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Episode 218 – It’s All About You
Genealogy Gems Podcast Episode 218
with Lisa Louise Cooke
In this episode, Lisa answers your questions and shares your comments. Hot topics on your minds that are covered in this episode:
- discovering new records online,
- working with other people’s online trees,
- hard-to-locate military records;
- and getting help with early Pennsylvania research
NEWS: GOOGLE EARTH STORIES COMING
“Google Earth to let users post stories, photos in coming years” at DNAIndia.com
Lisa’s FREE Google Earth video class: How to Use Google Earth for Genealogy
The Genealogist’s Google Toolbox, 2nd edition and Google Earth for Genealogy Video Series
Try Google Earth for Chrome (you must use the Chrome browser to access)
Download the free Google Earth Pro software.
Available in the Genealogy Gems Store
Video series available at the Genealogy Gems store
NEWS: FAMILYSEARCH REACHES 2 BILLION IMAGES
Why you should have a free FamilySearch account and use it!
How to use the FamilySearch Catalog (it’s free! Everyone should use it!)
GEMS NEWS: LISA’S NEW COLUMN IN FAMILY TREE MAGAZINE
Purchase the May/June issue in print or digital download format
Subscribe to Family Tree Magazine: print format, digital download format or get a great price for both!
StoryWorth for Father’s Day: Invite your dad to share stories with loved ones every week, and then get them all bound in a beautiful hardcover book at the end of the year. Go to http://www.storyworth.com/lisa for $20 off when you subscribe. This Father’s Day is actually a gift for you, too!
BONUS CONTENT for Genealogy Gems App Users
If you’re listening through the Genealogy Gems app, don’t forget to check out your bonus content for this episode! The Genealogy Gems app is FREE in Google Play and is only $2.99 for Windows, iPhone and iPad users.
MAILBOX: SARA’S FRIDAY RECORD POST DISCOVERY
Click here to view several recent Friday records posts and see what new records have appeared online lately!
Tell Lisa Louise Cooke about your “Friday records post” discoveries or anything else at genealogygemspodcast @ gmail.com or call the podcast voicemail at 925-272-4021.
MAILBOX: ONLINE FAMILY TREE MATCHES
Reviewing tree hints at Ancestry.com
MAILBOX: BACK TO RESEARCH AFTER 10 YEARS!
Lisa’s recommendations to a new Genealogy Gems Premium eLearning member for getting back into the swing of research:
Watch the Premium video, “Take Control of Your Family Tree” (Premium eLearning membership required)
Listen to the Family History: Genealogy Made Easy podcast by Lisa Louise Cooke. It’s a great series for learning the research ropes and well as refreshing your skills.
Listen to Lisa’s other podcast
Lisa Louise Cooke uses and recommends RootsMagic family history software. Visit www.RootsMagic.com
Lisa Louise Cooke uses and recommends RootsMagic family history software. From within RootsMagic, you can search historical records on FamilySearch.org, Findmypast.com and MyHeritage.com.
Keep your family history research, photos, tree software files, videos and all other computer files safely backed up with Backblaze, the official cloud-based computer backup system for Lisa Louise Cooke’s Genealogy Gems. Learn more at https://www.backblaze.com/Lisa.
MAILBOX: MILITARY DRAFT REGISTRATIONS
Click here to read about finding military draft registrations
INTERVIEW: JIM BEIDLER ON PENNSYLVANIA RESEARCH QUESTION
James M. Beidler is the author of The Family Tree Historical Newspapers Guide and Trace Your German Roots Online. Learn more Pennsylvania research techniques in his on-demand webinar download, Best Pennsylvania Genealogy Research Strategies.
Click here to read a summary of some of Jim’s tips AND find a collection of links we curated to help you find more Pennsylvania birth records online.
MyHeritage.com is the place to make connections with relatives overseas, particularly with those who may still live in your ancestral homeland. Click here to see what MyHeritage can do for you: it’s free to get started.
PRODUCTION CREDITS
Lisa Louise Cooke, Host and Producer
Sunny Morton, Editor
Hannah Fullerton, Audio Editor
Lacey Cooke, Service Manager
Disclosure: This page 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 this free podcast and blog!
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Resources
MyHeritage News: Pedigree View, End of WorldVitalRecords
We have three pieces of MyHeritage news to share with you. First: a quick summary of the billion records they’ve added recently–including U.S. newspapers. Second: a much-requested feature for their online family trees launches. Third: they’re retiring the site that launched their entry into online historical records: WorldVitalRecords.
