Our Family History

Is “Cricket” stealing your genealogy blog content?  I would recommend that you find out.  I filed a DMCA complaint against this blogger today through Google/Blogger.  This person has been taking entire posts wholesale and representing them as his/her own work.  While there is a link to the “source” for the material, it is not considered acceptable practice in blogging to post an entire blog post written by someone else.  Quotations and even block quotations are considered appropriate, but what this person is doing is wrong, and he/she could be doing it to you.  Go see at http://familyhistoryideas.blogspot.com/.  Don’t support this person’s efforts by clicking on ad content or by linking to him/her unless you use the rel=”nofollow” tag.  If your content is being stolen, I urge you to protect your work by filing a complaint.  Here’s how: Digital Millennium Copyright Act on Blogger.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if this post is stolen, too?

Technorati Tags: dmca, copyright, genealogy, blogging, theft, blogger, google

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What if you started to research your family history and discovered the mother of all skeletons in the family closet — that you weren’t who you really thought you were? That’s what happened to the descendants of Bobby Dunbar.

Bobby Dunbar went missing at the age of four during a family trip to Swayze Lake in Louisiana in 1912. After an eight-month search, little Bobby was found with tinker William Cantwell Walters in Mississippi. The only problem was that Bobby’s mother wasn’t certain he was her missing boy, and another woman claimed he was her son Bruce Anderson. A court found in favor of the Dunbars, who raised Bobby. DNA tests done on family members in recent years have proven that he was actually Bruce Anderson. You have to listen to last week’s episode of This American Life (NPR):

Download link

You can download the program (and learn more about it) at TAL: “The Ghost of Bobby Dunbar.”

This story made me think of a similar story in my own family (albeit without a kidnapping). At one point during the program, when Margaret Dunbar Cutright is recounting her feelings upon all that Julia Anderson, Bobby’s real mother, lost, I admit I teared up. It’s an amazing story that only listening to the podcast can truly bring justice to.

Photo of Bobby Dunbar with unknown persons, via This American Life.

Technorati Tags: npr, this american life, bobby dunbar

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I am late in posting this information, but Jasia has the latest edition of the Carnival of Genealogy — “Carnival of Genealogy, 42nd Edition” posted at her blog, Creative Gene.

Thanks for including me, Jasia.

Technorati Tags: carnival of genealogy, igene awards

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The current Carnival of Genealogy asks genealogy bloggers to share their top posts in the following categories:

• Best Picture
• Best Screen Play
• Best Documentary
• Best Biography
• Best Comedy

I was fairly silent on this blog in 2007 as my family, career, and other interests pushed genealogy into the back seat. It is not my intention to stop posting on this blog, but I don’t foresee posting regularly any time soon. However, I really liked this particular carnival idea. I will be interested to see what others select as the best of their blogs.

The Best Image posted on this blog is this one:

This picture features Johnson Franklin Cunningham (left) and my gg-grandfather Amos Blakey Cunningham (right). Johnson Franklin Cunningham is named for Amos’s father. The two men played together as boys before Amos and his family moved to Texas around 1880. It was interesting for me to learn more about Johnson Franklin Cunningham and his own family. I’m not sure what this picture says, but I am drawn to it. It was taken at a Cunningham family reunion in the 1950’s. It was featured on my February post “Slavery in the Family.”

If “World War I Veterans Reunite After 50 Years” could be expanded and perhaps given the Hollywood treatment, it might make an interesting movie; therefore, it is my nomination for Best Screen Play. I’m not sure who I would get to play the parts, but if I could pick anyone, I suppose my great-grandfather Herman’s young self would be played by Ben Affleck, while John Roy McCravey’s younger self would be Matt Damon. As to who would play their older selves, I’m not sure… for some reason I can’t think of older actors who resemble either man as they are pictured in the post. Well, for that matter, I guess Ben Affleck and Matt Damon don’t either. For some reason I just thought it would be an interesting pairing for the topic of the post.

If I could flesh out the details a little more and fill in the gaps, I think “Civil War Records of William Jones Bowling” would be worthy of the Ken Burns treatment, so I nominate this post for Best Documentary.

The Best Biography posted this year was a tribute to my grandmother, whom I call Granna, back in March. She read it and enjoyed it very much.

For Best Comedy, I would nominate my gg-grandfather Amos’s “Horse Story,” posted in March. I actually worked this one into a short story for children once, but I am not sure where that story is.

I will check out the other posts when this carnival is posted, and will be sure to link it here. I can’t wait — should be very interesting.

