Ocean Heaven with Jet Li

I have a movie to recommend.  Ocean Heaven with Jet Li. Grabbed at random from the bookmobile shelf, this movie turned out to be very moving, important in understanding parents of autistic children and a view inside modern China I never expected. The acting is underplayed and spectacular. Beautiful movie.

African American Oral History

Aunt Sally, old midwife, the only doctor or nurse ever heard of in Gees Bend before project was started. Gees Bend, Alabama photo by Marion Post Wolcott

I'm going to try to make a list here of the major African American Oral history sites. I'm studying oral history projects so I can start my own and I didn't see any collection list like this. So here goes. If I'm missing one please comment or email me. These are projects that are only about African Americans.

1. The History Makers -  "We have more than 2,000 videotaped interviews. 310 have been digitized, comprising about 8,000 hours of videotaped interviews; 60 special event recordings; more than 2,000 online biographies, and over 30,000 photographic images."
2. Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 - contains more than 2,300 first-person accounts of slavery and 500 black-and-white photographs of former slaves.
3. Getting Word - African American Families of Monticello - 100 Interviews so far
4. Behind the Veil - Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South - 310 interviews--all from North Carolina--from the Durham, Charlotte, Wilmington, Enfield, New Bern, and James City areas.
5. The Oral History Center at the University of Louisville
6. Black Oral History Interviews, 1972-1974 - Quintard Taylor, with associates Charles Ramsay and John Dawkins, interview black pioneers and their descendents throughout Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana.

Some video documentary interviews

1. Counter Histories  documenting the struggle to desegregate Southern restaurants

Photoshelter's Lattice needs watermarks!

I can't use Photoshelter's new crowd-editing Pinterest alternative, Lattice, because I can't put my images on the Internet without a watermark and here is why:

I have an image of a nutrition label that is very popular. I know for a fact it has never sold with an extended license. It showed up in a magazine with a circulation of 1.5 million. My agency has a limit of 500,000 reproductions, after that you have to purchase an extended license. There isn't one on record. I contacted my agency - they said that because the image is available on my personal portfolio they will not contact the magazine and ask them for the extended license amount. So I am screwed on this one transaction.

I can't really afford to lose ANY sales. And I can't do anything that will make it harder for me to get compensated for future sales.

So I can't put my images on Lattice without a watermark.

Now I am really curious if anyone else feels the same way. So I started a poll.

Would you let me know how you feel about Lattice and watermarks?

Thanks,
Catherine dee Auvil

Beginning Genealogy Tip - Capitalize Your Direct Line

I don't know how many times I have looked at families far back in my tree and I wonder to myself which one of these siblings is MY ancestor again?? So to make it easier on my memory I just learned this tip - type only your direct ancestors in capital letters. I know some people type all their surnames in capital letters. I hate when they do that. What is the purpose? But with this method of capitalizing only my direct ancestors I can look at a group of siblings and right away see my line.

Tim McGraw - Daniel Smith Connection

Google Search: Watch Tim McGraw Who Do You Think You Are

(This is especially for my Indian Creek Nikitie Study Group) I was watching a re-run of Who Do You Think You Are? - Tim McGraw - and I heard them mention our Daniel Smith who lived at Indian Creek, Virginia. He was best friends with our Thomas Mastin. They were friends at Indian Creek and then decided to move to Tennessee together where Daniel Smith became senator. The episode of WDYTYA touches on a lot of our genealogy. They even showed a map that Daniel Smith (he was also a surveyor) made. Here is a map he made of the headwaters of the Clinch:

(Click on Image for larger size) I circled our Indian Creek in red. He includes "Burk's Garden" and Abb Valley - both important places for our families.

Polygamy and Divorce

Found something interesting while I was checking out the changes at Family Search. I was following one of my lines and I found an ancestor named Winthrop Farley. I wanted to know more about him so I Googled him and found out he had 5 wives. Polygamy is not unusual in a Mormon family but 5 is a lot! I found a paper written by Diane Stokoe saying that one of his wives divorced him - Mary Ellen Reed. Mary Ellen Reed was my 3rd great grandmother! I don't really care one way or another if people have polygamous marriages but I feel like she must have really been strong willed to have decided she wanted no part in it. And imagine asking for a divorce in 1859! I am amazed. I can't wait to tell my mom.

The sad part is she had to leave her children behind - they were raised by Winthrop's first wife Angelina Calkins. Here is a portrait of Angelina:

Isn't that a beautiful painting? You can read more about Angelina here. I'm going to try to find out if Mary Ellen Reed lived near Winthrop so she could see her children. I wonder what all the arrangements were like? Although Mary Ellen Reed married again soon after her divorce, to another Mormon, he did not take other wives. Here is a photograph of Mary Ellen Farley, my 2nd great grandmother who was raised by Angelina Calkins:

Now that I know about the divorce and I am figuring out which children go with which wife - I am going to use this family to explore how polygamy was reflected in the census records. More on that later...

The Mormon LDS Family Search Site Now Has Shaky Leaf (Hints) Technology

This is to let some of you part-time genealogists who may not keep up with the news know that Family Search - the Mormon - LDS free genealogy site now has "hint" technology. Most of you are familiar with the "shaky leaf" at Ancestry.com that lets you know if there are documents or census data that might match your ancestor. You can now use that technology at Family Search. Family Search is free. And they have and will continue to expand their photo archive. I looked up one of my lines and there were all kinds of new-to-me photos that are not on Ancestry.

Family Search is a collaborative site like WeRelate. That means there is only one entry per person. Unlike Ancestry where there are 100s of pages for each person and wrong information gets copied over and over again. The future of genealogy is collaborative sites. I don't know how Ancestry is going to compete. We'll see!