This and That

Carnivals Galore!
I feel bad that I haven't highlighted any of the wonderful holiday carnivals this month, especially since I know that a) the hosts work extremely hard to come up with relevant, interesting themes and put together quality editions once or twice a month; and b) the participants craft fascinating and delightful submissions that are a pleasure to read. I've updated the December Calendar of Events post with links to all of this month's published carnivals and events. Don't forget that the 14th Edition of the Carnival of Central and Eastern European Genealogy - "Christmas Traditions of Central and Eastern Europe" will be due this Sunday, the 21st. You don't have to have ancestry from this part of Europe to participate. See Jessica's Genejournal for more info.

Speaking of writing, the Southern California Genealogical Society's 9th Annual Writer's Contest is ongoing through December 31st. Go here for more details.

Holiday Specials
Dick Eastman is offering this week's Plus Edition newsletter for free.

Ruth tells about great deals for getting a year's subscription to Ancestry, dirt cheap.

From Tim, we hear that RootsTelevision videos are commercial-free this holiday season.

New Databases
Ancestry now has Florida State Census records. Some of these (1885, 1935 and 1945) are also available at FamilySearch Record Search, but not indexed there. Frugal tip: If you don't have an Ancestry subscription, you can use their Florida State Census search engine for free to see if your ancestor is listed (if found, results will give you the year and the county), then spend some time browsing at FamilySearch to find the image.

The Minnesota Official Marriage Systems (MOMS) has marriage records for 87 Minnesota counties (not all available years are represented in their database). MOMS does not have a Soundex feature, so get creative in your spelling and research strategies. Hat tip to John from Transylvanian Dutch.

Connections
Bill West e-mailed me to let me know we are cousins--9th cousins, twice removed--to be exact, through the Willard line. Let's see now, that makes the third genea-blogger I know I'm related to, besides Randy and T.K.

"Granny Pam" Warren has been publishing some great ancestral postcards from Belle's Box. I like these because besides being interesting and historical, they are mailed to and from lots of places that were my ancestral locations, like Newaygo and Wexford Counties, in Michigan. One of them was written from someone that lived in a house one block away from where my mother grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Pam came to my attention a while ago, when she recognized the name of one of my cousins as an owner of a photo I was featuring on Wordless Wednesday...he was a former neighbor!

The other day I was over at Facebook, writing on my sister's wall. I clicked on a profile photo of one her friends from Northeast Washington, thinking he was one of our brother's school mates (he wasn't). When his profile page loaded, I saw that besides having my sister as a mutual Facebook friend with me, he has also Travis LeMaster, a genea-blogger who lives in Indiana. Since they share the same surname, it's likely their related. I'll have to ask Travis about the connection!

New Blogs
Michael John Neill has started Famous Census, which is a lot of fun to browse. He must have gotten these images through NARA microfilms, as Ancestry (for whom he writes) threatened him with legal action early in 2007.

Becky Jamison's dad, Ernie, has his own genealogy and personal history blog. I've so enjoyed it...it's like sitting and listening to your granddad talk about the good old days!

Andrea, formerly of Exploring My Ancestors, has combined her blogs and is now at Mom's Many Projects. I think I can relate to having many irons in the fire!

Cherie and David are two of the newest genea-bloggers I've discovered. Please welcome them to our corner of the Internet!