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    The Pikes Peak NewsFinder

    The Pikes Peak Genealogical Society has been indexing the Colorado Springs Death Registers, and presents their work in the Pikes Peak NewsFinder.

    To check it out, I threw in my go-to surname: Pulley. What I found was quite exciting! Andrew J. Pulley, who died in 1903 at 35 years of age, is buried in Union Chapel Cemetery in DeKalb County, Missouri. Most of his life takes place during the void between the 1880 census and the 1900 census, and he died before Missouri maintained death certificates. There’s more interesting stuff about this guy, which I’ll probably write about later, but that is not what makes this find, as regards the Pikes Peak NewsFinder, so fabulous.

    Here’s the kewl part: The index entry includes a link to obtain the document. I clicked on it to find out how much it would cost. Nothing. They’ll email it to you. . . . [Yes! There’s more!]

    12 March 2015 | Category: Websites | Leave a comment

    ARGH! Ancestry.com Strikes AGAIN!

    I’ve used HeritageQuest Online for years to access the U.S. census. It’s a service available through libraries which, unlike Ancestry.com Library Edition, can be accessed from home using your library card number. Yes, the interface was a bit outdated and maybe not as pretty as some. You had to be a bit creative with your searches because of the way the indexing was presented, and while all available images for all years were there, not all years were indexed. The pages with the images themselves loaded relatively quickly, taking into account how large the files were, and there were several format options available for saving them.

    Enter Ancestry.com, screwing things up again, a la RootsWeb and Find A Grave.

    I don’t know when HeritageQuest Online climbed into bed with Ancestry.com, but some time in the last month or two, the website has been “updated.” At . . . [Yes! There’s more!]

    10 March 2015 | Category: Pet Peeves, Websites | Leave a comment

    The Saline County Historical Society

    When I first started managing the Saline County MOGenWeb Project, I searched long and hard for any information about the Saline County Historical Society. Finding nothing I came to the erroneous conclusion that there wasn’t one — an assumption that was corrected by a nice lady at the Marshall Public Library. She told me that not only was there a county historical society, it was pretty much based in the library. Makes sense — but why such a secret?

    Since I don’t actually live in Saline County, and Marshall is just far enough away to make a day trip difficult, I was never able to follow up on this “Secret Society,” instead referring inquiries about the SCHS to the Genealogy Department at the library.

    The article about the SCHS lawsuit against the Marshall Public Library made me wonder again what was up — especially the little tidbit . . . [Yes! There’s more!]

    4 March 2015 | Tags: | Category: USGenWeb Projects | Leave a comment