The NC Government & Heritage Library is conducting a crowd-sourcing pilot and could use your help. This week staff uploaded images into a Flickr set (find it here) and would like to know if you can log onto Flickr and contribute by transcribing them. At the time of this post, there were 164 documents in the set, though some have already been transcribed.
There are quite a range of documents there – family bible records, newspaper clippings, handwritten family trees, handwritten letters, church records, etc; a large variety.
letter from James Woods Babcock
Their first batch of 50 documents was transcribed in 49 days – how awesome is that? To transcribe, all you need to do is log into your Flickr account and leave your transcriptions as a comment. Won’t you contribute?
Last week’s episode of the GeneaBloggers Radio Show focused on ways to engage youth in genealogy. At the same time, here in the NCGenWeb project, we learned of our own real-life example – what a coincidence!
Some 10th grade students participating in a summer school course taught by history teacher Ms. Martinez were working on projects related to slavery & the slave trade. In the course of their research, the students found resources linked from the Halifax County NCGenWeb’s African American page to be of particular help.
A few students found your page to be very informative and resourceful for their projects. Thank you for making such a good reference available for them! — Ms. Martinez
Not only that, as a way to give back, they wrote to the county coordinator, Deloris Williams, to suggest the inclusion of additional resources to add to the page. As an incentive, Ms. Martinez provided students bonus points if their suggestions were incorporated. After review, Deloris did in fact incorporate a couple of the links suggested, including a page from PBS’s Africans in America collection, noting:
The link to the PBS website is part of one of the links I’ve used myself in my own research and I know how very informative it is because it offers so much information about many different eras on the website. The link that I was planning on adding, however, is the Arrival of first Africans to Virginia Colony, since that page is more specific to the area of North Carolina research.
Thank you to Ms. Martinez for engaging your students to become more active in the research process and for thinking of the NCGenWeb project! For anyone else who is interested, you may visit the NCGenWeb African-American page for even more resources.
I’m a little late in announcing this, but if you have research interests in Pitt County, you will want to be sure you visit the new and improved Pitt County, NCGenWeb site. Brian Nichols is our new coordinator for the site and within days of adopting it he completely transformed it. Quick work Brian!
Brian is a descendant of William Nichols – a Virginia transplant who arrived in Pitt County in 1755. His family roots are deep in the area and this familiarity should serve him well as site coordinator.
The site features links to many resources relevant to the county, as well as original data. If you have information to share, please let Brian know – he would be glad to receive it. Welcome Brian to the NCGenWeb Project!
The NCGenWeb Project is saddened to announce the passing of Winona Ott Solomon, county coordinator for the Bute county website.
Winona was born December 6, 1944 and died May 4, 2011. She was a long-time contributor to the NCGenWeb project, providing numerous records and material for area researchers. Winona was also actively involved with Warren County research and collaborated with family members and friends on the Pegram Family website.
Winona, a member of the Church of Latter-Day Saints, was a graduate of Brigham Young University. She was also a cousin to Nola Duffy, another coordinator here in the NCGenWeb project. Our thoughts are with Winona’s family.
Here at the NCGenWeb Project we are pleased to announce new county coordinators (CC) for three of our counties! And, both are named Susan 🙂
Union County – Susan Sullivan is our new CC for Union County. Susan has family roots in the area that go back many years and has been practicing genealogy for many years. Her family also is from nearby Chesterfield County South Carolina. Susan is a graphic designer by profession and we look forward to her plans for adding additional content.
Perquimans County & Pasquotank County – Susan C. Griffin is our new CC for Perquimans and Pasquotank counties. Susan G. also has strong family ties to both of these areas. A third-generation genealogist, Susan G. is well qualified to help make these county resources better for you.
Of course we also welcome contributions from our researchers, so if you have family from Union, Perquimans, Pasquotank or any NC county, please keep the NCGenWeb project in mind.
Congrats to Richard Phillips, one of our active North Carolina genealogy researchers! One of his blogs was highlighted during the GeneaBloggers Radio Show #18 on Friday, May 27th.
GeneaBloggers Radio is held weekly on Friday evenings. You can listen live and access previous shows here. It is a great platform for learning new information while at the same time socializing with other genealogists. This latest show focused on military records. Guests included Curt Witcher of the Allen County Public Library and professional genealogist Jeffrey Vaillant. Each week, Thomas McEntee, the show host, picks a blog to highlight. This week, Richard’s African American Soldiers & Sailors blog was the one picked.
Not only is Richard an active researcher but he briefly helped us out as coordinator of the Scotland County pages. He has several web projects and this particular blog focuses on African American Soldiers and Sailors of Onslow County during the Civil War period. This and another of his blogs is listed on the Onslow County Military page.
African American Soldiers & Sailors Blog
You can also find his blogs listed on our NC Genealogy 2.0 page along with many other NC genealogy & history related blogs.
How cool for Richard to be featured on GeneaBloggers Radio. Here at NCGenWeb we value our volunteers such as he and our many others. If you in fact, have information to share, please let us know.
The NCGenWeb Project sends a big welcome to our newest County Coordinator, Jane Gouge!
Jane has adopted McDowell County, one of the counties that sits on the western side of the state.
An active family researcher, Jane has also recently started a blog and discusses her Conner family roots on her site, Connor Trails of North Carolina. Be sure to check her blog out.
Thank you Jane for joining us; we look forward to seeing what new data you gather for the site.
The Gale Cengage company is offering a wonderful treat during the next two weeks. From now until April 24th, several databases will be available free of charge in celebration of National Library Week.
Several databases will be available, the one most likely to be of highest interest for most genealogy researchers is Gale News Vault becuase of its vast collection of historical newspapers. The database includes both US & UK newspapers and has more than 10 million pages available.
For North Carolina — the following newspapers and ranges are available in the 19th US Century Newspapers subset of Gale News Vault:
News & Observer (Raleigh, NC) from 1880-1899 – close to 6,000 issues
Raleigh Register from 1800-1899 – more than 3500 issues
Fayetteville Observer from 1816-1899 – more than 3,000 issues
Daily Register (Raleigh, NC) from 1850-1861 – more than 500 issues
Remember, newspapers often covered items over a wide geographic area so you’ll want to be sure to especially check for news in counties near to where the paper was published. For example, the Raleigh Register newspaper covered news from across the state — here’s an 1858 excerpt of an account on the death of Mr. George Hensley of Madison County (all the way on the other side of the state) who unfortunately met his demise due to an accidental gun discharge after a bear hunt.
Published in the Weekly Raleigh Register - Wednesday, January 27, 1858; Issue 10; col D
As county coordinators, we often receive inquiries from researchers on how to find various types of information. A common request is how to locate obituaries and death information – sometimes even going back before official state and county records.
Over the years, many have taken the time to go through historical newspapers and pull out items of genealogical interest such as births, marriages & deaths. Many of our county sites have detailed information on how to locate such records, but as an additional aid, we’ve put together a bibliography of print resources to help you locate information extracted or abstracted from various newspapers in the state.
The new page is hosted on the FamilySearch Research Wiki in light of our collaboration with FamilySearch.org. The page has a purposeful emphasis on PRINT resources. When available, each book will link to the catalog record for either the Family History Library or WorldCat.org to help you find the book at other libraries.
Snapshot from the NC Newspaper Extracts Bibliography page.
Northampton County co-coordinators Ken Odom & Tom Davis are pleased to announce a new addition to their site. You can now search and access a database-driven compilation of close to 3,000 burials in the county!
Cemetery & Burials Database
The database is searchable by last name and by cemetery. Each record includes death & birth dates as applicable. Headstone photos and a map showing the location of the cemetery are also included.
