• 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]

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]

Check this out if you have Revolutionary War or War of 1812 ancestors: Subscription genealogy site Fold3 is making its collection of Service Records of Volunteers, 1784-1811, free through Feb. 5, according to a post on the site's Facebook page.

These images come from 32 rolls of NARA microfilm publication M905. Each soldier's "jacket" typically contains cards abstracting entries for the soldier in original muster rolls, payrolls, receipt rolls, and other lists.

Go here to search this collection. You'll need to register for a free account with the site to view records.

Need research guidance for Revolutionary War and War of 1812 ancestors? Both conflicts are covered in our guide, Research Strategies: 10 Lesser-Known Military Conflicts. It's a $4 download from ShopFamilyTree.com.

Friday, January 27, 2012 3:54:53 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

• 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]

The database is the first searchable collection resulting from the World Memory Project, a partnership of Ancestry.com and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The records contain information on thousands of individuals including displaced Jewish orphans; Czech Jews deported to the Terezin concentration camp and camps in occupied Poland; and French victims of Nazi persecution.

World Memory Project contributors use software from Ancestry.com to index museum records. The indexes are free to search on Ancestry.com. The museum retains the original records and provides free copies of them upon request. To date, more than 2,100 contributors from around the world have indexed almost 650,000 records.

Thursday, November 03, 2011 9:06:11 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [3]

German
People with German heritage make up the largest ancestry group in the United States, according to the 2000 US census. I'm part of this statistic, at one-half German.

• Tips for using the Meyers Orts- und Verkehrs-Lexikon des Deutschen Reiches, which German genealogy expert James M. Beidler calls the “seminal handbook for tracking down German villages”
• Family Tree Magazine's German genealogy glossary
• German Genealogy Home Page
• Surviving passenger departure records from the port of Bremen
• German records on FamilySearch.org
• Beidler’s German Genealogy 201 Family Tree University course

Italian
Those with Italian heritage make up the seventh largest ancestry group in the United States, with 15.6 million Americans claiming Italian roots in the 2000 US census.

• Italian genealogy records at a glance
• Finding Italian military records
• Italian Genealogical Group
• Ancestry.com’s Italian records (includes recently released civil registrations and a free index to Palermo birth records)
• Italian records on FamilySearch.org
• Family Tree Magazine Italian Genealogy Guide digital download, available in ShopFamilyTree.com

Polish
If you have Polish ancestors, you share heritage with 9 million Americans and are part of the country's eighth largest ancestry group.

• Polish Genealogy Terms
• Tracing Polish town-name changes
• Federation of East European Family History Societies’ Poland Genealogy Resources
• Polish Genealogical Society of America
• PolishRoots.org
• Poland, Roman Catholic Church Books, 1600-1950 on FamilySearch
• Family Tree Magazine Polish Genealogy Guide digital download from ShopFamilyTree.com

Wednesday, October 26, 2011 2:40:33 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

A new database will be free each day, and stay free through Oct. 15. So far, you can search for free:

• Social Security Death Index (also free elsewhere online, including FamilySearch and RootsWeb)
  
• Griffith’s Valuation, 1848-1864, an important resource for Ireland
  
• California Marriage Index, 1960-1985
  
• WWI Personnel Rosters, 1914–1918, from Bavaria, Germany (records are in German)
  
• 1920 US Census
  
• Australian Electoral Rolls, 1903–1954

You also can enter to win daily prizes from Ancestry.com, culminating in a grand prize trip behind the scenes of the NBC show "Who Do You Think You Are?"

Go here to see Ancestry.com's daily free databases and enter the sweepstakes.

Thursday, October 06, 2011 9:04:13 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [1]

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]

The Ancestry.co.uk collection includes many of the same records: arrivals at US Atlantic and other ports, records of early US immigrations, US naturalizations, the Irish Emigrants in North America collection, etc. To see the list, go here and scroll down to the Included Data Collections box.

Click here to start searching the Ancestry.co.uk immigration collection.

