La Societe des Cajuns & Vien Ici Websites

The La Societe des Cajuns & Vien Ici Websites offers a mailing list in addition to an archive of cemetery information. Their website has thousands of obituaries and an archive of information from newspapers. They have recently updated their cemetery lists. This is just one resource of information found at RootsWeb which offers a bundle of information from mailing lists. There are numerous pages dedicated to LOUISIANA to which you may subscribe or select an RSS feed for an update in a news reader, such as BlogLines. One of the most helpful resources that I have found is that you may even create a forum for your surname. There are several forums available over the internet. GenForum and RootsWeb are two of my favorites. RootsWeb will also allow you to create a mailing list for your surname and archive that information for you.

La Societe des Cajuns & Vien Ici Websites

Websites: http://www.vienici.com/lasociete/default.htm
and http://www.vienici.com/default.htm

"...We have been expanding the site to include Cemeteries in Terrebonne Parish
as well as Lafourche Parish..."

Ancestry.com confilcts

GeneaBlogie - rants about the conflict he and other bloggers have had with Ancestry.com's alleged "fair use?".
"Ancestry.com: Thieves, Hypocrites, Blunderers, or Fair Users?" - Tuesday, August 28, 2007 by, GeneaBlogie. USGenNet - Has also made claims against them. From - Bluebonnet Country Genealogy Blog
Humbolt State has a webpage dedicated to copyrite information.

Love at last sight- NOLA.com

Love at last sight- NOLA.com
Bliss Broyard exmines her famous father's hidden identity
Sunday, September 23, 2007
By Susan Larson

On Old Maps, Family Histories - U. S. Geological Survey Offers Unusual Tools for Genealogy

Paper: Washington Post, The (DC)
Title: On Old Maps, Family Histories - U.S. Geological Survey Offers Unusual Tools for Genealogy
Author: Julie Sevrens Lyons
Date: August 12, 2007
Section: A Section
Page: A8

To track down the former site of her great-great-great-grandfather's fruit orchard, Pamela Storm turned to a seemingly unlikely source: the federal government's repository of earthquake information.

Perusing one of the U.S. Geological Survey's historical topographic maps and comparing it to a current city map, Storm and a friend were able to find the site of Amory Gale Rich's onetime home and orchard. They were in an industrial area that is now home to Microsoft, Siemens and other high-tech companies.

"If genealogy is a history of families, it's reflected in the history of land, which is recorded on maps," said Leslie Gordon, a USGS spokeswoman. "There are a lot of genealogical tools out there, but I think ours is a tool that will help you dig a little deeper."

Indeed, perhaps one of the best-kept secrets in genealogy is the wealth of tools that the USGS has to offer armchair detectives investigating their family roots. The tools include:



Tens of thousands of topographical maps dating as far back as the late 1800s;



An easily searchable database listing more than 2 million places named after families, including some schools and towns that no longer exist; and



Old aerial photographs that may provide clues about abandoned buildings, old railroad lines or other pertinent geographical features.

"Maps are just like books. They've got a wealth of information in them," said Joseph Kerski, an expert on geography education and a former USGS employee. "People think about maps as road maps, but there's a lot to mapping. There's old tax assessor maps. There's old property evaluation maps and old flood maps."

The USGS has been producing maps since it was founded in 1879.

"In the Bay Area, people know us for earthquakes. In the rest of the country, people are probably most familiar with our topographic maps," Gordon said. "That has been our signature project since the very beginning."

Such maps show the country in great detail, including fence lines, homesteads, towns, rivers, mountains and cemeteries. The agency did not complete its topographic, to-scale series of the country until 1990, Kerski said.

Other agency products include satellite imagery and maps of mines, geology, earthquakes, floods and land use.

The USGS Geographic Names Information System database is a free Internet feature that provides clues about who lived in certain regions and when they were settled. Searching the database for a family name will pull up information on rivers, cemeteries, schools, villages and post offices containing that name. The results include latitude and longitude coordinates to help searchers find each spot on a map.

"People move. They migrate. But they have left their imprint on the landscape through cemetery markers, through names on maps," Kerski said.

