Enjoy a blast from the past with episode #10 featuring Steve Morse and his One-Step website. Then delight in Darius Gray, a genealogist and storyteller who provides tips on sharing your family history stories with your family, (recorded at #RootsTech 2013)

GEM: A Blast from the Past -Episode: # 10

Original Publish Date: May 01, 2007

GEM: Stephen Morse
On August 21, 2007 I attended a seminar sponsored by a local genealogical society. The speaker was Stephen P. Morse who is very well-known in the genealogy community for his ingenious database search tools available to everyone free from his website: www.stevemorse.org

It’s estimated that nearly 40% of Americans today have an ancestor who arrived in the United States at Ellis Island. I know I certainly do.

Well, ship’s passenger records are really exciting to find and to work with. If you have an ancestor who came through Ellis Island, you’re going to want to make it a priority to find their record.

Steve Morse, described to those of us at the seminar, the success and the frustrations that he encountered in trying to retrieve records from the ellisisland.org database.

Steve experienced much of the same frustration that we often do. However, he just happens to be a world renowned engineer. He holds electrical engineering degrees from three universities, which he put to good use when he designed the Intel 8086, the predecessor to today’s Pentium processor.

And being an amateur genealogist he put those skills to good use by developing the One-Step Ellis Island website to make those records easier to find. Since that time the One-Step site has really been expanded to include new search capabilities and an array of color-coded search forms.

Today Steve recommends use of his Gold Form that searches all New York passengers using enhanced search options. It uses the database at ellisisland.org but has its own search form and search engine that provides the enhanced features.

When you use the Ellis Island website you’ll most likely have to keep going back and revising and adding to your search to get what you need. But using the Steve’s Gold Form website, all the search criteria are there on one page for you to choose from and use. You’ll be using your search time much more effectively – and you know me, I want to get the most I can out of my research time.

The One-Step website started out as an aid for finding these ship passengers in the Ellis Island database. Shortly afterwards it was expanded to help with searching in the 1930 census. Over the years it has continued to evolve and today includes over 100 web-based tools divided into twelve separate categories. They range from genealogical searches to astronomical calculations. He even has a last-minute bidding form you can use for e-bay! If you listened to Episode 3 of the Genealogy Gems Podcast on Ebay, then you know that I was excited to hear that!

Please let other genealogists know about how much you enjoy the Genealogy Gems Podcast:
If you’re enjoying the show & have an itunes account, would you please do me a favor? Go to the Genealogy Gems Podcast listing < http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=250987403 > and leave a positive review. Thanks!

GEM: Interview with Genealogy Guru and Storyteller Darius Gray at RootsTech 2013

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Direct download: Episode_153.mp3
Category:podcasts -- posted at: 4:35 AM

Fri, 8 March 2013

Episode 152 - Interview with Dr. Turi King at Who Do You Think You Are? Live in London

Show Notes
Lisa Louise Cooke

I am back from speaking at the Who Do You Think You Are? Live conference in London, and I’ve brought back some gems for you for this episode which I’m excited about. I got to spend about a week in England and this time around got to do some touring with my friend Janet Hovorka owner of Family ChartMasters. We went to Windsor castle which I’ve always wanted to see, and it did not disappoint.

What windsor castle can teach us about family history. It’s all in the details!

The highlight for me was going to Jane Austen’s house in Chawton, Hampshire. I’m an Austenphile, and I soaked in nooks and crannies of the home where she lived with her sister Cassandra. It was fantastic seeing the little desk where she worked on her books like “Pride and Prejudice” and “Emma.” Janet and finished up the tour with tea at Cassandra’s Cup teashop across the street, where hundreds of china tea cups hang from the ceiling, and where I had the best bowl of tomato soup in my entire life!

Oh yeah, I was there for a genealogy conference. And yes, WDYTYA Live lived up to all expectations. Janet and I had a booth and I taught classes on Google Search and using your iPad and tablet for genealogy. The classes were sold out and people were lined up around the walls. The turn-out they get for this event is just incredible. I haven’t heard the final numbers, but word is it was well over 12,000 people over the three days.

So here’s my own genealogy story from the event. Now, if you’ve been listening to the podcast for a while then you may remember me telling you about my first trip to WDYTYA Live and how after one of my presentations several of my husband’s distant English Cook cousins met up with us and we sort of had an impromptu family reunion upstairs in the expo hall. One of those in attendance was Louise Cook (without the “e”) who is married to my husband’s cousin Peter. I know, it gets a little confusing with Louise Cook and Lisa Louise Cooke! But anyway, Louise and I stay regularly in touch, and we met up at the conference this year. She found me after one of my classes and we got to visit, and she told me that she was going to help out with her friend’s society booth. So we are walking back to my booth, and when we arrive, she looks up and laughs because the Lincolnshire booth was right next to ours and there was her chair!

