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Share Stories this Summer
He was the “new good-looking” Ken that would <swoon> talk to you, and in 1970 I was listening!
What did your Ken say to you?
We’ve all got stories to tell. This summer “say many different things” about your family history to your kids.
Have fun with it, and help them understand that they are part of something bigger.
Have a wonderful week!
-Lisa
About the Author: Lisa Louise Cooke
Lisa is the Producer and Host of the Genealogy Gems Podcast, an online genealogy audio show and app. She is the author of the books The Genealogist’s Google Toolbox, Mobile Genealogy, How to Find Your Family History in Newspapers, and the Google Earth for Genealogy video series, an international keynote speaker, and producer of the Family Tree Magazine Podcast.
Come see us at the Federation of Genealogical Societies 2018 Conference
What: Federation of Genealogical Societies 2018 Conference
Where: Fort Wayne, Indiana
Booth: #101 Lisa Louise Cooke’s Genealogy Gems
When: August 22-25, 2018
We can’t wait to see you at the Federation of Genealogical Society 2018 Conference! Genealogy Gems will be rolling out the red carpet for with our free power sessions and prizes. On Saturday, you’ll have the rare opportunity to go behind the scenes and join us for a live recording of the Genealogy Gems Podcast and the Family Tree Magazine Podcast. And be sure to stop by with your smartphone or tablet and we’ll set up the free Genealogy Gems Podcast for you!
Join us for our incredibly popular red carpet mini sessions while you’re at FGS. We’ll have expert instruction and free prizes at every session, including DNA kits, online courses, subscriptions, and more!
Lisa Louise Cooke will be showing you how to apply your sleuthing skills to find missing trees, as well as create free map collections and stunning family history videos. Shannon Combs-Bennett joins us to provide practical tools and strategies to work with your DNA results and apply them your genealogical research. Special guests also include Mike Mansfield to bust brick walls with MyHeritage, and RootsMagic founder Bruce Buzzbee will give you tips and tricks for using the famous family tree software. Attendees of the conference will find our flyer with the complete schedule in their conference bags. Here’s the full schedule:
We’ll set up the free podcast on your mobile device!
If you’ve never listened to the free Genealogy Gems Podcast, we want to personally invite you stop by the booth on Saturday from 10:00 – 11:00 AM and we will set up the podcast on your mobile device for you! It’s completely free, and totally easy to listen. We’ll make sure you leave comfortable and confident to listen.
Attend free live podcast recordings on Saturday
And whether you’re a podcast listener or not (yet!), you have the rare opportunity to go behind the scenes and watch our live recordings:
Saturday 8/25/18 12:30 – 1:00 PM Family Tree Magazine Podcast
Saturday 8/25/18 1:15 – 1:45 PM Genealogy Gems Podcast
We will have special guest interviews, BIG prizes, and lots of fun!
Mark your calendars for Lisa’s FGS sessions:
Thursday 10:00 – 12:00 Reconstruct Your Ancestor’s World with Google (workshop)
Thursday 3:30 – 4:30 7 Awesome Apps to Captivate Non-Genealogists
Friday 11:00 – 12:00 10 Exciting Ways to Enhance Your Genealogy with Video
Friday 3:30 – 4:30 A Proven Methodology for using Google Search for Genealogy
Register for FGS 2018 Now
If you haven’t registered for FGS, it’s not too late! Head to the FGS website to register, available until August 13, 2018. Fort Wayne, Indiana is home to the Allen County Public Library, which is an incredible resource for any genealogist and makes FGS 2018 is well worth the trip.
Visit our FGS landing page for all the details about everything that’s happening at the Genealogy Gems booth, and see you at FGS 2018!
Lacey Cooke
Lacey has been working with Genealogy Gems since the company’s inception in 2007. You can find her at the Genealogy Gems booth at many conferences and seminars, hosting webinars, and contributing behind the scenes with product development and content creation. No stranger to working with dead people, Lacey holds a degree in Forensic Anthropology, and is passionate about criminal justice and investigative techniques. She loves taking genealogy on the road with Lisa (who just happens to be her mom) and exploring new places.
New Jersey Death Index and More US Genealogy Records Online
The New Jersey Death Index tops this week’s list of new and updated U.S. genealogy records online. Along with a Native American census collection, our list includes family history records for Georgia, Illinois, New York, North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. Among the documents you can search for your ancestors are vital records, obituaries, digitized newspapers and even home movies!
