Do you like finding new stuff about your family history? Well, then you’re in the right place because today that’s exactly what we’re going to do in this episode of Elevenses with Lisa.
If you’re looking for new information about your family history, an important website to add to your research list is the Internet Archive. The Internet Archive is a free website that attempts to archive the web, and that includes online genealogy!
One of the best ways to approach your search at the Internet Archive is by focusing on a particular type of record. Here are 10 genealogy records that every genealogist needs that can be found at this free website.
You are free to search for and access records without an account, but there’s so much more you can do with a free account. Here are just a few advantages of having an Internet Archive account:
Getting a free account is easy. Simply click on the Sign Up link in the upper right corner of the home page.
There’s a surprisingly wide variety of content available on the website including:
A great way to discover all that the Internet Archive has to offer is to think in terms of categories of records. I’m going to share with you ten genealogy record categories that include several specific types of records.
Start your search for each category using just a few keywords such as:
Next try applying some of the filters found in the column on the left side of the screen. I try several combinations of searches to ensure that I’ve found all that the Internet Archive has to offer. Let’s get started:
In Elevenses with Lisa episode 41 we discussed how to find and use church records for your family history. Here are just a few of the specific types of church records you can find at the Internet Archive:
Including:
Learn more about finding and using family bibles for genealogy in Elevenses with Lisa episode 29.
Including:
Including:
Including:
Including:
Elevenses with Lisa episode 31 features the Genealogy Center at the Allen County Public Library which hosts much of their content on the Internet Archive. Tip: If you find a collection difficult to navigate, visit the website of the sponsoring organization (such as the Allen County Public Library) which may have a better user interface for searching the records.
From the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Keep in mind that your ancestor may be mentioned in a patent even though they did not file it.
Although there doesn’t currently appear to be a large number of probate records, the Internet Archive does have some. Try searching by location to see if it includes a probate record for others from the same community. For example, a prominent shopkeeper might list many in the town who owed them money.
Audio records include:
Genealogy Gems Premium Members: Listen to episode 176 of the Genealogy Gems Premium Podcast for more on the Great 78 Project at the Internet Archive. (Learn more about joining us as a Premium Member.)
Video records can include:
I searched for the small town where my husband’s ancestors lived for several generations and found a great video from 1954. It featured a parade float sponsored by his great grandfather’s business and several faces I recognized! Watch Winthrop Days.
A collection is a group of records submitted by a user. Often times these will be organizations, libraries and archives.
You’ll find the most popular collections listed on the Internet Archive home page. You can also search collections from the Advanced Search.
Here are just a few examples of collections that may be of interest to you as a genealogist:
Visit the Books to Borrow collection. You will need to be logged into your free Internet Archive account in order to borrow books. You can borrow the book in 1 hour increments. In some cases, you can choose a 14-day loan. If there is only one copy of the book available, the 1 hour load will be the only option. If there are no copies available you can join a waitlist. No waitlist is necessary for one hour loan ebooks.
Learn more about creating your own collection at the Internet Archive.
Scroll down below the individual item for:
Also, when you find an Item of interest, click the Contributor link to see all of the items uploaded by the user. It’s very likely they will have additional similar items.
One advantage to using the Advanced Search is when you are searching for items from a specific timeframe. It’s much more efficient than clicking the box for very year in the range in the filter.
Download the full cover version of the PDF when available. Images will likely be clearer and more accurate.
One of the advantages of tuning into the live broadcast of each Elevenses with Lisa show is participating in the Live Chat and asking your questions.
Question from Sue: What does metadata mean?
Lisa’s Answer: Metadata is data that describes other data. For example, the date of upload is metadata for a digital file that you find online. Metadata is often added by the person or institution doing the uploading to the Internet Archive. I like to search both “Metadata” and “text contents”.
Question from CA: Date filter really applies to date posted not date of item u r looking for….correct?
Lisa’s Answer: In the case of genealogical documents, the date typically refers to the date of original publication rather than the date posted. You will find dates back into the 19th century in the filters.
