FamilySearch – A Must Visit!

If you are actively searching for an ancestor you need to visit FamilySearch. If you haven’t been there lately you really haven’t been there. The site has been updated and is quite amazing. One big change is that anyone can now visit the site, register and then view the family pedigrees, contribute names, and view sources, photos, stories and then save what they find that you find to your own computer, or link information to your own family within FamilySearch. FamilySearch is found at https://familysearch.org.

The Features Include:

• Over a billion records are now available to search. The index is amazingly accurate and a majority of the search results have a digital image attached.
• The search is available in 10 languages, as records from all over the world have been and continue to be added.
• New records are being added daily through a massive indexing project.
• A fan chart can now be created on the site from anyone in your pedigree.
• You can add, or find your ancestors then locate additional records for them and attach those records to them. You can also add pictures, and stories as well as additional source documentation.
• Many films from the Family History Library in Salt Lake City Utah have been digitized and are available as browse-able records. While you wait for these films to be indexed you can view them without the need to order them. [Because they are not yet indexed your ancestor won’t appear in a search].
• There is a massive Research Wiki to help you guide you locate records.
• Hundreds of Free genealogy classes are available as video or slide presentations. These have been added by FamilySearch, and other partners such as the New England Historical and Genealogical Society, the Mid-Contentment Library and others.
• There is a section of free digitized books that have many books that were published by family organization.
• The Library Catalog from the Family History Library is also found there, and if you locate a record or film you need, if it has been digitized you will be given the link to the records.

When you first go to the site there is a tutorial you can take. FamilySearch is easy to navigate and if you find errors in your family pedigree, that others have made, you can correct them.

Check out the home page carefully as it will lead you to the many other treasures that are part of FamilySearch. The FamilySearch Blog indicated yesterday that the number of sources on the site has grown by 74% in the last three weeks.

If you haven’t visited FamilySearch in the last few week You Haven’t Seen FamilySearch.

Free Digitized Books, Census Records and More

There is a great website that offers, among many other things, free digitized books and free census records. It is the Internet Archives and is found at http:archives.org. This non-profit digital library has a stated mission of ‘universal access to all knowledge’. It has grown from 40 billion webpages in 2005, which equals 1 petabyte [a petabyte is over 1,000 terabytes] to over 10 petabytes, and it continues to grow.

The Interent Archive allows the public to both upload and download digital material. It’s largest collection is it archive of webpages, The Wayback Machine, which holds over 150+ billion web captures.

My favorite part is the world’s largest book digitalization project.The Internet Archive is working with several libraries to digitize the contents of their holdings. The Allen County Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana is one library that has contributed many digitized genealogy books to the project, another is the Harold B. Lee Library at Brigham Young University. Private individuals are invited to scan the public domain books in their personal libraries and upload them as well. 

 The result is a huge resource of books in TXT,  PDF, and other formats, books that you can download to your computer, save, and then search for every word. TXT files do not retain the same formatting  as the originals so Bold, Italics and Underling will be lost. Many of the books available were converted to TXT format by OCR software.  OCR stands for Optical Character Recognition, and means that you can search for a particular word or phrase.

The Internet Archive also provides most books in http, EPUB, Kindle, Daisy, and DjVu formats as well, so the books and documents can be read on almost any ebook reader, computer, iPad, or web browsing capable cell phone.

The Internet Archive also has scanned and digitized the U.S. Census records from 1790 through 1930. There is, however, no index. Small towns can be easily searched a page at a time while cities probably are best searched if you already know the Enumeration Districts involved.

This site is totally free, and has many other valuable functions. They do, however, accept donations through snail mail or pay-pal.

