Genealogy Insider

Frost, because searching the web or old newspapers and books brings up weather reports. It's also among the more-common names in my tree. I once got all excited because I thought my third-great-grandfather had served in the Civil War, but after some research, I had to conclude that the soldier was someone else's Thomas Frost.

Another Thomas Frost, a mail carrier, was arrested for not delivering the mail, which would be in character for my Thomas (I'll have to tell you more about him sometime). But I'm pretty sure that's a different guy, too.

Thoss, because newspaper and digitized book searches result in a flood of matches with the word "those," and Google tries to give me results for the name "Thomas."
Koop is very common. Also this family was huge and repeated first names, making it difficult to determine whether and how I'm related to a given Koop.

On the other hand, several surnames make my genealogy research a little easier: Ladenkotter is unusual enough that just about every record I've found with it is for a relative (this post has a picture of the tree I sketched just from FamilySearch's German birth and marriage records for Ladenkotters). Depenbrock and Birkmeyer are distinctive, not too common, and not easily mistaken for other words by search engines.

Our next webinar, Surname Genealogy Research Strategies, will help you tackle tricky surname issues, such as misspellings, variants, common last names and names that are words. You'll also learn how to take advantage of the benefits of unusual names.

The hour-long webinar with Family Tree Magazine contributing editor Nancy Henrickson is Thursday, Jan. 21, at 7 p.m. Eastern. Get your questions ready, because you'll have a chance to ask them.

Find out more about our Surname Genealogy Research Strategies webinar in ShopFamilyTree.com.

Webinars

Wednesday, January 13, 2016 10:41:41 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

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"Finding Your Roots" Traces Irish Ancestry
Posted by Diane

Last night’s “Finding Your Roots With Henry Louis Gates Jr.” was all about Irish roots and the family trees of journalist Soledad O’Brien, "The O'Reilly Factor" host Bill O’Reilly and comedian/television host Bill Maher.

Gates noted that finding family origins in Ireland is difficult because the main resources for the 19th century are parish and county records—and to find those, you need a specific place of origin. (Which, I'll ~~whine~~ add, also can be hard to find—my Norris third-great-grandparents may or may not have come from somewhere in County Cork.)

Psst! Our upcoming Trace Your Irish Immigrant Ancestors webinar can help! See the end of this post for info.

Yet for each guest, the show’s researchers were able to find Irish records for ancestors in at least one family line:

O’Brien’s father’s family migrated to Australia in the 1800s, where her great-grandparents started a flour mill. Their Toowoomba, Queensland, marriage record gave their Irish birthplaces and parents’ names. In County Clare, researchers found O'Brien's great-great-grandfather, a tenant farmer, in Griffith’s Primary Valuation of Ireland (a property tax survey carried out between 1848 and 1864—here's how to search it.) They hit a dead end with the other line in County Cork.

O’Reilly had heard that his Irish great-grandparents were from County Cavan. Gates said that this clue led to a document revealing the ancestral hometown. Although I know it’s impossible for TV shows to share every detail, I was disappointed we didn't get to see more on how researchers got from the county to a specific place. (See the above lament about my third-great-grandparents.)

Maher had no idea where in Ireland his ancestors came from. Researchers didn’t get anywhere with the Maher line. But for his father’s mother’s family, which landed in America before 1850 (his ancestors appeared in the 1850 US census in New York), an 1855 New York Emigrant Savings Bank record pointed to a place of origin in "Kilory" parish, County Kerry.

There's no Kilory parish in Kerry. But a town called Killury yielded a baptismal record for Maher's great-great-grandfather. “Often,” Gates says, “this is the only sign that a human being passed through: the fact that they were baptized and got married and died.”

Do you, like me, want more of the nitty-gritty details on how to discover records about your Irish ancestors? We have some guides and classes for you:

Trace Your Irish Immigrant Ancestors webinar with Donna Moughty, Thursday, Jan. 28 at 7 p.m. Eastern
Irish Research 101 Family Tree University online course (designed to help you research Irish immigrants for a place of origin in Ireland)
Irish Research 201 Family Tree University online course (designed to help you research your ancestors in records of Ireland)
Irish Genealogy videos and downloads in ShopFamilyTree.com

Updated: You can watch the full "The Irish Factor" episode on the "Finding Your Roots" website. Watch live on Tuesdays at 8 Eastern on PBS.

UK and Irish roots

Wednesday, January 13, 2016 9:49:30 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

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Tuesday, January 12, 2016

4 Steps to Begin Researching Your Eastern European Immigrant Ancestors
Posted by Diane

Most genealogists at some point need to trace an immigrant ancestor back to his or her place of origin. But how do you get started? Guest writer and author of The Family Tree Polish, Czech and Slovak Genealogy Guide Lisa Alzo shares four steps for beginning your search.

