The Publishing
Permutation
There has been a proliferation of Legacy Quickguides published
these past few weeks. For New England, you can now find New Hampshire, Maine,
Connecticut and Rhode Island Quickguides, and I’ve been told by secret sources
that Massachusetts and Vermont will be coming soon. All of the Quickguides are available as
downloadable files for your desktop or mobile device for only $2.95, and some
are available as laminated cards.
The RootsTech
Reaction
Technology +genealogy +archives
+documents = Fascinating Discussions
I’m wicked excited about attending the big conference in
Salt Lake City later this month, RootsTech 2013. I followed the last two RootsTech events
online, and was very interested in attending in person instead of virtually
being there. In preparation for being
surrounded by other technology nerds and genealogy geeks, I recently visited
the MIT Media Lab event “Providing Innovative Access to the Content in the
National Archives Records”. I had a great
time at this event and look forward to more of this in Utah. Read my post
HERE.
The Snowstorm
Solution
Three major blizzards have hit us three weekends in a row,
with several smaller storms mixed in between for a bit of variety. After Hurricane Sandy, Hurricane Irene (which
almost spoiled the 2011 Geneablogger Bash) and many ice storms, blizzards and
the famous 2012 SnowTober storm have taught me to be prepared by backing up all
my data. I also have plans for charging
up all my mobile devices and staying connected without power for extended
periods. Are you prepared? What do you
run around doing when you hear severe weather alerts?
The Crafter
Congruence
“Brown Eyed Baker” at
http://www.browneyedbaker.com/
featured my cutting board blog post on their “Friday Things” post 8 February
2013
http://www.browneyedbaker.com/2013/02/08/friday-things-15/
This is a cooking blog, but their
recommendation of my blog post led to almost 500 hits this month. Also, many thanks to the Ravelry.com (a
knitting website) discussion group that posted my blog post about the primitive
portrait exhibit at their website. I
guess that members were discussing the portrait I had photographed of the “Lady
of Essex, County”, which was originally titled “Portrait of an Old Lady
Knitting, Essex County, Massachusetts”.
This has had almost 2,000 hits from Ravelry.com and a few comments from
the Ravelry community. I’m very sad
that posts to do with arts and crafts have had so many hits lately. I wish it were genealogists reading blogs,
but anyways, maybe it will inspire a few cooks and knitters to explore
genealogy?
Read the blog post about folk art exhibit at Fruitlands HERE.
By the way, the cutting board story has had over 5,000 hits
from Pinterest since Christmas time.
Again, this was pushed ahead in my blog statistics by crafters, and only
a few genealogists. I’ve seen a huge
increase in blog traffic from Pinterest, but most of it is photo or craft
driven, not history or genealogy driven stories. Is this true for your blog, too? Read my cutting board story
HERE.
The Cousin Corollary
Filiopietism Prism
at
http://filiopietismprism.blogspot.com/2013/02/finding-cousin-kismet-karma-fate-or.html
is authored by John Tew, who began his blogging as a guest writer here at
Nutfield Genealogy. He recently found
out that we are cousins through our common ancestors Richard Tew (1605 – 1673)
and Mary Clarke (1618 – 1687). Our Tew
connection is how we first connected on line through email correspondence. I’ve found cousin connections with dozens of
bloggers, usually through casual conversations with genealogists on
Facebook. I wish more bloggers would
have blog posts or pages with the surnames in their lineages, to make these
cousin connections easier.
I find lots of common cousins through Facebook groups. Of course, many are made on the several Mayflower
pages and groups, but I also meet cousins on surname groups, local history
groups, regional genealogy pages and even on tourism pages for New England
sites. There were some recent
discussions about descendants of the Salem Witch trials that included families
that were accused, accusers, witnesses, and other characters from 1692
Massachusetts. You never know when or where you will meet a cousin next. Do you remember the days when we all used to
post queries on genealogy bulletin boards?
Is Facebook the new version of this?
Londonderry Fluctuations
There has been a lot of interest in Scots Irish genealogy
all of a sudden. I’ve had lots of email
from queries to the Londonderry Historical Society, from my blog, and from
several websites asking me to do look ups for descendants from some of the old
Ulster Presbyterian families. These
names include CARGILL, McMURPHY, STEELE, McCLARY, CILLY, ARCHIBALD, McKNIGHT, BOYD, WILSON and MORRISON. Some of these families removed from
Londonderry to Pennsylvania and then on to other places along the Appalachian chain. If you have a Scots Irish name, it just might
have originated here in New Hampshire after leaving Northern Ireland, and
before migrating south and west.
A member of the Londonderry historical society (not me!) will
be attending the big event in Northern Ireland this summer. The 400
th anniversary of Londonderry
will be taking place, with a year of festivals and events. In 1613 a Royal Charter established the Irish
Society and the County of Londonderry.
The Irish Society established Ulster.
You can read more about it at The Honourable Irish Society at this link:
http://www.honourableirishsociety.org.uk/about-us/400th-anniversary
I hope to report on this more later this year.
Mayflower Implementation
When the Mayflower II went into winter quarters at the
Fairhaven Shipyard last fall, it was discovered that repairs could no longer be
deferred to the future, and some major rennovations are being completed this
winter and spring. The ship is now 56 years old, which is a long time for a
wooden sailing ship. I received several
updates on the maintenance by email from the Plimoth Plantation museum, which
oversees the Mayflower II. The museum
will be fundraising significant donations towards this winter’s repairs and for
more major renovations this year. The
ship will return to Plymouth harbor in May.
Click here to help raise the $380,000 to keep the Mayflower
II shipshape and seaworthy!
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Copyright
2013, Heather Wilkinson Rojo
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