Can you imagine if we had not already met, that Lisa Louise Cooke, and Louise Cook would have been sitting right next to each other throughout the conference not knowing that our husbands were related by way of their third Great Grandfather? ! The moral of the story: Next time you sit down at a genealogy conference introduce yourself to those next to you, you never know who you might be related to.

NEWS:

JAMBOREE

Spencer Wells, PhD and Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., PhD to Speak at Conference in Burbank, CA

Jamboree Speakers

Following in Family History Footsteps: Young Genealogist Scholarship Available
Do you know any young genealogists who would love to go to the Southern California Genealogy Jamboree? Encourage them to apply for a $500 cash award and free conference registration.The Suzanne Winsor Freeman Memorial Grant Committee is now accepting applications for its 2013 Student Genealogy Grant. As they did last year, the SCGS Jamboree will provide the grant recipient with free three-day registration. Genealogists between the ages of 18 and 25 who have attended school in the last 12 months are eligible to apply. The recipient must attend the 2013 SCGS Jamboree in Burbank, California to receive the award. Get the details here

Find My Past Series now on the website
Find My Past, the hit UK television show, is now available to view via findmypast.com. Find My Past, now entering its second season, links living individuals to real historical events found in their family tree and now Findmypast.com is the only place in the US where you can watch the show!

Register on findmypast.com for free and watch Find My Past episodes that aired in the last 30 days at no cost. Missed an episode or want to watch your favorites again? Findmypast subscribers can watch all episodes for an unlimited time. Every episode will be available to watch on findmypast.com a week after it airs.

MAILBOX:

Delray wants to know where the Family History Podcast Show Notes have gone...
“I've been listening to your podcasts for over two years now: GenealogyGems and GenealogyGems Premium. ALL of the podcasts are on my iPod, so that I can listen to them over and over.

It seems each time I listen to your podcast, I learn something new that I missed last time. Somehow I missed the fact that you used to have a podcast called Family History: Genealogy Made Easy.

I'm going to be teaching a class to genealogy newbies in April, so I've been listening to these older podcasts to see what you shared with beginners. You mention the "show notes" like you do in GenealogyGems, which are always a life saver when I miss a web address or something; however, I cannot locate any "show notes" for the Genealogy Made Easy show.”

Lisa’s Answer:
The Family History podcast is in a bit of transition right now. We are no longer part of the Personal Life Media network and so all of the show notes pages that they previously hosted have been removed from their website. We are now working to transition the Tunes podcast feed. As soon as that happens, we will start republishing the show on the Genealogy Gems website.

Gus chimes in on Genealogy Podcast No. 148
“Here are my thoughts on internet rip offs. I have both a blog and a web site and my feelings are that if I put anything up there, people will steal anything and use it for their own use. I have copied myself from two books, one published in 1888 and another published in 1895, I don't feel that I am really stealing from these old books. In the book from 1888, I gave credit to the original author, (my ancestor) in a new book."

Dan shares his experience with copyright:
“When rock legend Ronnie James Dio died in 2010 I used his obituaries as a starting point for genealogical research on his ancestry, blogging about what I found at "What I have in common with Ronnie James Dio". Two people contacted me politely requesting permission to reprint the information, so in my experience people have been quite respectful of copyright. One of those people wanted to add my findings to the Hungarian Wikipedia page on Dio, increasing my reach as a blogging genealogist beyond my wildest dreams.

Getting the Word out on a Genealogy Blog
“I regularly listen to your podcast through iTunes and see that sometimes you feature blogs on your show. I've been meaning to write to you for quite some time now and am hoping you can let your audience know of my genealogy blog. My blog, called “No Hoof Left Behind,” features a family history of the Breeding family. Our roots are specifically in the following areas: Wythe County, VA; Overton County, TN; Carroll County, AR and Tulsa, OK.

Over the past two years, I have tackled genealogy from a different perspective: that of looking at my great-grandpa Hugh Breeding’s trucking company. At first, I merely intended on putting together some basic facts and figures on the company and calling it a day. However, I have really gotten into the history of the company and the place it held in the trucking industry…the employee vignettes featured throughout my company research really drives home the story of the company on a more personal level as well as adding much more color to the overall history of the firm.

I really like this post

GEM: WDYTYA Round Up

Genealogy Gems Listeners