Being a picky eater as an adult isn't uncommon, but is it etched into your DNA blueprint? Some people argue that food preferences are all about habit, while others are adamant that sensitivity to taste is the source.

Science—and an AncestryDNA® + Traits test—may offer deeper insights into the genetics of your food preferences.

You can read this interesting article at: https://www.ancestry.com/c/traits-learning-hub/picky-eater.

From an article by Brendan Scott published in Roots Ireland:

We are delighted to announce the addition of 579 Lease Abstracts for the Manor and Lordship of Monaghan (1679-1810) to the Roots Ireland database! These leases not only name the people who have agreed the lease, but also often mention other people and their properties in the leases and as such are a very useful census substitute for Monaghan.

For an up to date list of sources for Monaghan and to search these records, go to https://rootsireland.ie/monaghan and login or subscribe if required.

For more information about Roots Ireland, go to https://youtu.be/KG4VDiIq5gY.

I recently received a message from a newsletter reader that disturbed me a bit. He wrote, "I have been doing genealogy research for 10-15 years but only through the Internet." He then went on to describe some of the frustrations he has encountered trying to find information. In short, he was disappointed at how little information he has found online.

I read the entire message, but my eyes kept jumping back to the words in his first sentence: "... but only through the Internet."

Doesn't he realize that 75% of the information of interest to genealogists is not yet available on the Internet? (75% is a “guesstimate” on my part. It might actually be a higher or lower number, but in any case, the MAJORITY of genealogy information is not yet available online.)

To be sure, many of the biggest and most valuable resources are now available online, including national census records, military pension applications, draft cards, many passenger lists, land patent databases, the Social Security Death Index, and more.

The national databases were the "low hanging fruit" a few years ago as the providers of online information rushed to place large genealogy databases online. These huge collections benefited a lot of genealogists; these databases were the first to become indexed, digitized, and placed online. We all should be thankful that these databases are easily available today and are in common use.

As the national databases became available to all, the online providers of genealogy information moved on to digitize regional and statewide information. State or provincial censuses, birth records, marriage records, death records, naturalization records (which originally were recorded in many local and state courts), county histories, and much, much more are still being placed online. 

Of course, this is great news for genealogists who cannot easily travel to the locations where the original records are kept. For many of us, this is even better than having information on microfilm. Most of us don't have microfilm readers at home, but we do have computers.

Yet, I am guessing that 75% of the information of interest to genealogists has not yet been digitized. Why would anyone want to look for genealogy information "... only through the Internet?"

State censuses, birth records, marriage records, death records, naturalization records, county histories, and more are all "work in progress" projects. That is, they are not yet complete. In fact, I doubt if all of them will be available online for at least another two decades! If you only look online, you are missing a lot.

In many cases, church parish records, local tax lists, school records, land records (other than Federal land grants), and many more records are not yet available online and probably won't be available for many years. If you are limiting yourself to "... only through the Internet," you are missing 75% of the available information.

If you have the luxury of living near the places where your ancestors lived, I'd suggest you jump in an automobile and drive to the repositories where those records are kept. There is nothing that matches the feeling of holding original records in your hand. Make photocopies or scan them or take pictures of them or do whatever is possible to collect images of the original records.

If you do not know where to start, I would suggest reading “Begin your genealogy quest” at https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Begin_Your_Genealogy_Quest for some great “getting started” information. Also, check out the links to many valuable tutorials and reference material in my earlier articles. 

Which option would you prefer: accessing 25% of the available records or 100% of the available records?

A controversy involving genealogies in New Hampshire highlights it may be difficult to prove one's ancestry. Within a few weeks of starting her first term, State Representative Sherry Gould filed a resolution to give her American Indian tribe — the Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk Abenaki Nation — state recognition in New Hampshire.

Under the language of the resolution, which would have made the Nulhegan Band New Hampshire’s first recognized tribe, the group would become eligible for federal housing funding for tribes and the right to sell arts and crafts as “Indian-made,” among other benefits.

Gould’s bill stalled in the House about a month later. But her new public role, and her effort to win official recognition for her tribe, have shined a new light on a longstanding controversy around the question of who has the authority to represent the Abenaki community.

