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From: "Meg Bate" <>
Subject: Some very interesting items from Eastman
Date: Tue, 9 May 2000 12:33:12 +1000


Hi,
Forwarded ar some very itneresting items from Eastman's
Online Geneaology Newsletter for 8 May.
Meg
- The Society of Genealogists' Records Online

Four weeks ago I wrote an article entitled "Society of
Genealogists' Data to be Online." In that article I wrote, "I
suspect a formal announcement of this new agreement will be
made
at the Society of Genealogists' Family History Fair in London
on
May 6 and 7." I was close; the following announcement was
made on
May 5:

London, England -- May 5, 2000 -- The Society of
Genealogists
(www.sog.org.uk), has selected Origins.net
(www.origins.net)
to provide exclusive Internet access for an initial ten-year
period to important elements of its valuable collections of
indexes and genealogical data. Origins.net currently is the
sole provider of Internet access to the official genealogical
data of Scotland: birth, death and marriage records dating
back to 1553. With the addition of data from the Society,
family researchers with British ancestry now gain a unique,
new Internet resource for ancestral information. Access will
no longer be restricted to those who can travel to the
Society's premises in London, nor will researchers have to
contend with the tens of thousands of visitors that crowd the
aisles of the Society of Genealogists (SoG) library every
year.

The Society of Genealogists collection is the foremost
source
of genealogical information in the British Isles. The
Society's collections bring together thousands of source
materials such as parish registers and bishops' transcripts,
monumental inscriptions and censuses, local history, as
well
as an unequalled assembly of research notes on families.
More
important are the unique indexes and finding aids that have
been compiled from a number of sources that enable access
to a
vast fund of useful genealogical data. Chief among these are
those finding aids listed below that will be the first data
sets to appear on the Origins.net web site beginning in the
fourth quarter of 2000.

The information to be made available online includes:

Vicar General Marriage Licence Allegations Index 1694-1850
The Vicar General of the Archbishop of Canterbury granted
marriage licences within the Province of Canterbury. The
court
had great status and was used widely by Londoners or by
couples who lived in different dioceses within the Province of
Canterbury. This index replaces the old manuscript
calendars
and makes finding the original marriage licence allegation
much easier.

Faculty Office Marriage Licence Allegations Index 1715-1850
The Faculty of the Archbishop of Canterbury granted
marriage
licences within the Provinces of Canterbury and York. The
court had great status and was used widely by Londoners or
by
couples who lived in different parishes in the Provinces of
Canterbury and York. This index replaces the old
manuscript
calendars and makes finding the original marriage licence
allegation much easier.

Bank of England Wills
This index to a series of 176 volumes, covering the period
1717-1845, contains will extracts for those with monies in
the
public funds. The volumes also contain details of
stockholders who went bankrupt or who were declared
insane.
Many of the will extracts are from PCC (Prerogative Court of
Canterbury) wills for which later period there is no published
index.

London City Apprenticeship Indexes An ongoing project to
index
the London City Guilds and Livery Company Apprenticeship
records. Many men came to London to seek their fortune.

London Consistory Court Depositions Index The London
Consistory Court was used as the country's divorce court
and
contains depositions from people from all over England.

Apprentices of Great Britain Series: Indexes to Apprentices
and Masters, 1710-1744
A tax was levied on apprenticeship from 1710 to 1808. The
resulting records at the PRO (Public Records Office) in the
IR1 series were indexed by the SoG for the period 1710-74.
The
indexes usually give the name of the apprentice, the father
of
the apprentice, the name and trade of the master and the
amount paid. The tax was not paid on apprenticeships paid
for
by parish and public charities and the series contains few
borough or city apprenticeships.

Boyd's Marriage Index
The first and largest index of marriages 1538-1837.
Arranged
in generation spans, it contains coverage for some 16
counties
in specific county volumes and covers many other counties
in
miscellaneous sections. The arrangement is phonetic and
includes the name of either party and the date and place of
the marriage. In some counties only the grooms have been
indexed. The coverage is most useful for marriages in East
Anglia, Yorkshire, Durham, Somerset, etc., but most
counties
have some parishes represented. The index also includes
references from marriage licences such as those issued by
the
Archbishops of York or Canterbury, the Bishop of London
and
the Archdeacon of Nottingham. There are also references to
marriage notices in the Gentleman's Magazine.