Monday, August 29, 2011 8:41:17 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [6]

The collection includes arrivals at US Atlantic and other ports, records of early US immigrations, US naturalizations, the Irish Emigrants in North America collection and more. To see the list, go here and scroll down to the Included Data Collections box.

Click here to start searching the Ancestryco.uk immigration collection.

Monday, August 29, 2011 8:41:11 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [22]

• 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]

That’ll be more than 3.8 million images with 130 million records. Even better, they’ll be indexed by 45 fields, meaning you’ll be able to search on the name, street address, county, state, parents’ birthplaces and more.

The records won’t be on Ancestry.com right when the census is released April 2, 2012. Ancestry.com’s press release says they’ll commence “streaming onto the website in mid-April 2012.”

Can’t wait until mid-April? The record images will be available first on the National Archives’ website, but they won’t be searchable right away by name. Click here to see our post about finding your ancestors’ 1940 census enumeration district.

Get help with your census research—including preparing for the release of the 1940 census records—in the May 2010 Family Tree Magazine.

Wednesday, August 17, 2011 2:16:37 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [3]

• 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]

• 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]

Footnote.com is digitizing millions of War of 1812 records and making them available free as part of a project with the Federation of Genealogical Societies (which in is in the process of raising $3.7 million dollars for the project) and the National Archives.

The first 1,400 record images—less than 1 percent of the estimated 7.2 million documents—are now available, and Footnote will add new records as they’re digitized.

The War of 1812 Pension Application Files can tell you

• The veteran’s name, age, rank, and service information and dates

• His widow’s name and maiden name (if she applied for the pension)

• Soldier’s marriage date

• Widow’s death date

• Acres of land granted as a reward for service and the year of the Bureau of Land Management act under which the land was granted, and the warrant number (these details can help you find a bounty land warrant)

• Applicant’s place of residence

• Additional names, including those of the soldier’s surviving dependents

You’ll find a guide to researching the War of 1812 and other “lesser-known” US conflicts in the December 2010 Family Tree Magazine.

(Family Tree Magazine Plus members can access the article here.) 

Wednesday, May 11, 2011 11:30:52 AM (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]

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]

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]

To mark the occasion, subscription historical records site Footnote has made two collections free during the month of December:

• Pearl Harbor Muster rolls, the quarterly Muster Rolls and related documents for the United States Navy’s fighting ships, ground organizations, and shore facilities that were present on the island of Oahu during the attack. 

• World War II Diaries, 1942-1945, submitted by most units in the Navy (most Marine Corps war diaries were submitted by aviation units such as fighter squadrons), provide a day-to-day record of operational and sometimes administrative activities. This database contains 251,082 document images, about 13 percent of the collection housed at the National Archives. 

Of course, Footnote’s Interactive USS Arizona Memorial, a searchable, life-size image of the memorial naming USS Arizona sailors killed in the Pearl Harbor attack, is always free.

Get help making the most of your Footnote subscription with our Footnote Web Guide, available as a digital download from ShopFamilyTree.com.

Wondering about your family’s WWII memorabilia? Learn more about it from the photos and information in Warman's World War II Collectibles by Michael E. Haskew.

Tuesday, December 07, 2010 10:54:00 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]

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]

Home to the city of Pontiac, Oakland County is just north of Detroit and considered part of the Detroit metro area.

You can search by name and the year of marriage or death if you know it. Marriage record matches give the couple’s names and marriage date; death record matches show the person’s name and date of death.

If you find an index entry for an ancestor, you can click to order a copy of the record ($15 for the first copy, $5 for additional copies, plus a $5 “enhanced access fee” for online orders).

If your ancestor married or died in Oakland County between 1935 and 1941, you can order records from the clerk’s office online even though they’re not yet in the index. If the marriage or death occurred before 1935, you must order records by mail or in person.

Oakland County also has birth records, but Michigan birth certificates created less than 100 years ago are restricted to all but the person named in the record and his or her parents. However, according to the state vital records office website, “an heir may request a copy of a birth record less than 100 years old if they can provide an out-of-state death certificate, or the death information if it was a Michigan death, with the request.” 

