Civil Occupation Codes: What's Going On Here?

If you copied the transcriptions of WWII enlistment records from Ancestry.com in the past, it might be prudent to do a search and see if the "Civil Occupation" has been changed.  

Depending upon when you made the copy, there is a very good chance that it has.  I don't know yet the date the records were updated/corrected.

As I mentioned in my post earlier today, I noticed that Ancestry's WW2 Enlistment record for my Great Uncle, Mandell Newmark, had changed since I copied it in 2007.  The Civil Occupation had been changed from "Bandsman, Oboe or Parts Clerk, Automobile" to "Salespersons."

It was my belief that the original transcriber of the record had misread the Occupation Code.  That is no longer my belief.  The Civil Occupations on other Enlistment Records I screen-grabbed back in 2007 are now different too.

Mandell Newmark
Formerly "Bandsman, Oboe or Parts Clerk, Automobile"
Now "Salesperson"


Seymour Feinstein
Was: Railway Signal Operator
Now: Salesmen and sales agents, except to consumers


Sidney Feinstein
Was: Foreman, Laundry or Foreman, Auto Repair Shop
Now: Foremen, services amusements



Cruvant Altman
Was: Barber or Lawyer (Attorney or counselor at law)
Now: Lawyers and Judges


It seems that the Occupation Code List has changed as well.

The original list can be seen on the Kansas GenWeb site

Their citation: Electronic Army Serial Number Merged File, ca. 1938 - 1946 [Electronic Records]; Data Table: ENLISTMENT RECORDS; Record Group 64: Records of the National Archives and Records Administration; Series: World War II Army Enlistment Records, 6/1/2002 - 9/30/2002. (Online version on July 16, 2005 at http://www.archives.gov/aad/index.html.)

The current list can be found at archives.gov (as/of today: Aug 31, 2011)

Their citation: File unit: Electronic Army Serial Number Merged File, ca. 1938 - 1946 (Enlistment Records)
in the Series: World War II Army Enlistment Records, created 6/1/2002 - 9/30/2002, documenting the period ca. 1938 - 1946. - Record Group 64

The two lists are significantly different.

Comparing the old and new descriptions to the old and new Occupation Code lists reveals that in none of the cases above did the occupation code change.  The transcription error was not in reading the code.  The transcription error was apparently using the wrong list. Meaning this wasn't an error in one or two records. The error would have been in ALL of them.

Did Ancestry.com or the National Archives ever make an announcement that they had erred, and that those who had looked up records before should look again?  It's very possible they did and I missed it.  Maybe others did too.

Workday Wednesday: The Occupation of Mandell Newmark

Denise Spurlock of Denise's Life in the Past Lane began the meme: Workday Wednesday.  She writes:

Sometimes it seems like all my ancestors were farmers, but the records tell me differently. Some of the occupations I've found: shoemaker, milliner, wheelwright, mine worker, preacher, and sawmill owner. My dad was a sheet metal worker; I have several photos of him at work. I will be using the "Workday Wednesday" theme for sharing photos, stories, and records related to my ancestors' work lives. If you like, join me in posting on your own blog, or as a comment here, how your ancestors spent "Workday Wednesday!"

I've decided to participate in this meme, as the occupations of my ancestors are of interest to me.  This week I am looking at the high school occupation of my paternal great uncle, Mandell Newmark (1923-1945).  He was killed in action during WW2.

Back in April of 2007, I found on Ancestry.com a transcription of his enlistment record. This is what it looked like.

The civil occupation confused the heck out of my family.  We knew his occupation before the war, as a high school student, was a sales clerk at a department store. No one remembered him playing the oboe, or working as an Automobile parts clerk.

I found a listing of Civil Occupation Codes used on the enlistment records, and realized that "Bandsman, Oboe or Parts Clerk, Automobile" was code 175 and "Engineering Aide (Designated Field) or Sales Clerk" was code 170.  I figured that whoever transcribed the record misread a handwritten 170 as a 175.  That's the problem with transcribed records - you don't see what the transcriber saw, so you can't judge its accuracy.

Curiously - At some point in the past 4 years, Ancestry's record was changed. This is how it reads now.

Not only did someone figure out the code had been misread - they somehow knew Mandell was a salesperson, and not an Engineering Aide.  Without seeing the actual document, I don't know how.

