• Ultimate Polish Genealogy Collection
• Ultimate Czech and Slovak Genealogy Collection
• Ultimate Hungarian Genealogy Collection

• expertise on how to research ancestors from Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, or Hungary (depending which collection you opt for)
  
• strategies for discovering your ancestor's birthplace
  
• where to find records
• techniques for learning immigrants' original names
• the best websites and offline resources to use
• language help

Thursday, February 07, 2013 9:08:09 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

• Free unlimited profile adding—All users can add as many profiles as they'd like to their tree without upgrading to a paid account. There are no limits to the size of a user's tree.
• Free Merging—All users can now merge duplicate profiles in their tree (privacy and permission rules still apply).
• Free relationship paths—Users can discover their relationship to historical figures and celebrities, and even distant relatives.
• Free family tree chart downloads—All users can now download a high-quality chart of their family tree to their computer at no charge. 
• No ads—Ads have been removed to provide users with a cleaner, less distracting interface.
• More privacy—Living people who have not joined Geni will become private and will not be searchable on Google.

Wednesday, November 28, 2012 10:57:05 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

• Got family who landed in Australia? This weekend, Ancestry.com.au (Ancestry.com's Australia site) is giving free access to its Australian Birth, Marriage and Death and Cemetery indexes, containing more than 17 million records of those who were born, married or died in Australia from 1788 until the early 20th century. The free period runs through Monday, Oct. 1, 11:59 p.m. Australian Eastern Standard Time on Monday 1 October, 2012 (that's 9:59 a.m. Monday EST in the United States). You'll need to set up a free registration with the site to search the records.
  

• Registration is open for FamilySearch's  2013 Rootstech genealogy conference, taking place March 21-23 in Salt Lake City. Organizers are planning for the 2013 conference to have a 40 percent larger exhibit hall and more classes, including a new track for those beginning their family history research. Registration fees range from $19 for a one-day pass to the Getting Started track ($39 for all three days) to a $149 early bird special (regularly $219) for a full three-day pass. Click here to register for the conference.
  

• A new tv series aiming to document American family heritage one family at a time is airing on some PBS stations this fall. You can preview the pilot episode of Our American Family, which documents a family of Mississippi tenant farmers, online, and apply to have your family featured on the show.
  

Friday, September 28, 2012 1:14:50 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

And this little guy is 1/32nd Irish:

So this St. Patrick’s Day, Leo and I will have to make the most of our respective slivers of Irishness.

Whether you're a lot or a little Irish, you share heritage with the second-largest heritage group in the United States. Here are some more stats:

• 50,000 to 100,000 Irish came to America in the 1600s, and 100,000 more in the 1700s. Eight signatures on the Declaration of Independence belonged to men of Irish descent.

• In the American colonies, up to 90 percent of indentured servants were Irish. 

• About 250,000 Scots-Irish settlers from Ulster province arrived in the United States during the Colonial era. They were descended from Scottish and English tenant farmers settled in Ireland during the Plantation of Ulster.

• In the century after 1820, about 5 million Irish arrived on US shores. Irish made up almost half of all US immigrants in the 1840s and one-third in the 1850s, the decades of the Great Potato Famine.

• Today, Massachusetts is the most Irish state, with about a quarter of the population claiming Irish roots.

FamilyTreeMagazine.com has some great advice for tracing your Irish roots:

• Tracing Irish immigrants through Canada
  
  
• Where to search the 1901 and 1911 Irish censuses free online
  
  
• 10 Best websites for tracing UK and Irish Roots
  
  
• Tips on discovering your ancestor's place of origin in Ireland
  

For in-depth help researching your Irish ancestors, take a look at our Irish Ancestry Value Pack, with:

• how-to guides
• the Genealogist's Guide to Discovering Irish Ancestors book download
• the Irish Research 101 Family Tree University Independent Study course
  

The Irish Ancestry Value Pack is just $49.99 this month.

