Today is the second day of the month. That is still a good time to back up your genealogy files. Then test your backups!

(I normally post a similar message on the first day of each month except that yesterday was a Sunday and I normally do not post new articles on weekends. So today's article is posted on the second.)]

Your backups aren't worth much unless you make a quick test by restoring a small file or two after the backup is completed.

Actually, you can make backups at any time. However, it is easier and safer if you have a specific schedule. The first day (or second day) of the month is easy to remember, so I would suggest you back up your genealogy files at least on the first or second day of every month, if not more often. (My computers automatically make off-site backups of all new files every few minutes.)

Given the events of the past few months with genealogy websites laying off employees and cutting back on services, you now need backup copies of everything more than ever. What happens if the company that holds your online data either goes off line or simply deletes the service where your data is held? If you have copies of everything stored either in your own computer, what happens if you have a hard drive crash or other disaster? If you have one or more recent backup copies, such a loss would be inconvenient but not a disaster.

Of course, you might want to back up more than your genealogy files. Family photographs, your checkbook register, all sorts of word processing documents, email messages, and much more need to be backed up regularly. Why not do that on the first day of each month? or even more often?

The following is a Plus Edition article written by and copyright by Dick Eastman. 

I would suggest this is the perfect time to decide to organize your life. Specifically, it’s time to get rid of all the paper that is cluttering up your genealogy research as well as your need to keep receipts for income tax purposes, to keep copies of eyeglass prescriptions, to organize your warranties for the various items in your life, to keep copies of business cards, and for hundreds of other purposes where you might need to quickly and easily find a piece of “paper” in the future. Luckily, there are many software tools available for organizing your paper files by scanning them, saving the images to a database on your computer, and (optionally) throwing away the paper.

Remember when everyone talked about how we would someday become a paperless society? Now it seems like we use paper more than ever. Let’s face it – everyone still uses paper. We end up with piles of it – bills, receipts, financial and insurance statements, and much more. Still, the trend toward government and business entities wanting digital documents is growing. For instance, the Internal Revenue Service prefers that you file your taxes electronically. If an audit is requested, the I.R.S. strongly suggests you show up at the audit with electronic images of your receipts, not with boxes of paper. According to ruling Rev. Proc. 97-22 from the IRS, agency employees will accept digital documents. If you do insist on submitting tax forms and receipts on paper, the I.R.S. employees will simply scan all your paper and then throw that paper away! The agency doesn’t have enough file space to store paper from all the taxpayers, but it has lots of available space for digital storage. In addition, I.R.S. employees can retrieve electronic images much faster than they can retrieve paper documents. Perhaps you should do the same. After all, this is the 21st century!

I have written often about the advantages of genealogists going paperless. This week, I am experimenting with a software tool that shows a lot of promise for anyone thinking of reducing clutter and simplifying the retrieval of needed information at any time in the future.

The remainder of this article is reserved for Plus Edition subscribers only. If you have a Plus Edition subscription, you may read the full article at: https://eogn.com/(*)-Plus-Edition-News-Articles/10785059.

If you are not yet a Plus Edition subscriber, you can learn more about such subscriptions and even upgrade to a Plus Edition subscription immediately at https://eogn.com/page-18077.

Would you like to upgrade to the beta test version of Windows 11? It is now available for everyone at: https://www.tomsguide.com/uk/news/windows-11-beta-is-now-available-heres-how-to-download.

Warning: Pay close attention to the instructions, "If you want to download the Beta channel versions of Windows 11, the first thing you should do is verify that whatever PC you want to install it on meets the minimum Windows 11 system requirements." Many PCs that are currently running Windows 10 or earlier versions of Windows are not capable of running Windows 11. Make sure your system contains the necessary hardware to run Windows 11 before attempting,pting to upgrade.