Question from Mary: is there a print icon? I don’t see it.
Lisa’s Answer: Instead of printing, look for the download options. Once downloaded to your computer, then you can print.
Click the options icon (3 dots in the round circle just below the Search icon) on the left side of the viewer to find the Downloadable Adobe files, or look for Download options below the item.
Question from Susie: Would this site have membership of Rotary clubs and such type groups?
Lisa’s Answer: Absolutely! Search for “rotary club” and perhaps the name of the town or locality.
An example of a Rotary Club record from 1951 at the Internet Archive.
Question from Sally: Is broadest search METADATA? Does it catch everything?
Lisa’s Answer: No. Metadata is the default. I would strongly advise running both Metadata and text context searches for your search terms.
Question from Amy: Lisa, do you know of a way to correct records that are incorrectly or in sufficiently tagged?
Lisa’s Answer: To the best of my knowledge, you can only do that if you were the one who uploaded the item. If anyone else reading this has found a way to edit or tag other user’s items, please leave a comment below.
Question from John: You may have mentioned this but what is the difference between searching metadata or searching text?
Lisa’s Answer: Searching metadata is only searching the data (like tags) that were added to provide more information about the item. A text context search will search all the text that was typed including the title and description. I recommend searching both ways. Keep in mind that not all user’s include detailed descriptions, which is why metadata is very important.
Question from K M: Why does Allen County Library have this archive?
Lisa’s Answer: I think it may be because the Internet Archive provides affordable cloud storage which can be a big expense when offering online records.
Question from Karen: Lisa will you explain the download options?
Lisa’s Answer: Options are based on the type of item. For print publications you will often find you can download the item as an EPUB, PDF, Full Text, etc. Download options can be found by scrolling down just below the item near the description and Views. You can also found download options for Adobe files while viewing the item in the viewer. Click the three dots in a circle icon just below the search icon.
Question from Barbara: Would audio include old local radio programs?
Lisa’s Answer: Absolutely!
Question from Rita: Can you share info about how to upload something?
Lisa’s Answer: Learn more about creating your own collection at the Internet Archive.
Question from Margaret: What about information on the Mayflower?
Lisa’s Answer: Yes. Search Mayflower and then use the filters to narrow your results by Topic & Subject and by Year.
Question from Jeremy: Any pointers on Swiss Mennonites, Lisa?
Lisa’s Answer: A search of Swiss Mennonites brings up 21 items, some of which look rather interesting. Otherwise, like with all genealogy research, formulating a more specific question can help you craft a better search query at the Internet Archive.
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AUDIO PODCAST SHOW NOTES: In episode #290 of the Genealogy Gems podcast, Lisa Louise Cooke covers 5 of the top gems that came out of 2024. Use these to boost your family history now!
Click the media player below (AUDIO ONLY):
Download this episode’s show notes. (Premium Membership required. Join today.)
Get all the basic details on LiveMemory on the show notes page for Genealogy Gems Podcast episode #289.
Since the launch MyHeritage has added a set of 10 custom animation options. Now you can choose the action and resulting emotion for more fun. You can choose from emotional gestures such as hugging. laughing, kissing, dancing, and singing. You can also go more playful with zero gravity, underwater, rain, balloons, and even add a T-Rex to the scene!
With the newest update your videos will now be stored in your MyHeritage account. This makes them easily available through the app gallery. Photos with a LiveMemory™ have a play icon on the bottom. Tap the photo, then tap “LiveMemory” to play your video. You can also download the video to your device.
It’s now easy to share your videos with friends and family directly from the app to Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, Bluesky, WhatsApp, and other social media. Tap the Share button at the bottom of the screen, then select the social media platform of your choice.
Tips from MyHeritage for Best Results:
Check out Lisa’s extended LiveMemory™ video on the Genealogy Gems Facebook page.
Extra: New Records: Read Major Breakthrough: 3.4 Billion Records Extracted From Historical Newspapers Were Added to MyHeritage.
