Don't forget the magazines!

I was getting ready to head off to my son's swim class this morning and wanted to print out some NGSQ articles to read during the 50 minutes class. I started thinking that through the NGSQ article study group, I've probably managed to get through most of the articles that are available online and remembered that the NGS also produced the NGS Newsmagazine. The Newsmagazine also has online editions available to print so I started wading through them. There are some really great articles included and I realized that I may not be the only one who forgets about these mags. Like every other NGS member, I wait anxiously for my Quarterly to arrive and when the newsmag comes, it's like a bonus. I read them both cover to cover and put them aside. Sometimes the NGSQ articles come up on list discussions whereas the newsmag really gets shoved off the radar. It's a bad habit that I plan to reverse. The NGS Newsmagazine articles I printed out this morning were from the Oct/Nov/Dec 2005 edition and included:

"Homesteading in America" by Roberta King; lots of great info on the developments leading up to and resulting in the Homestead Act of 1862 and the legislation and amendments that followed

"Give Me Land-Using the BLM Records" by Barbara Schenck; information regarding Federal Land Patents, Tract Books, and other sources for patent and deed info (including a great bibliography of sources used)

"Deed Books-More than Land Descriptions" by Linda Woodward Geiger, CGRS, CGL; this most imformative article gives a bulleted list right on the first page of all the things you can learn from deeds and then goes into the strategies for using them and how to extract all of that info (there is also a great list of sources at the end of this one too)

The NGS website allows online access to the NGS Newsmagazine from 2005 to the present through the member's only section of the website.

NEHGS also prints a newsmagazine, called New England Ancestors. NEHGS members can view the table of contents for the editions published in 2000. For issues from 2004 to the present, members can view the full articles and contents.

So the rule of the day is don't neglect those genealogy newsmags in favor of only the journals. While the journals may provide the meaty case studies you crave for educational development, the mags may have the source and the history behind those subjects. Don't throw them aside, use them together.