Upcoming classes:

2010 Classes Sponsored by RootsMagic ™

March 13 – Saturday – Internet Genealogy II – How to make the most of the paid subscription sites (ancestry.com, heritagequest, footnote, New England Ancestors, Newspaper Archives) - Becky Hill - Find out how to use these online resources that are available for free at HPC

April 17 - Saturday - Tracing Your House's History - Becky Hill - Learn how to determine the age of your house, its owners, and possible changes made to it.

April 25 - Sunday - RootsMagic Workshop with Bruce Buzbee (FREE) - the creator of the RootsMagic family of genealogical software spends an afternoon at the Hayes Center - 1- 4 p.m

May 1, 2010 - Care and Identification of Family Photographs - Gil Gonzalez- HPC's Head of Photographic Resources

All classes are held at the Hayes Presidential Center, 9:30- 11:30 a.m.
Call 419.332.2081 to register.
$10.00 fee for each class ($5.00 for students through high school) -
May be paid the day of the class

“Learning about YOUR Past – Genealogy, Photos, and House History”

We have started the new classes for 2010 and it is turning out to be interesting because we have more time to explore topics we have not been able to in the past. The expanded Internet Genealogy classes have allowed us to go into more detail with old favorite sites and also look into new ones. Attendees are so eager to learn they even refused a break offered in the middle of the last session. Genealogists are hard core! People do not have to take the entire series; each class stands alone. Thanks again to RootsMagic ™ and Bruce Buzbee of Utah for sponsoring these classes so we can keep the costs low.

As announced last spring we became partners with Ancestry.com, the world's largest commercial genealogical website. We did not know when our material would start showing up on it, but on Jan. 8th, 2010, our data (as of March 2009) had been merged with theirs and people who were using Ancestry would find the 1.5 million names from the Ohio Obituary Index when they did their online searches. The Library staff wondered what was going on when order after order for obituaries started to arrive in our inboxes. One of Nan Card's researchers told her of the Ancestry link and bingo - we had our answer! The use of the index has spiked, the orders for obits have quadrupled, and the requests for all the "Other Sources" we have (wills, estates, Biographical Files, history books, Chancery Records, etc) have mushroomed.

Volunteers and staff have been bustling keeping up with the demand which we heartily appreciate in this hard economic time for us. We are proud that we are still maintaining our quick turnaround time for orders despite the much heavier demand. Thanks go to Merv Hall and Marie Paulson for riding herd on the orders and for volunteers, such as Sue Hammer, Allyson Stanton, Mary Hertzer and Jim May for completing hundreds of look-ups since January. John Ransom and Nan Card are the Other Source masters and are cranking out estate cases and history book copies. Keep the orders coming and we'll keep copying!

The best outcome is that thousands of new people are now aware of the Ohio Obituary Index and the Hayes Presidential Center. The regular Obits website is still free and up-to-date at www.rbhayes.org/index and can be accessed anytime without any interaction with Ancestry.

New Ohio Obituary Index Partner

We are pleased to announce that Wood County, Ohio will soon be joining the Ohio Obituary Index . The Center for Archival Collections of Bowling Green State University and the Wood County Public Library of Bowling Green will soon be adding their indexing of BG and Wood County newspapers to the Index. They already have a large database of almost 100,000 obits currently online through their libraries http://ul.bgsu.edu/cgi-bin/obxpub.cgi, but will duplicate that data and merge it with ours.

I will announce it here when the merge is complete. Between the Wood County Probate records and the inputting that other Wood County partner libraries -Pemberville, Luckey, Rossford and Wayne - have already completed, Wood County genealogists will have a great tool in the Ohio Obituary Index for genealogical research.

Genealogy on TV

Family history is getting more and more popular and is now getting a lot of media coverage. We see advertisements for Ancestry.com all over the TV showing how cool it is to research your own family history. At this time PBS is in the middle of a series called Faces of America with Henry L. Gates. It is a fascinating program which we can relate to because they are using the tools we all do when searching for our roots - census, obituaries, passenger lists, etc. Check it out next Wednesday -

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/facesofamerica/

And then on March 5th at 8 pm on NBC, another new series will air - Who Do You Think You Are ?

