African Roots Podcast # 128 September 16th, 2011

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Welcome back to the African Roots Podcast!
You can always reach me at AfricanRootsPodcast@gmail.com

Some wonderful news for those researching slavery in the British West Indies. British Slave records have recently been put online! This includes:
Antigua (1817-1818, 1821, 1824, 1828, 1832)
Bahamas (1822, 1825, 1828, 1831, 1834)
Barbados (1817, 1820, 1823, 1826, 1829, 1832, 1834)
Berbice (1818-1819, 1822)
Dominica (1817, 1820, 1823)
Grenada (1817-1834)
Honduras (1834)
Jamaica (1817, 1820, 1823, 1826, 1829, 1832, 1834)
Mauritius (1817, 1819, 1822, 1826, 1830, 1832, 1835)
Nevis (1817, 1822, 1825, 1828, 1831)
Sri Lanka (Ceylon) (1818-1832)
St Christopher (1817, 1822, 1825, 1827-1828, 1831, 1834)
St Lucia (1815, 1819)
St Vincent (1817, 1822, 1825, 1828, 1831, 1834)
Tobago (1819-1834)
Trinidad (1813, 1815-1816, 1819, 1822, 1825, 1828, 1831, 1834)
Virgin Islands (1818, 1822, 1825, 1828, 1831, 1834)

Though this is early 19th century—what a wealth of data it holds. A full article appears on Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter!
http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/2008/04/british-slave-r.html

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Getting ready for the AAHGS Conference in Little Rock, Arkansas.

There will be pre-conference tours next week and things will officially kick off on Thursday evening and run through Saturday evening.

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The Webinar on African American Online Resources can be ordered directly from LegacyFamilyTree.com

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Don’t forget to look into the Black Genealogy Summit and their schedule for the October confernce in Ft. Wayne, Indiana at the Allen County Library.

Thanks for listening everyone and next week’s broadcast will come from Little Rock Arkansas. In the meantime, keep researching, keep documenting, and keep sharing what you find.

African Roots Podccast #127 September 9, 2011

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Special hello and shout out to friends and genealogy family attending the FGS Conference in Springfield Illinois. I know you are having a great time and you are the envy of the larger community that cannot be there with you.
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If you are in the greater Baltimore area, the Agnes K. Callumn chapter of AAHGS will be meeting at Enoch Pratt Library on Cold Spring and Loch Raven on Saturday morning at 10:30 am. Discussion will be focused on the upcoming Genealogy Summitt in Ft. Wayne IN. For information contact: www.Baaghs.org

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Baltimore County is gearing up for the African American Heritage Festival in Towson MD on September 17th. Be sure to stop by the African Heritage Tent meet Mr. Louis Diggs, and also spend time visiting the amazing Heritage photo exhibit on display. This is the largest exhibit and will provide visitors a chance to see historic images of the county’s African American history!

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Acokeek MD, African American Heritage Day Festival will take place from 11 – 4 at the National Colonial Farm in Acokeek. (3400 Bryan Point Rd) This is the 11th Annual African American Heritage Day, an event rich with enchanting jazz/blues music, tales of great military battles, exciting hands-on activities for the entire family and lots of food. Buffalo Soldier reenactors will be present in addition to Jubilee Voices activities for children and music. More information here.
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Scholars at the Virginia Historical Society in Richmond have gone through over eight million documents dating back to the 17th century, seeking the names of slaves. The preliminary results, listing about 1,400 enslaved people and 180 owners, and the data is now online at vahistorical.org.

“Unknown No Longer: A Database of Virginia Slave Names” is searchable by locations, professions and first and last names, among other keywords. A recent article in the NYTimes described the project.
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Military records: Family Search has added millions of new images including data from the Civil War. Many of the images are resting on Footnote (Fold3)’s site. The service records of the US Colored Troops are among the many digitized images. I see that several regiments have yet to be scanned and digitized, such as those with high regiment numbers. The US Colored Cavalry, Heavy and Lt. Artillery, and Infantry regiments up 55th, then the numbers skip 56th through 65th and resume at 66th through 82nd Infantry. In addition the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Colored Infantries are also included. Hopefully remaining regiments will be included in due time.

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BTW if you are still interested in the webinar on Best Internet Sites for African American genealogy, you may still watch it for free until September 12th. Simply go to LegacyFamilyTree.com, and click on their webinar button to access the presentation.

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If you missed them, tune in to BlogTalkRadio for an interview with Melvin J. Collier on the NurturingOurRoots program. He was interviewed by Bernice Bennett. And SavingStories hosted genealogist and teacher, Lisa Lee, on her program this week as well. Both interviews were inspiring, and you are urged to tune them in.

This past week has been a wake up call coming from mother nature. From the fires in Texas to the floods in Vermont, it is time to think about backing up our data, and storing it in more than one format.

Let’s think about what is taking place—there are now many options for us to preserve—we know to make copies, we know to make electronic images, but saving them all in the same physical space does not really expand your research. Computers, saving them to external drives, but keeping that drive in your home—well tsunamis and events like Katrina have shown us that we have to do more.

There are now online sites where large files can be stored. There are now “clouds” offering a larger than life and endless capacity to hold what you have accumulated. We need to think about these options.

How many of us in our own genealogy circle are doing the basics—are you backing up your data at least once a month? Yes once a month!

This can be of benefit for more than storage and backup—you often find unexpectedly those documents or files that you had forgotten about by engaging in this exercise!

Let’s not only think preservation—this is the time where we pay our insurance—making the effort to insure that our work is not lost, the precious images of our loved ones are safe, and that our stories that we have acquired will be preserved.

Thank you all for listening, and please keep researching, keep documenting and always keep sharing what you find.