Creating a Timeline

If you really want some help in finding a lost ancestor you should create a timeline. A timeline will put the events of an ancestor’s life in chronological order and help you as you locate  and evaluate any information you may find. The process is simple:

1. Choose an ancestor
2. List the important dates and events in their life, such as date and place of birth, first wedding day, the births of their children,  any immigration information and finally their death.
3. Find other historical events for the period of time your ancestor was alive. Depending on where they lived you could add dates of wars, statehood, epidemics, or other historical events.
4. Organize your genealogical and historical dates in chronological order. From this information, you can create a simple time line by adding important dates with brief comments attached to them. it all depends on how much detail you want to include in your timeline.
5. Add to the timeline the age of your ancestor when each of these events occurred.

If there are discrepancies in your information they will show up immediately in a timeline. Timelines also help put your ancestor in the context of the time their were living. Example: Norman Bliss

• 1875 – born Toquerville, Kane County, Utah Territory
• 1882 – age 7 Father killed, Toquerville, Washington County, Utah Territory
• 1888 age 12 Mother died Washington, Washington County, Utah Territory Utah
• 1885 – age 20, married Mary Morris – Rockville, Washington County, Utah Territory

As you correctly add historical events you see that Utah was still a Territory and that Toquerville, changed from Kane County to Washington County. This can be important information as it can identify where you might locate records. It also gives you a picture of Norman that doesn’t readily show up in a Family Group Record. He was orphaned at the age of 12. You then begin to wonder who he lived with after his mother died, and what happened to his younger siblings.

Some genealogy software will help you create a chronology, and there are many historical timelines already on the Internet which will give you the dates of major events that would  have happened in the area your ancestor lived. As you research and refer to your  timeline you will be able  to quickly eliminate people that don’t belong in your family by a simple look at the age your ancestor was at a certain time period. Of course if you need more help making a timeline of your own you can go on the interent to You Tube and search for genealogy and timelines, or chronologies, and watch a number of videos that will step you through the process and give you additional ideas.

Marriage Records

It’s almost Valentines Day and that seems like a great time to talk about marriage records. These are valuable to family genealogists’ because they may be one of the few places where a woman’s maiden name is recorded.  
Marriages are most likely to occur in the town or county where the bride lived, giving clues to other family origins.

A good marriage license will give you the names of the bride and groom, their ages and places of residence.  They can also include the occupations of the couple, the full name of witnesses and their relationships. If either the bride or groom were younger than the legal age you may find a consent to marry signed by a parent or guardian.  If you are fortunate enough to have German ancestors, you will find that German marriage records often include the names of the parents of both the bride and groom and their grandparents.

A couple may have married in a neighboring county if the parents opposed the marriage and they eloped. Understand also, that not all marriages were recorded. On the frontier or in isolated communities there may have been no one to marry a couple, and so vows were taken and sometimes solemnized when an itinerant preacher came through the area. He would then make a note in his records, which may or may not ever reach an official church or civil registration office.

Some places to look for marriage records:

*   Family Bibles were a place where families recorded not only marriages, but births and deaths of family members.

*   Journals, letters and scrapbooks where pictures were kept, may also document an event. One of my g g grandfathers was married in 1848 in Nebraska on the Pioneer trail west. His marriage record is only found in his journal.

*   Local newspapers often have list of names of those who apply for marriage licenses. They also publish articles about the weddings, and anniversary milestones such a couple’s 50 Wedding Anniversary.  These articles are very valuable because they may state relationships, so you should also check newspapers for the area where your family lived.

*   Churches were the first to record vital records which included births, deaths and marriages. Later these records were required to be sent to the county or state governments. Since, generally, a license was needed to marry, you may be able to locate both a church and civil record of your ancestor’s marriage.

*   Interviews with family members may yield information from a relative who may remember the wedding.

*   Tombstones – sometimes the only record you can find of a marriage is carved into a tombstone “Ada Tuthill wife of Levi Bliss died Jan 19, 1826, age 25”. Not a marriage record exactly, but definitely indirect evidence that one took place.

*   Pension applications will state the name of the spouse. If a widow applied for a pension, she had to prove that she was married in order to qualify for her husband’s pension. One widow tore out, and mailed in a Bible page which contained her marriage information as proof of her marriage.