When researching Polish, Czech, or Slovak genealogy, you might be tempted to throw yourself into research and as soon as possible find the ancestor who braved the New World. But good research takes more time and attention than just jumping into records to find your immigrant ancestor. Rather, you’ll need a research plan to make sure you’re covering all your bases. Here are four steps to get started:

Take stock of what you already know about your ancestors. Look through family documents, interview relatives and—perhaps most importantly—write it all down. This will help you establish where you are in your research and identify where you need to go.
Establish the date of your immigrant ancestor’s arrival. This date serves as a benchmark moment in a person’s life. All records from before this date will be in the old country, while all records from after will be in the United States or Canada. Note that some “birds of passage” ancestors may have traveled the Atlantic multiple times before settling down. You can often use clues in US census records to help pinpoint the date of arrival. For example, the 1930 US census lists the immigration year for my Slovak grandfather, John Alzo, as 1910. A search of the Ellis Island Foundation (which requires free registration to search), turns up his passenger record. According to that, John arrived on 29 October 1910 on the ship Kaiserin Auguste Victoria. I can also view the entry on ship’s manifest page. While his surname is spelled slightly different there (Alzio), I also get another valuable clue: his original name, Janos, which is Hungarian for “John.” (Slovakia was under Hungarian rule until 1918.)
Identify your ancestor’s original name and hometown. Scour home sources and name websites for possible spelling variations or nicknames that your ancestor might have used or other names his town might have been known by. Be sure to determine the exact name of the town or village because rather than general areas such as Prague or Krakow; your ancestor may have listed such bigger cities as a point of reference, you’ll need to be more specific to find the appropriate archival district and local church or civil offices in the old country This will help you make sure you’re searching for the right person and place.
Search websites and online databases. Record websites, genealogical societies and message boards have digitized a growing number of records that can be searched online. Check large sites such as Ancestry.com and FamilySearch.org as well as small, volunteer-generated databases.

Once you get across the ocean, you’ll have to take additional steps, such as: learning where the town or village is located today; doing onsite research in or writing to archives, churches, or registrars; hiring a professional researcher; and seeking out fellow genealogists researching similar areas. And of course, researching each individual ancestor may require you to adjust your research process.

Learn more tips and strategies for searching for your Polish, Czech or Slovak immigrant ancestors, by ordering your copy of The Family Tree Polish, Czech and Slovak Genealogy Guide today.

Czech roots | immigration records | Polish roots | Slovak roots

Tuesday, January 12, 2016 1:25:28 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

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Wednesday, January 06, 2016

"Finding Your Roots" Season Premiere Focuses on Enslaved Ancestors
Posted by Diane

Did you see the season premiere of "Finding Your Roots" last night on PBS? What did you think?

The episode focused on the role of slavery in the family trees of Donna Brazile, a Democratic political strategist (above, left); Kara Walker, an artist whose sometimes-provocative work centers on slavery and African-American identity (right); and Ty Burrell, an actor best known as Phil Dunphy on the show "Modern Family" (center).

Burrell recalls a family story about having black roots, and the show's researchers did find out that his enslaved fourth-great-grandmother was raped at age 13 by her 33-year-old slaveowner, Dudley Mask. Her child Nellie, Burrell's third-great grandmother, carried the surname of her father. The story was in a family history written by Mask descendants, and DNA testing proved Burrell's relationship to the family.

Brazile learned the origin of her surname: Researchers linked her ancestor Della Braswell, born in 1843, to a slaveowning family of the same name. That family descended from Robert Bracewell, who was born in England in 1611 and immigrated to the American Colonies.

Kara Walker had family rumors of white ancestry. The average African-American is nearly a quarter European, Gates said on the show. Walker's great-grandfather James Thorpe, born in 1881 in Aiken, SC, had a black mother and a white father—who in 1900 resided with his white family a few blocks from James and his mother. Records suggested that the father helped his son financially.

In each family tree, researchers identified slaveowners by locating the former slave's place of residence, then searching the census for white families with the same surname in the same county. This strategy is based on the fact that many (but not all) slaves took the surname of the most recent slaveowner, and after slavery, often (but not always) settled near their former homes.

Researching the white families' probate records (which document the transfer of property when a slaveowner has died) or 1860 slave schedule can provide confirmation it's the right owner. You can read more about how to follow this method of researching enslave ancestors in our Slave Ancestors Research Guide.

