The year was 1955 and it was the year of “the shot felt ‘round the world.” Following the epidemic years of the 1940s and early 1950s, parents breathed a sigh of relief in April when Jonas Salk announced the successful trials of his new polio vaccine and a vaccination campaign is started.

The Civil Rights movement also gets a shot in the arm when Rosa Parks, a forty-two year-old seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama, refused to give up her seat on a bus to a white passenger. Her refusal sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Backed by church leaders like the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., who organized the boycott, Rosa Parks’ simple act of defiance led to the Supreme Court ruling that segregation on public transportation was unconstitutional. Continue reading →

 Contributed by Elliott Healy, Dublin, CA
Elliott’s great-great-grandfather, Alexander Healy. He was born in 1822 in Port Lorne, Nova Scotia, Canada, of Scottish descent. He married Hannah Ricketson of Clarence, Nova Scotia.

 Click on the images to enlarge them

Contributed by Bruce MacDonald, Hanover, PA
Jenny G. Levanseller, who later married Everard Alton Bryant. The photo was taken in 1894 when she was only nine months old, living in Waldo Co., Maine. She would live to be more than 100 years old. Born 6 January 1894, died 3 August 1994.

The lofty oak from a small acorn grows.
 ~ Lewis Duncombe

The Monroe County Library System (serving the Rochester and Monroe County, New York area) is pleased to announce a new web site at: http://www2.libraryweb.org/

Family historians will be particularly interested in the link to the local history department and most importantly, a series of indexes including over 130,000 names, in addition to the 800,000 that are included in the Life Records project of the Rochester Public Library (birth, death, and marriage indexes from City of Rochester newspapers).

These indexes are free to look at, and we may be contacted through the ask-a librarian page or for Life Records, through that page.

Thanks to Larry Naukum for sharing this information. I was able to locate my ancestor Thomas Tobin in the Rochester City Directories online in the local history department, and I’m looking forward to exploring these collections more in the coming weeks!

Back in May, I wrote about a genealogical mystery I had read.  I hadn’t even realized that this genre was out there, so I committed myself to finding and devouring more such books.  Now it’s time to report back on a couple.  But first, I’d like to take a brief detour for a definition.

What’s a Cozy?
Once again, I find it necessary to confess my ignorance.  Until I went on this recent reading binge, I didn’t know what a cozy was.  But time and time again, as I read reviews, I kept seeing the word “cozy.”  On the off-chance that some of you might share this same knowledge gap, I thought it might be helpful to explain.

According to mystery-writer Stephen D. Rogers, “A cozy is a mystery which includes a bloodless crime and contains very little violence, sex, or coarse language.  By the end of the story, the criminal is punished and order is restored to the community.”

Ah, OK.  Well, that certainly fits.  If you venture into the world of genealogical mysteries, you’ll find that they’re almost all cozies — pleasant reads that you can absorb in one couch-lounging session.  Of course, I can’t promise that the genealogist in you won’t be frustrated by the detective’s choice of tactic (thoughts such as, “Don’t waste your time doing that — the answer you need is in the cemetery!” frequently crossed my mind), but overall, these are relaxing escapes. Continue reading →

My apologies to all of you who received garbled and illegible newsletters yesterday. For an as of yet undetermined reason, many AOL and Comcast users received a corrupt version this week. We have our experts working to diagnose the problem and I want to thank everyone who wrote in and helped us as far as diagnosing the problem. 

We’re very hopeful that the problem will be resolved before next week’s newsletter and in the meantime, you can read this week’s newsletter in the Ancestry.com Library or here on the blog.

Enjoy your day!

Juliana

“Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.”
~ Albert Einstein

Posted This Week

• 1901 Canadian Census
• 1906 Canadian Census: Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta
• View all of the recently added and updated databases 

Upcoming Databases

• Improved Message Boards 
    

After reminiscing with my sisters over the holiday weekend, several memories of the “old days” came up. Maybe you had a similar experience. This week, take a few minutes to record the memory of a person, place, or event that is special to you. Create a file and do this often. You’ll be helping to preserve an important part of your family history. Don’t you wish your ancestors had done the same?

Click here for a printer friendly version.