HILLENBRAND, Markelsheim, Bad Mergentheim, Wurttemberg, Germany, - Germans of Syracuse and Onondaga County - Karen's Power Tools - www.s-gohost.net

Do you have German ancestors in Upstate, NY? My Dad’s father came from Markelsheim, Wurttemberg in Southern Germany about 20 miles South of Wurzburg and about 60 miles North East of Stuttgart, on the Taube River. He immigrated in 1885 alone, however there were three other men on the same ship Rhatia that were also recorded as being from Wurttemburg when the ship’s manifest was logged in at Castle Garden at the tip of Battery Park in Manhattan. I would like to think that he got to see the Statue of Liberty being constructed because that was about the time that the head of the statue would have been being raised up.

I was lucky enough when first starting out in the research of his family that I was able to locate the Catholic Church record books on microfilm at the LDS Library, and was able to take his family back several generations in the same little town. Gramp was the only son of an only son, so there is not much chance of having any “close” HILLENBRAND family relations in this country other than his descendants. It is odd but for about 15 to 20 years now I have been monitoring and posting messages about Markelsheim on various websites, message boards, mailing lists, etc., and I have NEVER found anyone else working on any families from Markelsheim. That tiny little winemaking town is now sort of absorbed by the much larger county center of Bad Mergentheim.

I have quite a bit of data on my grandfather’s family, but of course would always like more. So if anyone sees this and knows ANYTHING at all about Markelshiem or Bad Mergentheim in the State of Baden-Wurttemberg, please let me know.

If you had German ancestors that ever came to the Syracuse or Onondaga County areas of New York then the very best website to go to is Michelle Stones’ excellent gathering place for items that relate to that particular German community. Many of the settlers of that part of NYS were there because of good farming lands and also there was plenty of employment around the Salt industry that Syracuse was famous for. This means that you will find many of these people in the outlying areas that surround the Salt works and many of them were employed in businesses like coopering and basket making and other jobs relating to the manufacture of Salt and the transportation of same. Michelle Stones’ site is http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~mstone/ .

More Computer Stuff…

Karen Kenworthy was a writer for the now defunct Windows Magazine at Winmag dot com, but she still is giving us some excellent utilities for free at http://www.karenware.com . There are several very useful tools under the category of Karen’s Power Tools, that will save your bacon if you are a Windows user.

She offers many tools, but some that seem very helpful to genealogists are:

Replicator - (Automatically copy and backup files),

Cookie Viewer - (View and delete cookies),

Directory Printer - (Print names and info of all or selected files and folders on your computer),

Time Sync – (Sync your computer clock with any of the ultra-precise Internet time servers),

and many more.

You will first have to download and run her Visual Basic Module, (the language her programs were written in) before you download, install and launch any of the Power Tools, but it is real easy.

Karen also has a free newsletter that you can subscribe to and keep up to date with her fine collection of utilities.

Want to know what your IP Address is? Just go to http://www.s-gohost.net/ and it will show you without having to do anything! www.s-gohost.net is a company that offers website hosting and they are featuring our new website currently in their brag list. A well deserved brag if I say so myself. The other cool thing that you can do at this site is a quick check on a domain name to see if it is registered or if it is available. Check it out.

The website for Upstate New York Genealogy (UNYG) is: www.ny-genes.com .

OHA - Buffalo Research - Acronym List - XP Restore Point

The Onondaga Historical Association (OHA) in Syracuse, NY has suffered severe damage from a 24 inch water main break immediately in front of their museum and research center back in October. Their facility is still shut down and is expected to reopen November 25^th. They have the full story and photos of the unbelievable damage on their website at: http://www.cnyhistory.org/ and they are asking for donations to help with the extremely costly recovery.

Here is a swell website for researchers working in the Buffalo, Erie Co., NY area. Brought to you by Cynthia Van Ness, [aka: Betty Barcode] and includes links to over 175 full text, digital books on-line that relate to Buffalo. http://www.buffaloresearch.com/

Here’s a GREAT idea! - Acronym List.

Our good guy publisher, Geoff Brown, over at Between the Lakes Publishing has put up a free site at: http://www.betweenthelakes.com/pdfs/organizations.pdf , that will help you identify Organizations by their Initials. It’s easy to remember what “AA” is, easier for some of us than others, but who the heck knows what the “EOMA” stands for? I suspect this is a dynamic list and will be growing all the time, so if you want to add to it just send the info to Geoff at: http://www.betweenthelakes.com/ .

A lady sent out a panic message on one of the mail lists that I subscribe to. She had lost all of her family files in Family Tree Maker and wanted to know how to restore them. She had called DELL and tech support quoted $99 to walk her through it because she was out of warranty, go figure.