I'm glad the record has been updated. However, I would have liked to have been notified that the record had changed.  I did attach the record to my great uncle's entry in my online family tree, so Ancestry had a way to know that I was interested in the record.

Of course, technically, the current transcription is no more reliable than the first.  I happen to have reason to believe it is currently correct -- in the Civil Occupation field, as well as several others.  However, seeing a transcribed record is never the same as seeing an image of the original.

Update: I have just discovered a list of Occupation Codes on the National Archives site which varies significantly from the list linked to above.   It doesn't have the weird combinations of occupations being assigned to the same code.  I'm unsure of the difference between the two lists.

Amanuensis Monday: A Historical Look at United Hebrew Synagogue - 1915

Amanuensis: A person employed to write what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another.

I continue my project to transcribe family letters, journals, newspaper articles, audiotapes, and other historical artifacts. Not only do the documents contain genealogical information, the words breathe life into kin - some I never met - others I see a time in their life before I knew them.

I began this project back in February of 2009, and since then, many others have joined in on the meme.  Why do we transcribe?  I provide my three reasons in the linked post.  You may find others.  If you participate, feel free to leave a link to your post in the comments.

***

This week, I look at an article that appeared in the March 19, 1915 edition of the St. Louis Jewish Voice.  It is a reprint of an article that appeared the prior week in The St. Louis Republic. The article provides both an history of the congregation up to that point, and a description of the then-current synagogue.  My grandmother, Belle (Feinstein) Newmark was born in 1914, and grew up in the congregation.  She remembered moving in the 1920s to the location on Skinker Blvd which now houses the Missouri History Museum Library and Research Center. That's the location I grew up in, and I remember the move in the 1980s to the current location.

Week in Review

Below are some noteworthy news stories and blog posts I have read in the past week that deal with my overlapping interests in Genealogy, History, Heritage, and Technology.

• Michael Hait at Planting the Seeds shares Ten Lessons Learned from the Other Side of the Microphone - from his experience as an audio-visual technician. 

•  The article is a few months old, but The Economist discusses how many countries are moving to censuses based on government databases instead of going door-to-door. (hat/tip: JewishGen Blog)
  

• The Ancestry Insider discusses Those Darned Non-English Indexers. Ancestry.com apparently utilizes indexers in China, who sometimes make some humorous mistakes.

• A new UK television show, Guess the Relative, is seeking people from around the world who believe they have British roots.

• Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak writes about the recent changes at Footnote and the Google News Archive for The Huffington Post.

•  Lee Drew at Family History with the Lineagekeeper discusses Password Security in Genealogy and Your Life.

•  Tim Forsythe at AncestorsNow discusses "large interlinked genealogy tree websites" in The Really Big Tree Co.

•  Judy Wilkenfield, at Provenance, begins a powerful post, Evidence, with the words: For 68 years, my father was seeking the answer to the question, what happened to his mother, sister and brother during The Shoah? What was their final destination?

On the Lighter Side

• Michael John Neill at RootDig posts a humorous computer-error parody: These Ancestors cannot be displayed.  

• Beloit College has released their annual Mindset List.  This is a list of 75 facts about the incoming class of college freshman.  For example: The Communist Party has never been the official political party in Russia.
  
  Other Weekly Link Lists
  
  • Randy Seaver's Best of the Genea-Blogs at Genea-Musings
  • Deb Ruth's Follow Friday at Adventures in Genealogy
  • Liz Haigney Lynch's Links at The Ancestral Archaeologist
  • Ruth Blair's Ruth's Recommendations at The Passionate Genealogist
  • Elizabeth O'Neal's Best Bytes at Little Bytes of Life
  • Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak's Genealogy Round Up at MSS Roots World
  • Julie Cahill Tarr's Friday Finds at GenBlog

Pocket Computers - 1851

No. 6. Pocket Computer, 4 inches in diameter, with Time, Calendar, and Compass cards.

(Source: Fuller's complete and perpetual calendar: comprising a complete and comprehensive set of calendar pages for every year from 1724, o.s., to 1900, n.s - Lee and Shepard, 1871)

Fuller's Pocket Computer actually dates back to 1851, and can be found in the Official descriptive and illustrated Catalogue of the great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations: 1851, Volume 5

Workday Wednesday: Occupations of Melvin Van Every

Recently Denise Spurlock of Denise's Life in the Past Lane began a new meme: Workday Wednesday.  She writes:

Sometimes it seems like all my ancestors were farmers, but the records tell me differently. Some of the occupations I've found: shoemaker, milliner, wheelwright, mine worker, preacher, and sawmill owner. My dad was a sheet metal worker; I have several photos of him at work. I will be using the "Workday Wednesday" theme for sharing photos, stories, and records related to my ancestors' work lives. If you like, join me in posting on your own blog, or as a comment here, how your ancestors spent "Workday Wednesday!"