Monday, October 18, 2010 4:57:31 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [2]

• 394 maps and nautical charts used for naval campaigns, and troop movements and battles. You can search the maps by keyword(s), state or region, year or chart number. If you click Search without entering terms, you’ll get a list of all the documents in the collection (not in alphabetical or chronological order).

• the Coast Survey publication Notes on the Coast, which aided Union forces in planning naval blockades. Browse Notes on the Coast here.

• annual report summaries by war-era Coast Survey Superintendent Alexander Bache. Download them by year using the links on the Charting a More Perfect Union home page.

Monday, October 11, 2010 1:43:04 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• 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]

• The Federation of Genealogical Societies has re-launched its Society Hall online directory. If you think you know the name of the genealogical society, historical society, family association or library you want to contact, you can search by keyword; otherwise, choose a state from the drop-down menu for a list of societies in that state (note that the directory might not include every society in the state).

• An Irish library and museum website called Ask About Ireland has posted an important Irish record group free online: Griffith’s Primary Valuation is an accounting of property values in Ireland that took place between 1847 and 1864. You can search by a family name and place, or use the Place Name search to search by just a place. 
  

Each result contains the family name, the first name, county and parish. Click links to see details for the individual (landlord and tenant names, location, and publication information for the original map), the person’s residence plotted on a map, and a copy of the original Griffith's Valuation page entry.

• Tonight you can watch the “Who Do You Think You Are?” episode in which pro football Hall of Fame member Emmitt Smith discovers his roots. It’s on NBC at 8 pm eastern (7 central). (See our “Who Do You Think You Are?” coverage.)

Friday, August 27, 2010 2:42:33 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• Finding African-American Ancestors in Newspapers, a Family Tree University course taught by African-American genealogy expert Tim Pinnick
  

• Tracing Slave Ancestors Resource Toolkit (free article on FamilyTreeMagazine.com)
  
  
• How to trace slave ancestors, available as a Family Tree Magazine Plus article (click here for information on Family Tree Plus) and in the July 2009 Family Tree Magazine
  
  
• African-American Research Guide, a digital download from ShopFamilyTree.com

Monday, July 19, 2010 9:33:06 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• 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]

• British civil registrations (akin to US vital records) starting in 1837
• 1841 to 1911 English and Welsh census records
• passengers leaving British ports (which includes those whose journeys originated elsewhere in Europe but brought them through British ports, such as Liverpool)
• death duty registers of probates generating taxes (1796 to 1903)
• British Army Service Records 1760-1913
• National Roll of the Great War 1914-1918
• Army Roll of Honour 1939-45
• specialist records (civil service records, directories of the medical professions and clergy, crew lists, shareholders of the Great Western Railway)

Monday, June 14, 2010 8:46:25 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• Union and Confederate service records for many states (these records are being added as they’re digitized)
  
  
• Widow’s pension files (records are being added as they’re digitized)
  
  
• Emancipation documents and slave records
  
  
• Confederate amnesty papers and citizens files
  
  
• Lincoln assassination investigation and trial papers
  
  
• Civil War photos and maps

• 10 Best Websites for military research (free article)
  
  
• Civil War resource toolkit (free article)
  
  
• Guide to the American Civil War Research Database (free article)
  
  
• A House Divided: Civil War research guide (for FamilyTree Magazine Plus members)
  

• July 2007 Family Tree Magazine with our “A House Divided” Civil War research guide (digital issue from ShopFamilyTree.com)
  

• Online Military Records: Document Your Ancestor’s Service webinar recording from ShopFamilyTree.com
  
  
• Footnote Web Guide digital download from ShopFamilyTree.com
  

• Family Tree University US Military Records course (starts June 21)
  

Thursday, June 10, 2010 8:35:54 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• Tonight on “Who Do You Think You Are?” watch actress Brooke Shields reconnect with her royal past. Take note of the new episode schedule, which inserts a repeat and a bye week:

April 2: Brooke Shields
April 9: Sarah Jessica Parker (Repeat)
April 16: No episode
April 23: Susan Sarandon
April 30: Spike Lee

• You might’ve seen this already, but I thought I’d mention: The New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) in Boston discovered that talk show host and rookie American Idol judge Ellen DeGeneres is related to superstar Madonna. You can watch Ellen talk about the findings on her March 31 show.

