Military Maneuvers
After being closed all summer, the US Army Heritage and Education Center's Military History Institute (USAMHI, http://www.carlisle.army.mil/ahec) in Carlisle, Pa., reopened Monday in its new 66,000-square-foot facility. The official grand opening is Sept. 24, but you already can go there to research weekdays from 9 a.m. to 4:45 p.m.
As the Army's central repository for historical materials, USAMHI holds 11 million items, including books, magazines and journals, military publications, diaries, letters, maps, memoirs, oral histories, photographs and classified documents. Its collection of Civil War materials is among the best in the country.
The new facility, with an electronic database system and preservation-friendly environmental controls, is a far cry from the archives' previous home in an Army War College former classroom building.
Additional Army Heritage and Education Center construction plans call for a museum, visitor center and conservation labs for USAMHI materials.
Stern's List
Researchers now can search online for Jewish ancestors (and gentiles who married Jews) whose names are recorded in Rabbi Malcolm H. Stern's First American Jewish Families.
Last published in 1991 and now out of print, Stern's book contains family trees of Jewish families that arrived in the United States between 1654 and 1838. The American Jewish Archives has posted the entire text online at http://www.americanjewisharchives.org/aja/FAJF/intro.html, and added an index you can browse or search by last name and optional first name. Click on a name in the search results to see a digital image of the page on which the person appears. (Images are in PDF format; to view them, you'll need the free Adobe Reader, available from http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html.) You'll find birth, marriage and death information, dates of arrival in the United States and other data.
Your ancestor could appear in her own family tree, a spouse's, the Addenda et Corrigenda pages or the Update section—read the How to Use This Resource page to make your searching simpler and more accurate.
Fighting Obsolescence
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA, http://www.archives.gov), faced with the growing problem of how to store the government's zillions of electronic records in an obsolescence-proof format, announced Tuesday that technology and communication systems companies Lockheed Martin and Harris Corp. will duke it out for a chance to solve that dilemma.
As technology advances, today's CD-ROMs, Zip disks and other means of data storage may go the way of the Betamax videocassette tape and eight-track audiotape. NARA's challenge for Lockheed Martin (http://www.lockheedmartin.com) and Harris (http://www.harris.com) is to design the Electronic Records Archive (ERA)—a system that will permanently store information so it's retrievable with whatever hardware and software are available.
After a yearlong, $20.1 million ERA design competition, NARA will select one of the players to build the electronic archive. According to NARA, the contract is potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars for the winner.
The ERA system promises to make finding records easy for the public and government officials, and to make delivering those records easy for NARA. "ERA will make electronic information available virtually anytime, anywhere," says National Archivist John Carlin. "We are not just talking about the information contained in government records. We will start with government records, but there is no end to where ERA can take us."
Archivist's Resignation Sparks Controversy
National archivist John Carlin, who announced his intent to resign last December, now says that the Bush administration asked him to step down. Carlin runs the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA, http://www.archives.gov), which controls public access to federal records—including genealogical staples such as censuses and military personnel files, as well as presidential papers.
According to the National Archives and Records Administration Act of 1984, which made the National Archives independent from the federal government, the president must give Congress a reason for removing a national archivist.
In a July 21 letter responding to questions from Senate Governmental Affairs Committee member Carl Levin, Carlin wrote, "The Administration initially approached me. On Friday, December 5, 2003, the Counsel to the President [Alberto Gonzales] called me and told me the Administration would like to appoint a new Archivist. I asked why and there was no reason given."
Carlin wrote to President Bush on Dec. 19, saying he'd resign when a new national archivist was sworn in.
Bush's nominee, Allen Weinstein, a senior advisor at Maryland's International Foundation for Elections Systems, told the Governmental Affairs Committee during its July 22 confirmation hearing that the president's staff first approached him about a possible nomination last September. He began completing job-related paperwork in late November. Levin, a Democrat from Michigan, asked the committee to request that the Bush Administration explain its request for Carlin's resignation.
The White House says only that Carlin issued an intent to resign, and the president is obligated to find a replacement.
Some critics say Bush wants to keep the records of his father, former president George H.W. Bush, from being made public in January 2005. Under the Presidential Records Act of 1978, presidential records are released 12 years after a president's term ends. Others think Bush is protecting his own records.
Weinstein, a registered Democrat, testified during the hearing that no one had instructed him to keep any records secret. He also said he'd defend Bush's Executive Order 13233 against legal challenges. The order, issued Nov. 1, 2001, allows a sitting president to keep a past president's records from being made public.
Although presidential papers are at issue, some genealogists are concerned that the controversy is the latest development in a trend toward restricted access to public records. On the other hand, historian and The Nation magazine contributor Jon Wiener predicts NARA's change in command will affect only presidential records, not the ones genealogists typically use.
