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Home Archiving for the Genealogist: 5 Ways to Think Like an Archivist

by Lisa Cooke | Nov 6, 2017

You may be doing some “home archiving” without even realizing it, if you’re the keeper of any family photos, documents, heirlooms, or artifacts. Professional archivist and genealogist Melissa Barker offers these tips for the family historian and keeper of the family archive.

I have always said that “home archiving” is something genealogists do, perhaps without ever calling it that. So family historians can definitely benefit from learning how archivists work. Here are five ways to think like an archivist.

5 Home Archiving Tips for Family Historians

1. Learn to preserve family artifacts.

Archivists are always educating themselves on how to preserve certain items that have come to their archives. Genealogists inherit family heirlooms all the time. Learning how to preserve them is thinking like an archivist.

Tip: Preserving an item means keeping it from further deterioration. This may mean putting it in special storage materials, keeping it out of strong light, and storing it in a place that isn’t too hot, cold, or humid. Click here to read an article on humidity and your family archive.

2. Organize your “collection.”

A very important job for archivists is keeping their records collections organized so they know what they have and can pull them efficiently. Genealogists, as home archivists, would also benefit from keeping their genealogical records organized.

Tip: Get inspired! Click here to catch some tips on organizing your digital photos from Denise Levenick, The Family Curator and author of How to Archive Family Keepsakes: Learn How to Preserve Family Photos, Memorabilia and Genealogy Records.

3. Store your treasures carefully.

Archivists are always careful to use special materials such as archival file folders and boxes to put records and artifacts into for preservation. Genealogists should use archival materials to preserve and store their records just like archivists do.

Tip: Click here to read my article on how to archive family history documents. It’s packed with great tips and recommended products to store your items safely.

4. Keep the stories that go with your artifacts.

Telling the stories of the people that have come before us is also something that archivist try to do with the records they have in their care. Archivists do this by sharing their records collections with the public through displays, exhibits, and open houses. Genealogists should tell their ancestor’s stories by sharing their family histories with their families and passing down their ancestor’s stories to the next generation.

Tip: Create a meaningful display of artifacts in your own home. Group together items that tell a story, preferably unique, eye-catching items. Add framed copies of documents and photos (keep originals safely tucked away). Click here for some fantastic ideas from Lisa Louise Cooke on sharing your family history with the non-genealogists in your family.

5. Archive your own mementos.

Archivists collect today for tomorrow! Many archivists collect documents and artifacts that are produced today so they can be preserved for tomorrow. They collect items such as the high school graduation program, digitizing the local newspaper, and that local diner menu.

Genealogists do the same thing in their “home archiving” by collecting and preserving a funeral card, digital photographs they took at the grandbaby’s birthday, and the marriage invitation you received for your niece’s wedding.

Home Archiving, National Archiving: It’s all in the Genealogy Gems Podcast

Did you know I’m on Lisa Louise Cooke’s Genealogy Gems Podcast now? I chime in frequently with that “offline” archival perspective that’s so important in our research. Click here to see the list of recent episodes. In Episode 211, publishing this week, I report on a fascinating way you can help make collections from the National Archives more accessible to everyone. Why not listen in? It’s free!

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!

9 Unique Family Trees That Will Take Your Breath Away

by Lisa Cooke | Nov 4, 2017

These unique family tree designs–some hundreds of years old–are creative and artistically stunning. Some are about actual families, and others re-create the family tree of an entire culture or empire. Which ones inspire you?

These 9 Unique Family Tree Designs Will Take Your Breath Away

I found these gorgeous and unique family tree designs online. Some of them are hundreds of years old; others are much younger. Some are brightly-colored; others are not. Whether murals, wood-carvings, engravings, or drawings, they are all absolutely stunning. Though I may not paint my living room ceiling with images of all my ancestors, they certainly inspire me.

1. A Russian Royal Pedigree Mural

This show-stopping “Genealogic tree of Russian sovereigns” ceiling mural appears in the front vestibule of Moscow’s State Historical Museum. The Museum itself is home to over four million artifacts, but I could probably spend all day just staring at this one.