Our friends at MyHeritage.com, one of the Genealogy Giants and a sponsor of the free Genealogy Gems Podcast, recently made three announcements we are sharing below.
MyHeritage news you can use
1. A Billion New Records
“We’ve reached a new huge milestone — we now have over 9 billion historical records in MyHeritage SuperSearch™! After achieving our huge milestone of over 8 billion historical records, we have added another one billion records in less than 10 months!”
In this update, we are announcing 11 new collections with a total of 9.8 million new historical records, including Newspaper Collections from Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, Delaware, and Rhode Island, a Danish Census from 1840 [and they’ve since added the 1834 Danish census, too!], New Jersey Birth, Marriage and Death Indexes and Queensland Passenger and Crew Lists.”
2. New Pedigree View updates
“As you may recall, we recently released the long awaited and highly requested Pedigree View for online family trees, which was very well received by our users. This new view enables you to see a person in your family tree and their direct ancestors. (It does not show siblings, spouses, or anyone else who is not a direct ancestor. In this view you can navigate to anyone else in your tree and view their pedigree as well. The new Pedigree View doesn’t replace the current view, which we call Family View. It comes in addition, and you can toggle between the two and a third view, which is a List.)
“We initially released Pedigree View as read-only. We are happy to announce that you can now add, edit, and delete tree profiles directly from the Pedigree View. It is no longer necessary to switch to the Family View to edit your tree. Click here for more information.”
3. End of WorldVitalRecords and BackupMyTree
“In 2011, MyHeritage acquired the services World Vital Records/Family Link and BackupMyTree. We are now announcing that these services will be retired on September 1, 2018.”
BackupMyTree
“BackupMyTree was a free service for backing up family trees consisting of a software client and server backup at www.backupmytree.com. At its peak, the service was used by a few thousand users. The BackupMyTree software did not survive recent updates that Microsoft has made to the Windows operating system. The data that was backed up on BackupMyTree will be deleted on September 1, 2018. Any user of the service who would like a copy of their family tree data from BackupMyTree is encouraged to download their backup from the service before September 1, 2018, and to contact MyHeritage support if they require any special assistance.” [Genealogy Gems Premium eLearning members can watch the Premium video, “Take Control of Your Family Tree” to learn a master strategy for safeguarding your family tree data.]
World Vital Records/Family Link
“These two similar services provide a searchable collection of historical records and were the basis for MyHeritage’s expansion into historical records in 2011. Both these services share the same pool of historical records. In 2012, all of the data on those services was transferred to MyHeritage SuperSearch™ where the number of available records is more than triple what was originally available on these services. MyHeritage also includes superior tools for searching and matching. World Vital Records/Family Link underwent silent sunset under which almost no new subscribers have been added in the past three years.
“Any current subscriber of these services is entitled to a free Data subscription on MyHeritage for the same duration. Subscribers of World Vital Records or Family Link that still have an active subscription that extends beyond September 1, 2018, and who find that they do not yet have an equivalent subscription for free on MyHeritage, are welcome to contact MyHeritage Support and a free Data subscription on MyHeritage will be provided to them for the duration of their current subscription.
“We will work with subscribers of the World Vital Records Library Edition to transition them to the MyHeritage Library Edition which is a superior product with three times more content. We will give the Library subscribers an equivalent subscription on MyHeritage plus six additional months for free to ease their transition.”
More MyHeritage News from Genealogy Gems
We help you keep up with changes and progress at the world’s biggest genealogy websites, which we refer to affectionately as the Genealogy Giants. MyHeritage.com is one of these giants. Here’s an interview I did with Daniel Horowitz from MyHeritage.com at RootsTech 2018 with MORE MyHeritage news you should know–whether you’re a subscriber or not. For example: they’ve found that your genes have nothing to do with your longevity! Check it out.
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!
Pennsylvania Genealogy Brick Wall Strategies
It’s a common Pennsylvania genealogy brick wall: “My ancestors are from PA—but I don’t know where!” Pennsylvania expert Jim Beidler has strategies that may help narrow down the needle-in-a-haystack problem of identifying your ancestor’s home county. Here, we also add tips on how to follow through—including how to access record images for a major Pennsylvania birth index at FamilySearch.
