USGenWeb is Alive and Well

This afternoon I'm featuring a post by guest blogger, Lisa Frank.  I met Lisa on Twitter and she currently lives in my home state. Lisa is here to dispel the misconceptions about USGenWeb.  I hope your enjoy her post and visit her blog afterward.

USGenWeb is alive and well!!! Why the excitement, you ask? Recently I read a blog post in which a commenter was lamenting that the USGenWeb volunteers are extinct. WHAT?!!! I realized at that moment that there must be researchers who are unaware that USGenWeb is still going strong.

USGenWeb is a set of genealogy websites provided by a group of volunteers. The idea originated in 1996 with the Kentucky Comprehensive Genealogy Database Project which later became the Kentucky GenWeb Project. The idea is to provide free, non-commercial genealogical and historical content for everyone. Today the USGenWeb Project includes sites for every state and county. Family Tree Magazine recently named the USGenWeb Project to its 101 Best Websites for 2011.

The USGenWeb sites are organized by county and state, with each site coordinated by one or more volunteers. The main website is the USGenWeb Project.  From here you can navigate to a specific state and from the state page to a specific county. State sites contain information related to state histories, family reunions, maps of the counties, and resources for posting queries in which the county is unknown. Some of the state sites offer blogs and e-newsletters that you can sign up to receive.

County sites may offer county histories, transcriptions, links to county resources, photographs, marriages, and other genealogical data. Each site offers different types of information, depending on the coordinator's research, or what items other volunteers have offered. For example, on the Mecklenburg County site that I maintain, I am in the process of adding a list of Vietnam War Casualties, all of which were provided by a volunteer. Many of the sites now offer the ability to follow new additions via RSS such as google reader.

The USGenWeb Project maintains a number of special projects that are sponsored at the national level, such as the USGenWeb Kidz Project and The USGenWeb African American Griots Project. The main USGenWeb Project site also provides help for genealogy researchers, found by clicking on the "Researchers" tab at the top of the main page.

Since USGenWeb is completely volunteer based, the websites are sometimes on different platforms, but that makes it all the more interesting to peruse. Another result of this volunteer effort is that many of the state and county coordinators are seeking out additional materials to add to their site. The County Coordinators do add what they can to the site from their own research, however the efforts of one person are necessarily limited. If you have anything you can offer to the USGenWeb volunteers, first determine which state or county, then contact the coordinator. Examples of items contributed to the USGenWeb sites include transcriptions (deeds, wills, probates, diaries), photographs, personal genealogies, maps, county histories, church listings, marriages… any data that falls into the realm of public domain. Volunteers may also include their contact information on a look-ups index.

What if you want to volunteer? I thought you'd never ask! Here is a page at the USGenWeb Project main site that explains the many ways volunteers can help, including coordinating a state or county website, participating in The Archives Project, and any of several Special Projects.

If you wish to coordinate a USGenWeb site, first select the state you are interested in then look for a link to 'volunteer opportunities,' or 'adoption,' or go to the list of counties to see which counties are not currently managed. Since every site is a little different you may have to search around for the adoptable counties, or just contact the state coordinator and request more information. Both state sites and county sites can be adopted. In some cases there is also a wish list if the county you are interested in is not currently adoptable. Guidelines for State Coordinators (SC) and County Coordinators (CC) are available on the main USGenWeb site on the Volunteer page, under Project Business to the right of the page.

If you were previously unaware of the USGenWeb project, or have not visited lately, I encourage you to take some time to look around!

 

Lisa Frank is a finance professor, genealogist, and mom to an amazing 4 year old. In her oodles of spare time outside of her primary vocation she trains for marathons, volunteers for The USGenWeb Project, and is Secretary/Treasurer of the Second Life chapter of the Association of Professional Genealogists. She writes the genealogy blog “1 Ancestry 2 Little Time,” among other non-genealogy blogs, and is on Twitter.  

Enhance Your Genealogy by Uploading Custom GPS Coordinates

Today I'm featuring a post by guest blogger, Ed. Ed recently left a comment on one of my blog posts where he described how he uploaded custom coordinates to his GPS.  I was fascinated by the concept but knew nothing about how to go about it. Ed is going to share not only how beneficial using gps coordinates are to genealogical research but also specifically how to upload the information to a gps.

A few years ago I was preparing for a trip to visit three generations of my ancestors, the Smith family, in their family cemetery which I had never visited before in eastern Iowa. From descriptions I found online, it was described as being in the middle of a field a quarter mile from the nearest road, not visible from there and in general very hard to find. However, with today’s modern technology that is widely available, I found it easily on my first try.

The first and hardest part is to find the place you want to find using Google Earth which is a free program you can download from the internet. Once you have found your target, in my case Smith Cemetery, add a ‘placemark’ by clicking the pushpin icon on the toolbar at the top of the screen and placing it over your target. Google Earth will give you a chance to name your placemark and more importantly, will give you the GPS coordinates.