*   Census records also provide relationship information, and sometimes will point you to a year of a couple’s marriage. Don’t stop there, however. Locate the original record if possible because it will yield more information.

*   Since the twentieth century, many states began to require that a record of the marriage be transferred from the county to the state level, so it may be possible to find a statewide index.

There is no national marriage index for the United States, but if you know the place of the marriage, you should search on  FamilySearch.org which now has the marriage records for many states. 

Evernote and Genealogy

Evernote is a free note taking software that syncs across all your mobile devices. I find Evernote is one of the most useful tools for family history research that I have. I have it downloaded on my computer where  everthing I have put into my Evernote resides. Evernote also keeps a copy of my information in ‘the cloud’ so that I can access it on my phone, ipad, or a different computer.

• Evernote  is one of my favorite tools, not just for genealogy, but for keeping track of my life. It is my ‘personal assistant’ that lets me create and store notes, pdfs, or clip webpages.  I can not only use it to save photos and documents, but also to  email them right from the Evernote program. It also keeps my to do lists, and  functions as a type of research log, as everything I enter is date stamped, and can be viewed by date created. Because Evernote syncs across any internet accessible device I use, I can open up a project on any computer I am using, my ipad or smart phone.
• Everything in my Evernote folders is always in sync, so no matter where I am – I am working with the same data. I can begin working on a document at home and save the document. Then if I go to an Archive, for example, I simply sign into Evernote, from a computer/ipad/phone,  and ‘voile’, there is the document I was working on.
•  When I am researching on the internet, I often come across websites that I want to save for future reference, but don’t want to take the time to analyze at the moment. So I simply use the ‘web clip’ function to save the webpage, complete with URL into Evernote. Later I can locate the document by a simple word search. Evernote allows tagging, and you can also set up folders to further aid you in document and note storage.
• I can take a picture with my cell phone, send it to Evernote, and then use it in a project. If I take a picture on my phone, I can tag it, and then organize and/or add text to it  at a later date. If I come across an article that I want to share, I can use the Evernote share feature, and upload or email any particular note. Everything stored in my folders can be searched and located by word, and that includes a photo with words visible, such as in a restaurant sign, or a pdf. I took a picture of my car license plate so I can quickly find it on my phone when I check into a hotel instead of running out to my car for the license plate number. I simply search by tag words, or the state my car is registered in.
•  I also use Evernote when I’m taking a class. The obvious reason would be to take notes, but I can also take a picture with my cell phone of a whiteboard or a chart or drawing. Then Evernote makes it searchable for me.
•  When I’m researching on a particular line for myself or someone else, I  pull together all the material I have saved, including any maps, which I also store in Evernote, and get to work.
• You register for Evernote by visiting their webpage at www.evernote.com. A video on the main page will explain how it works. You can download it on a Mac or a PC. Once you have Evernote on your computer, you can access your documents or photos from any mobile device that has internet access. Evernote allows you to upload 60 MB a month, and that is usually plenty for most people. There is a premium service that currently is around $5.00 a month, if you find you need more space.

I could go on and on about why I love and use Evernote, but I’ll stop for now. What a great age for the genealogist to live in!

Begin Your Genealogy With You

We all have stories that have been handed down to us about our origins. We may have been told that we had an ancestor who was part Indian, or one who came on the Mayflower, or fought in the Revolutionary War. Maybe Grandpa told you that his family came from came from Ireland during the Potato Famine, or maybe you that you come through a certain Scottish Clan. Sometimes a famous family line is mentioned such as a Royal line, or you have been told that your great-great grandmother was an Indian Princess. My husband’s  family has a legend that they are related to Germany’s infamous von Hindenburg, [not all stories are happy ones]. When we hear of a famous ancestor we immediately want to prove the connection [or disprove it] and we are tempted try to jump back in time, skipping over ancestors in the process. This is generally not the best way to search for your ancestors. My grandpa would say we are ”putting the cart before the horse.”

Genealogy begins with you. You should begin by putting together what you know about yourself and then you should get that information into a format that makes it possible to share what you have with others. No one will be in a better position to record your information than you are in right now. Recording your own information, and writing your own history, also gives you the opportunity to tell your story in the way you want it told.

After you get yourself recorded and documented you can begin to move back in time from the known to the unknown. You need to stop at each ancestor and  collect what you can. Sometimes there is not much information available. When this happens you will need to research the other people in their lives, like siblings or neighbors. Neighbors are often kin, but if they turn out not to be related, your research will still be helpful in showing  you know what life was like for your ancestor. By solving the little puzzles along the way, and gathering the histories, you can better understand who your ancestors really were.

As you record what you know about yourself, your parents, and grandparents, if you were lucky enough to know them, make certain to give a physical description and a bit about their health. A  WWI draft registration card for my husband’s grandfather stated that he had light blue eyes. We now know where the light blue eyes came from that my husband, son, and several grandchildren have, and more importantly, they know.  I like to record the cause of death, which can help track patterns of illnesses that may be genetically linked. This becomes more important as new helps for genetic problems become available.

Remember to reach out to family members who are still living and glean what you can from them. My biggest helps recently have been the distant cousins that I have met online. These distant relatives have had stories and photos that I had never seen. If you gather with your family during the upcoming Holidays you can start the ball rolling by telling your remembrances. You will soon find other people chiming in. You may learn some bits of information that you hadn’t known before. Make sure you pass on what you know to those who come after you by recording either on paper or video what you have learn.

At Thanksgiving I like to tell  my grandchildren about their first ancestors who came to this country, and what they sacrificed to get here. I had ancestors at the first Thanksgiving, but I also had other ancestors who came at different times and from different countries. Their sacrifices were no less real and no less important.

As you move back in time and history, you may find out that you are related to Abraham Lincoln, or came through Spanish Royalty, but you will also find that the “regular” people in your lineage are just as interesting as the “famous” ones.

Cemeteries, Families and Maiden Names

After dragging my children to and through cemeteries when they were young, while they moaned and complained, I was pleasantly surprise when, as an adult, one of my daughters gave me an unexpected phone call, from a cemetery. She told me that she  was visiting it voluntarily, and that she now believed that cemeteries were “fun”. I had tried to tell her that for years. Finally she discovered it for herself.

I have always enjoyed visiting cemeteries. I like reading the tombstones, and I especially like finding my own family names among the gravestones. Cemeteries are worthwhile for establishing relationships. Families often purchased plots that could serve as burial sites for a number of family members. One cemetery I am familiar has plots that hold 8 graves. Those people buried in the ‘family plot’ with either be family or very close friends.

A cemetery index will give a list of the people buried there, and is usually in alphabetical order, which may or not be helpful as family members could have a variety of surnames. A married daughter and her husband might be buried by her parents, and the surnames would not be the same. A grandchild might be buried by their grandparents, again with a different surname.

Cemeteries can sometimes be helpful in ascertaining the maiden name of females. A woman may have been buried next to her husband but with her maiden name. “Lydia Lyman wife of Leo Finlinson”.  Families sometimes added the names of their children on their headstones, often on the back side.

The surrounding graves may also belong to family members. Families liked the idea of having their burial plots near those plots of their family. A sibling might purchase the plot next their their brother, parents or grandparents.This is particularly true of smaller cemeteries.

When visiting a cemetery try to locate the cemetery sexton. A sexton is the person responsible for keeping track of who is buried in each plot. There are often additional records that a sexton keeps that may give you more genealogical information.

There are two excellent websites for locating graves. One is Find A Grave, http://www.findagrave.com and the other is Billion Graves, http://www.billiongraves.com. Both are free and can be very helpful.

Enjoy October, Halloween and Cemeteries.