The “Finding Your Roots” television series on genealogy returns with its second season at 8 p.m. Tuesday on Georgia Public Broadcasting, running through Nov. 25.
With Henry Louis Gates Jr. as host, the new season features 30 well-known personalities in various fields: Ben Affleck, Jessica Alba, Khandi Alexander, Angela Bassett, Ken Burns, Deepak Chopra, Tom Colicchio, Anderson Cooper, Alan Dershowitz, Tina Fey, Sally Field, Valerie Jarrett, Benjamin Jealous, Derek Jeter, Billie Jean King, Carole King, Stephen King, Tony Kushner, Rebecca Lobo, Nas, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, Gloria Reuben, Aaron Sanchez, David Sedaris, Anna Deavere Smith, George Stephanopoulos, Sting, Ming Tsai and Courtney Vance.
Three celebrities are featured in each hourlong segment. They will be grouped by origins, or types of research used, such as DNA. Check gpb.org for a schedule of episodes. The previous season can be viewed at pbs.org.
Georgia Archives File II
The Georgia Archives recently placed the names portion of its File II collection online in the Virtual Vault segment at georgiaarchives.org. This alphabetical collection began in the 1930s and consists of a wide assortment of materials from government records, correspondence and other data.
The online collection contains only digitized images of original documents and transcripts. Reference correspondence and secondary research, located in the original file at the archives, was not digitized.
Included are governors’ correspondence, passports through Indian territory and documents, with a heavy emphasis on antebellum records. This material needs to be checked by anyone doing Georgia research.
Other File II areas, such as pre-1800, will be added later.
The online addition was made possible by a grant from the R.J. Taylor Jr. Foundation.
Civil War records online
The "War of the Rebellion" series, 127 volumes of the Official Records of the Civil War, have been digitized and online for some time. For those who may not be aware, the series can be found on Cornell University's Making of America site (ebooks.library.cornell.edu/m/moa) and in Ohio State University's ehistory collection (ehistory.osu.edu/osu/mmh).
Always follow research instructions to get the best use of these sites. A good article about using them is in the National Genealogical Society’s NGS Magazine for July-September 2014.
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