Thursday, March 15, 2012 8:09:01 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

This month's Ultimate Collection will help you research those folks! Our Ultimate German Research Collection has

• Find Your German Roots: Family Tree University Independent Study Course download
• German Newspapers in America (on-demand video class)
• Genealogist's Guide to Discovering Germanic Ancestors digital book
• Family Tree Passport to Europe CD
• Tracing German Ancestry in Eastern Europe download

Plus, you get a 25 percent off coupon for the Family Tree University German Genealogy 201 online course (learn more about this course here).

This collection is a $184 value for $69.99, and it's available only while supplies last, and only in February. Get your Ultimate German Research Collection in ShopFamilyTree.com.

Wednesday, February 01, 2012 2:30:23 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [2]

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]

• 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]

• 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]

• Getting into Giffith's Valuation
• Ancestral counties in Ireland
• Using church records to learn about your Irish forebears
• Finding your Irish ancestors online
• Search the 1901 Irish Census free online
• Researching Irish Catholic nuns
• Irish immigration through Canada

Thursday, March 17, 2011 8:37:06 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

• Griffiths Valuation, 1847-1864: Over 2.5 million records that provide a snapshot of ancestors who rented land or property throughout Ireland in the 1850s
• Tithe Applotment Books, 1824-1837: In 1823, a law was enacted requiring all land holders to pay a tithe to the Church of Ireland, regardless of their religious affiliation. With details like tithe payer, acreage of their land and amount of their tithe, these 600,000 records in effect provide a census of pre-famine Ireland.
• Ordnance Survey Maps, 1824-1846: The first detailed mapping of Ireland undertaken during the 1830s and 1840s, the later part of which was produced during the height of the famine.
• Lawrence Collection, 1870-1910: This collection of 20,000 photographs showcases the length and breadth of Ireland, through the eyes of William Lawrence's photography studio in Dublin.

Wednesday, March 16, 2011 1:06:22 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [4]

In this edition of my guest post for the Genealogy Insider I’m reporting from the Who Do You Think You Are? Live event in London, which runs Friday, Feb. 25, through Sunday, Feb 27.

While I could spend time telling you about the huge booths and displays of the genealogy giants like Ancestry.uk, FamilySearch or Find My Past, I think it would miss the mark on conveying what is truly unique about this particular event. It’s the “little guy” – the local society, volunteer organization and fledgling online start-up – that fills the vast majority of the exhibit hall. Here are just a few that stood out as I made way up and down the aisles:

Discover Ireland
“Genealogy butler” and professional genealogist Helen Kelly sat down with me at the Discover Ireland booth to talk about the countless number of people they have helped trace their Irish ancestors and then make the journey to the homeland. Their free booklet “Tracing Your Ancestors” in Ireland walks family historians through doing research on their own in the U.S, heading online to tap into digital records, hiring professional help as needed, and tips for making the trip and walking the green grass of Ireland in person.

“We have to be quiet sometimes,” says Kelly, “…we have to sit in the landscape and then the stones can speak to us.” Kelly made a compelling case for making the journey “back to the community that nurtured your ancestors.” While many things have changed, you can still experience the accents, landscape and culture that enveloped your ancestors.

Kelly summed it up this way, “We are not just part of our people, we are also part of our landscape.” Stay tuned to my Genealogy Gems podcast, where you will hear my entire conversation with this inspirational expert on discovering Ireland.

Lisa talks with Helen Kelly about tracing Irish roots.

Western Front Association
If you have an ancestor who served during the Great War, the Western Front Association may have just the resources and expertise you are looking for. Founded by historian John Giles in 1980, the association has grown to include thousands of members around the world. Their historical information officer is available to help with research questions, and their publications and unique record holdings make them an ideal resource.

War Memorials Trust
As I approached their booth, a woman named Nancy welcomed me and explained the simple yet vital purpose of the War Memorials Trust: to monitor the condition of war memorials and to encourage protection and conservation when appropriate. They also strive to provide expert advice to war memorial projects across the UK, to act as the specialist organization for war memorial conversation issues and to facilitate repair and conservation through grants. I was pleased to see organizations in attendance that play a vital role in empowering all of us to help preserve our precious history.

