Category Archives: News

Time is running out to save $50 on the full registration fee for the FGS 2011 Conference.  Registration must be received online (or postmarked) by 11:59 pm on July 1st in order to take advantage of the discount price.

Ancestry has a new collection, just in time for the 4th of July.  You can now search the Sons of the American Revolution applications, which are indexed by all of the names found in the lineage of the application.

A law passed in May 2010 allows for Illinois adoptees to request their original birth certificates without a court order.  Those who were born before 1 January 1946 have been able to request their birth certificates since the law was enacted.  Those born after 1 January 1946 (and at least 21 years of age) have to wait until 15 November 2011, which isn’t too far off. To learn more about the law, including obtaining birth certificates as a spouse or child of a deceased adoptee or sibling or child of […]

Photo Detective, Maureen Taylor, presents a 30-minute webinar entitled, Photo Detective Live:  Solutions to Your Photo Mysteries.  In the webinar, she discussed how to use photo type, clothing and background as clues to dating and identifying photos.  She also discusses the preservation of photos.  To watch this free webinar, click here.

Michael John Neill recently announced a new publication called Casefile Clues for Beginners.  I’m sure if it’s anything like Casefile Clues, it will be a great publication.  Kudos to Michael on this new endeavor!

You may recall my Facebook status a few months back indicating I had some great news to share but couldn’t at the time because it hadn’t been officially announced.  Well, on May 11th, it was official…I took 3rd Place in Category 5 (unpublished work by published author) of the International Society of Family History Writers and Editors (ISFHWE) Writing Competition.

As many of you know, the Federation of Genealogical Societies is working to raise money in order to digitize the War of 1812 pensions.  The goal is to raise $3.7 million and to have the digitization of records completed in 2015. You can help by contributing to the fund.  A $25 donation will digitize 50 images…a $500 donation will digitize 1,000 images.  No amount is too small, even $5 will digitize 10 images.

One of the newest features of the Illinois State Genealogical Society’s website is a Surname Database.  Anyone can search the database and make contact with the person who submitted the listing, however, only ISGS members may submit a name to the database.