Springfield, MA USA
dave@oldbones.info

Tag: genealogy

Family Research - Classes - Workshops - Consultation

NERGC? What’s a NERGC?

“Using the Tools of Today & Tomorrow to Understand the Past” The New England Regional Genealogical Consortium produces a conference every other year. Each NERGC conference is held in a city somewhere in New England. Past conferences have been in Hartford, Connecticut, Manchester, New Hampshire, Providence, Rhode Island, and this year, Springfield, Massachusetts. The event…
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Family Tree Maker® – Goodbye Ancestry – Hello MacKiev

In 1998, I was wandering around Circuit City, a company that went out of business maybe 7 years ago or more. I really don’t remember what I was looking for. Stereos, cell phones, DVD’s, whatever. I had recently bought a desktop computer and eventually I walked down the software aisle. Somewhere in the back of my mind,…
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Facebook Genealogy

In nearly every class or lecture I conduct on genealogy research techniques and strategies, I ask the group, “Who here is on Facebook?” The reaction ranges from a raised hand to snickers to an adamant “NO” here and there. Then I explain that there’s more to Facebook than reporting the BLT you may have had…
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Ages of Males at Death

Sounds morbid, I know, but that’s what genealogists deal with all the time. We study more dead people than living. So thanks to Randy Seaver (author of Genea-Musings) for bringing this up, but he proposed charting the ages at death of 4 or 5 generations. I could go back quite a bit farther, but here’s…
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What do you do when you find hundreds of living relatives Part 2

It was Friday evening about 8:30 pm. Karen and I pulled into my sister’s driveway in Cortland, New York. She greeted us warmly with hugs and kisses, but I kept looking over her shoulder to get a look at the woman I came here to see. Apparently having nodded off after her long flight from…
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Mocavo (a great resource) is moving to FindMyPast…soon!

Below is the body of an email I received today regarding my Mocavo account. I also have an account at FindMyPast. That part of the merger will be interesting! And the merger is taking place TODAY, 23 MARCH 2016!! Mocavo is moving to Findmypast We’re contacting you to let you know that the Mocavo website will…
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Strawberry DNA

Here’s a neat article I found in my Feedly posts today. Click “Imagination Station” for a simple explanation of the DNA extraction process. They’re using strawberries in the video, but, as you’ll see, you could try it on just about any living matter…including yourself. The problem, of course, is other than having a dish of cloudy…
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Strawberry DNA

UPDATE: We’re conducting a DNA series at Western Massachusetts Genealogical Society, Inc. We’re using Tom MacEntee’s DNA Boot Camp featuring Diane Eberle. A couple of weeks ago in our 6th session, we tried the strawberry DNA extraction test. In plastic storage bags, we mashed 5 or 6 strawberries in each. Separately, we mixed up batches…
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Family Tree Maker and RootsMagic Users — Great News!

Tuesday, 2 February 2016 was a great day for Punxsutawney Phil (no shadow) and users of Family Tree Maker (FTM) and RootsMagic (RM) for building their family trees, collecting and storing photos and documents and adding source citations. With last December’s announcement that Ancestry.com was discontinuing support for their Family Tree Maker product at the end of…
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Black History Month

Here are a couple of links to research opportunities. The first is an article I found in the Huffington Post and the other is an announcement by Fold3, This was my post to the Western Massachusetts Genealogical Societies (WMGS) Google Community: I just read this article at the Huffington Post: http://bit.ly/Black_History_Month_Google_Cultural Great for researchers interested…
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