Technorati Tags: carnival of genealogy, best of, genealogy, awards

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Created with Animoto.

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Miriam started a meme, “Where Were You During the Censuses,” and I have decided to play. I have actually only appeared in three censuses (I think — we’ll see in about 50 years or so, won’t we?). I was born in 1971, so I should be on the 1980 Census as an eight-year-old living in Aurora, Arapahoe County, Colorado.

In 1990, I should be in Warner Robins, Houston County, Georgia as an eighteen-year-old resident in my parents’ home. I graduated from high school that June.

I remember the 2000 Census. I was excited because I was already into genealogy by that time, and I admit I wondered if anyone 100 years down the line would be reading my answers to the responses. I was living in Warner Robins, Houston County, Georgia with my then husband and my oldest daughter (who would have been six at the time), and would have been listed as a twenty-eight-year-old woman.

You know what? Despite the fact that I’ve moved a lot in my life, I don’t think I’ll be all that hard to find, should any descendants ever go looking.

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It looks like UrbanPosters.com shipped my order today, almost exactly three months after I ordered it.  I still have not received feedback regarding the lateness or the multiple e-mails, or the BBB complaint, and I suppose I don’t expect to now, as they will feel they fulfilled their end of the bargain.  I am not satisfied, however, and will still not order from them again.  Three months for posters they said they had in stock is ridiculous.  Amazon does better with out of print materials than that!

Crossposted at Much Madness is Divinest Sense, the Pensieve, and huffenglish.com.

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Consider this post a public service announcement.

Back in mid-August, I ordered two posters from the website poster outfitter UrbanPosters.com.  September came and went, and they had not arrived.  Furthermore, the company did not respond to numerous e-mails regarding my order.  I filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau, but the company has yet to respond to that complaint as well.  I’m out about $27, which is not a lot, but much more disturbing to me than the fact that I lost money is the fact that the company ignored repeated requests and a BBB complaint.  I have rarely received such shoddy customer service anywhere. I would urge you strongly not to do business with this company and to spread the word around.

Crossposted at huffenglish.com, Much Madness is Divinest Sense, and the Pensieve.

Technorati Tags: urbanposters.com, bbb, better business bureau, customer service

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Some time back, I shared with you some photos of my great-grandfather Herman Cunningham and his WWI tentmate John Roy McCravey that my aunt Carolyn had sent me. She told me that she had an article about their reunion, but couldn’t find it at the time. Later, she took the trouble to find the article on microfilm and share it with me. Here it is:

World War I Tentmates Reunited After 50 Years

October 23, 1969, Lockney Beacon

In this age of high speed transportation, our world seems to have shrunk.

For a pair of World War I buddies, the situation was different. Herman Cunningham of Lockney and Roy McCravey of Memphis had no renewed their friendship for half a century until one day this fall.

The local man had inquired for years about his former Army “tentmate” … but to no avail.

This summer he was visiting in a Plainview convalescent home and struck up a conversation with “a fellow who turned out to be from Floydada.” During their chat, Mr. Cunningham asked the Floydada man whether he knew John McCravey.

“No,” was the answer, “but a Roy McCravey used to live there. I think he has a sister still living in Floydada.”

Cunningham’s son-in-law Connie C. Reed, a Floyd County deputy sheriff, knew the woman, who works in a Floydada restaurant. The pair went to see her.

“Do you have a brother named John McCravey?” the Lockney man inquired of the waitress.

“No, but I have a brother, Roy, who now lives in Memphis,” came the reply. Further discussion related that “John” and “Roy” were one and the same individual.

Mr. and Mrs. Cunningham were driven to Memphis for a visit with the former friend several weeks ago by a daughter. McCravey and his wife returned the visit recently.

McCravey had lived in the Plainview and Floydada areas before moving to Memphis.

He and Cunningham became friends in 1918 when they were inducted into the Army and trained together at Camp McArthur, Waco. They shared the same tent.

Later, Cunningham and McCravey shipped out together for France. Shortly after their arrival — “four or five days” — the Lockney man contracted meningitis and was hospitalized in France for treatment.

Before he was “back on his feet,” armistice had been declared.

Back in the states, Herman and Roy got together once for a visit in 1919. That was in the Cunningham home at Whitfield (now Claytonville).

“Then we both moved and we lost connection,” Mr. Cunningham says. He moved to Lockney in 1931.

For the past 50 years the World War I buddies’ trails had not crossed … until a chance conversation put Cunningham on the trail. Maybe it is a small world!

