Photography led to the invention of mugshots, and particularly interesting are mugshots that simultaneously captured the accused's image from front and side angles. The Yuma (Arizona) Territorial Prison State Historic Park has some on display if you visit in person, and in looking for something suitably Halloweenish for this website I stumbled across this online exhibit from my birthplace, Fall River, MA. The Fall River Historical Society's Mug Shot Online Exhibit has 28 of these images, all dated 1912. Fall River's employment was mainly at the spinning mills and there was a significant immigrant population of Irish and French Canadians. Most of these people, based on surnames, were probably immigrants or children of immigrants and that proved to be the case for the few I checked on the NEHGS website. Of interest to genealogists is the biographical information, about height, weight, date of birth, and occupation. Based on occupation they were not at the top of the socioeconomic ladder and "larceny" is the most common crime noted here, but note the one person charged with adultery. Moral of the story: don't forget to look for your ancestor in police and prison records. Things that are not illegal now may have been then (home brewing, for example, of which one of my Irish immigrant ancestors was convicted) and your person might have her or his picture on display.

Did you know that there is such a thing as a National Genealogy Hall of Fame? There is, and the National Genealogical Society (NGS) is looking for someone whose work merits their inclusion. Do not nominate yourself, as you have to have been dead for five years to qualify, but there are quite a few other awards to consider. Librarians, high school students, scholars, volunteers, and authors of articles, books, and newsletters are eligible to enter. NGS membership is required for some but not for all categories. Prizes include money, publication, free online classes, and travel to an NGS conference. Click here for information and entry forms. The deadline is December 15 but these are annual, so if you are not ready to nominate yourself or someone else, put it on your to-do list for 2019.

Normally AmazonSmile pays on the order of 0.75% of your qualified purchase to the charity of your choice. (Mine is the General Society of Mayflower Descendants, which you will see as "GSMD" on this site because the whole name is too long to type. This is the official name of what people call "The Mayflower Society.") AmazonSmile is paying 5% through Nov. 2. If you have not enrolled a charity yet, it does add up, so try https://www.smile.amazon.com and get started. (Note: amazon is not in any way a sponsor of this website. I just like free money.)

The All-Surname Index (tab at bottom left of home page) is complete and we'll see how it works. If you are wondering whether anyone in your family has any Mayflower connection at all, and you have no idea where to look, you can now search for that surname in the regular index and find a probable straight-line descendant OR check the All-Surname Index to see if they married one. This should be especially helpful with females who married into a totally non-Mayflower family and went West or in some cases, left the country. For example, if I put modern-day or living people's pictures on here (which I do not do, as a rule), and you wondered if anyone named Lynch was on the Mayflower, that surname is not in the regular index because I have not found any 100-year-old photos of a Lynch Mayflower descendant. So, you might look for that surname in the All-Surname index. There you would find the name Lynch, with "ALD  BRE  BRO  COO DOT  ROG  SOU  WAR," and then my name (listed as my maiden name). My dad married a Lynch, and that is our list of pilgrims. (ALD includes MUL.) Look for me in any of those sections and you'd see where the Lynch surname fit into Mayflower history. Let me know how well this works for you!

I have made it through the first unit (5 weeks) of the BU online genealogy course and have turned in the assignment for the first 1 of 3 exercises in the second unit. I appreciate your good thoughts and prayers and ask you to keep all the students on your prayer list. It is a serious time commitment and very challenging, which is a good thing, as they want us to learn new things and unlearn old bad habits. We can all use a dose of that in our lives, right?

The New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) is looking for more volunteers to help them get data online for all of us to use. From what little volunteer indexing I have done in my lifetime, this task involves looking at images on the screen for key bits of data, such as names, and typing them into a data base the sponsoring organization. They also need help scanning parish records (for their Historic Catholic Records Project, which right now is the Archdiocese of Boston parish records) and the General Society of Mayflower Descendants (GSMD) silver books (new ones are issued periodically), and digitizing other records "from the comfort of your own home!" There will be a webinar on Thursday, October 23, from 3-4 pm EDT (which in AZ is noon to 1:00 pm) explaining how this works. If you want online access to more New England documents, like I do, and want to see data in the hands of people dedicated to New England genealogy rather than people with a cause or agenda you don't support, consider at least checking out this opportunity to help.