 

Legacy and MyHeritage are sponsoring this fun (and FREE!) online genealogy conference which will take place on Fridays throughout the month of September. There will be 30 live and pre-recorded webinars in all. People can join live for all four Fridays or just one, and if you can't, we've got you covered! Enjoy the recordings at your convenience - they'll be free to view through the end of the month.

The following announcement was written by TheGenealogist:

TheGenealogist has added a further 322,894 individuals to its continually increasing collection of Parish Records with the release of a set from the English county of Suffolk.

These East Anglian church registers have been fully transcribed and linked to images of the actual pages from the books that were once kept by the Anglican Parish Churches. From before Victorian times and the introduction of Civil records, as the Established Church of the state, these important Church of England documents recorded the baptisms, marriages and burials of our Suffolk ancestors. In some cases these important records will allow family historians to find their ancestors as far back as the 16th century.

St. Margarets Lowestoft

Parishes in this release include: Ashby, Belton, Blundeston with Flixton, Bradwell, Burgh Castle, Carlton Colville, Corton, Fritton, Gisleham, Gorleston with Southtown, Gunton, Herringfleet, Hopton, Kessingland, Kirkley St Peter & St John, Kirkley St Matthew, Knettishall, Lound, Lowestoft Christchurch, Lowestoft St Andrew, Lowestoft St John, Lowestoft St Margaret, Mutford, Oulton Broad, Oulton St Michael (Oldton), Pakefield, Rushmere, and Somerleyton.

You can read TheGenealogist’s article ‘Searching the Suffolk Parish Records finds the man who accused the Lowestoft Witches’ here:

https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2021/searching-the-suffolk-parish-records-finds-the-man-who-accused-the-lowestoft-witches-1432/

About TheGenealogist

TheGenealogist is an award-winning online family history website, which puts a wealth of information at the fingertips of family historians. Their approach is to bring hard to use physical records to life online with easy to use interfaces such as their Tithe and newly released Lloyd George Domesday collections.

TheGenealogist’s innovative SmartSearch technology links records together to help you find your ancestors more easily. TheGenealogist is one of the leading providers of online family history records. Along with the standard Birth, Marriage, Death and Census records, they also have significant collections of Parish and Nonconformist records, PCC Will Records, Irish Records, Military records, Occupations, Newspaper record collections amongst many others.

TheGenealogist uses the latest technology to help you bring your family history to life. Use TheGenealogist to find your ancestors today!

The following announcement was written by Findmypast:

• • Explore your Scottish heritage with millions of new records, comprehensively transcribed and fully searchable online for the first time
  • Published on Findmypast thanks to the work of hundreds of passionate volunteers at local family history societies across Scotland
  • New records span 450 years of Scottish history and cover every parish in the country
  • Contains the vital details of Scots from all walks of life, including some of Scotland's most influential sons and daughters, from fathers of nations to inventors and innovators, forgotten figures and much more

Leading UK family history website, Findmypast, has today announced the publication of a vast new online collection of “Old Parish Registers” in collaboration with local archives and organizations across Scotland.  

To access Findmypast’s Scottish collection, please visit: https://www.findmypast.com/page/scottish-family-history-records

Dating back to 1561 and spanning 450 years of Scottish history, the new collection contains more than 10.7 million historical documents chronicling baptisms, marriages, burials and more. This vast new online resource will allow family historians across the globe to uncover rare details of their ancestor’s lives and the stories behind major life events.  

When combined with Findmypast’s existing collection of Scottish records and historical newspapers, today’s release firmly establishes Findmypast as the home of the largest collection of Scottish family history records available anywhere online, enabling users to explore their Scottish family tree in greater depth and detail than ever before.  

This groundbreaking new resource is the result of Findmypast’s close collaboration with local family history societies, archives and volunteers from across the country. It brings together a wide variety of important historical records, many of which were previously inaccessible to public and are now fully searchable in new ways for the first time.  