I've decided to participate in this meme, as the occupations of my ancestors are of interest to me.  This week I am looking at the occupations of my maternal great grandfather, Melvin Van Every.

At some point in the late 1950s, I think, my Great Aunt Minnie (Minnie Van Every Benold) gave my mother a Family Register.  I believe most of the research had been done by Minnie's eldest daughter, but there are some additional notes handwritten by Minnie.  Here's the paragraph on Melvin Van Every, who was Minnie's father, so I have reason to trust it as far as one can expect a child to have a good recollection of her father's life.

Melvin Van Every, son of Samuel was born August 30, 1863 in Michigan and died in Texas, May 26, 1929. He is buried in El Paso, Texas. He was of a more or less pioneering nature and was self-supporting from the age of 14, having come to Texas with his father at the age of 10. In his early life he was a sheep raiser, then went into cotton gin work and raised much cotton himself. Then he purchased and improved and resold farms, reinvesting his profits. Still later he went into the bee business and dairying, operating sometimes 500 colonies of bees. In 1917 he moved to west Texas and purchased several farms, which he began to improve. At the time of his death he was living on one of three farms near Garfield, New Mexico. He was a very religious man, a Methodist and a member of the Masonic order. He first married Mary Jane Denyer, Aug 29 1883. She was born Sept 1, 1868 and died May 2, 1923. He married second Josie Thedford.

I have managed to verify some of this with newspaper articles.  Below we see a letter from the 1908 volume of Gleanings in Bee Culture.

This indicates starting in 1903, by 1907 he was up to 300 colonies.  A November 1914 issue of the Galveston Daily News confirms he was into dairying.

The bio at the top misses a few professions. I also know that in 1918 and 1919 at least, he was a County Apiary Inspector in Fabens, Texas, near El Paso. (The list of inspectors can be found in the below clipping near the bottom of the left hand column.)



And a May 1913 news clipping suggests he got himself involved with building contracting.

I still haven't found confirmation of his early activities raising sheep or cotton, but I have no reason to doubt it.

Amanuensis Monday: Declaration of Intent for Morris Fudemberg - 1914

Amanuensis: A person employed to write what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another.

I continue my project to transcribe family letters, journals, newspaper articles, audiotapes, and other historical artifacts. Not only do the documents contain genealogical information, the words breathe life into kin - some I never met - others I see a time in their life before I knew them.

I began this project back in February of 2009, and since then, many others have joined in on the meme.  Why do we transcribe?  I provide my three reasons in the linked post.  You may find others.  If you participate, feel free to leave a link to your post in the comments.

***

This week, I look at the Declaration of Intent for Morris Fudemberg (1883-1971).  He married Nellie Newmark, who was the sister of my great grandfather, Barney.

Week in Review

Below are some noteworthy news stories and blog posts I have read in the past week that deal with my overlapping interests in Genealogy, History, Heritage, and Technology.

• Michael Hait at Planting the Seeds discusses the 5 Most Misused Words in genealogy.

• Michael Zhang at PetaPixel discusses The Impermanence of Digital Photographs

Genea-Announcements
There have been several announcements this week from Genealogy-Database vendors

• The 1940 census will be freely available at Ancestry.com to search and browse when it is released to the public mid April 2012

The reaction to this has all been positive.

---

• Footnote.com has changed its name to Fold3.com and is focusing on their military documents, though they promise the non-military documents will remain.  (Though one wonders about the unfinished indexing projects for the non-military records.)

 There has been a lot of reaction to this change, much of it negative.

• Kate T. at ArchivesNext
• Tamura Jones at Modern Software Experience
• An unscientific poll Tamura conducted on Google+ seems weighted against
• James Tanner at Genealogy's Star
• However, Cyndi Howells at Cyndi's List reminds us Change is Good

Back when Ancestry acquired Footnote (11 months ago) - I drew the comparison to Coke acquiring Pepsi.  In the comments, I said  "There might be some renaming of products, but the products could remain the same." The renaming has begun. I may be wearing a tinfoil hat, but I don't think the closeness to 1 year is a coincidence.  They assure us the non-military documents will all remain on Footnote.  But I won't be surprised if a year from now a migration of non-military records from Footnote to Ancestry begins.  And perhaps a migration of military records from Ancestry to Footnote.  (Even though, today, they are saying that isn't happening.) They have a business reason to encourage people to continue to purchase both subscriptions.

