A new feature to the NCGenWeb project has been added to the site – you can now sign up to receive an email each time the blog is updated. Don’t worry – we won’t overflow your inbox; updates usually average somewhere around 1 -2 new blog posts each week. We use the blog to announce news and changes to county sites, share information on NC relevant resources, and sometimes offer tips to help with your genealogical research.
You can sign up for the email updates by clicking on the envelope icon on the right sidebar
All of us here in the NCGenWeb project mourn the loss of Franklin County Site Coordinator, Sheila Hanna. Sheila passed away February 11th in her hometown of Louisburg, NC. She was 49 years old.
Our thoughts are with the family during this difficult time. Memorial services for Sheila are being held on Thursday, February 18th.
This week, there are celebrations ongoing in Pitt County to celebrate the county’s 250th-year anniversary. As part of the festivities, the local paper, Greenville’s Daily Reflector, is featuring their new online collection of images from the newspaper — the Daily Reflector Image Collection.
This site is a spectacular resource for anyone with historical/ancestral roots to the county. It features more than 7,500 images from the paper’s photo negatives (of which there are more than 85,000). The Joyner Library at East Carolina University has for years now been building a strong digital library collection, but this just tops the cake in my book. You can download high-quality files of the image, share them via a variety of social websites, and add your own comments to the pictures if you know something about them. Some of the images here are also on Flickr and have received a great response there. The pictures cover events and people not only in Pitt county, but in surrounding counties as well.
To learn more about the project, see their About page, where you can view a SlideShare presentation about the project’s implementation. Kudos to the Joyner Library for another great resource!
Okay, not really, but let me tell you about an interesting connection the NCGenWeb has to a recent television show.
Brigham Young University has an ongoing series on their cable station called “The Generations Project.” I am at the moment I write this, watching the most recent episode and have seen a great example of how USGenWeb fits in the larger picture. In the current episode, the subject of the show, John Robert Searcy, is seeking to learn more about his ancestors. In one of his meetings with a genealogist, she informs him of her research and finding out about his first Searcy ancestor to come to the United States.
The first one in his family to come to the U.S. was John Searcy born 1694 in Nottingham, England and died in 1787 in Granville County, NC.
John Searcy detail from The Generations Project Episode
When I saw this, I wondered – hmm.. is there anything that is on the NCGenWeb site/ USGenWeb Archives that the genealogist may have used? Of course, I don’t know for sure as it was not stated. But, I did find that back in 2002, Waunita Powell submitted the will of John Searcy to the Archives site. In 2004, she submitted the same information to the Granville site, along with other Searcy documents (here and here). Additional Searcy information can be found by searching the site using the FreeFind Search Engine.
John in the television show is descended from John’s son (John Jr.) as named in the 1787 will. In less than 10 minutes, I quickly found several trees in Ancestry Public Member trees that document the family and can provide a lead to locate original source documents for the family tree. Just thought I would share this as a way to show how our volunteers efforts could potentially make a difference in any person’s quest to learn more about their families.
If you’ve not seen this show, you must watch it. This is the second episode I’ve watched and they are done quite well and bring an extremely intimate and personal touch to learning more about your ancestors. You can view the episode I describe by going to http://www.byub.org/thegenerationsproject/, though, as each new episode comes out, the video is replaced. Enjoy.
In the past month, we’ve shared two major online collections of NC college yearbooks that are freely available at the Internet Archive – those of Elon College & the University of North Carolina @ Chapel Hill. Well, more digging around at the Internet Archive site reveals even more of them!
In order to make access easier for our researchers, a new page has been added to the NCGenWeb “List of Consolidated NC Resources,” a page to link you to the available yearbook collections. On the new page, you will find (at the time of this post) collections for:
Appalachian State University – 1923-2005
Duke University – 1919-1995
Elizabeth City State University (African-American school) – 1925-2008
Elon University – 1919-2009
Louisburg College – 1867-2007
North Carolina State University – 1903-2009
UNC-Chapel Hill – 1890-1963
Thanks to UNC Libraries’ collaboration with the Internet Archive, we are able to have great access to these yearbooks. Though there are dates listed here, these collections continue to be updated, so exact dates may vary.
Earlier this month I posted about Elon College’s online collection of yeabooks; in this post, I’d like to share the fact that UNC-Chapel Hill Library has a collection of their yearbooks, the Yackety Yack, online at the Internet Archive. Browsing through the yearbooks can be informative, seeing the pictures of the students and their class photos. The Yackety Yack has some interesting art in it as well.
Commencement Artwork from 1901 Yackety Yack
The oldest one currently on the site is the 1901 yearbook, the first issue with that name, previously, it was called the Hellenian. The senior class have a variety of information written about them, from their hometown to the activities & organizations in which they participate. I was pleasantly surprised too seeing early in the yearbook the name of a person in a family that I’ve been helping another researcher learn more about – the Picot’s of Washington & Halifax counties. On the Board of Trustees is listed Dr. Louis Julien Picot.
1901 UNC Board of Trustees
As is par for the course for texts at the Internet Archive, you can either browse these online or download them in a variety of file formats (even Kindle!).
Just had to share this news from the UNC Southern Historical Collections – today they unveiled a new digital collection of African-American Resources. Thirty-five of their collections w/ more than 8,600 items make up the first installment of this amazing resource.
In addition to materials relevant to NC history, the new digital offerings include materials from other southern states as well.
County Coordinator Katy Hestand is ready for you to visit her new Polk County, NCGenWeb site!
The new site uses Joomla, a content management system, that allows Katy to be efficient in updating information quickly on the site. The new version of the site offers several features, such as printer-friendly formatting, a “Who’s Online” feature, and the ability to establish a user account if you are interested in adding or contributing additional data.
New Polk County NCGenWeb site
Katy is the CC for two counties in NC, Wilson & Polk, as well as for 18 other counties in the USGenWeb Project. Go Katy! Visit the site if you can and let Katy know 1) what you think and 2) if you have any data to contribute!
Do you have research interests in Alamance county? If so, you may be interested in knowing that Elon College now has their yearbook collection from 1913-2009 available online! The blog of the Belk Library at Elon College recently posted an announcement to their blog, Under the Oaks.
The collection is hosted at the Internet Archive and the interface is quite easy to use and navigate. You can view the yearbooks online, or you can also download PDF versions of any edition for viewing on your own computer. Both black & white and color versions are available. There is even a beta Kindle version!
This is an absolutely wonderful resource if your research interests are around Elon. Your webmaster here applied to Elon for college too but ultimately decided to go elsewhere; imagine if I’d had! My picture would be here too!
A treasure trove of information is just waiting to be discovered in these books. For example, this is a picture of the Junior Class of 1913
Elon College: Junior Class 1913
The motto of the class was “Nihil nisi optimum” which means “nothing but the best is good enough.”
The class flower was the Violet, and the colors were Black & Gold.
The class members were:
S.S. Myrick
C.C. Johnson
M.S. Revel
Grace Rollings
Bettie Ellis
J.F. Morgan
Nina Pinnix
Ethel Barrett
Sallie Foster
Vera Gray
Anyone know who the young child may be?? I’m puzzled over that one 🙂
A big hurrah to the team involved in making this available to researchers!
This week, the NCGenWeb has launched a new application form for those potentially interested in joining the project. We have several counties currently up for adoption and could always use good county hosts. All you need is a love for the county you’re interested in and basic HTML skills; don’t worry, we can even help you w/ the HTML part!
You can find a list of our counties up for adoption on our Volunteer page. If interested, let us know by filling out the Volunteer Application!
