Links, 8.15.11

Not that I’m having a terrible August, but I must say it drags on a bit. I keep asking whether it’s Sunday when it is, in fact, the previous Saturday, or even the previous Thursday. I am reasonably sure, however, that today is Monday, and therefore a good time to post links.

Eyecatching: I hadn’t seen the Western History & Genealogy blog of the Denver Public Library, but it strikes me as a nicely thought-out and well-presented example of a library highlighting its resources. For example, this Manuscript Monday meme, which features examples from the library’s manuscript collections.

Reunited: Megan Smolenyak has started rescuing orphaned heirlooms again. Yay!

Submerged: Severe drought reveals the remains of a long-forgotten cemetery in Texas where freed slaves were buried in the Civil War era (see also Dick Eastman).

Unsettling: Well, OK, here’s a hazard to family revelations that hadn’t occurred to me: British actress Emilia Fox, two weeks away from her due date, discovers via the UK Who Do You Think You Are that her great-grandma died in childbirth, delivering a stillborn baby. Not the sort of thing I would have wanted to dwell upon at that stage in pregnancy.

Debatable: Uh-oh, Dick Eastman wades into the tombstone touch-up controversy with How to Read Unreadable Tombstones. Go ahead and read it. Then go have a fight with somebody about it.

Useful: Newspaper columnist James Beidler reviews what sounds like a wonderful resource: a Surname Atlas of Germany.

That’s it for now. Enjoy the week!

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