I had her back up and fixed in less than two minutes. Windows operating systems like XP and probably others, have a way to Restore the Operating System to an earlier day without damaging any newly added files. Here’s how you do it: go to: All Programs, Accessories, System Restore, then just pick an earlier date that you know the program was working OK at. Don’t worry it’s all reversible if you don’t like what you see pick a different date. XP will create arbitrary restore points periodically as you use the system but an even better way to stay out of trouble is for you to go into the same section and “Create a Restore Point” from time to time. I do mine after any time that I have made major changes, or installed new programs, or uninstalled old programs, or after major anti-virus fixes, etc. When you create a point you will be asked to give it a name. Just write out what was going on and what you did and that the system is working fine at that point. When the point is saved the system automatically gives it a date and time stamp.

Oh by the way, I suggested she could send me the 99 bucks kiddingly of course, but she did offer to buy supper any time I am in the Deep South!

Of course I know that you all always “BACK UP, BACK UP, BACK UP” all of your important files and programs and make at least two copies of each and store one copy off site every day, right?

Visit our website for Upstate New York Genealogy: http://www.ny-genes.com

Platt BABBITT Daguerreotypist Niagara Falls

Today through the website and blog I have met Richard O. Titus who is doing an extensive research project on an important photographer from the Niagara Falls area, by the name of Platt BABBITT who was active at the Falls from about 1850 to 1879.

He and his fellow collectors have located some other photos as well and I am sure Richard would be happy to share them with you. He also sent me a copy of another daguerreotype from The American Memory Project at the Library of Congress which is probably BABBITT’s best known work “Avery Stranded”. Avery was a young sand scow worker who eventually was swept over the falls in 1853. This is one of the earliest news photos known in the world of photo journalism and may be seen at the top right.

Richard owns a full plate daguerreotype done by BABBITT named “Figures at the Falls”. See a copy of the image, second down.

If anyone wants to collaborate with Richard, he intends to be in the Buffalo and Rochester area next summer to do research and he could use some help from a local genealogist. He can be reached at: [eyenet (at) Comcast (dot) net.] (You figure it out.)

Visit our new website at www.ny-genes.com . It is full of good content for research in Upstate New York.

ANTI-TERRORISM LAW CLOSES VITAL RECORDS

United States Anti-Terrorism Law Orders All Vital Records Offices and All Libraries in the U.S. that have Information on Names of People and Dates of Births, Deaths and Marriages Newer than 70 years ago, to Cease and Desist, FROM THIS DAY ON!

This includes all on-line research sites like, Ancestry, Genealogy, and even the Mormon Church! The government is now looking into how to erase all of the information that is on the Internet that is newer than 70 years old also.

The State of Vermont is the first to be hard hit with this new law. The Green Mountain Boys (and Girls) that live in that gorgeous state are in a quandary. They want terrorism stopped, but not at the cost of giving up their rights. For those of you who know and those that might not be aware, the State of Vermont is populated by very hard working, and many God fearing and trusting souls, that have had totally open Vital Records (to date), in all of the Town Clerk’s Offices and at the State Vital Records Office in Montpelier. You used to be able to obtain a copy of any Birth Death or Marriage record as soon as it was filed.

One other thing is that Vermont is an International Border State with a not too tight border, (but don’t tell anyone.) The Federal Government is afraid that Osama Bin Awful might slip across the border in the dark of night, go right to Montpelier and obtain a new identification of say, Ichabod Beasley Crane, and then he would be free to travel throughout the country doing what ever terrorists do.

All of the above is false of course, other than the fact that Vermont is going to have to close their records for 70 years and you can read about the whole story in the Burlington Free Press today.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It was pointed out to me that the shortcut URL to the LDS digitized books catalog at BYU is: http://www.lib.byu.edu/fhc/ . This will make it easier than going to the home page and clicking through all of the tabs.

The new website at www.ny-genes.com is working real well and other than tweaking a few things here and there, and adding new content, we are good to go! Hope you all visit it often.

I am working on a good method to post pages full of photographs and images, mostly from postcards, of Upstate NY scenes. I have access to about 100,000 postcard images and think they will make an excellent addition to the website and to help you better put some meat on the bones of your ancestors. I will put up a notice when we start to bring them on-line, and be patient because I only have a small handful of them scanned to date. This is likely to take all winter to put up enough to be helpful to you.

The RSS feeds are working now and for those of you that know what that is about you are welcome to subscribe to them now. If you have no idea what I am talking about just wait a while and I am going to write an easy to understand description of what they are and how easy it is to use them.

