Hi, I’m Taylor, the fall intern here at Family Tree Magazine. Nice to meet you all!

As Halloween rolls around, you begin thinking of costumes, candies and creatures. But where did all these spooks and treats come from? Before you crack out the latest scary movie and devour your favorite snack, let’s catch up on some Hallow-history.

According to our new book Good Old Days, My Ass Irish Potato Famine Immigrants brought Halloween and the jack-o-lantern to America after 1846. The original jack-o-lantern tale is rather gruesome. “Jack” trapped the devil inside a tree until he agreed that Jack, an avid sinner, would never go to hell. The devil then gave Jack a burning ember to light his way through the dark places in the world. Jack placed the ember into a lantern made of a turnip. When the Irish reached America, pumpkins proved more practical than turnips.

But, one of the world’s oldest holidays, Halloween celebrations have been going on since way past our time and have evolved from the festivals celebrated by our ancestors. Celtic Ireland is credited with creating our spook fests. Known as Samhain, Oct. 31 was for clearing out the old and starting new. As the Celtic New Year, Samhain marked the beginning of the 11th month.

Celtics believed that on this day, the thin veil between our world and the otherworld was weakest, allowing spirits to inhabit the land for a single night. While this mostly included deceased family members, malevolent souls were also allowed passage. The villagers would dress up in scary, distorted masks to deter evil spirits from causing them harm.

The Romans celebration was based on Pomona, the goddess of fruit trees, especially apples. Many dishes served during this gathering were apple based; this is where “bobbing for apples” is derived as well as caramel apples. Seventh century Pope Boniface wanted to channel citizens away from Pagan traditions and declared Nov. 1, All Saints Day, which kicked off Oct. 31 as All Hallows Eve.

While many countries continue these traditions, Hispanic countries have their own interpretation. Dia de Los Muertos (Day of the Dead) is a three-day celebration beginning on Oct. 31. This is a time when deceased loved ones return to their homes. Family members build alters to welcome their ancestors. They will gather favorite foods and items of the deceased as well as flowers and incense to guide them home. The family will then visit at the graveyard to remember those they’ve lost.

Check out these Halloween history websites to learn more.

www.history.com/topics/jack-olantern-history

www.randomhistory.com/2008/09/01_halloween.html

www.loc.gov/folklife/halloween.html

Thursday, November 01, 2012 8:23:44 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

1. Verify, verify, verify. Because so many of our Colonial families have "already been done," it is important to verify data that has already been published. Mistakes in Colonial families can filter through several generations and cause headaches for genealogists.

2. It hasn't all been done. It is important to get over the common mindset that "my colonial families have all been researched," as there's still so much to discover. During the webinar, we'll talk about a few new resources for tracing Colonial families that are largely untapped by genealogists.

3. Study your history. The Colonial period is a fascinating time in our history, and it is important that you know exactly what was happening in the areas your ancestors were living. Boundary changes, disputes, conflicts with American Indians and a host of other events did impact the lives of our Colonial ancestors.

• Participation in the live presentation on Nov. 13
  
• The chance to submit questions before the event and again during the webinar
• Access to the webinar recording to view again as many times as you like
• The 75-page PDF of the presentation slides for future reference
• Eight pages of additional handouts

Wednesday, October 31, 2012 9:35:37 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [0]

• Death records are generally available after the state passed a law that counties or towns had to keep records and forward them to the state health department or vital records office. To find out when that was for your ancestor's state, download our free US Vital Records Chart (PDF document) from here. Compliance with the law wasn't always 100 percent, so keep that in mind.

You can get websites and contact information for state vital records offices from the Centers for Disease Control Where to Wrote for Vital Records listing.

• Restrictions on public access to death records are generally shorter than those for birth records—depending on the state, it's usually 25 to 50 years if you're not immediate family. Check the state vital records office website for this information.

• If your ancestor died before statewide vital recordkeeping began, there still may be a record. Many counties, cities and towns started keeping death records before the state said they had to. For example, Ohio death records don't officially begin until 1908, but the city of Cincinnati started keeping records about 1865 (yay for me!), and they're online here. With some gaps, St. Louis began registering deaths in 1850. They're in the Missouri Birth and Death records, Pre-1910 database at Missouri Digital Heritage. The database gives you a microfilm number for the image of the register at the Missouri State Archives; and the registers also are digitized on subscription site Ancestry.com.

The town or county health department or a local genealogical society where your ancestor lived can tell you when death recording began there. Remember that these early records often aren't complete.

• To find online death indexes or record collections, search online for the county, city, town or state name and death index or death record. The free FamilySearch.org has indexes to death information from a variety of sources for most states; also search the catalog at Ancestry.com. If you find your ancestor in an index, check the site to see how you can get the original record.
  

• No official death record to be found? Look to other sources, such as newspaper obituaries and death notices, cemeteries, church records, US census mortality schedules and probate records. 

Learn more about tracking down death information for your ancestors from these Family Tree Magazine expert resources:

• Getting Creative With Death Records video class: Learn how to go beyond the obvious sources to find the information you need on when your ancestor died.
  
