• FamilySearch has added another 30 million new, free records to its historical records website—16 million indexed names and 14 million browsable images. Highlighting the additions are new databases from Canada, England, Germany, Italy, Micronesia, Slovenia and the United States. The new records also include millions of US births, marriages and deaths, and over 9 million church records from Sweden. See the list of new collections here.

FamilySearch also has launched a free mobile app for the iPad, iPhone and Droid that lets volunteers index digitized records. You can find it by searching for FamilySearch Indexing in the Apple App Store or Android Marketplace.

• Ancestry.com is giving away not one but three grand prize $10,000 family history trips in its Ultimate Family History Journey Sweepstakes. And 20 first prize winners will get an Ancestry.com World Explorer membership. You can enter daily through May 18.

• Library and Archives Canada is starting a monthly podcast series called Discover Library and Archives Canada (LAC): Your History, Your Documentary Heritage. Episodes will introduce you to LAC services and archivists. You can subscribe to episodes using RSS or iTunes, or tune in on the LAC website.

• The Civil War Trust is holding its 16th annual battlefield cleanup called Park Day on Saturday, March 31. More than 100 sites in 25 states are taking part, with activities ranging from trash removal to trail building. Click here to find a site near you and learn about specific projects.

• The National Genealogical Society has a new online events calendar where organizations that have a valid subscription to NGS can list their events (and, of course, you can look for events to attend). The calendar isn't searchable, but you can use your browser's Find function (control-F or command-F) to look for a particular topic, place, date or speaker.

• Genealogists have formed the Family History Information Standards Organisation (FHISO), to develop standards for the digital representation and sharing of family history informaiton. The goal is to make data exchanging work with different genealogy websites, software, applications and other services. FHISO will sponsor the Build a BetterGEDCOM Project, a grassroots effort started last year.

Friday, February 10, 2012 3:00:43 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

• Mocavo Rolls Out New Content, Features
• GeneTree Introduces New Test, Consultation Service
• 1940 Census Community Project Update
• Brightsolid to Launch 1st Pay-As-You-Go Census Records Site
• Ancestry.com to Live-Stream its RootsTech Presentations
• RootsTech: Sessions You Can Watch From Home
• Four Genealogists to Compete for Top Honors at RootsTech

Next year, RootsTech will be a little later in the year, March 21-23, in Salt Lake City.

Thursday, February 09, 2012 9:10:04 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

The 1940 census images will be hosted on Archives.gov, the National Archives website. Archives has been awarded the digitization contract for these images.

Indexing will begin as soon as the records are released online April 2. Each page will be indexed twice, with a third arbitrator to resolve difference in the two indexes.

FamilySearch is making upgrades and doing "test loading" to make sure its site can handle the extra traffic the indexing project will generate.

Chris Van Der Kuyl, CEO of brightsolid (the British parent company of FindMyPast.com), described the 1940 project as "one of the most exciting crowdsourced projects on the internet." A video commercial to be released on YouTube will bill it as a "national service project" and genealogical societies will receive incentives for galvanizing members to index.

Part of the funding provided by brightsolid and Archives.com will be dedicated to producing other free digital collections. The idea is that money that might otherwise be used to build competing census collections will now go to creating access to material that's not already online. It's "putting money into the community that would otherwise be duplicated," says John Spottiswood of Archives.com.

To volunteer for 1940 census indexing, sign up on the 1940 Community Census Project website.

We're joining in the RootsTech excitement with conference specials for everyone! You'll get 20 percent off select online genealogy titles at ShopFamilyTree.com.

Thursday, February 02, 2012 3:40:25 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

Digital book operations manager Dennis Meldrum says approximately 17,700 books were moved, and a backlog of 13,300 books—which wouldn't fit onto the BYU site—were added.

That means you can now search upwards of 31,000 family history books at FamilySearch.org. Another 4,500 will be added this week, with 25,000 more to come during 2012.

You can keyword-search the entire text of the books and download an entire book (instead of one page at a time, as was the case on the BYU site). "We are working to improve the download experience over the coming weeks," Meldrum says.

We're joining in the RootsTech excitement with conference specials for everyone! You'll get 20 percent off select online genealogy titles at ShopFamilyTree.com.

Thursday, February 02, 2012 9:07:14 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [2]

Ancestry.com also will live-stream several presentations by its staff. See the list on Ancestry.com’s Facebook page.

My top picks:

• The Inner-workings of the Ancestry.com Search Engine, Friday, Feb. 3, 3 pm MST
  
  
• 5 New Things to Try at Ancestry.com, Friday, Feb. 3, 1:45 pm MST
  
  
• Who Do You Think You Are? Live Q&A: How Do Our Experts Search?
  Saturday, Feb. 4, 2:30pm MST (This is the day after NBC's season 3 premiere of "Who Do You Think You Are?" so you may get some insider details on the Martin Sheen episode.)

We're joining in the RootsTech excitement with conference specials for everyone! You'll get 20 percent off select online genealogy titles at ShopFamilyTree.com.

Tuesday, January 31, 2012 12:56:02 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

I checked over the RootsTech session schedule for each day (look in the left column for the room number and click each presentation title for details about it), and found great presentations going on all day in this room 155. My top picks are:

• Effective Database Search Tactics by Kory Meyerink, Feb. 2, 1:45-2:45 p.m.
  
  
• Twitter: It’s Not Just “What I Had For Breakfast” Anymore by Thomas MacEntee, Feb. 2, 3-4 p.m.
  
  
• Genealogists “Go Mobile” by Sandra Crowley, Feb. 3, 1:45-2:45 p.m.
  
  
• Genealogy Podcasts and Blogs 101 by Lisa Louise Cooke, Feb. 4 9:45-10:45 a.m.
  
  
• Privacy in a Collaborative Environment by Noah Tutak, CEO of Geni.com, Feb. 4, 1:45-2:45 p.m.
  

Remember, all session times are in Mountain Time. Details about how to access the live-stream sessions are still to come—watch the RootsTech website and this blog.

Update: All you need to do to watch the live presentations is go to the RootsTech home page.

If you’re going to be at RootsTech (like our own Allison Dolan and Kerry Scott), you can make sure you check off your conference to-do and to-see lists with the RootsTech2012 app for iPad, iPhone and Android.

You can get them from the Apple App Store or the Android Marketplace and use them to keep track of your scedule, see venue maps, get conference news and more. Randy Seaver goes into detail about the app at his Genea-Musings blog.

RootsTech, organized by FamilySearch, takes place Feb. 2-4 in Salt Lake City.

Wednesday, January 25, 2012 11:18:32 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

Feb. 2, Brightsolid CEO Chris van der Kuyl will address a Brightsolid-sponsored RootsTech lunch with a talk on, “Why Everyone Deserves Their Own Episode of ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ and How Brightsolid Will Help You Get There.”

Hmmm ...

Remember that Brightsolid also has joined the 1940 Census Community Project, along with FamilySearch and Archives.com, which turned some American genealogists' heads.

Of course, we'll let you know what the big news is when it's announced.

The RootsTech conference, organized by FamilySearch, focuses on technology in genealogy. It takes place Feb. 2-4 in Salt Lake City.

Tuesday, January 24, 2012 3:03:53 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [1]

• All 397 US national parks will offer free admission Jan. 14-16 to commemorate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. You can visit the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site in Georgia, the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail in Alabama, or the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC—just a few of the many national parks that have ties to Dr. King or the Civil Rights movement. 

Use the directory at NPS.gov to find a park.

• Library and Archives Canada has added digitized images of Upper Canada land petitions (357,831 new images in all) to its website. First search the index here (use the search link at the left; the one on the bottom didn't work for me) to find the microfilm number you need, then use the “microform digitization” research tool to you can browse the image page by page.

• FamilySearch has added 119 million new, free records to the record search at FamilySearch.org (that includes about 64 million indexed names and 55 million browsable images). They come from more than 30 countries including Australia, the Czech Republic, Italy, Portugal, Sweden and the United States. See the full list of new and updated databases here.

Friday, January 13, 2012 4:54:31 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

• Genealogy organizations Archives.com, FamilySearch, and Findmypast.co.uk, will work together on the 1940 US Census Community Project. The ambitious project aims to engage online volunteers to publish a name index to the 1940 US Census soon after the National Archives and Record Administration (NARA) releases the records to the public April 2, 2012. All three partners will provide access to the free index on their websites. You can sign up to be an indexer at www.the1940census.com.

Last month, NARA selected Archives.com to host the digitized census records. Ancestry.com also has announced it'll offer a 1940 census index and the record images free, at least through 2013.

• FamilySearch's RootsTech conference, taking place Feb. 2-4 in Salt Lake City, is open for registration. The early bird rate of $149 is valid through Jan. 13, 2012.

• The National Genealogical Society 2012 Conference, taking place May 8-12 in Cincinnati, also is open for registration. Early bird prices ($175 for NGS members and $210 for nonmembers, plus extra if you want a printed syllabus) are good through March 20.

• I saw on Dear Myrtle's blog that genealogy expert and Evidence! author Elizabeth Shown Mills now has a website where she explains her research methodologies. You can visit Mills' Historic Pathways site here.

Friday, December 16, 2011 3:26:15 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [3]

• Ancestry.com has upgraded its mobile app for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. New features include 99-cent in-app purchasing of individual records for non-Ancestry.com subscribers (such as World War I draft cards, census records, birth and death certificates, and school yearbook photos), the "shaky leaf" hints indicating a possible record match to somone in a user's family tree, and easier updating of family trees with information from historical records.
  

The app, which boasts more than 1.7 million downloads to date, is free from the Apple App Store.

• FamilySearch.org has added more than 18 million records from Canada, Czech Republic, Germany, Haiti, Hungary, Italy, Mexico, Peru, South Africa, Spain, the United States and Venezuela. US records include a Texas death index (provided by Ancestry.com); naturalization index cards from Louisiana, Texas and Wisconsin; county records from several states and more.

You can view all the new and updated collections and click to each one here.

• SavingOurs.com is a new volunteer group dedicated to saving historical newspapers and other documents. The organization will work with local volunteers, companies and governments to digitize these documents and ensure they're available free to the public. Visit SavingOurs.com to learn more or volunteer.

• Library and Archives Canada (LAC) has started a blog as a four-month-long pilot project. It'll offer tips and tools on LAC's records and navigating its website. Posts so far cover war diaries, Royal Canadian Navy ledger sheets, the newly digitized Lord Elgin collection and more. Visit the LAC Blog here.

Friday, December 02, 2011 10:58:54 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

Researchers will be able to browse, view, and download images from the 1940 census. See NARA's full announcement here.

To kick off the partnership, Archives.com has created a web page about the launch of the 1940 Census.

You won't be able to search the census by name right away on April 2; instead, you'll need to know the enumeration district (ED) your relatives lived in and then browse the records for that district. You can find the ED if you know your ancestor's address in 1940 or in 1930.

Here's a post about an online tool that can help you determine the ED.

FamilySearch is heading up an effort to index the 1940 census records ASAP after they're released, which will let genealogists search by name.

Subscription website Ancestry.com also has announced plans to provide the 1940 census for free, at least through 2013.

Thursday, November 17, 2011 12:07:21 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [3]

Verkler will assist with the transition for several months as a consultant.

FamilySearch regularly rotates its senior leaders, according to yesterday's announcement.

Under Verkler’s decade of leadership, FamilySearch has become a genealogy industry leader in enhancing online access to genealogy records through technological innovation and partnerships with genealogy businesses, records repositories and societies. Especially notable has been the FamilySearch Indexing project, which has mobilized tens of thousands of volunteers worldwide to index digitized records, making them searchable online.

Brimhall has held positions of increasing responsibility in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which sponsors FamilySearch. Before that, he was president and CEO of the University of Colorado Hospital in Denver from 1988 until 2005.

“I am very excited to help lead the work of FamilySearch, to continue the great things that have been done and move forward in new directions as appropriate,” he says.

Wednesday, November 16, 2011 8:49:04 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [2]

FamilySearch has created a page to recruit volunteers for transcribing the 1940 census, scheduled for release April 2, 2012. (We’re just 146 days from 1940 census nirvana!) 

Unlike previous censuses, images of 1940 census records will be available free on the National Archives and Records Administration website. You won’t be able to search for an ancestor’s name right away; instead, you’ll have to browse the record by enumeration district (more on that—and figuring out your ancestor’s enumeration district—here). 

FamilySearch is coordinating a volunteer effort to index those images as soon as they’re released, so you’ll be able to search by name and click to see the record where the name appears.

If you want to help create the free, searchable 1940 census index, go here and sign up on the right side of this page.

Starting in mid-April, subscription website Ancestry.com also will begin streaming 1940 census records onto its website, where records will be free to search at least through 2013. 

Read more about the 1940 census, including what questions your ancestors had to answer, in our free article. 

Our Census Secrets CD, available from ShopFamilyTree.com, will help you find ancestors in US censuses from 1790 through 1940.

Tuesday, November 08, 2011 9:14:05 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [2]

• Subscription site Ancestry.com added 53 million new US birth, marriage and death records from 23 states dating as far back as the 1600s. 