---

• Geni made several changes to their website, requiring a subscription to do a lot that was previously free.

• Randy Seaver at Geneamusings has gathered a compendium of the reactions to Geni's changes

• Some have hypothesized that a jump in usage at WikiTree may be related.

• Geni made a few tweaks, hoping to appease the concerns.

---

• Kimberly Powell at About.com discusses changes Google has made to their News Archives

At the Movies
(Movies currently showing, or being released this week, with some connection to Genealogy or History. The plot provided is taken from IMDB, so should contain minimal spoilers.)

The Help -- Jackson, Mississippi, 1962: aspiring writer Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan returns home after college, where unexpected friendships with African-American maids Aibeleen Clark and Minny Jackson result in a book that gives a previously unheard voice to a community's suffering. [Note: I have seen the movie, and highly recommend it.  I haven't read the book.]

Other Weekly Link Lists

• Randy Seaver's Best of the Genea-Blogs at Genea-Musings
• Deb Ruth's Follow Friday at Adventures in Genealogy
• Liz Haigney Lynch's Links at The Ancestral Archaeologist
• Ruth Blair's Ruth's Recommendations at The Passionate Genealogis
• Elizabeth O'Neal's Best Bytes at Little Bytes of Life
• Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak's Genealogy Round Up at MSS Roots World 

Does the I Ching have the answers I seek?

For his weekly Saturday Night Genealogy Fun Randy at GeneaMusings suggested we seek help from the Online IChing.

• Go to IChingOnline.net and ask a question relating to your genealogy research. You can "throw the coins virtually" or "throw the coins by hand." You have to click the "throw" button six times, then click on "Read."   

I threw the coins virtually.

• Report the question you asked and the answer you received, in the form of the Cast Hexagram (which explains the situation you are now in, or what has gone before), to your readers.

I decided to ask a specific question:

Where will I find the record of my great grandmother Bertha's birth?

The answer I received:

 45 - Forty-Five

Ts'ui / Gathering

The Lake rises by welcoming and receiving Earth's waters:
The King approaches his temple.
It is wise to seek audience with him there.

Success follows this course.
Making an offering will seal your good fortune.
A goal will be realized now.

SITUATION ANALYSIS:

This is an important Convergence, and you must be part of it.
Look for the Center of this convergence.
Like waters running to the sea, like an astronomical convergence of planets revolving around the sun, you should let the gravity of this Center draw you near.
Others are also drawn to this Center, and among them you will find shared bonds and kindred spirits.
This tribal convergence will give you a clarity of purpose.
You will no longer be alone.

• Does the answer make any sense to you? How do you interpret the answer? 

This makes some semblance of sense.  Bertha (Cruvant) Newmark referred to her father as Moshe Leyb the King.  It was a joke likely based at least in part on his initials (M-L-K) spelling the Hebrew word for King.  Is the I Ching telling me I need to figure out the synagogue my great great grandfather attended, and if it still exists, perhaps they might have some records?

What kind of offering do I need to make?

The Center of Convergence I should seek might refer to the local genealogical society.  Others are certainly drawn there.  I've been a member previously, but I have let my membership lapse.

Re-viewing Documents

The word, "reviewing" literally means "seeing again."

A while back I contacted the local Moolah Shrine Temple for any information they had on my Great Grandfather, Herman Feinstein's membership.  (The Moolah Temple is a masonic organization)  They sent me the application he filled out in 1927.

One piece of information on the document stood out: his birthplace.  This was the first document I found which narrowed down the origin of this branch of the family to anything smaller than "Russia."  Neither Herman's Social Security Application, nor his father's naturalization document, had been more specific than that.

However, a search for shtetls with names close to Alexandria in the Russian Empire at JewishGen yielded nine.  And I had some cause to be suspicious, since my limited understanding of Masonic organizations suggest they incorporate Egyptian symbolism, so my great grandfather could have creatively selected a town in Russia with an Egyptian counterpart.

