Heard from an old friend, John Van Buskirk who has a very nice site for VAN BUSKIRK research at, http://www.geocities.com/vanbus1/ He also sent me a very large family file that ties into the the Old Cambridge District with the Buskirks Bridge families, near Eagle Bridge.

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Found an EXCELLENT webpage for people working on Rensselaer County research. The Troy Irish Genealogy Society (TIGS) has an extremely helpful amount of information on ALL people of the area, not just the Irish. http://www.rootsweb.com/~nytigs/ The resources page is superb. I do not have any Irish ancestors, err not yet, but this site will help anyone with connections to that area.

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It does'nt get any better than this. www.stevemorse.org

Stephen P. Morse of San Francisco has one of the MOST helpful sites on the Internet for searching and understanding how to search; Ellis Island and Castle Garden records, other ports of immigration, Federal and NYS Census records, including a super way to locate Enumeration Districts (Eds), vital records and birth dates, most any kind of calendar you will ever encounter in your research, and I have not even scratched the surface with what is available. I did have a chuckle though when I first went to look for him because I typed a wrong address in, stevenmorse dot com, and don't go there if you are faint at heart.

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If I was an author, published, and earning revenue for my effort, I would hate what is going on at http://print.google.com I'm pretty sure Google will push Bill aside in ruling the world, but what ever...

This is going to be a HUGE asset to researchers, as more and more titles become available. You can follow the Google side of the story at their official blog site http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/11/preserving-public-domain-books.html

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If any of you subscribe to the Dutchess County Mailing List from rootsweb.com, you will know all about this. If you do not, it would be worth the effort to subscribe to the list, (free of course) just to learn a lesson in civic duty, political intrigue, and perseverance. Ginny B. has led a campaign to force the County Executive and the County Legislature to hire a County Historian as required by law. For a couple of years now I have been lurking and reading her posts and all of the positive support messages she has been receiving, as well as the weasly responses from the politicians to her bold and outright “in-your-face” persisitance. Today I give her the “Asbestos Glove Award” because I would not want her to burn her hands while holding the politicians feet to the fire.

If you want to have some fun and learn how to handle the government, just go to the rootsweb mailing list archives for Dutchess County and read the MANY posts regarding “Dutchess County Historian”. I don't know what the outcome will be but she is one of my all time heroes!

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I have been having fun swapping some GIFFORD family material with a new found GIFFORD cousin that I met through this website and BLOG. See boys and girls it pays to get your data out there on the web. Use discretion, don't air all of the linen, but get a website or a BLOG, or post your basic lines to one of the big boards and you will meet new friends and make family connections that you have never dreamed of.

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Rochester Public Library, Renee Zamora, 86th NY Vols. St. Lawrence Co. Hist. Assn., Mayflower

Received a nice note from Mr. Larry Naukam, “aka, Larry N the LibraryN” , the head of the local history and genealogy division of the Rochester NY Public Library.

They are hard at work bringing many more things on-line as you will see from the excerpt of his note about their Rochester City Directories.

“We have them on-line now from 1827-1869; the coders and camera folk are hard at
work to get a decade up every couple of weeks, and we set a goal of getting
to 1900 by year's end, with the scanned directories running through 1930
before we move on to other nice stuff - like the 500,000 entries in the 19th
century newspaper index! “

I can't wait! http://www.libraryweb.org/rochcitydir/citydirectoriestable.html

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Renee Zamora has a nice BLOG that has a lot of information about Upstate New York, where she hails from. http://www.livejournal.com/~rzamor1/ I chatted with her a little and was able to help her with some information on a WETHERWAX family in the Old Cambridge District.

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Terri & Doug Olszowy are working on an in-depth study of the 86^th NY Vols.

“My husband & I are researching the regimental history of the 86th NY Volunteer Infantry (Civil War). Co A of the 86th NY came from the Syracuse/Onondaga area. We are trying to locate any letters & diaries that discuss the regiment. One name of major importance would be Benjamin L. Higgins. Originally a firefighter in Syracuse, he served as Company commander for Co A and as Colonel of the Regiment before being discharged for disability.”

If anyone has any information for them just let me know and I'll put you in touch.

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Joe Makowiec, the webmaster for the St. Lawrence Co. Historical Association, contacted me as he found out we are 10^th cousins through Francis COOKE and he invites all to their website at http://slcha.org/

They have a very nice Civil War Research Page on their site as well, and his complete documented genealogy to several Mayflower lines may be found at http://makowiec.org/newengland/joemayflower.pdf

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Lost hunter story, not genealogy

OK, inquiring minds want to know so here goes.