The records come from state and local archives, county offices and newspapers.

Subscribers can search Ancestry.com's vital records collection at www.ancestry.com/vitals.

• The free FamilySearch.org added a variety of records from the California, Iowa, and Texas in the United States, as well as Canada, Chile, the Czech Republic, Guam, Hungary, Japan and Wales.
  

Go here to view the new FamilySearch records and link to each one. Remember, where you see a "0" in the Records column and a number in the "Images" column, you're looking at a collection that hasn't yet been indexed. In that case, rather than type in a name to search, you'll need to browse through the record images in that collection.

Thursday, October 27, 2011 9:25:53 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [3]

• EntertainmentWeekly.com is reporting that actors Marisa Tomei, Martin Sheen and Blair Underwood will appear on NBC’s celebrity genealogy series “Who Do You Think You Are?” in 2012. Other featured celebrities will be announced later. Read more on EntertainmentWeekly.com.

• GeneTree is having a sale on genetic genealogy tests to mark Family History Month. The Y DNA 46 marker test costs $99  and the mitochondrial DNA test costs $129 (the regular price for these tests is $179). The sale runs through Oct. 11.

• New records on FamilySearch this week include five million civil registration images from the Philippines from 1945 to 1980, plus records from Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Italy and Spain.
  

US additions include Sebastian County, Ark., births and deaths; San Mateo County, Calif. Italian cemetery records; Florida Confederate veterans and widows pension applications; Clark County, Idaho, records; Indiana marriages; North Carolina estate files; Columbia County, Ore., records; and Utah probate records. Remember that not all collections are indexed yet, so you may need to browse record images by date or place.

Go here to see details on the additions and link to each updated collection.

• This one’s for anyone who has worn or is planning to wear a wedding gown: The Wedding Gown Project is sponsoring a writing competition for stories about buying, making, fitting, wearing, storing or passing down your wedding dress. The deadline is Nov. 30, and three cash prizes will be awarded. Author and documentarian Donna Guthrie will compile the stories for a documentary in 2012. See The WeddingGownProject.com for entry details.

Friday, October 07, 2011 1:02:18 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [2]

To see all the recently updated records, click the region of interest on the FamilySearch.org home page. Next, click the blue “Last Updated” heading on the right.

The list of record collections will be resorted to show recently updated collections at the top:

For example, some recently updated collections from the United States are:

• Arkansas births, christenings, marriages and deaths
• Georgia death index
• North Carolina estate files
• Idaho: Clark County records (marriage affidavits, naturalization records, declarations of intention, deeds, patents, brands and marks, mining records, probate records and estate files)
  
• Illinois probate records
• Indiana marriages
• Ohio: Cuyahoga County probate files
• Oregon: Columbia County records (land and property, marriage, and naturalization records and indexes)
• Tennessee county marriages
• Utah probate records
• Washington state Army National Guard records
• Washington state county records

US Civil War records are also gathered onto a Civil War landing page. These include Confederate pensions ad service records for various states, Union Provost Marshal Files, Union Navy Widows' Certificates and more. To see them all listed, go to the Civil War landing page and click the “More” link beneath the “Find your ancestors in the following collections” list. 

This Civil War page also links to bios on some famous faces from the era and links to how-to information. 

Remember that not all of the collections on FamilySearch have been indexed yet. The organization’s policy is to provide researchers with online access to record images as quickly as possible, and get volunteers working on the indexes in the mean time. 

When you see a “Browse Images” link for your collection of interest (such as the Quebec notarial records, above), you’ll need to have a good idea of when and where your ancestor was living when the record was created. Then you’ll go through the record images one by one, similar to scrolling microfilm.

Thursday, September 29, 2011 9:51:20 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• JSTOR, a service providing digitized academic journals through libraries, is making articles published prior to 1923 in the United States and 1870 elsewhere free to anyone. This includes nearly 500,000 articles from more than 200 journals, about 6 percent of JSTOR’s total content. This web page has more information. You can start searching here. To just see the free stuff, make sure the “Include only content I can access” box is checked.

My search on Civil War and Missouri, for example, resulted in matches including “Reminiscences of the Civil War” by Richard Taylor in the University of Iowa’s Jan./Feb. 1878 North American Review. (Thanks to Sharon DeBartolo Carmack for the heads-up about this service.)

• The National Archives will break ground for its new Denver-area facility on Tuesday, Sept. 27. The new facility will house the archives’ Denver-area research services, including a Federal Records Center, research rooms and event space. Read more about the groundbreaking and the facility on NARA’s website. 

• New records on FamilySearch.org this week come from US states including California, Louisiana, Maine, Mississippi, New York, Oregon and Vermont, as well as Mexico, Canada, the Czech Republic and elsewhere. See the full list of additions and link to the collections here. Remember that not all of these collections are indexed, so you may need to browse. 

• The New England Historic Genealogical Society is releasing the seventh and final volume of Robert Charles Anderson’s Great Migration Series: Immigrants to New England 1634—1635. (This latest volume includes all immigrants whose surnames start with T through Y.) It’s available now at GreatMigration.org. The Great Migration series includes a total of 10 volumes; three for the years 1620 to 1633, and seven volumes for 1634 to 1635. You also can subscribe to the GreatMigration.org website to get online or quarterly newsletters.

Friday, September 23, 2011 11:25:45 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• FamilySearch released more searchable records this week, including  more than 6 million Hungarian Catholic Church records, 4 million Mexican civil registrations, 1 million new Chinese genealogies (1500 to 1900), and Quebec notarial records (1800 to 1900). US additions come from California, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Montana, New York, Washington and the Virgin Islands, plus 1942 WWII draft registrations. See the full list and link to each database here.

• Family tree site Geni introduced its $4.95-per-month Geni Plus service as a level between the free Basic and $12.95 Pro memberships. Genealogists’ frustrated feedback after changes to those memberships led to Geni Plus, intended for social genealogists who want to collaborate with other researchers. It's "designed to give these members more power to build their personal family trees while discovering some of the benefits of working with others on their family history," says CEO Noah Tutak. Features include unlimited relatives in your tree and GEDCOM exports for any profile you can view on Geni (up to 100,000 records). See Geni’s blog for more details. 

• Subscription British records site Findmypast.co.uk added a million 20th century merchant navy seamen records—the first time they’re accessible online. They list crew members of UK merchant ships from 1918 to 1941 and include photos.
  

• This from the New York History blog: If you’re planning to visit Ellis Island and see where many immigrants first entered America, you can download a $1.99 cell phone tour taking you through the immigrant experience. Read more here.
  

Friday, September 16, 2011 4:49:42 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [1]

With nearly 13 million records, this census counted an estimated 90 percent of the population. Note that citizens from the Federal District, which includes Mexico City, aren’t named.

In its announcement, Ancestry.com calls this the most comprehensive historical Mexican census available online. (FamilySearch.org, the source of Ancestry.com’s index and images, also has the 1930 Mexico census records available in its free historical records search.)

Nearly 30 million Americans—about 10 percent of the US population—can trace their families to Mexico. Other Ancestry.com collections they can use to research their roots are border crossings from Mexico to the United States (1895-1957) and parish records. The records are gathered in a Mexico collection landing page. (The 1930 Mexican census is free to search, but not all the other records in the collection are free.)

If you’re researching ancestors in Mexico, check out these resources from Family Tree Magazine:

• Spanish Genealogy Glossary (free article)
  
  
• Hispanic genealogy organizations (free article)
  
  
• Mexican Heritage Research Guide digital download from ShopFamilyTree.com 
  
  
• Finding Your Mexican Ancestors: A Beginners Guide book by George R. Ryskamp and Peggy Hill Ryskamp, also available in ShopFamilyTree.com 

Friday, September 16, 2011 11:33:22 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [3]

• FamilySearch’s Dennis Meldrum gave me a demo of the soon-to-be-launched new Family History Archives website.

The Family History Archives, now hosted on the Brigham Young university libraries site, lets you search the text of nearly 18,000 family and local history books. But the collection is outgrowing the BYU site, and a backlog of digitized books are waiting to be put online. 

The new site will launch in about a month and a half, says Meldrum, with around 45,000 books from the Family History Library and a half-dozen other libraries. You already can try out the new site in beta at FamilySearch Labs. 

The new search has one field where you enter a name, subject, author, keyword or any combination of these. You’ll download the entire book that matches your search results, then you can use a PDF viewer for finding your search terms within the book.

• If you’re researching ancestors in Sweden, you’ll want to explore a site called Lantmäteriet.se. This free site from the Swedish land registration authority (comparable to the US Bureau of Land Management General Land Office) has digitized historical maps and property records, for a total of 3 million maps and 70 million pages of text from the years 1628 to 1927.
  

I got just a quick demo of this site, but it’s one you could spend a lot of time on. You search by county, municipality and place, and get back maps and records for that place. (The advanced search lets you add more parameters, such as dates.) You’ll need the free DjVu plugin to view the maps. You can click Buy to order a download of the map.

There’s an English version of the maps search, but I found I had to use Google translation tools to read the information about the collection. 

Thursday, September 08, 2011 11:06:56 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [2]

Those include veterans applications for military headstones, records of headstones for deceased Union veterans, Confederate POW records, registers of homes for disabled soldiers, service records and more.

Also newly added are notarial records from Canada, church records and civil registrations from Mexico, and a variety of records from England.

You’ll find a chart here listing the new collections and linking to the individual databases. Note that not all of the collections are searchable. Indexes haven’t been completed for some, such as U.S., Records of Confederate Prisoners of War, 1861–1865. In that case, you’ll need to browse collections by date or place.

Wednesday, September 07, 2011 10:04:00 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [6]

• The Family History Library (FHL) is starting to roll out online microfilm ordering in the United States and Canada, meaning you soon won’t have to visit a FamilySearch Center to order microfilmed records (you’ll still need to go in person to view them, of course). First, you’ll find the film you need in the FHL online catalog, then you'll order it here. California, the Pacific Northwest and other points West were first to get online ordering, with the rest of us still to be added in phases.

• UK subscription genealogy site FindMyPast.co.uk is adding a million 20th-century merchant navy seamen records (Britain’s Merchant Navy Day, is Saturday, Sept. 3). The records name crew members of UK merchant ships from 1918 to 1941, offer physical descriptions and include photos.

• Genetic genealogy company FamilyTreeDNA discovered through its Family Finder test that NFL players Xavier Omon of the San Francisco 49ers and Ogemdi Nwagbuo of the San Diego Chargers are half brothers. You can read more about their story on ESPN.com. 

• As an update to our November 2011 online newspapers article, which highlighted the subscription website Paper of Record in addition to other online sources, Rick Crume gave me a heads up about some improvements to the site: First, highlighting of your search terms has been restored on the digitized newspaper pages in your search results. Second, you now have the option to search a broader date range than five years within a single title.

Friday, September 02, 2011 10:34:42 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [11]

If you missed it, you can order the Virtual Conference video classes for on-demand viewing at ShopFamilyTree.com. 

One of my favorite parts of the conference was the live chats, which buzzed with research tips, questions and inspiration. For example, Thomas’ Saturday evening chat, Pick Thomas’ Brain: Ideas on Creative Approaches to Genealogy, was chock full of advice.

I’ve pulled some comments from the chat to share here (I made some edits and added topic headings so the Q&A is easier to follow).

On brick walls:

• Thomas: First, very often I think what we call a brick wall isn't really a brick wall . . .
  
  
• Joan: What do you mean by a brick wall not being a brick wall?

• Thomas: To me it is a matter of perhaps not having all the right tools at one's disposal. Or it could be a matter of going back and rechecking spelling, surname variations, etc.

• Allison FTU: A true brick wall is when you have exhausted every possible avenue for research and there is no more information

In many cases, what we refer to as a brick wall is really just an exhaustion of ideas

• Patricia: A Brick Wall to me is having a timeline just end with no leads. Just solved 2 of my brick walls by reviewing current finds in detail as if I was looking at the finds for the first time.

On ancestral adoptions:

• Terri: My brick wall is my grandmother, born and adopted in 1900. I thought her SS application might help, but she apparently fibbed on the application! Gave her adopted info as official
  
  
• Kerry: I've used church records to find babies who were baptized prior to their adoption. Not all were adopted at birth.
  
  
• Allison FTU: If you know what area she was born in, you might try guardianship records.
  
  
• Terri: Are guardianship records civil records, private institutions, what?
  
  
• Allison FTU: Guardianships are typically court records. So you do need to know which county to look in.

On going beyond well-known resources:

• Carol: I have a line that went to Nebraska. FamilySearch and Ancestry seem to have nothing and GenealogyBank only later years. Any links for Nebraska?

• Thomas: What time period? Were they Homesteaders?

• Carol P: Late 1800s to early 1900s

• Thomas: Last night I did a GeneaBloggers Radio episode mostly on Nebraska. 

• Allison-FTU: Also take a look at Nebraska State Historical Society, one of FTM's "best state websites"

On ordering ancestors’ vital records:

• Mary Ann: When I look for birth, marriage, and death certificates in the US, I am taken to sites where it is free for 7 days and then you pay. Is there a good site to find these certificates?