Featured collection: New Jersey Death Index
The US records advocacy group Reclaim the Records has been able to secure copies of the New Jersey Death Index for the years they still exist. It’s the first public copy to be available online and it’s free to search! According to a recent announcement, the records exist for “about half of 1920-1924, all of 1925-1929, and then from 1949 to 2017.”
You can search a database of over 1.2 million records for 2001-2017 and click through to explore links to over 500,000 digital images for the not-yet-transcribed 1901-2000 data. “Most of the years of the index will at least give the age at death, from which you can infer an approximate birth year, but the later years of the index (after about 1985) also give the deceased person’s exact date of birth. Some of these records give a numeric locality code for the place of death and/or the place of residence of the deceased.”
Taking things a step further, Reclaim the Records is working with the state archive to secure additional records from the missing years. It also hopes to force the state to recreate missing years of the death index; we’ll report progress on that front as we hear about it. Search the New Jersey Death Index for free.
More US genealogy records now online
Native American records. The free Genealogy Giant, FamilySearch.org, has updated its collection of United States, Native American, Census Rolls, 1885-1940. Site visitors may now search nearly 250,000 records of “census rolls for various tribes. Original records are NARA Series M595. This NARA series also includes some vital records.”
Georgia. The Digital Library of Georgia has added a new collection of town and home movies that have been digitized by the Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection. Better yet, according to the site, “DLG staff provided enhanced descriptions of these moving image resources that enable users to locate segments of the moving image footage without having to view the footage in its entirety.” The finding aid includes shot lists, Library of Congress subject headings, word-search capabilities and “a time-correlated description that connects the text search term to the corresponding moment in the moving image footage.” The Georgia Town Films Collection covers the towns of Fitzgerald, Bowman, and Athens; the Georgia Home and Amateur Movies collection comprises 126 home movies.
Illinois. Genealogy Giant Findmypast has published the browse-only collection, Illinois, Tazewell County, Obituary Card Index, which covers nearly a century (1914-2007) of obituaries published in the Pekin Times. The index includes the deceased’s full name, birth date, death date, and burial place.
New York. FamilySearch.org, has updated its collection, New York State Census, 1905. It now has over 7.7 million records available for free searching. State census records for New York are especially valuable, given that the state was the first U.S. home for millions of immigrants and their children, and since state vital records aren’t easy to come by.
Haven’t heard much about state-level censuses? Click here to read a little more about state census records.
North Carolina. You can now search (for free) over 150,000 records in FamilySearch’s database of North Carolina, Davidson County Vital Records, 1867-2006. According to the site, the collection includes “images of death records and marriage licenses recorded in Davidson County, North Carolina. Some of the individual volumes include an index and there are comprehensive indexes to some of the records. Index and images of birth certificates for the years 1914 through 1930 and delayed births certificates filed between 1940 and 2006 (for births occurring between 1869 and 2000).”
Tennessee. A free new website, ChattanoogaNewspapers.org, features about 6000 pages of old Tennessee newspapers. According to a report at Nooga.com, “The first batch of newspapers covers 1862 to 1907 and 12 different newspapers. Publications include The Chattanooga Star (1907), The Daily Times (1869-1895), The Chattanooga Daily Times (1875-1911), Chattanooga Daily Gazette (1864-1865) and others.”
Virginia. “The Virginia Newspaper Project has reached a major milestone: over a million historical newspaper pages have been added to Virginia Chronicle. According to an announcement at Virginia Memory, “Recent additions include: 1879-1959 of the Northern Neck News of Warsaw, additional West Virginia titles and the Idle Hour of Glen Allen.” The project is ongoing, so keep checking back.
Keep up with new Genealogy Gems like these
New records come online every week–sometimes by the million! And important DNA news breaks frequently, like this week’s news about Findmypast’s new partnership with Living DNA. We curate these “gems” and tons of try-this-now tips in the Genealogy Gems weekly e-newsletter. Subscribe for free and you’ll stay informed and inspired as you search for your ancestors’ stories!
About the Author: Sunny Morton
Sunny is a Contributing Editor at Lisa Louise Cooke’s Genealogy Gems; her voice is often heard on the Genealogy Gems Podcast and Premium Podcasts. She’s known for her expertise on the world’s biggest family history websites (she’s the author of Genealogy Giants: Comparing the 4 Major Websites); writing personal and family histories (she also wrote Story of My Life: A Workbook for Preserving Your Legacy); and sharing her favorite reads for the Genealogy Gems Book Club.
Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links and Genealogy Gems will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on these links (at no additional cost to you). Thank you for supporting Genealogy Gems!