I LOVE to Deer Hunt, have since I was sixteen, about a hundred years ago. Dad and Uncles and old time neighbors that are now long gone got me hooked when I was a little kid and other than genealogy it is my only passion, err sort of.

Where I live now in the foothills of the Adirondacks is EXCELLENT deer country. Lots of good feeding areas, and PLENTY of cover for them. If you are a hunter you will start to get a warm fuzzy feeling. If you are not I suggest you go to some other website, but only temporarily!

So it was late afternoon, the second weekday after the time change. Let's see, is it spring forward and fall back, or what? So the clocks are right with the powers that be, and I have just a little window of time to go down in back of my house and find an elusive monster.

I live on an old country road that is surrounded within two miles by two other country roads and a main highway. Been walking the property for a LONG time now and especially just before deer season got out and beat the bushes to see where the action would be.

So, I went down in back almost to the highway and my gosh it got dark quick. It was raining and there was no sunset and after dark there was no moon. Now I have a real good sense of direction in the woods but after dark with no light, no compass, and no good common sense by this point, I headed for home. It was easy, the highway was behind me and all I had to do was cross a couple of cricks (as they call them in these hyar parts) and then head up the hill to my house.

Hah! Every hill I went up seemed to come back down again to another little stream. Lo and behold, I could see the highway again after about an hour. How the heck could I have gotten turned around like that? After a while I thought, well Dummie, there are only two cricks between your starting spot and the old homestead, so just keep the water on your left and walk uphill, what are you stupid?

Didn't work. Now it got dark. I mean DARK, DARK, DARK! With the rain, thank heavens it was a warm rain, and the fact that I had two light wool jackets on, I was relatively comfortable, but would get winded and had to stop to rest on a log or a big rock occasionally.

Now I started to get smacked with branches and tree limbs, stepped in some kind of a rotten tree hole that I think would have kept going until I met Alice or the Mad Hatter if I had not grabbed on to a branch within panic reach. Now mind you I can not see a THING! There were a lot of new fallen trees now because we had a twelve inch snow last week when the leaves were still on and many of them came down. I felt around and found a good stout walking stick that would handle my couple of extra pounds. Sit down again a while, figure it out and take a rest, then find the next stream and head UP the hill. NOT.

I could hear the water on my left and started again up the hill. What the heck? The hill came back down again to another little stream. It was so dark that you could not duck the branches because you could not see them even when they were IN you eyes, oh and if you were clearing stuff out of your eyes you would trip over a log. Do you have ANY idea what a partridge sounds like when going off from the ground about three feet from you in fright flight? Sit down, calm down, I know I will break out into my lower pasture field any minute. NOT.

Well I could swallow my pride and ask for help. We all know that one of the International Distress Calls is to shoot three times. Should I do it? Will I feel like a jerk if I am right next to one of my neighbors? What the heck, they are all hunters too and will help me find my way back. So I fired three shots, with well spaced timing, waited a little while and hollered “HALLOOO”... Didn't hear a thing.

Waited about five minutes and fired my trusty side arm again. BANG! One two three, BANG! One two three, BANG! Wait a couple of minutes. “HALLOOOOOO”. Nada. Hey jerky boy, it's raining, duh. No body is sitting outside on the veranda sipping mint juleps. They are all inside watching the tele. Better not fire any more rounds. I might run across that HUGE sow bear with two cubs that is in the neighborhood. Can't see a damn thing!

Take inventory. One tiny little candy bar that I scalped out of the trick or treat candy dish last night, and one Natures Valley cinnamon crisp bar. Au oh, better think about making a shelter and camping out.

Can't do that, my dogs are home alone, wife went to Syracuse for a couple of days. Hey, I've got a cell phone in my pocket. I know it never works up in this area but let's check it anyway. Right, “NO SIGNAL”, (BUT), it has a light on the screen and this model has a tiny little LED flashlight on it so you can find the keyhole, or whatever. SAFE!!!

NOT.

I went back to a stream to take a sip of water and now with this little light I could see that the darn stream was running UPHILL, or so it seemed from the way I thought it was going. I was so turned around I had been going in circles over and over and the stream that I thought would lead me home was taking me back down to the swamp by the highway. So now I got REAL level headed and said to myself, “self, go upstream”.

ALL of these streams in this chunk of land eventually do cross my own road, and this time it worked. I did finally see some lights uphill, followed them and came out on my road about a half mile from where I thought I was. I chuckled to myself. The three shots in the forest only works in the movies.