From the promo -
"Seven celebrities embark on the journeys of their lives - the quest to discover the genealogical roots of who they are". Experts dig into the famiilies of Sarah Jessica Parker, Brooke Shields, Matthew Broderick, Spike Lee, Susan Sarandon, Emmitt Smith and Lisa Kudrow. No doubt you will all be able to see similarities in the searching that will be done for these people since you all do it yourselves! I'm seeing lots of Ancestry.com all over the website so they must be heavily sponsoring the show. More exposure for our Ohio Obituary Index !

Thank You

Thanks to the following who have given donations of money or materials to the Hayes Library and its genealogical collections since the last newsletter:

James G. Weaver - Thanks for donating much of the proceeds of his recent book he wrote, Our Family History, the Descendants of Michel Joseph Weber
Henry Timman
Dr. David C. Skaggs
John Fatherley
Estate of Guy Leedy
Jack Ziegler- Donation of dozens of books in memory of Joyce Zeigler
Sandusky County Kin Hunters
Irene Byrne
Joanne Richolt Allison

New Books at the Hayes Presidential Center Library

Please check our website often to see the list of new books we receive, mostly donations since we aren’t making any new purchases at this time.

http://www.rbhayes.org/hayes/libnews/newbooks.asp

Membership at the Hayes Presidential Center

Don’t forget that a Hayes Membership is a great asset to research at home http://www.rbhayes.org/hayes/joinmember/
When you join at the $45.00 level, you get access to all the US census records at home with Heritage Quest for a year and a 10% discount at the Museum Store plus many other benefits.

Save This Date

The ground at Speigel Grove is covered with snow and icicles hang from the Hayes Home roof, but the Hayes staff is looking forward to summer and the big celebration here on July 4^th 2010. The Hayes Presidential Center is having a BIG weekend then with a Wine Auction, a Pro-Am Croquet Tournament and a collectible car show, running from July 2 to 4^th. Check out all the exciting new things that will happen that weekend . This is a fund-raiser, but there are also opportunities to enjoy the Grove and have fun for free.

And perhaps you might even have something to donate for sale at the auction - click here for further information

Firelands Museum

Hayes volunteer, Barbara Czerwony, has informed us that the Firelands Museum in Norwark has the following hours - Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturdays from 10 am to 4 pm. Call 419.668.6038 for details.

Learning about YOUR Past –
Genealogy, Photos, and House History

Class Schedule 2010

Sponsored by RootsMagic™

All classes (except April 25th) 9:30- 11:30 a.m.

March 13 – Saturday – Internet Genealogy II – How to make the most of the paid subscription sites (ancestry.com, heritagequest, footnote) - Becky Hill

April 17 – Saturday – Tracing Your House’s History – Becky Hill

Apr 25 – Sunday – RootsMagic Workshop with Bruce Buzbee 1 – 4 pm (Free – no charge)

May 1 – Saturday – Care and Identification of Family Photos – Gil Gonzalez

June 12 – Saturday – Beginning Genealogy - Becky Hill

July 10 – Saturday - Internet Genealogy I – Free genealogical websites. (Ohio Obit Index, Family Search, USGenweb) - Becky Hill

Aug.28 – Saturday – Internet Genealogy II – How to make the most of the paid subscription sites (ancestry, heritagequest, footnote) - Becky Hill

Sept. 18 – Saturday - Searching Your Ohio Roots – Becky Hill

Oct. 16 – Saturday - Online Resources for Photo Management – Gil Gonzalez

Nov. 6 – Saturday- Using RootsMagic Genealogical Software- Becky Hill

Becky Hill
Head Librarian
Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center
Spiegel Grove
Fremont, OH 43420-2796

419-332-2081 ext. 31
419-332-4952 (fax)
bhill@rbhayes.org <mailto:bhill@rbhayes.org>
www.rbhayes.org <http://www.rbhayes.org>