• Thomas: I personally don't recommend those sites. In most cases, if you know how to order them directly from the state or county, it is better and cheaper. What do others think?

• Mary Ann: Yet, the states’ [vital records office websites] are sending me to those sites.

• Kerry: I totally agree; I'd much rather order directly from the source.

• Terri: I have seen some states that use a private online payment service for their records, but there's generally an option to pay the vital records office directly.

• Thomas: I want to share an odd tool from the Centers for Disease Control of all places—Where to Write for Vital Records! 

• Allison FTU: It's also available to download as a PDF 

• Kerry: Some states (Minnesota, for instance) house records at the state historical society, and you can order (and in some cases, view) them online.

• Thomas: Did you know that some societies have a vital records service where they will, for a much cheaper fee, pull the records? Illinois State Genealogical Society does this for Illinois Death Certificates.

• Mary Kay: Or borrowing microfilm from your local FHC.

On hard-to-trace immigrants and F.A.N. clubs:

• Christine: Ancestor arrived in 1750 from Rotterdam, based on PA baptism records which are German Lutheran—don't have a clue where to start across the pond. Strategy much appreciated....

how to get from point of departure (Rotterdam) in 1750 to where he might have lived...

• Thomas: Have you tried the F.A.N. club approach? Friends, Associates, Neighbors?

Elizabeth Shown Mills uses that F.A.N. club term all the time.

Last night on my radio show, Gail Blankenau from Omaha who specializes in German Parish Records used the term "10 up and 10 down" meaning always go up 10 lines from what you've found and down 10 lines as well.

• Allison-FTU: Christine, have you heard of something called manumission records?

In Germany during the time period, emigrants had to pay a tax to be released from serfdom. The resulting records are manumissions

There's an often-referenced index to German manumissions by Werner Hacker ... let me see if i can find a link

• Christine: Would they have been microfilmed by the Family History Library?

• Allison-FTU: Yes! Check out this page on the FamilySearch wiki for more info 

• Thomas: I just found this for Germans to America  

On online research tools:

• Thomas: Want to let you know that my entire research toolbox is on my Destination: Austin Family blog

Tuesday, August 23, 2011 9:50:10 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [6]

• The thousands of new record images at FamilySearch.org this week include testaments (wills) from Cádiz, Spain; US military records for Louisiana and Washington; and North Carolina estate files. The collections for Canada, Italy and Poland also were updated. Here’s the announcement from FamilySearch, with links to the updated collections. 

• The Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS) has a free mobile app for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. You can use it to access information on FGS news and events (such as the conference coming up Sept. 7-10, in Springfield, Ill.), FGS Radio, the Voice FGS blog, and webinars. You also can interact with other users via Facebook, Twitter and e-mail.

• By the way, tomorrow, Aug. 20 is the last day to register online for the above-mentioned FGS conference, add luncheons and dinner events to your registration, or purchase a printed syllabus.
  

Friday, August 19, 2011 11:08:38 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [17]

• Congratulations to Lisa Louise Cooke, podcaster and blogger at Genealogy Gems (and Family Tree Magazine podcast host). Appadvice.com named Lisa’s Genealogy Gems Podcast app a must-have in the Hobby category of its AppList. Appadvice.com reviewers called it “a great resource for both amateur and professional Genealogists … The interface is easy to use and the type and controls are larger, making this application ideal even for older users.”

The Genealogy Gems podcast app features streaming of the Genealogy Gems podcast, plus show notes and bonus material. It’s available for the iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad (at the iTunes store) and Android phone (in the Marketplace).

• FamilySearch added 4.3 million record images this week, nearly half of those to its Hungary Civil Registration, 1895–1980, collection (my husband is a quarter Hungarian, so this moves up his tree a few notches on my to-do list).
  

Other new records come from Austria, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Panama, and the US. Note these record images aren't yet indexed, so you'll need to browse them. See the updated collections and link to them from here.

• The California Genealogical Society and Ancestry.com are putting on an Ancestry Day Nov. 5 in San Francisco. It’ll include classes, Ancestry.com experts to answer your questions and one-on-one consultations with genealogists. The early bird price ends Oct. 5. You can register here. 

Friday, August 12, 2011 12:00:13 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [6]

FamilySearch has added new records from the United States and seven other countries—Canada, Czech Republic, France, Italy, Mexico, Philippines, and Poland—to its record search.

Updates to US collections total 1.8 million records, including the South Dakota 1945 state census, New York court records, Indiana marriage records and Utah Indian Wars service affidavits.

Note that in many cases, the updates consist of unindexed digitized documents, meaning you won’t find them using the search on FamilySearch’s home page. Instead, you’ll need to browse the collections by date or place (however the records are organized).

Click here to see a list of the updated collections, whether each one is indexed, and a link to each collection. 

FamilySearch also has announced it’s launching a YouTube channel Aug. 4. You can preview it now by watching Genealogy in Five Minutes: Learn From Family (this one’s actually 6 minutes and 8 seconds long), with tips on talking to relatives about family history.

The video is part of what'll be a 24-episode series offering quick tips on various aspects of genealogy. When the channel launches, you’ll also be able to watch inspirational videos, those highlighting the lighter side of genealogy, a series on societies and archives, how-to videos and others.

Wednesday, August 03, 2011 9:40:45 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [4]

• Subscription genealogy site Archives.com has added 17 million new US vital and military records. Vital records come from Texas, Colorado and South Carolina; and the military records provide information about individuals who served in the Air Force, Army, Marine Corps, Navy and National Guard during the Vietnam War and Gulf War eras. Click here to see more details on the Archives.com additions. 

• FamilySearch has updated 55 of its online record collections, for a total of 25 million new images of records from 16 countries. Many of the collections haven’t yet been indexed, so you’ll need to click through to the individual database and browse by place, year or however the records are organized. Click here to see a list of the record additions and link to the updated collections. 

• Deceased Online, a pay-per-view site for burial and cremation records in the UK, is adding millions of records from Scotland. You can check out participating cemeteries and crematoria here. 

Friday, July 08, 2011 3:14:20 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [6]

• On its History Happens Here site, the Missouri History Museum is sharing the Civil War saga of soldier James Love and his letters to fiancee Eliza Mary "Molly" Wilson. Museum staff post each new letter 150 years to the day after it was written. Catch up on the letters you’ve missed here. 

• The free FamilySearch site has added records for 10 countries. The additions come from Germany, Mexico, Brazil, Canada, Guatemala, Italy, Norway, Sweden and the United States (Iowa, Indiana, Louisiana, Ohio, Vermont and Wisconsin). Click here to see details and links for the updated collections. 

• British subscription site FindMyPast.co.uk has published the records of over half a million men who served in the British militia, the precursor to the UK’s Territorial Army. The militia was made up of men who held everyday jobs, but took part in regular military exercises and on occasion, fought. You can search the Militia Service Records, covering 1806 to 1915, here.
  

• The National Genealogical Society has created The NGS Weekly, a “newspaper” that pulls feeds from various genealogy blog posts. You can subscribe to get e-mail notifications when the page is updated.

Friday, June 24, 2011 1:21:58 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [1]

Everyone’s invited to participate in the Great Illinois Genealogy Scavenger Hunt, going on now through June 30.

All you have to do is find information on Illinois genealogy resources—websites, databases, how-to articles, etc.—and say why a resource should be included in the Research Wiki.

First, visit the Illinois pages of the FamilySearch Research Wiki to see what content is already there (your submitted resources should be original). Then submit your resource using the entry form.

Prizes include a RootsTech 2012 conference registration and a one-year ISGS membership. In addition, a prize will be awarded each day between June 1 and June 30, 2011 to someone drawn at random. For complete details, consult the contest rules.

See a full description of The Great Illinois Genealogy Scavenger Hunt on the ISGS website.

Need ideas for Illinois genealogy resources? See our $3 Illinois State Research Guide digital download, the Illinois section of the Family Tree Sourcebook (which has research tips, resource listings and county-by-county records guides for every US state), and the other how-to products in the Illinois section at ShopFamilyTree.com.

Wednesday, June 01, 2011 8:57:42 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• The new iPhone app BillionGraves.com (1BGraves) lets you contribute to the site’s gravestone image database while on the road. Even without the app, you can add transcriptions to the site's online database. On the site, you can search gravestone records by person or cemetery (it looks like few stones are recorded yet, but you can find cemeteries listed with maps showing their locations).

• The entire 1930 Mexico Census is now complete on FamilySearch. This indexing project started in September2007 and encompassed 13 million records. 

• Here’s an update on a smaller genealogy subscription site you may not be familiar with: Family Tree Connection, launched in 2003, is approaching 2 million records. The names were transcribed from more than 5,400 documents including Masonic lodge rosters, military rosters, insurance claims, tax lists, orphanage records, club and society member lists, prisoner logs and mug shots, school catalogs, yearbooks, railroad employee information, rural telephone directories, church member lists and more.
  

• Ancestry.com has added new US WWII Navy Muster Rolls (1938-1949) and a US Navy Cruise Books Index (1918-2009) to its military records collection.

• Among the New England Historic Genealogical Society’s (NEHGS) upcoming events is Come Home to New England, a weeklong educational event featuring research opportunities, individual research consultations, lectures and more. It takes place June 13-18 at NEHGS’s Boston headquarters. Learn more on the NEHGS website. 

Friday, May 27, 2011 9:30:35 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [2]

• We’re hearing there's great attendance at this year’s conference, and that the first two days in the exhibit hall were crowded.
  

• The 2012 NGS conference is May 9-12 in Cincinnati (also the hometown of Family Tree Magazine) and the 2013 conference will be in Las Vegas.

• FamilySearch has set an annual goal to add 200 million record images to its free online records search. Its 2012 RootsTech conference will be Feb. 2-4 in Salt Lake City.

• Archivist of the United States David Ferrerio, speaking at the NGS opening session, said that the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is digitizing the 1940 census in-house and it’ll be available—but not yet indexed by name—on on NARA's website April 2, 2012. It won’t be on any commercial websites on that date.

• Ancestry.com will begin indexing the census records as soon as they’re available and will post the indexed records online later in the year, the company announced at a conference reception.
  

Dick Eastman has posted his copious notes from the reception. Some things that caught my eye: the new genealogy Web Search, US Navy Ship Muster Rolls 1939-1949 (coming on Memorial Day), more US birth and death records, a faster record image viewer, a new Android app, and the ability to download data from your Ancestry tree to version 2012 Family Tree Maker software.

• See this GeneaBloggers post for the latest NGS-related tweets and blog posts.
  

Friday, May 13, 2011 4:14:05 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• South Carolina Probate Records, Files and Loose Papers, 1732-1964 have been added to the FamilySearch record site (this collection hasn’t been indexed, so you’ll need to browse the record images).

• South Carolina Probate Records, Bound Volumes, 1671-1977, also have been added (also browse-only).
  

• A South Carolina section is now in the FamilySearch Research Wiki.

Probate records can be helpful in researching African-American ancestors, because probate files of slave owners often contain inventories of their slaves.

The Civil War, which of course started 150 years ago at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, is the talk of this year’s NGS conference. Click here to see FamilySearch’s related announcement about its Civil War records. 

Wednesday, May 11, 2011 9:31:11 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

Among the Civil War databases are:

• United States, Civil War Soldiers Index: These index cards contain 6.3 million names of Union and Confederate soldiers and African-American sailors, along with basic service information (this information also is on the National Park Service’s Civil War Soldiers and Sailors System website).

• Confederate pensions for those living Arkansas (1901-1929), Louisiana (1898-1950) and Missouri (1911-1938): Browse these databases by last name.

• Civil War Pension Index Cards: These are index cards for pension applications of veterans who served in the US Army between 1861 and 1917.

• 1890 Census of Union veterans and widows of the Civil War: Browse by state, county and town; enumerators creating these special schedules sometimes listed Confederate veterans, too.

• United States, Registers of Enlistments in the U.S. Army, 1798-1914: This database, still being filmed and added to the site, names Army “regulars” (those who enlisted during peacetime—so generally, not men who enlisted to serve in a war). Browse by name.

• Arizona Service Records of Confederate Soldiers of the Civil War, 1861-1863: This index links to record images at subscription site Footnote.com (you’ll need a subscription to view the documents).

See the full list of Civil War databases here (click the More » link).

You can search the Civil War records from the FamilySearch/Civil War page (note the search won’t include the browse-only collections, which aren’t yet indexed), or click on a database title to search or browse just those records.

Wednesday, May 11, 2011 9:20:07 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [1]

• As part of its annual conference next week in Charleston, SC, the National Genealogical Society will offer a one-day Genealogy 101 session on Saturday, May 14, from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Registration costs $50. Online registration is closed, but you can register at the door. Space is limited, so get there early.

• A new organization has formed with the goal to provide in-depth genealogical education in the Mid-Atlantic region and nationally. The Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh (GRIP) is planning a weeklong genealogy seminar for Monday, July 23 through Friday, July 27, 2012, in Pittsburgh. Learn more on GRIP’s website.