Boyd's Inhabitants of London
The collection contains family group sheets relating to men
and their families found in London City records, notably
apprenticeships, freemen records, parish registers, poll
books, London letter books, Courts of the Common Serjeant
and
Common Council, Herald's Visitations, Wills in the PCC and
other courts. It is strongest for persons in the 16th & 17th
centuries, but entries occur from the 14th century up to
some
very few in the 19th. Many sons of such families migrated to
America in the 17th century, and London attracted many
migrants from the English shires to the metropolis. It is a
unique source for London and migration within the UK.

Boyd's London Burials
Extracts of burials for adult males in London City parishes
as
well as neighbouring Middlesex and some other parishes.

Prerogative Court of Canterbury (PCC) Wills Index 1750-
1800
The PCC was the highest church court that dealt with
testamentary matters. It also had jurisdiction over people
dying overseas and refers to many who died in America and
other foreign parts who had property and connections in
England.

Trinity House Petitions, Apprenticeships, Pensions, and
Almshouse Applications 1780-1890 Index
This indexes the petitions from seafaring men and their
dependants asking for assistance to be paid out of
charitable
funds administered by Trinity House. They are rich in
biographical material.

Teachers Registration Council c 1902-1948 (Subject to Data
Protection Act Limitations)
Registrations made by the Teachers Registration Council.
Registration was never compulsory, so the registers do not
contain all teachers; however, the volumes are useful for the
information they contain on the careers of teachers,
including
the institution where they trained and details of the schools
where they taught. There is one main alphabetical
sequence
and a smaller run of registrations of deceased registered
teachers, often stamped with the date of "notification of
death" and the source the information came from.

The first of these databases will probably appear online late
this
year. There is more information about this new offering available
at the Society of Genealogists' Web site at
http://www.sog.org.uk
and at Origins.net's Web site: http://www.Origins.net.


==============================================
================

- Devon 1891 Census Transcription Project Update

A major project involving the 1891 Devon (England) census is
underway. Quoting from the project's Web page:

This project aims to provide a free online searchable
transcription of the 1891 Census for Devon. It is intended as
a pilot project, testing out organizational procedures and
specially-designed software which is hoped will prove
suitable
for, and encourage the undertaking of, a planned much
larger
project, the FreeCEN Project, that would encompass other UK
counties and census years . . . The project makes use of
specially developed software modules for data entry, checking,
validation and database upload, under the global name of UK-
CENS . . . Over fifty volunteers are already involved in
transcribing microfiche copies of the Devon census. . .
Additional volunteers are very welcome - a few more
transcribers are needed, and a larger number of checkers will
shortly be required to help with the upcoming checking task.
We also welcome contact by people who are willing to organise
other similar contributions, for other census years and
counties . . .

The project was initiated and planned largely by John Lerwill,
with the assistance of a number of people, in particular, Bob
Muchamore and Sue Kinsella (Australia), Nick Mayne, Brian Randell
and Phil Stringer (U.K.), and Ray Osborn (New Zealand). John
Lerwill remains in charge of the overall technical aspects of the
project, while Brian Randell handles the project coordination. In
order to spread the workload and reduce postal expenses, much of
the organization of volunteers is handled on a regional basis by
the following people:

Dennis Radford assisted by Roy Conibear (US and Canada),
Lesley Dawson assisted by Ros Haywood (UK), and
Bob Muchamore (Australia and New Zealand).

This is a great "grass roots" cooperative genealogy project. A
Web
page describing the present status of this project, including a
list of all the completed 1891 census transcriptions that are
already available in GENUKI/Devon, is available at:
http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/genuki/DEV/censusproject.html

- PAF 4.0: the Videos

This week I watched some videotapes. In fact, I watched more
than
three and a half hours of videos on how to use the Windows
version
of Personal Ancestral File version 4.0. I must say that I learned
a number of things about the program that I didn't know
previously.

