To approach this task, I had a thought  - why not enlist the aid of all of you who help support the TNGenWeb and have a little fun at the same time? So, here we go!

BACKGROUND

In 1913, the following postcard was sent to California from Tennessee.

The postcard has a picture of camels harnessed to an International Harvester trashing machine in Russia. It is addressed to a Mrs. Hiram Bare of Sanger, California. The transcription (as best we can tell), is as follows:

Dear Aunt Addie,

Just a line to tell you that pa died at 1:40 a.m. Friday morning and was laid to rest at Saturday afternoon beside dear mother in the little spot selected by them here at home.  We feel the loss so keenly now that all have gone and left us.  Fannie (sp) stood it well and is able to be up.  I will try to write you a letter in a few days.  Lovingly, Daisy J.

THE TASK  

1. Identify all the people named on/in the postcard.
2. Find contact information for a living family member that may be interested in having this postcard.
3. Send an email to tnsc@tngenweb.org. Your email should provide biographical details of all the people referenced in/by the postcard, your research process to identify a living family member,  and what resources you used.

THE RULES

1. Entries are due by May 1st.
2. Now, here at the TNGenweb, we are all about providing FREE genealogical information. So, in light of that, you can only use FREELY available resources to search. No subscription or paid resources allowed  
3. Also, please do not contact a family member yourself; it will be less intrusive for them if they were contacted by only one individual. We will coordinate that process here in the TNGenWeb.

THE GIVEAWAY

Everyone who submits information on a living family member will be entered into a drawing to get a free TNGenWeb drinking mug. We will be giving away 2 mugs. 

We will host a Google Hangout over in our TNGenWeb Google+ Community in mid-May to share the the path the winners and other researchers took to find the information.  More details will be forthcoming about that so stay tuned.

I can’t wait to see what we all find! Let’s get this postcard back into the hands of the family.

Recently, Jerry has added a Maps feature that lets you see the location of cemeteries in any given county overlaid on a Google Map.  Here is an example from Henderson County:

 Selecting a cemetery name from the sidebar, or clicking on any red marker, will show you details about the cemetery.

 You can then click to see directions, more info (including list of names of those interred there, when applicable) and zoom in further on the map to see better location details.

Cemetery maps can be accessed via the top right corner of any county’s page in the Cemetery Database.

The geographic information for the cemeteries comes from the US Geographic Names Information System and is not perfect.  If you have information to share on cemeteries to include, please do let Jerry know; his contact details are available on the site.   Thank you Jerry for helping make the Cemetery Database even more useful.

Those of you familiar with Washington County likely already know about the Washington County Obituary Project.  Started  as a partnership between the Cemetery Survey Team of Northeast Tennessee and the Washington County TNGenWeb approximately two years ago, the project aims to provide as many obituaries for individuals of Washington County as possible. Currently, they have more than 1700 obituaries (out of 10,000 already collected!) posted on their old site, but are now in the process of moving to a new website.  You can visit the new site at http://washingtoncountytnobituaries.wordpress.com.

 Enjoy visiting the new sites and exploring what is available.

The latest county site to undergo this transformation is now Perry County.  Jerry Butler, our newest coordinator for Perry County, has launched a new version of the site today.

Jerry has long-standing research interests in Perry County so expect great information to be added over time.  To keep up with additions, you may be interested in subscribing to the site’s RSS feed or periodically checking the “What’s New” page. 

Thanks Jerry for the new site! And, we also thankful for the many efforts and contributions of the previous coordinator,  Jan Monnin.  If you have information to contribute, please do let Jerry know. 

The Midwest Tennessee Genealogical Society was organized November 12, 1968 and is based in Jackson, Madison County.  The society has graciously allowed us to share them online so the information becomes much more widely available as a resource for us all. The issues online begin with the very first one, published in April 1969 and continue until the Oct 1979 issue.

