The Canadian War Museum will host a free commemorative VE-Day 75 webinar, Remembering Canada’s Finest Hour in a Digital Age, presented by Dr. Tim Cook and Marie Eve Vaillancourt on Tuesday, May 5, at noon Eastern time.
Registration is required. Limited space available.
One of genealogists’ favourite devices to use when visiting relatives will soon no longer be available.
Gordon Nutall, the founder and CEO of the portable scanner, Flip-Pal, advised his affiliates a few days ago week that production of the scanner has been stopped.
If you’ve thought about buying one, you should do it soon. Ellen Thompson-Jennings, owner of the Canadian online store for genealogy products, Shop the Hound, says she still has Flip-Pals and accessories in stock.
I bought my Flip-Pal in 2011 immediately after a distant cousin in New Hampshire told me she had lots of old family photos and invited me to stay at her place for the weekend. Sitting at her dining room table for much of the time, while chatting with her, I scanned more than 200 photos.
On occasion, I’ve even been known to attend a wake after a family funeral with my lightweight, battery-powered Flip-Pal tucked discretely in my purse. My cousin laughed when she found me in her bedroom, scanning photos of her mother that had been on display in the funeral parlour. She knew about my portable scanner and guessed correctly about why I had disappeared from the living room.
I’ve also used my Flip-Pal to scan photos in an old, fragile photo album, to avoid over-handling it.
What led to the Flip-Pal’s demise? I suspect the culprits are cell phone companies who improved the quality of the cameras on their phones.
Yes, you can take photos of old photos with your cell phone, but they’re rarely as good as those you scan with a Flip-Pal. As an added bonus, if the photo is larger than the scanner screen, you can scan it in sections and then “stitch” it seamlessly together on your laptop.
For those of us who own the portable scanner, a trimmed-down Flip-Pal website will stay active for a while to provide support.
Thanks to Christine Woodcock for the heads up.
Legacy Family Tree Webinars wants to do its part to help genealogists across the world who are self-isolating at home right now.
Providing free webinars in April was a great start, but everyone is still at home and looking for things to do. So, they’ve extended their daily free webinars through the month of May.
Each day, they will unlock one Legacy Family Tree webinar from the membership library to be available to watch for free.
Today’s presentation is How I Built My Own Brick Wall delivered by Rebecca Koford.
Genealogists, who research their ancestors who lived in Quebec, whether they were French or English-speaking, should take particular note of Michel Leclerc’s presentation, Quebec Civil and Parish Records, available Thursday, May 7.
See the full list of free daily webinars here.
May 8 marks the 75th anniversary of VE Day — Victory in Europe and the Liberation of the Netherlands — and for that reason, the two Ancestry Extra sessions this week are focused on WWII.
And… the news from Ancestry Canada gets better.
From Monday, May 4 to Friday, May 8, Ancestry.ca will provide free access to all 10 million Canadian military records on the site.
Wait. It gets even better.
In addition, Ancestry says Canadians will be able to access for free all content on the online newspaper archive Newspapers.com, as well as all records on Fold3, a site that provides access to military records, stories and photos.
At this point, I don’t know how Ancestry plans to give access to Canadians or if its a worldwide offer. If I learn there’s a special way to access, instead of through the above links, I’ll let you know.
Update: The free access is available through customized links that I have posted on the Genealogy à la carte Facebook group.
Ancestry Extra sessions
As for the Ancestry Extra sessions, you can watch them live on Ancestry Canada’s Facebook page or watch the recordings afterward. Both sessions are free and no registration is required.
Tuesday, May 5, 10:00 a.m. Eastern time
Researching Your WWII Commonwealth Ancestors
Ancestry ProGenealogist Simon Pearce will share advice and guidance on how to tackle your WWII research, highlighting resources available to discover the stories of your ancestors that served in the Canadian military and across the Commonwealth. He’ll then conduct a live Q&A.
Thursday, May 7, Noon Eastern time
Finding the Unknowable
Jewish families often think that records of their Eastern European families prior to the Holocaust, or prior to their emigration from Eastern Europe were all destroyed during World War II. Although many records did not survive, many did, and can, with diligent searching be found. We’ll be discussing some research techniques and resources available digitally, and visiting ancestral towns to find out more about your family before they emigrated.
Speaker bio: Janette Silverman began her genealogical journey more than 35 years ago as a hobby with her father. What started as a hobby quickly became more as she immersed herself in Jewish history, both as a student and a teacher. Ms. Silverman serves as a Board member of the International Association of Jewish Genealogy Societies (IAJGS). She has been president of a Jewish Genealogy Society; was lead co-chair of the 2016 IAJGS conference and for over 6 years was the Coordinator of the JewishGen Ukraine SIG. She has worked with private clients since 2004.
Some of the bijoux I discovered this week.
Blogs
Newfoundland Ancestors: Online Newspapers at Memorial University of Newfoundland by Candice McDonald on Finding Your Canadian Story.
