Genealogy

Leone Thelma Johnson, born Nov. 24, 1917, in Ogden, died Sunday, Jan. 29, 2012. A funeral will be held at 11 a.m. Friday, Feb. 3, at the Lorin Farr 2nd Ward, 480 7th St., Ogden. Friends may visit family from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday at Lindquist’s Ogden Mortuary, 3408 Washington Blvd., and from 9:30 a.m. to 10:45 a.m. Friday at the church. Interment, Ogden City Cemetery. Post condolences at www.lindquistmortuary.com. See the complete obituary in the Standard-Examiner's e-edition.

Genealogybank.com became the nation's first ancestry research firm to stop posting Social Security numbers online, after two people complained their privacy was violated when the Social Security Administration falsely listed them as deceased.

"We made the decision several weeks ago that we would rather err on the side of privacy," said Daniel Jones, vice president of consumer products for Newsbank.com, which owns the research service based in Naples, Fla. It made the change Nov. 8.

The nation's largest commercial genealogy research company -- Ancestry.com -- earlier this week also stopped posting Social Security numbers at the request of federal lawmakers. Four Democratic senators, in a Dec. 1 letter to the five biggest services, urged that they withhold some information they get from the federal government under the Freedom of Information Act.

SALT LAKE CITY — The Family History Library will host two workshops, one on German research and one on American Indian research.

BOUNTIFUL -- Helen Wright wasn't ever one of those adopted children carrying with them a sense of loss. After all, she and her twin, Peter, were raised as the only children of a storekeeper in Massachusetts.

When they run into those inevitable brick walls in search of their ancestors, more and more genealogists are turning not to census data, military logs or death notices.

They're spitting into vials.

Genetic testing can enable researchers to identify living people with whom they share common kin and figure out where in the world distant ancestral homes were and long forgotten ethnic roots.

TREMONTON -- A fiber-optics ultra-high-speed UTOPIA broadband network at the Tremonton-Garland Family History Center has sped up the process somewhat and has allowed a capability of serving many more users at once for the last two years.

OGDEN -- The Northern Utah and surrounding states chapter of the Utah Genealogical Association will meet at 10 a.m. Saturday at the Ogden Family History Center, 539 24th St.

Jamie Weeks with the digital collections and archives section at Weber State University will bring the group up to date on preserving histories and photographs indefinitely.