We will be holding a meeting of Footnote.com members at the 2007 Southern California Genealogical Society Jamboree in Burbank, California on Saturday, June 9, 2007 at 6:00 PM. Footnote members who live in the Los Angeles area or who will be attending the 2007 SCGS Jamboree, are welcome to attend. We will discuss future plans, solicit member opinions and give out door prizes. Anyone who is interested may attend. Seating will be limited. If interested please contact Elizabeth.

I read an interesting article recently about the new USS Monitor Center at the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, Virginia. The USS Monitor, and the Monitor Class ships that came after it, played an important roll in the Civil War and in the history of naval combat. The article does a nice job discussing the history of the ship and the new exhibits at the museum.

I was particularly interested in the article because a few weeks back I was playing around the search on Footnote and did a quick search for “monitor” in the Matthew Brady collection of Civil War Photos as a test. I found some great images (over 30 of them) of ships and their crews.

It was interesting to see the differences between the various incarnations of the Monitors and to see the way the decks of the ships were used. Here are a few examples:

This one has a single (and smaller) turret, a tall thin smoke stack and a cannon and any number of other accouterments attached to the deck.

Here’s another single turret example, the Sangus, but it’s quite different from the example above with a larger turret, stockier pipe and what looks like equipment for clearing the water in front of the ship. There are even pictures of her officers and crew.

Here’s another one where they pulled out all the stops, double turrets, tents, lifeboat hangers, flags, you name it.

Footnote has recently launched its affiliate program. This new program will help Footnote grow and provide a way for other content related sites to earn some extra money.

Like most affiliate programs, website owners can put links to Footnote on their sites and when people visit the site, click those links, come to Footnote and buy, we share part of the subscription fees with the owner of the referring site.

We hope this program will help the right people find Footnote and help support other history and genealogy related websites.

For more information go to http://footnote.com/affiliates.

In the bibliography of David McCullough’s bestselling book, “1776“, (see what else we’re reading) lies an interesting source: “Revolutionary Pension Records.”

Much of the power of McCullough’s writing comes from his ability to recount an event that happened more than 220 years ago and make seem like it happened yesterday.

The powerful drama unfolds in an unending series of unique, rich and personal details gathered from extensive research. Details like the ones you can now read for the first time online in the Revolutionary War Pension Records.

These newly digitized records contain historical information as well as information useful to those researching their family’s past. And each name contains a complete file of pension documentation – usually about 30 pages.

The pension records are even more valuable when you consider that most of the original service records and the earliest pension records of the Revolutionary War were destroyed in fires in 1800 and 1814.

So we’re proud this week to release the first portion (about 10 percent) of the applications. Soon, we’ll have more than 2 million documents containing 80,000 pension and Bounty-Land-Warrant applications.

To those who think this might sound like something interesting only to librarians or doctoral students, take a look inside.

When a person applied for a pension, he or she had to appear in court and describe – under oath – their service in the Revolutionary War. Widows had to provide information about their marriage.

Details that could be found in files include:

• Marriage certificates
• Property schedules
• Letters
• Pages from family Bibles
• Diaries
• Journals
• Witnesses’ affidavits
• Details of battles and campaigns
• Troop movement
• Civil events and conditions
• Family relationships

Each file offers an intensely human story of the brave individuals who sacrificed life and limb to make the ideals of the Declaration of Independence something more than words on parchment.

Take the typical case of Matthias Armbruster, “an old Soldier of the American Revolutionary Army.”

He enlisted in 1776 for one year in Germantown and then marched to Quebec.

He fought at the battles of Brandywine, Trenton, Princeton, Monmouth and the capture of Stoney Point.

He received bayonet wounds to the front of his head and his right arm from a “horseman whom he shot dead but afterwards.”

Check out the first-hand account of Mr. Armbruster, just 79,999 stories left to tell.

When complete, all of the images and indexes of this collection can be found on Footnote or will be freely viewable at the more than 4,500 LDS Church-run family history centers around the world.

Footnote made an exciting announcement today about its new partnership with FamilySearch, historically known as the Genealogical Society of Utah, a nonprofit organization sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. FamilySearch is the world’s largest repository of genealogical information.

This new partnership will enable Footnote to digitize valuable documents that have never been available before on the internet. The first project through this partnership will be to digitize and release on Footnote.com the three million records in the Revolutionary War Pension Files. Details about this partnership and what this means to Footnote members can be found in the Footnote Press Room.