** Civil War Tombstones: A Quick Primer

** What Is A Source? Definition from James Tanner

** Local Little Societies Are A Goldmine!

** MyHeritage: Do Check It Out

 

 

 

Civil War Tombstones: A Quick Primer….. thank you to Dick Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter and Amy Johnson Crow.

What is the difference between a Union and a Confederate tombstone? Amy Johnson Crow gives the answer in a short, but interesting, article in her blog at http://goo.gl/jGKMhc. (Copy and paste this address to access Amy’s good article.)

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What is a source? One dictionary definition is so vague as to be meaningless: “a place, person, or thing from which something comes or can be obtained.” See Google search for “define source.”

A source is the identity and location concerning where you got the information you are using. 

That isn’t very artfully said but genealogists are talking about sources being reliable or unreliable. A source is a source. If I got my information from a book in the local public library, the citation information about the book and the place where I found it constitute the “source” of my information. Any questions about the accuracy, reliability or whatever of the information have nothing whatsoever to do with the “source.” If I think your information is wrong or unreliable and you provide me with a source, I can go an check to see whether or not you are correct. Absent a source, I have to guess where you might have gotten the information and from my perspective, I have to assume, since you did not tell me where you got your information, that the information is unreliable and quite likely wrong. When people say a “source” is unreliable, what they really mean is that the information obtained from the source is unreliable.

James Tanner    Genealogy’s Star    5 Dec 2015

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I’ve beaten on this drum before but it bears repeating: There is gold in them there little historical societies and museums. Here is a peek through the window of the Coulee City Pioneer Museum………just look at all the potential “good stuff” on those shelves. Maybe you don’t need help in Coulee City……….but what about Waterville? Chelan? Hillyard? Uniontown? Gray’s Harbor? Friday Harbor? Here’s the rule:  If you need local help, go there! Virtually, of course, but in person is great too.

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I’ve been getting plenty of news, updates and information from MyHeritage and I thought I’d share some of it with you all. This website, and what is offered there, is just getting better and better and better.

 

Way back in February 2016 MyHeritage announced Family Tree Builder 8.0. This new version of their popular FREE software allows you to sync your tree with MyHeritage and use all their wonderful features. Wow.

Back in April 2016 they announced Super Search.  This is a MyHeritage search engine that searches for matches to your family tree within their databases (of about 7,000,000,000 records…..that’s 7 billion!). Wow.

Also in April they announced Book Matching. This automatically finds matches for your people in your family tree on MyHeritage in their vast collection of some 450,000 digitized historical books. Wow.

In May they announced MyHeritage Community. This feature is a Q&A hub on the MyHeritage website created to help their 8,000,000 registered users to collaborate and help each other with any family history related question. Wow.

In June they announced Sun Charts. This is an innovative new family tree chart for visualizing descendants in your family tree.  It is as you would guess, names radiating out in all direction like the sun’s rays. Wow.

Then just a month ago in July, MyHeritage announced Pedigree Map. This is an innovative way to visualize your Family history by plotting events from your family tree (such as birth-marriage-death) along with photos on an interactive world map. Pedigree Map displays photos and events groups by country and location allowing your to easily filter it by person, family group, event and time period. Wow.

You certainly want to sign up for the MyHeritage blog! Click to blog.myheritage.com and (on the right) sign up with your email.  Did I say? It’s free!

MyHeritage offers many more wonderful and helpful things and is worth the subscription price ($160 annually). For more information email sales@myheritage.com, or call 1-877-432-3135.

Tell them my friend, Mark Olsen, sends you and ask for a discount??? My mother taught me that you can ask anything you want as long as you’re polite.