The Society of American Archivists, along with 28 other historical and archival records societies, issued a statement refusing to endorse Weinstein because Bush didn't consult with professional organizations before nominating him. (See the statement at http://www.archivists.org/statements/weinstein.asp.) Congressional reports accompanying the 1984 National Archives act specify the necessity of such consultation to ensure a nonpartisan choice.
DNA Deliberation
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 considers genealogy-DNA testing. 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.
E-Mail Essentials
This week's tip comes from Teresa Brewer Delikat of Breinigsville, Pa.:
"My e-mail program allows me to add a company name for each of the contacts in my address book. I use this field instead to record the surname of the person's ancestor to help me remember his or her lineage.
"I've also used my e-mail software to create contact lists of people researching the same surname. Then I can easily send new research finds to all of them at once."
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 Family Tree Guidebook to Europe, available at http://www.familytreemagazine.com/store/display.asp?id=70625.
Be first to check out these new articles on our Web site:
The Joys of GEDCOMs
Q. How do I get a GEDCOM file? Do I have to buy it, download it or what?
A. GEDCOM is a file format that allows genealogists to swap information about their ancestors. It's designed to be compatible with all genealogy software, so no matter what program you use, you can open files that were created with different software—and other researchers can open your files.
You don't have to buy a GEDCOM, since it's a file format. Just as your word processing files end in the extension .DOC; GEDCOMs end in .GED. You do need a genealogy software program to create or open a GEDCOM. You can't use GEDCOMs in other types of software, such as word processors (Microsoft Word), Web browsers (Internet Explorer) or spreadsheet programs (Excel).
You can get a GEDCOM file a couple of ways:
1) Create a GEDCOM file of your family information using your genealogy software (this is the only way to get a GEDCOM file from your own family tree information). The process is easy, but it varies slightly depending on your software. In general, though, you'd just open up the program and pick Export GEDCOM (or a similar command) from a menu. Then you'd click through a few dialog boxes that will ask you questions or give you instructions.
2) Download someone else's GEDCOM file from a Web site. Sites such as RootsWeb WorldConnect (http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com) and GenCircles (http://www.gencircles.com) allow genealogists to share their GEDCOM family tree files with one another. You can search these sites to find a match for one of your ancestors, and if you do, you can download the whole GEDCOM—with all the family information that the creator included in his or her file; not just on the one matching person—to your computer. Then you can use your genealogy software to incorporate the information from that GEDCOM file into your own family file.
These Web sites just provide common forums for researchers to exchange information. You can share a GEDCOM file as you would any other computer file—by, for example, saving it to a disk or e-mailing it as an attachment.
For more answers to your basic and not-so-basic genealogy research questions, see the September 2004 Trace Your Family History, a special issue of Family Tree Magazine. To learn how you can win a free copy, visit http://www.familytreemagazine.com before Aug. 9. Or purchase it now at http://www.familytreemagazine.com/mags.
—Allison Stacy
Allison Stacy is editor of Family Tree Magazine.
Read more Q&A with the experts at
http://www.familytreemagazine.com/nowwhatonline/previous.html.
The Little Prince
Expert photo historian Maureen A. Taylor helps readers analyze old family pictures in her Web-exclusive column Identifying Family Photographs. This week, she chronicles
her attempt to reunite a "lost" photo with the family of the original owner.
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.
Lancaster, Texas
Emily Anne Croom
Aug. 10
Lancaster Genealogical Society
- Topic: You're Known by the Company You Keep: Cluster Genealogy, an Essential Tool in Research
Contact Lela Evans at the Lancaster Library, (972) 227-1080 Ext. 20.
West Chester, Ohio
Allison Stacy
Aug. 17
Barnes & Noble genealogy group
- Topic: Nine Steps for Writing Your Family History
Contact Linda Keller at CRM2170@bn.com or (513) 755-2258.
Genealogy Hotel Rates in Salt Lake-You will love the genealogy rates at the Holiday Inn-Downtown along with the free shuttles to & from the Family History Library. www.holiday-inn.com/slc-downtown
PLANTAGENET ANCESTRY: A Study in Colonial and Medieval Ancestry, by Douglas Richardson, is the best book on royal genealogy in years. See for yourself at: http://www.genealogical.com/item_detail.asp?afid=&ID=4894
Did your paper trail end? Are you up against a brick wall? Let genetic genealogy help you. Family Tree DNA can help you find out if you are related to another family with the same or a different surname. http://www.familytreedna.com
UNIQUE SCANDINAVIAN HERITAGE TOURS Visit ancestral villages, parish churches, archives, connect with family. Fluent guides and genealogy experts included. www.scandgen.com
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 - "amazingly easy and convenient" says Family Tree Magazine. Get a free trial copy at http://www.GenSmarts.com
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