Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, Who Do You Think You Are?

This Who do You Think You Are program in England is extremely popular. It draws many millions of viewers for each program.

It also has everyone waiting for the next lurid or juicy tidbit. Who Do You think You Are is coming to America so be ready folks.

Here is an announcement from the recent issue about the Mayor of London.

LONDON - London Mayor Boris Johnson rambling through his family history on BBC One's 'Who Do You Think You Are?' pulled in 6.8m viewers last night to win the prime-time slot, according to unofficial overnight figures.

The second episode of the series, which saw Johnson tracking down his great-grandfather, a radical Turkish journalist, and investigating the supposed French aristocracy of his granny, attracted 28.5% of the 9pm-10pm audience.


Read the full story on the Brand Republic website.

http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/840799/Boris-Johnsons-genealogy-pulls-68m-BBC-One/





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Report of a Good Resource for Early Ohio Research

If you had early Ohio ancestors your research comes with some built in problems. The 1800 and 1810 census for most of Ohio, save Washington county, are lacking.

One resource that has been created to help fill some voids in that time period is a book that was compiled first in 1971, then had an all name index created for it in 1973, and now has been reissued in its combination form.

Early Ohio Tax Records, by Esther Weygandt Powell. This book was created to take the place of Ohio’s lost pre-1820 census information.

An in-depth explanation of the tax lists used is in this report from the Tribune Star newspaper website of Terre Haute, Indiana. Article by Tamie Dehler

Read the full report on this early Ohio research source at the TribStar, Early Ohio Tax Records.



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Federal Government Turns Genealogy Into a Money Making Venture

The Federal Government reports that they received over 40,000 requests for genealogy information from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS,) through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA,) so they have decided to turn it into a fee-for-service revenue generating department for the government coffers.

Some of the record groups that the USCIS will be able to search for a fee are:

• Naturalization Certificate Files (C-files) from September 27, 1906 to April 1, 1956
• Alien Registration Forms from August 1, 1940 to March 31, 1944
• Visa files from July 1, 1924 to March 31, 1944
• Registry Files from March 2, 1929 to March 31, 1944
• Alien Files (A-files) numbered below 8 million (A8000000) and documents therein dated prior to May 1, 1951

Index Searches and Record Copy Fees will run from $20.00 to $35.00.

Read about this new program on the USCIS website.



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The Aztecs and the Making of Colonial Mexico, an Exhibit at the Newberry Library

Every once in a while I get speechless with wonderment in this study of genealogy. This is one of those times.

To the readers of the Genealogy Miscellanea Blog, you just have to check out this fantastic collection that is on display at the Newberry.

http://www.newberry.org/aztecs/index_en.html

One of the key items that you will admire is an Illustrated Will done in 1576.

http://www.newberry.org/aztecs/s4i1.html

This is just beautiful!


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Allen County Public Library, Fort Wayne, Indiana Receives 10 Million Dollar Gift

Tom Kemp in his GenealogyBank Blog has reported that the Allen County Public Library (ACPL) in Fort Wayne, Indiana just received a grant of 10 million dollars, to be spread out with a one million dollar check every year for ten years.

The same endowment was also given to three other organizations in Indiana by the Edward D. and Ione Auer Foundation. The others gifted were; The Fort Wayne Philharmonic, The Fort Wayne Children's Zoo and Indiana University - Purdue University Fort Wayne.

Edward Auer was the senior vice president of Lincoln National Life Insurance Co. and owned his own investment firm. Ione Auer was a philanthropist who passed away in 2007 at the age of 103.

Read Tom Kemps GenealogyBank Blog .


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Genealogists Warning: Do Not Take Laptop, Ipod, Cell Phone, or any other electronic recording device abroad

Planning a Genealogy Research Trip to the mother country of your ancestors?

Fair Warning. Do NOT take any electronic gadgets with you, without standing the chance of having them seized at the border upon reentry.

The new rules of border protection allow the security officers at the border to seize all laptops or other devices that "might" have digital files of any type in them, for an undisclosed period of time, to allow technicians a "reasonable" period of time to inspect all the files and look for possible evil.

You do not have to fit any particular ethnicity, group or religion, the officers have the right to seize them for no reason whatsoever. They also will be sharing all of your files with many various other agencies for cross-linking of the data.

Let us know what you think about this and what might be done to be able to share your genealogy research trip findings. Seems possible that it might be better to put all of your research up on a website before your trip, and then while abroad you might want to buy or rent digital devices to use to capture the history of your research trip.

While abroad you could always take digital photos, movies, scanned records, etc., and put them up on a website to be able to access when you get back home.

Let us know what you think.

Read the full story of this problem in the Washington Post newspaper.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/content/article/2008/08/01/laptops.html?hpid=topnews

(Note: if you tried this earlier the link was bad. Randy Seaver on the excellent "Genea-Musings Blog" pointed this out. Thanks Randy.)

If you feel strongly about this story please share it with others by linking to this Genealogy Miscellanea Blog article, and if you use DIGG (see button below) or Stumble Upon, it would help if you DIGG or Stumble this article with a thumbs up.
Thanks.



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