Today, February 19th, 2011, the North Carolina Genealogical Society (NCGS) hosts their Sixth Annual Speakers Forum in Raleigh, NC.   Throughout the day,  NCGS members will share their expertise on a variety of topics.

Presentation titles include:

• State Land Grants: Accurate Information?
• WorldCat: It’s Not Just for Librarians
• Use of Facial Recognition Tools for Ancestor Identification
• Freedmen’s Bureau Records: Much More Valuable to Anyone’s Research Than You Might Have Thought!
• No Person Shall … Gallop Horses In the Streets: Using Court Records to tell the Story of our Ancestors’ Lives
• Shoot…I already had this
• Social Media: Share Your Genealogy Without Losing Your Mind
• Story-Catching While You Can

The full details of the day can be found here.  I’m hoping that NCGS Speakers may share brief recaps of their presentations for those of us that can’t make it in person.  Be sure to check the NCGS website for future notifications.

Did you know that the North Carolina State Preservation Office is adding the full application files of properties nominated for the National Register of Historic Places?

Announced on their website, PDF nomination files are currently available for all properties listed since 2009.  The files are worth checking out for all those doing family history research.  The nominations are several pages in length and include pictures and detailed histories.  Below is an example for the William A. Curtis home in Raleigh.

The list of sites with nomination files attached may be found online at http://www.hpo.ncdcr.gov/nr/nrlinks.html.  At the time of this writing, approximately 230 were available.  North Carolina has more than 2700 properties listed on the Register and the Office does plan to add older ones as time allows.  Meanwhile, if you are interested in the nomination of any particular property and it is not available online, contact the Office for details on how to order.

On January 25, 2011,  Josh Howard, a research historian in the Research Branch of the N.C. Office of Archives, will discuss his work on the North Carolina Civil War Death Study.   Through his work Mr.  Howard has been able to provide details of North Carolina Confederate and Union units – for both black and white troops.

More details can be found on the blog of the State Library of North Carolina.

In the last post, we shared information about transfer of the FamilySearch website to their new online domain – www.familysearch.org and highlighted some of the new features.  One such feature included their Research Wiki – a site designed to help guide you to resources for locality searching and also to provide information on a wide array of genealogy resources.  Think of it like a Wikipedia for genealogy.

The FamilySearch Research Wiki team has been actively trying to grow the wiki so that it as effective as possible. Part of this initiative includes their Adopt-A-Wiki program whereby societies, archives or other family history organizations can sign up to help enrich and monitor specific pages.

Joining other USGenWeb State Projects, the NCGenWeb is pleased to announce our sponsorship of the North Carolina pages on the Wiki.   Now when you visit one of the county pages, you’ll find a badge identifying the NCGenWeb as the adopter.  Our goals as adopters are to help round out the pages with basic information to help get you started; similar to what we do anyway here at the NCGenWeb.   Our collaboration with the Family History Library on this project provides you more access points for your research.

The benefit of the Wiki is that YOU can contribute directly to the page.   A registration is required in order to make changes, but editing is as simple as using today’s standard Word processing programs.  Here are some helpful links if you’d like to get started:

• Registration page
• Wiki Help
• How to search the Wiki
• More info on the Adopt-A-Wiki program

Bear with us as we spend the next few weeks enhancing the pages, but visit the wiki site to explore.  If you have knowledge to share – add it!  Others will benefit.

This week, the FamilySearch officially transitioned their old site, www.familysearch.org, to their NEW SITE!

The new site offers a very appealing update in design and functionality.  The new site has been available for many months now as FamilySearch wanted to unveil the new site in stages.  This allowed them the opportunity to work out bugs along the way.  A description on the site detailing why they’ve made the change explains:

The updated version of the FamilySearch website gives you a richer family history experience by putting all FamilySearch content, services, and products on the same site.

Major areas of the new site include:

• Learning Resources – offers a Research Wiki that can be edited by anyone to share knowledge, a long list of online research videos & tutorials to help you learn  family history research methods, & a special section on how to get started doing family history research
• Family Search Centers – search for a Family History Library near you – complete with a fancy Google-map like image for locating it. Tree icons on the map help you find the closest locations and directions, hours and contact information are included.
• Give Back – help contribute to the rapidly increasing online database collections as a member of the indexing community, contribute to the Research Wiki, or sign up to help evaluate FamilySearch resources
• Historical Records — if you haven’t checked out the MANY databases coming online from FamilySearch this is your opportunity to do so now.  Amazing what the combined efforts of many can achieve. Collections are international in scope.  There are several NC related collections that we’ve blogged about before.
• Family Trees –  search user-submitted pedigree files.  Remember the limitations of such files, yet, they can offer useful clues if you locate a person of interest
• Library Catalog – with a completely revamped and snazzier interface.  As you type a search term, it auto-completes for you a-la Google, and results returned by subject headings make it easy to locate exactly the kind of item you need.  In the old search, the list of specific film rolls required an extra click, but now it’s all consolidated on one screen.

There is plenty to explore in the new interface to keep you busy for awhile.  Read the blog announcement for more information, including a guide to the new site in PDF format.   Also,  the Ancestry Insider blog has a very detailed comparison of the old and new sites.

The NC Office of Archives & History announces this week the publication of a new book on Tyrrell County.

This book by Alan D. Watson chronicles the history of the county over close to three centuries.   If you have research interests in this area, you’ll want to pick up this book.   It is available through the NC Historical Publications Shop for $15.

Looking for records & resources for African-American genealogy research?  We’ve recently updated the African-American Special Projects page on the NCGenWeb site to include links to specific counties with relevant content.

Resources vary and may include:

• Wills that list free slaves – such as that of Julius Zollicoffer of Halifax County
• Freedmen Bank Records – see Northampton County as an example
• School information – such as the Rosenwald Schools in Nash County
• Slave runaway notices – like Simbo from Onslow County
• Comprehensive collections – like that of Bladen County

You never know what you’ll find so be sure to look around.  If you have questions, please contact the county coordinator who can lead you to further resources.  Thank you to Deloris Williams, Assistant State Coordinator, for compiling the county links.

The North Carolina State Archives announced a new site this week – their “Treasures” collection.

Treasures is an online exhibit of some of the most priceless items from the collections at the North Carolina State Archives, with supplemental materials from the State Library of North Carolina to be added later. These archival documents are not available for public viewing except at specifically designated times due to their importance to the state’s history and, in some cases, their fragile condition. Also included in this online collection are some examples of presidential signatures that the State Archives has collected over time.

Upon visiting the site you’ll quickly understand why these are very much state treasures.   Having them digitized for online viewing will certainly increase their accessibility and many a researcher will be thankful.   The site is easy to navigate with content clearly presented in 12 time periods that spans 1600-present day.

There are many interesting items to be found here – as an example of one among many is the will of John Penn (of Granville County) – one of the NC representatives to sign the Declaration of Independence.    John died in September of 1788 and his will, dated 1 Mar 1784, divides his estate between his two children – a son and a daughter.   What a great document for a descendant, or Penn family researcher, to know about and access.   Spend some time exploring the stie and see what you find.

The North Carolina Genealogical Society (NCGS) is holding its annual fall meeting within a few days.   The meeting will be held at the Brownstone Inn in Raleigh on November 12th and November 13th.   The theme is “Finding British Isle Ancestors” and the featured speaker is Paul Milner.

Further details are available on the NCGS website.

In other NCGS news, Jordan Jones, Director-At-Large and Webmaster for the NCGS, was recently named to the Board of Directors of the National Genealogical Society.  More details can be found on Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter.