF) which was approved in 2006. OOXML, the format used by Microsoft Office, was approved in a vote earlier this year that is being contested by some of the countries involved in the approval process. From LinuxWorld: The International Organization for Standardization has approved Adobe Systems’ widely used PDF (Portable Document Format) as an international standard, and is now in charge of any changes made to the specification. The format is open and accessible to anyone as ISO 32000-1, the standards body said Wednesday. The standard is based ...

NOTE: This flag flys high at the Leavenworth National Cemetery taken when I visited 19 May 2008. My ancestor William Gist FROMAN is buried about 1/2 mile to the south/southwest of this mark. I couldn"t believe my luck at this shot, didn"t even crop it. As I turned off the camera, and looked back towards my ancestor"s tombstone, the cemetery"s distant bell tower began to toll the hour -- a fitting tribute, and the end of a marvelous day of cemetery research.

DearREADERS, As ...

Like Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Monroe and Eva Gabor, Senator Jesse Helms has died on the Fourth of July. I have to say that I was shocked and saddened to learn that he hadn't died years ago. From Wikipedia:Hendrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker noted in his memoirs that Helms had "the 'humorous habit'" of calling all black people "Fred".A MeFi commenter compares this to the demeaning practice of calling all Pullman porters "George":In 1916 the Society for the Prevention of Calling Sleeping Car Porters “George” (SPCSCPG) was founded by a wealthy Chicagoan, George William ...

Happy Independence Day, everyone!

There"s so much I want to explain about my change in employment and there"s so little time to write, at least for today I"ll start by answering a question asked in response to Thursday"s announcement.

Dean wrote,

From what you"ve been able to sense so far, do you anticipate any differences in FamilySearch"s corporate attitude towards employee blogs vs. the one you experienced at Ancestry?

Dear Dean,

Thanks for reading my blog and thanks for your comment. Best wishes on your new blog!

If you"ve not read my ...

Five siblings in Australia are recreating their grandfather Charlie Heard's world-record taxicab ride. Charlie drove Ada Beal and two other ladies on a 7,000-mile, three-month journey from Geelong to Darwin and back in 1930.Ron, Steve, Bob and Doug Heard and their sister Anne Cole have squashed themselves in to the 1929 Essex they are driving. “After doing a bit of research and checking the world book of records it looks to be the longest continuous taxi fare in the world, we are re-enacting Australian history,” Steve said. Leaving on the exact date, June 20, from the same ...

Some of pyrotechnician Meredith Smith's cremains were launched skyward last night.About a half-teaspoon of his ashes will be in a fireworks shell that will create a white burst in the sky for the finale of the show, set for Thursday night. "I can't think of a better way," said family friend Kevin Moss. He also will be memorialized through hundreds of T-shirts referring to the tribute as "the last shot." [Link][Thanks, Nancy!]

Performance artist Berenice Rarig borrowed her husband's 1863 family Bible for a special project.She opened the Bible to the beginning, where illuminated letters started the first book, Genesis, where God brings order out of chaos. Her hands grasped the gilt-edged pages. And pulled.Rarig knew her fellow artists would appreciate the value of a family heirloom. And they would understand how much it would cost her to deconstruct it.Rarig tore the book of Genesis into one-inch squares. She wove the squares into scarlet silk fibers, making a 20-foot cloth that floats with words and glows with ...

Olive Tree Genealogy added almost 10 more years of baptisms in the Reformed Church at Machackemeck (Deerpark),Orange County New York for the following years: Feb 1752- June 1754 | July 1754-Nov 1756 | Nov 1756-Jan 1759 | Jan 1759-Apr 1760 This adds to the current church records online for 1716 - 1750 You can click on links for this set of free church records at the What"s New for June page

Archaeologists believe they've discovered George Washington’s boyhood home on the banks of the Rappahannock River in Virginia. For three years, they’ve been excavating foundations, stone-lined cellars and other remains of what’s likely an eight-room, one-and-a-half story residence. Those characteristics, as well as artifacts—wine bottles, figurines, wig curlers, a clay pipe with a Masonic crest (the first president was a Mason), and more—led to the ...