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Museum Displays Hair Mementos
Happy Thanksgiving! Over the holiday I got a whole bunch of hair cut off and mailed it to Pantene Beautiful Lengths, which makes wigs for women undergoing chemotherapy. If I were around a couple of...
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Online exhibit reveals lives left behind
Until the 1960s, being institutionalized for psychiatric reasons was often a life sentence. Willard Asylum in Upstate New York, which opened in 1869, housed more than 50,000 patients during its...
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Smithsonian Develops Photo Initiative
The Smithsonian possesses more than 13 million images in 19 museums and 700 collections, organized by discipline. In the past, it's been difficult for researchers—and even curators—to know where all...
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Haunting Holocaust Albums Online
Tracing the Tribe pointed us in the direction of a US Holocaust Memorial Museum online exhibit of haunting scrapbooks from the Auschwitz concentration camp complex. Very few photos of Auschwitz during...
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48 Hours in Washington, DC
While planning a trip to our nation's capital to see friends, I focused mainly on coordinating schedules and figuring out where to eat. But the day I left, I suddenly got really excited about all the...
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Iowa's Libraries and Museums Assess Flood Damage
Freelance writer Dana Schmidt, of Ames, Iowa (you may remember her as a former Family Tree Magazine staffer), sent us this report about how the recent recording-setting floods have impacted libraries...
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Ellis Island Hosts Stars, Expands Museum
Our lucky New York-based colleague Guy LeCharles Gonzalez attended the Ellis Island Family Heritage Awards yesterday. He got the scoop on the latest Ellis Island exhibits and rubbed elbows with the...
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Fee-Free Weekends at Historic Parks
Want to immerse yourself in history but still save a few bucks this summer? Plan to visit a national park on one of these two entrance fee-free weekends: July 18-19 August 15-16 You've got more than...
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Colonial Williamsburg and Other Places to Time Travel
My ancestors got here after Colonial days, but all the same I enjoyed an afternoon in Colonial Williamsburg earlier this week while visiting family. The park covers 301 acres with 88 original buildings...
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Free Database of 5,000 York, UK, Prisoners
York Castle Prison museum in York, UK, has posted an online a database of 5,000 people who were held there or were victims of crimes, mostly during the 1700s. The database, which isn’t comprehensive,...
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Did Your Immigrant Ancestors Sail the Red Star Line?
The Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation folks sent us a note on behalf of a future museum in Antwerp, Belgium, about the history of the Red Star Line. The Red Star Line was a steamship company...
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Genealogy News Corral: August 24-28
Hundreds of genealogists—your truly included—are packing their bags for the Federation of Genealogical Societies Conference in Little Rock, Ark., Sept. 2 to 5. I’ll write more about the conference in...
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NY Museum Offers Digitized National Guard Records
Got a New Yorker who served in the state’s National Guard? The New York State Military Museum and Veterans Research Center in Saratoga Springs has released of 53,671 pages of New York National Guard...
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Genealogy News Corral: February 8-12
Neat website alert: The Ministry of Food goes with an Imperial War Museum London exhibit about the British public’s adaption to food shortages during World War II. You can see photos from the exhibit,...
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Historical Photo Database Shows NYC's Lower East Side Tenements
The Tenement Museum in New York City’s Lower East has launched on online database of more than 1,300 images from the museum’s collection. Photos show the neighborhood, historic and contemporary...
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A Visit to the East Tennessee History Center
I blogged a bit a couple of weeks ago about the East Tennessee History Center and the research collections inside. Friday morning while attending the Federation of Genealogical Societies conference, I...
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Genealogy News Corral: Sept. 20-24
Tomorrow, Sept. 25, is Museum Day, when participating museums across the country give free admission to those with a Museum Day ticket (one ticket per household). Click here to get your ticket and...
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Ancestry.com and Holocaust Museum to Create Free Index to Holocaust Records
Subscription website Ancestry.com and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum are launching the World Memory Project to recruit volunteers to build an online resource for information on Holocaust...
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What's Cooking, Uncle Sam?
Did you know that in 1943, butter had its own food group? See (click the image for a bigger view): (and that was before Paula Deen was even born). From ever-evolving food groups to the War Food...
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Genealogy News Corral, June 6-10
The Southern California Genealogical Society Jamboree is going on now in Burbank, Calif. Visit the Geneabloggers blog for links to the latest blog posts and tweets about the conference. GenDetective,...
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Visit National Parks Free June 21
The US National Park Service will waive all entrance fees on Tuesday, June 21, the first day of summer. Among the beautiful and historic sites you could visit are Civil War-related places such as...
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Museums Offer Free Admission Sept. 24
Get ready for Museum Day Saturday, Sept. 24, when hundreds of museums across the country will offer free admission (good for up to two visitors per household). Participating museums include such...
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Genealogy News Corral, August 22-26
FamilySearch added to collections from seven countries, including 6 million record images from Mexico. Other additions include parish register records from Belgium and England, and church book records...
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Genealogy News Corral, September 12-16
FamilySearch released more searchable records this week, including more than 6 million Hungarian Catholic Church records, 4 million Mexican civil registrations, 1 million new Chinese genealogies...
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Search 30,000 Names From Holocaust Musuem Records—Free
Material from four museum collections containing information on more than 30,000 victims of Nazi persecution is now searchable online for free at Ancestry.com. The database is the first searchable...
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Genealogy News Corral, Jan. 9-13
All 397 US national parks will offer free admission Jan. 14-16 to commemorate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. You can visit the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site in Georgia, the Selma to...
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Get Free Admission to 100s of Museums Across the Country on Sept. 29!
This Saturday, Sept. 29, is Museum Day—when hundreds of museums across the country open their doors and let you visit for free. You do need to sign up for your free tickets on the Museum Day website...
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Ellis Island Immigration Museum Archive Relocated
The National Park Service has moved treasures from the Ellis Island Immigration Museum in New York Harbor to a federal storage center due to the effects of Hurricane Sandy. Oct. 29, the hurricane...
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Battle of Gettysburg 150th Anniversary: Honor Civil War Ancestors With a...
With the beginning of July (can you believe that's already next week?) arrives the 150th anniversary of the bloodiest battle of the Civil War, the Battle of Gettysburg. It lasted from July 1-3 and...
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Chris O'Donnell visits St. Louis on "Who Do You Think You Are?"
I'm looking forward to tomorrow's "Who Do You Think You Are?" because actor Chris O'Donnell stops in St. Louis, my stomping grounds during college and briefly thereafter. Although I wasn't researching...
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How the Government Shutdown Impacts Genealogists
The government shutdown means that some of you who had big genealogy research or historical travel plans are up a creek: National parks and Smithsonian museums will be closed. National Archives...
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Smithsonian Launches Website to Crowdsource Old Document Transcriptions
The Smithsonian Institution has joined the crowdsourcing revolution: It launched a Transcription Center website where volunteers can help transcribe thousands of document images, such as Civil War...
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Museum Day Live! 2015: Free Admission to Participating Museums on Sept. 26!
If you want to save money while learning about your ancestors' lives, you'll want to know about Museum Day Live! on Saturday, Sept. 26, organized by Smithsonian magazine. On that day, you can get into...
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