For %%emailaddr%% Aug. 17, 2006 How excited is everyone about going to Boston for the Federation of Genealogical Societies conference Aug. 30-Sept. 2? If you'll be there, visit Family Tree Magazine editors at booth #306 and pick up free stuff, including article indexes for 2000 through 2005, our list of the 101 Best Web Sites for 2006 and the October 2006 Family Tree Magazine (you’ll be among the first to see it). We'll also be running a subscription/renewal special, and people who subscribe or renew at the show are eligible to win six issues free, plus genealogy how-to books from Family Tree Books. (E-mail Update newsletter readers: If you subscribe or renew at the show AND bring in a printout of this newsletter, you'll get two chances to win!) For those who also plan to take in Beantown sites, the Freedom Trail (http://www.thefreedomtrail.org) is a great place to start. And to ease your journey, keep up with the Transportation Security Administration's latest carry-on luggage rules at http://www.tsa.gov/travelers/airtravel/prohibited/new-items.shtm. —Diane Haddad, Newsletter Editor ftmnews-editor@fwpubs.com P.S. Make sure you don't miss a single issue of your E-mail Update! Add our address (familytree-newsletter@fwpubs.com) to your email-address book—your software will recognize the Update as an e-mail you want to read.   Big Time On a Mission All-Access Pass AncestorNews: Ancestors in Print Tip of the Week: Start With a Bang Worthwhile Web Sites Identifying Family Photographs: Neighborly Advice Speakers' Schedule Advertiser Special Offers Big Time In two weeks, Boston will be a veritable hotbed of genealogical fervor as researchers descend upon Beantown for the Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS; http://www.fgs.org) conference Aug. 30-Sept. 2 at the Hynes Convention Center in the Back Bay. Organizers capitalized on Boston’s history and location to supersize the show with 350 classes, workshops and seminars by speakers from the United States, Canada, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland and England. Offerings include sessions on researching in international records, led by archivists who work in foreign repositories. Two exhibit halls, which open Thursday, will reflect Boston’s ethnic heritage with an Irish booksellers, professional researchers, genealogical organizations and tourism representatives. Also new is the Ancestor Road Show, a program popular at other recent conferences, which lets attendees consult with Association of Professional Genealogists experts on brick-wall problems. See the conference blog at http://fgsconference.blogspot.com for more news on special events. FGS conference registration costs $185 for all four days; daily admittance sets you back $95 per day. Plan time for off-site research, too: The conference is just blocks from host New England Historic Genealogical Society (http://www.newenglandancestors.org), and the Massachusetts Historical Society (http://masshist.org) and Boston Public Library (http://bpl.org) aren’t far.   On a Mission Until now, the baptism, marriage and burial registers of California’s historic Spanish missions were inaccessible to all but a few scholars. The original records, scattered in archives across California, are too brittle to handle, and microfilm copies are poor quality and hard to find. Interpreting the registers’ 18th-century Spanish script demands rare skills. Now you can get a peek at these registers thanks to the San Marino, Calif.-based Huntington Library's Early California Population Project (http://www.huntington.org/Information/ECPPmain.htm). This online database contains transcribed information on the Indians, soldiers and settlers of Alta California (roughly, where the state of California is now) from 1769 to 1850. Records include more than 101,000 baptisms, 27,000 marriages, and 71,000 burials from 21 missions plus the Los Angeles Plaza Church and Santa Barbara Presidio. Searching isn’t the most intuitive. First, select a record type (baptism, burial or marriage). You can search on many criteria, such as name, age, religion and spouse’s name: Use the table’s pull-down menus to select a criterion, then enter the information in the corresponding field. For example, select Ego’s Native Name (Ego being the subject of the record) and enter a first name, using a % as a wildcard to replace a character you don’t know. Choose a Clause—and, or, or not—for each criterion to run a Boolean search. Click on a match and you’ll get a form showing whatever details were in the record, such as date of the sacrament, recipient’s place of origin, spouse’s name and a coded mission name. See the search tips to unscramble the code and peruse other helpful information about each mission's records.   All-Access Pass Raise your hand if you like free stuff! Raise your other hand if you’ve done a Web search and finally found a promising match, only to be stymied by a subscription fee requirement. Congoo (http://www.congoo.com), a new site still in beta testing, offers a free, downloadable NetPass that lets you access up to 15 premium articles a month from 250-plus (and growing) newspapers and other sources. The Chicago Tribune, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Kansas City Star and Encyclopedia Britannica are on the list; see the whole shebang at http://www.congoo.com/congoosource.aspx. You visit some sites directly; for others, you’ll need to search through Congoo. Unfortunately, the NetPass only works with Windows, and you’ll need Internet Explorer or Firefox.   