The document was sent to me via email, and I downloaded it to a documents folder when I received it; I even emailed a cousin interested in the origin of Herman's mother's family about the contents, but I forgot completely about it.

**

I was on Ancestry this week searching on the name of Herman's father - Selig Dudelsack. (Selig changed the family surname to Feinstein.) And I viewed again the Hamburg Passenger Manifest.  There, in the column "Bisheriger Wohnort" (Former Residence) it said "Wolinsky, Russland."

How did I miss that?  The document is in German, and I suspect I focused mainly on the information I could readily read, like the names, and date.  I had the English arrival manifest from Castle Garden. So I went into my email to contact my cousin with this information, and searched for the last email I sent him.  And I rediscovered the document above.  One of the 9 Alexandrias is in the Volhynia district, aka Wolyn, aka Wolinskie.

I then re-viewed the Hamburg manifest of Selig's brother, Judal (Julius).  It said Scitomir (Zhytomyr), which I quickly learned is a major city in Volhynia, about 250 km west of what is currently known as Oleksandriia. Near the eastern boundary of Volhynia, it's actually close to Kiev.  (The balloon on the map below is Oleksandriia.) 

This is of note, since one relative recalls being told Herman was born in Kiev.  The family immigrated when Herman was age 4-5.  It's possible the family lived in both towns during those years. Herman could have also still been creative with his choice of birthplaces on the Moolah Shrine Temple petition.  However, research at JewishGen shows there was a family of Dudelzaks in the Aleksandriiya Yizkor book. (The Yizkor Books are memorial books for those who were murdered in the Holocaust.)

 I don't know if they're related, but some of the names match names in my tree, which raises the odds.  (Though some names are common enough, perhaps not by much.)  "Shmuel" (Samuel) matches the name of Selig's father.  And on the passenger manifest, the name for Herman's brother who was known as "Ben" in America, looks a lot like "Berl."  I thought it was sloppy handwriting, but 'Berel/Beryl' as a Hebrew name isn't completely unheard of.

Also, according to Familysearch, I may also have a lead on some potential cousins who made it to America:

Srul (age 17) and Schmarje (age 45) Dudelzak arrived at Ellis Island in March of 1906, and their last residence was Alexandrie.   (However, it doesn't state specifically Alexandrie, Volhynia.  It could be one of the other 8 towns.)

Workday Wednesday: Occupations of Selig Feinstein

Recently Denise Spurlock of Denise's Life in the Past Lane began a new meme: Workday Wednesday.  She writes:

Sometimes it seems like all my ancestors were farmers, but the records tell me differently. Some of the occupations I've found: shoemaker, milliner, wheelwright, mine worker, preacher, and sawmill owner. My dad was a sheet metal worker; I have several photos of him at work. I will be using the "Workday Wednesday" theme for sharing photos, stories, and records related to my ancestors' work lives. If you like, join me in posting on your own blog, or as a comment here, how your ancestors spent "Workday Wednesday!"

I like this idea. I, too, have been surprised by both the unique, and often repeated occupations of my ancestors. Most of what I have learned about recent ancestors hasn't been 'news' to my family, though I have uncovered documentation, and some extra details. Perhaps the biggest revelation has been in the case of my second great grandfather, Selig Feinstein.  The paternal grandfather of my paternal grandmother, Selig arrived in America in 1890.  The family remembered him as being active in both real estate and in the laundry business.

My research uncovered he had been in the US for 16 years when he entered the real estate business in 1906 (at the earliest).  It may have been 1911 before he opened his first laundry. His trade in the 'old country' is unknown, though he is listed as a 'laborer' on the arriving passenger manifest, and 'schlosser' on the German departing manifest, which translates to either 'locksmith' or 'metalworker.'

Occupations and Business Partners of Selig Feinstein (1860-1915)
(Unless otherwise indicated - Source: St. Louis City Directories)

• 1892-1898 - Feinstein and Wieselman - Shoers 
• 1898 - Feinstein and Wieselman - Inventors (source: patent database)
• 1899-1900 - Feinstein and Wieselman - Blacksmiths
• 1901-1902 - mgr The Western Junk Shop
• 1903 - Feinstein and Schriber, Junk
• 1904-1905 - Junk
• 1908 - Feinstein and Broude - Real Estate - Selig Feinstein, (his son) Harry Feinstein, and Sergius Broude
• 1909 - Feinstein Real Estate Co - Selig and Harry
• 1911 - Royal Laundry Co - Selig and (his son) Herman (Selig: Pres., Herman: Mgr) 
• 1912 - Central Laundry Co. (source: newspaper clipping)
• 1914 - Famous Laundry Co - Annie Feinstein (wife), Pearl Feinstein (daughter), Selig Feinstein incorporators 

My interpretation of these facts is that following the successful patent of improvements to fire hydrants, shoers Feinstein and Wieselman promoted themselves to blacksmiths and experienced enough success that Feinstein opened his own junk store. Then, at the age of 46, Selig left the junk store business.

