Month: February 2006

100th Birthdays May Become the Norm in Some Nations

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According to TODAYonline (Singapore), reaching 100 years old may become the norm in some nations:

They go on to talk about it may widen the gap between nations, but I just want to look at it from the point of view of genealogy – I’m not sure how it would change things, but I know it would make them very interesting. Could you imagine if this had been case within the past 60 years, and how much it would have changed your genealogy research?

Something to ponder.

(Genealogy) Information is Power

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Terry J. Allen has an article about a topic that many genealogists should be aware of, called Information is power. It’s pretty frightening, and unfortunately if everything goes through as planned, getting any of it reversed is going to almost be impossible. States are fighting it, althought not out of any love for genealogists, but rather out of costs and whether or not it’s a federal or state issue.

Oprah’s Liberian heritage could inspire nation’s residents

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Oprah’s Liberian heritage could inspire nation’s residents, an interesting article by Jeremy Levitt in the Chicago Sun-Times, delves into just what impact the recent PBS Documentary “African American Lives”, which covered the genealogy of several prominent African-Americans, will have on Liberia and Liberian genealogy research as a whole. Although it covers mostly the Liberian aspect, it’s still kind of an interesting read (and they bring up some of the problems with DNA genealogy research).

Google bringing search to historical manuscripts

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Nancy Gohring has an article in PCAdvisor.co.uk, Google bringing search to historical manuscripts that looks interesting – soon you’ll be able to search quite a few historical documents that are being digitized. At some point in the future, genealogists could use this to search for certain names, etc. We’ve seen this done by private companies, and we’ve seen plenty of documents that were scanned, but the text was made searchable. Hopefully we’ll see more and more of this as time goes on.

The Origin of Irish Family Names

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The Legacy Family Tree blog had an interesting link the other day, that many genealogists might want to bookmark. The Origin of Irish Family Names (www.ireland-information.com) is a page that explains around 100 Irish surnames, as well as displaying their Coat of Arms. It gives a brief summary of each name – how frequently it occurs, spelling variations, where it came from geographically. etc.