FindMyPast has a guide that may prove helpful for those with Catholic connections

UNDERSTANDING CATHOLIC RECORDS

 “Miner Recollections Volume One 2018”
is a compilation of the first 100 Recollections and includes the growing list of miners
who perished while mining Georges Creek coal.
Proceeds support the installation of a life-sized bronze statue
and the educational landscaping that will surround it.
Books are available at Armstrong Insurance in Frostburg
or by contacting
Polla Horn at jph68@verizon.net or
Bucky Schriver at bucky1015@comcast.net.
The cost is $20 per book and includes shipping to anywhere in the United States.

"When an Aunt passed away many years ago, she left a considerable amount in the form of US Savings Bonds to family members who may or may not have cashed them.  Although the beneficiaries didn’t have the paper bonds, and Uncle Sam no longer pays interest on them,  I had a list of the serial numbers of the bonds as well as a list of the intended beneficiaries. 

Here’s my suggestion: add a link to the Savings Bond Recovery website that will offer steps for the intended beneficiaries to follow.  Doing so will add value to the website and possibly be a be a nice surprise for a few of the visitors."
SavingsBondRecovery  at the U.S. Treasury Dept
(Courtesy of John McGowan)

The LegalGenealogist has great articles on DNA testing and how the results are used

Finding You Ancestors In Other Nearby Areas

In this past week's NEHGS e-newsletter I found reference to a great site, the Parkersburg and Wood County, WV Library  which has much more than you might think, covering lots of other areas.

I've just begun to explore, and already found the following regarding Washington County, PA, where some, if not many, with Garrett County, MD will have ancestors.
Hope that you find some new information!
all the best,
Beth Golden

Catholic Burials in Pittsburgh

(Courtesy of Pat Dailey)

From the Coal Mines to Cooperstown
The Lefty Grove Memorial

Buzz One Four Memorial

In honor of the 1964 crash of the B 52 Bomber that went down near Lonaconing, MD.

New SICKLES Group

I'm excited to announce that the Sickles Genealogy Yahoo group is officially launched!

Group Description:
A genealogical and family history group for descendants of Zacharias Sickels born about 1630 in Vienna, Austria and researchers of the Sickels, Sickles, Siggles, Ziggles, etc., and even some named Vansickle. This is not a group for the Van Sickles whose American progenitor was Fernandus. There's a great Facebook page already established for them, managed by Jeannie Miyama. https://www.facebook.com/VanSickleFamilyTree
 
All postings should be associated with genealogy or related topics. Join to meet other researchers, exchange data and ideas, send queries and knock down brick walls.
You're welcome to join, whether you've just begun your search or have been exploring your family history for a long time. Please send your request to join to  sickles_family-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. When emailing your membership request, please ensure that you specify your genealogical connection to the Sickles line. Otherwise, your application will be denied.

If you're a Sickles descendant, I hope you'll join us.

Beth Golden, administrator

National Endowment for the Humanities
Library of Congress
Search U.S. Newspaper Directory, 1690-Present

This gives access to available newspapers from all states!
It is FREE!!

The Hoyes of Maryland
by Captain Charles E. Hoye

Great news! This book is now available on the Online Books Page of the Univ. of Penn. library.

http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/005763209

I was looking for it to read for free online and found the title at UPenn but it wasn't curated. So I asked for them to do so, and they did. Hooray!
 
btw - lots of other great resources there, too.
 
Happy Hunting!
Beth Golden

VanSickle vs Sickle

Hi All,
I've been pursuing who I thought were my Vansickle ancestors for about a month now, and have discovered some interesting things that might be of help to others with either of these names (and all the spelling variations).
The property which was in both VA (now WV) and MD named, Sickle Hill, should have been an immediate clue, but it wasn't. I've discovered that my ancestral line is SICKLES and not VAN SICKLE. At least it sure seems that way at this point. The American progenitor of the Sickle family was born about 1630 in Vienna. The Amercian progenitor of the Van Sickle family was born in either Belgium or the Netherlands (saw both reported in my research).
I don't know if some of the early MD census takers that[sic] mistakenly lumped them into the Van Sickle name group or what happened for the Sickles to adopt the name Vansickle.
Also, in one historical book, the Index has numerous spellings for the Sickle family in NJ - even Siggle. So if you're not having any luck with finding your Van Sickle ancestors they may actually be Sickle or Siggle or Stickler ...  ;)
If anyone has any further information, please share. I'd love to learn more.
all the best,
Beth Golden

Get Rid of Those Annoying Ads!

