Previous Grants Awarded 2003

December 2003
The Southern California Genealogical Society has launched the "1890 Project" to fill in this missing census year by recreating the 1890 population of Los Angeles County through every available record or listing of residents' names between the years 1888-1892. As part of this effort, they are going to create an every-name index of every 1890 issue of the L.A. Times, which just became available in a digitized format. The SCGS will use the grant to help purchase this new resource, which will also be available for their patrons at their facility.

November 2003
The Knight Museum Partners of Alliance, Nebraska is the only genealogical library within 80 miles, aside from a LDS FHC that's only open one day a month. They archive all available information on Box Butte County, NE, are responsible for answering all requests that come into the county, and put all available information on the US GenWeb Box Butte County site. This month's grant will assist with the compilation of a special cemetery database which includes more than 16,000 burials in 25 cemeteries. For each entry, they take a tombstone photo, look up an obituary, and then merge in information from marriage records, class lists, and naturalization records to make a "one-stop-shop" for people to find everything they have about one person in one place. The whole project is being done with volunteers and donations.

*** Update as of November 2005
The grant that we received . . . enabled us to complete our cemetery project. We did a database of the 18,000+ graves in Box Butte County, NE. Each grave has a page with a copy of the obituary, a photo of any stone and a list of other info that we have about the individual. The back of the page has any info on other family members that are not buried locally. These pages are then done alphabetically in notebooks for each of the 15 cemeteries in the county. They are colored for each cemetery and very easy to use. – Becci Thomas, Director, Knight Museum & Sallows Military Museum

October 2003
The Camrose Branch of the Alberta Genealogical Society in Canada is only three years old, but has already hosted speakers from the U.K., compiled and transcribed records, held seminars, and catalogued their genealogical collection. But they're most proud of the fact that they helped discover a native burial ground. Prompted by a story in a local family history book, they conducted research and thought they had located the right spot. A ground penetrating radar company offered to perform a scan of the area and their suspicions were confirmed when the scan identified at least 51 burials in a 14 x 14 meter area. The report estimates that some of the burials are well over 100 years old, and those buried there are believed to be members of the Cree, Blackfoot, and/or Metis tribes. The Society will use the grant to erect a monument on the site of the Amiskoosis Sakahigan Burial Ground, honoring the memory of the indigenous people and their descendants who played such an important role in our Alberta history.

September 2003
Holly Simpson of Quebec, Canada has been researching her family history for the last three years. Her grandparents, mother and aunt were interned by the Japanese in Shanghai from 1942-45 and eventually managed to settle in Montreal in 1950. After a fire in her grandmother's apartment, a secret journal kept her grandfather was discovered and Holly - being the only other journal keeper in her family -- was entrusted with this family heirloom. To ensure that this piece of history is not forgotten, Holly transcribed the journal for her extended clan and is now producing a documentary to inspire others to begin dialogue with their family elders.

August 2003
Lorine McGinnis Schulze of Ontario, Canada, the mastermind behind Olive Tree Genealogy, is working on a project to fill in the 1847-1892 index gap for passenger arrival records in New York. Using two sources -- filmed passenger lists and the lesser known Alms House Records for New York for 1819-1858 (which include the name of the ship that individuals traveled on, the date of their arrival in North America, the ports of departure and arrival and the Ship Captain's name) - Lorine is transcribing and uploading records to her site. Click here to see passenger lists from ships and here to see details of Alms House residents. Lorine is using this month's grant to obtain more Alms House records to transcribe.

July 2003
Last year the National Genealogical Society launched a Bible rescue program for the purpose of collecting family Bibles, digitizing the genealogical contents (to make them available to all), and then locating descendants of the original owners to return the Bibles back to family hands. At the NGS conference in Pittsburgh this year, a rare opportunity for a mass rescue presented itself. One of the vendors was selling an extensive collection of original family pages (removed from Bibles by dealers) which she had purchased over a period of several decades. She was willing to turn over the complete set (over 100) to NGS, provided they pay $3,500 within six months. This month's grant is to jump start the fundraising efforts for this purpose. If you would like to donate for the same cause, please contact Dereka Smith.

