Was just reading some of my blog feeds on iGoogle and noticed a post by our friend Megan Smolenyak . It’s now been two years since she and her partner Marcy Brown launched Roots Television and what they’ve accomplished is truly amazing! In their first year, they won four Telly Awards and there are now hundreds of videos available on twenty-four channels that can be viewed on the website, including George Morgan and Drew Smith’s Down Under Florida series on the Dearly Departed Channel , DNA Stories , and a series of interviews by Dick Eastman on the Conferences Channel . ...

The great thing in the world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

Posted This Week Canadian City and Area Directories, 1819-1899 Business and general directory of Newfoundland, 1877 View a list of all new and updated databases Learn more about what’s new at Ancestry.com Search the Ancestry.com Card Catalog

Do you have a family file or binder that’s bursting at the seams? Maybe it’s time to reorganize and break it down into several smaller files. Check and make sure all of the information in your files is up to date with your family history database and that your timelines are current. If you haven’t started a timeline for that family, do that too. Timelines are a great way to jumpstart your research. Learn more about creating timelines here .

Last week I posted a press release on the blog about a new database of Canadian Passenger Lists, 1865-1935 that was added to Ancestry.ca. Available to Ancestry.ca and World Deluxe subscribers this collection includes roughly 7.2 million names of passengers arriving in Canadian ports. While this is fantastic news for folks with Canadian roots, it’s also good for many Americans, who may not realize that they have cousins in Canada or ancestors who traveled through our northerly neighbor on the way to the U.S. When the database first rolled, I got that gleam in my eye that comes when ...

In 1735 there were three small children named Johann Ayelts in the village of Wiesens, now located in Germany. They spent their entire lives in that same village. The village of Wiesens is a small one located in the north of Germany with a population of probably less than 500 people in the mid-eighteenth century. Those three Johanns were: Johann Ayelts, born 1727 Johann Bruns Ayelts, born 1731 Johann Ayelts, born 1732 This is a situation that can easily confuse genealogists. Separating the three Johanns reminds us of some important lessons about genealogy methods and the importance of ...

Many genealogists have difficulty carving out a space in their homes or apartments to work on their research. The kitchen or dining room table is often used as a temporary work area, but this means constantly having to relocate your research–that or eating out a lot. A quick and inexpensive solution is to purchase a pair of two-drawer file cabinets at a thrift shop or garage sale, followed by a five- or six-foot length of oak or pine shelving at least 30″ deep. Use the file cabinets to support the shelving and you have a workspace spanning across the cabinets. You can paint or ...

Keep the Date on Newspaper Clippings I have been scanning obituaries from a file that my mother kept of family. I am most disturbed by the lack of date and sometimes name of the paper–just an old yellowed announcement and not even the year on most obituaries. When you’re clipping newspaper articles to save, be sure to include the name and date of the newspaper. Nancy Cragun Day Double-check Place Names I am using Family Tree Maker 2008 which I think is great as I have been able to add so much more to my tree with this version. I am looking forward to the 2009 update. I ...

Contributed by Barbara Huard of Bali, Indonesia This is a photograph of my aunts, Helen Dee McCuaig and Florence “Sandy” McCuaig, taken in Schreiber, Northern Ontario, Canada. Sadly, Dee died of tetanus after stepping on a rusty nail shortly after this photo was taken. Sandy passed away in 2005 at the age of 74. Click on an image to enlarge it. Contributed by Michael Mayr, Coloma, Wisconsin This picture was taken on 2 June 1895 in Milwaukee, WI, for the baptism of Herbert W. Mayr. Included in the picture are Ida M (Winkel) Mayr, mother, Herbert W. Mayr, baptised baby, ...

This week I was checking out the Canadian Passenger Arrival Records that were recently posted on Ancestry.ca in search of some connections to my Hungarian ancestors. As I was looking for information regarding locations, I happened across the newly updated website of the Federation of Eastern European Family History Societies (FEEFHS) . If you have ancestors from Eastern Europe, this fantastic website is a must-see. FEEFHS has had an outstanding presence on the Internet for more than ten years. (I’m not sure of the exact date, but I know they already had a pretty extensive presence ...

“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” ~ Thomas Edison

Posted This Week Washington Deaths, 1891-1907 Canadian Passenger Lists, 1865-1935 1828 New South Wales, Australia Census (Australian Copy) 1841 New South Wales, Australia, Census Missouri Birth Records, 1851-1910 (Updated) Missouri Death Records, 1834-1931 (Updated) View a list of all new and updated databases Learn more about what’s new at Ancestry.com Search the Ancestry.com Card Catalog

Search the Ancestry Card Catalog or WorldCat for local histories pertaining to the areas in which your ancestors lived and traveled. You may find explanations for the decisions your ancestor made, and you’ll gain a keen appreciation for the lives they led and events that helped shape them.

This past weekend an aunt and uncle of mine celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary. When we woke early Saturday to make the trip, my handy-dandy rain gauge told me we had already received somewhere around five to six inches of rain. (OK. it’s not really a rain gauge, more of an empty bucket, but the weatherman backed me up on the numbers.) With all that rain, it was decided that my husband would stay home on sump-pump duty while my daughter and I made the trek to Cleveland. While I was on the road, several parallels came to mind and I tucked them away to share with you this ...

Earlier this month, I wrote about using an obituary located on Ancestry and the research clues and future research suggestions I was able to extract from it. This week, I took my findings a step further and experimented with the automated search feature of the “My Trees” tool at Ancestry, creating a new tree for Conrad Krebs using only the information I had gleaned from his obituary. Three of the “hints” Ancestry found were records I had located previously on this family. The nice thing about Ancestry locating these “hints” for me was that adding them ...