Thought I’d send this along for anyone who uses FindAGrave or are just fed up with Google ads on every site you visit. The ads on FAG had gotten to the point that I had to wait for 3 or 4 of them to open before I could type anything and they were awful to look at. I found a great little add-on that really, truly works. This is the url: 

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/adblock/gighmmpiobklfepjocnamgkkbiglidom?hl=en
 
It will ask for a donation, and you can pay what you like :) It blocks all ads on all sites that you visit and it works instantly. In my opinion, it’s priceless! Also, you can’t believe how fast your computer becomes with no ads to bother loading.
(Courtesy of Sheryl Kelso)

Leo Beachy's Legacy

An amazing story of Leo Beachy, photographer, and the (2800 plus) glass negatives that were lost for decades and rescued by his niece
Maxine Beachy Broadwater.
The short documentary can be found at:
http://www.wqed.org/ondemand/onq.php?id=288

The pictures are now available online to view or purchase at the Garrett County Historical Society Museum
http://gchsmuseum.com/shop/gift-shop/leo-beachy-photographs

Fantastic news from Addie Glotfelty of the Local History and Genealogy Dept at the Ruth Enlow Library in Oakland!
Addie has been working on a project to compile an online Obituary Database with images from The Republican,
which began publication in 1877 in Garrett County, MD.
The fully searchable database is now online and is totally functional, with obituaries from 1877.
You can go to
Ruth Enlow Library

and click on "Local History and Genealogy" and find the link at the top of the page

What a huge ongoing project this is and it should prove invaluable to all of us.
Make sure to Bookmark the site or add to your Favorites and check back often since they will continue to add to the database!

Passing along information from Patricia Shaffer ~

Information is needed on VETERANS from the area of Windber, Somerset Co., Pa., for a black granite wall which is to be erected.
You may contact Patricia Shaffer at:

pdshaffer@comcast.net

From the Julian to Gregorian Calendar
 
The Julian Calendar (established under Julius Caesar) was slightly out of whack with the solar calendar. The earth’s orbit around the sun takes about 365 ¼ days. The Julian Calendar had introduced leap years (every 4 years) which added one day to the month of February to compensate for that quarter day. But actually this slightly *_over_*compensated, so that calendar dates (very) slowly drifted ahead of the seasons.
 
To correct this, a calendar adjustment was introduced to Catholic countries under the papacy of Gregory XIII (“the Gregorian Calendar”), effective October 1582. It refined the formula that defined leap years.
Every year that was divisible by*/four/* remained a leap year, /*except for*//**/ years that were exactly divisible by */one hundred/*. Those ‘centurial’ years would be treated as leap years only if they were exactly divisible by */four hundred/*. So 1700, 1800, and 1900 were no longer treated as leap years, but the year 2000 was. Also, as a one-off change, to eliminate slippage that had already occurred, the calendar was moved forward by 10 days. Thursday, 4 October 1582 was followed by Friday, 15 October 1582.
 
Protestant countries did not adopt this change immediately.But in 1752,both England and Scotland (which by then were joined as the United Kingdom) did so together. By that time, further time slippage meant that they had to omit */11/* (not 10) days from their calendar to put the date back in sync with the seasons (earth’s orbit), and to align it with that used by most European countries by that time. This change occurred effective the end of 2 September 1752; the next day became 14 September 1752.
 
The only difference between England and Scotland was in 1599. Until then, both countries treated March 25 as the start of a new year. The day after March 24 1500, for example, was March 25 */1501/*. Scotland (which was then a separate country) decided that it made more sense for the start of the calendar year to be January 1 (the nativity).So it decreed that January 1, 1599 (“Old Style”) should be called January 1, */1600/* (“New Style”), and so on going forward.

Overlapping “Old Style” and “New Style” forms of dating the first three months of the year lasted for several generations [e.g. "January 27 1731/2", or "March 13 1648/9"].
 
Catholic countries had already changed New year's day to January 1 as part of the Gregorian reform. England did not catch up with Scotland, and adopt this “New Style” until 1752. By the way, this change is why September, October, November and December (named after the Latin for seven, eight, nine and ten) are actually now the ninth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth month of our year. But, in Scotland (like England), the definition of leap years, and the 11 days out of synch, remained as per the */Julian /*Calendar until 1752.
Information provided by John Humphrey
(Courtesy of Sheryl Kelso)

Letter to the Editor

During the heavy rain on June 12, a roof drain separated over the biography and non-fiction sections of The Ruth Enlow Library of Garrett County in Oakland, causing extensive water damage to books, the carpet and the ceiling.
Volunteers Dale Schoch of Dale Schoch Masonry and Concrete, Roger Craver and Dr. Karl Schwalm were instrumental in helping the library’s staff mitigate and cope with the damage. The board and staff of the library are very grateful to these volunteers.
While insurance will cover part of the damage, donations are needed to replace most of the damaged books.
Please send donations to: The Friends of the Ruth Enlow Library, P.O. Box 301, Oakland, MD 21550. The Friends of The Ruth Enlow Library are a 501(c)3 organization.

Thank you.
Cathy Ashby, director
Ruth Enlow Library of Garrett County
Oakland
Cumberland Times-News
(Courtesy of Sheryl Kelso)

The Historical Society of Pennsylvania (HSP; online at hsp.org), one of the largest and most comprehensive genealogical centers in the nation, and FamilySearch (online at FamilySearch.org), a nonprofit premier family history and records preservation organization, announced a joint initiative to digitally preserve select collections of the historical society’s vast holdings, starting with compiled family histories. The project is now underway, and the digitized documents will be accessible for free at FamilySearch.org.
David Rencher, FamilySearch’s chief genealogy officer, said,

“The richness of the collection at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania cannot be overstated. It simply is the best collection of resources for studying the history and people of Pennsylvania—period. The vision to collect and preserve these historical documents for many decades gives HSP and FamilySearch a unique opportunity to increase the knowledge and awareness of this priceless historical gem.”