The effort is controversial because there are no formal historic records identifying the Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk Abenaki Nation as Abenaki.

You can read all about the controversy in an article by Julia Furukawa published in the New Hampshire NHPR web site at: https://tinyurl.com/bdes9eeb.

Here is a list of all of this week's articles, all of them available here at https://eogn.com:   

NOTE#1: This is a repeat article from a year or so ago. The question arose again today because of an email message from a newsletter reader. I suspect other people have similar questions so I decided to re-publish this article again for those (unknown) people.

NOTE#2: This article has nothing to do with genealogy. If you are looking for genealogy-related information, I suggest you skip this article.

NOTE#3: For me, this has almost become a new religion: I try to avoid as much printing as possible. Instead, I publish to PDF files (and occasional other formats) and save it to a private space I pay for in the cloud. As a result, I can quickly and easily find anything, even years later, by searching for it electronically. This works even when I am traveling overseas. I find it faster and easier to search for things electronically rather than pawing through reams of paper.

If you have been reading this newsletter for a while, you probably already know that I am a fanatic for going paperless. Life without paper is good! Also, life without paper can save a lot of time and frustration when later trying to locate and retrieve items.

For instance, a few months ago, I traveled and stayed in a hotel room in Anchorage, Alaska. If I wanted a document or some other bit of information I saved in an earlier week or even in an earlier year, I could quickly retrieve it from my paperless filing system, even from Alaska. Try doing that with paper! To retrieve anything from paper files when needed, I would need to carry a 4-drawer or larger filing cabinet as my carry-on luggage on the plane!

Aaron Couch published an article on the MakeUseOf web site several years ago that describes the easier ways to convert to a paperless existence. Admittedly, I only found the article recently and am impressed with it.

Aaron writes:

"Paperless – a term that is used quite often now days. But what does it mean? And to what extent does it apply? Certainly we all still use paper to some degree despite the advancements in technology, so how can we go completely paperless?

"Well, the truth is, there will likely always be some form of paper, but the problem doesn’t lie in using paper itself, but instead having awareness for the amount used and methods of which it is being used for."

He then describes:

• Alternatives To Printing & Paper Notes
• Print To PDF
• Save As WWF, Save A Tree
• Electronically Sign Documents
• Use Your Smartphone For Notes
• Clip Webpages Instead Of Printing Them
• Cutting Down On [Snail] Mail
• Get Your Bank Statements Via Email
• Fill Out Forms Online
• Email Invoices (For Businesses)
• Get Your News & Information Online
• Unsubscribe From Mailing Lists
• Pay Your Bills Online
• Scan Existing & New Documents
• Use A File Organizer, Preferably With OCR
• Sync Your Documents Across All Devices
• Conclusion: Helpful Methods To Adopt

If you would like to simplify your life, start by reading The Future Is Here – Your Guide to Having a Paperless Life Today by Aaron Couch at http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/future-guide-paperless-life-today/. A related video, How to go Paperless with a Digital Filing System, can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7VJopCHem0.

Also see my earlier article, Possibly the Best (?) Document Scanner for Home and Office Use, at: https://www.eogn.com/page-18080/12284742.

Most people are warned before taking a DNA test that occasionally there are unwelcome "surprises" in the results. One such surprise was recently documented.

A couple in Salt Lake City recently took a DNA test to learn more about their heritage. The results claimed there were more questions. The results said that the husband was the father of the couple's eldest son, but the father of their youngest was unknown.

You can read the full story by Kate Graham as published in The U.S. Sun web site at: https://tinyurl.com/3ubs697a.

What's in YOUR genes?

An article by Esther Linder published in the abc.net.au web site describes how historians, genealogists, and others almost lost a valuable collection of records:

A historical society in Melbourne's east is racing to preserve thousands of photographs that were almost destroyed in a freak accident.

The Box Hill Historical Society's collection came close to destruction in April last year, after rewiring works in the town hall building caused a humidifier to malfunction, increasing the humidity levels within the archive's rooms to nearly 90 per cent.

Lead archivist Helen Harris had stopped by the archive on a Saturday and found condensation dripping through the building and paint beginning to melt.

"It's every archivist's worst nightmare, to open a door and find condensation running down the walls," she said.