This includes records that not only reveal vital information on Scottish ancestors, but also provide valuable insights into parish life, including;

• • Records of non-conformist churches including the Episcopal, Free Church, United Free Church and more, fully indexed and searchable for the very first time
  • Newly published 20^th century records (current online collections stop at 1855) that provide vital details of more recent ancestors, allowing users to uncover the details of previous generations and trace their family tree back from there
  • Rare “Irregular Marriages” from Kirk Sessions (those not officially recorded by the parish registers and conducted without a ceremony)
  • Mortcloth rentals, records of deceased Scots who were too poor to afford a proper burial, having to the hire the cloth that was placed over their coffin, or where original records no longer survive
  • “Ringings of the burial bell”, records of those too poor to even afford a mortcloth rental so instead paid for a ringing of the church bell in their memory

Today’s announcement forms a cornerstone of what is now most comprehensive collection of online records for Scotland ever assembled, covering every parish in every corner of the country.

This revolutionary new resource is the result of a collaborative project between Findmypast and volunteers at 9 Scottish local and national family history societies, including:

• • The Scottish Genealogy Society
  • Fife Family History Society
  • The Highland Family History Society
  • Dumfries & Galloway Family History Society
  • Renfrewshire Family History Society
  • Lothians Family History Society
  • Lanarkshire Family History Society
  • Glasgow & West of Scotland Family History Society
  • West Lothian Family History Society

Names, dates, locations, the names of parent’s, spouses, children and other biographical details such as occupations, residences and more were transcribed and then digitally converted thanks to the hard work of hundreds of Scottish family historians.

Some of Scotland’s most renowned sons and daughters can be found within the collection, including fathers of nations, inventors and innovators, forgotten figures and much more.

Myko Clelland, Regional Licensing & Outreach Manager at Findmypast said; “We are honoured to work with such a large number of outstanding organisations to make Scottish family history accessible worldwide. This has enabled Findmypast to not only illuminate the lives of influential Scots who have played pivotal roles in history, but also tell the stories of ordinary and often overlooked people who, through centuries of effort, have shaped the world we now live in and are responsible for everything we know and love as Scotland today.”

Celebrated Scots

Notable individuals found within the collection including;

Founding Fathers:

• • Culloden Veteran and Revolutionary War Hero Hugh Mercer - a career soldier and physician, Mercer initially served with the Jacobite forces of Bonnie Prince Charlie, the British forces during the Seven Years' War, and later became a brigadier general in the American Continental Army and a close friend to George Washington. Mercer died as a result of his wounds received at the Battle of Princeton and became a fallen hero as well as a rallying symbol of the American Revolution. The records document his baptism at Pitsligo, Aberdeenshire on 17^th Jan 1726.
  • American founding father and Presbyterian minister John Witherspoon, Witherspoon embraced the concepts of Scottish common-sense realism, and while president of the College of New Jersey (1768–1794; now Princeton University) became an influential figure in the development of the United States' national character. Witherspoon was a delegate from New Jersey to the Second Continental Congress and a signatory to the July 4, 1776, Declaration of Independence, the only active clergyman to sign the Declaration. The records capture his marriage to Elisabeth Montgomerie in Beith, Ayrshire on 14th Aug 1748

Cultural icons:

• • Novelist, essayist, poet and travel writer, Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson - best known for works such as Treasure Island, the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Kidnapped, Stevenson was born and educated in Edinburgh and travelled extensively throughout his life, dying in Samoa in 1894 at the age of 44. A major celebrity in his lifetime, the popularity of Stevenson’s works has endured and in 2018 he was ranked, just behind Charles Dickens, as the 26th-most-translated author in the world. The record document is Edinburgh baptism in 1850.
  • Scotland’s national poet, Robert Burns - celebrated worldwide, he is the best known of the poets who have written in the Scots language and regarded as a pioneer of the Romantic movement. After his death in 1796 he became a great source of inspiration to the founders of both liberalism and socialism, and a cultural icon in Scotland and among the Scottish diaspora around the world. A native of Ayrshire, Burns can be found numerous times in the records including his 1759 Baptism, the 1785 baptism of his illegitimate daughter with Elizabeth Paton and his irregular marriage to Jean Armour in 1788.

