Week In Review

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

• Missy Corley at Bayside Blog discusses When Even Vital Records Can't Be Trusted, reminding us that if the person providing the information on the document didn't know or couldn't remember the correct information, the document will be wrong.

• The Ancestry Insider reminds us that some census enumerators were lazy... and raises a disturbing question about why they are unable to find the same document at FamilySearch.

• Cynthia at ChicagoGenealogy takes a closer look at the Chicago Lying-in Hospital birth records.

• Michael John Neill at Genealogy Tip of the Day reminds us January 1st was not always the start of the year.

• Tamura Jones at Modern Software Experience responds to a statement by the IrishCentral that twins born in different years was a 'historic first.'

• Bill LeFurgy at the Library of Congress' Digital Preservation blog listed the Top Ten Digital Preservation Developments of 2011

• Dean Kaner at Jewish Magazine writes on his grandparent's immigration story in Jewish Immigrants to America as Seen Through Letters

• James Tanner at Genealogy's Star highlights some Genealogical Myths and Fallacies. 

• Some may see a connection to genealogy in Fred Clark's post at The Slacktivist on Three Kinds of Falsehoods: Innocence, Interest, and Intrigue.

• The National Archives has posted several interesting historical documents this week to their Document of the Day feed. 

• Answer of the Proctors for the Amistad Africans
• Emancipation Proclamation
• The Check for the Purchase of Alaska

In the News

• NBC announced the celebrities who will be in the upcoming season of Who Do You Think You Are

• Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is returning to PBS with a 10-part series entitled Finding Your Roots.

• A Polish WWII ursine war hero named Wojtek is to be commemorated.  (You're probably not related.)

• The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund has corrected the spelling of a soldier's name in their database

•  Scientists create monster super-soldier ants by activating ancestral genes.

Carnival

• The 113th Carnival of Genealogy has been released at CreativeGene.  The theme was A Dickens' Christmas.  The theme for the 114th edition will be The Fifth Annual iGene Awards. For more information, read here.

New Blog Discovered

• This week I discovered Michael Twitty's Afroculinaria.  While his focus is the culinary traditions of Africa, he has started a series he entitles: The Cooking Gene.  From his bio: "I am a Judaics teacher and Culinary Historian focusing on the foodways of Africa, enslaved African Americans, African America and the African and Jewish diasporas."

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Other Weekly Link Lists

• Randy Seaver's Best of the Genea-Blogs at Genea-Musings
• Ruth Blair's Ruth's Recommendations at The Passionate Genealogist
• Julie Cahill Tarr's Friday Finds at GenBlog
• Deb Ruth's Follow Friday Gems at Adventures in Genealogy
• Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak's Genealogy Round Up at MSS's Roots World
• Apple's Weekly Rewind at Apple's Tree
• Wndy Littrell's Follow Friday at All My Branches Genealogy
• Greta Koehl's Friday's Finds and Fun at Greta's Genealogy Bog
• Diane Haddad's Genealogy News Corral Catch-up at Genealogy Insider

(Source: Wondermark)