Month: January 2006

Twelve Google Search Tips for Genealogists

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Kimberly Powell has completed her new series of genealogy tips, Twelve Google Search Tips for Genealogists that could be of great use to beginning genealogists (and even those who are just new to the internet). It’s a good series – it gets into the semantics of how to make the most effective searches – most of us just type in the words we are looking for and then sort through the results – she points out to get more relevant results faster. She also mentions how to retrieve information when you turn up a site that no longer exists – in many cases that site may have been cached by Google or elsewhere, and you might still be able to retrieve relevant information.

Are You in Indiana? Do you Have a Railroad Dining Car or a Boxcar You Don’t Need?

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If you are in Indiana, and happen to know of a railroad dining car or a boxcar that is not being used, Denise Jennings-Doyle of Blairsville, the President of Homer-Center Historical Society, would probably like to speak with you. John Como writes in The Indiana Gazette and the historical society is looking for a companion car to their already-existing Caboose Museum in Homer City.

Saving My Family History and Remembering the Holocaust: The Tale of a Synagogue

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Political Cortex, normally a very political website (as evidenced by the name) has a very interesting genealogy story:

What follows is a very personal account of a non-political project I have been working on. It began as a quest I started some three years ago, delving into my genealogy and finally actually visiting the town in Latvia where one branch of my ancestry came from. What I found there was a Jewish population that had almost been wiped out by the Nazis and that may yet die out, fulfilling, in part, Hitler’s dream of eliminating Jews from Europe. There is one surviving synagogue in that town, though it is now a condemned building. That building has stood through 160 years of weddings and pogroms, hope and the Holocaust.

This is the story of my family’s roots in Latvia, my rediscovery of the synagogue where my great grandparents probably were married, and my ongoing attempts to save that synagogue.