VGS Latest News & Tips: 9 November 2016

Today: November 9, 2016

Irish Genealogy SIG Meeting

10:00 AM in the Osceola Room at the Chula Vista Recreation Center

Tomorrow: November 10, 2016

German Genealogy SIG Meeting

9:30 AM in the Reliance Room at the Late Miona Recreation Center

Topic: Member stories of "Big Breakthroughs" or "Climbing Brickwalls"

New York Public Library Digitizes 137 Years of New York City Directories:

NYPL
"New York Public Library is digitizing its collection of New York City Directories, 1786 through 1922/3, serving them free through the NYPL Digital Collections portal. The first batch—1849/50 through 1923—have already been scanned, and the 1786–1848/9 directories are right now being scanned. The whole collection will be going online over the coming months."
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Quotes from the Civil War: A Fun Quiz:

GenealogyBank
"Introduction: In this article, Mary Harrell-Sesniak searches old newspapers to place some Civil War quotes into a fuller context. Mary is a genealogist, author and editor with a strong technology background.
Much has been written about the Civil War and its impact on the United States – and many have quoted the words of the great leaders of the time. But sometimes those leaders’ words are not put into the context of the speech itself."
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DNA Matching is Now Out of Beta:

My Heritage
"DNA Matching in Beta mode was a good start, but it wasn’t perfect. There were many false positives in our Beta release and the initial accuracy was not on a level that we were satisfied with. We also received feedback from the community about missing features and functionality.
As the DNA Matching leaves Beta mode now, all matches have been re-calculated. What this means is that previous matches that are now considered as false positives have been removed, and matches that have had a change in their parameters or predicted relationships are denoted as updated."
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Amaze Yourself!

My Heritage
"Locked inside your DNA is your unique ethnic makeup, the history of your ancestors, and a web of close and distant relatives waiting to be found. With a quick swab of your cheek, the test determines your ethnic origins and finds your relatives. Uncover your ethnic origins and find new relatives with our simple DNA test. Now on sale for $79.00
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Ancestry V1 vs V2 – Shared DNA and Relationship Predictions:

DNAeXplained
"I had previously tested on the V1 chip, and recently tested on the V2 chip to see how many of the same matches were present on both match lists. The results were better than expected. "
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How to Make Siri Announce Who’s Calling on iOS 10:

How-to-Geek
"Say you’re out for a jog. You’re in the zone, you’ve got your earbuds in, you’re listening to your tunes, your iPhone is strapped to your arm for safe keeping, and then someone calls you. Who is it, and more importantly, should you even answer?"
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This Day In History: 9 November

1848: The first U.S. Post Office in California opens in San Francisco at Clay and Pike streets. At the time there are only about 15,000 European settlers living in the state.
1906: President Theodore Roosevelt leaves Washington, D.C., for a 17-day trip to Panama and Puerto Rico, becoming the first president to make an official visit outside of the United States.
1938: Nazis kill 35 Jews, arrest thousands and destroy Jewish synagogues, homes and stores throughout Germany. The event becomes known as Kristallnacht, the night of the shattered glass.
1886 Birthday: Ed Wynn, actor and comedian.

State Timelines:

Even though it is hard to tell what made people move or disappear, these are just a few possibilities.
Iowa:
1838: Iowa Territory organized
1840's: Dutch began to arrive, Cedar Rapids settled and Fort Atkinson built
1846: Mormons began to cross the region and admitted to the Union