Creative Commons Photo: Wikipedia / Shakko. Click to view full information.

2. A “Crooked” Family Tree

The image below comes from the collection of the Wellcome Library, “one of the world’s leading libraries on medical history and the human condition.” It’s an engraving with no known date or artist attached to it. Although it appears to be a caricature drawing of a family tree, the item description disagrees: “A type of family tree with the parents occupying the centre space surrounded by their progeny with each of the figures appearing to be suffering from some kind of deformity.”

Creative Commons Image: Wikimedia, click to view. Credit: Wellcome Library, London, wellcomeimages.org. Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

3. A Carved Beauty in a Remote Palace

This is carved family tree of Edward Woynillowicz, found at the Sawiczy palace in the Minsk region of the Russian empire. Edward was the leader of the Minsk agricultural society and a humanitarian leader during World War I. The carving appears to be dated 1905. It’s sure beautiful!

Wikimedia Commons image; click to view. This work is in the public domain in the U.S.

4. “Uncle Sam’s Family Tree”

In 1900, John F. Waite published this drawing of “Uncle Sam’s Family Tree,” along with a folksy description of the history of the United States (or the growth of this “tree”). He cleverly portrays the “grafting” in of various branches or states of the country as they were acquired by conquest or purchase. Here’s the article, and following, a close-up of the tree itself:

5. A Drawing with Great Genealogical Value

This “Family tree of the Weigert Family – showing the birth, etc. of Paul Ehrlich and of his cousin Carl Weigert” is another Wellcome Library image. It’s not just a fancy drawing. Look closely at the detail image shown here, and you’ll see that genealogical information is actually written onto the tree.

Creative Commons Image: Wikipedia. Wellcome Library, London. wellcomeimages.org. Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0. Click to view.

6. The Family Tree of Noah

This 1749 engraving of the “Genealogical tree of Noah after the Biblical flood” was created by J. Hinton for the Universal Magazine:

Creative Commons Image: Wikipedia / http://www.peopleofar.com/category/literature/page/2/. This work is in the public domain. Click to view.

7. A Princess and her Pedigree

This portrait of Empress Elisabeth Petrovna (1709-1762) with her family tree provides an at-a-glance family history for this Russian royal. It also dates from the mid-1700s.

Creative Commons Image: Wikipedia. Click to view. This work is in the public domain.

8. Magnificent Mayolica Mural

This unique family tree design is artfully executed in colorful Mayolica tiles. It’s titled “Arbol geneologico del comienzo del mestizaje” (Genealogical tree of the beginning of the mestizo), by Gorky Gonzales Quiñones (Museum of Artes Populares, Mexico City, Mexico).

By AlejandroLinaresGarcia (Own work) GFDL or CC BY-SA 4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0], via Wikimedia Commons. Click to view.

9. A Tombstone Tree

This is a headstone in the burial ground of the Abbey of Dulce Cor in southwest Scotland, better known as “Sweetheart Abbey.” Carved in stone is the Jardine Family Tree. According to a note on the image file, “This is quite substantial; the family tree continues on the other side of the stone.” This creative approach to sharing your family tree isn’t cheap. Genealogy Gems Contributing Editor Sunny Morton shared with me a recent article in Ohio Genealogy News that priced “tombstone tree” carvings at $10,000 or more. But this is certainly a lasting monument. (Just make sure your tree is right before you invest in a project such as this one.)

Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license. Wikipedia Image: click to view.

More Unique Family Tree Designs on Pinterest

One of my Pinterest boards offers even more unique family tree designs and other heritage decor for your own halls, walls, and display areas. Click here to take a look at my How to Display Your Family Tree board–then follow me on Pinterest to keep track of the genealogy eye-candy I share there!

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.

Historic U.S. Newspapers & More in New & Updated Records

by Lisa Cooke | Nov 3, 2017

Historic U.S. newspapers are featured in this week’s new and updated records collections, including Hawaii, Colorado, Georgia, and North Carolina. Also new this week are updated New York passenger lists, vital records for England, Welsh newspapers, military and census records for Canada, and Austrian parish records.

