Category: Resources Page 10 of 17

Genealogy News: March 21st – 27th

By

On 27 March 2015

In Friday Finds, Resources

There may or may not have been snow this morning… There was a suspicious looking “dust” sparkling in the morning sunshine. But that must have been pollen because it’s spring, right? Right. And I will stand by that!

Genealogy News

Genealogy Community News

As some of you remember, the Indiana State Library was in peril of losing it’s beloved genealogy department not that long ago. There was a large call to action from genealogists not only from Indiana, but from around the country to write to representatives to change the budget. And it worked (for now)!

There’s another library that may be losing their genealogy funding due to budget cuts, this time in Connecticut. The Connecticut Library Association put out a call to action that you can read on EOGN here.

These types of things are only going to keep coming but we do have the power to be loud and take action to stop it as much as possible. Go to the Connecticut Library Association website to see more about who to write to and other ways you can help out.

Resources

  • Do you have a family tree saved on FamilySearch.org? Check out their blog for some changes and updates coming to their website.
  • EOGN recently had an article about the Drouin Institute, which specializes in French-Canadian data, about new additions to their resources. If you have French-Canadian ancestry, read the article to see what you could find!
  • Another EOGN article discusses the Knowles Collection (a free online Jewish genealogy database) and their move to FamilySearch.org. Go to the Knowles Collection website to see how to access the records on FamilySearch.org and read the EOGN article here.
  • Avotaynu Online is a new resource/website for those seeking Jewish genealogy information. Click here to read more about the new website and what it hopes to do and check out EOGN’s announcement of it here.
  • Have family that may have been part of the Bethlem Royal Hospital (also known as Bedlam)? FindMyPast is working with them to create a database of records for genealogists. Click here to see some of what will be available or start searching here.
  • Pennsylvania birth certificates from 1906-1909 and death certificates from 1906-1964 are now online! To find out where you can see the resources, click here for more information.
  • Ancestry.com has launched IrishNewspapers.com! Read more about what this new website/resource entails here.

Interesting Articles

  • Black’s Law Dictionary is a book that is often mentioned as a must for genealogists. But which edition would be best? The Legal Genealogist gives her recommendation (and why) here!
  • There are new phone apps that let you explore World War II American cemeteries that are overseas. Interested? Read more here.
  • Is your genealogy society driving away visitors? Amy Johnson Crow from No Story Too Small discusses 10 ways your genealogy society may unknowingly be doing just that. Read more here.
  • Victorian Street Life in London pictures – A glimpse into the past!

Webinars/Videos

  • It’s spring cleaning time! Why not clean out your family tree as well? Check out this video by Christa Cowan on how to do just that.
  • Have you used billiongraves.com? Lisa Louise Cook discusses the website and it’s uses in a video here.
  • This is just a neat video/graphic showing the changes in popular girls names from 1880-2013. My name, I assure you, is not listed. Having a unique name can be fun, but those little trinkets that are sold with your name on it? Yeah, they don’t exist for me. My name is now in baby-name dictionaries though!

Beta Version of Ancestry’s New Look

By

On 26 March 2015

In Resources, Review

Type in Ancestry Beta into Google and you’ll see LOTS about the new look of Ancestry.com. You’ll see a post from Dear Myrtle, Lisa Louise Cooke, Randy Seaver, etc. I’m adding my voice to many who have already chimed in but I feel like you can never know too much about a much-used website when they change things around.

My first impression is a good one. I like the way everything looks! Then again, I am the type of person who enjoys moving her furniture around every so often to get a new look. It’s refreshing. And that’s how I feel about the new look – it’s refreshing and seems clean.

Pedigree View/Home Page

This is relatively the same except for font and color changes. The leaf looks a bit bigger as well but really, there are no big changes in how the pedigree/home page is viewed, at least in how I use those screens.

Individual Profiles

Here is where quite a number of changes have happened.

LifeStory 

Pros:

  • The historical insights are kind of like History Lines, which I’ve mentioned once before. These highlight historical events that happened during your ancestor’s life that probably made an impact – like the World War II draft, or the Americanization of immigrants in the early 1900’s. When you click on a historical insight, you’ll be brought to a page with more information and more pictures. I love this new feature as I feel this is often overlooked when people look at their family in history.
  • This also includes family events like when a parent, child, or spouse dies. This is a wonderful feature! Having that in the list right up front might make certain things your ancestor did more clear.

Cons:

  • The World War II draft cards that are on Ancestry.com I use as a source for birth dates. The problem then is that the historical insight for the World War II draft is placed on his birthday, not the day he actually filled out the card. So, for Arthur Almy above there, the historical insight about being drafted in World War II is listed at 1885, not 1942 when he actually filled it out. I have yet to find a way to edit this (but did comment on that to Ancestry so I hope this changes!).

Overall – I really enjoy this! I think it’ll help people understand their ancestors a lot more with this new feature.

Facts

Pros:

  • Clicking on a fact shows you where the source came from (see picture below) and vice versa, clicking on a source tells you what fact it supports (see picture below). This is a wonderful feature!
  • You can turn off the historical insights and family events from both here and the lifestory pages, which is nice, but I doubt I’ll do that.

