The program on August 2nd will be on a “Madison County Oral History Project”.

This plantation is representative of the structure and norms of southern Plantations of it’s time. The historic site is near Lake Phelps in Washington County (not far from Creswell and the line of Tyrell County.) The first ever gathering of descendants of former slaves was held in 1986 at Somerset. This idea has since been done at other former plantations.

Somerset Place is open to the public. Admission is FREE although donations are requested.

From their website (linked above.)

HOURS OF OPERATION:
April 1 through October 31
Monday – Saturday 9:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m.
Sunday 1:00-5:00 p.m.
November 1 through March 31
Tuesday – Saturday 10:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m.
Sunday 1:00-4:00 p.m.
Call ahead for hours of operation for state and federal holidays.

INTERNET GENEALOGY AND RELATED SEARCHES: LOOKING AT SOME FREE SITES: 6:30 p.m. June 2. Using a computer lab in the Griffin Room, you and your fellow classmates will look at and experiment with several different sites. Some computer experience necessary. At least 30-45 minutes will be spent on Heritage Quest’s Census Records — focusing on some searching tips plus how to save and/or print images (there will be no available printer with this computer lab, so if you find any images you wish to keep please bring a flash or jump drive for personal use). Call: 704-283-8184 ext. 224.

Most of my ancestors lived in the mountains of western North Carolina and I look around at all the abundance and security that the forests and hills provide and can’t help but think this was a challenging land for my ancestors, but it was a plentiful land. Standing on the thin stretch of sand that exists at the mere WHIM of the oceans you have to think establishing a settlement in this desolate and tenuous stretch of land was more than a challenge.

It makes you think about the personalities of the people that chose to try and live in places like this. What challenges they had faced at home, what pushed them to find a place like this to try to survive in.

Genealogists talk a lot about the dates and years, where people were from, but when you look at where they settled sometimes you get an idea of what they were made of. Surely, those are the kinds of people that has made our country what it is. Those people that could strike out into a hostile environment and put down roots and find a way, however possible to survive and even to thrive.

How many of us today could face such a spartan environment and challenge it?

Unfortunately, not all eyes online are friendly. There are many with an eye to get access to as much data as they can on someone for malicious purposes. One of the reasons I’ve been so hesitant to publish too much data on this site is I know how many of the accounts I hold use Mother’s maiden name, or Father’s middle name or something along those lines as security questions. In the last 5 years, many companies have become more creative, even allowing people to make up their OWN security question, or select from several other ideas.

But, what if your parents or grandparents (or Uncles and Aunts) are still living and you post information on your grandparents family? You’ve just given a con-man everything they need to try and get access to some of the Parents (or Aunt’s and Uncles’) accounts. Not to mention the publishing of birth dates and marriage dates et al. I know many of these things are public record anyway and can be looked up. But what did you go through to look them up? I remember in my case to see birth records we requested to see them at the county courthouse (and it seems as though there was a limit on how recent the records were available for.)

So, think carefully when posting family data online and be cautious in revealing too much information. I know many genealogy programs will filter out and label as “private” data that is recent enough (say 70-90 years) for posting online. This is a partially a good solution. I still get a bit nervous when I see someone listing full parent names/etc for themselves. Maybe I’m a bit too paranoid, but the reality is there are a lot of people out there looking to take advantage.

When posting on this site, I’ve tried to make sure not to post family information for any family with either living parents or children to avoid giving too much info to those unfriendly eyes.

Good luck and stay safe!

Hard drives fail abruptly and suddenly, usually without warning. Can’t you recover the data? Many times the answer is no, most times the answer is well, if you pay $2000 to a data recovery company. Ouch, that’s outside most peoples budgets. So, here are some questions: do you backup your data? how often? do you ever test your backups to make sure you can read them? could you restore your data to a new computer easily? Do you keep your backups in more than one location (a copy at home and another in a safety deposit box or a relatives or friends?)

Let me take a moment and let you re-read those questions. If the answer is no to any of those you need to really seriously make a plan to keep copies of your genealogy data. Don’t let the time you’ve spent researching your family history vanish in an instant because you failed to back up. So how do you do it? You can make copies of your data to cd and dvd, I’m fond of those for backup purposes. Send a copy to relatives. In fact, send copies to several relatives. Even if it’s unfinished work, that’s fine. Just make it clear that this is a backup of the current state of your genealogy research. That way there are other copies of it out there in case something happens to your pc, or to you.

Online backups are a possibility as well. There are many sites online like carbonite that make it easy to backup your data online. My only question with those is how easy it would be for someone else to retrieve the data. Let’s face it, we want our data to be passed on to our relatives so they will be able to enjoy the fruits of our research and if there’s no clear and easy way for them to get the backup (or even know it exists) it’s probably not as useful as a dvd or cd of your data.

The essence of a good backup strategy is duplication. Make clear date marks on your backups and throw out the old when you make new backups. Genealogy research is a rewarding past-time and your family usually relies on you to tell them about their great-grandparents, etc. Rely on them to keep copies of your backups from time to time as well. That way your research will hopefully continue to outlive even the most cantankerous hard drive.

For suggestions on how to do backups, it might be worth reading online if there are suggestions for your favorite genealogy software and backing up to various media (cd or dvd.) Each genealogy program is different and some may offer to create a backup file directly from the genealogy software. The only problem is most people usually just save to their hard drive and forget it. It NEEDS to be saved to something that you can remove from the computer and file away in a safe place.

Good luck and see you next week.

Thanks for visiting.

Additionally,

In coming weeks, I’ll also be taking a look at a long overdue update of the underlying software that I’m running the site on. The version of WordPress I currently use here is still receiving updates, but the 2.3 series is preferred. The last time I looked at the possibility of an upgrade, I had a couple of challenges that made it look like a thicket I didn’t want to pursue, but the hosting account we’re in is about to get an upgrade as well, so it may be time to re-engineer the whole works.