Historic U.S. Newspapers & More

This week we were delighted to see lots of historic U.S. newspaper made available online. Newspapers are a fantastic way to find clues about your ancestors, especially when vital records are elusive, and also learn about their daily lives.

Hawaii. If you have family from Hawaii or are interested in Hawaiian history, then you’ll definitely want to check out these three new titles added to Newspapers.com:

Honolulu Advertiser 1856 – 2010 with 2.2 million pages
Honolulu Star-Bulletin 1912 – 2010 with 1.9 million pages
Honolulu Star-Advertiser 2010 – 2017 with 300,000 pages

In 2010, the Adviser and Star-Bulletin were merged to create the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. If you’re looking for ancestors or other family members in these papers, good places to start include personals columns, society pages, local interest columns, and the like.

Colorado. History Colorado (HC) recently digitized and added two historic Denver African-American newspapers: Statesman (1905-1912), and The Denver Star (1912-1918). While these papers covered news from African-American communities in “Colorado, Wyoming, Montana and the West,” they also covered local news from Denver’s Five Points district. These newspapers cover Denver’s African American culture and community, including its residents, businesses, and aspects of everyday life.

Georgia. Georgia Perimeter College Collection is now available online. The digital collection includes yearbooks, catalogs, and student newspapers from the 1960s to the 2010s. You can browse the collection by decade, date, format, or by the name of the institution at the time each item was published.

North Carolina. The newspaper of Belmont Abbey College in Belmont, NC has been digitized and made available online. There are 44 issues are available to browse spanning from 1971-1979 with issues published every other month. Among the news headlines are graduations, alumni news, fundraising campaigns, appointments of new abbots, and changes on campus reflective of this decade’s larger cultural movements.

New York. MyHeritage has updated their collection of Ellis Island and Other New York Passenger Lists, 1820-1957. This collection contains millions of records of individuals arriving at the port of New York, including individuals who arrived at three well-known immigrant processing stations: Castle Garden (1855-1890), the Barge Office (1890-1892), and Ellis Island (1892-1957).

England – Portsmouth Collection

Findmypast has an exciting new collection for Portsmouth, Hampshire. This collection of scanned images of original handwritten documents contains more than 1.3 million historical records spanning 1538 – 1917. When complete, the collection will be the largest repository of Portsmouth family history records available online. Click the links below to explore the 5 collections:

Also new this week from The British Newspaper Archive is the Ross Gazette. This newspaper is published by Tindle Newspapers in Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire, England, spanning 1867 – 1910. This collection currently has over 2,000 issues available now, with more continuing to be added.

Welsh Newspapers

Even more historic newspapers are new this week as we head over to Wales. The British Newspaper Archive recently added the Rhyl Journal (Clywd, 1877 – 1897) and Cambrian News (Dyfed, 1863 – 1882) to their database.

Though these collections are relatively small, they can provide wonderful clues and details about your ancestors living in Wales in the 19th century.

Canada – Military and Census Records

New for Canada this week are Certificates of Military Instruction at Fold3, which includes records from 1867 to 1932. There were initially two types of certificates: First Class (battalion-level officers) and Second Class (company-level officers). The information you can find in the certificates in this collection typically includes the man’s name, rank, and residence; the certificate type and date; and the name and location of the school.

The 1921 Canadian Census is now available for free at the Library and Archives Canada. The 1921 Census marked the sixth regularly scheduled collection of national statistics. It officially began on June 1, 1921. This research tool contains 8,800,617 records that are searchable by name.

Austria – Parish Records

Over at Ancestry.com, a new collection of Salzburg Catholic Baptisms, Marriages, and Burials, 1600-1930 is now available. From the description: “This collection contains parish registers from numerous Catholic communities in the city Salzburg, Austria as well as numerous communities that today are part of the Austrian state of Salzburg.” Note that these records are in German, and you should search using German words and location spellings.

Native American Records

Do you have Native American ancestry? Or are you interested in Native American history? Then explore Fold3’s Native American Collection for free November 1-15, 2017. Their unique collection includes records, documents, and photos never before seen online. All you need is a free Fold3 account to start exploring!

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!