I also find it fascinating how families ended up where they did. Burrell grew up in a small town in Oregon, where Nellie Mask's daughter Susannah Weeks applied for land under the Homestead Act of 1862. Brazile's great-great-grandfather was born into slavery in Louisiana and died there at age 92, alone and impoverished, in the 1930s. Brazile was raised in Jefferson Parish, La.

You can watch the full "Finding Your Roots" episode on the show's website. It airs Tuesdays at 8 pm Eastern on PBS.

African-American roots | Genealogy TV

Wednesday, January 06, 2016 12:18:35 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

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Thursday, December 31, 2015

What's Wrong With This Record?
Posted by Diane

We at Family Tree Magazine are always urging genealogists to find their ancestors' original records, rather than relying on an index or on what another family tree says.

Even original records can contain mistakes, though. For example:

Looking at the birth and death dates on this 1918 death certificate, you might think Alex died at about 6 weeks old. Those are the birth and death dates shown in search results, too, which originally caused me to scroll past this record.

But when you view the record, you notice that Alex was married and employed as a conductor. Which makes sense for someone whose age is 28 years, 1 month and 15 days.

Looks like the person who filled out this death certificate in 1918 accidentally wrote 1918 for the birth year, instead of 1890. (I used this genealogy birth date calculator to figure the right year). He probably was writing an unusually large number of death certificates due to the Cincinnati area's ongoing flu epidemic.

It's still important to locate the original record whenever possible, but also be sure to examine the entire record for consistency and use other records naming the person to confirm what you find.

Research Tips

Thursday, December 31, 2015 11:13:15 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

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Free in January: Millions of Vital Records on AmericanAncestors.org!
Posted by Diane

Happy New Year! The New England Historic Genealogical Society is offering free access to three important vital records databases on its AmericanAncestors.org website for the entire month of January 2016. If you have family in NewEngland, you'll want to take advantage. Free databases include:

Massachusetts Vital Records, 1841-1910: Each index entry includes the person’s first and last name, the town or city where the event occurred, the year, volume number, and page number.
Vermont Births, Marriages and Deaths to 2008: The collection includes more than 1.5 million birth records, more than 1.8 million marriage records, and more than 1 million death records.
New Hampshire Births to 1901, Deaths and Marriages to 1937: This database includes records of more than 475,000 births, more than 1 million marriages, and more than 915,000 deaths.

You'll need a free guest user account to access the free databases (I just learned a free guest account also entitles you to free access to every new database for the first 30 days after NEHGS adds it to the site). Click here to get started.

Here's another help for New England ancestry: The New England Genealogy Value Pack at ShopFamilyTree.com is loaded with expert webinars, easy-to-use State Research Guides, and more to help you discover your family history in Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut and Rhode Island.

Free Databases | Vital Records

Thursday, December 31, 2015 9:56:14 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

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Tuesday, December 15, 2015

Great Gifts for the Genealogist on Your Christmas List
Posted by Diane

Buying a holiday gift for someone who's into genealogy and family history? (And it's totally, 100 percent acceptable if the person you have in mind is yourself.)

Here's a list of gifts that I and the other genealogists I know would love to find under the tree. If you're ordering from ShopFamilyTree.com, take shipping deadlines (at the bottom of this post) into account, or choose one of our many downloadable genealogy guides, cheat sheets or videos.

Family Tree Magazine gift subscription

The Family Tree Historical Maps Book or Family Tree Historical Maps Book: Europe: These beautiful compilations of old maps are perfect for a genealogist or someone who loves historical maps.

A membership to the person's local genealogical society. Search online for the town or county and genealogical society.

A Genealogy Cheat Sheet or two: These quick-reference downloads are great if you're worried about your gift arriving in time for Christmas. You could download the cheat sheet and send the PDF to your recipient, print out the cheat sheet to give, or both. Cheat Sheets are listed here—they cover topics such as German Genealogy, Obituary Research, Genetic Genealogy and Source Citation.

The Flip-pal Mobile Scanner, which you could give with the Flip-pal Deluxe Carry Case: This light, portable scanner is easy to take to the library or a relative's house to scan pictures or old book pages. Update: Now is the perfect time to get this scanner! You can use code 10FLIP in ShopFamilyTree.com to save $10! The code expires on Wednesday, Dec. 23.

A subscription to a genealogy website, such as Ancestry.com, MyHeritage or Findmypast.com.

A DNA test from one of the above subscription sites or from Family Tree DNA.

Help and company while scanning old photos and documents, traipsing through a cemetery or looking up local records at the library. This might not sound like much, but many genealogists would give anything to have a loved one express interest in his or her research.