My GPS device requires any coordinates input into it to be in decimal format (instead of degrees, minutes, seconds) so depending on your GPS device, you may have to change the settings in Google Earth to have it output the coordinates in the same format. In my case since I needed decimal format so I clicked on Tools, Options and choose that option on the 3D View tab as shown below.

Once I had the coordinates, all I had to do was input those into my GPS device, tell it to go there and followed the directions. That worked great but I often found myself visiting areas of the country for reasons other than my interest in genealogy, which also happened to be an area where my ancestors lived. But due to my lack of foresight, I didn’t have the GPS coordinates with me. I started looking for ways to keep that information with me right on my GPS unit.

Customizing Your GPS

My GPS is a Garmin and has a Points of Interest or POI Loader that you can download for free from their website. This program allows you to upload your own custom files onto your portable GPS device and access them through the touch screen interface. All you need beside the POI Loader is a spreadsheet program like Excel and the USB cable that came with your GPS unit.

In an Excel spreadsheet, enter the longitude in the first column, the latitude in the second column and the text you want to appear on your Garmin screen inside quotes in the third column. You can enter multiple locations by simply adding new information on new rows. For example, I have the locations of all my ancestor’s gravesites within one spreadsheet, another spreadsheet for homesteads and a third for other genealogy related sites that I might want to visit someday in the future. Once you have all the information entered, save your file to your computer using the Save As command and selecting Comma delimited or CSV format. The Garmin POI Loader website has numerous examples of how to create these spreadsheets and load them onto your Garmin GPS.

Once you’ve uploaded the file or files to your GPS device using the POI Loader software, your file name will then become an item under Custom POIs on your Garmin GPS that once selected, will list all your targets along with the usual direction and miles it is from your current location. Select the one you want and away you go.

Another advantage to getting familiar with using GPS coordinates is that it is a very easy way to give ‘directions’ to other tech savvy people to locate a gravesite of an ancestor for example. So many times I can find the cemetery and know my relative is buried in block C, row 3, 4th plot from the left and without a map, still spend hours walking around looking for their grave. Once I have located the grave, I write down the coordinates of the headstone, update the data on my CSV file and reload it on my GPS device when I get back home. Then if someone wants the information, I can give them the coordinates and by following their GPS, the can get within a couple feet of the desired target saving them a lot of searching and allowing them more time to visit. The possibilities for using this system are endless.

Ed is an amateur genealogist who was inspired to know more about his ancestors as a child after seeing someone else's family tree but only started actively researching about five years ago. He occasionally writes about his latest genealogical findings on his blog, Riverbend Journal.

Photos courtesy of Ed.

How To Take Better Gravestone Photos

This morning I'm featuring a post by guest blogger, Greg Stewart.  I met Greg on Google+.  He has a very innovative way of improving gravestone photos which helps take the "luck" out of photography to make consistently good photos.  Greg is going to tell you how he does it in his own words.

Nancy L. Meggs Before & After photos using flash

I began photographing tombstones of my ancestors after retiring a few years ago using a Nikon D40 DSLR camera.  I then jumped into researching who these people were which led to more gravesites to photograph.  Some of these cemeteries are well kept while others have been abandoned and overgrown.  Many of the stones are hard to read while looking at them in person, and the photographs were not any better.  At the right time of day the sun worked in my favor to light the stone for a decent photograph while other days would be overcast. 

I soon learned through online blogs (Strobist) how to use a flash off camera for more pleasing light.  There are different methods of triggering a flash off camera, but the one I chose for the Nikon D40 was a cheap wireless trigger purchased through Cowboy Studio on Ebay.  This includes a wireless trigger to mount on the hot shoe of the camera, and a wireless receiver to mount to the flash.  I use a Nikon SB600 speedlight with this camera.  This flash, and others are capable of being used on a manual setting so you can power down the output of light.

The gravestone on the left highlighted by flash

With this new capability I returned to many of the gravesites and photographed the hard to read stones.  With the flash on a light stand I adjust the flash output to 1/8^th to 1/16^th power, and place it to the side of the stone a few feet away.  Lighting the stone from the side causes shadows on the engraving enabling you to very clearly read the inscription.  In the Nancy L. Meggs photograph you notice her first name and middle initial are raised letters.  This was hard to read even in good sunlight.

I have also used a reflector on a stand to reflect sunlight across the face of stones with good results.  The downside to this is when working alone the wind will blow the reflector away, and you need sunlight.  By using a flash on a light stand I can photograph any time of day with or without the sun.

Greg Stewart is a retired Deputy Sheriff from Union County, North Carolina.  He is currently a licensed Private Investigator in North Carolina specializing in pre-employment backgrounds.  You will usually find him in a cemetery satisfying his hobbies of photography and genealogy.  

Photos courtesy of Greg Stewart.