Board of Health Complaints; 1861 – 1866

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The Rochester Public Library has published online a very unique resource. It is a typed transcript from the Rochester Board of Health listings all their complaints for the years 1861 to 1866. It deals with livestock running freely in the streets, illegible livestock on home lots, people throwing “slop” in the street, placement of privies, etc. There isn’t really a lot of genealogical information but it very interesting reading how Rochester was dealing with health problems.

Check out the Complaint Book for an insight to life in the 1860s.

St. Patrick’s Day

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st-patricks-dayIt seems that I am one of the few people that doesn’t have a Irish ancestor. When we asked at Rochester Genealogical Society meetings about a third say that they have Irish ancestry.

If you want to research your ancestors from Ireland, I suggest you read this recent blog post from Diane Haddad, the “Genealogy Insider.” The title is Six Irish Genealogy Websites but she gives links to 8 websites and some other resources for avenues of research.

World War I Books Online

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The Rochester Public Library has added the 3 volume set titled World War Service Record of Rochester and Monroe County, New York to their online collection. This is a fantastic resource for those that served in the war and also those that stayed home and did volunteer work during WWI.

Volume one of the set is subtitled: Those That Died For Us (652 pages). These are men and a few women that died during the war. Each person has a biography which gives their home address, birth date & place and parent’s names. Also is a description of their service record and where they died. Usually the bio also tells where the person was buried. Best of all, at the rear of the volume there is a portrait of about 90% of the people included in this volume.

Volume two is subtitled; Those That Went Forth to Serve ( 1985 pages). This is a comprehensive list of over 22,000 that served from Monroe County during the war. These are much shorter biographies. Each includes; home address, birth place and a description of their military service including when admitted, places served and discharge date.

Volume three is subtitled; Those Who Supported The Service (588 pages). This volumes has written descriptions of the organizations and companies that helped the war effort. Among the organizations are the local Draft Boards, Red Cross, YMCA, YWCA, Jewish Welfare Board, Salvation Army and others. Companies that helped during the war included Eastman Kodak, Bausch & Lomb, Gleason Works and others. Each of these has a great description of their work to help during the war.

Each volume can be viewed or downloaded separately as PDF files. They are very large files. Vol. 1- 16mb, Vol 2 – 51 mb and Vol.3 – 19 mb. These are direct links to the volumes:

Kodak News; March 11 – 15

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History in the making…

520EX-scanner

520EX Scan Station

On Friday Kodak announced the expiration, at 5:00 p.m. on March 14, 2013, of the offer to holders of its outstanding 10.625% Senior Secured Notes due March 15, 2019 and 9.75% Senior Secured Notes due March 1, 2018 to subscribe for up to an aggregate amount of $455 million of term loans under a new junior secured priming superpriority debtor-in-possession term loan facility, and exchange Notes for up to an aggregate amount of $375 million of junior term loans under the Junior DIP Facility. The offer was oversubscribed.

I’m not sure what the above announcement means. The stock market loved the announcement. Kodak started the week with a stock price of about 20 cents and ended the week at around 30 cents. Even that is only a 10 cent increase, it figures out to about a 50% rise for the week. I suspect that the stock market now is confident that Kodak will be out of bankruptcy around mid 2013.

On Tuesday Kodak announced a new “plug-and-play” scanning solution for Microsoft SharePoint that will be used on the Kodak 520EX Scan Station. Users can use the system to capture documents directly to SharePoint in real time. That makes it easier to collect, manage and share content. On a network, the Scan Station 520EX lets multiple users  to scan to print, e-mail, fax or a PDF file.

RootsTech Conference 2013 Online Sessions

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RootsTechNext week, Thursday through Saturday (March 21 -23) is the RootsTech Conference in Salt Lake City. RootsTech is a genealogy conference that has the latest family history tools and techniques. It offers a chance to connect with experts in your genealogical research, and be inspired in the pursuit of your ancestors. Sessions will show how to find, organize, preserve and share your family’s connections and history. Attendance is expected to be over 5000.

If you can’t be there in person to attend the over 250 sessions than you will have the chance to see 13 of the sessions live online at the RootsTech website. You can’t beat the price. They will be free all 3 days.

The schedule, below, is the times of the sessions in Mountain Time. For Eastern Time, they would be 2 hours later and Pacific Time an hour earlier. Note also that the sessions will be released later so if you can’t watch these sessions live you will be able to watch them in the near future.