I am working on vol.1, no.1 of the “Newsletter of the Upstate New York Genealogy Website (UNYG)”. There is a subscribe box on the website and it will be free for now.

State of Wisconsin Collection, Western Emmigration Co., Castle Garden, Jane Devlin's Data Site

A new on-line resource is available for free searching at the University of Wisconsin, “State of Wisconsin Digital Collection” at

http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/WI/

Many Central New Yorkers migrated to the upper mid-western states and Wisconsin was certainly one of the popular states, rich in farming country, cheap land and a great connection to the sea through the Great Lakes.

I have had a long time interest in researching several of the families of Kenosha and Racine counties in Wisconsin because that area was founded and settled by some of my family members that became stock holders in “The Western Emigration Company” that was formed from residents of Hannibal and several of the nearby towns of Ira, Cato, Granby, and Lysander.

Here is a very short mention of this company from the Oswego County GenWeb site: “By 1835, the population of the Town of Hannibal [Oswego County, NY] was up to 2,204 people. It was during this time that the Western Emigration Company was formed in Hannibal for the purpose of establishing a new settlement in the West. Hannibal residents were directly responsible for the founding of Kenosha, the fifth largest city in Wisconsin.”

To search for Immigrations a good site to check is: http://www.castlegarden.org

Castle Garden, is at the tip of Battery Park in lower Manhattan and it was the largest official American immigration center until the opening of Ellis Island in 1892. Although Castle Garden was in operation from 1852 to 1890, this website currently contains immigration records taken from ship manifests from 1820 to 1913. The history of the Castle is interesting in itself. It was built as a fort during the War of 1812, and has served multiple duties ever since. At one time it was an aquarium and is now part of the National Parks System and is open as a historical site and it is also the place where you purchase your tickets for the boat excursion ride out to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.

Here is a great site that has been put up by Jane Devlin and a group of her friends that is heavy in content for Middlesex County, Connecticut, but has quite a bit of good material from New York State. They have been busy little beavers extracting all kinds of data from myriad sources and putting them all on-line. (Bless you all.) Jane named her site in honor of her grandparents’ surnames so you are not apt to locate this enormous collection of material by the use of many search engines and it was brought to my attention by one of my website visitors, Coralynn Brown. Check it out: http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~jdevlin/#008

New Website Today! - World War I Draft Card Resgistrations On-line FREE!

Steve Gorney at www.s-go.net and I have finished the new website and will be launching it today (I hope). I think you will agree that he did a superb job of formatting my old site to the new design. The man is incredible! If you ever need someone to hold you by the hand and walk you through this wild wild world called the Internet, he’s your guy. JOOMLA! (VERY Good!)

We will have much of the old material in a newer sleeker presentation, and we have added tons of new features and data. You will now be able to subscribe to my RSS feeds (at no charge of course) and you will get any news flashes that I think might be helpful to NYS researchers.

At the top there will be a “SEARCH” box for my whole website, then a row of buttons for:

Home – Daily Blog – Favorite Genealogy Links – FAQs – Contact Us – Site Map

Then along the left hand side there will be buttons for:

Home

Basic Genealogy

Civil War Research in NY

Internet Genealogy

Internet Security

Land Records

Mayflower Connection

NY Counties & Census

Old Cambridge District

Researchers Gathering

Book Reviews

My Genealogies

Login Form:

Username

Password

RSS Feeds:

RSS 1.0

RSS 2.0

If you don’t know about RSS feeds yet, stay tuned, I’m going to write an easy to understand description on what they are and how to use them.

I think you will really like the new design and I hope that we will be able to bring you new and exciting items to help you discover those pesky elusive ancestors!

Please let me have some feedback on the new design and if you have thoughts on additions, corrections or if you find any glitches, burps, humps in the road, or BUGS, then PLEASE do let me know ASAP.

(Oh, and by the way, I just LOVE my new logo!)

Keep trying the site at www.ny-genes.com until you see the new design.

World War I Draft Registration Cards - FREE!

Ancestry has completed indexing and digitizing nearly 24 million World War One Draft Registration Cards (1917-1918). To celebrate they are offering free access to this database with registration (your name and email address) from November 12-25, 2005. To take advantage of this offer you must go to the webpage below and click on the WWI Draft Cards link near the top...

Online World War One Indexes & Records
http://www.militaryindexes.com/worldwarone/

This is a wonderful collection of data that will give you Names, Addresses, Age, Date of Birth, Occupation, Next of Kin and other neat stuff. This is for EVERYONE of registration age, not just the men who actually served. Yeah...!