Friends of the MPHC
Do you have a bobby in your background? If so, the Metropolitan Police have a resource for you! The Met Collection encompasses artifacts previously hidden from view. The permanent public display at the Met Collection heritage center rotates from the 17,000 items that make up the collection including uniforms, photos, police equipment and a vast database of records. You can visit the collection in person at The Annex, Empress State Building, Empress Approach, Lillie Rd., London SW6 1TR (a 2 minute walk from the Brompton tube station) or visit them online at the Friends of the MPHC website.

With such a variety of fascinating topics and experts to learn from, it’s no wonder that over 17,000 people have bought tickets to attend the three-day event. Next week I’ll have a complete wrap up for you on the Who Do You Think You Are? Live event. 

Saturday, February 26, 2011 6:22:50 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [1]

The records, dating from 1500 to 1937, comprise nearly 18 million images scanned from microfilm and microfiche of the original church records. The collection includes births, baptisms, marriages, deaths, burials, household examinations (akin to censuses), parish books, moving-ins and moving-outs.

You can learn more about these records here. 

Wednesday, January 12, 2011 2:59:24 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

• Allison Stacy, Family Tree Magazine’s publisher and editorial director, fills you in on Family History Month events

• Genealogy expert James M. Beidler provides history and research tips from his article "Trace Your Scots-Irish Roots" in the December 2010 Family Tree Magazine. 

• Get started paring down your collection of papers with tips from online editor Grace Dobush on what to keep and what to toss.

• Lisa and I talk about Ancestry.com's acquisition of iArchives, Footnote.com’s parent company, and some questions genealogists are asking.

• Researcher and author Lisa A. Alzo gives you tips for exploring your ancestor’s international origins from her Family Tree University class Tracing Immigrants: How to Research Your Family’s American Arrivals.
  

You can listen to the Family Tree Magazine Podcast in iTunes and on FamilyTreeMagazine.com. You can get the show notes on our website, too.

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Wednesday, October 13, 2010 1:41:35 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• a roundup of German research websites, books and organizations
• how to use Meyers-Orts- (a handbook for tracking down German villages)
• translations of words you’ll see in German records
  

Monday, September 20, 2010 2:54:22 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• country-by-country genealogy resources for Canada, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Australia and New Zealand, Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean

• best websites for learning about history, culture, records and genealogical research (just click each URL to visit the site)

• bibliographies of how-to books and published indexes to relevant records for each place. Book titles link to free online versions when available

• addresses, phone numbers and websites of important repositories

• expert tips for contacting overseas repositories

• our guide to tracing your ancestors to the old country—without having to book a plane ticket

• maps of 53 countries show you major administrative divisions, capitals and large cities

Thursday, September 16, 2010 10:08:23 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• Spanish genealogy glossary
• Mexican research resources 
• tips for finding Mexican parish records
• Central and South American Archives

Tuesday, September 14, 2010 2:15:52 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• I hope you didn't travel to Washington, DC, for genealogy research this weekend. Because of a snowstorm predicted to deliver up to 24 inches of snow to the area, the National Archives research rooms in DC and College Park, MD, closed at noon today, Friday, Feb. 5, and remain closed on tomorrow. The Library of Congress closed at 1 pm today and will stay closed Saturday.
  

• British subscription and pay-per-view genealogy site FamilyRelatives added 5 million new parish records with information on baptisms, marriages and burials in counties in England and Wales, dating from the early 1500s to almost 1900.

• FamilySearch is producing a short film based on a Hawaiian woman’s search for her grandmother, a resident of the Molokai Leper Colony, to show at this year’s National Genealogical Society conference. The conference takes place April 28 to May 1 in Salt Lake City and features FamilySearch-sponsored special events (you can read about them on the conference blog).

• Registration is open for the 30th IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy in Los Angeles July 11 to 16. Registration costs $265 (pay another $150 for a spouse/partner) until May 1. Student discounts are available, and you can purchase single-day registration. Click here to see pricing.
  
