AnceStories: The Stories of My Ancestors: Friday Finds and Follows: 20 March 2015 (A Day Late)

Saturday, March 21, 2015

Friday Finds and Follows: 20 March 2015 (A Day Late)

Apologies for the late posting this week. Life sometimes gets in the way of genealogy!

Articles and posts that caught my eye:

SeekingMichigan, the website for the Michigan Historical Center and the Archives of Michigan, released images of death certificates for the years 1921 through 1939. These are free. The release sparked a number of blog posts, including:

Good news for Michigan researchers! by Harold Henderson of Midwestern Microhistory: A Genealogy Blog - where I heard it first
They're Here! by Jessica Harden and Kris Rzepczynski at SeekingMichigan blog - the official announcement
Michigan Death Certificate Images Released–1921 - 1939 and Day Two of the Michigan Death Certificates Journey–Now What? by Diane Gould Hall of Michigan Family Trails - Diane shows how she uses her Legacy Family Tree software to find Michigan ancestors and relatives whose deaths fall between 1921 and 1939, in order to search the database
Finding New Death Certificates on Seeking Michigan by Amy Johnson Crow at No Story Too Small - Amy gives a nice tutorial on how to search this database

Speaking of SeekingMichigan, I found these two other posts this week that were helpful:

Exciting Times for the Archives of Michigan by Brenda Lyndyke of Journey to the Past - Brenda shares what she learned by listening to a presentation by Kris Rzepczynski, Senior Archivist at the Archives of Michigan at the Michigan Genealogical Council Delegate Meeting. There is a lot to look forward to, if you have Michigan ancestors!
Brenda also posted Searching the Michigan State Census Records, with some nice tips.
Extra, Extra, Read All About It --- The Detroit News SUBJECT Index Cards are Now Online at SeekingMichigan.org by LE at MCGG and Let's Talk...Genealogy - highlighting a collection consisting of well over 1 million index cards from The Detroit News

Got Swedes? You'll want to check out ArkivDigital's free access weekend here. It's for Saturday and Sunday, March 21st and 22nd only. Check out the Image Database and Swedish Genealogy links in the left-hand margin of that website for information on the various records and tutorials on how to use them.

A Proof Argument? Why Bother? by Elizabeth Shown Mills at QuickTips: The Blog@Evidence Explained - Elizabeth shares why we can't just let the documents do the talking

Librarians Express Concern Over HeritageQuest Changes and Ancestry.com Did Not Buy HeritageQuest by the author of The Ancestry Insider - keeping us up-to-date and addressing concerns about this topic

Advice for Beginning Genealogists by Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings - I love this list and will be pointing the beginning genealogists in my classes to it!

And along the same lines for advice for beginning genealogists, Roberta A. Estes writes Eleven Things I Would Do Differently at DNAeXplained – Genetic Genealogy

The Genealogy Blog is Back! by Dana Swiers Huff at Our Family History - first Jasia, and now Dana. I'm so glad to see some "old" geneabloggers back online!

Women's History Month 2015: School Days and "Women" as a Keyword by Gena Philibert Ortega at Gena's Genealogy - I've really been enjoying the Women's History Month 2015 posts Gena's been publishing. If you're having trouble finding your female ancestors, check these out!

Ohio set to open adoption records sealed for 50 years by Jim Provance at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - good news for Ohio adoptees everywhere!

Watch Thousands of Free Movies at Documentary Heaven by Kristin Wong at Lifehacker - a great way to improve your history education to supply background to your ancestors' lives

The Josh Groban episode – the Dutch part by Yvette Hoitink of the DutchGenealogy blog - Yvette researched Josh's Dutch ancestors for the television show, Who Do You Think You Are?

A Clarion Call for Arbitrators: Worldwide Arbitration Event by Spencer Ngatuvai at the FamilySearch Blog - want to help reduce the FamilySearch images awaiting arbitration by two million? Here's how you can help out.

FamilySearch Pilots Web-Based Indexing Extension by Taneya Koonce at Tennessee GenWebProject blog - Taneya explains a brand new Google Chrome extension that can help you with FamilySearch indexing