Inventors & Innovators:

• • 
  • Andrew Carnegie, age 16, with younger brother Thomas
    
    
  • Titan of industry and celebrated philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie - Carnegie led the expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century and became one of the richest Americans in history. During the last 18 years of his life, he gave away $350 million (roughly $5.2 billion in 2020), roughly 90% of his fortune to various charities, foundations, and institutions with special emphasis on local libraries, world peace, education, and scientific research. Carnegie was born in Dunfermline in 1835 and emigrated to the United States with his parents in 1848 at age 12. Carnegie’s baptism and the marriage of his parents can both be found withing the collection.
  • Inventor of the first practical telephone and co-founded the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, Alexander Graham Bell – born in Edinburgh in 1847, Edison’s early experiments with hearing devices eventually led to him being awarded the first U.S. patent for the telephone, on March 7, 1876. Despite the world-changing impact of his creation, Bell viewed it as an intrusion on his real work as a scientist and refused to have a telephone in his study. Bell and his parents can be found in an 1847 baptism record 23 years before the family emigrated to North America.

Forgotten figures

• • Scipio Kennedy, a slave taken as a child from Guinea in West Africa and brought to Scotland in 1702. Purchased at the age of five or six by Captain Andrew Douglas of Mains, Scipio served as a slave under his daughter, Jean, the wife of Sir John Kennedy, 2nd Baronet of Culzean in Ayrshire. He was granted his freedom in 1725, but continued to work for the Kennedy family and was given land on the estate. In 1728, Scipio was recorded as having fathered a daughter, Elizabeth, “by fornication” with Margaret Gray. Scipio married Margaret later that year and baptism records reveal the couple had a further seven children, and is known to have descendants living today.
  • Early feminist, socialist, abolitionist and social reformer, Frances Wright – baptized in Dundee in 1795, wright became a US citizen in 1825 and founded the Nashoba Commune in Tennessee, a utopian community designed to prepare slaves for eventual emancipation. Throughout her life, Wright campaigned for universal education, the emancipation of slaves, birth control, equal rights, sexual freedom, rights for married women, and liberal divorce laws. She was also vocal in her opposition to both organized religion and capital punishment and her radical views were constantly attacked by the press and members of the clergy.

Today’s announcement marks just the latest step in Findmypast’s Scotland expansion. Since 2019, over 200 million new records from across the country have been added to their ever-expanding Scottish database, making Findmypast one of the best places online to research your Scottish family tree.

Tamsin Todd, CEO of Findmypast said: Combining the largest collection of Scottish family history records available anywhere online with an expert customer service team based in Scotland and an active local community using our digital family history tools, Findmypast is the go-to website for anyone wanting to explore and share their Scottish heritage.

To access Findmypast’s Scottish collection, please visit: https://www.findmypast.com/page/scottish-family-history-records

The following announcement was written by MyHeritage:

We are delighted to announce the publication of 4.7 million records from three new collections from New Zealand: New Zealand, Birth Index, 1840–1901, New Zealand, Marriage Index, 1840–1901, and New Zealand, Death Index, 1840–2021. The records in these collections are provided by the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs and are the main source of vital records in New Zealand. If you have roots in this island down under, these collections offer important details about your ancestors. 

Here are more details about each of the collections.

New Zealand, Birth Index, 1840–1901

This collection of 2 million records is an index of birth registrations from throughout New Zealand. Records may contain the first and last name of the individual, the name of the father and mother, the birth year of the individual, and the registration number.

Births have been officially recorded in New Zealand since 1848, and were originally under the jurisdiction of the Colonial Secretary. If a birth was a stillbirth, this is indicated in the record. 

Search New Zealand, Birth Index, 1840-1901

New Zealand, Marriage Index, 1840–1901

This collection is an index of marriage registrations from throughout New Zealand. Records may contain the first and last name of the bride, the first and last name of the groom, the year the marriage took place, and the registration number.