Here is a picture of Roy McCravey (left) and my great-grandfather (right) in 1918:

And here is a picture of the two at their 1969 reunion:

It is interesting that I was able to correctly estimate a date for this photo. I guessed it was taken in the late 1960’s or early 1970’s based on similar photos I had seen in my parents’ and grandparents’ photo albums.

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More and more people are beginning to use blogs as a medium to deliver their genealogy research, and this is definitely a trend I want to encourage. Many genealogists who create blogs are new to Web 2.0 or Read/Write web technologies. The terms Web 2.0 and Read/Write web refer to tools that allow users to contribute content to the web, including video, photographs, blogs, wikis, and more. Lots of possibilities exist, and I decided that it might be helpful to genealogists to learn more about how Web 2.0 technologies can help them get their family history online. In this post, I will discuss several blogging platforms available to genealogists.

Blogger

Blogger is arguably the most popular content management system, and not just among genealogy bloggers. Registration and blog creation is very easy. You can choose from a variety of attractive templates. Blogger allows users to upload images. Blogger’s images are actually stored in Picasa Web Albums, which have 1024 MB of storage space for images. I would imagine that is standard, but if you use Blogger and have a different amount, let me know. Blogger also offers spell check and auto save features. Auto save will prevent you from completely losing a post if your computer freezes or crashes while you’re writing.

Blogger is perfect for people who want to get started quickly. With Blogger’s new editor, you no longer have to know CSS and HTML in order to alter your template easily. You can select which elements you want to appear on your blog and customize their appearance, and you can change the colors and font on your blog in a snap.

As the largest blogging platform, Blogger is the target of comment spam. Blogger allows users to moderate comments before they post. In order to post comments on most Blogger blogs I’ve seen, commenters must successfully reproduce the characters in a CAPTCHA. I am going to go on record as stating I hate CAPTCHAs. Sometimes it is very difficult to determine what the characters are, and it takes me two or more tries to enter a comment. Even worse, spam comments have become such a problem on Blogger that some Blogger users will only accept comments from people who have registered with Blogger. I will step on my soapbox long enough to say that while I certainly have no problem with comment moderation, I think it is heinous to ask users to register with a service they may not want to use in any fashion just to leave a comment on your blog. Another problem I have with Blogger’s commenting system is that it isn’t customizable to look like your blog’s template. I think Blogger is a fairly good option aside from its commenting system. Many Blogger users actually go with outside commenting services such as HaloScan. Free HaloScan commenting systems allow users to customize the appearance to match their blog, but the service does include ads.

Another feature of Blogger that you might want to be wary of is the navigation bar. This bar allows users to search your blog posts, but it also contains a feature that allows users to surf to the next blog. Just like Forrest Gump’s proverbial box of chocolates, the “Next Blog” feature offers a wide variety of mysterious options. You might click through to an entertaining, enlightening blog you never would have found another way. You might click through to a spam blog or a blog with content you find inappropriate. Will all of your family members understand that this feature is a link to a random blog and not a link you created? You can disable the navigation bar, but doing so will take search capability out of your blog, which is probably something genealogy bloggers in particular want to retain.

WordPress

WordPress, like Blogger, has a quick set-up that will having you blogging in minutes. WordPress has a variety of attractive templates. You can also upload images. WordPress gives users 50 MB of space for file uploads. However, if you want more space you can either purchase it or use an image upload service like Picasa, Photobucket, or Flickr. Like Blogger, WordPress has spell check and auto save features.

One of WordPress’s best features is tagging. Tagging is important for helping others find your blog. It will enable search engines like Google Blog Search and Technorati to categorize your posts and make them easier to find.

By far, WordPress’s best feature is its commenting system. Rather than opening up comments in a new window or popup window, WordPress integrates comments within posts. WordPress users can moderate comments. WordPress users can also take advantage of WordPress’s excellent comment spam killer, Akismet. Akismet works with a variety of platforms, but was developed for WordPress. It does not work with Blogger.

Other Free Players

A wide variety of other options exist for bloggers who want to write about their family history, including LiveJournal, Xanga, and MSN Spaces. If you have a favorite, feel free to write about it in the comments. Also if you have any thoughts to add about the free blog hosts mentioned, feel free to contribute.

In my next post, I will discuss options for genealogists who own their own domains and want to put content management systems on their websites, rather than use hosted blogs.

Technorati Tags: genealogy, blogging, blogger, wordpress

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