• If you’ll be in the Washington, DC, are next week, you can learn how to research the National Archives’ records of Union and Confederate Army units and Navy ships at one of two free workshops: May 10, 11 a.m. at the Washington, DC, Research Center; or Thursday, May 12, 11 a.m. at the College Park, MD, research center. Learn more on the National Archives’ events page. 

• FamilySearch has added more than 2 million digital images to its record collections come from Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Switzerland, U.S., and Wales. More than 1.7 million of those images were added to the Brazil Civil Registration collection, and 346,000 church records were added for Honduras. The record images aren’t yet indexed, so you’ll need to navigate to the collection of interest on FamilySearch and browse the images. You can see the list of updated collections and link to each one here. 

Friday, May 06, 2011 3:26:44 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

I kept up with my Google blog reader (sometimes at 3 a.m.) while on maternity leave, so I noticed the regular record updates at FamilySearch.org. That’s how I got a surprise hit on my grandfather while casually searching collections from states my ancestors lived in.

The match, from the collection Texas Births and Christenings, 1840-1981,  has indexed information (so, no image of the record itself) from a church baptismal register in Gonzales, Texas:

The information was close to a baptismal certificate I already had from our family papers. In 1960, my grandma wrote the church where my grandfather was baptized to request the baptismal record. Apparently she needed it so my grandfather, who didn’t have a birth certificate, could participate in his company pension program. Here’s what the priest sent her:

I was never 100 percent confident in the birth information on this certificate, since it was created when he was almost 60 and my research gives two birthdates and places for my grandfather. So I was excited when I saw on FamilySearch.org the microfilm number for the original baptismal register (circled in red above).

I ran a Family History Library online catalog search for the film number and found this catalog record: 

It's hard to read here, but the baptismal register is from Sacred Heart Church, formerly called St. Joseph, in Gonzales, Texas, part of Archdiocese of San Antonio. (Note the 1960 baptismal certificate says St. James Church at the top.)

I printed this catalog page and took it to the FamilySearch Center to rent microfilm no. 25152. 

When the film came in, I quickly found my grandfather’s record (thanks to the page number provided in my FamilySearch.org search result). Here’s the first page, with my grandfather at the bottom:

My great-grandfather Mike Haddad appears in a few records as "Fadlo" (probably short for his pre-immigration name)—I believe that's why he's recorded as "Daddlod" here. 

And the second page, with columns for the sponsors, the minister who performed the ceremony, details on the person's Confirmation (another Catholic sacrament, usually received around age 13), and “remarks.”

See the note on the far right in the Remarks column? That reports my grandfather’s marriage t0 my grandma in 1942 in Cincinnati.

The handwriting was uniform throughout the entire book. From the title and publisher pages, 

it looks like this was a blank register book printed in 1944, which someone later filled in with information from diocesan church records going back to 1883.

My guess is that the (?) in the sponsor column next to Saida’s name—a symbol also appearing by several other names on the page—means the person who copied the original records into this book couldn’t quite make out the handwriting.

In 1960, when my grandma sent her request to St. Joseph, she must've provided her marriage information. Then the priest who answered her letter would’ve looked at this book in order to fill out the baptismal certificate, and added the marriage details to the notes column. 

So this still isn't the actual record that was created in 1902 when my grandfather was baptized, but I have more confidence in that 1960 baptismal certificate (and the birth date it provides) now that I've seen where that information came from.

One question: Why does the baptism certificate sent to my grandma in 1960 say "St. James" at the top, when the church register is from St. Joseph (later changed to Sacred Heart)? Perhaps the diocese routed all records requests like my grandma's to St. James? What do you think?

Monday, April 18, 2011 11:23:23 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [6]

It’s DNA Day! Today only (Friday, April 15), genetic genealogy company FamilyTreeDNA is offering a promotional code you can use to get a discount on several types of DNA tests. See FamilyTreeDNA’s Facebook page for details.

Family Tree University professor Tim Pinnick sent us a note that he’s moderating the new African-American-American Newspapers forum on the Afrigeneas website. Stop by to ask questions and share your finds from Black newspapers. 

FamilySearch announced this week that it’s released 500,000 new US county marriage records, as well as records from Costa Rica, England, India, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru and Spain, in the Historical Records Search. Click here to see the list of the updated collections. (Look for our guide to the new FamilySearch.org website in the September 2011 Family Tree Magazine.)

Subscription genealogy site Archives just announced the addition of 3.5 million new US vital records to the website, including the obituary index from the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center in Ohio (also searchable here). Other updated collections come from Texas, Kentucky, Maine, South Carolina, Arizona, South Carolina and Colorado.

iArchives, the records digitization arm of subscription site Footnote, announced plans to collaborate with the Federation of Genealogical Societies to digitize 180,000 War of 1812 pension applications. They’ll eventually be available on Footnote. Read more details on the FGS Voice blog.

Friday, April 15, 2011 9:52:35 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

Diane's on maternity leave for a few more weeks, but that hasn't stopped her from continuing her genealogy research. She brought baby Leo with her on a recent trip to a Family History Center to request some microfilm. I am sure he was a very popular guy! Look at those hands -- he's just itching to get his mitts on some microfiche.

If you're planning on taking a trip to a Family History Center for the first time, you've got to read our article "Family History Central" (available to Plus members) from the January 2011 issue of Family Tree Magazine.

FamilySearch | Genealogy for kids | Genealogy fun

Friday, March 04, 2011 11:05:28 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [2]

With all the anticipation of the first ever RootsTech conference, it’s hard to believe it’s already come and gone. Here are some highlights from this year’s conference that I hope inspire you to attend next year. (Block out February 2-4, 2012 on your calendar!)

Microfilm Distribution: As a member of the media, I had the rare opportunity to see how hundreds of thousands of microfilm rolls make their way around the world each year.  The Family History Library distribution center is the size of 19 football fields and stores 725,000 film copies, each copy averaging 100 feet in length.  Films are stored in huge automated shelving systems holding trays of film that are tracked and accessed by computer. Even though there is a goal to digitize all microfilms held by the FHL, there will always be a need for microfilm distribution because of copyright restrictions. 

Inside the microfilm distribution center at the Family History Library.

Flip-Pal Mobile Scanner: One of the winners at this year’s conference was the Flip-Pal Mobile Scanner. Many a happy genealogist clutched their new portable workhorse, and those that didn’t already have one were muttering quietly that they really needed one. Having acquired a Flip-Pal scanner myself not long ago, I can say that the buzz was warranted. Look for the Family Tree Magazine review of the Flip-Pal scanner in our May issue, on newsstands March 8.

The Media Center:  I felt a bit like Maxwell Smart in the Cone of Silence from "Get Smart," as I conducted interviews in the glass cubicles at the center of the exhibit hall. The cubicles weren't sound proof, but they provided a convenient place to record audio and video while still capturing the ambiance of the place.  One of my first interviews was with Patricia Van Skaik of the Cincinnati Public Library, who won the Most Distinguished Presenter award for her Saturday presentations. The media center was a stroke of genius on the part of the organizers. It gave podcasters and bloggers the room and tools we needed to get the word out.

Lisa interviewing Patricia Van Skaik in the media center.

Interviews: Curt Witcher, manager of the genealogy deptartment at the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Ind., also sat down with me for an in depth interview. He sees technology converging with genealogy, and his keynote address was quite a hit from sounds of between-session banter. Watch our conversation below:

You can see more from RootsTech at the Genealogy Gems YouTube channel. Click subscribe while there and you can receive email notification as they are posted.

Virtual Presentations Roundtable: I wrapped up the whirlwind three-day conference as a panelist in the Virtual Presentations Roundtable. Thomas MacEntee pulled together a panel of experienced webinar presenters, including editor of Family Tree Magazine Allison Stacy, Photo Detective Maureen Taylor, DearMYRTLE, Geoff Rasmussen and Marian Pierre-Louis.  Not only did we provide tips on how societies can hold their own virtual presentations, but the session itself was a virtual webinar.  And to top it off, the RootsTech folks streamed the session live on the RootsTech website!

RootsTech made a bold leap onto the conference scene, and from every indication, it’s here to stay.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011 11:13:43 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [2]

1. Navigate to a website where you want to save a portion of a page.
2. Under the Start menu click All Programs.
3. Click on the Accessories file folder.
4. Select Snipping Tool.
5. The tool pops up in a small window on your screen.
6. Drag the cursor around the area you want to save.
7. Click the Save icon in the window, name the image and save it to your hard drive.

Tuesday, February 15, 2011 9:58:29 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [1]

See the FamilySearch website for a list of the rest of its recently added records. If you don’t want to search all the records on the site using the search form on the home page, here’s how to find the individual databases:

1. Scroll down on the FamilySearch home page to Browse By Location and click the world region of interest.
   
   
2. In the filter links on the left side of the page, click the country. (That’s as narrow as you can get when it comes to places at this time.) In the center of the page, you'll see an alphabetical list of all databases pertaining to that country.
   
   
3. Below the place filters, you can use other filters to narrow the database list by year range and type of record.
   
   
4. Once you’ve narrowed as much as you can, look for the database title in the alphabetical list in the center of the page. (Most US naturalization records are separated into databases for the relevant states, so they're alphabetized under state names for those.)

Using your browser’s Find function (Control+F or Apple+F) to search for a word in the title of the database you need will help you sidestep some inconsistent titling that can make a few collections hard to find.

For example, Revolutionary War pension records are in the database “Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty Land Warrant Applications Files,” listed with the Rs, but Revolutionary War service records are in the database titled “United States, Revolutionary War Compiled Service Records, 1775-1783”—listed with the Us.

Also, “United States, Index to Naturalizations of World War I Soldiers, 1918” isn’t listed near the naturalization records from US District Courts, which are alphabetized by the name of the state the records are from, or with the WWII records in “United States, World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1942.”

I noticed those WWI soldier naturalizations don’t show up when you use the Migration & Naturalization or Military Records filter (but they are included in the Court Records). I sent a comment about it; if you find a categorization or other quirk, you can comment using the orange Feedback tab on the right side of the site's pages.

Thursday, January 27, 2011 10:15:21 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

• FamilySearch has added records to its overhauled website, including the Social Security Death Index, US state censuses and vital records, and records from Canada, Spain and Venezuela. Click here to see the full list  and search the collections here. 

• FamilySearch also has started several new volunteer indexing projects, including US censuses, tax and vital records, and its first project in Polish. See the FamilySearch blog for details on each project and a contact link if you can volunteer.

• FamilySearch’s RootsTech conference, taking place in Salt Lake City Feb. 10-12, has announced its lineup of keynote speakers. They include two technology types you might not expect to hear at a genealogy conference—Shane Robison, Executive VP and Chief Strategy and Technology Officer for Hewlett-Packard; and Brewster Kahle, founder of Internet Archive (where you’ll find digitized books and the Way Back Machine, among other delights)—as well as Curt Witcher, manager of the nationally known Allen County (Ind.) Public Library Genealogy Center (which has digitized documents and databases on its website); and Jay Verklar, CEO of FamilySearch International. Learn more about these speakers and get conference details on the RootsTech website. 

• British genealogy site Genes Reunited has added the original householder schedules for the entire 1911 UK and Wales census. The records are available by subscription or on a pay-per-view basis.

• A.C. Ivory, one of the young genealogists profiled in the November 2010 Family Tree Magazine (in one of my most favorite articles I’ve worked on), has given his Find My Ancestor website and blog a new look. You’ll find new downloads and resources, a new logo, easier navigation, social media integration and more.

• Those named to new positions in the genealogy world include Matt Wright as editor of the Federation of Genealogical Societies’ electronic quarterly, FGS FORUM; and Laura Murphy DeGrazia and Karen Mauer Green as co-editors of the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society’s New York Genealogical and Biographical Record. 

Monday, January 03, 2011 5:26:38 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

• Indiana Marriages, 1811-1959
• Minnesota Will Records, 1849-1985
• Ohio: Cuyahoga County Probate Files, 1813-1900
• Tennessee Death Records, 1914-1955
• Texas County Marriage Index, 1837-1977
• Wisconsin Probate Estate Case Files, 1861-1933
• U.S. Social Security Death Index
• Canada: New Brunswick Provincial Deaths, 1815-1938
• Spain: Granada Catholic Pre-Marriage Investigation Files Index, 1556-1899
• Venezuela: Merida Parish Registers, 1654-1992

Wednesday, December 29, 2010 11:01:14 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

• The Library of Congress has posted a collection of nearly 700 ambrotype and tintype Civil War portraits to Flickr. You’ll notice that letters on hats and belt buckles are reversed in the images because they're “direct positives”—images directly from the camera.

• Library and Archives Canada has put the 1916 census of the Prairie provinces (Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta) online. You can’t search by a person’s name, though. Instead, search the database by province, district name, district number and sub-district number. Or, click here to browse the microfilm reels page by page. 

• Another new database from Library and Archives Canada is Medals, Honours and Awards, containing more than 113,000 references to medal registers, citation cards and records of military awards. It also has digitized images of some medal registers. You can search the database by name, regiment, rank and more; if you find a match, you’ll learn the medal awarded, the related battle or conflict, and a citation for the record containing the information. Because no service files exist for the Canadian military in the 1800s, these records may provide the only proof of service for 19th-century conflicts. 

