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Archive for August, 2010
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Make a date to meet generations of your family at
Boston Family History Day 2010 – Saturday, October 16, 2010
Brought to you by Ancestry.com and the New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS)
Register today for this exciting event, which will include a full day of classes, family history, and of course Ancestry.com experts on hand to answer your questions.
Family History Classes
Choose from more than a dozen classes to get pro tips and guidance from the experts at NEHGS and Ancestry.com. Class topics will include something for every family historian:
- Getting the most from your Ancestry.com
- Researching your New England ancestors
- Discovering NEHGS family history resources
- Getting started in family history
- Finding your family in immigration records
- And much more!
Have New England ancestors, but you hail from somewhere else? Boston Family History Day is a great reason to head back to your ancestral home – learn new tips on researching ancestors’ lives, discover unparalleled New England resources provided by NEHGS . . . and take in Boston’s beautiful fall foliage.
One-on-One Consultations
Sit down with professional genealogists from NEHGS who can help you outline resources for getting started, breaking through brick-walls, specific ethnic or geographic problems, and more.
Document and Photo Scanning
Have your family photos and historical documents scanned – for free – on professional scanning equipment provided by Ancestry.com. It’s a unique opportunity to have your family history records digitized!
Learn more about Boston Family History Day 2010 at www.FamilyHistoryDay.com.
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As you may have already heard, NBC is planning to re-air four episodes of the TV show Who Do You Think You Are? starting on Friday, August 13 at 8/7c.
As a sponsor of NBC during the show, we wanted to make sure that you didn’t miss this Friday night affair, where you can expect to see the repeated episodes that feature Lisa Kudrow, Sarah Jessica Parker, Emmitt Smith and Brooke Shields.
As many of you know, the idea for Who Do You Think You Are? originated from a show that has been phenomenally successful in the United Kingdom for several years. Brought to the United States this past March by executive producer, Lisa Kudrow, the series had more than 6 million people tune in each week to NBC to watch the show.
And now we are lucky enough to have four of the episodes replayed from August 13 until September 3.
For those of you who may have missed a few episodes of this family history-focused series, now’s your chance to experience it. You’ll see the celebrities take an amazing voyage to discover more about the ancestors who came before them. Or maybe you’ve already seen all the episodes. If that’s the case, it will still be worth the time to pop some popcorn and sit back to relive the heart-warming journeys that each of the celebrities experienced.
So let your friends and family know about the Who Do You Think You Are? reruns and get ready to relive each episode on Friday nights at 8/7c starting August 13.
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This post is just a quick heads-up to let you know about a few million Midwestern records that have gone live on Ancestry.com over the last week.
Ohio Online
Ohio is the big winner, with indexes to more than 10 million vital records.
Ohio Deaths, 1908–1932, 1938–1944, and 1958–2007, has been updated with an additional 550,000 names, but the bigger news is two new databases: Ohio Marriage Index, 1970, 1972–2007, and Ohio Divorce Index, 1962–1963, 1967–1971, 1973–2007. They’re on the modern side of our record collections, for sure, but they provide access to more than 10 million records between them. And while I have no ties to Ohio that I know of, I can’t help but think these records could hold some intriguing clues for those who do.
This is especially true of the divorce index. While some entries provide less information than others, the most extensive can include not only names and dates but also times married, birth years, number of minor children, the grounds for divorce, whom the decree was granted to, and the length of the marriage.
Michigan Death Certificates
For a little icing on the cake for those of you with relatives next door, Michigan Death Records, 1897–1920, contains almost 1 million death certificates from the state of Michigan’s Division of Vital Statistics. The records are great sources of vital information, including names and birthplaces of the deceased’s parents.
Ellen Wilson
A Michigan native clued me in on one great story from the death records. In 1850, Ellen Wilson and her husband, both slaves, passed through Michigan on their way to freedom in Canada. They returned a few years later to live among the peace-loving Quakers in Farmington, where Ellen died in 1915 (though there appear to be a couple of confusing sixes penciled in). Her death certificate gives her father’s name—a great find for anyone researching slave ancestry.
So, all you lucky folks with Ohio and Michigan roots (or branches), enjoy.
UPDATE AS OF AUGUST 12, 2010
After the success that some folks already had with them, you may have noticed that the Michigan Death Records are currently unavailable. We apologize for this inconvenience. Please know that we are working hard to get them back up on the site and hope to have the situation resolved soon. In the meantime, if you’re researching your Michigan ancestors, go to the Card Catalog and type Michigan in the Title box, and you will see more than 300 Michigan-related databases in our collections. Or you might find these Michigan death or marriage (prior to 1850 and 1851–75) databases useful if you haven’t checked them before.
We’ll let you know as soon as we get the Michigan vital records back up.
