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

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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]

• Marian's Roots and Rambles (hurry—ends Oct. 19 at noon EST!)

• Genea-Musings (ends Oct. 21); this blog will hold a second contest Oct. 23.

• Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter (ends Oct. 31)

• Olive Tree Genealogy (Tuesdays and Thursdays through Nov. 2)

Wednesday, October 17, 2012 4:37:38 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [1]

Last chance for Online Military Records!

Almost every genealogist has an ancestor who spent some part of his life in service to our country. Today these individuals are immortalized in collection upon collection of digitized military records.

Jump into the fray with an hour-long webinar from expert presenter David A. Fryxell, who will discuss such conflicts as the Colonial Wars, Revolutionary War, War of 1812, Civil War, Spanish-American War and many more.

Some sample tips from this workshop include:

• Service records and rolls are available for browsing via Fold3 if you know your ancestor's unit.
• Resources vary depending on the conflict. For instance, Revolutionary War records are available via the Daughters of the American Revolution online library, whereas state websites are often an excellent resource for the Civil War.
• There were three different types of WWI draft cards. Along with basic info such as name, age, address, etc., the 12-question Draft Card included occupation and any claimed draft exemptions.
• Records that are not online can still be ordered using the eVets system available from Archives.gov.

Want to learn more, see demos of the sites mentioned here, and have your questions answered by our presenter? There's still time to register for the live webinar—Online Military Records takes place Thursday, Oct. 18 at 7 pm Eastern time (4 pm Pacific).

Can't make Thursday's presentation? No worries! Every registrant receives a copy of the recording to watch as many times as you wish, along with a PDF of the slides/handouts for reference.

See ShopFamilyTree.com for more details about this and other Family Tree University webinars.

Tuesday, October 16, 2012 2:15:03 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [2]

• click on the updated collection from the listing here

• use the place filters on FamilySearch.org: Scroll down on the home page, choose a world region next to the map, then choose a country, date range or collection on the left to narrow the collection list to those covering your ancestor's lifetime. Then click on the title for the collection you want to search.
  

Monday, October 15, 2012 10:54:30 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• Ancestry.com has released a new Ancestry Facebook app that helps you use Facebook to add to your Ancestry.com family tree. The app lets you use your Facebook credentials to log into Ancestry.com, get hints about Facebook members who may be family, add family members on Facebook to your Ancestry tree and send copies of your tree to those relatives (which they can use to start their own trees on Ancestry.com). Watch a video of how the app works and get the app on Ancestry.com.

Note that when you add information from Facebook to your Ancestry.com tree, you grant Ancestry.com permission to use the information according to its Terms and Conditions and Privacy Statement.

• Our Photo Detective Maureen A. Taylor's book The Last Muster: Images of the Revolutionary War Generation, will soon become a historical film! Visit LastMusterFilm.com to learn more about the project and how you can help the stories of the book's subjects come to life through a donation to the Center for Independent Documentary.

• FamilySearch is holding a Genealogists Say "Thanks!" video contest. Submit a video sharing an ancestral find in FamilySearch indexes and thanking FamilySearch volunteer indexers for their work. Five winners will each receive  a $25 Visa gift card and have their videos published on teh FamilySearch indexing Facebook page. The submission deadline is November 5; see the FamilySearch blog for contest rules and other details.

• British genealogy website Genes Reunited has added a Keepsafe feature where the site's members can store digital copies of their family records, photos and memories. Keepsafes can be public, private or shared with select others.  Also new are Relation Profiles, where members can view and edit details about people in their Genes Reunited family trees. Check out the recently revamped Genes Reunited here.

• Genealogists familiar with French Canadian family heritage won't be surprised by Ancestry.com's latest famous-roots discovery: Canadian celebrities Justin Bieber, Avril Lavigne and Ryan Gosling are related through a family connection going back 400 years. The Biebs is also 10th cousins three times removed with singer Celine Dion. You can read more about how these stars are linked and see it charted out on Ancestry.com's blog.

Friday, October 12, 2012 11:04:26 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• Iowa is the 29th state, attaining statehood in December 1846. Birth and marriage records began in 1880 and death records in 1891. There are some online indexes (and even record images) you can use from home—at least to get enough information to request original records. We'll help you use these online sources, and tell you where to go for the originals.

• Iowa is one of the lucky states with great state censuses. In the webinar, we'll talk about when they were taken, what information they include, where to find them, and how to use them. You'll see examples of one of the greatest censuses in the country (in our opinions:) and the three pages of information on each enumerated individual.

• Land has always been one of Iowa's most important assets. The first sale of most land was from the federal government to individuals. Using the Bureau of Land Management's General Land Office database and other sources, we'll show you how to find land records and what they mean to your research.

• The Iowa Genealogical Society is large and active. We'll have some tips on researching using the society's library in Des Moines. If you have Iowa roots, this is one society you should join.

