Posts By: whuskonen

AP Report Previews Tonight’s Finding Your Roots Episode

Yesterday (02 Oct) Lynn Elber, AP Television Writer, previewed a bit of tonight’s premiere of Finding Your Roots on PBS. She wrote: If there’s a bigger cheerleader for genealogy research than Henry Louis Gates Jr. it’s unlikely they’re nearly as well-connected. The prominent Harvard professor once again lures the famous and celebrated to PBS’ “Finding

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Hooray! Ancestry.com Adds New York Death Records

If you have ever tried to research death records in New York State, you know it was a big pain. The state death index existed only on microfilm and was accessible only in a half dozen libraries across the state. You had to know the year of death to be able to browse these records

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I’m Looking Forward to Finding Your Roots beginning Oct 3

It’s time once again to watch the television series “Finding Your Roots.” The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) series featuring Henry Louis Gates, Jr., as host premieres on Tuesday, October 3 at 8/7c. Once again, Prof. Gates will present genealogical research results for celebrities. In the past, he has highlighted interesting stories and the guests are

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Some Links to Read about President Niinistö of Finland

As a followup to my attendance at FinnFest 2017 in Minneapolis last week (Sep 21 – 24), I have done some Google research to find links to news coverage of President Niinistö’s visit. Here is a brief selection: Dropping the Puck at NHL hockey pre-season game https://www.nhl.com/wild/news/finland-president-visits-092117/c-291247206 The President’s Personal Webpage: http://www.tpk.fi/public/default.aspx?contentid=365353&culture=en-US’ U of M

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A Blast from the Past: FinnFest 2007 Program Notes

I can hardly believe that it was 10 years ago that FinnFest was in Ashtabula. Having just returned from Minneapolis and FinnFest 2017, I was curious about what publicity for that earlier event might still be available. So I went online and checked the website for the Star Beacon, the daily newspaper published in Ashtabula.

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Advice to White Supremacists: You Might Not Want to Test Your DNA

Last week (Aug 17, 2017) Dick Eastman posted an article with the title above on his blog, “Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter.” We are reprinting it here with permission: UPDATE: This news story is mushrooming. The original news article listed in the article below was knocked offline for a while, probably because thousands of people were accessing

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One Hundred Years of Finland’s Independence

Dec 6, 2017, is the day Finland will officially celebrate its centennial as an independent country. In the lead-up to that momentous day, it is appropriate that Finland has a website with information about the centennial: Suomi Finland 100. The page on that website that is very interesting to me is “One hundred years of

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Take Your Ethnic Purity Business Elsewhere

This email was distributed to subscribers of the Ancestry Blog a couple days ago. Especially appropriate for us as genealogists is what Ancestry states in the third paragraph: The entire Ancestry family is horrified and appalled by the tragic events that occurred in Charlottesville. We not only condemn the violence that occurred but are deeply

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Hello to Finnish Cousins

I just received word via email that notice of my recent posts about Cousin Matti sending Kaapro Huuskonen’s biography to me, and how he and my brother Walfrid translated it into English, has been circulated to other Huuskonen (original spelling of surname) cousins. For their benefit, in case they take a look at this blog,

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