Rockdale County GaArchives History .....Rockdale County Genealogical Society-Newsletter November 2006 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/ga/gafiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Larry C. Knowles http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00012.html#0002854 March 16, 2009, 7:04 pm JEANS & GENES Rockdale County Genealogical Society Publication-November 2006 _________________________________________________________ November 12. 2006, Meeting The Rockdale Genealogical Society will meet at 3:00 PM on Sunday, November 12, 2006 at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, 1275 Flat Shoals Rd., SE, Conyers, Georgia. Our program is "Reflections, Celebrations and Refreshments". We will review and celebrate the past year and discuss plans for 2007. For information please call 770-356-3229 or e-mail spierce02@comcast.net The public is invited. There is no admission charged; however, donations are appreciated. These help to defray expenses such as paying for speaker’s expenses to travel to our meetings. _____________________________________________________________ Election of Officers for 2007 The Board of Directors of the Rockdale County Genealogical Society has selected a slate of officers and committee chairmen to recommend to the membership to serve in 2007. Those selected were: President: Norman Swann V.President: Bill Freese Treasurer: Ellen Trainer Secretary: Jane Conn Program Chairman: Claudine Jackson Membership: Jenel Shipp Travel Coordinator: Ann Walker Newsletter: Marion Farmer The election will be held at the meeting in November and the selections do not preclude nominations being made from the floor. Anyone who desires to serve in some capacity should make the desire known. Also, the Board of Directors has indicated a desire to nominate individuals to assist the committee chairmen. ___________________________________________________________________ Library Visitors List Names Researched James R. Taylor, 3566 Bethel Ch. Rd., Laurens, SC. Researching Taylors from Laurens, South Carolina to Conyers, Ga. Wallace Haywood, Marietta, Ga. Researching Haywood and Carr. Paul & Barbara Thiesen, 601 8th St., Wellsburg, Iowa. Researching history and people of Milstead, Ga. Janice Turner, Winder, Ga. Researching Peppers, Brown, Manns, Whaley, Pound, Whatson. Sandra Melton, Monroe, Ga. Researching same as Janice Turner and also Culberths. Roy Peek, 4421 Hwy 20 NE, Conyers, Ga. Looking for location of Dover Church Cemetery on Gum Creek Rd. Dennis Burleson, 554 Brownwood Ave. SE, Atlanta, Ga. 30316. Researching Longshore, Marbut and Simms. Ann Parker Parsons, Hartwell, Ga. Researching Parker and Crumbley. Fran Passmore, Conyers, Ga. She was there for a presentation of a book. Joyce O’Malley, Conyers, Ga. Likewise for presentation of book. Julia A. Farrigan, Jackson, Ga. The women presented a book from the Gov. Robt. Daniell Chapter NSDAC. Jean W. Brown, Griffin, Ga. She was one of the presenters of the book. Billye DePratter, Lake City, Florida. Reserching for Conyers people. ______________________________________________________________ New Site for Newspaper Articles Don’t know how comprehensive it is, but it could prove useful in some cases, a news archive search on Google. http://news.google.com/archivesearch it’s extremely useful. I did have to subscribe to a database that may include Newsbank, that includes the rural papers in the area I’m researching. Thanks very much for this. I put in the name of an individual I am researching, whose 1910 obituary I had previously found in the New York Times archive at a local Library, and got four more obituaries from different papers plus three other news stories about him. Thank you very much for the site, it’s been very useful as I’ve found references and articles about people I’ve been trying to find for years. While the text is garbled on the older articles, they are complete and free. I read through the entire page, cutting and pasting as I go. From the new document thus created, it’s possible to make corrections or at the very least, to get the gist of the article, and it does give the timeframe of the event. _________________________________________________________________ Homestead Exemptions Useful in Research The homestead exemption applications found in county courthouses, as well as on microfilm at the Georgia State Archives, are a valuable source for genealogists. These books (lists) which began shortly after the Civil War, contain tax exemption applications and have nothing to do with homesteading or the claiming of land. They are concerned only with the aspect of an exemption of ad valorem taxation on the property where one lived. Consequently, they are proof of residency. The applications often list the children’s full names and ages, can be helpful in proving a line, and always aid in understanding how our ancestors lived. Women could file even if their husbands were living. Thanks to Ken Thomas for this tidbit in “Ken Thomas on Genealogy”. _______________________________________________________________ New LDS Church Testing Site If you haven’t seen this new testing site the LDS Church has up, you’re missing a real treat. They are testing a ‘smart pedigree viewer’ feature that may or may not make the cut, much like projects on Google Labs come and go. But this one looks like a real winner based on what I saw tonight. You need to have a high-speed connection. Go to http://www.familysearchlabs.org/ and then click on the link to the Smart Pedigree Viewer. If you don’t have the latest Flash plugin, v9.0.r16, it will ask you if you want to update it. Click yes. You will then see the search screen. If you have no idea what might be in there or want to just get a look at some sample trees, click on one of the images below the search boxes. You can send up your own tree as well to try it out using your own data. From the site blog (link on familysearchlabs.org main page), here are some stats for the first weekend it was up. Here are some interesting stats from this past weekend’s usage of the pedigree viewer: * Total GEDCOMs uploaded: 943 * Most generations displayed in a pedigree: 146 gen w/ 1,429 individuals * Most individuals displayed in a pedigree: 6,357 individuals in a 69 gen pedigree * Unique visitors: 342 * Users submitting feedback: 18% * Distance winners: 1 user from South Africa, and another from Australia About 55% of the GEDCOMs we processed were our sample GEDCOMs. The other 45% were submitted by users. __________________________________________________________________ Judy Bond Reports on Cemetery Project Our Cemetery Project is going well. The list is getting smaller, only about 20 cemeteries to locate. I have found 5 family cemeteries that weren’t surveyed in the past. Help would be appreciated if you know of others that are lost. Don Sailors and I hope that in late 2007 Rockdale County will have its first Cemetery DVD/CD on the market. What a joy it will be to see this in our new Special Collections Room. Judy Bond 770-922-4902 ___________________________________________________________________ Nazi Germany Records Become Available Bloomberg reports that the International Tracing Service, the biggest archive of Nazi documents related to victims of the Third Reich has been opened to researchers. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601100&sid=aPyEEFha4QDY The world’s biggest archive of Nazi documents, containing details on millions of victims of the Third Reich, is to be opened up to researchers as 11 nations amend a 50-year-old agreement to allow wider public access to the files. The International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen, in the western German state of Hesse, contains 30 million to 50 million wartime documents relating to some 17.5 million individuals. Under an agreement signed in 1955, the archive is administered by the International Red Cross and financed by the German government. Eleven states -- Israel, the U.S., France, the U.K., Belgium, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Italy, Poland and Germany -- agreed on May 16 in Luxembourg to open up the archive while taking into consideration the protection of personal data to shield those who were persecuted and their families. Today’s official signing of the protocol ``is a first step to opening up to the public the archives of separate states and organizations,’’ said Wolfgang Wippermann, history professor of the Free University in Berlin in an interview. ``The more access and knowledge we have, the more we can help the victims.’’ Today’s protocol will allow copies of the archive’s documents to be made available to all member states, which can in turn make them accessible to researchers according to their national law. More in story. The International Tracing Service is here. http://english.its-arolsen.org/ Related stories on Yahoo News are here. http://news.search.yahoo.com/search/news?p=Nazi+holocaust&sp=1&fr2=sp- top&ei=UTF-8&SpellState=n-1038910967_q-uYCIudmpMdBxToLYNUXmHAABAA@@ Related stories on Google New available here. http://news.google.com/news?sourceid=navclient-ff&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGGL,GGGL:2006- 15,GGGL:en&q=International+Tracing+Service Regards to all. Keith Old -- Steve Hayes E-mail: hayesmstw@hotmail.com (see web page if it doesn’t work) Web: http://people.tribe.net/hayesstw http://www.geocities.com/Athens/7783/ ___________________________________________________________________________ Latter-Day Church Hours We would like to post our hours of operation at the Family History Library in your monthly newsletter. The hours are: Tuesday: 10:00am-2:00pm, 7:00-9:00pm Wednesday: 10:00am-2:00pm, 7:00-9:00pm Thursday: 10:00am-2:00pm Others times available by appointment by calling 770-785-9888. Thank you, Chris __________________________________________________________________________ New Search Engine Available for Genealogy In recent years, people around the globe have become more and more interested in their ancestry. They’ve been turning to software programs, the Internet, books, CDs, genealogical societies, and professional genealogists to help them trace their genealogy. Why spend all this time--and money--digging up the roots of your family tree? Because knowing something about where you came from is not only fascinating, it also gives you a sense of purpose, direction, and history that you may be missing out on. Now I know there are some very good books out there that you can buy on Amazon.com or at the bookstore that will help you find your ancestors on the Internet. However, by their very nature, as soon as these books show up in the bookstore, they are out of date. Why? Because things change fast, especially on the Internet. Web sites come and go every minute of every day, with new and valuable sites added all the time. How do you find out what and where they are? Search Engine Genealogy will tell you. http://emotorbaypqjm.greatrecipepages.com/home.htm _________________________________________________________________ JEANS & GENES is a publication of the Rockdale County Genealogical Society. % Nancy Guinn Library, 864 Green St. SW, Conyers, Ga. 30012 President: Norman Swann V. President: Bill Freese Treasurer: Jackie Smith Secretary: Jane Conn Program Chairman: Sherry Pierce Membership Chairman: Vacant Membership Committee: Norma Owens Membership Committee: Jenel Ship Trip Coordinator: Martha Brown Board Member: Bertha Little Newsletter: Marion T. Farmer 1500 A. Pine Log Rd NE Conyers, GA. 30012 mtf@mindspring.com http://mtf.home.mindspring.com _______________________________________________ Additional comments: This back issue of the Rockdale County Genealogical Society newsletter has been copied with permission from the personal website of editor, Marion Farmer, as his website is nearing capacity. For simplicity the few photos or graphics have not been included here. Websites previously linked from Marion’s site will not be operative here. Sites that are still active may be found by entering their listed URLs. File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/ga/rockdale/history/other/rockdale93nms.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.net/gafiles/ File size: 12.5 Kb