1) This year, Americans will mark the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War.
2) According to genealogy inside e-newsletter by family tree magazine
Keys to Locate Your Overseas Ancestors' Hometowns
This tip comes from their Family Tree University Immigration Master Class, which offers three immigration records research courses for the price of two. Class began Jan. 3: Before you begin looking for specific places in your ancestral homeland, get acquainted with the country's key geographic divisions, such as borough, city, county, hamlet or parish. This will help you locate and interpret the records you'll use because such administrative districts served as jurisdictions for record-keeping.
You can get a quick crash course in your ancestral country's administrative divisions using tools such as:
· Wikipedia: Type in the name of the country or region plus the phrase administrative divisions.
· FamilySearch’s Research Wiki: Search for your ancestral country or region.
· Online guides to geographical terminology geared toward genealogists, such as Place Name Guide and About.com Genealogy’s Genealogy by Region.
4) GeneaNet Blog By Jean-Yves Baxter 4 Jan 2011.
§ UK: Changes to the 30 Year Transfer Rule for Government Records. As part of a number of changes to the Freedom of Information and Public Records Acts announced today, government departments will begin transferring records to The National Archives in a phased approach reducing the 30 year rule to 20 years. This will result in much earlier access to large numbers of government records. From 2013, the current aim is to transfer two years' worth of government records to The National Archives per year over a ten year period.
§ Civil War Historian's Papers Accessible at University of Wyoming. Papers and correspondence of one of the most popular U.S. Civil War historians is now accessible through the University of Wyoming American Heritage Center. The Bruce Catton collection is open to the public with no access restrictions for research purposes.
Catton was a newspaper reporter in Cleveland and Boston before working for the War Production Board and the U.S. Department of Commerce during World War II. The first of his 15 Civil War histories was published in 1951. His "A Stillness at Appomattox" won both the Pulitzer Prize for history and the National Book Award in 1954.
§ University of Mississippi Puts Civil War Archive of 762 Items Online Through Williams Library. The University of Mississippi is making its Civil War archive available online just in time for the sesquicentennial. Organizers say historians and the merely curious anywhere in the world can browse letters, diaries and other documents from those who saw the war up close. The archive, handled by the university's Special Collections Digital Initiative and the J.D. Williams Library, consists of 762 items. The collection includes the Gage Family Papers. Jeremiah Gage was a member of the University Greys, a unit composed of Ole Miss students, which met its defeat at Gettysburg.
§ Find your Irish Ancestors in New Online Collection. Those with Irish ancestors and relatives will be delighted to see that the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland is making photographic collections available through flickr, a free photo-sharing website. Visit www.proni.gov.uk/pronionflickr to view the photographs.
The Irish record office also recently indexed and digitized wills dated 1858 through 1900 from three district probate registries of Armagh, Belfast, and Londerry. These records are available at no charge on http://applications.proni.gov.uk/DCAL_PRONI_WillsCalendar/WillsSearch.aspx
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