Earlier this year my father-in-law passed away at the age of 90 - the last living World War II veteran in my family. Luckily for us, we have many of his stories recorded, but for many veterans the stories and memories of their war experiences have died with them. Take time this week from your family history research to learn more about the veterans in your family tree - interview a living veteran, track down a military record, or read online accounts of other military veterans who served with your ancestors. Thank you for honoring our veterans.

If you're like many of us, you (or your parents or grandparents) probably have stacks of old slide carousels loaded up with family memories. Unfortunately, the precious images on those slides are deteriorating with each passing day. Here are several options for converting those pictures to digital format.

Once you've scanned your old family photos or slides into digital format, try these tips for digitally cleaning up those tears, stains, creases and faded images.

As a bonus for your hard work, the digital pictures you've created from those old family slides can now be used in all sorts of creative ways to make great holiday gifts for your family members -- from ornaments to calendars!

Footnote announced today that it will digitize and place online all publicly available U.S. Federal Censuses from 1790 to the most current public census from 1930. The 1860 and 1930 censuses are already online, with digitization of 1900, 1910 and 1920 just getting underway.

So why use the census on Footnote when it is available elsewhere on the Web? Footnote does do it a little differently - offering interactive census pages for each individual which allow users to add comments and insight about that person, upload and attach scanned photos and documents, and identify relatives found in the census by clicking the I'm Related button. Check out the 1930 interactive census page for Jimmy Stewart to see available features.

Footnote also offers an alternative to other subscription genealogy sites, such as Ancestry.com, which offer the complete U.S. census. The census records also make a very nice addition for people subscribing to Footnote for the many other records they offer. Of course, FamilySearch Record Search offers many U.S. Federal Census online for free (along with census records for many states and other countries). They currently have indexes and images for 1850, 1860, 1870 and 1900, plus indexes only for 1880 and 1920.

Check out the latest interactive census additions at Footnote, and sign up to receive an email when images are added for your chosen states.

The Bureau of Land Management's General Land Office records are a great online resource for U.S. genealogists researching ancestors in the thirty federal or public land states. As far as online land records go, however, the GLO is not the only game in town. Many U.S. counties, especially in the eastern part of the country, have started putting their historical deed records online. You might be surprised what you can find!

Most of you probably know that I have a lot of North Carolina ancestors. As a result, I've been very happy with the recent trend of North Carolina counties to place their deeds records online in digitized format. Read more...