For those of you with Chicago ancestry, there is a new resource that is available to help you with your research. www.chicagoancestors.org contains loads of information such as all of the Catholic churches in the Chicagoland area, digital photograph selections and historic buildings to name a few. These are all laid out on a Google map to make them easy to locate. It's clear that it is a work in progress in some cases (cemeteries) but it holds promise.

Gone bad. Okay, not really bad. Tonight I upgraded TNG from 6.1.2 to 6.2.0 and ran into a couple of hurdles with the upgrade. First I had problems with the permissions on the site where none of the pages were being displayed. Then, once that got fixed, I overwrote most of my customizations with the default files during the install. So, you might notice slight changes in the site due to the fact that I had to quickly recreate some of the files like the logo. I'll eventually create new logos but for now it will have to do.

Meanwhile, please enjoy the new functions that Darrin Lythgoe has added to the release. New content and pictures have also been added.


Enjoy!

Bill

Having passed the threshold of 19,000 people in the family tree, much of the information and people that we have in the tree would not be possible were it not for the help and generosity of countless people.

There are several new pictures that have been posted and linked to the site. Many of these were provided by Barbara Besecker who we had the chance to meet while we visited Ohio a few months ago. My mother has also been contributing by providing pictures, obituaries and other documents whenever she comes across them. Apparently I have become the family archivist.

This weekend I received an email from Sonja (nee Rice) Floyd who was able to provide us with the Descendants of William Walden Rice. William had four children, three of which passed at a young age. William's remaining son, Owen Alanson Rice, married Melinda Jane Replogle. The data that Sonja (my sixth cousin) adds several third, fourth, fifth and sixth cousins.

We welcome Sonja and our other newly found cousins to the the family and again thank Sonja for all the research that she had done. With the information that Sonja provided, we are just under 19,000 individuals in the database.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-080119johnkass,0,7157265.column

United States Marine Sgt. McNulty is getting ready to ship out to Iraq from Camp Pendleton soon. While is court case is set for the 18th of January, Sgt. McNulty does not need to be present to move forward.

That said, it seems poetic justice has been served knowing that the presiding judge in the case is a former Marine. Circuit Court Judge William O'Malley was a lance corporal in the Marine Corps in the 1960's who celebrates the Marine Corps birthday each November.

The Chicago Tribune ran a story on Sgt. McNulty's recent run-in with Mr. Grodner. Looks like Sgt. McNulty will get his day in court.

I try to keep stories such as this off the blog but this one just turns my stomach. Basically, a Marine Sergeant getting ready to return to Iraq for a second tour makes a stop in Chicago. While in Chicago, anti-military attorney Jay Grodner took it upon himself to vandalize Sgt. McNulty's vehicle. The case is still playing out in the courts.