Wow, the week went fast! And it’s been a rather exciting one spent corresponding with a cousin who’s done some very significant work on the family history. At an appropriate future point, I’ll talk more about that–but it’s been great.

A Few Research and Tech Bits

I noticed that the National Archives has changed its home page. It’s a leaner, cleaner look. Finding what one needs up front is easier now. Unfortunately, it’s still a bit cumbersome to get to places useful to genealogical research. For example, it’s about six confusing clicks from the front to the World War II enlistment records database, even though “World War II” has a link on the “Research” page. Because of the way the Archives site is set up, you can’t bookmark specific online databases. But you can bookmark the search page for the Access to Archival Databases.

Familysearch.org has also updated its online appearance. While I was looking at that, I decided to check out the evaluation version of Personal Ancestral File Companion 5.2. Now I know there are a lot of programs out there and everybody has their favorites. I’m young and impressionable [there's at least one lie there!], and I liked PAF Companion [no lie!]. It prints various reports in diverse formats quickly and easily. The colors are perfect and navigation is a joy. I especially liked the swiftness with which the program produced a kinship report. I bought the licensed version for $8.25. . . .

Google has added a blog search to its portfolio. About time. . . .

Someone on a mail list I’m on asked recently how long it takes the Social Security Administration to respond to requests for copies of applications for Social Security
numbers. These applications are very valuable sources of genealogical information. The applications are available for deceased individuals under the Freedom of Information Act. The government charges $27.00 if the requestor provides the individual’s Social Security Number or $29.00 if the SSN is not provided. My experience has been that it takes about four weeks to get a reply if the SSN is provided. Most people use one of the form letters available on Internet genealogy sites to request these applications. But today, as I was perusing the Web, it occurred to me that the SSA could easily allow folks to request and pay for Social Security records online. The records would still be mailed out, but how about it, SSA?

One of the more poignant “success” stories out of the Katrina disaster involved the relocation of more than 400 veterans from the Armed Forces Retirement Home in Gulfport, Mississippi, to the Armed Forces Retirement Home in Washington, D.C.

The cheering started as soon as the buses rumbled up the driveway of Washington’s Armed Forces Retirement Home. Officers and enlistees mixed with civilians in a two-sided receiving line, waving small American flags and clapping for the elderly veterans who had survived World War II, Korea and, now, Katrina.

Read more here.

Read more about the Armed Forces Retirement Home here and here. The AFRH is in need of donated items [critical list ] [wish list ] and cash to assist displaced veterans. Go to the AFRH homepage for information on how to donate items or cash.

The piece about the veterans reminded me of a family story originally published about five years ago.

Catherine L. Bowie watched her three brothers go off to war in 1942 and decided a year later to get into the fight, too. Later, when her brothers went home, she liked the Women’s Army Corps and stayed.

Asked about her military career of more than 24 years, the 86-year-old Bowie quipped, “Well, I can’t remember much today. Yesterday, I knew everything.”

Read the rest of the story here.

From USA Today:

HOUSTON — Where does it end for Linda Bowie? Happily reunited with her mother in a hospital room somewhere in Texas, in Louisiana, perhaps in Illinois?

Or in a morgue, identifying her mother’s body a week or more after Bowie watched the ailing 82-year-old being lifted into a helicopter amid the post-Katrina chaos near New Orleans’ Superdome?

Read the rest of the story here.

And from the “other side” of the family in another part of the country, the Bangor [Me] Daily News reports:

Out on the tarmac at Bangor International Airport on Tuesday, Richard Bowie was busy organizing a mission to aid the victims of Hurricane Katrina. As director of the Bangor-based Down East Emergency Medicine Institute, or DEEMI, Bowie was clearly in his element – bustling around the supply trailers, taking inventory of water, food, clothing, medical needs, safety gear and camping equipment for 15 frustrated volunteers who are champing at the bit to get down to the Gulf Coast and help.

Read the rest of the story here.

I’ve just heard about WikiTree, “the Family Tree of Humankind,” described as an effort to “provide a central place on the Internet for kin information about all people we know ever lived.” It’s an open-source, collaborative project sponsored by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. The idea apparently is to create a gigantic, user-driven genealogical database. The project commenced in April 2005, and as of today, has over 33,000 pages. The authors of the project home page say this is not as big an undertaking as it would seem.

The Wikimedia Foundation is the outfit that created Wikipedia, the Web-based free encyclopedia often linked to in this blog.

I think I would agree that theoretically, the task sought to be accomplished by WikiTree is not all that daunting. Think about how it could be done. First, a good core of “the family tree of humankind” could be created by digitizing all the known written sources that mention non-fictional human beings by name, or other identifying characteristic. That means every book, magazine, newspaper, telephone directory, government record, school yearbook, etc., would be digitized, much as Google is out now digitizing entire libraries. Then a supercomputer, or series of supercomputers, would analyze and organize the data into a single family tree.

There are several other Web-based projects with similar themes, but primarily of a commercial nature. I’m thinking of OneGreatFamily.com, Ancestry.com’s OneWorldTree, and Rootsweb’s WorldConnect. [The latter, though owned by Ancestry, is free]. But these projects and WikiTree may suffer from the problem of the limited, self-selecting nature of their audiences. My admittedly somewhat whimsical supercomputer idea might work better, except it would put full-time genealogists out of work and deprive part-time genealogists of the frustrations of brickwalls and the joys of discoveries.

From CNN.com:

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AP) — When Xavier Bowie died in a flooded New Orleans neighborhood, his wife did the best she could in a city so preoccupied with saving the living that no one can deal with the dead.

She wrapped his body in a sheet, laid him on a makeshift bier of plywood boards, with a little help, and floated him down to the main road.

[Read the whole story here].

I’m back from my longest vacation ever [22 days], and I had planned to write about a number of topics, but Nature intervened with fury. In my day job, we’re dealing with relief efforts and the tasks are tough. Obviously most resources right now have to go to ameliorating human suffering, but there are other aspects to be dealt with as well, as time permits.

Their bags are packed with safety glasses, gloves, masks, boots and suits. As soon as they hit the ground in New Orleans, they plan to set up triage tents and long tables.

Then the emergency team from the National Park Service will begin its work: blotting, washing, drying, straightening and preserving centuries of historical artifacts that tell the story of one of the oldest U.S. cities.

Read the rest of the Washington Post story here.

A blog called The Present Past has an assessment of damage to Civil War historic resources.

Give to The American Red Cross.