Canadians forever at rest in Rome’s Non-Catholic Cemetery by Penny Allen on UK to Canada Genealogy.
British Museum Makes 1.9 Million Images Available for Free and Previously Unseen Street Photos of Greater Manchester, England, in the Post World War 2 Decade by Dick Eastman on Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter.
Exploring ICD codes on death certificates by Janine Adams on Organize Your Family History.
Research Under Confinement or “Lock Down” by Anne Morddel on The French Genealogy Blog.
Some Genealogy Treasures inside The Internet Archive by Michelle Patient on Genie tips from The Patient Genealogist.
Facebook for Genealogists: Saving Posts by Julie Cahill Tarr on Julie’s Genealogy & History Hub.
How to Quickly Link Media to Event on Ancestry by Devon Noel Lee on Family History Fanatics.
Ancestors Reenvisioned in Living Color on Family Sleuther.
Concepts: Chromosome Browser – What Is It, How Do I Use It, and Why Do I Care? by Roberta Estes on DNAeXplained.
Combine DNA Tools to Calculate Unknown Relationships by DiAnn Iamarino on Fortify Your Family Tree.
Video
YouTube: Family Secrets Revealed in Free Archival Canadian Newspapers Online: Provincial Initiatives by John D. Reid on Canada’s Anglo-Celtic Connections.
Tracing the Irish in Scotland – talk now on YouTube by Chris Paton on Scottish GENES.
Articles
New genealogy book focuses on Ferguson family that came to P.E.I., The Guardian, Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island.
Wilma Morrison leaves behind ‘important, immense and permanent legacy’ by Ray Spiteri, The Standard, St. Catharines, Ontario.
What do DNA test results mean? by Debbie Kennett, Who Do You Think You Are? Magazine, Bristol, England.
For more gems like these throughout the week, join the Genealogy à la carte Facebook group. When you submit your request to join, you will be asked to answer two quick questions about your family history research.
Wayne Shepheard from Calgary, Alberta will deliver a free webinar, The Future is Still in the Past: An Introduction to Online Parish Clerks in the United Kingdom, hosted by Legacy Family Tree, on Friday, May 1, at 2:00 p.m. Eastern time.
England is divided into 40 administrative counties which traditionally were each comprised of various numbers of ecclesiastical parishes. Each parish had its own church that administered to both the spiritual and the secular needs of the community.
In 1538, Thomas Cromwell, chief minister of Henry VIII, issued The Second Henrician Injucntions that mandated every parish to maintain registers in which to record all baptisms, marriages and burials.
These documents are central to ancestral research in England but it is not always practical for researchers to inspect or study the original registers or the many additional documents that originated in the parishes.
Some of the people offering assistance in sourcing and reviewing the parish information are those involved in the Online Parish Clerk (OPC) program. OPCs are not officially associated with parish councils, ministers or congregations, however, these groups are often helpful in sourcing information about past residents and constructing histories of the various parishes. The tasks of OPCs are primarily to compile reference material for their adopted parish or parishes in the form of transcripts, extracts, abstracts, indexes and copies of original records.
Register here to watch the webinar live. The recording will likely be available to watch for free for up to seven days afterward.
The Drouin Institute is offering you the chance to win a one-year subscription to Genealogy Quebec, 1,000 PRDH-IGD hits, or $200 to spend in their online boutique.
All you need is an existing Genealogy Quebec account or you can create a new account to be eligible for a draw prize.
Existing account
If you already have a Genealogy Quebec account, log into it at least once between April 29 and May 13, 3:00 p.m. Eastern time.
You do not need to have an active subscription on the account to be eligible for the contest.
Create an account
If you do not have an account on Genealogy Quebec, simply create one. No credit card is required. Setting up an account should take you less than a minute.
Ten winners will be drawn at random on May 13.
See the details in the Drouin Institute’s blog post.
John D. Reid wrote on his blog, Canada’s Anglo-Celtic Connections, about Ancestry providing free access to Canadian newspapers on Newspapers.com until Thursday, April 30, 11:59 p.m.
As part of the Great Famine Voices Roadshow 2020 online event series, you can now watch, for a limited time, two short documentaries about the Famine Irish in Liverpool, England — The Famine Irish in Liverpool from the Strokestown Park Estate and Liverpool: A Famine Frontier.
On Saturday, May 2, from 8:00 to 11:00 a.m. Eastern time, you can attend an online lecture about the Famine Irish in Liverpool that will be delivered by Professor John Belchem.
Note it is possible the documentaries will not be available after the lecture.
Details on the films and lecture are on the Roadshow website.
Today, at 2:00 p.m. Eastern time, American genetic genealogist Roberta Estes will deliver a free presentation, with Q&A, about triangulating DNA matches on the MyHeritage Facebook page.
More about the presentation is in Ms. Estes’ blog post, Top Tips for Triangulating Your DNA Matches with Roberta Estes – FREE – MyHeritage Facebook LIVE, April 27th.
For those who can’t watch the live presentation, a recording will be available on the MyHeritage Facebook page soon afterward.