Selig seems to have entered the Real Estate and Laundry industries just as his children were starting out in these industries themselves.  This leads to questions concerning his role in these ventures. His participation may have been a means of passing on his business management experience to his children.

Tu b'Av - Day of Love

Tu b'Av is a relatively obscure Jewish holiday that falls on the fifteenth day of the month of Av (sundown Sunday, August 14 to sundown Monday, August 15 this year).

The fifteenth day of each month on the Hebrew calendar falls on a full moon, and the holiday was observed as a sort of fertility festival during the period of the Second Temple.  After the destruction of the Second Temple, it was forgotten for the most part in the Diaspora, only to be revived in modern times as a Jewish alternative to Valentine's Day.

To A Lady
by Victor Hugo,
From Les Feuilles D'Automne


Child, were I king, I'd yield my royal rule,
     My chariot, sceptre, vassal-service due,
My crown, my porphyry-basined waters cool,
My fleets, whereto the sea is but a pool,
     For a glance from you!

Love, were I God, the earth and its heaving airs,
     Angels, the demons abject under me,
Vast chaos with its teeming womby lairs,
Time, space, all would I give--aye, upper spheres,
     For a kiss from thee!


translation by Thomas Hardy
photogravure by Goupil et Cie, from a drawing by Deveria, appears in a collection of Hugo's poetry published by Estes and Lauriat in the late 1800s.

Amanuensis Monday: Declaration of Intent for Charles Cohen - 1910

Amanuensis: A person employed to write what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another.

I continue my project to transcribe family letters, journals, newspaper articles, audiotapes, and other historical artifacts. Not only do the documents contain genealogical information, the words breathe life into kin - some I never met - others I see a time in their life before I knew them.

I began this project back in February of 2009, and since then, many others have joined in on the meme.  Why do we transcribe?  I provide my three reasons in the linked post.  You may find others.  If you participate, feel free to leave a link to your post in the comments.

***

This week, I look at the Declaration of Intent for Charles Cohen (1884-1965).  He married Bella Newmark, who was the sister of my great grandfather, Barney.

Password Security

The below XKCD comic has led me (and others) to consider Password Security the past week.  The webcartoonist defends his math here, though it should be noted, very few are arguing the underlying message.



First, since this is a Genealogy-focused blog, let me tie Password Security to Genealogy. It's rather simple. As a Genealogist you probably have an account for at least one of the following:

• Ancestry/Rootsweb
• Footnote
• GenealogyBank
• Your Local Genealogy Society

If you are into social networking you may have an account at

• Facebook
• Google
• Twitter 

If you buy stuff online you may have an account at

• Amazon
• Apple

And of course, if you pay bills online

• Your Bank
• Paypal

Not everyone realizes this, but it is recommended that your password be different on every website.  That way, if a website is hacked and your password there is discovered, it's not easy for the hackers to sign in to your other accounts.

This is why some suggest The Only Secure Password is the One You Can't Remember.

Using software such as LastPass, KeePass, or 1Password, you can let the software remember all but one of your passwords.  Each time you log into an account, the sofware will ask you for the master password, and then enter that particular website's password for you.

This seems to be a great solution, if you have one computer.  All your passwords are stored encrypted on that one machine.

But I have:

• A computer at home
• One at work
• A BlackBerry
• An iPod.  
• I occasionally house-sit for members of my family, and I may log into one of my accounts from their computers.  
• When I'm at the library I may log on to one of their computers, because while I could use one of my mobile devices, I like the larger screen.
• I have been known to check my email on my friend's computers, though those days may be behind me now with the mobile devices.

