The Huguenots settle in America

Melissa Slate contributed the article, "What are Huguenots?", offering a brief history of the French Huguenots.

Legal documents yield a wealth of clues

Karan Pittman contributed the article, "Legal Terms Provide Clues", offering a basic knowledge of legal terms necessary for successful family history research.

Another 1880 Census Resource

WorldVitalRecords.com launched an installment (502,894 records) of its first census today, the 1880 Census. "This is the first of many census indexes that we hope to have at WorldVitalRecords.com," Paul Allen said. "We want these indexes to be accessible and affordable to everyone." (web site: WorldVitalRecords.com)

Thanksgiving Story

Teenage Thomas Hull's ancestral journey was highlighted in "Student proves ties to Pilgrims" this week in the Yakima Herald Republic. This 15-year-old documented his ancestry back to the ship the Pilgrims sailed on in 1620.

Restoring Familial Foliage

Jan James shares a bunch of great tips in "Uncorking the genealogy bottle" an article in last week's San Joaquin County Record. About genealogy as a hobby, "you cannot get away from the history of it that connects your family," she said. "You're almost living their life again."

National Adoption Month

Penny Lofton's article "Becoming a forever family" published last week in the The Ocala Star-Banner, and reminds us that November is National Adoption Month, "a month when we pay tribute and thank those who have adopted children and loved them as their own."

Brown University Cataloguing Rare Maps

Here's an article from the Boston Globe about a new project at Brown Univ. to catalogue a collection of rare maps. "Officials say the push to catalog the artifacts -- some brittle with age, and many dating back 100 years or more -- will make them more accessible to the public and help those interested in urban studies, genealogy and other research areas."

World War II Internment Camp Sites

There was an article published Friday in The Honolulu Advertiser about the "120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry were unjustly and unconstitutionally detained behind barbed wire during World War II. " In "Senate backs bill to preserve internment camp sites" we are reminded of this very sad but important chapter in our nation's history.

New National Cemetery in South Carolina

There's an announcement on the U. S. Army web site about Fort Jackson being selected as the site for a new national cemetery to be established. Construction is slated to begin in fiscal 2008, with interments beginning about a year after that.

National Family History Day, 2006

According to a post on the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services web site, Acting Surgeon General Kenneth P. Moritsugu, M.D., M.P.H., has declared Thanksgiving 2006 to be the third annual National Family History Day. "Over the holiday or at other times when families gather, the Surgeon General encourages Americans to talk about, and to write down, the health problems that seem to run in their family. "

Resources related to the Surgeon General's Family Health Initiative are available at http://www.hhs.gov/familyhistory/. New materials for 2006 include a printable PDF brochure entitled "Before You Start" and a redesigned, user-friendly PDF version of the tool, both of which are available in English and Spanish.

Hess grocery bind Yates family

"Memories of small Hess grocery bind Yates family" in Monday's edition of the The Altus Times and the Frederick Leader provides extensive genealogical details of the YATES family, along with some local history of this family-run grocery store.

Stoner Creek/Stayton Cemetery

"Searching for buried history" published last week in the Central Kentucky News-Journal shares the story of Phyllis and Butch Johnston as they uncovered some of the tombstones from this forgotten cemetery (a rumored burial ground for a Civil War soldier) and attempted to document those interred.

An Ever-Evolving Publication

Our first newsletter issue was sent out on July 8, 2004 with the goal of "helping individuals of all ages and genealogical experiences sort through, and then organize, the mountain of information available to those who try to find their family history."

The initial newsletter format was plain text, which shifted to rich text in 2005, and then to .PDF in 2006. As 2007 rapidly approaches, the GenWeekly team has reviewed the project mission listed above along with current Internet trends to determine what next steps should be taken.

While there will be some content changes to the newsletter, the team felt that genweekly.com should be updated to better highlight the unique contributions of our writing staff, along with the events and news stories that they discover as part of staying abreast of our industry.

Beginning this week, you'll begin to see these new posts to genweekly.com as we migrate the site into a blog format. You'll still need a subscription to access the original content (and receive the newsletter edition), so if you haven't already, please consider subscribing to GenWeekly.