• Follow these eight steps to using the 1850 and 1860 US census slave schedules—which enumerate but don't name slaves—to find records of your enslaved ancestors.

• African-American Genealogy Toolkit with websites, publications and organizations for tracing African-American roots.

• About the Afro-Louisiana History and Genealogy Website, which contains information on African people in Louisiana from 1719 to 1820

Also check out these resources in ShopFamilyTree.com:

• A Genealogist's Guide to Discovering Your African-American Ancestors by Franklin Carter Smith and Emily Anne Croom
  
  
• African-American Slave Genealogy Guide
  
  
• Jump Start Your African-American Genealogy Value Pack
  
  

Wednesday, June 19, 2013 12:24:37 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• Cemetery Research 101: Dig Up Your Family History
• Digital Photography Essentials: Techniques to Capture and Preserve Your Family History
• Time Management for Genealogists: Make Time for Your Tree, Yourself and Your Sanity
• Exploring City Directories: How to Trace Your Family in Yesterdays Yellow Pages
• US Military Records: Trace Your Ancestors' Service

• Newspaper Research 101: Find Your Ancestors in American News Sources
• Computer Boot Camp for Genealogists: Become a Power User in 4 Weeks
• Creating a Family History Book: Start-to-Finish Guidance for Assembling and Printing a Family Keepsake
• Reverse Genealogy: Working Forward to Break Down Brick Walls
• Civil War Research: Find Your Ancestors in the War Between the States
• Google for Genealogy: Find Ancestors Online

Tuesday, June 18, 2013 4:32:30 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• The folks at Flip-Pal mobile scanner are presenting a free webinar, Metdata and Digital Images, on Tuesday, June 18 at 7:30 Central Time (that's 8:30 Eastern,  6:30 Mountain and 5:30 Pacific). Presenter Thomas MacEntee will show you how to use a digital photo's metadata (the information embedded in digital files) to add captions and details such as who's in a photo and when it was taken. See more details about the webinar and click to register here.

• Friday through Sunday marks the Southern California Genealogical Society Jamboree, one of the most-anticipated conferences of the year. Remember to register for sessions you want to watch from home via free JamboSTREAM webcast. See the schedule on the Jamboree blog.

• Findmypast.com has added 2.5 million court records to its collection of Irish Petty Sessions Court Registers (1828-1912), which has information on petty crimes (such as public drunkeness and allowing livestock to wander) and punishments of Ireland's residents. They're available with a World Subscription or pay-per-view credits on findmypast.com international sites.

• Visit the BBC News site to see a list of materials damaged beyond repair in an April 26 fire at the National Library of Wales. The items were among the 140 crates of material that were badly damaged by smoke and water; items that can be salvaged are undergoing restoration.

Friday, June 07, 2013 11:47:16 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• A great source of old maps to use with Google Earth is the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection. Sign up for a free account for access to the highest resolution downloadable maps (You can still download up to about medium resolution if you aren't signed in).
  
  Instead of using the "Search the Site" box, scroll down on the home page and use the Map Rank Search tool to search by year and location.

• More of Lisa's favorite sites for maps  are the Library of Congress American Memory Map Collection, the British Library, the University of Georgia Hargrett Rare Book & Manuscript Library, and the University of Texas Perry-Castaneda Library Map Collection.

• Lisa recommends using Google to find online plat maps (these show property boundaries and owners' names), which might be anywhere from large mapping web sites to a genealogist's own site. Try doing a Google Image search with keywords such as Indiana "Randolph County" "Plat map."

• Another strategy to find plat maps is to run a Google Books search on a county, state and the term "plat map." If the book you want isn't fully digitized, copy the title and search for it at WorldCat to find libraries that have that book.

• You can have Google email you when Google Maps or Google Earth map images are updated, or Street View becomes available, for the areas where your ancestors lived. Go to Follow Your World, log in with your Google account, and follow the prompts.

• Google Earth doesn't auto save, so if it crashes on you, you'll lose your work. Every so often, go up to the menu and select File>Save My Places to save everything in My Places.

