Send Us a Fan Photo and Win a Subscription!
The February 2005 Family Tree Magazine, on newsstands at the end of this year, will mark five years of bringing you genealogy news and know-how.
To celebrate our fifth anniversary, we're giving a free one-year Family Tree Magazine subscription to the first E-Mail Update reader who e-mails us a photo of him- or herself holding the premiere issue of Family Tree Magazine, dated January
2000. (If you
already subscribe to the magazine—thank you!—we'll renew your subscription or send the prize to a friend of yours.)
E-mail your photo to ftmnews-editor@fwpubs.com. The image must clearly show your face and the magazine. We plan to include it in a future issue of the E-Mail Update (so
be
ready to fend off some genealogy paparazzi if you win). Run for your camera—the
clock starts . . . now!
Mighty Search
Genetic genealogy testing company FamilyTreeDNA has launched MitoSearch, a free database of mitochondrial DNA (also called mtDNA) test results at http://www.mitosearch.org. You can enter results from any company
and search for mtDNA matches.
Tests of mtDNA, a type of DNA passed from mother to child, reveal "deep ancestry" and can provide information on ethnic origins. Results indicate person's haplotype, which groups people into the equivalent of a maternal branch in the world's family tree.
MitoSearch contains data from nearly 500 individuals to date, and allows side-by-side comparisons of those results. Users also can upload their pedigrees in the form of GEDCOM files (the universal file format for family trees). The rarer your haplotype,
the more useful a matching person's family tree information. In addition, says FamilyTreeDNA spokesperson Max Blankfeld, viewing the pedigrees helps when you're looking for women who may have married and changed their names.
FamilyTreeDNA also operates Ysearch, a database of approximately 10,000 people's Y-DNA test results. Blankfeld expects MitoSearch to grow more slowly than Ysearch. "Far fewer people test their mtDNA, compared to Y-DNA," he explains.
The company is offering special prices on all its tests in October; visit http://www.familytreedna.com/mtDNA_promo.asp for details. For a layperson's guide to genetic genealogy, see the February
2005 Family Tree Magazine (on newsstands Dec. 28).
Vote for Genealogy
Every time you register to vote, you leave a paper trail. So did your ancestors. The availability and location of old voter registration records can be spotty, but they're full of useful information such as full name, residence and, for immigrants,
place of naturalization and country of origin.
Registrations usually are in a county courthouse, or a city, county or state archive. Some have been microfilmed or published; search for them in the Family History Library's card catalog (online at http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/Library/FHLC/frameset_fhlc.asp)
and at a genealogical society in your ancestor's area. Cyndi's List links to online voter registration indexes at http://www.cyndislist.com/voters.htm.
You may never know your ancestors' favorite candidates, but you can use the following Web sites to learn how they cast their ballots and the results of the elections they participated in:
• Historical Election Results
http://www.archives.gov/federal_register/electoral_college/votes/index.html
• History of Presidential Elections
http://www.multied.com/elections
(This site is ad-heavy, so get ready for some flashing banners when you click on the links.)
• How Voting Methods Have Changed
http://americanhistory.si.edu/vote
• Pennsylvania Election Statistics
http://wilkes-fs1.wilkes.edu/~hcox
• US Elections Research Guide
http://gethelp.library.upenn.edu/guides/polisci/elections.html
• US House of Representatives Office of the Clerk Election Statistics
http://clerk.house.gov/members/electionInfo/elections.html
• US Presidential Election Maps: 1860-1996
http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/collections/stats/elections/maps
Land Yourself in the Land of Lincoln
If you think you're related to Honest Abe, stop by the brand-new Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield, Ill. Its holdings include nearly 1,500 manuscripts that the Great Emancipator wrote or signed; his family artifacts; 900 Civil War
diaries; and the Lincoln Legal Papers Project, which documents cases he tried during his legal career.
Opened Oct. 14, the library (shown) also is home to the Illinois State Historical Library, which formerly was squeezed into the Old State Capitol basement. The new building features lockable offices for researchers, a reading room with data hookups for
laptops,
classrooms, a lecture hall and microfilm readers. Eventually, visitors will be able to download and e-mail microfilm images. A Lincoln presidential museum will open next door to the library in the spring, and the nearby Union Station, a train depot built
in 1898, is slated to become a visitor center for the complex.
Visit the library's Web site, http://www.alincoln-library.com, for loads of Lincoln lore. For example, one article points out that the 16th president, known for his wit, is often misquoted. The most famous
line falsely attributed to him? "You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time."
Library image courtesy of the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency.
No Strings Attached
Having trouble tracking down those elusive ancestors? In this biweekly, Web-exclusive column, contributing editor Nancy Hendrickson points to new and helpful ways to do your computer-related genealogy research. This week, she outlines the advantages of
going wireless. Read more at http://www.familytreemagazine.com/ancestornews/current.html.
