VGS Latest News & Tips: 28 September 2015

New FamilySearch Collections Update: Week of September 21, 2015:
Dick Eastman: eogn.com
"Check out the Pennsylvania Civil Marriages 1677-1950, Ohio County Marriages 1789-2013, and Virginia Richmond City Birth Index 1870-1912 additions this week. Millions more records were also added for Italy (Potenza, Rieti, and Trapani) and Colombia. Search for these new records and more by selecting the links below."
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Genealogy Humor: 7 Funny and Odd Inheritances & Bequests:
GenealogyBank
"Writers and editors love to feature oddities, and genealogists love to read them – so go ahead and enjoy these odd and unusual inheritances and bequests."
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How to use Google Photos for Genealogy:
The Cousin Detective
"To me, the single most important thing in the genealogical detective world is finding and sharing photos.  All the hard work of piecing the giant puzzle together really pays off when you find a distant cousin who has photographs of your relatives -- especially really old ones that you'd never dreamed of finding."
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Patrons split on how fast libraries should move into the digital age:
The Washington Post
"The word “library” conjures up a very specific image for most people: rows upon rows of books. But as libraries evolve into a place for more digital research, and teach a different kind of literacy, how long should the bookshelves stay?"
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Helps for Translating the Old German Typeface:
My Ancestors and Me
"As you search for your German ancestors there may be times when a search engine will find an ancestor's name in a newspaper which is printed in German. (Isn't OCR amazing?!) What happens when you know or suspect the article is about your ancestor but you can't read German? There's help if you're willing to patiently examine the letters and translate them."
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Mayflower 400 anniversary events planning visit to Plymouth:
Plymouth City Council:
"US Ambassador to the UK Matthew Barzun is visiting the city where the Mayflower set off on its historic voyage to the United States almost exactly 395 years ago. The Ambassador is visiting Plymouth over two days and will be meeting the leadership group responsible for planning the Mayflower 400 events for which Plymouth is the lead city in the UK."
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This Day In History: September 28
1607: Samuel de Champlain and his colonists return to France from Port Royal Nova Scotia.
1924: Three U.S. Army aircraft arrive in Seattle, Washington after completing a 22-day round-the-world flight.
1928: Sir Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin when he notices a bacteria-killing mold growing in his laboratory; it remained for Howard Florey and Ernst Chain to isolate the active ingredient, allowing the "miracle drug" to be developed in the 1940s.
1901 Birthday: Ed Sullivan, television host.

VGS Latest News & Tips: 20 Apr 2015

Meeting Reminder - Tomorrow, April 21:

Italian Genealogy SIG Meeting

1:00 PM in the Atlanta Room in the Savannah Center

Getting More From Your Autosomal DNA: Genetic Family Trees"

Origin Hunters
"For years, genealogists have been able to use Y-DNA to validate paternal pedigrees and sort surnames into family groups.  This has been a great advantage for the world of genealogy, but it has been restricted to men and paternal lines.  Autosomal DNA is more inclusive."
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Conquering William's DNA:

Origin Hunters
"One of my favorite aspects of y-DNA is that it’s used to prove or disprove that two men with the same last name are closely related. Two family lines with a similar surname can figure out if they have a common ancestor."
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Note: We have 5 male members of The VGS with the Williams surname.

Frustrated with Facebook? 5 Tips to Reclaim Your Sanity:

Briallyn Smith
"The real-world social implications of Facebook make it difficult to deal with frustrating online situations. Here are five tips to help you keep your Facebook feed drama-free."
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Free Historic Book Collection Online Hits 200,000th Milestone:

Familysearch.org
Imagine a free virtual online library of rare historic books from all over the world to help you discover rich, unknown details about the lives of your ancestors. What if the historic book collections held by significant public libraries and venerable societies were the sources of these contributed books? You’d have a dynamic, priceless online repository of some of the greatest hidden historic treasures predominantly unknown to man. International, and a growing host of partnering libraries and organizations and volunteers, have announced today that they’ve reached the milestone of publishing 200,000 historic volumes online for free at books.FamilySearch.org. The growing online collection, which began in 2007, is invaluable to genealogists and family historians in finding their ancestors.
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FamilySearch Adds More Than 2.3 Million Indexed Records and Images for the Czech Republic, Mexico, New Zealand, Ukraine, and the United States:

Familysearch.org
"Notable collection updates include 771,097 images from the New Zealand, Archives New Zealand, Probate Records, 1843–1998 collection; 417,808 indexed records and 417,808 images from the US, BillionGraves Index collection; and 411,325 indexed records from the Mexico, San Luis Potosí, Civil Registration, 1859–2000 collection."
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This Day in History:

1912: The Boston Red Sox played their first game at Fenway Park. They beat the N.Y. Highlanders (who in 1913 would become known as the Yankees) 7-6.
1902: Marie and Pierre Curie isolated radium.
1841: The first detective story, Edgar Allen Poe's "Murders in the Rue Morgue" was published.

VGS Latest News & Tips: 26 Mar 2015

Darned Posthumous Marriage:

We depend upon records to reveal the "truth" about our pasts. Yet sometimes records have anomalies. Read about such a case from ancestry insider.
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Enhancements to FamilySearch’s Personal Trees:

Robert Kehrer, senior product manager for search, recently announced enhancements to FamilySearch Genealogies, its personal tree feature previous called Community Trees. FamilySearch Genealogies are searched or submitted from https://familysearch.org/family-trees. To reach that page, click on Search and then on Genealogies.
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UK Mapped Out by Genetic Ancestry:

Finest-scale DNA survey of any country reveals historical migrations.
Ewen Cllaway writes "Researchers have found genetic signatures among Britons that betray their historical roots in particular locales of the United Kingdom, leading to the finest-scale map of genetic variation yet created. The analysis — which shows a snapshot of clusters of genetic variation in the late 1800s, when people were less likely to migrate far from their region of birth — reflects historical waves of migration by different populations into the island."
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FDA permits marketing of first direct-to-consumer genetic carrier test for Bloom Syndrome:

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today authorized for marketing 23andMe’s Bloom Syndrome carrier test, a direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic test to determine whether a healthy person has a variant in a gene that could lead to their offspring inheriting the serious disorder.
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