Wednesday, June 05, 2013 10:26:51 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• What free genealogy sites you should be scouring for information on your ancestors.
• How to use popular free sites such as FamilySearch.org, RootsWeb.com and Internet Archive.
• Online search tricks to find data on smaller, less well-known free genealogy websites.
• Using the free Evernote site to organize your research and become a more-efficient genealogist. (Personal note: I've started using Evernote for my genealogy to-do list, and it's keeping me from forgetting research tasks that occur to me while I'm doing something else. And I can check the list anytime on my smartphone.)
  

Tuesday, June 04, 2013 11:29:23 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• To mark the anniversary of the WWII Battle of Midway, which took place June 4-7, 1942, the US Navy will host a Google+ Hangout with a panel of historians from the Naval History and Heritage Command, Pentagon operations leaders, and representatives from the USS Midway Museum.
  
  The hangout is scheduled for 2 p.m. Eastern time on Monday, June 3. You can watch and participate in the event on the Navy's Google+ page, or watch it afterward on YouTube.

• This week, FamilySearch added more than 7.3 million images to the record collections on the free FamilySearch.org. They come from Austria, Brazil, China, Honduras, Luxembourg, Peru, Portugal, Switzerland and the United States. New collections include US, Massachusetts, Land Records, 1620-1986; US, Hawaii, Honolulu Passenger Lists, 1900-1953; and Honduras, Civil Registration, 1841-1968. See all the updated collections and click through to search or browse them here.

• The Southern California Genealogical Society will live-stream more than a dozen sessions of the 2013 Southern California Genealogy Jamboree, taking place June 7-9. The "JamboSTREAM" webcast is free and sponsored by Ancestry.com.
  
  You must register to view a session. See the live-stream schedule on the Jamboree blog and click a class title to register. You'll get a login and password to use when you log in to watch the session. The times on the schedule are Pacific Coast Time; remember to translate them into your time zone so you don't miss the session.

• The National Genealogical Society has announced the location of the 2014 Family History Conference: Richmond, Va., at the Greater Richmond Convention Center and Marriott Hotel in downtown. The dates are May 7-10.  Click here to download the announcement brochure with accommodation details and conference highlights.

Friday, May 31, 2013 1:55:52 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• Date: Thursday, June 13
• Starting time: 7pm ET/6pm CT/5pm MT/4pm PT
• Presenter: Sunny Jane Morton
• Duration: 1 hour
• Price: $49.99 (Save $10 if you register before June 6!)

Click here to register for the Secrets to Beat Your Ohio Brick Walls webinar. See you there!

Wednesday, May 29, 2013 2:24:07 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [0]

• Use free sites: FamilySearch, of course, but also Find A Grave, EllisIsland.org, Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild, USGenWeb, Genealogy Trails, Civil War Soldiers and Sailors database, Google Books, Internet Archive, family trees at MyHeritage and other pedigree sites, state archives, libraries and others. Many others. Use Google searches and portal sites such as Cyndi's List to find these sites. 

• Know that free sites often have sponsored links (they have to pay the bills somehow), which may not be obviously ads: You click on a database title or type your name into a search box, and you end up on a subscription site, which can be frustrating if that's not what you expected. Just hit the back button until you get back to the site you started on (or if the site opened in a new browser tab, go back to the tab you were on).

• Look for free-for-a-limited-time databases around holidays. Recently, for example, four sites offered free online military records for Memorial Day. Find out about these offers by reading genealogy blogs (such as this one) and newsletters (such as the Genealogy Insider newsletter), sign up for genealogy websites' email programs, and befriend those sites on Facebook and Twitter.

• Many subscription sites have some free offerings—they want to give you a reason to get to know the site. Ancestry.com has a landing page dedicated to free resources here; there's a partial list of free databases on the right. Also try typing World Archives Projects into Ancestry.com's card catalog keyword search to find the site's volunteer-created indexes (you do have to pay to see most of the corresponding records). Fold3 lists its free records here.  

• Libraries and FamilySearch Centers may have computers with access to a variety of subscription websites such as Ancestry Library Edition, HeritageQuest Online, NewsBank, Historic Map Works and more. Check the library website or call ahead to the center to see what's available.

• Sites such as Archives.com, Ancestry.com and findmypast.com offer free trials, usually for 14 days. Just make sure you read the terms and cancel on time if you don't intend to subscribe.

Tuesday, May 28, 2013 2:53:06 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)    Comments [1]