Personal Ancestral File is a very popular genealogy program
that
is offered by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
One
reason for its popularity is its price: the program is free. You
can download it directly from:

http://www.ldscatalog.com/cgi-
bin/ncommerce3/ProductDisplay?prrfnbr=369179
&prmenbr=1402&CGRY_NUM=373032&RowStart=1&LocCode=
FH. The Mormon Church
does not produce the videotapes that I watched. Instead, these
videotapes
are produced by "The Studio," a commercial video and
multimedia production
facility based in Utah.

Two different videos for Personal Ancestral File are available
now: "Getting Started Video Training" and "Intermediate Video
Training." These videos tend to go deeper into various topics
than
the available manuals or the program's built-in help files. Best
of all, you can watch as an experienced instructor
demonstrates
the use of the program, something you will not obtain from a
user's manual.

The Personal Ancestral File "Getting Started Video Training"
video
features host Steve Lemmon, who spends roughly an hour and
45
minutes showing the basics of the program. He starts off with
such
topics as how to use the mouse, how to enter names and other
basics. Very early in the video he shows how to insert
multimedia
files into the database. This surprised me a bit, as I didn't
think the use of multimedia was an elementary topic to be
used at
the beginning of a "Getting Started" videotape. However, Steve
only spends a brief amount of time on the subject and then
moves
onto other topics that I expected. He shows how to enter data,
how
to insert European characters (umlauts, accents, etc.) and how
to
use the LDS-specific fields in the database. He also discusses
protecting the privacy of living individuals. Near the end of the
tape, Mr. Lemmon spends time showing how to use the
program's
built-in help files and also how to make backups of the
database.
This "getting started" video lives up to its name; Steve Lemmon
does an excellent job of covering the basics.

The "Intermediate Video Training" features Alan Mann. Alan is
an
Accredited Genealogist who is well known in genealogy
circles. He
is a prolific writer and lecturer on a wide variety of genealogy
topics. The intermediate tape is almost two hours long and
shows
Alan demonstrating features of the program not shown on the
earlier tape. He demonstrates several ways of navigating
around
the program, both with and without the use of a mouse. Alan
also
demonstrates quite a few of the hotkeys PAF version 4.0
utilizes
as shortcuts to many functions. He also covers many of the
advanced preferences, such as "auto-completion" and the use
of the
address book. I was especially pleased to see him spend quite
a
bit of time on recording sources. Not only does he show the
keyboard commands, but he also discusses why every
genealogist
needs to record the source of every piece of information
recorded.

The "Intermediate Video Training" also covers image file
formats,
how to import data from other sources and especially how to
import
data into a new database so that you do not insert possibly
erroneous data into your own! The videotape spends quite a bit
of
time showing how to merge two datasets together. That is,
when a
newly received database contains information about individuals
that are already recorded in the main database, the merge
feature
allows the user to identify these "duplicate" individuals and
combine the data on them, preserving all the links to their
relatives. The "Intermediate Video Training" tape also covers
many
of the printed reports available and then spends quite a bit of
time on creating computer-generated Web pages. Again, the
Intermediate tape does a great job of covering the topics
involved.

The "Getting Started" videotape is aimed at the complete
novice,
while the intermediate tape is aimed at the user who has been
using Personal Ancestral File for a few hours and is already
comfortable with the basics. Near the end of the intermediate
tape, there is a hint that an "Advanced Topics" videotape will be
available some day, but apparently this third video has not yet
been released.

The Personal Ancestral File videotapes apparently are only
available in NTSC format and therefore can only be used on North
American television sets. They will not play properly on U.K. or
European television systems.

The Personal Ancestral File version 4.0 for Windows "Getting
Started Video Training" sells for $12.95 and the "Intermediate
Video Training" costs $14.95. Both prices are in U.S. funds.
You
will also have to pay for shipping charges. You can obtain more
information about these videotapes or even order them online
at:
http://www.pafvideo.com



Meg Bate,
Reference, Library,
La Trobe University.
BUNDOORA Vic 3083
Phone: 94793558
Fax: 94710993

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