Long Island NY: Digital Heritage Mapping, May 23

Digital mapping, with speaker Jay Sage, will be the topic at the Jewish Genealogical Society of Long Island (New York) meeting on Sunday, May 23.

The program begins at 2pm, at the Mid-Island Y-JCC, Plainview. Come early to get help from the JGSLI's expert mavens.

Google Earth -- Google’s high-resolution, three-dimensional model of the Earth -- provides an exciting new way to display one’s family history or to make virtual visits to family sites.

Users can create Google Earth "layers" comprising a collection of geographical markers with associated viewing perspectives and Web-page-like documentation that may include text, photos, video, and audio. Virtual tours can be created that lead one from place to place.

Sage will demonstrate how to utilize Google Earth to document locations anywhere on the globe associated with the history of a family, such as hospitals where relatives were born, their houses, schools, workplaces and cemeteries.

As researchers interview relatives, Google Earth can be used to make a virtual visit to places of their past, and as visual perspective enhances memory.

Jay Sage was co-president of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Boston (2000-2003) and is currently co-editor of its journal, Mass-Pocha. He is president of the non-profit Digital Heritage Mapping, dedicated to virtual preservation and public understanding of cultural heritage sites around the world.

For more information or directions, click here.

Florida: 'Googling Goodies for Genealogists,' April 25

"Googling Goodies for Genealogists" will be presented by Paul L. Enchelmayer at the next meeting of the  Jewish Genealogical Society of Broward County (Ft. Lauderdale, Florida), in conjunction with Nova Southeastern University (NSU), on Sunday, April 25.

The free program begins at 1pm at NSU's Alvin Sherman Library, 3100 Ray Ferrero Jr. Blvd, Davie.

Enchelmayer has spoken to nearly two dozen societies and clubs, presenting programs to help others learn how technology can aid in family history projects.

He is chair of the Genealogy Group, University Club, Winter Park; past president and current webmaster, Central Florida Genealogical Society, Orange County; member and webmaster, Florida State Genealogical Society's Speakers Bureau; member, National Genealogical Society; and member, Hamilton County Genealogical Society, Cincinnati, Ohio.

Seating is limited, pre-registration required, so click here to let them know you're coming.

For more information, click on the JGSBC site, or send an email. A link on the JGSBC site will lead to the library site, with a map and directions.

Orlando: Genealogy Google Goodies, Nov. 24

Want to make your Thanksgiving feast special? Impress your family with what you've learned at this session just a few days before the holiday!

Learn about many useful Google tools for genealogy with Paul Enchelmayer's talk at the Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Orlando (Florida) on Tuesday, November 24.

The program begins at 1pm at the Congregation of Reform Judaism.

A member of the Genealogical Speakers Guild, Enchelmayer is past president and current webmaster of the Central Florida Genealogical Society.

He'll demonstrate the many tools available through Google, including maps, photos, books, patents, old newspapers and other useful tools for family history research.

The meeting is free and open to the public. For more information, send an email.

Illinois: Family history Internet resources, Nov. 8

The Jewish Genealogical Society of Illinois will host Harriet Rudnit on "Using World Wide Web Resources in Researching Your Family History," on Sunday, November 8.

The program will cover use of various websites and the finer points of searching Google, Ancestry and JewishGen. It is geared to all levels of researchers.

Doors open at 12.30pm at Temple Beth Israel in Skokie for attendees to use the library or receive help from experts. The main program starts at 2pm.

For more information, click here.

HIAS: Google's Brin gives $1 million gift

HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) received a $1 million gift from Google co-founder Sergey Brin, according to a press release from the organization.

The organization was one of the groups that helped his family when it left the Soviet Union some three decades ago.

Both of Google's co-founders (Brin and Larry Page) are Jewish.

The New York Times reports that Brin has given several gifts to Jewish organizations that helped his family:

“I would have never had the kinds of opportunities I’ve had here in the Soviet Union, or even in Russia today. I would like to see anyone be able to achieve their dreams, and that’s what this organization does.”