In the free Genealogy Gems Podcast episode #218, I shared listener Tammie’s question about finding a PA family who had lived in Ohio and throughout the Midwest during the late 1800s. She followed leads online and offline, even visiting a Mennonite archive in Pennsylvania, but couldn’t pinpoint their origins in Pennsylvania. So I invited Pennsylvania research expert Jim Beidler to share some strategies that could help Tammy—and everyone else with Pennsylvania genealogy brick walls.
In case you didn’t catch that episode yet, here’s a summary of some of his top suggestions, along with some step-by-step instructions on how to implement Jim’s strategies.
“Yes, but WHERE in Pennsylvania were they from?”
Jim reminds us that Pennsylvania has 67 counties. That’s a big haystack in which to find a needle! So you either need to make the haystack smaller—by winnowing down the number of possible counties—or make the needle (your ancestor) easier to spot.
Look for children’s birth records
If you can locate a birth record for any child in the family you’re researching, it may indicate where in Pennsylvania the child was born. (If you can find one for the last child born in Pennsylvania before the family moved, you may be able to determine their last area of residence in the state.)
Statewide birth registration didn’t start until 1906 and wasn’t fully implemented until 1915. (Search a free index of births at the Pennsylvania State Archives for 1906-1912 or indexed images for 1906-1910 at Genealogy Giant Ancestry.com.) But 39 counties kept birth records for 1852-1854, too (search these at Ancestry.com as well).
Church birth or baptismal records may also prove helpful in Pennsylvania. Start by accessing the free FamilySearch database Pennsylvania, Births and Christenings, 1709-1950 (you’ll need a free login). Because it’s just an index, you won’t see the original record. But you’ll see a note on the lower right referring to a “GS film number.” Copy that number.
Next, open the FamilySearch Catalog (from the home page, you’ll find it under the Search menu). Click the option to search by film/fiche number (#1 in the image shown to the right). Then paste in the GS film number you copied (#2).
That will bring up the name of the collection. In this case, that “Birth registers, 1860-1903, for the city of Philadelphia.” Click on the collection to see whether online access is available. In the case shown below, it is, as indicated by the bright red text by the arrow.
Clicking through shows that it’s even been indexed. (Note: to view these images, you need to be at a Family History Center, FamilySearch affiliate library or log in as a member of FamilySearch’s sponsoring church (Mormons).)
Findmypast.com (one of the Genealogy Giants subscription websites) also has collections that may prove helpful:
- Historical Society Of Pennsylvania, Births & Baptisms (an index);
- Historical Society Of Pennsylvania, Congregational Records (also an index); and
- Catholic parish records for Philadelphia, PA
Another set of helpful indexes to early Pennsylvania church records is a multi-county series by the late John Humphrey. It’s not as easy to access but worth the effort. Some of these are searchable for members of the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania. You can also find these as published volumes organized by county (he indexed several counties in southeast Pennsylvania and the indexes).
If you can determine when a child was born but not where in Pennsylvania, Jim has another strategy to try. Look at the next U.S. census taken after that birth and see where the family’s surname occurs. If it’s a less-common surname, you may be able to narrow down the number of counties.
Search Pennsylvania tax lists
Pennsylvania residents paid property taxes but also taxes on certain kinds of personal property (so they didn’t need to be landowners to appear in property records). Jim explains several different kinds of tax records from colonial times forward. Here’s a summary of places to start your search online:
- Ancestry.com’s Pennsylvania, Tax and Exoneration, 1768-1801, described as including “documents for supply taxes, 18-penny taxes, liquor taxes, carriage and billiard table taxes, and others.”
- Ancestry.com’s Pennsylvania, US Direct Tax Lists, 1798, described as “tax lists from Pennsylvania associated with the first direct tax levied by the United States government in 1798.”
- Subscription site Fold3’s free-access Pennsylvania Archives series, which includes colonial-era tax lists and many later annual tax lists on the county level.
More help for your Pennsylvania genealogy brick wall
Listen for free to the full Genealogy Gems Podcast episode #218, which will be available on Thursday, June 14, 2018. You’ll hear more tips from Jim, including what to do when you’ve exhausted your online research options and need to start researching offline. Hear tips on researching at the state archive and state library and how to understand Pennsylvania land records (how they were supposed to be and how they actually are).
About the Author: Lisa Louise Cooke 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.
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!