Help finding free genealogical records in the form of the Unofficial Guide to FamilySearch.org.

For the person who already subscribes to Ancestry.com, help him or her make the most of the site's historical records databases with the Unofficial Guide to Ancestry.com or the Get Started With Ancestry.com Kit (which includes a signed copy of the book).

Can't decide or out of time? Let your recipient choose his or her own gift with a ShopFamilyTree.com online gift card for $15, $25, $50 or $100.

Some important dates for ordering ShopFamilyTree.com books and other physical items:

Wednesday, Dec. 16: last day to order in-stock items to arrive before Christmas with standard or ground shipping (orders over $25 include free standard shipping in the lower 48 US states)
Friday, Dec. 18: last day to order in-stock items to arrive before Christmas with 2-day shipping
Tuesday, Dec. 22: last day to order in-stock items to arrive before Christmas with overnight shipping

ShopFamilyTree.com Sales

Tuesday, December 15, 2015 12:35:41 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

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Friday, December 11, 2015

MyHeritage Launches New, Free Collection of Old Books
Posted by Diane

Genealogy website MyHeritage launched a Compilation of Published Sources collection, containing 150,000 digitized, keyword-searchable genealogy and history books published over the past four centuries. Even better, you can search the collection and view your search results for free.

Books include city directories, government publications, periodicals, association newsletters and others.

I initially thought they might be from the FamilySearch Books digitized collection, but that's not the case. "The collection does not come from FamilySearch, Mocavo or any other," MyHeritage Chief Genealogist Daniel Horowitz said when I asked.

Instead, the collection is sourced from various published texts that are copyright-free. A team of curators examines each digitized book for relevance to family history research, and enhances its metadata if they decide to include it.

Here's a search I ran for my Depenbrock family, who lived in and around Cincinnati.

It's a relatively unusual last name, so I didn't add a first name. If you're looking for someone with a more-common name, you could search for a first and last name, plus a keyword such as a town, street or employer.

Because a book mentioning an Ohio ancestor might have been published elsewhere, I left the Publication Place "Match Optional." That means matches in books published in Ohio will be ranked higher in my search results than books published elsewhere.

Results show the publication title and year, and the portion of text containing the name. Click on a title to see the page. Looks like my third-great-uncle George Depenbrock was a justice of the peace in Colerain Township, serving a term that expired Jan. 3, 1907:

Below the image is a detailed description of the publication—in this case, Ohio: The Federal, State, County Officers and Departmental Information, 1903, vol. 1903-05, published in 1911 by the Ohio Secretary of State in Columbus, and contributed by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Note that the search does pick up first and last names that both appear on a page, but don't necessarily belong to the same person, as in this result for my search for Edward Norris:

If you click the full screen button above the page image, you'll get a Download icon you can click to download the record to your computer. You also can register for a free or a premium MyHeritage account and create a family tree, then attach the record to that person in your tree.

Read more about the Compilation of Published Sources Collection on the MyHeritage blog.

Learn how to master MyHeritage with help from our Make MyHeritage Work for You Webinar, available now in ShopFamilyTree.com.

MyHeritage | Research Tips

Friday, December 11, 2015 10:31:23 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

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Wednesday, December 09, 2015

Ancestry.com Announces End of Family Tree Maker Software
Posted by Diane

You've probably heard by now: Ancestry.com announced on Tuesday that it will discontinue its Family Tree Maker software. (I feel compelled to mention here that Family Tree Magazine isn't related to the software or to Ancestry.com.)

In a post on the Ancestry blog, Senior Vice President of Product Management Kendall Hulet said Family Tree Maker will no longer be sold as of Dec. 31, 2015. Ancestry.com will continue to provide support and fix bugs "at least through Jan. 1, 2017." During that time, Tree Sync, the feature that syncs your Ancestry Member Tree with Family Tree Maker software, will continue to work.

Why retire a popular program? "We’ve taken a hard look at the declining desktop software market and the impact this has on being able to continue to provide product enhancements and support that our users need," Hulet writes.

Software in other fields is moving to versions available only via the cloud by subscription, such as Adobe Photoshop and InDesign software. Advantages include the ability to automatically roll out updates, access from multiple devices, and online data storage.

But switching can be a pain, especially when you're using older desktop software that's not compatible with the cloud version, and you need to find new tools or create a new workflow, and you feel forced to keep information in the cloud, where you have less control over it (remember the Ancestry.com DDoS attack last year, when the site was inaccessible for several days?).

