Blog Some Genealogy

Public Name Profiler

This interesting new website above was recently brought to my attention by Ken Graves of The Graves Family. Using lists of data from electoral rolls and phone directories, eight million surnames are plotted worldwide. 300 million people in 26 countries, are covered, showing the origins of names and the various countries where families bearing the surnames have moved. The site also reveals which of five million first names (forenames) are used most frequently for the various surnames and which regions and cities of the world are the most popular for each surname.

Check out your own surname: Public Name Profiler

FAMILYPEDIA

I have just learned of FAMILYPEDIA, described as THE GENEALOGY WIKI.

Instructions on getting started and using the wiki site, how to communicate with others and general help is provided on the site. It describes itself:

“This is a place where you can create articles about your ancestors, and easily link them to other articles about where and when they lived. You can work wholly within this wiki, or you can link your articles to sites on the world wide web. And because this is a wiki format, you can work collaboratively with others to create a network of articles about your ancestors and about those they lived and worked with—or simply about people you find interesting. As this site grows it is our hope that we will be able to gradually link our ancestors into a network that goes far beyond the simple nuts and bolts of who lived where and when, and a list of begats.

The focus of this site is on capturing the details of the lives of our ancestors, both those historically significant people and the everyday people usually not listed in encyclopaedias, histories, or even “people’s histories”. Along the way, it is our hope that the site will also provide information about the historical and social context that our ancestors found themselves within. Finally, this site aspires to be truly global, with active contributors and information from multiple cultures and all four Hemispheres.”

There is an interesting feature in The Wall Street Journal Online, 12 October 2007, about Maureen Taylor, who is a kind of forensic genealogist. She is known as the “photo detective.” Here is the link: http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB119214969916756801.html
Thanks Kathy!

Really Useful Social Security Information

Here is information that a curious American genealogist will find quite interesting and it is published by our own Social Security Administration. Prospective grandparents and parents-to-be can benefit from this too. If you don’t want to burden your newborn with the same first name that one third of the other girls or boys will be wearing on their first day in kindergarten, check out the most popular names for 2006.

1 Jacob
2 Michael
3 Joshua
4 Ethan
5 Matthew
6 Daniel
7 Christopher
8 Andrew
9 Anthony
10 William

1 Emily
2 Emma
3 Madison
4 Isabella
5 Ava
6 Abigail
7 Olivia
8 Hannah
9 Sophia
10 Samantha
(Here’s the site: www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/.)

If you want to spare your child the torment of being one of the forty or so Matthews or Madisons being called across the stage of First Grade Graduation, pick one of these old-timers (except for “Emma”) from great granny’s days, the 1880s:

1 John - Mary
2 William - Anna
3 James - Emma
4 Charles - Elizabeth
5 George - Minnie
6 Frank - Margaret
7 Joseph - Ida
8 Thomas - Alice
9 Henry - Bertha
10 Robert - Sarah
(www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/)

The year that I was born, almost all the girl babies were named Mary, Barbara, Patricia, Carol, and Linda. I wasn’t one of the bunch. In fact, I wasn’t even in the top 100, and for that I owe my parents. The boys were named James, Robert, John, William, and Richard.

It seems that none of the GEEK favorites made the Social Security cut. Whatever happened to Aiden, Caden, Braden and Jayden?

Kentucky death records are now searchable on line: http://kyvitals.com/vis/search/search.php.

Kentucy researchers have been in the forefront of Internet genealogy almost since the beginning. KYGenWeb has a web site for every county in the state of Kentucky with much helpful information.

The death records of Utah from the years 1905-1954, are now available on line, along with some other state and county records. Entering the surname in the search box seems to work well, giving an abstract plus a link to the actual image of the original certificate. Great work Utah and thanks!
Utah State Archives and Records

GENEALOGICAL & HISTORICAL RECORDS OF PREBLE COUNTY, OHIO are now on line with a great search feature.

This project is a true labor of love. The idea was conceived by Susan Kendall, Library Director; Polly Kronenberger, Webmaster; and the Preble County Room staff. Our Senior Aide, Judy Kennedy spent countless hours scanning court records. Polly developed an Access form so that Judy and the Preble County Room staff could create index to the images. Polly then used Cold Fusion to merge the index and scanned images. The result, a researcher’s dream. Not only an index to but also the actual scanned images of genealogical and historical records. The project is on-going.

This looks like a great site to do “free” research: SassyTazzy’s Online Genealogical Research Library

Welcome to my free online genealogy research library!

This site contains over 4,000 pages of genealogy transcriptions, extracts, images & a database. Including Bible records; birth, death and marriage certificates and records; deeds and land records; wills and probate records; manuscripts and documents; research notes; letters and correspondence; obituaries and other types of printed material; census and tax records; headstone inscriptions and cemetery records; Revolutionary war and Civil war records; old photographs; genealogy database; etc.

Here is another good site: Not Just Links - Genealogy Sites with Real Content