• FamilySearch has added nearly four million new digital images—nearly 1.7 million of them indexed—to its historical records collection. The additions include records from South Africa, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Guatemala, the Netherlands and the United States. Visit FamilySearch for a list of the collection titles with the new images, and how many of the records are indexed. Unindexed collections aren’t searchable, instead, you’ll need to browse those collections and view the records to find your ancestor’s name.
  

• Richard Heaton e-mailed us about his site called Last Chance To Read, a searchable collection of thousands of pages of scarce British and Irish newspapers and other publications, most printed between 1710 and 1870. Once you register for a free account, you can do a search and order PDF copies of articles for about $4.75 via PayPal. See included titles here (scroll down).  

• RootsMagic released a free update to version 4, version 4.0.9.8., which update adds several user-requested features and fixes a number of issues. Users may be automatically notified to download the update; if not, open the program and go to Help>Check for Updates or click here.
  

Friday, December 17, 2010 4:06:12 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [1]

• Congratulations to Lisa Louise Cooke on the 100th episode of her Genealogy Gems podcast! This special episode celebrates the first 100 with a look at some of Lisa's favorite gems, interviews and milestones, plus some messages from listeners.

• Season 2 of Brigham Young University's genealogy show, "The Generations Project," airs Monday, Jan. 3 at 7 pm Mountain time on BYUtv. You can stream the channel online, or look for it on cable for your area. Learn more about the show on its website.

• FamilySearch Beta has added or updated 34 collections of genealogical records—that’s 15 million indexed records and 2.5 million images. The information covers 13 countries: Mexico, Chile, Colombia, Honduras, Guatemala, Brazil, France, Spain, Germany, Belgium, Jamaica, Canada and the United States. Click here to see a list of the new/updated collections. 

• New York’s Larchmont Historical Society has created an online Photo Index of Fallen World War I Soldiers from New York State. The images, digitized from the book Soldiers of the Great War, don’t show all the state’s fallen soldiers, including those whose photos weren't available and those who grew up in New York but enlisted elsewhere. You can read more about the site and get search tips from the ResearchBuzz blog. 

• The New England Historic Genealogical Society is holding a technology-focused Weekend Research Getaway Jan. 27 to 29, 2011. The weekend will combine guided research at the NEHGS Research Library in Boston with educational lectures about using technology in your family search. Registration costs $300, or you can buy a day pass. See the program and register at AmericanAncestors.org.
  

• Ancestry.com and National Geographic Digital Media have developed an online family history “experience” on the National Geographic Genographic Project website where visitors can learn more about researching genealogy and search their roots. They’ll be able to start an online family tree, get tips on doing family history, and links to Ancestry.com’s subscription record collections. The Genographic Project is a DNA study of the genetic makeup of populations around the world in order to chart the migration history of the human species.

Friday, November 19, 2010 12:27:58 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

Organizers of the conference, taking place Feb. 10-12 next year at the Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City, aim to bring together creators and users of genealogy technology to accelerate innovation in the field and “define the future of genealogy.”

FamilySearch RootsTech chair Anne Roach and marketing magazine Anne Harrison, who talked about the event at last month’s Blogger’s Day, say it’ll educate technology users on the best technological practices and applications to use in their research, and educate software developers on the best technological solutions to genealogical problems.

Attendees can improve their genealogical know-how through classes, hands-on workshops, “birds of a feather” discussions and technology demonstrations that cover

• Using social networking to collaborate as families and genealogical societies

• Using cameras, scanners, and other preservation devices in your research

• Using cloud computing

• Using mobile devices and smartphone applications in your research

• Handwriting recognition and automated transcription

• Using web search engines and other finding tools GPS mapping for cemetery research, finding ancestral homes and more

• Leveraging records digitization and preservation techniques and programs

• Capturing your research in a range of media, and converting files from medium to medium

• Understanding new genealogy markets

… and more. Opportunities for dialogue will include an “unconferencing hall” where anyone can give a spontaneous presentation. Roach said there will be classes for the technology novice (though people who have never used a computer might struggle), and the syllabus will indicate which classes best suit which skill sets.

A few sessions will likely be broadcast free on the conference website; in the future, a virtual attendance option might be available.

RootsTech combines the BYU Conference on Computerized Family History, the BYU Technology Workshop, and the FamilySearch Developers Conference into one event.

Registration costs $99 per person until Dec. 31, with a student rate of $35. The regular fee rises to $150 on Jan. 1. Conference hotel rates are $89 per night if you book in time.

Tuesday, November 02, 2010 11:19:59 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

Maybe you can. State and local archives and libraries, town halls, and the Family History Library (FHL) may have town or county lists of registered voters or those who paid poll taxes.

Search your ancestral state archives website for voting, and try running a keyword search of the FHL online catalog on the town, county or state name and the word voting. You can rent promising microfilm by visiting your local FamilySearch Center. Subscription website Ancestry.com has some voting-related records and digitized books, so if you’re a member, run the same search of its online catalog.

Here are some examples of the records you can find for various states and counties:

• Every four years from 1803 to 1911, Ohio counted men age 21 and older in various counties to determine voting districts. These quadrennial enumerations are on FHL microfilm and in some local genealogical society collections. An 1863 list of Fallsbury Township voters is part of RootsWeb's free Tax and Voter lists search.
  

• Chicago voter records, which can help you substitute for the missing 1890 census, are available for 1888, 1888 to 1890, and 1892, at the FHL, as is a 1937 voter registration list. Lists for 1888, 1890 and 1892 are on Ancestry.com.
  

• Ancestry.com also has a list of registered voters in New York in 1880, as well as digitized books of poll lists for 1761 and 1765.

• California's "Great Registers" are county voting registers compiled roughly every two years. Early registers included naturalization data and even physical descriptions. The state library has registers from 1866 to 1898 and 1900 to 1944, and reisters from 1900 to 1968 are on subscription site Ancestry.com. They’re also on microfilm by county at the FHL.

• Arizona has similar Great Registers, located at the Arizona State Library and on FHL microfilm.

• In Kansas, members of the New England Emigrant Aid Society are thought to have settled the area in order to influence voting on the slavery issue. A list of those individuals and the territorial citizens deemed eligible to vote in 1856 is free on the Kansas GenWeb site.
  

• The Wyoming state archives’ collection includes poll lists for various counties (type voting into the search box on the home page). You’ll find voting lists for part of Fremont County from 1907 to 1913 on microfiche at the FHL.

• Massachusetts towns kept lists of freemen (landowning men of legal age, usually 21 but as young as 16) who were eligible to vote. An 1890 list of poll tax payers for the town of Maynard is part of RootsWeb's free database of tax and voter lists. The state library has voting lists along with city directories in its special collections.

Tuesday, November 02, 2010 9:16:08 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [2]

• British genealogy subscription site FindMyPast.co.uk has released a collection of records from the Second Anglo-Boer War including details on 260,000 British service members and 59,000 war casualties. The database compiles information from more than 330 sources, and resolves errors and conflicting information in some of those sources. The war was fought from 1899 to 1902 between the British Empire and the Dutch-speaking inhabitants of the South African Republic (Transvaal Republic) and the Orange Free State.

• The latest records added to the free FamilySearch Beta site include census records from Ghana (1982 to 1984) and Norway (1875), plus the Minnesota state census (1865 and 1905) and marriage records from Arkansas (1837 to 1957) and Idaho (1864 to 1950). You can see the full list of new records here. 

• The Troy (NY) Irish Genealogical Society has posted the records of Italian midwife Alesandra Matera, who practiced in the Troy area during the early 1900s. The transcribed records span 1909 to 1923 and document mostly Italian births, with some Syrians in later years. You can download the transcriptions as PDFs ordered by the father’s, mother’s or child’s last name (the transcriptions themselves are in chronological order, but you can use the Bookmarks bar in your PDF viewer to see the names in alphabetical order). Originals are in the archives of the Rensselaer County Historical Society.

• The International Society of Family History Writers and Editors (ISFHWE) 2011 writing competition is open to members and—for the first time—non-members of ISFHWE this year. Entries are due by Dec. 31, 2010, and you’ll get a discount on the entry fee for submissions made before November 30, 2010. See the categories, judging guidelines, rules and entry form on ISFHWE’s website.
  

• The River Raisin National Battlefield Park in Monroe, Mich., site of the War of 1812 Battle of Frenchtown, has officially become the 393rd park in the National Park System. You can learn more about the site on the National Park Service website and at RiverRaisinBattlefield.org. 

• The National Archives and Records Administration’s National Personnel Records Center (NPRC) in St. Louis will relocate to a modernized $112 million facility in North St. Louis County. It’ll take about 17 months to move the 100 million-plus records and 800 workers starting in May 2011. NPRC houses personnel records of civilian federal employees, as well as military service members after about World War I.
  

Friday, October 29, 2010 9:48:40 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

The Family History Library, located in Salt Lake City, started in 1894 with 11 donated volumes. Today it has the largest genealogy collection in the world, with 330,000 annual visitors and a staff of 700 employees and volunteers.

The library has begun surveying visitors to gauge their satisfaction with their visit. About 63 percent discover an ancestor they set out to find, and 86 percent would recommend visiting the library to a friend. The scores are better for patrons who have more genealogical experience and stay longer in the library—making the biggest area of opportunity, says Anderson, in helping new researchers.

You can borrow the library’s microfilm and microfiche by going to one of the 4,600 volunteer-run FamilySearch Centers around the country, which receive 6 million visits a year.

About 100 FamilySearch Centers are added every year, mostly in Latin America (few are being added in North America). Anderson says FamilySearch is working on a system that’ll let you go online—rather than visiting an FamilySearch Center to fill out a request form—to order microfilm for delivery to your FamilySearch Center (folks in Europe already can do this).

Because the centers are volunteer-run and have different kinds of facilities and resources, visitors will have varied experiences depending where they live. Anderson says he'd like to standardize the services offered in various types of FamilySearch Centers.

Also in the works is a plan to give FamilySearch Centers space on FamilySearch.org—perhaps the Research Wiki—to list hours, classes and what’s in their permanent collections.

Click here to learn more about visiting your local FamilySearch Center.

See my Blogger’s Day disclosure in this post.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010 2:24:53 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [2]

One of the most interesting parts of the FamilySearch Blogger Day was a talk by Dan Lawyer, the guy in charge of what he termed the “big renovation project” that is the FamilySearch.org makeover.

“Genealogy is hard” is a conclusion his team reached after studying how genealogists were using FamilySearch. Which isn't news to family historians who've done some research, but Lawyer pointed out three factors that can make it difficult:

• Life circumstances may not allow people the time or other resources needed to do genealogy.
  

• Logistic and technical hurdles, such as getting online and knowing how to use a computer.
  

• The way genealogy is often presented to a newcomer can make it appear not-so-engaging.

Do you agree with these findings? Click Comments at the end of this post to let us know.

So the goal for the renovated FamilySearch site—which FamilySearch Beta will become—are:

• Make genealogy easier.
  
  
• Make the site suitable for beginners and advanced researchers—so you don’t have to be a genealogist to use it, but even advanced researchers will find it useful.
  
  
• Facilitate giving and getting research help on the site, as well as learning how to research.

Though researchers have been using the beta site for months (as of earlier this week, it had 35,000 visitors from 17 countries in October alone), it’s still being tweaked.

User input into the site is spurring improvements in features such as, to name some minor ones: the hard-to-find arrows that let you expand search results (see the tiny gray triangles on the right side of the screen shot below) and the loooooong Advanced search panel on the left side of the search results (it continues beyond this screen shot).

Within the next three to six months, Lawer says, updates will include adjusting search forms, adding browsing filters, boosting the quality of results, and adding how-to content. (Interestingly, but not surprising to me, was the finding that new genealogists don’t look around the site at that how-to content until after they’ve used the search function.)

The Pedigree Resource File from the current FamilySearch.org will be added to the beta site's Family Trees search, which already contains the Ancestral File.

The beta site will probably become the official FamilySearch site sometime between December and February, Lawyer said. “New” FamilySearch, the online tree-building software available to members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, likely won’t become part of the site for some time, as developers work out a way to handle conflicts among different users' trees for the same lines. 

See my Bloggers Day disclosure in this post.

Learn more about "classic" FamilySearch and other popular genealogy websites in our Web Guides digital downloads, available from ShopFamilyTree.com.

Monday, October 25, 2010 12:29:10 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [8]

The wiki, available in Spanish and Swedish in addition to English, has had 5.5 million page views and 1.25 million unique visitors since its launch in 2008.

Loosle talked about a few special projects, including:

• The Rural Records of the Southern United States page, which has information about agricultural censuses. 

• The Indians of North America page, to which a researcher of American Indian history is posting information. 

• Tennessee genealogists beefed up the Tennessee pages before the summer’s Federation of Genealogical Conference in Knoxville 

See more projects here. 

