Biloxi Bridge

It opens Thursday!

TVA

TVA has been an important part of Northeast Mississippi since the 1930s. Those with first-hand memories of the early days of TVA are invited to be part of a documentary. See the full story.

Toxish Baptist Celebrates 170th Birthday

Toxish Baptist Church in Pontotoc County is celebrating 170 years.

Falkner Heritage Festival

Falkner Heritage Festival

Saturday, November 3, 2007

A Celebration of William Falkner's Tippah County Heritage

Ripley, Mississippi

The Festival is an all day event starting with registration at 8:30 a.m. and ends with a candlelight tour of Ripley Cemetery, called the Spirit Tour. A walking tour, cemetery tours, a writer's workshop and period demonstrations are some of the activities. A special dinner is served at one of the Antebellum homes, and there are readings from Colonel William Falkner's book, "The White Rose of Memphis. " Col. William Falkner is grandfather of the Oxford writer. Melissa McCoy-Bell will be leading a basic genealogy workshop at the Ripley Library as part of the festival at 10:30 a.m.

ADAH Increases Collections Available on the Internet

In Celebration of Archives Week, the Alabama Department of Archives and History (ADAH) is debuting a new service available on its website - CONTENTdm®. CONTENTdm® is an image management software that supports distribution of images of ADAH collections on its web site. Come to ADAH on Tuesday, October 16, 2007, from 10 AM to 11 AM for a demonstration of the new software and content available online!

CONTENTdm®, a digital collection management system, allows archivists to store, index, and display digitized primary resources online. Developed at the University of Washington, the program is in wide use at special collections repositories and research libraries across the country.

The first collections created for CONTENTdm® are under the ADAH Digital Collections and include Alabama Photographs and Pictures Collection, Alabama State Publications, and the Frank W. Boykin Collection. Boykin represented Alabama’s First Congressional District from 1935 to 1963. His collection alone contains more than a thousand items of personal and official correspondence, political memorabilia, and photographs. They are available thanks to a donation from the Tensaw Land and Timber Company in honor of Boykin’s granddaughter, Ocllo Malone.
Archives staffers are continuing to learn the system and entering data on a continuous basis in the Alabama Photographs and Pictures and Alabama State Publications collections. Work is also being done to completed four future collections in a timely manner. These are the Selma to Montgomery March, Civil War Period Flag Collection, Confederate Officers Photograph Album, and Alabama Governors. More information regarding ADAH Digital Collections may be found at http://216.226.178.196/ or call (334) 353-4635.

Laurel Library Says "Turn Cell Phones Off"

. . . or at least turn the ring tone off while you are in the genealogy department . . . and then go outside to answer it.

This is just common courtesy!

Itawamba Historical Society October Meeting

Mississippi Hill Country Music on Stage at Society's October Meeting

On Tuesday evening, October 16, the Itamingo Strummers will be the special program at the regular monthly program meeting of the Itawamba Historical Society. The meeting begins at 6 p.m. with refreshments, and the special musical program will begin at 6:30. The meeting will be held in the Gordon McFerrin Auditorium of the George Poteet History Center, headquarters of the society at the corner of Church Street and Museum Drive in Mantachie.

The program will include approximately 15 musicians and singers with special emphasis on the musical heritage of southern Appalachia featuring the mountain dulcimer, the mandolin, bass and guitar. Songs performed will include old mountain ballads, standards and religious selections.

The mountain dulcimer has an important part in the musical heritage of Itawamba County, one of Mississippi's northeastern hill counties, nestled in the foothills of southern Appalachia.

The public is invited to attend this special program. For further information, contact the society at 662-282-7664.

Portal to Texas History

Many of us had Mississippi ancestors (or descendants of ancestors) who moved on to Texas. The Portal to Texas History at University of North Texas is a project which is attempting to bring primary source documents of value to researchers online. Something exciting about this venture is that they care about how genealogists are using the Internet and plan some studies along this line.

Another Texas digitization project is Texas Tides which is hosted by Stephen F. Austin State University.

Mother Monroe Available

The Chamber of Commerce in Aberdeen just received a case of W. A. Evans' classic Monroe County history entitled Mother Monroe.

1867 Alabama Voter Registration Database Online

For those of us whose ancestors came in some of the burned counties of Alabama, this is quite exciting news! The 1867 Alabama Voter Registration database is online. Currently all entries are available for Macon, Pickens, Pike, Russell, Shelby, St. Clair, Sumter, Talladega, Tallapoosa, Tuscaloosa, Walker, Wilcox, and Winston counties are available. I'm off to check out those Walker County entries right now! Now -- if they'll just hurry and get Fayette online too.

Update: I noticed that some entries for Perry county are also showing up in the results!