Access over 40,000 genealogy books from this website

From their website:

Researching family histories online is an activity that has begun to come of age. Thousands of family history books and magazines are available to be searched directly from multiple websites. But searching through these websites and combing through the jumble of information they return can be a frustrating, costly, and fruitless process.

The newly launched family history website, GenGophers.com, (https://www.gengophers.com/#/)solves these problems by providing precise and free access to the industry’s most effective online search tools and a growing library of more than 40,000 downloadable family and personal histories, local histories, and genealogy newsletters.

Many searchable book websites make it difficult to restrict searches to genealogy related books. The result is that online searches for names, dates, and places return lists of thousands of potential books completely unrelated to family history. Genealogy Gophers search tools are based on artificial intelligence algorithms and significantly increase the chances of finding relevant search term matches compared to typical word search engines.

In theory, this looks really good, although I'm not sure that it's quite as great as it sounds.  For instance, I keyed in my great grandparents, grandparents and parents and came up with nothing at all for some of them and irrelevant information for others (such as I asked for England and the only name which came up was in Ohio!)
So perhaps this may be really useful for those searching amongst US information.


Family history daily - access over 40,000 genealogy books from:

http://familyhistorydaily.com/genealogy-resources/access-40000-genealogy-books-for-free-with-this-new-service/

Here is a story from the family annals.  I heard about this many years ago when I lived with my uncle and aunt up in Edinburgh but, like most young people, didn't take in the details.

Granddaughter honours Quintinshill crash survivor

My Cousin Heather (left)

WHEN the call came Alexander Thomson didn’t hesitate. The young miner from the West Lothian village of Torphichen downed tools, said goodbye to his family and travelled into Edinburgh and then to Leith to sign up with the 7th Royal Scots.

Just weeks later the 17-year-old and 497 of his fellow troops, full of excitement at what might lie ahead at Gallipoli where they would do their bit for King and country in the Great War, left Leith’s Dalmeny Street drill hall for Larbert station and a train to Liverpool.

He almost never made it. Two hundred and 16 of his fellow soldiers didn’t. They were killed in the worst rail disaster Britain has ever seen at the isolated spot of Quintinshill near Gretna. A further 226 were injured.

For the rest of this fascinating story see: 

http://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/granddaughter-honours-quintinshill-crash-survivor-1-3780554

Very pleased to see that our privacy is protected.  I saw this recently and thought it would be a good idea to post on here.

Apparently there are restrictions for ordering birth and and death certificates for less than 50 years ago, see this extract from the GRO website (http://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates/default.asp). 

A recent query of one of my Facebook pages asked

"I have a variety of family members' wills denoting their personal effects in British pounds. I would like to be able to convert these into Canadian dollars for their particular eras. Does anyone know of a website which would provide this conversion? I've looked and looked but haven't found one yet."

To which the reply was

" If you go onto the National Archives website they have a converter for old money to new in pounds Stirling for today's value and then you should be able to convert to the currency at today's exchange rate"


See: http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency/default2.asp

Talking of which, I found a stash of old coins this week. they included a Victorian farthing, an Edward VII penny and lots of George V, George VI and some Elizabeth II predecimal coins.  Unfortunately there were no Edward VIII coins which isn't surprising as he wasn't on the throne less than a year (20 January 1936 – 11 December 1936).

Somewhere I have some Georgian pennies and some old silver sixpenses (the ones which were traditionally put into Christmas puddings).

I was thrilled recently received a reply to a plea on this site.  The person said that the person I was asking about was one of his 1C4Rs (!). Never heard of that so looked it up and below what I found.  So his 1C4R - is 1st cousin 4 times removed.

Common Progenitor:

The closest ancestor two people have in common is their common progenitor.
For example: you and your sister have your parents as your common progenitor.  (You also have your grandparents and great-grandparents in common, but for these purposes, we are concerned only with your closest common ancestor). 
Another example: the common progenitor of you and your first cousin is one of your grandparents.

Removed:

When we speak of a cousin being “once removed”, we are referring to the number of generations removed.
For example: Your father's first cousin is your “first cousin once removed” — You are one generation away (“removed”) from the first-cousin relationship.
Another example: Your grandfather's first cousin is your “first cousin twice removed” — You are two generations away from the first-cousin relationship.

Relationship Chart:

	0	1	2	3	4	5	6
0	CP	S	GS	GGS	2GGS	3GGS	4GGS
1	S	B	N	GN	GGN	2GGN	3GGN
2	GS	N	1C	1C1R	1C2R	1C3R	1C4R
3	GGS	GN	1C1R	2C	2C1R	2C2R	2C3R
4	2GGS	GGN	1C2R	2C1R	3C	3C1R	3C2R
5	3GGS	2GGN	1C3R	2C2R	3C1R	4C	4C1R
6	4GGS	3GGN	1C4R	2C3R	3C2R	4C1R	5C

CP = Common Progenitor S = Son or Daughter B = Brother or Sister N = Nephew or Niece

C = Cousin #R = Times Removed GS = Grandson or Granddaughter GGS = Great-grandson or Great-granddaughter

For more information, see: http://www.jewishgen.org/infofiles/related.htm