Friends of PA-Roots Newsletter Vol 1, No 1, 7 February 2006, (c) 2006 PA-Roots
Copyright 2006, PA-Roots
Editor(s): Nathan Zipfel
Contents · Welcome from the PA-Roots Board of Directors · About the PA-Roots Review Newsletter · Latest News from PA-Roots · Digitizers · Research tools · Letters to the editor · Reprint Policy · Subscription Information
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Welcome from the PA-Roots Board of Directors
Nathan Zipfel - President and Director of Technology Alice Gayley - Vice-President and Director of PA Civil War Research Carol Eddleman - Director of Data Acquisition
On behalf of the PA-Roots Board of Directors I welcome you to the inaugural issue of the Friends of PA-Roots, a periodic Newsletter published on behalf of PA-Roots.
PA-Roots is a not-for-profit volunteer organization that is dedicated to the free use and access of public domain genealogical information. To further this goal, PA-Roots uses internet websites to create "local repositories" of information that researchers worldwide can access. Other resources include Data Boards, mail lists, historical data, including: census records, cemetery records, biographies, bibliographies, and family/surname registration websites.
What does the future hold for PA-Roots? Our plan is to file the necessary paperwork to incorporate PA-Roots as a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. We feel that the incorporation of PA-Roots will help provide the impetus for further improvement of our project as well as enabling us to approach fund-raising in a more professional manner.
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About the Friends of PA-Roots Newsletter
The Friends of PA-Roots Newsletter was created to keep the visitors and friends of PA-Roots informed about what is happening with PA-Roots. We will be providing helpful information on how to utilize PA-Roots as well as resources to assist you in your research.
We are pleased that you have utilized the services of PA-Roots in the quest for information on your family history. Our goal is to provide resources and tools to assist researchers such as you.
If you don't want to be included in our periodic mailings of this newsletter, un-subscription information is included at the end of this issue.
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Latest News from PA-Roots
Data Board Upgrades
6 January 2006 - PA-Roots is pleased to announce the completion of an upgrade to the Data Board system. The new system is faster and allows full searches across all postings.
28 January 2006 - PA-Roots has acquired approximately 2,500 obituaries copied from the Morning Call Newspaper, Allentown Pennsylvania for the years of 1895 and 1896. A special thanks to Sue Jones for donating them. The Digitizer Team is currently working at getting them posted to the Lehigh County Obituary DataBoard < http://www.pa-roots.org/data/list.php?504 >
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Digitizers
PA-Roots has a dedicated Digitizer Team of about 12 members working on digitizing records throughout Pennsylvania. Some of the projects are small bits and pieces of data while others are large collections of data such as cemetery records for Bucks county, where there are now over 26,600 individual cemetery records posted on-line. We greatly appreciate each member of the team, who live all over the U.S., but are interested in Pa.
Why do we call them Digitizers? Great question! Genealogy sources are only beneficial to researchers if they are easily accessable. Digitizing the data and making it searchable on-line ensures that more researchers can freely benefit from the data.
Do you have time to help with a transcripton project? If so, please contact Carol Eddleman on the Help Desk < http://www.pa-roots.org/data/list.php?880 > She will help you get started and even provide you with data, if needed.
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Research Tools
Are you doing research on your Civil War ancestor? If so you must stop by the Pennsylvania in the Civil War website < http://www.pa-roots.com/~pacw/ >. There are thousands of pages with over 132 Megs of data freely available to aid you in your research. You will find Regimental rosters, History Articles, Query boards, etc…
The last addition which is an ongoing project is the extraction of over 900 files of Prisoner of War records. This is an enourmous project which will take a long time to complete.
A related site that you might want to visit is the National Park Service's Civil War Soldier and Sailor's System < http://www.civilwar.nps.gov/cwss/ > This is an ongoing transcription project of Howard University. It is not complete.
Data Boards
The Data Boards are the place to post your queries or to submit Obituaries, Birth Records, Deeds, Wills, etc… There are currently over 313,125 records available to assist in your research. Over 11,900 records have been added in the past month. Visit the Data Board page < http://www.pa-roots.org/data/ > to see the available resources.
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Letters to the Editor
We'd love to hear from you. Please send your comments to nzipfel@pa-roots.com
Hi Nathan, I really love the new DataBoards. The search engine is really fast, I'm finding data I didn't know existed on the older version of the boards. Thanks!
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Reprint Policy
Permission to reprint articles from the Friends of PA-Roots Newsletter is granted unless otherwise indicated for an individual article. Reprints may only be used for non-commercial, educational purposes. The following must be included with any reprints: "Published by PA-Roots in the Friends of PA-Roots Newsletter, Vol 1, No 1, 7 February 2006 PA-Roots http://www.pa-roots.com/"
Back Issues of the Friends of PA-Roots Newsletter are available from the archive located at < http://www.pa-roots.com/newsletter/ >
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Subscription Information
To UNSUBSCRIBE from the Friends of PA-Roots Newsletter, send an e-mail to the following address pa-rootsfriends-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
