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RootsWeb Review: RootsWeb's Weekly E-zine
05 December 2007, Vol. 10, No. 49.
(c) 1998-2007 RootsWeb.com, Inc. http://www.rootsweb.com/
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==============================================================
IN THIS ISSUE:
1. Editor's Desk: News and Notes
1a. Holocaust Survivors and Witnesses' Testimonies Indexed
Online
1b. A Website Worth Looking At: Scottish Handwriting
1c. Book Notice
2. Using RootsWeb: Photography Blues and Other Topics
3. Connecting Through RootsWeb:
Family Members Across the United States
4. Bottomless Mailbag:
Sharing Historic Houses
A Tip for Researchers Visiting Libraries, Archives, and
Various Repositories
The United States of Names
5. New at RootsWeb
5a. New User-contributed Databases
5b. New/Updated Freepages and Homepages by Individuals
5c. New/Updated Freepages and Homepages by Counties, States,
and Genealogical/Historical Societies
5d. New Mailing Lists
6. Humor/Humour
7. Subscriptions, Submissions, Advertising, Reprints

==============================================================
IN THIS ISSUE:

1. Editor's Desk: News and Notes

1a. Holocaust Survivors and Witnesses' Testimonies Indexed Online

The new website of the University of Southern California's Shoah
Foundation Institute includes a searchable index of 52,000 video
interviews conducted with Holocaust survivors and witnesses in
fifty-six countries. You can view samples of some interviews and
locate institutions that provide access to full interviews. The
website also includes educational resources and an interactive map of
places around the world at which people can view the testimonies.

www.college.usc.edu/vhi

1b. A Website Worth Looking At: Scottish Handwriting

Need help deciphering sixteenth-, seventeenth-, or eighteenth-century
Scottish records? A new, free website offers online tutorials in
deciphering Scottish handwriting. You'll get brief lessons followed by
images you can test your skills on.

http://www.scottishhandwriting.com/

1c. Book Notice

A Guide to Tracing Your Roscommon Ancestors
By John Hamrock

This book is a comprehensive guide for those tracing families in
County Roscommon, Ireland. It is filled with information on what
records are available and what they contain. It is well illustrated
with maps and with record examples. It also has an extensive reference
list of estate records and family histories.

Softcover;161 pages; 230 x 145 mm; $18.50.

For more details and to order, visit www.flyleaf.ie/Roscommon.htm.


2. Using RootsWeb:

The Digital Genealogist: Photography Blues and Other Topics
By Mary Harrell-Sesniak
maryh@volunteer.rootsweb.com
"Genealogy is not just a pastime; it's a passion."

One of my family albums is interspersed with blue pictures--tiny blue
images of portraits and landscapes.

The photographs belonged to my great-grandparents and depict them with
young-adult friends enjoying nature and travels. They met in the early
1890s at college and married in 1900; this knowledge helps me date the
blue images at about 100 to 115 years old.

Technically called cyanotype, the blue process was invented by Sir
John Frederick William Hershel in 1842 and popularized in the 1880s.
His recipe, which is easily found on the Web, consisted of mixing
ammonium iron citrate, potassium ferricyanide, and distilled water.
Cyanotype photography is still used today and is where the term
blueprint originated.

For an example of a cyanotype photo, see Brett Payne's Louis DuBois
Collection:
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~brett/photo2/louisdubois/people.html

Although the term may have been borrowed from a German astronomer, Sir
Hershel is the man generally credited with popularizing the term
photography. Prior to this time, printed pictures were known by the
process types--such as heliographs, daguerrotypes, and ambrotypes.

The first printed picture was a heliograph and dates to 1824, when the
inventor, physicist, and chemist, Joseph Niepce (or Nicephore as he
renamed himself), stabilized the first permanent image.

The first attempt took five days. It eventually faded, but his "View
from the Window of Le Gras" of 1826 used an improved methodology that
established permanency and shortened fixation time to around twenty
hours. This famous image is the world's oldest surviving image and can
be viewed at several websites, including the University of Texas at
Austin, which displays it in its frame, and at Science News.
http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibitions/permanent/wfp/
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20021123/bob10.asp

The long time periods needed to set images made heliographs
impractical for portraits. People could not remain in one place long
enough to have their presence captured.

As photography progressed, methods and materials changed, and
improvements were dramatic.

