Genealogical Society of South Whidbey Island

What do these codes refer to?

2010-01-27T19:04:00.000-08:00

On certain family tree records I find notations like "@N125@" or "@N126@. I suspect that these codes relate to occupations or religious affiliation or some such. Does anyone know of an idex to these codes somewhere?
Jerry

Processing European Immigrants

2009-06-18T15:54:00.000-07:00

If someone came through New York City from England in 1949, what facility would they have been processed at? This person is still living and she believes she came through Ellis Island. Is that possible? Thank you.
Cheryl

Which cemetery websites do you use?

2009-03-31T07:22:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to find family members' grave sites. I've found a few websites with cemetery information, and some are helpful, but some are less so. If I don't already know which cemetery someone is buried in, how can I find out? Are there resources that can help me locate cemeteries in a given county?

submitted by Nancy

What genealogy software do you recommend?

2009-01-29T07:47:00.001-08:00

from Nancy Snow

A friend asked me which genealogy software I would recommend. I use Generations Easy Tree 5.2, but I can't really say that I recommend it because I haven't used anything else. My version is more than 10 years old, so it probably doesn't have some features that newer software has. I just did a video tour of the Legacy 7 software, and I have to say it has some really nice tools and gadgets: http://www.legacyfamilytree.net/videos/new7/What'sNewInLegacy7.html

I invite anyone to post comments about what software they use and what they like about it.

What "4-part location" should be used for someone born in Plymouth, Massachusetts in the 1600's?

2009-01-17T19:00:00.000-08:00

The question came from Bob Richardson.

It seems to me that nobody born on this side of the pond, prior to 1781, or perhaps 1776, should show the country as USA. It didn't even exist.

Note: "4-part location" refers to the genealogical practice of always providing 4 levels of jurisdiction for every location regardless of whether you know what to put in each jurisdiction at the time you enter the location in your database. The four jurisdictions are separated by commas. Basically the jurisdictions are: town/township/city, county/shire, state/province, country. What you enter should always reflect the information as it existed at the time of the incident. This format may vary in other parts of the world but the locality always starts with the smallest jurisdiction and each part is separated by commas.

Examples:
, , , USA
, , Washington, USA
, Island County, Washington, USA (note the use of the word County when the town/township/city is not known)
Coupeville, Island, Washington, USA

What topics would you like to include in our programs?

2009-01-16T13:51:00.000-08:00

I'd like to start a thread wherein members could state their desires as to future program topics. I won't necessarily follow-through on all requests but it would be helpful to me as Program Director to know what members would like to hear in our monthly programs.

Jerry

Do you have to do something special to 'follow' the blog?

2009-01-13T13:08:00.000-08:00

This question comes from Jerry Case.

Yes, as far as I can tell there are two ways to subscribe to this and receive notification. I welcome feedback from those who try these to let us all know how each works for you:

News feeds. In the navigation bar to the right, you should see two buttons under the "Subscribe To" heading. One will take you to a subscription page for the posts (new questions and topics), and the other will subscribe you to all the comments that are made to the topic on that page. Unfortunately, it looks as though you will have to subscribe separately to the comments for each post -- by clicking the button to subscribe to comments on each page -- if you want to follow all the various questions and answers.

When you click one of these buttons, you have to choose which news feed service to use. If all of these are new to you and you have no idea what you're doing, I recommend that you use the "Atom" selection at the bottom of the list. If you're already using one of the other services, you should select it.

Once you click the "Atom" selection, a new page will open with the blog news feed and all the recent activity on the blog. In the colored box at the top of this page, you'll see a "Subscribe to this feed" link. If you click that link, a new "feed" will be added to your browser, probably within your "Favorites" or "Bookmarks" section. (Again, feedback on how this works with various browsers will be helpful.) From this point on, the feed will automatically send an update to your browser once a day. If you want an update more often, look for the "View feed properties" link in the right-hand column on the blog news feed page and change the default setting.

In my browser, if there are new items on our blog that I haven't read, there is an indication in the "Feeds" heading. I use Internet Explorer (IE), and it shows a small star in the corner of the Feeds icon when there's a new item in my subscriptions.

To check for new activity, I click on the "Feeds" section in my Favorites. The feed name is bold on any feeds with new items. If I just point to the news feed in IE, I get a tool-tip type box that gives a summary, including how many new posts there are and how long ago the feed was updated. To see the new questions or answers, I click on the feed name (either "Genealogical Society of South Whidbey Island" or "Comments on ...".

There's also a link to subscribe to the news feed through Atom at the bottom of the page, below the comments. So that's it on following this blog via news feeds.
Email. There's a "Subscribe by email" link next to the button to submit a comment. To use this link, you need to have a Google account (or perhaps OpenID) and be signed in. If you want to receive notifications by email and you don't already have a Google account, you might consider creating one. It's free, but you will have to submit some information to Google.

How easy is it to use this blog?

2009-01-12T18:52:00.000-08:00

To view comments on any question or topic, or to add your own comment, you can click on the "comments" link just below any post. (even if there are 0 comments).

You can also click on the question (the post title) above or choose a question or topic from the Blog Archive at right. Then the comment form and instructions will appear below the post.