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I recently found a death index entry for an infant that bore the unique surname of my great-grandfather. I didn’t want to add the infant to a specific family because I wasn’t certain that they were related. But I also didn’t want to lose the information in case I discovered a relationship with the baby at a later time. In these cases, you can add the individual to your tree without linking them to anyone.
Months later when I was able to view the actual death certificate, I learned that this baby was indeed one of my great-grandfather’s children. Because I had already added this infant to my tree, it was easy to simply link her to her parents.
Have you had similar experiences finding individuals whom you can’t make fit in your tree yet? Do you usually find that these “unrelated” individuals do belong in your tree? Feel free to share tips on how you handle the mystery people in your tree.
To add an unrelated individual to your tree:
1. Click the People button on the main toolbar.
2. Click Person>Add Person>Add Unrelated Person.
3. Enter the person’s name (first name, middle name, and last name).
4. Choose a gender from the drop-down list and click OK. The new individual becomes the focus of the pedigree view and editing panel.
Note: Because the individual isn’t connected to anyone else in your tree, you can navigate to him or her by clicking his or her name in the index on the People workspace.
To attach an unrelated individual to a family:
- Go to the People workspace and select the individual you want to attach to a family.
- Click Person>Attach/Detach Person>Attach Father/Mother.
- Select the name of the father or mother you want to attach the individual to. Then click OK.
- If prompted, choose which family you want the individual attached to. Then click OK.
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The New England Historic Genealogical Society and Ancestry.com will hold a Family
History Day Saturday, Oct. 16 at the Seaport Hotel and World Trade Center Boston.
The day includes lectures, consultations and document scanning. Attendance costs $38. Learn
more and register here.
GenealogyBank has updated more than 1,800 newspapers
and added new titles. In addition, the site will add 400,000 digital newspaper pages
(11,633 issues from 48 newspapers) in September. You
can get a peek at the list on the GenealogyBank blog.
Aug. 14 marks the 75th anniversary of Social Security, the federal program that gave
us the Social Security Death Index and the SS-5 (Social Security application). On
FamilyTreeMagazine.com, you can learn how to access these two great genealogical resources.
You also can view the Social
Security Administration’s history pages.
Ready to share your family history knowledge? Geneabloggers blogger and High-Definition
Genealogy founder Thomas MacEntee has published an e-book called Approaching
the Lectern: How to Become a Genealogy Speaker that will help you become a
more-effective speaker at conferences, society meetings and other venues. You can
download it as a PDF for $8.99, or order it in print form for $12.99.
The Genealogy Gems Podcast is
among the first 1,000 shows available through the new BlackBerry Podcasts, a free
app that lets BlackBerry users (running BlackBerry OS v4.6 or higher) listen to free
audio and video. You can get the app at BlackBerry
App World.
If you missed NBC’s “Who
Do You Think You Are?” this past spring—or you just want to relive the thrill
of seeing celebrities do genealogy on prime-time network television—you can watch
the reruns Friday nights from Aug. 13 to Sept. 3 at 8/7c on NBC.
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While you’re avoiding ladders and black cats today, you can brush up on some Friday the 13th fun facts:
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Friday the 13th is a relatively recent phenomenon: The earliest known documented reference
is in an 1869 biography of Italian composer Gioachino Rossini: “If it be true that,
like so many other Italians, he regarded Friday as an unlucky day, and thirteen as
an unlucky number, it is remarkable that on Friday, the 13th of November, he died.”
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In 1907, Thomas W. Lawson published a novel called Friday the Thirteenth about
a stockbroker who orchestrates a financial panic on Wall Street by preying on people’s
superstitions.
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Many consider Friday a bad day to begin a project or a journey. In Scandinavia, Friday
was known as “Witches’ Sabbath.” Author Charles Panati writes that the Norse goddess
of love and fertility, Frigga, was banished and called a witch when Norse and Germanic
tribes converted to Christianity. Every Friday, she met with eleven other witches
and the devil (for a total of 13) to plan the next week’s misdeeds.
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In numerology, the number 12 symbolizes completeness, whereas 13 is an irregular number
that ruins the completeness.
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Every month that begins on a Sunday will contain a Friday the 13th. Friday the 13th
occurs at least once but no more than three times per year on the Gregorian calendar.
- The fear of Friday the 13th is called friggatriskaidekaphobia.
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Spanish-speaking cultures fear Martes Trece, Tuesday the 13th. In Greek culture,
too, Tuesday the 13th is a day of bad luck.
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Our new Web Guides CD, which delivers user guides to 11 of the most popular genealogy
sites on the internet, is available
for pre-order from ShopFamilyTree.com.
Each guide has a how-to article, screen-by-screen search techniques, and a cheat sheet
with quick links, hints and hacks from online genealogy experts.
The CD is a great way to catch up on guides in the magazine you may have missed, or
just keep them handy in an easy-to-store, searchable format with clickable links.
With the CD, you also get a bonus guide to Google, a handy web search tracker, and
free access to new or updated Web Guides for one year. Click
here to learn more and to order.
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Thanks to everyone who attended last night’s free “Ask the Editors” webinar! We had a blast, and we hope to do it again.
I wanted to share the questions attendees asked—and our answers, of course, enhanced
with links to resources we mentioned and a few new ones. But first, because Allison,
Grace, Lindsay and I started the webinar with an introduction, blog readers can “meet”
most of us on our FamilyTreeMagazine.com
staff page. Get
to know Lindsay here. And now for the main event:
Q. How would I find a 1905 death certificate from Mexico?
A. Civil registrations in Mexico (akin to vital records in the United States)
started in the mid- to late-1860s, though records may not be complete. In most cases,
records were kept on the municipio level and you can request copies from the
local civil registry (addresses are in FamilySearch’s
Mexico research outline). Older records may have been transferred to a local or
state archive.
Before writing, see if the record is in an online index or on microfilm. Many Mexican
death records are indexed on
the FamilySearch Record Search Pilot Site. Search the Family
History Library online catalog for microfilmed civil registration records or indexes,
as well.
You’ll find more advice in our Mexico
Research Guide digital download, available from ShopFamilyTree.com.
Q. I can’t find my ancestor’s birthplace. Different censuses give different
locations, and I don’t know his parents’ names. Where should I look?
A. It’s not unusual for a person’s birthplace to be inconsistent from one census
to the next. The trick is to go beyond census records. Many sources will give a place
of birth, so continue researching the person in any record you can get your hands
on. Bibles, baptismal records, newspaper birth announcements, military records, passports,
naturalizations and death records are a few sources that often name a person’s birthplace.
See which places are mentioned most often, and focus there. You may find online birth
indexes such as those for Arizona, Minnesota, Missouri or South
Dakota. Websites such as Ancestry.com and FamilySearch often
have vital records indexes, too.
Get in-depth information and online search demos in our recorded webinar Vital
Records: Researching Your US Ancestors’ Births, Marriages and Deaths, available from
ShopFamilyTree.com.
Q. How do you trace a child named Jane Doe who was a foundling, and was
adopted?
A. Adoptions weren’t always formalized in courts—sometimes a relative or neighbor
would take in the child. For a formalized adoption, look into guardianship records
(court records of hearings to determine who would care for a minor). Also look for
an amended birth certificate, changed to reflect the child’s adoptive rather than
biological parents.
Another good resource is newspapers. Finding an abandoned child would be a newsworthy
event and may have received press coverage and follow-up articles. Also see the resources
in our adoption
toolkit and the “Early Adopters” article in the February
2007 Family Tree Magazine (available as a digital issue).
Q. How do you find a grave site when the cemetery doesn’t know where the
stone is?
A. Try looking in the cemetery for plots of relatives and those of the same
last name, since family members are often buried together. Also search for burial
indexes, many of which were created years ago—perhaps before the cemetery lost track
of the burial record or the stone was overgrown. In the 1930s and early ‘40s, the
Works Progress Administration indexed cemeteries in many communities; you’ll find
a free WPA cemetery database
at Access Genealogy and printed indexes at public libraries and the Family
History Library. The Daughters
of the American Revolution also has collected cemetery and other records for years.
A webinar attendee suggested the researcher look for burial permits, which many counties
would issue before a grave could be dug, as well as funeral home records. Just this
week, I got a letter from a reader who found a permit that a deceased’s relative’s
second husband had obtained to have the remains moved to his own family plot.
Q. Several of my lines have “daughtered out.” What is your advice for researching
women?
A. Our female ancestors just don’t show up in as many records as our male ancestors
did, so sometimes you get to a point where you can’t trace a family line back past
a woman. Allison emphasized the importance of not focusing just on the female ancestor,
but also researching her husband, children, siblings, parents and neighbors. Records
of these people may lead you to a maiden name and other information about the woman.
Because people often married those who lived nearby, researching the husband’s family
may lead to records of interactions, such as land transactions, with your female ancestor’s
family.
See our list
of records that often reveal details about female ancestors.
Q. What will increase my chances of success in your photo
calls?
A. As Allison explained in the webinar, which photos end up in the magazine
or another project is partly luck, for example, say we need a wintry photo for a January
calendar page, and you’ve sent in a photo of kids sled-riding on a snowy day. Or sometimes
a project calls for a vertical or horizontal orientation.
Another thing we look for is a photo with a clear focal point to draw the viewer’s
eye. “Compelling” is a good word to describe a photo that makes someone want to pick
it up and look at it longer. (We’re always happy when someone picks up the magazine!)
Pleasant, open expressions on faces (we know outright smiles are rare in old pictures),
a steady gaze, or cute kids are often compelling. Photos with unusual or surprising
subject matter also can be compelling.
If we’ll be reprinting the photo at a relatively small size, we’ll want to make sure
viewers can still easily discern the subject matter in the pictures (in this respect,
photos of large groups of people might be at a disadvantage). But we hope you’ll upload
your photos to our Flickr pools regardless—we love seeing them, as do others.
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British genealogy subscription site Ancestry.co.uk has added a database called the National
Probate Calendar, 1861-1941, which has 6 million names and other information from
wills and probate records created in England and Wales during those years. (This
database also is available on Canadian subscription site Ancestry.ca and on
Ancestry.com.)
In England, the Principal Probate Registry has been responsible for the probate process
since 1858. Cases were summarized in the registry’s National Probate Calendar.
“There’s an entry for the vast majority of people who died in that period,” says Ancestry.co.uk
spokesperson Russell James. The calendar may provide the deceased person’s full name,
date and place of death, executor of his or her will (often another family member)
and value of the estate.
You can use the information in the database to write
the Principal Probate Registry for copies of the deceased’s will and probate records.
Related resource from Family Tree Magazine:
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Best
websites for British Isles researchers (free article) -
English
Roots Online Toolkit (free article) -
British
Genealogy Guide Digital Download (from ShopFamilyTree.com)
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The Family Tree Magazine staff had to do without their intern last Monday,
as I spent the weekend in New York. Being the amateur genealogist that I am, I couldn’t
pass up the opportunity to visit Ellis Island. Here’s a tip for the tourist: don’t
visit Ellis Island on a Saturday afternoon in late July. It took me no less than 3
hours to make it through the line (which has airport-style security) and onto the
ferry. Luckily, it was a beautiful day—had it been 5 degrees warmer, I don’t think
I would have made it.
I vaguely remember a visit to Ellis Island on my first trip to New York when I was
ten years old. My grandpa showed me (I forget how or where) a record for “Frank Sena”
(his grandpa’s name) from Italy. During my research at FTM however, I learned that
all of my ancestors came to America before 1892—the year that Ellis Island actually
opened. The “Frank Sena” my grandpa showed me could have been any number of people.
Ellis Island consists of a big, beautiful building (now the Ellis Island Immigration
Museum) on an island surrounded by trees and gardens. Despite its physical beauty
(and the hundreds of tourists running around), the building has an eerie quality.
Maybe because of the “horror” stories I learned in school—of people waiting for weeks,
being inspected in six seconds and turned away for seemingly silly reasons—I felt
uneasy as I passed through the exhibits.
The Museum itself is somewhat scattered, and unless you do the audio tour for another
$8 (I opted out of this), it may be difficult to know where to go. There are many
unmarked, unlocked doors, so I had to suspend my usual fear of “breaking the rules”
and be a bit adventurous. While searching for the exit, I wandered into a room and
was asked if I was there to pick up a record (there’s a station where you can search
for your ancestors and print the actual records—or you can order them from EllisIsland.org).
I didn’t see any original records though, which was disappointing.
(me in the Great Hall on the second floor)
The two parts of the Museum that were the most memorable were the “Barbie Dolls of
the World” exhibit, and some lone “graffiti columns.” The Barbie Doll exhibit—which
took up a large portion of space on the first floor—made part of me wonder, “What
is this doing here? Don’t they know this is a historic site?” and the other part think,
“This is such a brilliant idea.” If I was ten (okay—maybe five) years younger, and
you asked me to wait in line for three hours, you better believe I was walking away
with an Italian-themed Barbie.
After being a bit dumbfounded by the Barbie exhibit, I was relieved to see some genuine
artifacts in the form of two or three graffiti columns, located in a dim hallway on
the second floor. The columns had been stripped of paint to reveal original drawings
and writing from immigrants who had been waiting (presumably, to be examined). I couldn’t
read any of what had been written (it was faded and written in foreign languages),
but the columns finally made me feel connected to the many people who had passed through
Ellis Island.
In other news, my family tree search continues! Thank you for your comments on my
past posts—your advice has been very helpful. I’m learning that genealogy is largely
about the process—you can’t learn everything in a week! I have made some exciting
discoveries on my mother’s maternal line, which is now traced back to colonial Massachusetts
and Connecticut. I may not be a Mayflower descendent, but I’ve discovered some ancestors
that journeyed to America shortly after the Mayflower landed, in the 1630s and 1640s.
I will update with more details later this week.