The Genealogy Guys Podcast #161 - 2009 January 5

This week's news includes: Ancestry.com launches a new Florida State Census Collection (1867, 1875, 1935, and 1945); the Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS) announced that president J. Mark Lowe has resigned for personal reasons, and Vice President of Administration, Pat Oxley, has assumed the presidency; a Union County, Illinois group, Promoting Appreciation of Structural Treasures (PAST), is seeking to purchase the "House Where Lincoln Stayed" in Anna, Illinois, in 1858 when he was there to debate Stephen Douglas in one of the most historic political debates in U.S. History. Tax-deductible contributions can be made to PAST Lincoln House Project, Mona Diefenbach, 190 White Pine Lane, Anna, IL 62906.

Listener email this week included: Peter is concerned that searches in Ancestry.com for his family always include his own data at the top of the search results list, and believes that Ancestry.com should be able to mask or omit his own results; Virginia asked for clarification about ordering SS-5 applications for a Social Security Number, especially for deceased persons not in the SSDI; Roxanna shared a strong tip for researching in Salt Lake City; Scott wrote again to clarify his method for storing data at Ancestry.com and using his RootsMagic software; he also shared his excitement at having found old family photo albums and having found great information on the back of important photos; Sean recommends a product called SpinRite from Gibson Research Corporation (http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm) to help recover data from damaged magnetic storage media.

Drew discusses the crash of his desktop PC, and the steps he is taking to repair the hard disk and restore his data.