Marriages have been officially recorded in New Zealand since 1854, and were originally under the jurisdiction of the Colonial Secretary. 

Search New Zealand, Marriage Index, 1840–1901

New Zealand, Death Index, 1840–2021

This collection of 2.4 million records is an index of death registrations from throughout New Zealand. Records may contain the first and last name of the individual, year of death, age at death, birth date, and registration number.

Deaths have been officially recorded in New Zealand since 1848, and were originally under the jurisdiction of the Colonial Secretary. A law in 1913 required that Mäori deaths also be registered, and these records were part of a separate registration system until 1961. 

Search New Zealand, Death Index, 1840-2021

You can read more in the MyHeritage Blog at: https://blog.myheritage.com/2021/07/myheritage-publishes-three-record-collections-from-new-zealand/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+MyheritageBlog+%28MyHeritage+Blog%29

The New York, U.S., Almshouse Ledgers, 1758-1952 holds a total of 1,113,040 entries in the collection. Around 486,894 Irish-born individuals are listed, making it the largest single group in the collection – more than the USA-born total.

Almshouses were charitable houses provided to people in a particular community and were used as workhouses, soldiers’ barracks, hospitals, penitentiaries, and asylums. Similar to workhouses and poorhouses in England, the goal of an almshouse was to house the extremely poor in exchange for labor, if the tenants were able.

During the era of the almshouse, many immigrants arrived in New York. Those fleeing famine and persecution often had few resources available and may have found their way to an almshouse. 

Initially spread throughout New York City, all almshouses were relocated to Blackwell’s Island (now known as Rosevelt Island) by 1845.

Most almshouses were overcrowded, crime-riddled, underfunded, and rampant with disease. Throughout the era of the almshouse, many departments oversaw the almshouse system and made attempts at reform. Almshouses eventually faded away as residential development began on the island. 

The collection contains records for individuals admitted to almshouses between 1758 and 1952 in New York City. The ledgers contained in this collection detail admissions, (voluntary or otherwise), discharges, deaths, and census information for the various types of almshouses. You can view the collection on Ancestry.com at https://www.ancestry.co.uk/search/collections/62048/.

For more information about the New York, U.S., Almshouse Ledgers, 1758-1952, read “Guide to the Almshouse Ledgers, 1758-1952.” New York City Municipal Archives. Last Modified 2016 at https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/records/pdf/Almshouse_REC0008_MASTER.pdf.

Some believe preserving family history is a hobby, while others feel it is their responsibility. Now with Ancestry.com DNA testing and online records, the ways of conducting research have changed.

Groups, like the Clark County (Washington) Genealogical Society, are finding ways to keep up with the continuous technological advances, even with setbacks caused by the pandemic.

The genealogical society reopened its library to the public on July 13, the first time since spring 2020, said Vice President Marcia Grubb.

“The digital world exists, but we help people get started,” Grubb said.

You can read more in an article by Madysen McLain in The Reflector at https://www.thereflector.com/stories/climbing-the-family-tree-clark-county-genealogical-society-reopens-library-to-the-public,269738.

The Santa Barbara County Genealogical Society will reopen the Sahyun Library on Tuesday, Aug. 3, following over a year-long closure due to the pandemic. The library is at 316 Castillo St., Santa Barbara.

"Someday we'll look back on this Covid year as a minor interruption in our lives," said Art Sylvester, Society Board co-president. "But in the short term, it has been a great disruption in the operation and services our Sahyun Library provides for our genealogical society members."

While society meetings and genealogical presentations were provided online via Zoom over the past year, members are looking forward to gathering in person and assisting each other and the community with research.

"I have a ton of questions and hints from my genealogy work during this pandemic," said Bob Basen, board co-president. "I can hardly wait for the Sahyun Library to open to seek these answers, and to see some old friends who can help me."