  
• Family Tree University First Steps: Using Death Records course (You can register for the current session until Friday, Nov. 2; the next session starts Nov. 26.)
  
  
• Step-by-step guide to cemetery research article download
  

Tuesday, October 30, 2012 12:24:01 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)    Comments [2]

• The Chronicling America free, searchable database of historic US newspapers, has posted its 5 millionth newspaper page. Launched by the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2007 as part of the National Digital Newspaper Program, the site digitizes newspapers published between 1836 and 1922. It now has more than 800 newspapers from 25 states. 
  

• Old Weather, a joint project from the National Archives and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, will have citizen scientists transcribing historic Arctic and worldwide weather data from digitized Navy, Coast Guard, and Revenue Cutter ship deck logs. Digital images of the logbooks will be available on the project's website and on Archives.gov. The records offer access to weather data and climate patterns from your ancestor's day, as well as details on US maritime history, military operations and scientific exploration. Learn more about the project and participate at OldWeather.org.
  

• A new volunteer genealogy lookup site called Gen Gathering has announced it's looking for volunteers to do simple lookups for others in their home libraries or nearby repositories or cemeteries. You also can use the site to find volunteers who might be able to do lookups for you.  Learn more on the Gen Gathering website. 

• A new Windows phone app called Relative History ($4.99) from Papillion Producitons lets you view genealogy information from GEDCOM files on Windows phones. You can learn more about it and see screenshots and reviews here.
  

• Congrats to D. Joshua Taylor who recently was elected to fill the two-year term as president of the Federation of Genealogical Societies (FYI: Josh is giving our Top 25 Tips for Discovering Your Colonial Ancestors webinar on Nov. 13). FGS board members and directors newly elected or re-elected are Lisa A. Alzo, David E. Rencher, Janice A. Fritsch, Cherie Bush, Kris W. Rzepczynski and Melissa Shimkus.

Friday, October 26, 2012 11:30:38 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [31]

• Research Strategies: Reverse Genealogy article download by Lisa Louise Cooke: Get advice for making like Sherlock Holmes and finding cousins, including tips for figuring out where to look, as well as the best websites and directories to use.

• Reverse Genealogy independent study course download: This course, also developed by Lisa Louise Cooke, has in-depth instructions on tracing your family lines forward to find living relatives.

• They're Alive: Finding Living Relatives on-demand webinar by Thomas MacEntee: Learn about using people-finding websites, how to approach a possible cousin (without feeling like a stalker) and more.

• Step by Step Guide: Safely Sharing Data Online article download by Rick Crume: You want to find relatives and you want them to find you, but how do keep from putting "too much" out there (and maybe letting the wrong people find you)? This advice will help you stay safe.

Wednesday, October 24, 2012 2:32:03 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• Advice for cracking the "tombstone code"—the symbolism in carvings and inscriptions—from contributing editor Sharon DeBartolo Carmack
  
  
• How to preserve the genealogy and history information cemeteries hold, and share those details with others, from Family Tree University instructor and Find A Grave volunteer Diana Crisman Smith
  
  
• Tips for visiting a cemetery (what you can do from home, what to bring and what to look for once you're there) from Family Tree University Cemetery Research 101 course instructor Midge Frazel
  
  
• Tombstone rubbing dos and don'ts with Family Tree Magazine publisher and editorial director Allison Dolan

↑ Grab this Headline Animator

Monday, October 22, 2012 1:10:54 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• Did your ancestor attend Mercer University in Macon, Ga.? Now you can search an online archive of the Mercer Cluster, the university's campus newspaper.  The Mercer Cluster Archive, a project of the awesome Digital Library of Georgia, provides access to papers from 1920 to 1970. 

• The University of Wyoming Lab School's Tassakooma and Yearling yearbooks are now available online for the 1920s, part of the 1930s, and 1953 to 1964. Learn more about the yearbooks here. To access the online collection, visit the University of Wyoming Libraries catalog and then search for either Tassakooma or Yearling.

• Look for a new blog soon from the Library of Congress: To complement its Civil War in America exhibition, the LOC will debut a new blog in November to chronicle more than 40 folks from the North and South whose lives were affected by the war.
  
  Posts will use first-person accounts such as diaries, letters and published memoirs. “Bloggers” will include people such as Robert E. Lee, Clara Barton, Stonewall Jackson, William Tecumseh Sherman, Ulysses S. Grant,  Walt Whitman, Elizabeth Keckley, Eugenia Phillips and John F. Chase. You can find the blog starting Nov. 12 at blogs.loc.gov.

• Military records website Fold3 reached a milestone this week when when the site exceeded 100,000,000 images of historical records. Read more about this achievement on the Fold3 blog. The site, which launched in January 2007 as Footnote, has worked with partners including the National Archives, Allen County Public Library, FamilySearch and others to digitize records. Ancestry.com purchased the site in 2010 and last year rebranded it Fold3.com.

Friday, October 19, 2012 3:08:37 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]