Some suggest a workaround for some of the above is Dropbox, LiveMesh, SpiderOak, SugarSync, or Wuala. (The link compares the software for each.) Each of these allow you to sync files across multiple computers.  However, the most popular of these, Dropbox, recently had a security issue.  The most secure of these five programs are SpiderOak and Wuala, because they allow you to encrypt your data locally before sending it to their website. "Your data encryption key is only saved on your computer."  Unfortunately, for me, neither SpiderOak nor Wuala works on a BlackBerry.

And, of course, none of these help you with computers that aren't synched -- those at the home of a family member, a friend, or at the library.

Is it safe to write down all your passwords on a piece of paper?

I'm not an expert, but I think it depends upon who you think you are hiding the information from, and how it is written down.

If I had a piece of paper that looked like this:

A/R - Password1
FN - Password2
GB - Password3
GS - Passord4
F - Password5
T - Password6
G - Password7
AZ - Password8
A - Password9
B - Password10
P - Password11

I could record the passwords for all of the sites I listed above.  I wouldn't put my name on it. I wouldn't include my usernames. If the piece of paper was left behind on the seat of a taxi, or at the library, and someone picked it up, what good would it do them?  Even if a fellow genealogist picked it up, and figured out the code, without knowing whose it was it wouldn't be useful.

If your spouse, or kid picked it up -- yes, they could figure it out. So if you have an issue of trust with someone in your household, this might not be a solution.

One possible compromise.

Use one of the Password Management systems for any website you are willing to limit your use to one computer (or more if you are willing to trust the synching software.)  For the handful of websites you feel you need to be able to access on other computers, you can write those down on a piece of paper.

For example, I know the only websites that I access from my Blackberry are my email, and social networking accounts.  So I could set up a LastPass, KeePass, or 1Password account using Wuala or SpiderSync for everything else, and still feel pretty secure.

---

So,whether you are creating one master password to control all your other passwords, or you are creating multiple passwords you will write down on a piece of paper, we are back to asking which passwords are the most secure.  Not from your spouse or kid who might be able to guess that your password is G3n34l0gy!  But from a computer hacker who knows nothing about you.  Because unless you are somebody important, no one is going to be trying to hack your accounts specifically.  You're only at risk if your password is one of the 'low hanging fruit' passwords the hackers find before they're satisfied.

Randall Munroe, webcartoonist for XKCD, isn't the first to suggest that Multi-Word Phrases are More Secure than Incomprehensible Gibberish.

Once the hacker has to resort to "brute strength" - that is, trying every possible combination of letters, numbers, and symbols - the length of the password matters more than anything else.  Even if the characters are a series of periods, dashes, or spaces.

How Big is Your Haystack helps you compute the strength of a password.

A password such as:
D0g.......... (10 periods), according to this calculator, would take at least 100 centuries to crack using brute strength.  (However, since How Big is Your Haystack mentions the D0g.......... password, it's advisable to use something else.  You want your password to be unique.)


It is important to remember that some longer passwords might be tried before brute strength.  If multiple word passwords become common, you can expect hackers to feed movie and book quotes into their databases. So the following passwords likely will not be secure:

• Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope.
• To be, or not to be, that is the question.
• Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die. 
• As you sow, so shall you reap.

Week in Review

Below are some noteworthy news stories and blog posts I have read in the past week that deal with my overlapping interests in Genealogy, History, Heritage, and Technology.

Genealogy and History

• Michael John Neill at RootDig reminds us, despite what Ancestry's shaky leaf suggestions might say, the SSDI Last Residence is not always the Place of Death.

• The History and Genealogy Dept blog at St. Louis Public Library has been looking at Missouri's Odd Phenomena.  (Part 4) (Part 5)

• Susan Farrell Bankhead at Susan's Genealogy Blog is trying to help the LA Fire Department track down some photographs of fallen firefighters.

Technology and Social Media

• James Tanner at Genealogy's Star discusses the Ethics of Photo Restoration or Editing.  Should we use Photoshop to add someone to a photo, take someone away, or clear up teenage blemishes? His post reminded me of something I wrote in 1987 for a college newspaper, and I blogged about back in 2003. I suspect in 10 years, or earlier, we may be having similar questions concerning video editing.

• Dick Eastman at EOGN looks at a service called 1DollarScan that offers to scan, digitize, and OCR books for a dollar. ($1 per 100 pages.)

• Joanna Geary, focusing on the privacy and social media issues,  describes how she tracked down an entire family starting with one twitter post.

• Some using the Blogger platform may be interested in Google Scribe, which suggests words and phrases as you type.

