Structural Genealogy

Genealogy – it’s not just for people

Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection

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If you are looking for antique maps online, and would like a great source, check out the Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection, hosted by the University of Texas at Austin. It’s one of the premier online map collections (and it’s free) and it covers areas around the world, and it includes maps that date back pretty far. The formats are mostly in JPG and GIF graphic formats (easily viewable through any browser). Most of the maps are in the public domain, so you are free to copy (see the FAQ for more details).

If you can’t find a map you are looking for, they have an extensive directory of links to other map sites online, as well as map dealers.

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.

Genealogist tries to solve Eagle head mystery

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There is a rather unique article in the Morning Sentinel (MaineToday.com), Genealogist tries to solve Eagle head mystery, by Colin Hickey, about the head of the Maine Genealogical Society’s Taconnett Falls Chapter helping a man track down an artist from over a century ago. The hope is to build a biography of the artist, as well as the intended home of a carved eagle’s head (which originally kicked off the mystery).