Introducing a new contributor

Since I haven't had much (any, really) time for genealogy since the baby was born, my aunt Cherie has agreed to join the blog as a contributor. Her family history research has mostly focused on colonial times and our Winslow, Watson, Longwell, Fleischer, and Jenkins lines. She recently joined DAR and will be posting about that and about her other research findings.

Welcome Cherie!

New member of the family!

Born one week ago today, the newest Geyer descendent -

Oliver Martin -
Born: July 23, 2007 at 12:17pm in Regensburg, Germany
Weight: 3820 grams (8 lbs, 6.8 oz)
Length: 52 cm (20.5 inches)
 



I uploaded my first video to YouTube, made of Oliver this morning:

Feedburner Integration for Blogger Blogs

As of July 11, integrating your Feedburner feed into Blogger became a snap. All you need to do is go to your Blogger Dashboard, hit Settings, hit Site Feed, then enter your Feedburner feed address, and hit Save Settings. And voila! You should soon be able to see how many subscribers you really have.

I'd also suggest that while you are on your Settings page, you make sure that you are publishing a "Full" feed. It is a big turnoff (for me anyway) to have to leave Google Reader and load the blog to read a whole post. More likely than not, I don't bother unless the title and first few sentences are very catchy, which means that I (and others - I've read this as a common complaint on the "be a better blogger" type blogs) are missing out on your great content!

Now if only Blogger would get around to allowing subcategories in labels.

Carnival of Genealogy

It's official...

My last post, Shaping the Future, has been included in the 23rd Edition of the Carnival of Genealogy. The topic was School Days, and there are twenty wonderful submissions for you to check out! The next deadline for submission is May 15th and, in honor of Mother's Day, the topic is Moms. Will you be the next to join the Carnival?

Coming Soon to Shanghai Library: Chinese Family Tree Index

The Shanghai Daily reports good news for those of us wishing to explore our Chinese ancestry:

SHANGHAI Library will finish composing the world's biggest Chinese "Family Tree Index" by the end of this year, Xinhua news agency reported today.

The library will first compile the index into a series of books, which in total will contain millions of names and more than 50,000 family trees.

The index will later be converted into an online format that will enable all Chinese from home or abroad uncover their family history, the report said, citing Shanghai Library.

Two new blogs to check out

I've added two new genealogy blog links to my sidebar. Both are well put together sites that look like they will have quite a bit of information on their topics. As the author, Bill Ives, describes them:

One is the Ives Family History Blog, covering my father’s family going back to William Ives, co-founder of New Haven, as well as those who married into the family (e.g., Bassett, Dickerman, Yale, Atwater, Peck, Cooper, Day, Humiston, Bishop, Dunbar, Rich and others).

The other is Sharp Family in NC covering the history of the Sharp family of Harrellsville, North Carolina. My grandmother is a Sharp from Harrellsville. It also covers some of the families who married into the Sharp family (e.g., Winbourne, Hare, Parker, Powell).

For both blogs, I am also doing brief histories of where they lived and travel tips for the locations.

Any handwriting experts out there?

I'm trying to transcribe a letter that was written by some Scotch-Irish ancestors of mine in the 1850's and am having a bit of trouble deciphering the handwriting. I've gotten pretty good at reading the handwriting from old documents, but there are a few places in the letter where I'm thrown for a loop. If you happen to have some experience reading old Scotch-Irish handwriting, or even if you don't but want to take a stab at it, I'd love some help and a second opinion. They're also writing from a place that I think is called Laughries Caus (I THINK the letter says: "When you Rite Direct Letters to the Care Mr James Moor Mohill Street grween newtown was Cunty Down Irland for William Mcgimpsey of Laughries Caus, farmer."), but I can't find any Laughries in Ireland, so if you know where they are writing from, that'd be great too. Thanks!

And as soon as I have what I think is a pretty accurate transcription, I'll post the letter here. It's from William and Marget McGimpsey to their son Henry and is dated April 2, 1854.

*****

Update: I'd like to thank all the folks who offered help! I also wanted to pass on a few really useful links that people sent me.

• BiB, Apple and Pam helped me identify the origin of the letter writer as Loughriscouse, Newtownards Parish, County Down (map of townlands in Newtownards Parish)
• Megan sent me a link to the Paleography page at the National Archives UK website that has a lot of information and tutorials on reading handwriting from 1500-1800.
• Pam also sent me a link to Ros Davies' Co. Down, Ireland Genealogy Research Site, which has a lot of great info on people and places in County Down

Where's Christina?

I know this looks like a dead blog, but I really have a LOT of info to post here from my recent genealogy trip to Pennsylvania and Virginia. I unfortunately have a lot of projects I'm juggling right now, and genealogy has been put on the back burner, so to speak. So please be patient, I will get around to blogging, it just may take a month or so (hopefully less).

Setting Sail

It's the first post on my new blog (I've been blogging for a while over at An American Expat in Deutschland). The purpose of this blog is to chronicle my experiences as genealogy becomes something more than a hobby for me. I'll review books and online courses as I read and take them respectively. I'll talk about my trials and tribulations; hopefully my experiences will help you avoid some of the bigger potholes on the family history road. And maybe I'll be entertaining from time to time.