"We had stuff spread out in other rooms [to dry]. It's an entire archive, it's too much to take out."

Whitehorse City Council paid for a conservator to review the damage, who confirmed how close the archive was to being lost.

Had the fault been discovered a day or two later, the delicate documents, papers and photographs of the archive would have been destroyed beyond repair.

The digitisation drive will become part of Victorian Collections, a state-wide catalogue that is available online, run by Museums Victoria and the Australian Museums and Galleries Association Victoria as a record of the state's past. Funding for the program is provided by the state government through Creative Victoria.

As an area rich in history ranging from the traditional owners, the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation, early European settlement in the 1830s, to the migration boom of Chinese-Australians in the last few decades, the treasures within the archive are numerous.

There is more to the article at: https://tinyurl.com/mpk77mza.

This is the second installment of a multi-part article. 

First of all, I'll offer a short follow-up to last week's article: I kept using the word "you" in that article. As a newsletter reader pointed out , "you" can be either singular or plural.

You can start this business by yourself, with a partner, with your family, with a local genealogical or historical society, or with any others who share your interest in electronically republishing old books and extracts from records. In fact, e-publishing is an excellent method for genealogy societies to republish old books and records at low cost. The society can provide a valuable service as well as earn a revenue stream that may be difficult to duplicate elsewhere. 

Last week's article focused on the mechanics of scanning old books and other documents, converting them to computer files and (optionally) CD-ROM disks. This week I will describe practical methods of advertising and selling the information. In the next article, I will describe methods of collecting payment. 

When looking for genealogy information, any computer-savvy genealogist will always look on the Internet. That genealogist is a potential buyer. Therefore, sellers of genealogy information always need a web presence. Luckily, this is relatively easy to do and is also quite inexpensive. There are many web hosting services available that will provide a web site for as little as $5.00 a month.

You can already find a number of web sites created by vendors who republish old genealogy books on CD-ROM disks. Of course, CD-ROMs are a technology that is now disappearing. Many desktop computers and almost all laptop computers are now sold without CD-ROM drives. The newer technology is selling digital copies of old books as “ebooks.” That is, digital files. These are typically sold on the World Wide Web with delivery handled online within seconds after the purchaser makes payment for the ebook.

Creating your own online shopping web site will quickly create two major challenges: advertising and payments. Neither problem is insurmountable. In fact, there are interconnected solutions for each. The easiest method of advertising is to find out where your customers are already looking, and then offer your wares in that location.

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/13204270.

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. 

The following announcement was written by TheGenealogist:

TheGenealogist has added to its Headstone Collection copies of records from certain local authorities and the Church Commissioners that relate to the removal of graves and tombstones in burial grounds. These records are held by The National Archives.

They detail former cemeteries from all over England and Wales and cover the years 1619 to 2003. A number contain a plan of the original place of burial while some will reveal the place of reinterment also.

An example of transcription of a headstone removed in TheGenealogist’s RG 37 records

Headstones are an extremely useful record for the family historian as they can give the researcher information that has not been recorded elsewhere. 

They are mostly accurate in revealing dates and names and often other family members are on the same tombstone or are buried close by. 

When a grave or headstone has been removed then a record of the inscription may have been recorded in this particular recordset.

The Removal of Graves and Tombstones records on TheGenealogist are part of their Death & Burials – Headstone Collection and are searchable by: 

    • the deceased’s name

    • year of death

    • place of original burial

    • any keyword that may have been included

Details from a search of TheGenealogist’s Death & Burials records

The origin of these RG 37 official records of burial ground removals can be traced back to 1911 and a recommendation was made by the Attorney General that such records be made and deposited with the local registrar of births and deaths. The Registrar General suggested to the Home Secretary of the time that the records should be deposited with the miscellaneous records held by the General Register Office instead of at the local registrar. 

If your ancestor was buried in one of the burial grounds to have been recorded in this release then, despite the headstone no longer standing, you will be able to discover details about your ancestor recorded on their tombstone at the time it had been originally erected.

Read TheGenealogist’s article: A not so final resting place: https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2023/a-not-so-final-resting-place-1813/.

About TheGenealogist

TheGenealogist is an award-winning online family history website, who put 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, and 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!