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What do you mean my grandparents didn't have any kids!?!

- (+) Coats of Arms: The Other Side of the Story

I have written several times about the junk being sold under the label of "Your Family Coat of Arms." This stuff typically is not worth the paper it is printed on.

This week I received a nice letter from Terence Sherwood, describing the method by which a person living in Florida did recently obtain a legitimate coat of arms. The new coat of arms was personally granted by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Indeed, while you cannot obtain a legitimate coat of arms from a pushcart vendor in a shopping mall or from an online merchant who sells this junk, many people can legally obtain their own personal coat of arms. Once authenticated, the recipient can display the coat of arms appropriately. I thought I would describe the process in this week's newsletter.

I suspect that most of us have heard about the records stored inside a mountain near Salt Lake City. However, very few of us know any details about this storage facility.

The preceding is a "preview" of a Plus Edition-only article. The full article is available only to Plus Edition subscribers. Click on Plus Edition for more information.

Springtime is almost here in the northern hemisphere, and that means one thing: lots of genealogy conferences. One of the bigger ones in North America will be held in Pasadena, California, on April 16 and 17. Assuming you have a few dollars left after your close encounter with the IRS earlier the same week, you might want to attend this event.

The Southern California Genealogical Society's Genealogical Jamboree and Resource Expo begins at 1:00 PM on Friday and goes until 9:00 PM. Bright and early the next morning, the doors open at 8:00 AM for a Saturday session that stretches to 6:00 PM. The Jamboree always features exhibits by many of the leading genealogy vendors as well as numerous societies. In addition, a number of speakers will be holding forth both days on a variety of topics. Those scheduled to speak include:

• Bill Dollarhide, well-known genealogy author and lecturer
• Leland Meitzler, Executive editor of Heritage Quest Magazine
• Arlene Eakle, Ph. D., co-editor of the 1st edition of The Source, president and founder of The Genealogical Institute and Family History World.
• Robert Booth
• Jana Sloan Broglin
• Tom Underhill
• Lisa Schumacher
• Pat Parish
• Lois Burlo
• Charlotte Bocage
• Beverly Truesdale
• Dean Louder
• Andy Pomeroy
• Elaine Alexander
• Marilyn Skelton

A full list of the presentations as well as the speakers' bios can be found on the sponsoring society's Web site. I noticed that there is a workshop on scrapbooking. This popular pastime is not often seen at genealogy conference although I suspect that will change over the next few years. Scrapbooking and genealogy seem to share common ideals: preserving family history and memories.

This has been a very busy and even crowded conference in past years. I suspect this is because of two factors: Pasadena is obviously within reasonable driving distance of several million people; and the admission price is only $30.00 at the door and even cheaper for advance registration. A thirty dollar event in a major metropolitan area is bound to draw a lot more people than the higher-priced conferences held in various cities.

Held in a different city each year, the International Conference on Jewish Genealogy is always a major event. This year's conference will be held in Jerusalem for six full days. This summer's event is hosted by the Israel Genealogical Society (IGS).

Leading experts will present lectures on many different facets of Jewish genealogy. The program will include more than 100 presentations, computer workshops, and discussion panels by leading international experts on themes at the cutting edge of the field. Topics to be covered include: the waves of immigration to Eretz Israel; Jewish communities and social histories; education programs; genetics; ethics; genealogy by region; Holocaust – Shoah; Genealogy and the Internet; Genealogy for Beginners, and more.

The nearby Central Zionist Archives has approved a special access to the records of the Jewish Agency Search Bureau for Missing Relatives. Yad Vashem, which has the world's largest documentation of the Shoah, offers conference attendees the opportunity to research their archives. In addition, chief archivists have agreed to give introductory lectures on their archives and onsite research.

By the way, the 2005 IAJGS International Conference will be held in Las Vegas.

It seems that the department still cannot get it right. This week Judge Lamberth again ordered an immediate shutdown. The judge determined that the agency still has not fixed security holes that threaten payments owed to American Indians. "The feigned indignance of Interior aside, there is simply no other alternative. Interior brought this on themselves," Lamberth wrote in his opinion.