June 2003
Anyone who has read any of my series of orphan photo articles knows what a fan I am of websites that help reunite stray photos with their families of origin, make it easier to identify those mystery faces in the sepia-toned photos we all have in our collections, or allow us to simply share old photos with others. AncientFaces is a wonderful site founded by Kathleen Pinna and her son to assist others with these challenges. In the few years that AncientFaces has been online, over 30,000 photos, stories, and recipes have been shared by people worldwide. With more than 2.5 million visitors a year, there's a good chance that some of your distant cousins may be searching the site, so you might want to consider uploading a few photos yourself! June's grant is in support of this terrific, free resource.

May 2003
The Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild (ISTG) is a well-known and invaluable volunteer organization that copies and transcribes passenger manifests of immigrants. Due to the determination and selfless giving of its volunteers, the ISTG website now contains over 5,000 passenger manifests with over a million surnames! Intent on providing free access to all, ISTG volunteers have covered all expenses, ranging from manifest copies to monitors. This month's grant is to help the organization purchase some much needed supplies and continue its activities.

April 2003
This month's grant goes to Joe Beine for his New Orleans Passenger Lists - Filling in the Gaps project. The purpose is to close the gaps in the standard National Archives microfilm series for New Orleans passenger arrival records (M259 - Passenger Lists of Vessels Arriving at New Orleans, 1820-1902) with alternate records such as WPA transcriptions, the Quarterly Abstracts and other sources. Material found is added to the website in a searchable database. Even if you have no German Roots, do yourself a favor and visit Joe's site for some of the best organized and most current lists of genealogical links you'll find anywhere. Chances are, you'll end up bookmarking several of them.

*** Update as of July 2005
My grant was for a project that involved searching for gaps in the New Orleans Customs Passenger Records in the 1820-1850 period. When gaps were found, alternate sources were checked to help find names of the passengers on the otherwise missing lists. Some of these alternate sources were transcribed and put online at: New Orleans Passenger Lists - Filling in the Gaps 1845 - 1847. Presently, more than 150 previously unindexed New Orleans passenger lists have been added to the website. I also wrote an article for the Utah Genealogical Association's Journal about New Orleans passenger lists. Some of what I learned from the gap project was used in the article, and much of the article was based on my online research guide, Finding New Orleans Passenger Lists. - Joe Beine

March 2003
Those of you who believe that orphan heirlooms (photos, Bibles, etc.) should be returned to their families of origin - or who are hoping to find a treasure that has strayed from your own family -- will want to subscribe to Julie Case's wonderful newsletter. Somebody's Links Newsletter: Genealogical Treasures Found lists items that folks have found in flea markets, antiques stores, attics, and on eBay. Better yet, you can search back issues to see if anyone has listed an item from your family's past (be sure to try searching by location as well as name). I've been a subscriber for several years and am delighted to give this month's grant to Julie in support of the tremendous service she is rendering to the genealogical community.

February 2003
Motivated by the lack of genealogical resources for the Pacific region, Christine Liava'a of Auckland, New Zealand is publishing a book on the 1,100 soldiers from Fiji who served in WWI. Having already traveled at her own expense for research in Fiji, she will use her grant to assist with publishing costs. The book will include a chapter of history of the Fijian involvement in the Great War, photos of the military units involved, a list of all the dead, photos of war memorials and graves, extracts from newspapers concerning the soldiers, writings (i.e., letters, poems, songs, etc.) by the soldiers, and maps and illustrations of the areas they fought in.

*** Update as of July 2005
My project -- Soldiers from Fiji in the Great War -- is nearly finished. I am now at the stage of writing an index and working out statistics about the people involved. -- Christine Liava'a of Auckland, New Zealand

January 2003
Established in 1990, the Berlin & Coos County Historical Society in Berlin, NH serves the American and Canadian genealogical community from the Moffett House Museum. The Museum has recently dedicated a second room to genealogical research since receiving over 850 books from the Diocese of Manchester from the estate of the late Father Croteau. Some of the donated volumes were in poor condition, so the Society will use its grant to have a particularly heavily used set of eleven volumes (Recueils de Genealogies de Beauce-Dorchester-Frontenac) hard bound.