You can use the wiki by typing a search term—such as a place you’re researching, a war your ancestor fought in, or a type of genealogical record—into the search box on the home page. You also can use the Browse by Country link to find articles about your ancestral homeland; many articles link to related records on the FamilySearch Beta site or listings in the Family History Library Catalog.

For help getting started, click the Tour link on the wiki home page.

(See my blogger's day disclosure in this post.)

Sunday, October 24, 2010 4:30:05 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

In 1998, FamilySearch started digitizing the 2.4 million rolls of microfilm and 1 million microfiche in its Granite Mountain vault (where film and fiche masters are preserved). More than a third of those records have been digitized.

Of the records in the vault, 1.1 percent have been published as online images at the FamilySearch beta site. Beta site indexes cover 2.6 percent of the records in the vault. 

Why the gap between the number of records FamilySearch has and the number published online? Copyright.

FamilySearch doesn’t own the vast majority of all those records, but has negotiated agreements with each record-holding repository to microfilm and provide access to the records through the Family History Library. Once technology opened up the possibility of online access, FamilySearch began renegotiating with all those repositories for digital rights.

The initiative to index the digitized records began in 2006. So far, more than 375,000 volunteers have indexed 300 million names.

Depending on the agreement FamilySearch can negotiate, you may get free online access to both the record images and indexes, to just the indexes with links to the original repository to see the record (sometimes for a fee), or to just the images. If you need the records that fall into one of the latter groups, see if you can get broader access by using the computers at a Family History Center.

Besides the vault, other sources of records include genealogical societies and archives who can provide both access to the records and volunteers to index them, as well as agreements with commercial entities such as Footnote.com and FindMyPast.co.uk.

The indexing goal for 2010 is 200 million names, with 148 million indexed so far. (Last year, 139 million names were indexed.) One of the biggest challenges is a need for more indexers who read non-English languages.

To provide records access as quickly as possibly, FamilySearch often will add record images to the beta site, even if the index isn’t completed. You can browse those record images by date and place.

You can learn more about being a volunteer indexer and see what projects are underway at the FamilySearch Indexing site.

(See my blogger's day disclosure in this post.)

Friday, October 22, 2010 9:52:58 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

Most of what was covered was context: a look at the changes in FamilySearch products and services over the last few years, and what direction future developments might take. Over the next few days, I’ll share what I’ve learned that'll be especially helpful to you.

Sometimes it’s helpful to have an overview. You might be using parts of the FamilySearch website in your research right now, but not know that other parts exist. Eventually, all the parts will be integrated into one site where it’s easier to move from one to another, but for now, here are the parts and where to find them:

• “Classic” FamilySearch: This familiar site has Ancestor File, the International Genealogical Index and other pedigree databases, the Social Security Death Index, the Family History Library Catalog, research outlines, and more.

• FamilySearch Record Search Pilot Site: For a few years, this is where Familysearch was publishing its digitized records and volunteer-created searchable indexes. The site is still there and will remain for awhile, but new records are no longer being added. Instead, those new digitized records are being added to …

• FamilySearch Beta: This is where new FamilySearch features are being incorporated, and it’ll be the main FamilySearch site in the future. Right now, it has all of FamilySearch’s digitized records and the volunteer-created searchable indexes, searchable family trees, plus links to FamilySearch online classes, the Research Wiki (with articles you can search for genealogy advice), a new version of the Family History Library Catalog, a Family History Center search and a FamilySearch news blog.
  

• Community Trees: This site lets you search lineage-linked genealogies from specific time periods and localities around the world. See this page for geographic areas and time periods covered. 

• Forums: I just learned about this resource--post your research questions here, and genealogists (including Family History Library or Family History Center consultants) lend their expertise. No need to register if you don’t want to.

• FamilySearch Indexing: FamilySearch has mobilized volunteers around the world to help index its digitized genealogy records. Here is where you can join the volunteer effort and see what projects are in the works.

• FamilySearch Labs: New products are tested here.

• “New” FamilySearch: This is a place (eventually to be called FamilySearch Family Trees) where users can post and collaborate on family trees. It’s currently available only to members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as kinks are worked out. We got a look at some of the kinks, which include how to reconcile differences in trees for the same family.

Of course, FamilySearch also has the Family History Library in Salt Lake City and the branch Family History Centers (also called FamilySearch Centers).

In the interest of full disclosure: FamilySearch covered travel expenses and meals for participants in the bloggers’ day. There were no agreements regarding whether or how any bloggers would cover the event.

Thursday, October 21, 2010 11:25:08 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [1]

• A friendly reader told us about another genealogy app for the iPhone called Traces, which searches the databases at the FamilySearch beta site. beta.familysearch.org. The reader (who’s not affiliated with the product other than using it) recommends it as “far and away the best iPhone app ... I've found to facilitate actual genealogy research and database searching.” See a list of iPhone/iTouch genealogy apps on the MobileGenealogy.com website.

• If you have Minnesota ancestors, you can use the index on the Minnesota Official Marriage System website to search for marriage records. You’ll get the names of the bride and groom, date, county and certificate number; and a link to order a copy of the record. See the County Index Dates page to find out which counties and dates are covered in the index.

• The National Archives is holding a day-long symposium called The Civil War: Fresh Perspectives on Saturday, Nov. 20, from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m, at its Washington, DC headquarters. It’ll feature panel discussions related to themes from the archives’ special exhibit, Discovering the Civil War. Registration is required, along with a fee of $50. Click here to learn more and register.

• The National Genealogical Society has posted online video that shows you where Civil War Pension files are stored at the National Archives (in an area is closed to the general public) and lets you look inside a pension file with professional genealogist John Humphrey. It’s called Finding Your Family at the National Archives, and you can click here to watch it. 

• UK family history subscription website Findmypast.co.uk and FamilySearch are beginning a project to digitize the Greater Manchester County Record Office’s cemetery registers and institutional records (from gaols, schools and workhouses), which date as far back as the 16th century. When the project is complete, you’ll be able to search indexes free at FamilySearch. The indexed information will link to the records at FindMyPast.co.uk, where you’ll be able to view the record images for a fee.

• There’s more for those with UK roots: Old-maps.co.uk has added 60 more years of town plans and other maps to its collection, which now covers 1850 to 1996. In addition, new spy maps produced by the Russian military from 1950 to 1997 cover 16,000 sq km of the UK, including 103 major towns and cities. You can search and browse maps for free and purchase printed or downloadable PDF versions.

Friday, October 08, 2010 3:10:24 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [1]

• Tomorrow, Sept. 25, is Museum Day, when participating museums across the country give free admission to those with a Museum Day ticket (one ticket per household). Click here to get your ticket and find a museum near you.

• The California Family History Expo is coming up Oct. 8-9 in Pleasanton, Calif. The exhibit hall is free, but you must register ($65 in advance; $75 at the door) to attend classes. Here’s a neat option for those who can’t go to the whole conference: If you’d like to attend just a few classes, you can do so for $12 per class. Register on the Family History Expos website. 

• The FamilySearch Beta site has added nearly 2 million new digital images of historical records this week from the Dominican Republic, Italy, Jamaica, Spain, and the United States.

Note that not all of the new records are indexed yet, which means that they’re not included in the search, so you may need to browse. Use the filters on the left side of the Collection List page to navigate to the country, then possibly the type of record and/or province, then select the record set you want to browse.

• Starting Oct. 1, the Georgia State Archives will change its research hours to Thursday through Saturday from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.—a move made necessary because of budget issues. You can see the announcement on the archives' home page.
  

Friday, September 24, 2010 1:10:01 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [1]

• FamilySearch.org recently added 5 million new indexed names and images to its free databases. These 48 new and updated collections come from 19 different countries, including the first records from Nicaragua and Sri Lanka. Also included are church and civil registration record from Brazil; baptism, marriage and death records from Canada; Swedish church records; vital, tax and other records from the United States; and more. You can search the records at FamilySearch beta.

• I came across a website called Tools of History, a collaborative digitization project for historical manuscripts, photographs, maps, drawings, books and artifacts from south central New York State. Among the collection sare photos of the Daughters of Charity at Lourdes Hospital, Atlases of Chemung County and something intriguing called the “murder pamphlet collection” (looks to be old books, letters, sermons and other accounts of cases in the area). Definitely a site worth exploring if you have ancestors there.

• Ancestry.com has introduced a new feature called Suggested Records that, well, suggests records for you to check. The suggested records list is being tested on results pages in the 1900 census and the WWI draft registration collections.

If the record you’re viewing has been saved to any member family trees, the list will suggest other records have been saved to the same nodes on those member trees. Randy Seaver takes a close look at Suggested Records on his Genea-Musings blog.

Friday, September 17, 2010 3:52:41 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• Today (Sept. 10) marks the 20th anniversary of the Ellis Island Immigration Museum opening in 1990. More than 35 million people have visited the museum, which highlights the immigrant experience and the growth of America during the peak immigration years of 1880 to 1924. You can read more about the museum on the Ellis Island website.

For help searching online for your Ellis Island ancestors, download our Ellis Island Web Guide from ShopFamilyTree.com or use the book The Family Tree Guide to Finding Your Ellis Island Ancestors (on sale for $12.99).

• Pay-per-view genealogy website ScotlandsPeople.gov.uk was officially relaunched with a new look and and new search features, including search results plotted on maps, to make it easier for you to find ancestors. The site offers records dating to the beginning of civil registration in Scotland in 1855, as well as parish records dating back as far as 1538.

• FamilySearch’s army of volunteer indexers have started work on the 1930 census, currently the most recent US census available to researchers. As with several other FamilySearch census indexes, volunteers will start with Ancestry.com indexes and create a second comparison index from scratch, then arbitrate discrepancies to reduce errors. FamilySearch also will extract additional fields of census data for improved searchability. You can read more about this project on the FamilySearch blog.

Friday, September 10, 2010 10:03:28 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• A new web address at beta.familysearch.org  (though fsbeta.familysearch.org still works).
  
  
• New records, including all those found at the Pilot Record Search site and more, for 450-plus collections.
  
  
• Alphabetized browsing (click All Collections on the FamilySearch Beta home page to access it) so you can quickly find the collections you’re looking for. In most cases, the collection title begins with the name of the state or country where the records were created.
  
  
• If you’re interested in only collections with record images, you can click All Collections, then check a box at the bottom left to see only titles of collection with images.
  
  
• You can type apostrophes into the search fields to find names such as O’Hara.
  
  
• You can filter your search results by collection category. 
  
  
• When viewing a record, you can click to see the previous or next record image in the collection.
  
  
• Census results now list all household members with their genders and ages.
  
  
• If you’re searching Trees (a link on the FamilySearch Beta home page), where the information from FamilySearch’s Ancestral File is, you can find people by event year—that is, the year of birth, death or marriage.

• For easier navigation and viewing of the site, you’ll find new labels in the header and footer, enhanced color contrast, and visited links that change colors once you’ve already clicked them.

Wednesday, September 08, 2010 11:31:14 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [6]

• FamilySearch Essentials: How to Access Records from 100 Countries Without Leaving Town webinar recording, available from ShopFamilyTree.com

• Make the Most of FamilySearch.org webinar recording, available from ShopFamilyTree.com
  
  
• FamilySearch Web Guide, available from ShopFamilyTree.com
  

Tuesday, July 20, 2010 4:09:49 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [1]

• Little-known strategies for finding family in FamilySearch databases (free article)

• How to find the books and microfilm you need in the Family History Library catalog (free article)

• FamilySearch Essentials: How to Access Records from 100 Countries Without Leaving Town webinar recording, available from ShopFamilyTree.com

• The January 2010 Family Tree Magazine with our FamilySearch Web Guide, available from ShopFamilyTree.com both in print and as a digital download 

Wednesday, June 23, 2010 12:42:52 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [4]

• FamilySearch has added records from Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, Guatemala, Mexico, Spain, and the United States to its Record Search Pilot site and Beta Search site. US additions include indexes to the 1910 census for several states, Massachusetts death records, Minnesota probate court wills.

• Michigan residents can access state history-related documents (such as personal narratives, memoirs, pamphlets and political speeches) and historical essays through Gale’s collection Michigana, Sources in U.S. History Online, available as part of Michigan eLibrary. (Some eLibrary material is accessible to only those who log in with a Michigan library card, driver’s license or state ID.)

• Got Scottish ancestors? The pay-per-view service DeceasedOnline, a database of burial and cremation registers for the UK and Ireland, recently added 192,000 burial records from 10 cemeteries in Aberdeen, Scotland. You can search for free; viewing records costs about $2.20 to $3.

Friday, June 18, 2010 2:55:30 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [1]

• 10 best websites for military research
• Military records toolkit
• Four resources for military ancestors
• Common abbreviations in military records
• Civil War genealogy toolkit
• WWI genealogy resources
• Military Records category of this Genealogy Insider blog
  

• Online Military Records: Document Your Family's Service webinar recording
• May 2008 Family Tree Magazine with our guide to online military records
• July 2007 Family Tree Magazine (available as a PDF digital download) with our Civil War research guide
• The Everything Civil War Book By Brooke C. Stoddard and Daniel P. Murphy, PhD

Wednesday, May 26, 2010 10:13:00 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [4]

Some 20,000 people attended the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints-sponsored Celebration of Family History Thursday night in the LDS Conference Center Auditorium.