Published four times a year, content covers all West Tennessee counties (except Shelby):  Benton, Carroll, Chester, Crockett, Decatur, Dyer, Fayette, Gibson, Hardeman, Hardin, Haywood, Henderson, Henry, Lake, Lauderdale, Madison, McNairy, Obion, Tipton, and Weakley.  From time to time, other areas were also included such as Alcorn Co., Mississippi.

The quarterly journals themselves are physically hosted on the Internet Archive – which means you have several options for viewing them.  You can view them online in a book reader view, download the PDF file, and save in EPUB and Kindle book formats.

Check them out to see if there is anything of interest. We hope you find these a valuable resource in your genealogical searching!

The TSLA Blog can be found at http://tslablog.blogspot.com/ and you will definitely want to check it out.   The first post features a calling card from First Lady Sarah Childress Polk.  They have also created a Facebook page for your engagement and are planning to release a Flickr site soon also.  

How to keep up with blog posts? You can subscribe to the RSS feed, sign up to get updates by email, or visit occasionally.  Additionally, the TSLA shares news via their main website RSS feed also.  

We have added TSLA to our TNGenWeb Social Media Directory page — remember, you can consult this page for a list of social media accounts of significance for TN genealogy & family history research.   

Gordon Belt, TSLA’s Director of Public Services, and one very socially-savvy information professional, shared the news on his Posterity Project blog yesterday.

Hat tip to Wanda Hunter Day with the Tennessee Genealogical Society for sharing this news in the TNGenWeb Facebook page. Thanks Wanda! 

The redesign was done in order to make it easier for us to add content for your research.  You can subscribe to the site’s RSS feed to stay current, or subscribe to receive new posts by email (see sidebar of the Cannon County site).   As always, our TNGenWeb sites rely on  you to make them better.  We always welcome contributions & donated volunteer time to help improve their value for your research.

They have also added a Facebook group! Visit the site at http://www.tngenweb.org/williamson and visit the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/groups/williamsoncotngenweb/. 

Connie Burkett – our interim coordinator for Obion County, has worked diligently on revising this county site.  There is a lot of material within these pages, so you’ll want to take a moment to explore and look around! 

 Then, just today, I made the revised version of Giles County live.   Giles is taking some time to adequately restructure, so not all the old content is on the new site, but we will be working on completing it over the next week or two.  

With both sites now being in WordPress, you an subscribe to their RSS feeds in order to stay current. That means the information can come to you instead of you having to necessarily visit the site each time you would like to know what’s new.  On the right side of the screen on both sites is the TNGenWeb Social Media toolbar and the first orange icon will provide you with the RSS feed URL.  If you’re new to RSS feeds, then this video will help explain it. 

Bear with us as we help make sure old links point to the correct locations; be sure to let us know if you find broken links.  And remember, we always welcome contributions & donated volunteer time to help us make these sites even better.  

The TNGenWeb Project is pleased to be able to offer our researchers access to material that will help you as you investigate your family tree.  As a volunteer group,  we can do some of it ourselves, but for the most part we rely heavily on the contributions of you all.  We could not do this “without a little help from [our] friends!” (cue up Joe Cocker’s song a la Wonder Years here…)

We had great success with having volunteer help from the 1940 Community Census project. What better way to continue the volunteer spirit than by helping us with a few TNGenWeb specific projects?

We currently have a short list of projects for which we would love to have additional partners to transcribe and index.  They include a marriage project, a biographical project, cemetery records, and a yearbook indexing project.  We hope to add more project options over the next several months.  

Over the past six weeks we’ve piloted our processes with a small group and have been quite pleased with the outcome.  The group has reformatted data for more than 35 cemeteries, transcribed more than 300 biographical profiles, and indexed hundreds of marriage records. 

Your efforts would be for whatever time you wish to contribute, whether 30 minutes or several hours each month.  We hope you can join us in these endeavors.  Visit our Indexing & Transcription Projects page to learn more.