Trenton, New Jersey Police Website
I very much enjoyed your article about police ancestors in the Ancestry Weekly Journal. For an example of a really well-crafted historical police department website, go to:
http://tpdmuseum.com/
This is the website of the Trenton, N.J., online police museum. For historical information, I click on the period 1900-1919, when my great-grandfather was a patrolman. As I read, the site plays ragtime music of the era! I learned that my ancestor’s salary was $950 per year. For people with roots in Trenton, it’s an amazing site.
Thanks for calling attention to this important segment of the population.
Sincerely,
Beth Kennedy
Include Family Name on Letters to Cousins
While writing a letter to an unknown cousin, I included the family name on the envelope with my return address. When the cousin responded to me she said, “What a surprise to see the family name with your return address.”
In this crazy world of fear and scams, I am going to add this small but important piece of family information from now on. It might be the difference between the recipient opening and reading the letter, or tossing it away unopened and unread.
Trudy Barch
Homewood, Illinois
Indiana or Iowa
As a follow-up to last week’s newsletter tip titled “Use Care with Birthplace on Census”–one census taker abbreviated Indiana as “IA” the current postal abbreviation for Iowa)– which easily could lead researchers astray.
Â
Carolyn Ford
AWJ Editor’s Note: Great point! Ia. was actually the abbreviation for Indiana for a time.
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I NEVER use the two letter postal abbreviation for states anymore when doing entry into my genealogy computer program — learned my lesson especially with the M’s (MA Maine, MD Maryland, MI Michigan, MN Minnesota, MS Mississippi, MO Missouri, and MT Montana). US Postal Service must have assigned abbreviation letters working from the east to the west — VERY CONFUSING to remember. I use Maine, Maryld, Mich., Minn., Miss., Missouri, and Mont. Might take up more space, but it is easy to figure out. I even use Wis. instead of WI for my home state of Wisconsin — use short simple abbreviations for ALL STATES. Think about people from another country trying to figure the states out.