GENDEX is going away. Owner Gene Stark has placed the following notice on the GENDEX Web site:

GENDEX has been a genealogy search engine that indexes more than 22,000 online databases of genealogical information on 60 million people. That means you can view data from many Web sites without visiting each site. Most of the data, however, came from only two other sites.

Financial difficulties apparently are the cause of the shutdown. The basic Web site has been open and free to everyone although an advanced search capability was available only to those who paid a $10.00 fee. Apparently few people paid.

It does seem unique that two announcements regarding genealogy search sites are received in the same week, almost the same day. The day after I received notice about GENDEX, I also received an announcement about a brand-new free genealogy Web site that uses Google as the search engine.

The new Web site proclaims:

The Genealogy Search Help site offers fill-in fields for the desired ancestor's first and last name, father's name, mother's name and spouse's name. Other fields include place of birth and place of death. Obviously, you fill in only the information you have and leave the remaining fields empty.

I decided to try the site and compare it side-by-side with a regular search for the same names on Google. I first entered one of my "end of line" ancestors' names, a person whose parents are unknown to me. I only know his full name and place of death. The Genealogy Search Help site found several references to this person, but unfortunately, all those references were written by me, either in this newsletter or in online queries. I must say that I was not too surprised.

I then picked a different ancestor, Samuel Harmon, born in 1709. This time I did have full information about his parents, spouse, and children. I simply used him as a test case. I entered his full name, spouse's name, and his place of death, but did not enter his parent's names. I wanted to see if the Genealogy Search Help site would find him. Indeed, it did. Several references to this person were identified, and most of them listed his parents' names.

I attempted to conduct essentially the same search manually on Google. For those who are not familiar with Google's inner workings, this could be a challenge. Simply searching for Samuel Harmon resulted in 365,000 hits! For example, I found a present-day photographer in Ohio and a realtor in Virginia, both named Samuel Harmon. There were many others as well.

So what does the Genealogy Search Help site offer that Google does not? The answer is one word: convenience.

The Genealogy Search Help site does not find any data that you cannot find by yourself on Google. However, it does help you quickly narrow your focus in what would otherwise be an ocean of data. This service is especially good for Google novices who have not yet learned to use Google's more advanced features.

I will caution you that you still will want to conduct searches the old-fashioned way, both on Google and elsewhere. The new Genealogy Search Help site is a convenience, but not a definitive tool. If you do not find your ancestor using the new search tool, try again and again elsewhere.

Webmasters will note that there is a capability to build ancestor search pages into your own Web site by cutting and pasting a few lines of HTML code.

In a recent newsletter, I published three announcements from the U.S. National Genealogical Society. One of the announcements was the "National Genealogical Society's Conference in the States and NGS GENTECH 2005 Call for Papers." That announcement stated that the GENTECH 2005 conference would be held as a part of the National Genealogical Society's annual conference in 2005 instead of being a separate January conference. I followed the announcement with some commentary in which I wrote, "I hope the board either can hold a separate and equal GENTECH conference in 2006 or else can find another organization that can do that for them."

Shortly after the newsletter appeared, I received a phone call from one of the members of the NGS Board of Directors. She assured me that, indeed, the NGS Board of Directors is planning to do exactly what I wished for. Identifying a co-sponsoring organization, reserving a convention center, negotiating hotel rooms, and all the other tasks typically require a lead time of eighteen to twenty-four months. Since the GENTECH conferences are normally held in January, the calendar simply does not allow enough time to plan and execute a separate GENTECH conference in 2005. Therefore, GENTECH 2005 will be combined with the normal NGS conference in Nashville on June 1 through 4.

Now the good news: I have been assured that the NGS Board of Directors is committed to holding a normal GENTECH conference in 2006 that is separate from the normal NGS conferences. The board is now in the eighteen to twenty-four month advance planning stage and is working diligently on both identifying a co-sponsoring organization and reserving a convention center for GENTECH 2006. There is nothing to announce at this time, other than a simple statement of, "We're working on it." However, full announcement of a separate and distinct GENTECH 2006 can be expected.