The gift was announced on the 3oth anniversary of his arrival in the US, when Brin was 6 years old.

Many readers of Tracing the Tribe had ancestors who were helped by HIAS when they arrived. HIAS has been helping immigrants and refugees since it was established in 1881. The estimate is that more than 4.5 million refugees and immigrants have been helped to resettle in the US, Israel and other countries.

In a HIAS press release, chair Michael Rukin noted that “As a refugee himself, Sergey Brin knows better than most the value of living freely in a country that allows people to dream and -- through vision, creativity and hard work -- fulfill those dreams."

He and his family were able to build a new life in the United States and, as a result, he was able to create a new industry by changing the way we process and use information. His contributions literally have changed the world.”

For more information on HIAS, click here. Read the New York Times story here.

HIAS also runs a location service, helping to reconnect families through a database of missing people. Learn about it here.

Google is our friend!

Writing in Ancestry Magazine, my colleague Howard Wolinsky speaks about his recent discoveries using the popular search engine in "Google, Genealogy, and You."

You don’t need a degree in computer science or a class in electrical engineering to find out a few new details about your genealogy. Access to Google is all it takes.

My father gave me two clues about family history when I was teenager in the 1960s. First, Wolinsky was not our original family name. It was Schrogin. Second, our family originated in Lithuania.

That was about all he knew. And his father, Henry, for whom I was named, was long dead.

But those tips have led me time and again to new findings, even when I felt there was nothing more to be found.

Howard mentions reading Dan Lynch's recent book, "Google Your Family Tree: Unlock the Hidden Power of Google" (which I call the new Bible of Online Genealogy) and adds his insight as to the resources detailed.

While many bloggers and journalists including Howard, use Google News Service, Lynch inspired him to check out Google News Archive and provides records (some free, some not) over 200 years.

I plugged in the family name Schrogin and found items from newspapers to magazines and legal documents dating back to 1918, arranged in a timeline. Among the items was a piece about a Schrogin who had been implicated by the infamous House Committee on Un-American Activities, known as HUAC, which investigated the “Hollywood Ten.”

This was a news flash to me. So I shot off an e-mail to my cousin Maxim Schrogin in Berkeley. I connected with Maxim in the 1970s after searching the phone directories in the University of Michigan library for Schrogins. Maxim and I were both budding genealogists, and, at the time, we hadn’t met.

He also plugs (using specific examples of each) Google Alerts, providing links to all your interests (and which Tracing the Tribe has used since its inception), Google Maps, Google Earth, Google’s powerful language tools and Google Books.

Dan Lynch also writes a blog detailing newer Google features and how they can help researchers.

Read Howard's complete article to see what he discovered and how.

Google: Searching with options

One of the best things about our geneablogging community is that we are often inspired by our colleagues.

Randy Seaver's Genea-Musings post on Google Options, which followed Dick Eastman's post on the same subject, was interesting. I hadn't had time to previously check out these new features, but it seemed like a fun idea now.

Having a bit of time available, I decided to try some WonderWheel searches, anticipating searches on variations of DARDASHTI, TALALAY, TALALAI, TOLLIN and some others.

- "talalay" = 248,000, included the foam rubber Talalay process (patented by the Mogilev-Moscow-USA branch) and family members.

- "talalai" = 4,800, many from the Polish-origin group from New Jersey, works by known St. Petersburg and Moscow cousins, and other interesting results.

- "tollin" = 230,000, many people I knew, many I thought might be connected, as well as a bunch of Swedes, whom I doubt are connected. Where's a DNA testkit when you need one?

- "tallin" = 1,980,000, the majority on Tallin, Estonia, not about Talalay relatives who changed their name to Tallin, like Uncle David in Newark, New Jersey.

I went on to "schelly dardashti" "Schelly Talalay Dardashti" "tracing the tribe" and "tracing the tribe the jewish genealogy blog".

The results were a bit mind-boggling on the straight searches, and the WonderWheel and Timeline results were also interesting and quite different - with some very pleasant surprises.