 It was a spectacular presentation that combined music from the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra at Temple Square, video shorts showing real people talking about what family history means to them, and talks from LDS president Henry B. Eyring and historian David McCullough. McCullough is the author of the books The Johnstown Flood, 1776, John Adams and others. Each element flowed smoothly into the next, in a seamless and inspiring program.

This is a picture I took with my phone before the celebration got underway:

One of my favorite moments came after a video about a man whose family came to appreciate their Scottish heritage when one young son decided to take up the bagpipes. The video’s sound faded as the choir launched into Amazing Grace and out marched a quartet of bagpipers—including the real live boy in the video, now all grown up.

Hearing McCullough was a real treat. Growing up in Pittsburgh, he said, all the kids would make gravy lakes in their mashed potatoes, use a fork to break the side and say “Johnstown Flood” as the gravy flowed into the peas—having no idea what they were talking about. That tragic flood was the topic of his first book.

At dinner time in the 1940s, his hard-of-hearing dad (who detested president Franklin Delano Roosevelt) and his equally hard-of-hearing grandmother (who believed that next to Jesus, FDR was the best human being to walk the earth) would debate the New Deal at unforgettable levels.  

McCullough spoke about the importance of history and the wonderfulness of journals as sources. If you want to be immortal, he advised the audience, keep a journal, and when you think the curtain’s about to come down on your life, give it to the Library of Congress. Your journal will be famous because it will be the only one in existence from this era.

To get to know your ancestors, besides studying their records and reading what they wrote, you should read what they read, McCullough said. There’s no such thing as a self-made man or woman—we’re all made from the people before us and the people before them and the people before them. There’s no such thing as the “forseeable future,” our ancestors no more knew how things were going to turn out that we know.

The phrase shouldn’t be “gone but not forgotten,” he said, but rather, “if not forgotten, then not gone.”

You can read more about the Celebration of Family History here  and here , and see a  video about it here. 

Friday, April 30, 2010 10:24:57 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

After setting up Family Tree Magazine’s booth in the National Genealogical Society conference exhibit hall here in Salt Lake City, editorial director Allison Stacy and I stopped by the Family History Library today.

The place was buzzing with activity! Researchers were busy at almost every computer terminal and microfilm reader. (I surreptitiously took these pictures on the second floor, which has US and Canadian microfilm.)

To help everyone get the records they need, the library is extending its hours, staying open until 11 pm Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday (the library normally closes at 9 on those days).

We’re looking forward to seeing lots of researchers in the exhibit hall!

Tuesday, April 27, 2010 10:03:03 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• The main event is the National Genealogical Society annual conference—where your friends at Family Tree Magazine will be in booth 510—is April 28 to May 1. Advance registration is now closed, but you can register at the door, and the exhibit hall is free. The conference will feature a special Gentech exhibit hall focused on genealogy technology, workshops for beginners and international researchers a Saturday kids camp and more.

There’s also a Celebration of Family History Concert with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Thursday, April 29 at 7 pm, and the Family History Library will extend its hours throughout the conference.

• Brigham Young University's Conference on Computerized Family History and Genealogy will be April 26 and 27. Classes cover topics such as FamilySearch online tools and resources, searching online databases, creating family websites, using genealogy software and more.

• The university’s Family History Technology Workshop, scheduled for April 28, is a daylong forum for discussing current and emerging research on technology in genealogy.

• The FamilySearch Developers Conference on April 27 is for software developers who want their products to work with FamilySearch’s online tools.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010 1:37:16 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• searching the online catalog ahead of time and printing the listings of books and microfilmed records you need (see our tips for searching the online catalog).

Note that catalog listings with the notation “Vault” mean that particular roll of microfilm is kept in the Granite Mountain Records Vault. You’ll need to call or e-mail at least three days ahead of time to have these items sent to the library (for contact numbers and the e-mail address, click this link and see tip number 6).

• preparing a prioritized research to-do list. Put book look-ups near the top, since these don’t circulate to your local FHL branch Family History Center (FHC). In my FHL research sessions, I’ve found doing book lookups a nice break when microfilm scrolling gives me a headache.

• updating your family tree charts (whether on paper or in software you plan to take along on your laptop, PDA, USB drive or other device). Also gather paper or digital copies of the records you’ll need to refer to.

• familiarizing yourself with the FHL’s hours, floor plan and researcher guidelines. Photocopier information is here. Also study the FHL’s advice on preparing for a visit.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010 4:57:53 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• Neat website alert: The Ministry of Food goes with an Imperial War Museum London exhibit about the British public’s adaption to food shortages during World War II. You can see photos from the exhibit, check out Ministry of Food publications on gardening and cooking, and watch video clips.

And here’s a blog by a woman who’s living for a month on a 1940s British ration diet. 

• And another one: Go to What Happened in My Birth Year for a fun way to see top movies, books and events from the year you were born. Thanks to ResearchBuzz for the heads-up on this site.
  

• Ancestry.com has improved Collection Filters in the New Search. When you’re in the Advanced Search, a pull-down menu lets you give priority to matches associated with various countries or ethnic backgrounds. See how it works on the Ancestry.com blog.

• FamilySearch added records from five new states to the 1910 and 1920 US censuses on the free Record Search Pilot Site. FamilySearch Indexing has started new projects to index records from Germany, Spain, Jamaica, Norway, Alaska, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana and Iowa. Interested in volunteering to be an indexer? Click here.
  

Friday, February 12, 2010 12:07:06 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

• Footnote hinted on its Facebook page about a new Civil Rights-era records collection to launch in February in partnership with Gannett. Get a glimpse here.

• The free FamilySearch Record Search pilot site has added 25 million new records for Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Dominican Republic, England, Germany, Guatemala, South Africa, Switzerland and the United States. They include 1920 US census indexes for Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Maryland, Wisconsin, South Dakota and Maine; 1935 and 1945 Florida state censuses; Indiana marriages and more.

• Subscription site GenealogyBank is adding 280 new African-American newspapers. The first 50 were released this month; see the titles, where they were published and the years of coverage on the GenealogyBank blog.

• The Victoria County (Texas) Genealogical Society’s website won the 2009 Website of the Year award from the Texas GenWeb Project. The Victoria County site offers local records, historical information, links to resources and more.

• Ancestry.com released the free Tree to Go iPhone app that lets you view your family tree, edit information, add relatives and upload photos on your iPhone or iPod Touch. You’ll first need a tree on Ancestry.com to use the app. Read more on the Ancestry.com blog.

• Ancestry.com also announced it’s getting rid of its Member Connections feature (note this is different from Member Connect, which was launched last year). It would let you let you enter an ancestor’s name and get a list of Ancestry.com members also researching that person, but now you can do pretty much the same thing by searching Public Member Trees.
  

• The National Archives in Washington, DC, is holding a public meeting next Friday, Jan. 29, at 10:45 am to discuss how the archives meets the needs of the research community. Get details on the NGS UpFront blog.
  

Friday, January 22, 2010 9:45:08 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

• In preparation for the Civil War sesquicentennial from 2011 to 2015, the Ohio Historical Society (OHS) and Cleveland State University's Center for Public History and Digital Humanities launched a website about Ohio’s role in the Civil War. You can submit content for several areas of the site. See the OHS newsletter for more information.
  
  
• FamilySearch updated several collections on its free Record Search Pilot site: the 1920 US census index (Texas, Ohio and Iowa were added), Massachusetts marriages, Spanish civil registers, Brazil Catholic church records, and Mexico Catholic baptisms. To see details of each collection, click the appropriate region on the site’s map, click the collection title, then click About This Collection.
  
  
• Pedigree database site OneGreatFamily created a page to help you discover Mayflower ancestors. You’ll find a list of passengers and information about their journey, and if you have a tree on the site (requires a subscription or a free trial), you can see if your branches match up with a Mayflower tree. Follow the directions on OneGreatFamily's Mayflower page to get started.
  
  
• If you’re going to the National Genealogical Society (NGS) annual conference in Salt Lake City April 28 to May 1, NGS has arranged air travel discounts of 2 to 7 percent with Delta/KLM/NWA, and car rental discounts of 8 percent with Thrifty. See the NGS website for how to take advantage of these deals.

Friday, November 20, 2009 1:41:39 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

• Databases recently updated or added in FamilySearch’s free Record Search pilot include the Indiana marriage index, Netherlands parish registers (images only so far), 1920 US Census index, Brazil Catholic church records (images only so far), and Italy municipal records (images only so far).

To see details of each addition, click the relevant region on the Record Search Pilot map. Then click the title of the collection in the alphabetical list. (Look for more FamilySearch search tips in the January 2010 Family Tree Magazine, on newsstands Dec. 15.)

• Dick Eastman started a free site called GenQueries for posting your surname research queries (for example, “Seeking information about Eugene and Lilly WOODFORD family, lived in Marion Co., Indiana, in 1900”). You also can advertise genealogy services or societies, and search others’ ads. Read about GenQueries on Dick’s blog.
  

• I read about this on the ArchivesNext blog: The Amsterdam, Netherlands, city archives has a scan-on-demand program. You can search the archives’ online records inventory, and if a particular item hasn’t been scanned, ask staff to scan it. You also can search an index to find already-scanned records. There is a fee to obtain a scan, which helps fund the program.
  

• Genealogy and family networking site MyHeritage launched a Family Statistics feature for the family tree sites on MyHeritage. The feature generates statistics, such oldest living relative or most common birth month in the family, based on data in the tree. Family Statistics works for sites on the free basic plan as well as the paid plans.
  

• Registration is now open for the 2010 National Genealogical Society (NGS) annual conference, April 28 to May 1 in Salt Lake City. Registration fees range from $175 to $245 for the full conference, or $95 to $115 per day—it depends whether you’re an NGS member, whether you want the syllabus in print or on a CD, and whether you make the March 8 early bird deadline.
  

Friday, November 06, 2009 12:24:18 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

• The current long list of six locality descriptors (small farm, large farm, parish, clerical district, county, country) will be reduced to four (large farm, clerical district, county and country).

• The current list of only one or two locality descriptors for “move-ins” from other clerical districts will be expanded to three or four descriptors wherever possible.

• Current errors regarding place names (caused by early extractors who couldn’t read the language) will be corrected in a later dataset.

• Variants and diminutives of some names will be corrected and standardized in a later version.

• Magneson hopes to post updated Sør-Aurdal data by the end of 2009. The next clerical district data to appear will likely be Nord-Fron, Sør-Fron, Norde Land and Søndre Land, beginning in early 2010.

Tuesday, October 27, 2009 2:53:13 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

• Got St. Louis-area ancestors? Consider subscribing to Genealogy and House History News, a free monthly e-mail update listing additions to the Missouri History Museum's Genealogy and Local History Index (click the “Sign up for the E-mail List” link). If you find a relative, you can order a photocopy of the record.

• On Kimberly’s Genealogy Blog at About.com: Genealogy, Kimberly Powell reports that almost 200,000 Scottish burial records from the 1800s are now online on a UK pay-per-view site called DeceasedOnline. See Kimberley’s post for details about the collection.

• FamilySearch has added a few more databases to the Record Search Pilot, thanks to its hard-working indexing volunteers. You can search indexes and view images of Protestant church records from France (1612-1906).
  

The 1920 US census index (but not record images) was added for Mississippi, Montana, New Jersey and South Carolina.

You can browse images of church records from Italy, Slovakia, Argentina and Mexico (these indexes are still being processed).

To find records associated with the place your ancestors lived, click Browse our Record Collections on the Record Search home page, then click an area of the map.

• Happy third birthday to RootsTelevision! The free genealogy TV Web site shared a list of its most popular videos, several of which relate to family history happenings that broke into “mainstream” news. See the list on the Og Blog.

Friday, October 02, 2009 2:20:23 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• Subscription site Ancestry.co.uk (sister site to the US-focused Ancestry.com) has added London parish records, which among other events cover deaths from the bubonic plague and the 1666 Great Fire of London. They’re part of a collection of London records from 1538 to 1980.

• Google Books, where you can search millions of out-of-print books, is partnering with On-Demand Books to let you use any Espresso Book Machine to print books in the public domain that Google has digitized from. (There aren’t a lot of places to find these book machines—click here for locations.) Learn more on the Google Books blog.

• Visit the Family History Expos blog for a list of 10 great tips for using social networking sites to do genealogy research and connect with your family.

• FamilySearch Indexing has launched new indexing projects from Indiana, Idaho, Canada, Spain, Guatemala, and Peru. The 1920 census index for Ohio is undergoing preparation for publication on the free FamilySearch site. Hooray! (We’re from the Buckeye State.) The 1920 census for Texas; Carroll County, Ind., marriages; and several international collections also are being readied for release.

• World Vital Records lowered the price of its World Collection subscription to $99.95 (from $119.95). This collection gives you access to all the site’s US records, plus those from Canada, the UK, Ireland and other countries. See the November 2009 Family Tree Magazine for our guide to using World Vital Records.