The Board of Directors hopes to have even more GENTECH conferences in future years.

I am delighted to hear this news and suspect that many others will feel the same. Indeed, this is good news. I want to say "Thank you" to the Board of Directors of the U.S. National Genealogical Society.

The following is an announcement from the U.S. National Genealogical Society:

1. Skill building (how-to articles on researching your ancestry)
2. Problem solving (case studies)
3. Resources and Repositories (where to get information and how to get it more easily)
4. Technology (digital genealogy and using the Internet in genealogy)
5. NGS Events and Services (articles on upcoming conferences, post-conference events, society services, etc.)

The South Bend Area Genealogical Society has released a new CD-Rom entitled "The First 20 Years: A Collection of Newsletters of the South Bend Area Genealogical Society 1976 to 1996" The CD is in PDF format with a surname index.

Do you have Swedish ancestry? Are you planning a trip to Sweden to research your ancestry? Do not overlook the Svenska Emigrantinstitutet, or Swedish Emigrant Institute.

Situated on a picturesque lake in the heart of Växjö, the House of Emigrants comprises an archive, library, museum, and research center. It also sponsors conferences and seminars, as well as celebrations, festivals, and temporary exhibitions with the themes of emigration, migration, and integration.

The Institute was established in 1965 to preserve records, interviews, and memorabilia relating to the period of major Swedish emigration between 1846 and 1930, when 1.3 million (about 20%) of the Swedish population left the country to avoid a famine and to start a new life. One of the museum's most popular attractions for visitors tracing their Swedish ancestry is a near-complete genealogy of those who left the region.

The Institute has a huge inventory of emigrant letters, diaries, photos, and other documents from the emigration epoch (1846-1930). Swedish church and society records in America have also been microfilmed.

The Institute's sound archive contains about 3,000 interviews with Swedish-Americans plus thousands of recordings made in Sweden. This material is complemented by microfilms of population census manuscripts, church archives from Sweden, passenger lists, registers for passport applications, and more.

It may sound strange to travel to Sweden to look at American records on microfilm. However, you might not know where to start in the U.S. The records likely are better organized at the Swedish Emigrant Institute. Besides, a trip to the Swedish homeland can provide an understanding of your ancestors' lives that will never be gained by sitting in front of a microfilm reader in the United States.

Many newsletter readers are familiar with Gary Boyd Roberts' work. He is one of the leading genealogists of our time and the publisher of books and articles detailing the ancestry of American presidents, movie stars, and other notables. He has been quoted in this newsletter many times. Roberts is a Senior Research Scholar at the New England Historic Genealogical Society. His wit and personality entertain many at the Society. As I work at the same place, I am delighted to see and talk with Gary almost every day.

Now Sam Allis has written an article in the Boston Globe that mostly quotes Bill Fowler's description of Gary Boyd Roberts. Fowler should know. He is director of the Massachusetts Historical Society and has worked with Roberts on many occasions. The article describes Roberts' opinions as carrying "the kick of sinus-clearing wasabi mustard." Then Allis goes on to make even stronger statements. He also describes Gary Boyd Roberts as one of " Boston's most colorful characters you've never heard of."

"They've got absolutely nothing. They don't have any fire department. They don't have a police department. No water department. No sewer department. There's nothing," said Rep. Jim Annis of neighboring Dover-Foxcroft, who wrote the bill proposing Atkinson's deorganization. The town's residents cite a growing tax load with few residents to share in the tax burdens. The state's property tax is based on a tradition of old English law, where municipalities are responsible for assessing property value and taxing it. In western and midwestern states with unorganized territory, tax is often assessed at a county level.

The town records of these now-defunct governments will be moved to the Maine State Archives.

It does seem ironic that in the midst of high population growth and expansion in much of the United States, small towns in Maine and probably elsewhere are shutting down their local governments.

The PR Budget for this newsletter is $0.00. I rely upon "word of mouse" advertising in which you recommend this newsletter to your friends. This newsletter is a private project of mine, and I have a zero budget for a publicity campaign to get more readers.

Thanks.

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