Ancestors in Print If you can find a book with stories about the early days of a place where your ancestor lived, it's possible you can find mention of your ancestor in print. To date, I've found three realted to my family: the Border Wars of Texas by James DeShields, one about Indian raids in Lincoln County, Kan., and stories from Fisher's River, NC. Could old books with information about about your family be somewhere out there? Learn how to find out at http://www.familytreemagazine.com/ancestornews/current.html. Nancy 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. Start With a Bang This tip on writing your family history comes from the August 2006 Family Tree Magazine, available now on newsstands and at http://www.familytreemagazine.com/ mags/display.asp?id=1781. To find the best starting point for your written family history, look for a dramatic point in your family's chronology. But don't just aim to open with drama: Select a scene that also emphasizes the focus or theme of your overall story. If you're writing about your ancestors' struggle to survive in 19th-century Sweden, starting with the winter their only cow starved to eath would arouse readers' curiosity and dramatize your central theme. If that's not also the chronological start of your story, don't worry—you can always "flash back" to the beginning ("Sven Magnusson was born...") once you've mesmerized your readers. 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 Plugging Into Your Past (Family Tree Books, $19.99) by Rick Crume, also available for purchase online at http://www.familytreemagazine.com/store/display.asp?id=70624. Overwhelmed by the number of family history-related Web sites popping up? FamilyTreeMagazine.com sorts through them all—whew!—to bring you only the very best. We recently recommended the following as Sites of the Week: • Caribbean Genealogical Research http://www.candoo.com/genresources/index.html Find resources for Antigua, Antilles, Bahamas, Barbados, Bermuda, Cuba, Haiti, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Tobago and others. • African American Genealogical Society of Northern California http://www.aagsnc.org This site offers a Genealogical Resources Directory of nearly 1,000 categorized links, announcements and news, featured Web sites, helpful databases and articles. • Librarians' Index to the Internet http://lii.org Take advantage of this searchable, annotated subject directory of 7,500-plus librarian-approved resources selected and evaluated for their usefulness. • List of Fraternal Organizations http://www.exonumia.com/art/society.htm Look up secret societies, fraternal organizations and fraternal orders by abbreviation, motto or slogan in this in-depth list (use the control-F keyboard shortcut for quick searching). Neighborly Advice Is this Beth Maxwell's great-uncle William Taylor (born in 1861) or her grandmother’s neighbor Jim Hibble (born in 1870)? Click http://www.familytreemagazine.com/ photos/current.htm to research along with me. And, if you're going to be at the FGS conference in Boston, meet me at my Photo Detective booth (#1111) to learn more about submitting photos for free analysis in this column. Expert photo historian Maureen A. Taylor, author of Discovering Your Ancestry Through Family Photographs, second edition (Family Tree Books, $24.99 from http://www.familytreemagazine.com/store/ display.asp?id=70677), helps readers analyze old family pictures in her Web-exclusive column Identifying Family Photographs. If you have a family photo mystery for Taylor to solve, check out our Submission Guidelines at http://www.familytreemagazine.com/photos/photohelp.htm. Boston, Mass. Aug. 30-Sept. 2 Federation of Genealogical Societies Conference James M. Beidler Topics: Find Your Society's Sense of Place "Duplicate" Documents That Aren't the Same Maureen A. Taylor Topics: Workshop: Identifying and Preserving Family Photographs   More than Scraps and Paste: Scrapbooks and Family History Using Photographs as a Genealogical Document Is My Pet Frog Part of My Family? Children and Genealogy in the Classroom Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak Genealogical Speakers Guild/International Society of Family History Writers and Editors Luncheon Topic: Finding Your Voice: Speaking and Writing in the Genealogical World For more information, see www.fgs.org/2006conf/FGS-2006.htm. RootsMagic Genealogy Software - "An excellent choice for any genealogist" says Family Tree Magazine. Get a free trial copy at http://www.RootsMagic.com GenSmarts Automated Genealogy Research - finds missed research opportunities.  Free trial at http://www.GenSmarts.com/ftmagDeals.asp Get Family Tree Magazine back issues at http://www.familytreemagazine.com/mags. Explore Family Tree Magazine E-mail Update past issues at http://www.familytreemagazine.com/newsletter/archive.html. Get free Family Tree News Service articles for your genealogy newsletter or Web site at http://www.familytreemagazine.com/ftns-subscribe.asp. Sponsor This Newsletter For information on sponsoring this newsletter or to receive a rate card, e-mail kworkman@longshoremedia.com You have received this e-mail because you expressed interest in receiving updates about genealogy and genealogy products from Family Tree Magazine and Betterway Books by e-mail. Thanks for your subscription! 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