Hendrickson is a family historian, freelance writer and the author of the book Finding Your Roots Online, on sale now at http://www.familytreemagazine.com/store/display.asp?id=70583.
Browse the archive of her AncestorNews columns at http://www.familytreemagazine.com/ancestornews/previous.html.
Timely Advice
This week's tip comes from Emily Anne Croom:
Your ancestors were real people who experienced life in the context of their families and communities. To see them in this context, try creating timelines of their lives. This also can help you plan your research by showing at a glance what information
is missing and where you could turn next.
Read Croom's instructions for creating ancestral timelines in the December 2004 Family Tree Magazine. It's on newsstands now, or you can purchase it at http://www.familytreemagazine.com/magazine_dec04.asp.
Do you have a great idea for discovering, preserving or
celebrating family history? E-mail us your tip at
ftmnews-editor@fwpubs.com with "TIP OF THE WEEK"
in the subject line. If we publish it, you'll win a free
copy of The Unpuzzling Your Past Workbook (Betterway Books, $15.99), available for purchase at http://www.familytreemagazine.com/store/display.asp?id=70327.
Be first to check out these new articles on our Web site:
• Adversarial Relationship
http://www.familytreemagazine.com/articles/dec04/familyties.asp
The clans of John Kerry and George W. Bush are quite well connected—to each other. Find out how this year's presidential candidates can call each other cousins.
• Living History
http://www.familytreemagazine.com/articles/dec04/livinghistory.asp
Celebrate your heritage and relive history at one of these five great holiday fetes.
• Preserving Memories: Heritage Cookbook
http://www.familytreemagazine.com/articles/dec04/cookbook.asp
Use our guide to create an heirloom-worthy heritage cookbook.
• Ship Top Shape
http://www.familytreemagazine.com/articles/oct04/shipshape.asp
Got German roots? We've got a hot tip on finding Colonial-era German immigrants.
Past and President
Q. I'm curious about how quickly the so-called genealogies come out when we have a new president, and how they nearly always show connections to European royalty. Movie stars often are portrayed this way, too. Can these pedigrees be
true? How are they compiled so quickly and why do they invariably display famous relationships?
A. Just as newspapers prepare obituaries of aging celebrities for use at a moment's notice, genealogists ready family trees of presidential candidates for release as the race to the White House heats up.
Political junkies, celebrity-philes and royal watchers also trace and publish famous pedigrees. Like any research, the reliability depends on the genealogist's sources and how well she connected the dots.
Exponential math is one reason presidential genealogies show so many notable figures. Everyone has four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, 16 great-great-grandparents and so on. Add up 10 generations, and that's 1,024 ancestors—just think of
all the collateral relatives (cousins, aunts, uncles). Odds are, any given tree has a few well-known members among the average Joes. As noted in the December 2004 Family Tree Magazine (on newsstands
now), 100 million Americans are related to presidents.
Then there's luck. Despite American ideals about equal opportunity, almost all US chief executives boast prestigious backgrounds. A wealthy, well-connected family is practically a presidential prerequisite, especially in these times of $500-a-plate fundraisers
and million-dollar campaign coffers. Most presidential families—including those of 2004 incumbent George W. Bush and his opponent, John Kerry—are descendants of early English immigrants (that's where links to royalty come in). Americans with New
England ancestry likely are related to presidents; Quaker and Southern roots also are advantageous.
Families of German or Scots-Irish immigrants, on the other hand, have a slim chance of being connected to presidents. That's because more-recent immigrants usually left their homelands to escape overwhelming poverty, and their families have had less time
to establish themselves in the United States.
—Diane Haddad
Diane Haddad is editor of the Family Tree Magazine E-Mail Update. See the December 2004 Family Tree Magazine for help finding presidents in your past.
Read more Q&A with the experts at
http://www.familytreemagazine.com/nowwhatonline/previous.html.
Trends of Tomorrow
Expert photo historian Maureen A. Taylor helps readers analyze old family pictures in her Web-exclusive column Identifying Family Photographs. This week, she offers a glimpse of photography's future.
http://www.familytreemagazine.com/photos/current.htm.
If you have a family photo mystery for Taylor to solve, check out our Submission Guidelines at http://www.familytreemagazine.com/photos/photohelp.htm.
Kingwood, Texas
Emily Anne Croom
Nov. 8
Humble Area Genealogical Society
Topic:
- Timely Tools for Genealogists
Contact J.R. Hollingsworth at America1@hal-pc.org.
Lake Charles, La.
Emily Anne Croom
Nov. 20
Southwest Louisiana Genealogical Society
Topics:
- Timely Tools for Genealogists: Using Timelines
- You're Known by the Company You Keep: Cluster Genealogy, an Essential Tool in Research
Contact Pat Huffaker at phuffaker@xspedius.net.
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New
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RootsMagic Genealogy Software - "An excellent choice for any genealogist" says Family
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