Wednesday, October 10, 2012 1:32:24 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• Canadian Genealogy Websites
  
  
• Finding Canadian soldiers in World War I
  
  
• Finding Canadians in the War of 1812
  
  
• Resources for tracing immigrants to Canada
  
  
• All about dit names
  
  
• 101 Best Websites for Genealogy in 2012: Canadian Genealogy Sites
  
  
• Finding Irish immigrants to Canada
  
  
• Canadian Genealogy Guide digital download (from ShopFamilyTree.com)
  
  
• Finding Canadian Immigration records video class (from ShopFamilyTree.com)
  
  
• French Canadian Genealogy Guide digital download (from ShopFamilyTree.com)

Monday, October 08, 2012 11:03:34 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• UK genealogy website Origins.net is making its York Marriage Bonds and Allegations Index (1613-1839) free to search until Monday, October 8 at midday BST (if midday is the same as noon, that would be Oct. 8 at 7 a.m. EST). Learn more about this index here. You'll need to set up a free registration on the site to search. If you find a record you need in the index, you can order a copy by clicking "Add to cart."

• Free, collaborative family tree site WikiTree has reopened member registration after closing it in January. The closure was "to give the WikiTree community time to absorb the flood of information that had been added by people who registered for a free membership and uploaded GEDCOMs, but did not take the time to integrate their genealogy into the shared family tree."

To help ensure that new members understand the site's mission, newly registered members now receive a temporary and limited Guest Membership. Those who want to become permanent members can volunteer to participate in the community as a Wiki Genealogist (requires signing an honor code), or they can ask if a Wiki Genealogist will help connect their family to the shared tree. 

• The Civil War Trust has announced the winners of its 17th annual photography contest. The grand prize winner is Buddy Secor of Stafford, Va., who took a gorgeous sunrise shot of the Chancellorsville battlefield. You can see this and the other winning images on the Civil War Trust website.

Friday, October 05, 2012 3:46:32 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

Most genealogists rely primarily on records to root out their relatives. However, the Internet has opened the doorway to other digitized documents. In particular, I'm referring to an oft-underutilized family research resource: Published Genealogies.

The new First Steps course from Family Tree University, Finding Family History Books About Your Ancestors, will show you where to find these manuscripts and what they might contain.

Genealogy is not a new pastime. During the colonial period, genealogy was seen as an attempt by early settlers to secure a measure of social standing within the British Empire. The truth is, people have been conducting family research for centuries, and many of these individuals might have published family trees--a resource that you now have the opportunity to plunder. From articles in genealogical society journals to entire books outlining specific lineages to searchable online databases of user-contributed family trees, this new course shows you how and where to look for the work others have already done, allowing you to save time and add branches to your family tree.

You'll learn to search for manuscripts on databases such as:

• FamilySearch
• Ancestry.com
• HeritageQuest Online
• World Vital Records
• Internet Archive
• WorldCat
• Interlibrary Loan

The first session of this 2-week long course starts on Monday, Oct. 15. Click here to learn more about our course First Steps: Finding Family History Books About Your Ancestors (and save %20 on your registration with coupon code FTU1012).


Family Tree University | Research Tips

Thursday, October 04, 2012 11:36:17 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [1]

1000memories, founded in 2010, has a website where people can store and share digitized photos. Shoebox, the site’s accompanying mobile app for iPhone and Android, lets you use a cell phone camera to “scan” and upload documents to the site.

The app has been downloaded more than 500,000 times since its launch.

Ancestry.com has already begun incorporating the app into its services. To mark this announcement, 1000memories has launched a new version of ShoeBox for iOS (iPhones), enabling Ancestry.com members to post photos directly to ancestors profiles in their Ancestry.com member trees.

“This is the first step in a broader plan that will see tighter integration of the two services in the coming months,” according to Ancestry.com’s official press release.

Wednesday, October 03, 2012 11:55:31 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

Detailed logs are an important tool in organizing your genealogy research.

These Fall 2012 Virtual Genealogy Conference tips come from the video session "Research Logs for the Rest of Us," hosted by Thomas MacEntee.

• It's important to understand the "why" of using a research log. If you're using a log only because you know other people who are doing so, then you're wasting your time. Understand the benefits of tracking your research journey.
• Select a format that you will continue to use. For instance, it is a poor idea to start your research log in Excel if you don't like using spreadsheets. Use a format you are comfortable with. Otherwise you'll only frustrate yourself and abandon the log.
• Spend time setting up headings or categories. When you use a spreadsheet or table, take time to consider which headings to use. Don't be afraid to add or remove headings over time. It's only through constant use of the research log that you'll figure out the best headings for your research.
• Shoot for a "one pass" goal. When you find a record or piece of information, note all of the information as if you might never find it again. This means noting the date you found it, the type of record, and even whether you are transcribing or abstracting it. You're only kidding yourself if you say that you'll come back to it later.
• Maintaining a research log is a discipline. A discipline created through handwork, dedication and repetition until it becomes habit. Realize that you will make mistakes the first few entries, then you'll become better at entering information accurately and quickly.
• Source citations matter, but take a shortcut! Create a cheat sheet--a document or spreadsheet tab where you can keep the most commonly used source citation formats. Then you can copy and paste them over to your research log to fill in the blanks.

Ready to start your own research log? Click here to buy this video session and get started documenting your research today.

Video classes from our Virtual Genealogy Conferences are available in ShopFamilyTree.com. And mark your calendar now for our Winter 2013 Virtual Genealogy Conference, Feb. 22-24.

Wednesday, October 03, 2012 10:27:22 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]