My guess is that Ancestry.com will try to move Family Tree Maker users to Ancestry Member Trees—hopefully, by enhancing the online trees (at least for subscribers) with features such as reporting and easier source citation.

If you do go with a member tree (or you already have one), make sure you download the records you find to your computer. Otherwise, if ever you let your subscription lapse, you'll lose access to them.

If you want to stick with a desktop application, look for offers from other software companies who want to acquire former Family Tree Maker customers.

Update: Several other genealogy software companies have set up special pricing and information for Family Tree Maker users looking to find another desktop program. Here are links to those we know of:

The Software Toolkit on FamilyTreeMagazine.com can help you scout out your options.

Lisa Louise Cooke has helpful perspective and user tips for dealing with the end of Family Tree Maker on the Genealogy Gems blog.

Update: Here's another helpful post from Genea-Musings, on short-term and long-term options for what to do with your data.

You can read Kendall Hulet's announcement on the Ancestry blog here.

Ancestry.com | Genealogy Software

Wednesday, December 09, 2015 9:20:38 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

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Tuesday, December 08, 2015

The Terrible Summer of 1897: Finding My Third-Great-Grandmother
Posted by Diane

I've written before about my third-great-grandmother Elizabeth Teipel, who married Louis E. Thoss in 1876 and died sometime between the birth of their son, Henry, in 1894 and the 1900 census.

Our Conquer Your Research Obstacles Digital Pack is designed to help you with genealogy stumpers like mine—finding out when, where and why Elizabeth died.

A few months ago, my hope for an answer was revived by a mention of Elizabeth's death in her mother's will in connection with 1895 loan to Elizabeth's husband.

Ancestry.com has digitized Kentucky death records covering this period. I searched for Elizabeth T*oss born 1857 in Ohio, with a death in 1895 plus or minus two years in Kentucky. I swear I've run this search before. I must've done something different and wonderful this time, or my mind was more open. When I narrowed the results to birth, marriage and death records, I saw:

and:

Was Elisabeth Toss, who died Aug. 29, 1897, the same Elisibeth whose son Bernard died just over a month earlier, on July 23? And was she my Elizabeth?

Examining Bernard's death certificate, I noted he died at age 10 from "overheating while convalescing from ... " followed by what looks like the beginning of "diphtheria" but runs off the page.

Elisabeth died at age 40—the right age to my relative—of "collapse," with the predisposing condition "birth of hydrocephalus and rupture of ..." which also runs off the page (as if the documents were trimmed during binding). The spaces for her parents' names were blank.

Naturally.

But most interesting was the records' identical place of death: "1230 Garrad Ave." (I guessed this was Garrard, a local street.) Not an address I had for my third-great-grandparents. Nor did I have a Bernard as their son, a possible case of a child whose short life goes undiscovered due to the missing 1890 census.

Things were looking promising, but I had to do some work to find out whether Bernard and Elisabeth were my relatives:

Look for a record with the Thosses at 1230 Garrard in 1897. It wasn't hard to do in Ancestry.com's city directories collection, although I had to find the 1897 directory and browse rather than search. They can't have lived there very long, as directories for surrounding years list the family elsewhere. It's hard to keep the Elizabeths, Edwards and Louises straight, so I've labeled them:

Search for Bernard's baptismal record in the Kenton County Public Library's (KCPL) GenKY index. I ordered a copy of the record for "Thoss, Bern. Lud." in volume 1887. The Latin record from St. Joseph Church showed Bernard's birth on "die 26 Augusti" to "Ludovici Thoss et Elisabeth Teipel."

Look for newspaper obituaries or death announcements for Bernard and Elisabeth. There was nothing in the largest local paper, the Cincinnati Enquirer. I'd searched a few times for Thoss KCPL's Northern Kentucky newspaper index, which includes the Kentucky Post, but this time I typed Toss. I ordered those records, too.

I've also looked for a death and baptismal record for the infant born with hydrocephaly referenced in Elizabeth's cause of death, who would have been the fourth child Elizabeth and Louis E. lost, but I didn't find anything. That must have been an awful summer.

My takeaways from this process?

Search with alternate name spellings and wildcards.
Don't rely on the census alone to provide family members' names.
When one record lacks information that will answer your question, look for another.
Look for another record even when one does supply the information you need.
Don't give up your search for answers (but setting it aside for awhile may help).

Conquer Your Research Obstacles puts together expert books and video lessons to help you solve your genealogy problems. Visit ShopFamilyTree.com to see what's in this brick wall-busting toolkit.

Research Tips

Tuesday, December 08, 2015 10:48:20 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

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