The "schelly dardashti" WonderWheel produced this with 548 results:

The "schelly talalay dardashti" WonderWheel looked like this with 5,450 results:

The "Tracing the Tribe" WonderWheel showed 49,500 hits:



The "tracing the tribe" (all lowercase) WonderWheel showed 49,700 hits:

"tracing the tribe the jewish genealogy blog" produced 9,880 hits but with no spokes. I assume there were too many categories. The last WonderWheel search was for "the jewish genealogy blog" for 9,960 hits.

If you click on any spoke of the center circle, you get an additional related WonderWheel with more terms and different numbers of hits. Try it out yourself.

The Timeline option produced the least number of hits for all searches. I am as confused as Randy about this option, as I indicate many years in my blog postings. Hits for searches conducted were "schelly dardashti" 10; "schelly talalay dardashti" 88; "tracing the tribe" 22; and "tracing the tribe the jewish genealogy blog" 4.

In any case, there were some very pleasant surprises.


The first search produced a Los Angeles Daily News article (March 10, 1990) about a Persian Shabbat I organized at our synagogue, Valley Beth Shalom. Honestly, I had completely forgotten that the paper had covered it - I'm now trying to get access to the full 450+ word article (only a snippet shows), which is at NewsBank.com.

It also called up a May 6, 1998 Las Vegas Review Journal story about a program we ran at Jewish Genealogy Society of Southern Nevada-East (now dissolved), which met at Midbar Kodesh congregation in Henderson. I remembered that story, but didn't have a copy of it.

There were a slew of Jerusalem Post-related items.

Using a Timeline search for "schelly talalay dardashti," which became my nom de plume around 1999 when I began writing for the Jerusalem Post, there were 88 hits, again with many JPost stories on genealogy, food, travel and other features. The search also pulled ads and other stories on the same page as my stories.

Just for the heck of it, I searched "it's all relative" jerusalem post to see what that would bring up ("It's All Relative" was the name of my gen column). The 49 hits included some interesting items I had forgotten. How time flies when we're having fun!

Using Google Search, I typed "schelly dardashti" in the box; in the "related" box underneath, it showed 6,180 results for this search. For "schelly talalay dardashti", the "related" list showed 4,350 hits. When I hit on those names however, the numbers were rather different. Schelly Dardashti showed 550 and Schelly Talalay Dardashti showed 5,450. "Tracing the Tribe" produced 78,600 hits.

The most interesting part was finding mentions of Tracing the Tribe in places (journal and magazine articles, other genealogy blogs, etc.) that I hadn't known about. Now I have quite a few thank-you notes to write!

Bottom line: Whether you're a blogger, a family historian or merely curious, conducting searches with these options for your families of interest or yourself might turn up some valuable - or at least interesting - items.

I'm interested in learning what you've discovered about your own families!

Michigan: Advanced Googling for Genealogy, May 3

Googling genealogists are always looking for strategies to find out more about their family history.

"Advanced Googling for Genealogical Purposes," with Pamela Buchstaber Smith, will be the topic for the next meeting of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Michigan at 1.30pm, Sunday, May 3.

The meeting will be held at the Holocaust Memorial Center, Zekelman Family Campus, in Farmington Hills, and has been rescheduled from its original March date.

For the past nine years Buchstaber Smith, the daughter of Russian immigrant parents, has been researching her family roots using her computer skills in solving genealogical mysteries of the past and the present.

Google, one of the best search engines available, has made it much easier for genealogists, family historians, etc. to discover information that otherwise could take days, weeks or even longer to find.

With tips demonstrating Advanced Googling, learn how to find books, photos, history, clothes, and news about your family much easier. Google alerts will bring information about your family directly to your email. Learn how to get information on your family from all those blogs out there? This talk will teach you all that and more.

She's a member of the JGSM and of the Flint Genealogical Society.

Fee: JGSMI members, free; others, $5. For more details, visit the JGSMI website or send an email.