Dogs were relieved to see me, in more ways than one. We all had something to eat, and I consumed about a half gallon of water, and took off my totally soaked clothes. Everything was soaked from my hat to my socks, and all parts in between. I was muddy all over, face was scratched, leg hurts, not unusual anyway, but more so now, had two sprained fingers on my left hand where I had tried to stop a slide down a muddy cliff, and I was PO'd that it had happened, but glad to be home. All of this happened in three hours.

Hey, who needs a flashlight or a compass. I'm only down behind the house.

Lost Hunter, Website Traffic, Brick Walls, Early Internet, Other Nice Folks Mentioning this Website and BLOG.

OK, so it has nothing to do with genealogy, but if anyone wants to hear my story about getting lost while deer hunting today, send me a note and if I get more than 5 requests I'll BLOG it. \grin/

Boy the website traffic has increased GREATLY! Thank you to all you visitors, even if you are the silent type, I appreciate your taking the time to read some of my rants.

I love to hear from readers and can some times even come up with an idea or two that has not been tried yet on those “brick wall” problems. Last night I got an email from a man looking for a first cousin in the Syracuse area, and all I had to go on was his name and that he was or had been a CPA. With modern day resources, SSDI, and newspapers on-line, I was able to find him in about twenty minutes!

I LOVE the Internet. I remember back when it first started, I tried to bribe a college official ( friend of mine) to let me have a university account and I would give them a collection of historical materials worth $5,000 for their Rare Book Library. He actually considered it but was worried that someone would flag the account because it would have been out of state, and that he would get in trouble.

Man I could not subscribe soon enough when dial up became available, and then when cable modems started being talked about I started calling my cable service company and bugging them every week until they acquiesced and put me on the “list”. I became a BETA tester for Road Runner, and was the 6^th person in Syracuse to get it.

My how things have changed in such a short while.

This site has been recently put on Cyndi's List, Darci's List, and genealogyblog.com and I received a very nice note from the head of the Genealogy Department at the Rochester Library thanking me for mentioning their ongoing project of posting the Rochester City Directories on-line, and they are working on much MORE to come!.

www.ny-genes.com

NYS Census for Jefferson Co., Researchers Gathering Summer 2006 in Washington County

Received a note from a lady in Jefferson county, who informed me that some of the New York State census for the years 1825, 1835 and 1855 for Jefferson county do exist. She said the 1825 & 1835 names are on index cards at the Flower Library in Watertown, with the originals probably in the possession of the County Clerk, and the 1855 is on microfilm also at the County Clerk's Office. This is great to know because I had previously searched the LDS Library catalog and the NYS Library catalog and did not locate them listed.

If anyone knows anything at all about the existence of any more State Census, I would appreciate hearing about it and I will update my listings. I know for a fact that some parts of some of the early state census do exist in historical societies, libraries and other types of archives, but most of them are incomplete and have never been microfilmed or cataloged, so it would be very helpful to know about any remnants of the manuscripts. Hey if it is YOUR ancestor that is on just one of these scraps it could be a very important piece of information.

I have just added a note to the section titled “Researchers Gathering”. This is in regard to a possible get together for a few days in Washington Co., NY., in August, 2006. Check the website for further details.

www.unyg.com

New website traffic, OCD

There are many ways to increase traffic on websites and I have begun to send broadcast emails to many of the rootsweb news groups that I subscribe to. It is amazing how a simple little notice of the fact that I have put new information on the site brings hundreds of new visitors per day.

I generally send out about 10 messages and the website gets seen by many more visitors and many of them have already made some very good contributions of new material that ties in to work I have been doing. Meet new friends and relatives, just get a website and try it. I pay for the Premium version at www.freewebs.com to have my own domain name and some special features, but there are many other good website providers that will also give you space absolutely FREE! Do a search and select a vendor. Their “canned” templates are very easy to use and you will have a lot of fun.

Through the latest broadcast I am now in touch with a lady in Utah who's ancestors lived in my favorite area of study, the Old Cambridge District, located at the South East corner of Washington County, NY. I like to call it “Grandma Moses Country”, because if you have ever seen any of her art work that depicts old time country scenes from those communities, it still looks quite like that today in many places.

I'll be trading data with her and several other new contacts. Remember that the capsule version of the genealogies I have on the website are stripped down versions of just names, dates and places. I do have the full version available with many notes and all sources cited that I am pleased to share with anyone who connects to these people.

www.ny-genes.com