One of the first transitions was in 1839, when Louis-Jacques-Mande
Daguerre announced his invention of the Giroux Daguerrrotype camera in
Paris. Daguerrotype images--or dags as they were dubbed--were fragile.
They were printed on silver-coated copper plates, protected by a brass
mat, and covered with glass. The plates ranged in sizes and the
smallest were less than 2" square. Several images could be placed on
one plate.

Once the time to set a picture was reduced from fifteen minutes to
less than a minute, daguerrotypes became practical for portraits.
Daguerran Parlors opened up, and the profession of photography boomed.

Daguerrotypes were quickly replaced by newer and simpler techniques.
Due to their rarity, they are quite valuable. Perhaps the most famous
dags are those of Abraham and Mary (Todd) Lincoln. Their images,
which were taken around 1846-47, can be viewed in the The Library of
Congress collection:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/daghtml/dagscope.html.

In 1851, James Ambrose Cutting developed the ambrotype, an improved
process that was simpler and produced a less expensive glass-plate
negative. The image was made into a positive by coating the glass with
black lacquer and applying a chemical. This process allowed for
sharper images and shorter development times; and it was
cost-effective. As with daguerrotypes, ambrotypes were encased in
wooden frames and generally had a leather decorative cover.

They remained popular for about thirty years until tintype--or
ferrotypes--became the trend.

The term tintype is somewhat of a misnomer, as black lacquered
iron--not tin--was used in combination with the light-sensitive
chemicals.

Since glass was easily broken and hard to transport, the tintype
became the method of choice during the Civil War. Photographers set up
portable studios in the field and were able to expose the plate and
develop the image at the same time. Tintypes were used from 1860 to
the early twentieth century and were still used at traveling fairs
well into the 1930s.

An example of a tintype can be seen at Uncle Joe's Genealogy Page.
Click the link for "Tintype image of an unidentified young man; circa
1870."
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~unclejoe/photos.html

The history of photography is a rich one. The art form moved from
glass-plate to iron and paper backings, from positive to negative
printing, from silver oxide and other chemicals to film, from
monochrome to color, and now to digital technology. I'll tell you more
about some of this in future articles.

In the meantime, I recommend visiting Michael Wilson's Genealogy
P***t at:
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~genealogyp***t/. Enjoy the
musical interlude and then explore the Galleries tab. Scroll to the
bottom and follow the History of Photography link.

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3. Connecting Through RootsWeb:

Family Members Across the United States
By Dorace Goodman

Last March as I looked through the RootsWeb message boards trying to
find information on my paternal relatives, I suddenly came across a
posting with the name of my maternal grandparent's ranch, "La
Violeta," in it. I read the note and responded, expecting nothing to
happen.

My mother was the last of sixteen children, and the people who posted
the note were her older brother's grandchildren. Because they
responded, I found out I had family I never knew about in Hawaii,
Houston, New Orleans, and southern Texas.

I got in touch with two of these newfound relatives and the three of
us got together and started filling in family trees with names and
dates. My family can trace its ancestors from sixteenth-century Spain
to present day. It's a big undertaking, but one day we'll have a
wonderful legacy to give our children and grandchildren.

4. BOTTOMLESS MAILBAG
[Editor's note: The opinions expressed herein are those of the
authors and are not necessarily those of the editor or of
RootsWeb.com.]
-------------------------------------------------------------
Sharing Historic Houses
By Sharon Gray

One of my distant cousins from Canada got in touch with me last week
to say someone had sent her some marriage information about a girl
named Elizabeth Selby, a daughter of Thomas Selby and Alice Price (my
relative). She was wondering if would I check out the marriage
information as I happen to live in the town Elizabeth was born in.

I found entries in the UK BMD index that showed she married a man
named Henry Dickin and together they had eight children. I was amazed
to see that three of their children were born in the mid-1800s in a
house called Burton Bandalls in a village in Leicestershire, which was
close to where Elizabeth had been born. My husband lived in Burton
Bandalls as a student in the mid-1970s. In fact, I met him while he
was living there. Burton Bandalls is just one house in all of England.
I wonder what the odds are of that happening.
* * *

A Tip for Researchers Visiting Libraries, Archives, and Various
Repositories
By Evie Bresette
eviebresette@everestkc.net

I volunteer at the National Archives' Central Plains Region and it is
surprising that researchers will leave notebooks and file folders
filled with original documents and other important research. Most of
these items that are left are not marked with the owner's name. We
hold these materials for about one year in the "Lost and Found" box,
but some of them are never claimed and we have to dispose of them. The
archives will mail back the materials if they are marked with a name
and address. Most people have a large supply of adhesive address
labels. Keep a sheet of address labels with your genealogy work and
when you go out to research, put one of these labels on every
notebook. Most places will hold the materials if they are marked.
* * *

The United States of Names
By Diana Ware

I have recently done a study on the naming of children after states
and found it very interesting. Amused that I found an ancestor named
Arizona and another named Mississippi, I did some searching on
Ancestry.com and learned they were both fairly common names for girls.
I did a few more searches and though I can't give any statistics, it
became apparent that through the years, naming children after states
was not uncommon at all. Whether some were used as nicknames and were
not given names I could not always tell, but many were obviously given
names.

