Dating and identifying persons in your old photos

Take a minute to visit the Photo Detective blog at familytreemagazine.com/. The blogger, Maureen A. Taylor,  has authored several books that will aid genealogists in dating their photos by looking at clothing, hairstyles, etc. The blog itself includes archived articles with photos and information and tips for solving your own photo mysteries. Worth a look.

Some highlights from the May-June Links and Bridges, the newsletter for the Genealogy Society of Hernando County: Pam Treme and Patti Schultz will present Posting Queries to Mailing Lists and Message at the May 22nd meeting... 1940 census update: Delaware, Colorado, Kansas, Oregon, Virginia, and New Hampshire are ready for searching by name....the New York Public Library has digitized the 1940 NYC phone books and linked them to the census. You can visit their website here. The Genealogy Society of Hernando County meets at 6:30 on the 4th Thursday of every month at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints(Mormons). The church is located at 21043 Yontz Road in Brooksville. For more information, please call Kathleen Marsh at 352-796-1623 or Bunny Ryczek at 352-796-4419.

Florida's State Archives

The State Archives of Florida, located in Tallahassee, are a very good source of information for Florida-related genealogy. Most of the the holdings are available for viewing by the public during business hours, and reference assistance is also available via phone or email. Some material is also available on line at Florida Memory Project. This includes service cards for Florida veterans of World War I, Confederate Pension applications (these were for Confederate veterans or their widows who were living in Florida when they applied for the pension, regardless of where they were living when they enlisted). Also online are guides to Civil War Records, African American Resources, and New Deal Records

Preserving Your Personal Papers

See this brief article from the National Archives on preserving your personal papers.

Vacation

We will be taking a break from now until Monday April 23rd for a much needed vacation, so there will be no new posts until then. In the meantime, take a look at Fl Gen Web for Florida Genealogy resources and volunteer projects.

Old issues of Hernando Today

We found recently, on a bottom shelf in the reference area, bound editions of the Hernando Today. Coverage runs form Nov 1987 to Dec 1988. Obits are being indexed.
Interesting to read about what was happening in the county at the time. The November 11th, 1987 issue features an announcement by the BOCC that the library would start allowing patrons to call in holds via telephone- they would be allowed a single hold request, and only if they knew the author and title. This was a compromise between the library director, who believed that the library didn't have enough manpower (2 people at the circulation desk without automation), and the Friends of the Library, who wanted to accommodate seniors who couldn't visit the library every day or wait in long lines.
This was before computers were installed to speed up the process; at the time of the article, a "county wide computer system" was in the works.

1940 Census begins loading

Read about it here. The 1940 form includes amount of income from 1939, as well as the level of education. This curious genealogist will be interested to learn how much education his grandfather had.