Take advantage of these videos to brush up or learn research techniques that can help you in your family research.   The videos can be found here.

This new site is launched by Rick Frederick, the county coordinator for Caswell County and is intended to supplement the Buncombe County NCGenWeb site,  the Old Buncombe County Historical Society, and the Western North Carolin Historical Association.

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• On March 3, 2010 – Jonathan Zittrain, professor of law and co-founder/faculty co-director of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, will discuss “Gaming History: The Battle for Narrative Control in the Digital Age.”
• On March 22, 2010 – David Ferrerio, Archivist of the United States, will present a lecture titled “Are We Losing Our Memory? The View from the National Archives.”

Both lectures are free and open to the public.  These are part of Duke’s Office of the Provost lecture series and more information can be found at http://www.provost.duke.edu/speaker_series/.

Now, interestingly enough,  your host just realized that the very first Archivist of the United States was Robert Digges Wimberly Connor.  I recognized the name immediately because RDWC (as I’ll call him) was from Wilson County,  North Carolina and is a great-grandson of one  of my family’s slaveholders, Robert Diggs Wimberly.  RDW very likely owned my 4th great-grandfather, AllenWimberly (I don’t have proof yet, just A LOT of circumstantial evidence).   RDWC graduated from the University of North Carolina in 1899, and now, thanks to their yearbook collection up to 1966 being online, you can find him listed in the 1899 Hellenian.   As an item of note – Duke’s yearbooks are also being placed online.

But I digress…. check out these lectures if you can!

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Our thoughts are with the family during this difficult time.   Memorial services for Sheila are being held on Thursday, February 18th.

This site is a spectacular resource for anyone with historical/ancestral roots to the county.  It features more than 7,500 images from the paper’s photo negatives (of which there are more than 85,000).   The Joyner Library at East Carolina University has for years now been building a strong digital library collection, but this just tops the cake in my book. You can download high-quality files of the image, share them via a variety of social websites, and add your own comments to the pictures if you know something about them.   Some of the images here are also on Flickr and have received a great response there.  The pictures cover events and people not only in Pitt county, but in surrounding counties as well.

To learn more about the project, see their About page, where you can view a SlideShare presentation about the project’s implementation.  Kudos to the Joyner Library for another great resource!

Brigham Young University has an ongoing series on their cable station called “The Generations Project.”   I am at the moment I write this, watching the most recent episode  and have seen a great example of how USGenWeb fits in the larger picture.  In the current episode, the subject of the show, John Robert Searcy,  is seeking to learn more about his ancestors. In one of his meetings with a genealogist, she informs him of her research and finding out about his first Searcy ancestor to come to the United States.

The first one in his family to come to the U.S. was John Searcy born 1694 in Nottingham, England and died in 1787 in Granville County, NC.

John Searcy detail from The Generations Project Episode

When I saw this, I wondered – hmm.. is there anything that is on the NCGenWeb site/ USGenWeb Archives that the genealogist may have used?  Of course, I don’t know for sure as it was not stated.  But, I did find that back in 2002,  Waunita Powell submitted the will of John Searcy to the Archives site.  In 2004, she submitted the same information to the Granville site, along with other Searcy documents (here and here).   Additional Searcy information can be found by searching the site using the FreeFind Search Engine.

John in the television show  is descended from John’s son (John Jr.)  as named in the 1787 will.  In less than 10 minutes, I quickly found several trees in Ancestry Public Member trees that document the family and can provide a lead to locate original source documents for the family tree.   Just thought I would share this as a way to show how our volunteers efforts could potentially make a difference in any person’s quest to learn more about their families.

If you’ve not seen this show, you must watch it.  This is the second episode I’ve watched and they are done quite well and bring an extremely intimate and personal touch to learning more about your ancestors.  You can view the episode I describe by going to http://www.byub.org/thegenerationsproject/, though, as each new episode comes out, the video is replaced.  Enjoy.

In order to make access easier for our researchers, a new page has been added to the NCGenWeb  ”List of Consolidated NC Resources,” a page to link you to the available yearbook collections.   On the new page, you will find (at the time of this post) collections for:

• Appalachian State University – 1923-2005
• Duke University – 1919-1995
• Elizabeth City State University (African-American school) – 1925-2008
• Elon University – 1919-2009
• Louisburg College – 1867-2007
• North Carolina State University – 1903-2009
• UNC-Chapel Hill – 1890-1963

Thanks to UNC Libraries’ collaboration with the Internet Archive,  we are able to have great access to these yearbooks.  Though there are dates listed here, these collections continue to be updated, so exact dates may vary.

Visit the NC Yearbooks page to further explore.  You could spend hours exploring,  so be forewarned!

Commencement Artwork from 1901 Yackety Yack

The oldest one currently on the site is the 1901 yearbook, the first issue with that name, previously, it was called the Hellenian.   The senior class have a variety of information written about them, from their hometown to the activities & organizations in which they participate.   I was pleasantly surprised too seeing early in the yearbook the name of a person in a family that I’ve been helping another researcher learn more about – the Picot’s of Washington & Halifax counties.  On the Board of Trustees is listed Dr. Louis Julien Picot.

1901 UNC Board of Trustees

As is par for the course for texts at the Internet Archive, you can either browse these online or download them in a variety of file formats (even Kindle!).

The years of the Hellenian available include:  1890 | 1891 | 1892 | 1893 | 1894 | 1895 | 1896 | 1897 | 1898 | 1899 | 1900

The years of Yackety Yack include:  1901 | 1902 | 1903 | 1904 |1905 | 1906 | 1907 | 1908 | 1909 | 1911 | 1910 |1912 | 1913 | 1914 | 1915 | 1916 | 1917 | 1918 | 1919 | 1920 | 1921 | 1922 | 1923 | 1924 | 1925 | 1926 | 1927 | 1928 | 1929 | 1930 | 1931 | 1932 | 1933 | 1934 | 1935 | 1936 |  1937 | 1938 |1939 | 1940 | 1941 | 1942 | 1943 | 1944 | 1945 | 1946 | 1947 | 1948 | 1949 | 1950 | 1951 | 1952 | 1953 | 1954 | 1956 |1957 |1958 |1959 | 1960

Update: more years do indeed seem to be coming in since I originally posted.  I’ll add links here as they become available:  1961 | 1962 | 1963

This collection represents just a small portion of the many books that UNC makes available at the Internet Archive.  What started out as a one-year experiment seems to be going strong.

In addition to materials relevant to NC history, the new digital offerings include materials from other southern states as well.

You can read more at http://www.lib.unc.edu/blogs/news/index.php/2010/01/digital-shc/.

Have fun exploring!