• Don’t forget to visit the Michigan Genealogical Council Web site for information on an online petition in support of the Library of Michigan, as well as links to news of budget-related library cuts across the country.

Friday, September 18, 2009 10:29:24 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• Our online Hispanic Heritage Toolkit has resources and tips for learning about Mexican, Spanish, Portuguese, Basque, Central and South American ancestors.
  

See our advice for research in the Caribbean, too.

• Visit the free FamilySearch Record Search Pilot to look for ancestors in the 1930 Mexican census; Mexican baptisms, marriages and burials; and church records from several Mexican states. (Scroll down on this page to see the list).

The site also has a growing collection of church, civil registration and census records from the Caribbean and Central and South America.

• Ancestry.com and the free Ancestry Library Edition (see if it’s available at your library) have border-crossing records from Mexico covering 1903 to 1957. These records are on microfilm at the National Archives.
  
  
• Those with Mexican ancestry can use our Mexican Research Guide, available as a $4 download in our online store.
  

• The Smithsonian lists some events and educator resources, and takes you on a virtual Hispanic heritage cultural tour.

• PBS is airing "Latin Music USA," a documentary series, Mondays, Oct. 12 and 19, from 9 to 11 p.m. ET.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009 9:50:25 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [3]

• records from Brazil; Mexico; British Columbia, Canada; the Czech Republic; and Hungary

• 1892 New York state census (some counties are missing from this census; see the FamilySearch wiki page about the collection for a list)
  

• Philadelphia, Pa. marriage indexes, 1885 to 1951

Monday, September 14, 2009 8:51:51 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• Subscription family tree site One Great Family exhibited this year as part of a new marketing effort to reach the genealogy community.

One Great Family automatically merges trees when it finds the identical person on both, which sounds a bit scary—but where the trees differ, the site maintains the differences and each member sees the version of the tree he believes is correct. President Rob Armstrong says no one can change your view of your tree, but everyone can see your version and accept your view if they choose. A subscription costs $59.95 annually; a free one-week trial offer is available.

• A new company called Geneartogy uses your ancestors’ names and photos to create frameable, decorative trees on canvas (you also can get the designs on smaller plaques). Prices range from a $98 extra-small plaque to a $408 extra-large canvas, with an additional cost for framing.

• Next year’s FGS conference is slated for August 18-21 in Knoxville, Tenn., home of the East Tennessee Historical Society’s excellent museum and research library (and close to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park). Many classes will cover the historic and cultural roots of Tennessee and Kentucky, as well as the in- and out-migrations of those states.

(The 2010 National Genealogical Society conference, by the way, is in Salt Lake City, so you could double up on a trip to the Family History Library.)

• If you’re new to genealogy conferences, you might be curious about the long panel of ribbons dangling from some attendees’ name badges, like so:

(This is podcast host Dear Myrtle’s badge.) Ribbons designate society memberships, honors and more. All registrants got an “Ancestry.com member” ribbon (whether or not they actually were members) and first-time attendees got “First FGS Conference.” FGS board members, speakers and  genealogical societies delegates received ribbons. I got “Podcast Fan” and “Keeping up With Blogs” at a social networking forum. Some highly involved folks had to take special measures to secure their ribbons:

Wednesday, September 09, 2009 11:31:00 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

Volunteer indexers from the Arkansas Genealogical Society have completed a quarter of the project so far--that’s 442,058 records linked to 199,431 digital images of original marriage certificates from the counties of Ashley, Baxter, Boone, Chicot, Clay, Crittenden,Desha, Drew, Fulton, Jackson, Johnson, Lee, Logan, Madison, Monroe, Montgomery, Nevada, Perry and Pike.

Friday, September 04, 2009 1:01:08 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [1]

• Hundreds of genealogists—your truly included—are packing their bags for the Federation of Genealogical Societies Conference in Little Rock, Ark., Sept. 2 to 5. I’ll write more about the conference in a separate post next week, but in the mean time, you can check out the conference Web site and blog.

• The National Archives’ marriage records (1815 to 1866) from the Virginia Field Office of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands (Freedmen’s Bureau) have been digitized and are now available free at the FamilySearch record search pilot site.

• Subscription genealogy Web site Ancestry.com and its related international sites will be down for scheduled maintenance for about three hours starting Tuesday, Sept. 1 at 1 a.m. Mountain Time. Portions of RootsWeb, Genealogy.com, MyFamily.com and FamilyTreeMaker.com—which live on Ancestry.com servers—also will be unavailable. 
  

• Mark your calendars for National Museum Day Sept. 26, when hundreds of museums across the country will offer free general admission to you and a guest when you present a Museum Day admission card, downloadable from this site.

• A Deerfield, Ill., documentarian has created a show called “The Legend Seekers,” which traces family legends of regular people. You can submit your family story at LegendSeekers.com, see others' stories and get research tips. Chicago-area residents can watch an episode on WTTW Channel 11 Aug. 30 at 12:30 p.m. and 3:30 a.m. Aug. 31. (It’ll also run on WTTW Prime—Comcast Channel 243—at 9:30 p.m. Aug. 31, and 4:30 and 9:30 a.m. Sept. 1.)

Friday, August 28, 2009 11:20:36 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• FamilySearch and Svensk Arkivinformation (part of the National Archives of Sweden) are starting a huge project to create a free online index to 418 million names in Swedish parish registers of births, christenings, marriages and burials. Volunteers will index registers from the start of recordkeeping (between 1608 and 1686, depending on the parish) through 1860.

• StoryCorps will bring its mobile oral history recording booth to the Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS) conference that starts Sept. 2 in Little Rock, Ark. See the FGS blog for details on booking a time slot and preparing to tell your story.

• Heritage Travel, a subsidiary of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, is launching a free online travel community called Gozaic with several “circles” for those interested in history-related travel. Those include Civil War Buffs, Abraham Lincoln, Family Heritage Travel, Journeys into Hidden America and others. Visit the pre-launch site to learn more.

• On a celebrity baby blog this week, actor/producer Lisa Kudrow describes her next project as “a genealogy series in which we take stars to their ancestral landmarks ... different countries and places where they see documents and they see homes or buildings or things that have to do with their family.” (Scroll to the bottom of the post to see the full statement.)
  

Maybe the postponed US version of “Who Do You Think You Are?” will see the light of our TV screens. (Last we heard, it didn’t make NBC’s fall lineup, but might show up as a mid-season replacement.)

Friday, August 21, 2009 12:13:47 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [2]

• New records this week on the free FamilySearch Record Search Pilot  include an index to Cheshire, England, Non-conformist records (1671 to 1900), and index to the 1895 Minnesota state census, and images for the 1905 New York state census (the index is still in progress).

New indexing projects are underway for Italy, New Zealand, Perú and the United States; volunteers who can help with foreign language projects are needed. Go to the FamilySearch Indexing site for more information.

• Library and Archives Canada’s online Canadian Genealogy Center—one of our 101 Best Web Sites for 2009—released an index of 206,731 Canadians naturalized from 1915 to 1932. You can use the information in the database to request the original naturalization records.

• The International Association of Jewish Genealogists conference is coming right up Aug. 2-7 in Philadelphia. Besides genealogy classes and an exhibit hall, you can use a Resource Room stocked with research materials and computers. Extracurriculars include walking tours, bus tours and cemetery research trips. Visit the conference Web site for registration information.

• A Twitter retweet from @mdiane_rogers led us to a free database from professional genealogy firm Price & Associates of indentured immigrants who arrived between 1607 and 1820. You can search by first and last name, date and place of of birth, and other parameters. Sources of the information are listed on the site.
  

• Ancestry.com has upgraded its “hinting engine” for FamilyTreeMaker. Now a faster, higher-capacity engine will automatically search Ancestry.com and display a leaf next to a name in FamilyTreeMaker's pedigree and detail views if there's a potential match. The new engine also searches Ancestry Member Trees instead of One World Tree data.
  

Friday, July 24, 2009 2:25:54 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [1]

• Members of FamilyHistoryLink (FamilyLink’s social networking site lunched in 2007) received e-mailed announcements that GenealogyWise, the social networking site FamilyLink launched last week, will replace FamilyHistoryLink. FamilyHistoryLink will shut down as of Aug. 15; members are advised to download and save any important messages. We wondered last week if this would happen.
  
  More than 5,000 people have signed onto GenealogyWise; they’ve formed 2,360 groups and contributed more than 10,000 items (photos, videos, blog posts, etc.) to the site.

• GenSeek, FamilyLink’s Web 2.0 version of the Family History Library online catalog, should launch this fall, according to a FamilyLink announcement posted on Dick Eastman’s blog. About the same time, the GenSeeker Project should hit the road to spread the word to local librarians and historians.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009 10:36:26 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• The Generations Network, parent company of Ancestry.com, has a poignant new ad campaign you’ll probably catch on some media or other (if you’re worried you’ll miss it, see it on Ancestry.com’s YouTube channel). 

• Ancestry.com also has developed an Ancient Ancestry Finder that guesses your haplogroup (ancestral origins) based on a few questions. It’s fun, and the haplogroups have cute names such as "Boatbuilders" and "Inventors," but keep in mind it's not necessarily accurate. At the end, you get a pitch to buy a $79 DNA test to determine if the Finder is correct.

• If you’ve been thinking of trying the databases at NewEnglandAncestors.org, now might be the time. The New England Historic Genealogical Society is offering $15 off new memberships during July.

• This week, FamilySearch enhanced its free Record Search Pilot with 12 new collections, which have records from Argentina, Australia, Mexico, Netherlands, and Spain. New United States collections were added for Delaware, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Rhode Island and Utah.

International indexing projects now underway involve records from the Czech Republic; Baden, Germany; and South Africa—click here if you’re interested in volunteering.

• Following on the heels of Footnote’s partnership with newspaper publisher Gannett, ProQuest announced it’s adding Gannett papers to its Newsstand data service (offered through libraries). ProQuest will offer the papers back to 1977; Footnote is digitizing older editions.

• The Houston Metropolitan Research Center (HMRC) at the Houston Public Library's downtown Julia Ideson Building is changing its research hours during a renovation. Now through Aug. 31, HMRC is open Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sept. 1 to Oct. 31, it'll be open by appointment—call (832) 393-1313 to make one.

Thursday, July 02, 2009 11:18:55 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [2]

• The Connecticut State Library, which is facing a staff reduction due to the state's Retirement Incentive Plan, will be closed on Mondays for the summer. Starting July 1, the library’s new hours will be Tuesday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.

• After record additions throughout the first half of the year, the 1911census.co.uk site (developed by subscription and pay-per-view site FindMyPast.com with the British national archives) now has the complete 1911 census for England, Wales, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. It also includes full details of British Army personnel and their families stationed overseas.

Read more about 1911census.co.uk in our post from last week.

• The free FamilySearch Record Search pilot added 6 million new records this week, including Louisiana and Idaho death records; the 1920 census for Delaware, the District of Columbia, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire and New Mexico; and digital images of church records were also added for Mexico (the states of Baja California and Baja California Sur).
  

• We hear that MyGenShare.com is almost ready for beta testing. Founder Barry Ewell said the launch was delayed until late summer to expand the site’s educational resources and take advantage of better technology to improve user experience.

Friday, June 19, 2009 2:11:26 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• New content on subscription site World Vital Records includes pre-1700 New England marriages and names of about 8,500 Union soldiers who were for various reasons omitted from the original Roll of Honor (a listing of Union burials in national cemeteries).

One addition, the Protestation Returns, which record religious loyalty oaths from males in England from 1641 to 1642, is free for 10 days (from May 28).

• Ancestry.com passed 8 billion records in its databases (a record in this case is a name, not a document). The vital records collection is biggest, with 1,100 million records and 38.9 million document images; followed by censuses at 900 million records and 27.7 million images.
  

On deck at Ancestry.com: Improving the census collection (1790 through 1900 censuses should be updated by year’s end), newspapers from 50 new cities and early city directories.

• FamilySearch has added volunteer indexing projects from around the world, including Argentina; British Columbia, Canada; France; and NorthDakota, South Carolina, Ohio and Indiana. For details about the records and years being indexed, see the FamilySearch Indexing Web site.
  

Click here to volunteer to index some records.

Friday, May 29, 2009 1:35:26 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• Look for subscription historical records site Footnote to make its 1930 US census free for a limited time later this summer. The site also will come out with a collection of American Indian records within the next few months.

• Swedish church records subscription site Genline is introducing a transcription feature. Once you find an ancestor’s record, you can easily transcribe the name and make it available to other users. As names are transcribed, they’ll be available for searching. Right now, you browse Genline by parish, but this means that eventually, you’ll be able to find ancestors without knowing their parish first.

• FamilySearch indexers have finished the New York 1892 and Rhode Island 1925 state censuses; these will be posted soon on FamilySearch’s record search pilot site.

• We heard about some changes coming soon for genealogy resources catalog directory site Live Roots. One sounds really useful: A way to save online searches to a “project” so you’ll know which sites you’ve checked, when, and how many results were returned, and you could easily repeat searches. You could create as many projects as you want—one for each county, say, or each surname.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009 4:22:29 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]