Founded in 1824 in Philadelphia, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania is one of the oldest historical societies in the United States. It is home to some 600,000 printed items and more than 21 million historical manuscripts and graphical items. Its unparalleled collections encompass more than 350 years of America’s history—from the 17th-century to the contributions of its most recent immigrants.

The initiative will digitally preserve and publish online the society’s many genealogies and local histories, family trees, and related family documents and manuscripts that contribute to the understanding of many family histories. Collections of particular interest might be those of Pennsylvania’s founding families, including William Penn and others.

Some of the society’s holdings date back to before the Revolutionary War. The rare histories include family papers, cataloged photographs, genealogies, African-American collections such as a history of the Dutrieuille family and related families, a cookbook compiled by Ellen Emlen during the Civil War in 1865, Jewish resources, sources about daily lives in the history of the United States, and much more.
(Courtesy of Pat Dailey)

Massive Online US Obituaries Project Will Help Find Your Ancestors

October 1, 2014

By Paul G. Nauta

In celebration of Family History Month, FamilySearch International (FamilySearch.org) and GenealogyBank (GenealogyBank.com) today announced an agreement to make over a billion records from historical obituaries searchable online.
It will be the largest—and perhaps most significant—online US historic records access initiative yet.
It will take tens of thousands of online volunteers to make GenealogyBank’s vast U.S. obituary collection more discoverable online.
Find out more at

www.FamilySearch.org/Campaign/Obituaries

The tremendous undertaking will make a billion records from over 100 million US newspaper obituaries readily searchable online.
The newspapers are from all 50 states and cover the period 1730 to present.
The completed online index will be fairly comprehensive, including 85% of U.S. deaths from the last decade alone.
The death collection will easily become one of the most popular online genealogy databases ever, detailing names, dates, relationships, locations of the deceased, and multi-generational family members.
(Courtesy of Pat Dailey)
 

Pennsylvania Residents

Pennsylvania and Ancestry have a free site with some PA death certificates, land grants, birth certificates, etc.
You will need to have a valid PA zip code to type in on the site, then just click and start:

http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/community/research_topics/3162/ancestry_com_pennsylvania/1575348

(Courtesy of Sheryl Kelso)

For anyone interested,
"The Old Pike" by Thomas Searight
is now online and accessible for free!

If anyone has kin that ever lived in New York State, there is a great newspaper site there:

Fultonhistory.com

I just spent about 7 hours there.
My family moved from Fayette about 1920 to Buffalo NY, so I had a lot to look up.
My dad was in sports so there over 800 hits, articles from before I was born.
It was amazing.
Every so often they will show newspapers from Philadelphia and other places.
I’m not sure why because the site says NY.
This is from Barbara Gross, Fayette Co, Pa.
(Courtesy of Pat Dailey)
 

Complaint against Newspaperarchive

I heard from the State of Iowa regarding the complaint [I made] against Newspaperarchive. They have accepted it and assigned it to an investigator.
They will keep me informed.
Not much but there must be something to it for them to accept it and assign it.
The file No is: 2014-158229 if anyone wants to add to it.
(Courtesy of Pat Dailey)
 

If you subscribe (or are thinking about subscribing) to NewspaperArchive.com
Please read this article regarding their billing practices.

http://www.cluewagon.com/2014/05/want-a-full-refund-on-your-newspaperarchive-com-subscription-just-ask-about-their-charity/

(Courtesy of Pat Dailey)

Also, if you are a subscriber, check out the their new pricing structure, BEFORE your renewal date.
They have doubled the rate and do NOT notify you about the increase.
They no longer offer annual subscriptions and the charge for six months is now $99. That's $198 a year!

GenealogyBank.com gives you access to over 6500 newspapers (from every state) and boasts over 1 billion family history records
Membership is about $70 per year.
GenealogyBank.com

Godfrey Memorial Library Gold membership is just $80 per year and includes access to NewspaperArchives with your membership.
This Premium membership also includes all their basic searchable databases as well as:
19th Century Newspapers
Early American Newspapers
London Times Digital
and you also receive 20% off Godfrey books.
http://www.godfrey.org/subscribe.html
 

Although for Preston County, these 2 volumes of
"A History of Preston County, West Virginia" by Oren Morton,
holds a lot of info on Garrett County surnames.
Thought it may be of help to some.
https://archive.org/details/ahistorypreston00colegoog
https://archive.org/details/historyofpreston00mort
(Courtesy of Beth Golden)
 

NEWS

The current governor of PA recently signed into law the bill to OK releasing freedom of information death certs.
The URL is pasted below.
Only the death index is online for 1906 to 1961.
Search by year. You get name, age, county of death and death cert #.
With this info you request the record. Cost $3.
Has to be submitted by their official form located online @ Pennsylvania Vital Records.com.
It takes 4 months to get the record.
www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt?open=514&objID=1085804&mode=2
(Courtesy of Shawn McGreevy)