  
• Israel-based family networking site MyHeritage has acquired OSN, a network of 10 family sites (including Verwandt.de in Germany, Moikrewni.pl in Poland, and the Dynstree.com in the United States). According to the announcement, the acquisition makes MyHeritage the world's largest international netwrok dedicated to families. Read more about what this means for the geenalogy industry on Craig Manson's Geneablogie. 
  

Friday, February 05, 2010 2:05:53 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [1]

• A New Mexico State University doctoral student is doing a study on cultural identity as explore through genealogy, and she’s looking for genealogists to participate. See the announcement on GeneaBloggers for details on how to participate.

• British genealogy site FamilyRelatives has added a quarter of a million 1889 Scottish Trade Directory records to its databases. The data are searchable with an annual subscription to the site (about $50).

• Ancestry.com has made some changes to how you browse to records in its collections, including removing an ad to make more room, moving the “Browse” box to the top of the home page for each collection, and including the entire collection description rather than a link to see the rest (this one isn’t yet implemented for every collection). See more on the Ancestry.com blog.

• "Who Do You Think You Are?" (US) Watch: NBC still hasn’t scheduled this celebrity genealogy show produced by Lisa Kudrow, according to Hollywood news site The Wrap.

Thursday, December 17, 2009 5:38:45 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [1]

• 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]

• Today’s the last day to get the $55 early bird registration special for the Mesa Family History Expo, Jan. 22-23 in Mesa, Ariz. If you miss the deadline, you still can save by preregistering for $65. Admission at the door costs $75. The exhibit hall is free to the public.
  

• Those with African-American roots, mark your calendars for the International Black Genealogy Summit at the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Ind., Oct. 29 to 31. It’s the first gathering of African-American historical and genealogical societies from the United States, Canada and the Caribbean. Watch this blog for more details.

• On his Genealogy Blog, Leland Meitzler reported on the SwedGen Tour, in which a team of Swedish genealogy experts is stopping at several research facilities to give presentations on Swedish genealogy resources (including subscription records site Genline and the Släktdata vital records site)  and offer one-on-one consultations. See the schedule and preregister at the SwedGen Tour site.
  

• I came across a neat blog today called Dear Annie. A Minnesota woman is posting 700 postcards (images and transcriptions) that her Great-aunt Annie Bartos, who died in 1983, saved during her 90 years.

Friday, September 25, 2009 2:44:31 PM (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]

• 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]

Swedish records subscription site Genline has added a bunch of records, made some user-friendly upgrades and formed a partnership that’ll help you discover free and low-cost photos and documents from all over Sweden.

Yesterday, I got a tour of the updates from Peter Wallenskog from Genline’s board of directors. Here's an overview:

• Record additions underway include birth, marriage and death records through 1920. Coming soon: parish books and vital records up to 1937.

• Household examination books (akin to censuses), which you currently find by browsing, are being indexed by farm name. Many farms were owned by the same family for generations. About 40 percent are already indexed; that’ll probably be 90 percent by the end of the year.

• Genline is adding very high-resolution, clear images, with tools so you can enhance them by increasing contrast, remove specks, and more.

• A transcription feature, introduced just a few days ago, lets users build a personal name index to Genline records by transcribing names as they find them. Other users can search on those names, vote for one or another transcription, and contribute their own version of a transcription. 

• Familjeband is a Swedish family history site where users build family trees, upload photos and communicate on a message board. Through an agreement with local groups in the Sverges Hembygdsforbund (Swedish Local Heritage Movement), Genline is helping develop a section of Familjeband called Bygdeband (now in beta), where these local groups are uploading photos, letters, probate papers, deeds and other records. Related records are linked, and a map shows places associated with records in the database.

Familjeband is accessible through a free registration and is in Swedish. Later this year, it’ll get an English interface, and records in Genline will be linked to related records in Familjeband. Eventually, it’ll cost a little—maybe $4 a month, says Wallenskog—to access records in Familjeband.

• Genline also hopes to partner with Swedish heritage groups on this side of the pond to add records and photos to Familjeband. So far, groups from Kansas are uploading documents from Swedish schools and churches. 

Saturday, May 16, 2009 10:25:54 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [2]

• 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]