Live Streaming Schedule (Mountain Time)
Thurs., March 21
8:30 AM Keynote – Dennis Brimhall, Syd Lieberman, Josh Taylor
11:00 AM The Future of Genealogy – Thomas MacEntee and panel
1:45 PM Tell it Again (Story@Home) – Kim Weitkamp
3:00 PM The Genealogists Gadget Bag – Jill Ball and panel
4:15 PM Finding the Obscure and Elusive: Geographic Information on the Web – James Tanner
Friday, March 22
8:30 AM Keynote – Jyl Pattee and Tim Sullivan
9:45 AM Researching Ancestors Online – Laura Prescott
11:00 AM FamilySearch Family Tree – Ron Tanner
1:45 PM Google Search… and Beyond – Dave Barney
3:00 PM From Paper Piles to Digital Files – Valerie Elkins
Sat., March 23
8:30 AM Keynote – David Pogue and Gilad Japhet
9:45 AM Using Technology to Solve Research Problems – Karen Clifford
11:00 AM Digital Storytelling: More than Bullet Points – Denise Olson

More information on these sessions at RootsTech website.

Talk on Women in Civil War

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On Tuesday, March 12th there will be the talk “The Role of Women in the Civil War” by Rebecca Budinger

During the American Civil War, men were called to the front to fight, forcing women to re-evaluate their roles as wives, mothers, home keepers, and members of society.  This presentation will explore some of the many roles into which women evolved, most beyond anything they ever imagined.

Rebecca Budinger, originally from Buffalo, attended Nazareth College and took a Civil War course at St John Fisher. That opened her love of history and the Civil War. She began re-enacting in 1998. She has been the Community Relations Manager for Barnes & Noble in Greece for the past 16 years.

Ms. Budinger talk is Tuesday, March 12th at 7:00 p.m. Greece Community & Senior Center, 3 Vince Tofany Blvd. Greece Historical Society members FREE. A $2.00 donation is appreciated from others. Reservations are not necessary.

Top Songs of 1963; #4

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The next song to hit the top of the record charts in 1963 was “Walk Like A Man” by The Four Seasons. The song was written by Bob Crewe and Bob Gaudio who wrote most of the early hits for The Four Seasons. It was their 3rd #1 hit.

The song was at the number one spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for 3 weeks (Feb. 24 – March 16). It was at the top of the Cash Box chart for 2 weeks (March 3 -16).

Visit the official Frankie Valli website.

Download The Four Seasons songs (for a small fee) from Amazon.com.

FamilySearch Family Tree now on the FamilySearch Front Page

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Back in November I wrote about the FamilySearch Family Tree (FSFT) online genealogy database. At that time you had to know the secret of how to get in to the database. Now FamilySearch has added a tab to their main page. You will still have to sign up for a FamilySearch account if you don’t already have one.

FSFT contains all the data from the old Ancestral file, Pedigree Resource file and IGI. That means there is already a lot of information. That also means that all the past duplicate records and past errors are in FSFT. Once you learn how to negotiate the database you can make corrections to the data and best of all it encourages you to add sources any time changes are made. If your family is not already in the database, you can add new information one person at a time or by using a GEDCOM. Note that adding new data via a GEDCOM can take an extreme number of hours. There are both videos and documents to help you learn how to use FSFT.

If you are not interested in putting your family data on FSFT then you can still just search the database, Again, you will still have to have a free FamilySearch account.

I think that eventually that FSFT will become a great source of information. It needs the help of everyone to add good sources. Remember that any data that isn’t sourced should be used only as clues in your own research.

 

Kodak New: Feb. 25 – March 1

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History in the making…

On Thursday Kodak reported a net loss of $58.1 million in January on sales of $127.9 million. Its loss from continuing operations totaled $57.2 million. Kodak had reported a net loss in December of $272.4 million on sales of $152.1 million. Is it possible that in a few months Kodak will finally show a month with a profit? Kodak keeps saying that they will be out bankruptcy by mid 2013.

On Friday Kodak announced that it has reached an agreement with its lenders that gives Kodak more financial flexibility. Kodak said that “certain terms of the financing” have been amended, but didn’t specify which terms. Also, Kodak and its lenders will hire a search firm to find potential new directors for the Board of Directors to lead Kodak after it emerges from bankruptcy.

This isn’t Kodak news but there was this blog post on Tuesday by Tim Barribeau, a digital imagery writer. He discuses how in 1946 Kodak discovered that radioactive iodine from nuclear tests was in corn from Indiana. Kodak even took on the Atomic Energy Commission who finally agreed to give Kodak and the entire film industry, information about nuclear tests, weather patterns, predicted fallout and more.