I am cleaning out my inbox of helpful links which have been passed on to me. That is all I have on this email. Not sure if I passed these help links on... Earthpoint. Tools for Google Earth - Township and Range - Public Land Survey System on Google Earth. http://earthpoint.us/townships.aspx Alton Civil War Prison with a database for a few hundred of the over 11,000 prisoners who passed thru the prison gates. http://www.altonweb.com/history/civilwar/confed/index.html George Rogers Clark Colonial Papers for Illinois Regiment online: http://my.execpc.com/~sril/grclark.htm --------------------------------------------------- Passing the following on. Haven't tried it!gf Telephone Information for Businesses IT WORKS----- 1-800-GOOG-411(1-800-466-4411) This is something you will want to have and use! I still remember when the telephone company charged me $1.50 to get a phone number from information! My compliments to Google! Just leave it up to Google to come up with something like this!!! Here's a number worth putting in your cell phone or your home phone speed dial: 1-800-GOOG-411. This is an awesome service from Google, and it's free -- great when you are on the road. Don't waste your money on information calls, and don't waste your time manually dialing the number. I am driving along in my car; I need to call the golf course and I don't know the number. I hit the speed dial for information that I have programmed. The voice at the other end says, "City & State." I say, " Garland , Texas ." He says, "Business, Name or Type of Service." I say, Firewheel Golf Course." He says, "Connecting" and Firewheel answers the phone. How great is that? This is nationwide and it is absolutely free! Click on the link below and watch the short clip for a quick demonstration (or just try it) http://www.google.com/goog411/ -------------------------------------------------- Example from Mike Hebert of having books scanned to put online: "I recently had some books scanned for Cumberland County by the Internet Archive. They will scan books for 10¢/page plus shipping both ways. This includes OCR, indexing, and permanent public hosting of the materials through the OpenLibrary.org and Archive.org websites. Their digitization effort is part of the Open Content Alliance (http://www.opencontentalliance.org/about/) whose goals are akin to those of the US/ILGenWeb Projects, namely, to make material freely available online with no commercial strings attached. Naturally, any material that has an active copyright needs to have the permission of the copyright holder before proceeding with any scanning. I had my cousin's "Cumberland County Illinois, 1843-1993" book (out of print) scanned but obtained her permission first. She was thrilled that her work would be made available to a wider audience. These are the books I had scanned: http://www.archive.org/details/cumberland1843county1993lindrich http://www.archive.org/details/cumberlandcountyhistoryrich http://www.archive.org/details/servicerecordbookmenwomenrich http://www.archive.org/details/centennialhistsoindchrisrich http://www.archive.org/details/woodroofwoodroughwoodrich I particularly like the DjVu option for viewing books at IA. I can pass along more details on the process and the contacts at IA for anyone that might be interested. This is even something that genealogy societies and local libraries could get involved in for their own genealogy collections." Mike --------------------------------------- Lost an ancestor? Epidemics. 1657 Boston Measles 1687 Boston Measles 1690 New York Yellow Fever 1713 Boston Measles 1729 Boston Measles 1732-3 Worldwide Influenza 1738 South Carolina Smallpox 1739-40 Boston Measles 1747 CT, NY, PA, SC Measles 1759 North America [areas inhabited by white people] Measles 1761 North America and West Indies Influenza 1772 North America Measles 1775 North America [especially hard in the northeast] Epidemic [identification unknown] 1775-6 Worldwide [one of the worst epidemics] Influenza 1783 Dover, DE [extremely fatal] Bilious Disorder 1788 Philadelphia and New York Measles 1793 Vermont [a "putrid" fever] and Influenza 1793 Virginia [killed 500 in 5 counties in 4 weeks] Influenza 1793 Philadelphia [one of the worst epidemics] Yellow Fever 1793 Harrisburg, PA [many unexplained deaths] Unknown cause 1793 Middletown, PA [many mysterious deaths] Unknown cause 1794 Philadelphia, PA Yellow Fever 1796-7 Philadelphia, PA Yellow Fever 1798 Philadelphia, PA [one of the worst] Yellow Fever 1803 New York Yellow Fever 1820-3 Nationwide [starts Schuylkill River and spreads] "Fever" 1831-2 Nationwide [brought by English emigrants] Asiatic Cholera 1832 NY City [and other major cities] Cholera 1837 Philadelphia Typhus 1841 Nationwide [especially severe in the south] Yellow Fever 1847 New Orleans Yellow Fever 1847-8 Worldwide Influenza 1848-9 North America Cholera 1850 Nationwide Yellow Fever 1850-1 North America Influenza 1852 Nationwide [New Orleans-8,000 die in summer] Yellow Fever 1855 Nationwide [many parts] Yellow Fever 1857-9 Worldwide [one of the greatest pandemics] Influenza 1860-1 Pennsylvania Smallpox 1865-73 A series of recurring epidemics of: Typhus, Typhoid, Scarlet Fever, Yellow Fever 1873-5 North America and Europe Influenza 1878 New Orleans [last great epidemic] Yellow Fever 1885 Plymouth, PA Typhoid 1886 Jacksonville, FL Yellow Fever 1880-1930 Chickasaw Co IA Consumption (bovine tuberculosis, predominantly) 1890-1899 Chickasaw Co IA Scarlet Fever, Diphtheria, Typhoid 1918 (peak year) Influenza Worldwide [many millions of people died, military & civilian] (Copyright © The Chickasaw County Genealogical Society Quarterly, Volume 26, No. 1) ------------------------------------- Gloria