• New sources in the Missouri History Museum’s Genealogy and Local History Index include portage lists (payrolls) and wages account for several steamboats, graduation programs and more. You can search the index, which references people and companies primarily from St. Louis, online; if you find an ancestor’s name, you can order a copy of the original document.

• The Brigham Young University library has posted data from the Mormon Immigration Index CD (originally published in 2000) in a searchable database. Data come from immigrants’ accounts, passenger lists and other resources documenting Europeans (especially from the British Isles) who became Mormons and immigrated to the United States.

• For those of you who are LDS church members, the subscription family tree site OneGreatFamily is launching a new web site called OneClickTempleTrip.com that taps into “New FamilySearch” for a quick and easy way to identify ancestors you can take to the temple for ordinance work. (New FamilySearch is a family tree site available to many LDS members; it eventually will become available to the public.)

Friday, April 02, 2010 11:41:28 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

• in the print May 2010 Family Tree Magazine,
• in the digital version of the May 2010 Family Tree Magazine,
• on its own as a digital download

• an in-depth description of how to use the site and its collections
• a quick-start guide and need-to-know statistics (such as the site’s contact information, major content areas and any fees)
• step-by-step search demos
• a cheat sheet of quick links, resources, hacks and shortcuts
• hyperlinked URLs so you can click through to all the websites recommended in the guide

Monday, March 15, 2010 12:10:16 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

• the complete 1860 census
• 5 percent of 1900
• 3 percent of 1910
• 3 percent of 1920
• 98 percent of 1930

Thursday, March 11, 2010 11:46:50 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

• Estates, 1791 to 1984

• Wills, 1791 to 1973

• Trusts, 1791 to 1984

• Guardianships, 1791 to 1984

• Marriages, 1808 to 1983 

• Minister's Licenses, 1963 to 1975 (index books only)
  

• Birth Records, 1863 to 1908

• Birth Registrations and Corrections, 1941 to 1994

• Death Records, 1881 to 1908

• Naturalizations, 1856 to 1906 (index books only; you can request photocopies from surviving record books from the court, or rent Family History Library microfilm through a Family History Center)

• Probate Court Journal Entries, 1791 to 1837 (no index; you must browse by volume and page number)
  

• Physician Certificates, 1919 to 1987 (no index; you must browse by volume and page number)

Monday, January 04, 2010 9:04:44 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [1]

• Click Search to search for a person’s name or other words in building descriptions. You’ll get a list of results for related buildings; click one to see information for that building.

• Click Street Index to browse to a street name, then click the house number you’re looking for.

• Use the links on the left side of the home page to browse the site’s deed records, census records and burial information.

• Click Related Information to read background material on the community and local organizations.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009 3:44:25 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [1]

• 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]

• The Genealogical Records Committee National Index (also called the GRC Index) was already on the site, but if you’ve used it before, it has a different interface as part of the Research System. It indexes 20,000 volumes of transcribed gravestones, family Bibles and other records (and not just from the Revolution era) DAR members have collected.
  

• The Ancestor Database of ancestral data from applications of DAR members (who must prove their descent from a Patriot).

• A Member search, which lets you enter a deceased DAR member's number for limited information on her ancestors.

• The Descendants index, still under construction, lets you search for names in generations between the DAR member and the Revolutionary War ancestor. It includes much 18th and 19th-century information.

Thursday, November 19, 2009 8:47:56 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [4]

• The New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) is publishing a new scholarly journal called American Ancestors Journal, which will be included as supplement in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register. It’ll contain articles with a national scope, emphasizing New York State and out-migrations from New England. You can download the first edition as a PDF here. 

Subscriptions to these publications are included with an NEHGS membership, which starts at $75 per year.

• Search three Georgia newspaper archives free at the Digital Library of Georgia: the Macon Telegraph, the Columbus Enquirer and the Milledgeville Historic Newspapers Archive (this includes several titles published in Milledgeville). You can search the full text of the papers or browse by date, and view pages with the DjVu browser plug-in.