Some names were more commonly used than others. State names ending
with the letter "A" seemed the most common--such as Georgia,
Louisiana, Arizona, and Alabama. But there were also those named
Nevada, Minnesota, Montana, Indiana, Iowa, Pennsylvania, and even
Alaska and Florida. I found plenty named Virginia, Carolina, and
Dakota but was surprised to find that very few were also listed with
West, North, or South as part of their given name.

Names that ended in a consonant were also used. I found plenty of
people named Texas, Oregon, Wyoming, and Kansas, but also a few named
Illinois, Utah, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. It seemed many more
girls were named for states than boys were; however, a few names
seemed to be used more often for boys than for girls. These names
included Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Washington seemed to be the
state name most often given to boys (makes sense), but I found it very
interesting that the name Maryland was also more often given to boys
than to girls.

In some census records it was apparent that naming children after the
states was a family pattern. One Cooper family in Indiana had possibly
six daughters who were all named for a state. In the household were
daughters Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Oregon. Then on the
same page in the second household below this Cooper family was a young
wife named Rhode Island Bartholomew, and living with her was her
likely older, widowed sister Louisiana Farmer. It may just be
coincidental that in the household between the Coopers and the
Bartholomews was another Cooper family, and that the youngest child in
that household was named Georgia.

I eventually searched every state name and learned that from Maine to
Alaska, and from Florida to California, including Hawaii and every
state in between, at some point in the history of the census records
there existed children with that state name, including New Hampshire,
New York, New Jersey, New Mexico and yes, even Rhode Island.

5. New at RootsWeb

5a. New User-contributed Databases at RootsWeb
http://userdb.rootsweb.com/submit/
-------------------------------------------------------------
The following databases have come online recently.
They are searchable, but not browseable.

CALIFORNIA. San Mateo County. South San Francisco High School; 1969
Senior Class. 406 records. Bob Sans.
http://userdb.rootsweb.com/alumni/

CALIFORNIA. Amador County. Amador Marriage Licenses, 1883-99. 2,060
records. Karen Hendricks.
http://userdb.rootsweb.com/marriages/

5b. New/Updated Freepages and Homepages by Individuals
To Request a Free Web Account: http://accounts.rootsweb.com/
-------------------------------------------------------------
Can your cousins find your website at RootsWeb? Has it ever been
mentioned here or do you have a new, updated, or substantially
revised website at RootsWeb (it will have "freepages" or "homepages"
in the URL)? Send the URL, the title of the website, the name of the
author, and a BRIEF description of the site, including major
surnames, to: Editor-RWR@rootsweb.com
* * *
If your genealogy- or history-related site is located somewhere
other than at RootsWeb.com, you can add the link here:
http://resources.rootsweb.com/~rootslink/addlink.html
* * *
Fulgham-Fulghum Family National Association. By Brent and Robert
Fulghum. This page has been updated with new membership application
links and contact links. Links to the Fulgham-Fulghum genealogical
database (more than 17,000 entries) are found on the homepage.
http://homepages.rootsweb.com/~fulghum/web-text-html.htm.

5c. New/Updated Freepages and Homepages by Counties, States, and
Genealogical/Historical Societies
To Request a Free Web Account: http://accounts.rootsweb.com/
-------------------------------------------------------------
Some of these Web pages might not be accessible yet. They are created
by volunteers, so if one that interests you isn't up yet, please
check again in a few days or next week.
http://www.rootsweb.com/~xxxxxx[accountname]
* * *
Note that the ~[tilde] before the Web account name is required.
For example, the Santa Clara County (California) USGW website is at:
http://www.rootsweb.com/~casantac/
* * *
DAR = Daughters of the American Revolution
USGW = USGenWeb

