Birth Years of U.S. Military Veterans

You know you should look for military records for your ancestor, but what war did he serve in? Our friends over at Fold3 created this handy little infographic to use as a rule of thumb. There are exceptions to every rule, but this will get you started and it's a good way to focus your research!

 

As I stress in class some military records may hold valuable clues to your genealogy research and this chart may  help. Click to enlarge and right click to save to your computer. Good hunting and have a great research day.

 

Ancestry New Search Engine Revisited - Again

Damn I hate to sound like a broken record, but since early last month I have tried to be patient with the new Ancestry search engine. My patience is really starting to wear a bit thin.

So if any if you folks at Ancestry or their "volunteers" try to tell me it ain't broke and the best product you have put on the street, I have a hot flash for you. Look at the screen capture I did below and answer me how I can get a UK census result when I have checked that all I want to see the United States collection only?

Be fore warned Ancestry that from this day forward I will be documenting every stupid result I get from your "new" search engine until you folks get this nightmare you have created fixed. I will also be sending you feedback with screen capture link of every time I get a result that I did not ask for in the search.
Bottom line, I will say this to Ancestry -- your product brand is really starting to take a hit in the genealogy community. If I were you, I would really take a hard look at getting some real genealogist on your Beta test teams instead of . . . well what ever you have now cause it isn't working.

AncestryDNA Abroad

We talked about this subject in DNA class last month and now here is an answer, of sorts, from the Ancestry Insider blog.

Dear Ancestry Insider,

Will the Ancestry DNA test be available in Canada soon? Can you explain the delay, please? Thanks,  Sue

Dear Sue,

I contacted Ancestry.com. This was their reply:

There are many factors when offering a DNA test at large scale internationally. These include issues relating to international logistics and regulations, which we are reviewing. It is our hope to offer AncestryDNA internationally and we will let our members know as soon as an AncestryDNA test is available in their market.

--The Ancestry Insider

More Proof That Lawmakers are Stupid and Ignorant People

Put a politician in front of me and it is like waving a red cape in front of a bull. There is nothing in this world more despicable than a politician. They even give used car salesman and hookers a good name!

Hot on the heels of the "you have to be the dead person to get your death certificate in Oklahoma" debacle (see previous post), the U.S. Government has released the new guidelines to access the Social Security Death Index (SSDI). Bottom line those of us who are genealogists will not be able to get access and those that will have access (the identity thieves) will have to fork over $200. Yet another new tax levied by this feds.

You can get all the gory details on this stupid law courtesy of my friend Dick Eastman at http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2014/03/limited-access-dmf-ssdi-certification-process-is-now-being-defined.html

There was an easier and cheaper fix. While you could search for a SSN that you were looking for you just didn't need to display all the SSNs in the database for everyone in the SSDI (blank them out). That would take care of the supposed identity thief issue that this law was designed to prevent. In reality it was a way to get some more money in the treasury - just another tax and layer of bureaucracy. Can you say empire building!

Nuff said. Time tol move on to my brickwalls now.