Author: Julie Sevrens Lyons
Section: A Section
Page: A8
Dateline: SAN JOSE

Copyright 2007 The Washington Post

Olive Tree Genealogy Blog : New York Times FREE 1851-1980

Blog: Olive Tree Genealogy Blog
Post: New York Times FREE 1851-1980 Link: http://olivetreegenealogy.blogspot.com/2007/09/new-york-times-free-1851-1980.html

This could be a treasure trove of information! I'm looking forward to searching old news articles for fragments of information that could be of enormous insight.

USGS Using Maps in Genealogy

A typical problem in genealogy research, especially one where several countries or even counties/parishes have owned the same plots of land in Louisiana throughout history, are finding place names. USGS offers suggestions and resources here.

The Cajuns and Patoutville - St. Nicholas Cemetery

Stanley LeBlanc hosts a website called The Cajuns that has listed St. Nicholas Cemetery or Patoutville Cemetery obituaries. The cemetery in early 2006 and 2007 was in the local newspaper due to several graves listed as abandoned and scheduled for destruction. You can access the PDF file of the local news story from his website. The article lists transcription of those buried and resources for those who are interested in genealogy in that area. Patoutville cemetery is over 100 years old, according to the newspaper article and genealogists are searching for relatives of those buried in St. Nicholas/Patoutville cemetery. It is not listed on Saving Graves - Louisiana website, however, I emailed Mr. LeBlanc to inquire if he was familiar with Mr. Spurlock's website and forwarded a copy to the Yahoo Group lasavinggraves.

Smallpox Hospital

There was a smallpox hospital in New Orleans . "It was located, as I recall, on one of the corners of N. Claiborne and Elysian Fields." link

Colonial Cemetery - Independence, Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana

Tangipahoa arrests teens in cemetery vandalism
http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/police/9750737.html

By DEBRA LEMOINE
Advocate Florida parishes bureau
Published: Sep 13, 2007 - Page: 2B

INDEPENDENCE — Tangipahoa Parish sheriff's deputies arrested two teenage boys Wednesday afternoon under suspicion in the desecration during the past two weeks of more than 100 graves in a century-old cemetery, officials said.

A 12-year-old boy and a 14-year-old boy were arrested after deputies received an anonymous tip, sheriff's spokeswoman Blair Foster said.

No details on motive or how the boys damaged the graves were available Wednesday because detectives were still interviewing the boys, Chief Deputy Dennis Pevey said.

More arrests are expected today, Pevey said.

The two boys, whose names were not released because of their age, were arrested and booked into the Florida Parishes Juvenile Detention Center in Robert on 108 counts of grave desecration and one count of criminal trespass, Pevey said.

Both crimes are misdemeanor offenses and carry a potential penalty of $500 fines and six months jail time, he said.

The boys are believed to have damaged more than 100 graves at the Colonial Cemetery in Independence on U.S. 51 on Aug. 25 or 26 as well as on Saturday or Sunday, deputies said.

The most extensive damage occurred in August when it appeared vandals may have knocked over marble, cement or wooden crosses on above-ground tombs in a section of the cemetery with graves dating from the 1920s to 1960s. In some cases, the fallen crosses took parts of the tomb walls with them.

The more recent damage was to graves that are a couple of years old, deputies said.

The Colonial Cemetery Association, the nonprofit that owns the cemetery, has worked since the first attacks to fix the graves, said Vincent Spitale, association president.

Spitale said he hopes to have most of the repairs done by the end of this week.

However, the association is still collecting donations to offset costs for repairs, especially for tombs of the deceased whose relatives have moved away from the area, Spitale said. As of Wednesday, people have donated close to $1,100 to the Colonial Cemetery Vandalism Fund at Hancock Bank, he said.

Spitale said he is happy to hear of the arrests.

"Maybe I can sleep a little better," Spitale said. "I hope this will be the end of it."

The 20-acre cemetery is one of the oldest in the Independence area of Tangipahoa Parish with graves dating back to the late 1800s, Spitale said. Many of the names carved into markers are those of Italian families that settled the area in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

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