Cons:

  • It takes some getting used to. The edit button is now in the top right corner as well as the search button. It will get easier as I play around with this more though.
  • Adding sources and repositories look to be about the same as before. I say this as a con because putting in new sources isn’t very genealogy-citation friendly. The form is mostly for published items, not unpublished (which is what genealogists usually use) and you can’t format it yourself – you have to fill in the blanks that Ancestry has for you. This can be nice for those who aren’t sure what to cite but are citing something (always appreciated!) but I feel like it leaves out too much to be a good citation.

Gallery

I really like the way this is set up! You can see all your pictures and stories at a glance, which you could before as well, but this now includes items like the census records, city directories, draft cards, etc. that you’ve also added from Ancestry.com’s databases.

gallery

Hints

This hasn’t changed in functionality, just in the way it looks.

Searching

There are smaller changes here:

  • The search forms now automatically begin with the advanced search, which you can hide. I always used the advanced search form anyway so I like that it’s one button click less
  • Tabbing between fields is easier now
  • The layout seems cleaner and easier to follow

Other than that, searching seems to be as before. The layout is a bit better, as mentioned, and that’s a plus. But overall, the functionality is about the same.

 

My conclusion? After two days of playing around with it, I do have to say I like the new way it looks! I think the historical insights and the new lifestory timeline are wonderful additions. I hope some of the bugs will get cleaned up (like not being able to change when a historical insight happens on the lifestory) before they push it out to everyone, but so far I like the new changes!

 

Anyone else tried the beta version? If so, what did you think? Comment below!

 

 

Using Twitter for Genealogy

By

On 24 March 2015

In Research, Resources

I’ll admit, I wasn’t big on Twitter when it first came out. I could not see the allure of posting what I thought was pretty much a status update. I was sure such a thing would fade away.

I am not the one to listen to when it comes to predicating the future of technology apparently!

Twitter

I gave in and joined Twitter back in 2010 and didn’t really use it for much until these last couple of years when I began to use it for genealogy. I personally use it to post my website blog postings and I follow many other genealogists as well as archives and historical societies. It is where I will get some of my news for my Friday posts in fact.

So what can you do on Twitter while looking for genealogy?

You can…

  1. Find genealogists and genealogy blogs (like this one!)
  2. See what’s new using #genealogy (you can save this search too so you can come back to whenever you want – you’ll find your saved searches when you click on the search Twitter box)
  3. Follow genealogy organizations in your areas of interest
  4. Follow the genealogy companies you use to know about new things coming to the website (and sales!)
  5. Follow events you are attending. Usually conferences will have a specific hashtag for their event so you can follow the hashtag to see what’s going on.

My favorite part of Twitter is keeping up with genealogy information. I don’t spend hours on Twitter (although I know that’s easy to do once you get started) but I will go through who I follow and see what’s new.

Who to follow?

Here are some recommendations (besides myself, of course):

Bloggers/Genealogists

There are more but my list will just keep getting longer… I follow a number of people on my Twitter so if you’re really curious, go here.

Genealogy Organizations/Archives/Historical Societies, etc.

And more… There are Twitter accounts for many archives, historical societies, and groups around the world. Seek and you shall (hopefully) find!

If you believe I left off an essential Twitter account(s) to follow, please leave it in the comment section below!

Happy Hunting!

Tuesday’s Tip: New Records on SeekingMichigan.org

By

On 17 March 2015

In Research, Resources

I no longer live close to my hometown where many of my ancestors lived and died. Well, close I suppose is a relative term but it’s not a trip I could make comfortably in one day. I use what I can online and then I have a list I continuously make for what I need to get the next time I am up there.

However, that mainly means just my hometown county, which isn’t the only place where my ancestors lived. Most of my maternal line comes from Tuscola County, not Saginaw County, in Michigan. That list is long and I have yet to get anything from there because when I am in Saginaw, I tend to work on Saginaw records.

SeekingMichigan.org is a site I’ve discussed once before and you may have noticed I get a lot of my death records from that site. Well today I heard some wonderfully happy news! The death records have been expanded! They now have records from 1921-1939 that are fully imaged and indexes from 1940-1952 are to be added soon as well.

So, can this help me to solve some family mysteries? Maybe, but at the very least this will give some wonderful clues on that side of the family!

Here’s some of the new information I got today. My 3rd great-grandmother is Rachel Henderson. I wasn’t positive on her maiden name but I at least knew when she died, 1927, as well as as some other identifying information from census records and the like. She was 7 years out of reach on Seekingmichigan.org until now and I am happy to report, her death certificate is there with enough identifying information to confirm this is my Rachel:

Rachel Henderson

Here we have Rachel Henderson. Her death date matches what I knew, her husband’s name is the name I had, she lived in the right location, and her daughter, Mary (Henderson) Lyons, is the informant. So I’d say that’s a pretty good match for my Rachel! And did you see what else was there? Her parents names!

Now I have MORE to research! I don’t know any genealogist who wouldn’t love that!

Enjoy and happy hunting everyone!

Page 10 of 17

Previous

Next

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén