Member of ISOGG
Archive for September, 2010
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Over the past few months we have released 3 new projects keyed through the World Archives Project, England, Newspaper Index Cards, Sydney and New South Wales, Sands Street Index, 1861-1930 and Perth, Scotland, Survey of Inhabitants, 1766, 1773. The indexes for these projects, containing more than 1.27 million records, can be searched for free due to the efforts of 5500+ contributors!
The Andrews Collection, aka England, Newspaper Index Cards, is a collection of newspaper clippings, and transcriptions, pasted onto index cards detailing births, marriages, etc. (I still recall keying the announcements for the death of a serviceman and less than a month later the birth of his son; my heart ached for the young wife.) Although these records were not the easiest to key it was definitely worth the time it took to bring these events to life.
The Sydney and New South Wales, Sands Street Index, 1861-1930, was our first directory project keyed by the community. In Australia directories are important to family history research due to the lack of census records -researchers can track their ancestors location through time and hopefully find the names of other relatives.
And Perth, Scotland, Survey of Inhabitants, 1766, 1773 records landlords and tenants – sometimes appearing as letters and more often as easy to follow forms. The landlords were requested to provide an account of their tenants, sub-tenants and familes including their occupations and what parish they came from so this collection is a treasure trove of information.
Congratulations to our World Archive Project contributors!
The Ancestry.com World Archives Project allows anyone, anywhere to help preserve history by typing facts from historical records into searchable online collections that are free to the public. Click here to learn more about joining our community of contributors.
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You’ve been waiting patiently and it’s finally here! Family Tree Maker 2011 introduces more than 100 enhancements (many based on customer requests) to help you create your family story like never before. Here are just a few of the exciting new features you’ll enjoy:
- Smart Stories—a narrative tool. If you’ve always wanted help starting your own family history book, this is the tool you’ve been waiting for. Smart Stories helps you quickly fill up those blank pages by letting you use facts, sources, and notes you’ve already entered in your tree. Simply drag-and-drop the text into your story. And smart story text is linked to your tree; if you make changes, text will be updated automatically.
- New and improved charts. In addition to four new fan charts, you’ll be able to enhance your charts with new backgrounds, borders, and embellishments. You can even change fonts based on fact types.
- New and improved reports. Ancestor and descendant reports have been improved and added to. You’ll also find a new Surname Report, the ability to sort custom reports, and the option to save and reuse report settings.
- More Ancestry integration. Ancestry.com has millions of members all over the world. And now you can find out which members are searching for your ancestors by viewing Member Connect activity in the expanded Web Dashboard. You’ll also see links to message boards and notification of your new Ancestry messages. In addition, uploading and downloading speeds have been improved.
- New media management tools. Now you can drag-and-drop, cut-and-paste, and even categorize multiple items at the same time. You’ll also find a new tool that helps you locate missing media files.
To view or download a PDF list of the new enhancements, click here. To purchase Family Tree Maker 2011, click here.
Also, in coming weeks I’ll be writing about how to use some of these new features. Please come back to the blog to learn more and also to let others knows how 2011 is working for you.
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Map on search homepage
Start browsing by clicking on the map or a link below the map on the new search homepage (http://search.ancestry.com/search/). You can browse either the data collections that are unique to or related to specific places. There are thousands of new place pages for countries, states, territories, provinces and counties.
Collections by Place
Data collections are organized by category. On the collection tab for each place, you can see the data collections that are unique to each place.
To see all the data collections in a category, click the “view all” link at the bottom of a category. It will take you to a page that displays the data collections in a category that are unique to that place and those that are related to that place.
On the right side of the page, there is a feature to let you switch locations without having to return to the search homepage.
You can switch regions, countries, or narrow to a specific county. If you narrow to a county and decide to go back to a larger location, just use the breadcrumb (chain of links) at the top of the page.
US State Pages & UK Country Pages
For US states and UK countries you can find links to extra resources and a history of the important events that occurred in that place. Look for the “history” and “resource” buttons.
History Tab
Understanding the history of a place can help you understand what happened in your ancestor’s lives, why they made certain choices, and what types of opportunities and obstacles they faced. Clicking on the history tab provides a brief set of basic milestones & statistics, a historical image, genealogy related facts, featured data collections, and some sample images of famous people from the place you are looking at. This tab is meant to help you get started on your place based research and not a comprehensive history of a place.
Resources Tab
On the resources tab you can find links to public organizations outside of Ancestry. Most resource pages include background information on census research, vital records, and local resources such as local libraries, genealogical societies, or historical societies.
What about searching?
You can do that too. There is a search button at the top right corner of the place pages. When you click it, a form will pop-up to allow you to search with residence pre-populated with the location that corresponds to the place page. The search results are summarized by category rather than sorted by relevance. (This form will be changing in the future but the results will remain categorized.)
A few more tidbits
These pages are loaded with goodies. I haven’t mentioned them all. Here are a few more:
- On the main data collection page, there is a printer friendly link towards the top right side. You can print a list of all the collections we list for each place and check each one off as you browse through it.
- On the right side bar there are links to view a map, find related message boards, and search the member directory for people doing research or looking for help in a particular place.
- Finally there is a section to send us feedback about our place pages. It is at the last link on the right side bar. We would really like your help in maintaining and expanding these pages. The web addresses of local institutions change frequently, you may know about a great public resource that we have not listed, or have a great idea for a new feature. Giving us feedback through this survey will help make the places even better.
Many places restrict access to vital records but place based records abound. Although I think my Dansbury side came over to the United States in the late 1700s, I am hoping I can find a connection between a little town in New Jersey and Grosse Pointe Michigan to help me understand why my grandfather’s entire family moved in the early 1900s.
Good luck in all of your place-based research!
Laura Dansbury
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If you are a member of our Ancestry World Archives community then you know all about the World Record Challenge. If you are not yet a member of our community, we thought we would let you in on what we have been doing and give you a chance to participate.
Our passionate and engaged community has keyed and arbitrated over 7.4 million records since June 1st. We’ve had fun with weekly and monthly challenges and we gave some great prizes out along the way. Collectively, our community has earned over 68,000 votes which they have cast for record sets they want to key next. Additionally, thousands of contributors have learned about new types of genealogical records and received lots of practice reading old handwriting. All of these things can only make our personal family history research even better.
We only have two days left in the challenge (today and tomorrow) so we thought we’d give you one last chance to get in on the action. We have two, one-year, World Deluxe subscriptions for Ancestry.com up for grabs – one today and one tomorrow. The individual who keys and/or arbitrates the most records each day wins. It’s as simple as that.
So, head on over to the Ancestry World Archives Project, sign up using your Ancestry.com login and password, download the keying tool, and start keying!
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Wondering whom to thank for your Monday off work? Historians disagree on who should
get credit for Labor Day. Most think it’s either Peter J. McGuire, general secretary
of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and a cofounder of the American Federation
of Labor, or Matthew Maguire, a machinist, secretary of Local 344 of the International
Association of Machinists in Paterson, NJ, and secretary of the Central Labor Union
in New York. Read
more Labor Day history on the US Department of Labor website.
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The National Archives in Kansas City has opened
to the public 300,000 Alien Case Files (A-Files) for individuals born in 1909
and earlier. This is part of the group of immigration records transferred last year
from the US Citizenship and Immigration services to the National Archives. The files
themselves date from 1944 and later, but the records remain closed until 100 years
after the birthdate of the subject of the file.
The files aren’t online; you can search NARA’s
Archival Research Catalog for your ancestor’s name to see if there’s a file on
your ancestor (after clicking a name in the search results, click Scope and Content
for a few more details about the subject of the record). You can access the records
in person or order
copies from NARA.
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Members of the RootsWeb Allegheny County, Penn, Mailing List have posted online Allegheny
County Vital Statistic Indexes compiled from Pittsburgh newspapers.
Just choose an alphabetical range and you’ll be linked to an index page
listing the vital events within that range. You can use your web browser’s Find function
to look for a name. Once you’ve found the name, publication and date, click the Quick
Links to Newspapers link to find the image of the page with the information you need.
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Awhile ago, we asked Facebook
fans which state they’d most want to see a webinar about. Among the many states
mentioned, Pennsylvania was the winner.
Philadelphia was the No. 1 port of entry for immigrants during the Colonial era and
has remained a financial and cultural center, meaning many of you have ancestors who
lived in Pennsylvania.
Ask and ye shall receive! You’ll learn resources and research strategies for tracing
them in our next webinar, Pennsylvania
Genealogy Crash Course: Find Your Keystone State Ancestors.
“Many people have what I call the ‘1850 census birthplace problem,’” says presenter
James M. Beidler.
“That is, they have an ancestor in a state such as Ohio, Illinois or California, and
the 1850 US census shows Pennsylvania as the birthplace—but nothing else ties the
ancestor to a particular part of Pennsylvania. We’ll discuss some ideas on how to
break through this brick wall.”
In the webinar, you’ll also learn:
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Aspects of Pennsylvania history that are essential to doing genealogical research
there - Details on vital records, immigration resources and other records in the state
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Ethnic groups that tended to settle in Pennsylvania and the records they may have
left behind -
The best websites for doing Pennsylvania research, such as the steadily expanding website
of the Pennsylvania State Archives.
Beidler, himself a Pennsylvania resident, is a frequent contributor to Family Tree
Magazine and an expert on research in the state.
The hour-long Pennsylvania
Crash Course webinar is Tuesday, Sept. 28 at 7 p.m. Eastern (that’s 6 p.m. Central/
5 p.m. Mountain/ 4 p.m. Pacific).
Sign
up for the webinar now to save 20 percent on your registration!
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Subscription genealogy site Ancestry.com is making its entire US
Immigration Collection searchable free through Labor Day, Sept. 6. (You’ll need
to register for a free account to access full search results.)
The freebie celebrates the site’s release of more than 1,700
recorded oral histories from immigrants who arrived at Ellis Island. Starting
in the 1970s, the National Park Service recorded of immigrants recalling the lives
they left behind, why they left and the journey to America. Before now, the stories
were available only to Ellis Island Immigration Museum visitors. The Ellis
Island Oral History Collection will remain permanently free on Ancestry.com.
Also part of the immigration collection are nearly 2 million new US
naturalization record indexes dating from 1791 to 1992, part of Ancestry.com’s World
Archives Project. The indexes cover the states of Alaska, California, Connecticut,
Hawaii, Louisiana, Maine, Montana, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Washington.
And the Boston Passenger
and Crew Lists, 1820-1943, database has been enhanced with nearly 2 million records
documenting crew members on ships who arrived in Boston.
Of course, Ancestry.com’s Immigration Collection also has virtually every available
passenger list for US ports, as well as the Passenger and Immigration Lists Index,
a good resource for tracing early immigrants.
Get
tips for beating brick walls in your immigrant ancestor research on FamilyTreeMagazine.com.
For help searching Ancestry.com, use Family Tree Magazine’s Ancestry.com Web
Guide, available
on our Web Guides CD from ShopFamilyTree.com.
Update: Ancestry.ca, the Canadian sister site to Ancestry.com, also is offering its
immigration records free through Sept. 6. Here, you’ll find Canadian passenger
lists and border-crossing records, among other resources.
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Thinking of going back to school? Family
Tree University‘s September session begins Monday, Sept 13, and we’ve got three
new courses for you. Read on for the whole course catalog!
STRATEGIES
New: Organize
Your Genealogy: Get Your Research in Order (and Keep It That Way)
Whether you work on paper or do everything online, getting your research organized
is essential to keeping track of ancestors and making sure you know where to put new
ones in your family tree.
More courses:
ETHNIC ANCESTORS
New: Trace
Your Polish Roots: Strategies for Searching in the US and Poland Trace your
ancestors from America to Poland. This course will debunk myths, explain history and
point you to the most useful records.
More courses:
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Find
Your German Roots -
Finding
African-American Ancestors in Newspapers -
Tracing
Immigrants -
Research
in Foreign Records
RECORDS AND SOURCES
New: Newspaper
Research 101: Find Your Ancestors in American News Sources
In this class you’ll learn how to find and use newspaper archives—online, on paper
and on microfilm—to put together missing pieces of your genealogical research.
More courses:
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US
Military Records -
US Vital
Records -
Exploring
City Directories -
Land
Records 101 -
Finding
Ancestors in the US Census
SHARING HISTORY
These classes will help you preserve your family’s legacy and get creative with your
genealogy:
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Creating
a Family History Book -
Writing
Your Family Memoir -
Build
a Family Website -
Digital
Photography Essentials
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Online genealogy company Ancestry.com has released Family
Tree Maker 2011, an updated version of its genealogy desktop software.
You can purchase Family Tree Maker with a full Ancestry.com subscription or a free
trial. The software also comes with either a printed or electronic Companion Guide.
It starts at $39.95 online at FamilyTreeMaker.com and
at some retail stores.
The 2011 version has more than 100 improvements, including:
• Smart Stories: An editor that lets you drag and drop text and photos from
your Family Tree Maker tree into story pages that update automatically when you make
changes to your tree.
• Timelines: You’ll be able to find and add more events to your ancestors’
timelines and add your own historical events.
• Charts: The 2011 version has four new fan chart styles. You can enhance charts
with backgrounds, borders and embellishments, and change fonts based on fact type.
• Improved Ancestry.com integration: A hallmark of Family Tree Maker is its
ability to search Ancestry.com’s records collections for people in users’ family trees
when the computer is connected to the internet. An Ancestry.com subscription is required
to see results. Uploading and downloading of your tree is faster in version 2011,
and you can see your Member Connect activity and related message board posts right
on your home page.
• Media management: Drag and drop, cut and paste, and categorize multiple items
at the same time. A new tool helps you locate missing media files.
• Enhanced reports: Ancestor and descendant reports have been enhanced, and
there’s a new surname report. You can now sort your custom reports, and save and reuse
report settings.
Ancestry.com is holding a free Family Tree Maker 2011 webinar Sept. 15 at 8 pm Eastern. You
can register by clicking here.
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You have only two more days to enter
to win our ShopFamilyTree.com $250 shopping spree! The sweepstakes ends Aug. 31
at 11:59 Eastern.
You can enter up to once per day at Win.FamilyTreeMagazine.com.
(Read all the
rules here.)
The winner will be able to choose from hundreds of expert genealogy how-to books,
CDs, and other products, such as
-
The
Family Tree Sourcebook (available now for pre-order) -
Family
Tree VIP membership -
10
Years of Family Tree Magazine commemorative DVD -
Live
and recorded genealogy webinars -
Google
Earth for Genealogy DVD -
RootsMagic
genealogy software -
Books
from Genealogical Publishing Co.