• Discover Magazine's Not Exactly Rocket Science blog looks at hair-thin electronic skin, that can monitor hearts, the brain, and control video games. io9 also discusses the breakthrough.

Other Weekly Link Lists

• Randy Seaver's Best of the Genea-Blogs at Genea-Musings
• Deb Ruth's Follow Friday at Adventures in Genealogy 
• Liz Haigney Lynch's Links at The Ancestral Archaeologist
• Julie Cahill Tarr's Friday Finds at GenBlog
• Ruth Blair's Ruth's Recommendations at The Passionate Genealogist
• Diane Haddad's Genealogy News Corral at Genealogy Insider
 

Amanuensis Monday: Ezra Pound and the Bollingen Prize

Amanuensis: A person employed to write what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another.

I continue my project to transcribe family letters, journals, newspaper articles, audiotapes, and other historical artifacts. Not only do the documents contain genealogical information, the words breathe life into kin - some I never met - others I see a time in their life before I knew them.

I began this project back in February of 2009, and since then, many others have joined in on the meme.  Why do we transcribe?  I provide my three reasons in the linked post.  You may find others.  If you participate, feel free to leave a link to your post in the comments.

***

This week, I look at a newspaper article from March of 1949 concerning the controversy over Ezra Pound winning the Bollingen Prize for Literature after escaping a lifetime prison sentence for treason on the insanity plea. What does this have to do with my family history? A cousin was a psychiatrist on staff at the asylum, and is mentioned briefly at the end of the article. [The article was found in a search of Google News' archives.]

Week in Review

Below are some noteworthy news stories and blog posts I have read in the past week that deal with my overlapping interests in Genealogy, History, Heritage, and Technology.

• Jasia at CreativeGene has published the 108th Carnival of Genealogy - the theme was Food.  The theme for the 109th edition will be Our Ancestors' Place of Worship - deadline September 1st.

• Quick Response (QR) Codes are being placed on headstones, providing those with smartphones a link to a website with more information about the deceased. (hat/tip: Lee Drew)

• Denise Levenick at The Family Curator shares five tips for creating the perfect Dear Photograph picture.

• The student newspaper staff at Florida Atlantic University put together an issue of the newspaper "80s-style" without any computers. (How to Have a Paper Ball) (How To Build a Newsroom Time Machine)  

•  Kathryn Doyle at CaliforniaAncestors reports we are approaching the 100 year anniversary of Women's Suffrage in California.  Descendants of California Suffragists are being sought for participation in the festivities.

•  "Besides ending nearly 3,000 lives, destroying planes and reducing buildings to tons of rubble and ash, the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks destroyed tens of thousands of records, irreplaceable historical documents and art." (full article) (hat/tip GenealogyBlog)
  

• The granddaughter of author Shalom Aleichem (Solomon Rabinovich) recently turned 100.  She was interviewed by the New York PBS. (hat/tip: Jewcy)

Watch the full episode. See more Metrofocus.

• A documentary about a guy, Jim Killeen, who Googled himself and then went all over the world meeting others with his name. (DNA testing was involved) (Video is 96 minutes)

• While not directly related, those interested in blogging, and those interested in writing family histories do need to consider copyright concerns.  The "Fair Use Doctrine" in US copyright law can be confusing. - Neil Netanel of the UCLA School of Law recently published a paper concluding that court application of Fair Use has changed significantly over the past couple decades.

Other Weekly Link Lists

• Randy Seaver's Best of the Genea-Blogs at Genea-Musings
• Deb Ruth's Follow Friday at Adventures in Genealogy 
• Megan Smolenyak²s Genealogy Round Up at MSS Roots World

Amanuensis Monday: Obituary for Selig Feinstein - March 12, 1915

Amanuensis: A person employed to write what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another.

I continue my project to transcribe family letters, journals, newspaper articles, audiotapes, and other historical artifacts. Not only do the documents contain genealogical information, the words breathe life into kin - some I never met - others I see a time in their life before I knew them.

I began this project back in February of 2009, and since then, many others have joined in on the meme.  Why do we transcribe?  I provide my three reasons in the linked post.  You may find others.  If you participate, feel free to leave a link to your post in the comments.

***

This week, I look at the obituary for my second great grandfather, Selig Feinstein. The obituary appeared in the March 12th, 1915 edition of The St. Louis Jewish Voice.