Enjoying the Drouin Collection on Ancestry.com

I've been on vacation this week. It's been filled with cleaning and all those other mundane things that need to get done while I have the time. I took yesterday, however, to do more research in the Drouin Collection on ancestry.com which is part of the World Deluxe subscription.

I admit, I'm not a fan of all of Ancestry's policies. I've had a couple of instances when I've bickered with them over theft of my data (both times, although it took persistance, they removed the information). I have to say though that I love that they have these records online.

The churches in Québec, Canada used to record the vital statistics of its people until around the 1960s. The Institut Généalogique Drouin went through and microfilmed the records to preserve them. Most churches are filmed through 1940, although a few are through the 1960s. As technology changed, the microfilms were scanned. Most institutes that have a copy of the microfilms or scanned records charge for access to them, either a by the hour charge or by the record charge. So, having them accessible at home (so I can browse in my PJs) is awesome.

If you don't have the World Deluxe subscription, you should check to see if your local library has access to that subscription.

If you just need a couple of records and don't have other access to the Ancestry site, the American-Canadian Genealogical Society in Manchester, New Hampshire also has the digital versions of the records. They will provide copies of the record or by the hour access to the collections for a fee. See their website under Drouin.

I believe there are also copies at the American-French Genealogical Society in Woonsocket, RI, the New England Historic Genealogical Society in Boston, MA and the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, IN. I don't know their access policies, so you'd need to research that yourself. Your efforts will be well worth it if you have Québec ancestors!

NY State employee arrested for stealing historical documents

A New York State employee has been charged with stealing documents and selling them on E-Bay. This person, although he has pleaded innocent, has apparently admitted to stealing documents since 2002 and they recovered about 400 items. That's a long time and a lot of items before getting caught!

Boy, it seems like there have been a lot of these stories in the past year. I understand that people need money and tempations are hard to resist, but it's such a shame. Has this always gone and we're just suddenly catching people or were people "in the old days" more moral? Maybe the places that hold these documents should wake up and update their security policies for their employees. Most already have strict policies in place for visitors who want to look at the records.

Full article here on Reuters.

Have you searched on the new FamilySearch Labs site?

I wrote a bit back about volunteering to index records for FamilySearch. See that post here.

Did you know that some of the efforts by all these volunteers are already available? Best of all, they're totally FREE and include not only the index, but scans of the original records too!

The special site is at http://labs.familysearch.org. You do need to register for an account in order to access the site, but that is a small requirement.

You should give it a try today! If you do find this project worthwhile, it's still not too late to help. There are many projects currently being indexed. Please consider volunteering.

I'm pleased to announce that I have picked back up my transcription work on New Hampshire Women: A Collection of Portraits and Biographical Sketches of Daughters and Residents of the Granite State, Who are Worthy Representatives of their Sex in the Various Walks and Conditions of Life by The New Hampshire Publishing Co., Concord, NH, 1895. This is a wonderful volume. It's not often that you see a biography book mentioning the contributions of one or two women, yet this was a book containing 122 biographies of only women. Additionally, each biography is accompanied by a photo. You can't top that! A new biography will be posted each Sunday until they're all available.

Historical Rutland

I found a cute little history book on Rutland, Vermont, which will have sections released on even days on my website Family Findings.

The book is Historical Rutland: an illustrated history of Rutland, Vermont, from the granting of the charter in 1761 to 1911 by Rev. F. E. Davison, Rutland, Vt.: P.H. Brehmer, 1911. It had a lot of photos, but my xerox copy was bad, so I didn't try to post them. I'm sorry about that. I would have loved to be able to include the photos. Regardless, the text of the book can be found here. By the end of April, the entire book will be displayed. Enjoy!

The Connecticut River Valley in Southern Vermont and New Hampshire: Historical Sketches

I found a delightful book entitled The Connecticut River Valley in Southern Vermont and New Hampshire: Historical Sketches and have started transcribing it on my main site Family Findings under the History section.

The book was written by Lyman S. Hayes and published in 1929. It's a great resource for people researching the Rockingham, Vermont and Charlestown, New Hampshire area. It's not genealogies, but there are lots of fun topics on the area covered and some names mentioned. Consider it an easy to read compilation of historical essays on the area.

I've thoroughly been enjoying reading the book as I prepare it for free online access to you all on my website. There will be a new article pretty much every other day until the book is all posted. I think it will be worth your visit!

Remember to backup your data

Computers are quirky. You just never know when something is going to go wrong with them. You want to make sure that you have multiple copies of your data. Imagine how devastated you'd be to lose your family database or all the scanned photos that a distant cousin emailed to you.

I've been using Mozy to save my files. It's a service that you download a small program and it will automatically backup your changed files as often as you specify. The original backup does take quite a while, but once that's done, it's pretty fast to update your backup.

The largest benefit to this is that it's an off-site backup. If your house burned down, having 100 backups won't do you any good if you kept them in your house.

You can get a free account to backup 2GB of data. Use my referral link (or type my referral code 4YXZQ1) and we'll both get another 256MB of free space. For each friend you refer after that who downloads and backs up their data once, you'll get an extra 256MB.

Why not give it a try? You've got nothing to lose and a lot to save!

Have you indexed today?

Most of us wish that there were more records online for free. Would you be willing to help out in hopes that you get back?

FamilySearch is seeking volunteers to help them index records. You sign up at http://www.familysearchindexing.org, download a little program and you're in business! When you run the program, you download from various projects that they are working on (always your choice of which one you want to do). Then, the original record is displayed on your screen while you type the data into a spreadsheet that is also on the screen. It's pretty easy, well, easy if the writing is readible. If a page is too difficult to read, you can reject it and get a different page that you can read, either in the same project or a different one.

Imagine the difference that could be made if we all indexed just one page a day. Please consider being a part of this great project.

Oh, and by the way, yes I indexed today!