U.S.A.
casantac -- Santa Clara County (California) USGW
cojackso -- Jackson County (Colorado) USGW
flsfcdar -- Sophia Fleming (Florida) Chapter DAR
gaevhs2 -- Etowah Valley Historical Society (Georgia)
gatchs -- Treutlen County Historical Society (Georgia)
mdogg -- Odenton Genial Genealogists (Maryland)
mnsncdar -- Star of the North (Minnesota) Chapter DAR
njpwddar -- Polly Wykoff-David Demarest (New Jersey) Chapter Dar
wacdhs -- Coolgardie Districts Historical Society (Washington)

5d. New Mailing Lists
To Request a New Mailing List: http://resources.rootsweb.com/adopt/
-------------------------------------------------------------
For information and an index to the more than 30,000 RootsWeb-hosted
genealogy Mailing Lists and for easy subscribing (joining) options go
to: http://lists.rootsweb.com/

NEW SURNAME MAILING LISTS
ARMAGOST
CECCARELLI
GRAMS
KERSLAKE
KRASULAK
MCANINCH
MCGARTLIN
MCGRANN
MCNINCH
MCSHERRY
MINIHANE
POMALES
RICHART
SHINABERRY
WORBY

NEW REGIONAL MAILING LISTS
CAN-QC-CEMETERIES -- This list provides an area where family
researchers can submit queries on cemeteries in the province of
Quebec.
LA-CEMETERY-PRESERVATION -- This list is for documenting and making
public information from those cemeteries that are neglected,
vandalized, endangered, not documented by USGS, hard to locate, or
that have historical significance in Louisiana. It is mainly for local
cemetery preservation groups.

NEW ETHNIC OR SPECIAL INTEREST MAILING LISTS
MO-JCGS -- This list is for members of the Jefferson County
Genealogical Society (Missouri).
NC-PERQU2 -- This mailing list will be used in conjunction with the
Perquimans County NCGenWeb site.
MSGW-TECH -- This list is for the MS GenWeb technology committee.
OBITUARIES -- This list will be gatewayed to the Obituaries Message
Board.

6. Humor/Humour

Phil Graves worked in the graveyard in Mitchell, Indiana.

--Thanks to Larry Goettel
* * *

While attempting to find my great-grandparents through various 1870
Utah census rolls, I came across the following name, which I found
very amusing due to the name of the town where the gentleman lived. He
was listed as the "Bishop of Paradise."

--Thanks to Garnet Naslund
* * *

My great-grandfather married Isabelle Grant Nutty. From that I was
able to come up with a total of twenty-one Nutty in-laws. One of the
Nuttys married a woman that was obviously in love with herself--given
name: Narcissa.

--Thanks to James Blair
* * *

Found a funny or "proper name for the job" in old records, or an
amusing entry in census, parish, church, or other records? Send them
to:
Editor-RWR@rootsweb.com. We also welcome other humorous
genealogy-related submissions.

7. Subscriptions, Submissions, Advertising, Reprints
-------------------------------------------------------------
SUBSCRIPTIONS. You received this newsletter because you are subscribed
to the RootsWeb Review. To manage your e-mail communications (i.e., to
*** from this newsletter or to sign up for others), visit our
newsletter management center any time at:
http://newsletters.rootsweb.com/

If you use a spam-filtering program, in order to receive the RootsWeb
Review please make sure that you're allowing e-mail from
rootswebreview@email.rootsweb.com. The RootsWeb Review is a free
publication of The Generations Network, Inc., 360 West 4800 North,
Provo, UT, 84604
* * *
The RootsWeb Review does not publish or answer genealogical queries,
and the editor regrets that she is unable to provide any personal
research assistance or advice. RootsWeb Review welcomes short (500
words or less) articles, humor, stories, or letters, and reserves the
right to edit all submissions. The announcement of books and products
is provided as a community service and is not an endorsement in any
way. All mail sent to the RootsWeb Review editor is considered to be
for publication--send in plain text (please, no attachments) to:
Editor-RWR@rootsweb.com and please include your full name and e-mail
address in the text.
* * *
ROOTSWEB REVIEW ADVERTISING CONTACTS.
AdSales Worldwide: Tami Deleeuw, tdeleeuw@tgn.com
* * *
REPRINTS. Permission to reprint articles from RootsWeb Review is
granted unless specifically stated otherwise, provided: (1) the
reprint is used for non-commercial, educational purposes; and (2) the
following notice appears at the end of the article: Previously
published in RootsWeb Review: 05 December 2007, Vol. 10, No. 49.
* * * *