VGS Latest News & Tips: 7 Apr 2015

Meeting Reminder - Tomorrow, April 8:

Irish Genealogy SIG Meeting

10 AM in the Osceola Room at the Chula Vista Recreation Center

Who Do You Think You Are?

Discover your roots like a celebrity, plus have a red carpet experience! Win a trip for two to your family's homeland and access to a personal genealogical historian provided by Ancestry. You'll also get star treatment at a Hollywood movie premiere.

Grand Prize:

• Trip for two to your ancestral homeland and $2,000 in spending money
• Personal historian to guide you on your journey
• Trip for two to Hollywood to attend a movie premiere
• Ancestry products including a DNA Kit and World Explorer membership
• Plus weekly prizes!   Enter to win...

FamilySearch has added to its Collections:

More than 18.3 million indexed records and images for England, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States have been added to FamilySearch. One new browsable image collection that was added is the Pennsylvania, Grand Army of the Republic Membership Records, 1866-1956. This collection consists of membership records of the Pennsylvania Department Grand Army of the Republic, an organization of Union army and navy veterans of the Civil War. The collection consists of registers, lists, minute books, account books and descriptive books of local posts (chapters). The descriptive books include town of residence, military unit, date of enlistment, date of discharge, age and birthplace. There are currently 2919 images in 9 boxes of information. Boxes 2 through 8, box 9-10 and box 13. At this point you don't know what is in any box. If you go to Box 13 and click on images image 2 through 4 you will find an explanation of what is in all the boxes. There are also descriptions of what is in boxes 1, 11 and 12 but apparently they have not as yet been digitized.

Other collections of note are:
Texas, County Marriage Records, 1837-1977 a collection of various types of marriage records (registers, licenses, intentions to marry, etc.) from 183 of the 254 counties in Texas. 1.3 million records with 464,000 images.

United Kingdom, World War I Service Records, 1914-1920: This collection contains World War I service records from 1914-1920. It contains records from two publications in the National Archives: WO 363 (War Office: Soldiers' Documents, First World War "Burnt Documents") and WO 364 (War Office: Documents from Pension Claims, First World War). Index only, no images.

England, Westminster Rate Books, 1634-1900: This collection contains rate books from various parishes in Westminster City from 1634-1900. The rate books were an assessment of tax that was owed and are an excellent census substitute. They are arranged by street and usually contain the head of household, owner, street address, rate owed, and event date. This collection was originally filmed at the Westminster City Archives and the index was created by FindMyPast.com. You must be at a Family History Center or a member of FindMyPast to see the image.

FTDNA Chromosome Browser:

Dear Myrtle and Angie Bush
This is a video that explains the benefits of a "chromosome broswer" using the Family Tree DNA website in this episode of  Ol' Myrt's Demystifying My DNA Tests. It's fascinating to see which segments are in common and how much (actually quite little) DNA is inherited from a specific grandparent or great-grandparents. For this discussion, we used Angie's daughter's DNA results, since that dear little girl is young enough to have her parents, grandparents and great-grandparents tested.
View video...

This Day In History:
7 April 1999: World Trade Organization rules in favor of the United States and its long-running trade dispute with the European Union over bananas.

7 April 1983: During STS-6, astronauts Story Musgrave and Don Peterson perform the 1st space shuttle spacewalk.

7 April 1940: Booker T. Washington becomes the 1st African-American to be depicted on a United States postage stamp.