• Subscription site WorldVitalRecords has added newspaper content from Alaska, California, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Texas, Wisconsin, Mexico and the UK. Click here to see the titles and other details. The papers are accessible with a World Vital Records subscription ($39.96 per year).

• David Ferriero was sworn in this week as the 10th Archivist of the United States. The new director of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) was formerly the Andrew W. Mellon Director of the New York Public Libraries, and he’s served in leadership positions at other academic libraries. You can read more about Ferriero on NARA's website.
  

Friday, November 13, 2009 2:04:45 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

• Concentration camp registers and documents from Dachau, Mauthausen, Auschwitz and Flossenburg.
  
  
• The Ardelia Hall Collection of records related to Nazi looting of Jewish possessions.
  
  
• Captured German records including deportation and death lists from concentration camps.
  
  
• Nuremberg War Crimes Trial proceedings.  

Tuesday, September 29, 2009 9:11:26 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

Let me know if you guys ever do an article on gruesome heirlooms—my family has this shirt that my great-great grandfather was wearing when he was shot and murdered. (Gross! And weird—who keeps that kind of stuff?)

Basically, all I know is my great-great grandfather was a pig farmer who had a farm in Lockville, Ohio. According to the story, my great-great-grandpa turned to go back into the house after refusing to sell land to this guy, and when he did, the guy shot him in the back. Yikes! And that's how my grandpa ended up with a bloody shirt in a trunk in his basement.

Murder at Lockville.

LANCASTER, June 23.—[Special.]—George (sic) Tisdale, a farm laborer, shot George L. Boyer, a prominent famrer, at Lockville, this county, this morning. As the two sons of Tisdale were quarreling with a son of Boyer about hogs that had trespassed on Boyer's farm, he came up to protect his son, when Tisdale came out of his house and shot Boyer in the right breast, Boyer dying in five minutes after.

• Researching an Ancestor's Murder
• Forum: What did your ancestors die of?

Tuesday, August 11, 2009 10:51:25 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [1]

• 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]

• Criminals sentenced to transportation to America, about 1705 to 1775
• Criminals executed at York, about 1710 to 1899
• Debtors who pleaded insolvency, about 1709 to 1813

Wednesday, July 22, 2009 8:35:56 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]

• Use the basic search form (below) to search by surname, first and middle names, and the death date. You can use an asterisk (*) as a wildcard at the beginning or end of a name. A Browse button by each field lets you select from an alphabetical listing of all available terms for that field. The Search button is at the bottom of the form.
  
  

• Click the Advanced Search link to add age, birth date, cause of death and other terms.

• At the bottom of the basic search form, click a letter of the alphabet to browse entries for surnames beginning with that letter. (I wasn’t able to get any of these surname listings to load.)

Thursday, June 25, 2009 1:55:39 PM (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]

• Historical records subscription site Footnote is giving away several lifetime memberships. To be eligible, you have to create or find an I Remember page on Facebook (using Footnote’s recently released app) and get five people to click the I Remember button for that person. See more details here.

• British subscription and pay-per-view site Familyrelatives.com added more than 200,000 Canadian civil service records from 1872 to 1918. The records reveal the civil servant's name, position, department, length of service, salary and date of appointment. The earliest ones also provide civil servants' national origins and religion.

• FamilySearch has added a total of 3.5 million-plus new records to 13 collections on the free FamilySearch Record Search pilot. The additions come from Brazil, the Czech Republic and Italy; and the US states of Florida, Indiana, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina and South Carolina.

• The State Library of North Carolina and the North Carolina State Archives have posted a free collection of North Carolina family records including nearly 220 family Bible records and the six-volume Marriage and Death Notices from Raleigh Register and North Carolina State Gazette: 1799-1893.
  

• NBC’ continues to string along genealogists eager to see its “Who Do You Think You Are?” The on-again, off-again series didn't make it onto the network's fall lineup, but still may show up as a mid-season replacement, according to California-based Genealogy Gems blogger Lisa Louise Cooke.

Friday, May 22, 2009 4:38:34 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]