Greetings Fellow Family History Sleuths,

Happy Fall, y'all! Welcome to another month's worth of genealogical potpourri.

As usual, our long-time friend, genetic genealogy makes several appearances (environmental DNA, anyone?), but you'll also find digital doppelgängers, an intriguing new book about the census (I promise, no matter how much you think you know, there's so much more), and the strangeness of old articles becoming freshly relevant (in this case, a piece I wrote back in the Dark Ages of 2008 about who would be king of America if George Washington had been king instead of president). I also hope you'll spend some time experimenting with the new research tools discussed in this issue's feature article as I've already had several people tell me how handy they are and we just never know what will unearth that tidbit we've been looking for so long, right?

Until next time, happy sleuthing!

Research Buzz Search Gizmos

Photo Credit: Brain POP under Creative Commons license

Hey, y'all, In case you're not familiar with Tara Calishain, the one-person guru behind ResearchBuzz, I'd like to suggest that you check out some of her latest tools designed to help us dig deeper and faster in our research efforts.

They're all free (some require API keys, but the keys are also free) and there's no advertising.

Currently there are 15 gizmos, and while I encourage you to poke around and play with all of them, Tara was kind enough to highlight a few she thinks might be most useful for genealogists:

• Smushy Search - Adds contextual query words to a Google topic search (in other words, try this when you're researching a topic that's new to you - will help you get past a lot of Google noise to what's most relevant).
  
• Time-Sliced News Search - Takes a year and query you input and generates date-restricted searches for multiple news search engines at once - including Google News, Google Books (Books, Newspapers, and Magazines are searched separately), Newspapers.com, and Chronicling America.
  
• Twitter Receipts - Not all of us are on Twitter, but if you are, you're going to like this one! Twitter Receipts has you enter a Twitter handle and a date, then queries our friend, The Wayback Machine, for the closest snapshot of the Twitter handle to that date.
  

P.S. For yet another cool tool Tara introduced after I wrote the above, check out the "Carl's Name Net" link under the links for the week of September 21st!

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Genealogy Roundup, September 21

Photo Credit: Mary Woodard under Creative Commons license

Carl's Name Net – Ooh, look! Tara of ResearchBuzz has a new tool to help speed your research using Google, Google Books, Google Scholar, and Internet Archive. Tired of having to search on countless name variations? Let Carl's Name Net do the work for you!

This nine-year-old was enslaved in the US. Her story could help stop a chemical plant

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Genealogy Roundup, September 14

Photo Credit: Denish C under Creative Commons license

The Match – Sri Lanka DNA adoption project 🧬

Can environmental DNA help us find lost US service members? – Environmental DNA. 🤔 Might help with Army cases.🤞

A new study explains why Starbucks can’t spell your Jewish name – Really interesting article. And I had never heard of an Aroma name. 😂

Populism Updates on Twitter – Weird thing to wake up to. For those on Twitter, there's a discussion on research I did back in 2008 determining who would be King of America if George Washington had been King instead of President.

And anyone curious about the sleuthing, here's an article I wrote (BTW, would be different now since the UK changed its law of succession in 2013).

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Genealogy Roundup, September 7

Photo Credit: Scott Ableman under Creative Commons license

Keira Knightley, Kit Harington, Emeli Sandé to Explore Their Family Histories in ‘My Grandparents’ War’ – More celebs looking into their roots, but a specific aspect. And this one will be available on PBS!

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Genealogy Roundup, August 31

How To Live With Your Digital Doppelgängers – Hoping I've got a while longer before this becomes an issue for me. 🙏

Transkribus User Conference 2022 – A whole conference "that brings together researchers and practitioners from a wide range of disciplines to explore the future of handwritten text recognition" - with particular emphasis on technology for doing so!

Their ancestors came to America. After Dobbs, they want out. – Have been wondering when this phenomenon would get covered.

"Paige thinks her great-grandparents might even be proud of her efforts to find a way out. 'They came over looking to the future, right? They probably had a similar thing, where they had to break up with their past,' she says. 'In that way, it almost feels like the family tradition.'"

For the First Time, Government Asks Public for Input on Census Design – Want to weigh in on the 2030 census design? h/t (@dickeastman, www.eogn.com)

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Genealogy Roundup, August 24

Photo Credit: Alicia Soltani under Creative Commons license

5 locations in Ireland that are special to Irish-Americans – This article has a few errors (still claiming Annie was 15 when we've known she was 17 since 2006??), but it's kind of cool to have had something to do with 2 of these 5. ☺️☘️

Democracy’s Data: The Hidden Stories in the U.S. Census and How to Read Them – New book alert! There’s a lot of familiar territory here for genealogists, and at the same time, you'll be surprised by how much you *didn’t* know about the U.S. census. It’s like getting a backstage pass! You can also learn more by watching the replay of this online event with Dan Bouk. You can watch the replay of another online event, hosted by the National Archives, here.

This Prince George’s County Plantation Museum Is Bringing Stories Of Enslaved People Out Of The Shadows – Very pleased to see this happening in my old backyard of PG County.

WWII Detroit native's remains to be interred at Arlington – Welcome home, Sgt. Adolph "Leonard" Olenik. Honored to have researched your family. (This was a challenging one, so am especially grateful).

Genealogy Research in the Year 2070 – How very strange to wake up and read this. 😆😆😆 Someone predicting what genealogy would be like in 2070 made a hypothetical granddaughter of mine the client - which I especially love since I have no children. Very grateful to this writer for giving me future descendants! 👋❤️, y'all!

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