Ancestry added loads of new records in 2024. The best way to quickly find and review them is in the Card Catalog:
1. Go to https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/catalog/
2. From the Sort by drop-down menu select Date Added
3. Records will be listed starting with the most recently added. They will be marked New.
FamilySearch also added millions of new records. Most were added to existing collections, expanding them even further. FamilySearch also used AI to generate indexes for many of their existing collections making them much more usable. This all means it’s worth revisiting collections where you came up empty in the past.
If you’re looking for free international records, FamilySearch is hard to beat! It includes,
Chronicling America is a huge collection of free digitized old newspapers from the United States. However, in the past it did not include all of the newspapers available through the Library of Congress website. Now all digitized newspapers have come under one search umbrella with the new Chronicling America website.
Chronicling America is in the process of transitioning from the legacy Chronicling America interface to a new Chronicling America interface and back-end search infrastructure. Read more about it.
Search the 4,000+ newspaper title with the Advanced Search at Chronicling America.
Explore all the titles using the interactive map.
Use the interactive map at Chronicling America to search for family history in old newspapers.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is here and will be with us in 2025 and many years to come. AI has been incorporated into genealogy websites for quite some time. However, in 2024 we saw a real uptick in genealogists using stand alone AI sites like ChatGPT, Gemini, and others to assist with their research.
If you’re going to start using these AI sites, keep a couple of key things in mind.
1) It’s not a person.
No matter how realistic it sounds, or how many times it refers to itself as “I”, it’s not a real person. This is important to remember as you’re interacting with it. When AI talks to you like it’s a person, and you work with it for a period of time, you can start to have the impression or the feeling that it knows what it’s talking about. It can come across as authoritative. You can get the impression that it understood what you asked for, and that’s just not the case. It’s a language tool, and it’s trying to put together what it thinks makes sense based on what it has already “learned”.
This means you must be in the driver’s seat and stay in the driver’s seat. Continually analyze what you’re getting from AI. Think about what it is “saying: Go check it out and verify the information and get more evidence to back it up.
2) It’s not a stand-alone search engine.
At this point AI isn’t ready to be used as a stand-alone search Q and A tool. However, it does have strengths we can use today for such activities as:
• Translating typed text,
• Summarizing large documents,
• Reassembling information into desired formats,
• Finding information buried within a document.
• Quickly determining if particular items appear in a document.
It can do much of the legwork, thereby speeding up the research and writing process.
If I had to predict, I would say we’re going to see AI and search merge more and more. In fact, over at Google’s Gemini, we’re noticing that it sometimes provides users with a check this at Google button. For now though, be aware that Google’s search results are not fully represented in Gemini’s responses. Go search it separately on Google, and then review the results provided. Make sure you can actually find sources for yourself that verify everything that AI tells you.
Learn more about AI and Genealogy with Genealogy Gems:
Download the show notes cheat sheet PDF
with Lisa Louise Cooke
In this episode:
Click here to watch the short RootsTech 2018 official recap video.
Update: The Companion Guidebook has been discontinued.
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.
Beginning German Genealogy: Defining “German”
If you’re listening through the Genealogy Gems app, your bonus content for this episode is some get-started-now tips from Legacy Tree Genealogists on tracing your German ancestors. The Genealogy Gems app is FREE in Google Play and is only $2.99 for Windows, iPhone and iPad users.
To learn more about Legacy Tree services and its research team, visit www.legacytree.com. Exclusive Offer for Genealogy Gems readers: Receive $100 off a 20-hour research project using code GGP100. (Offer may expire without notice.)
Military Minutes with Michael Strauss
Click here to see the full article (and plenty of images!) on the Genealogy Gems website.
Findmypast.com is the Genealogy Giant best known for its deep, unparalleled historical record content for England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales.
Tamsin Todd is the Chief Executive Officer of Findmypast.com. She “has worked in the travel, retail and technology sectors, and brings with her a track record of leading successful growth businesses. She spent the early part of her career at Amazon and then Microsoft, where she led the introduction of ecommerce and search products into the UK and Europe. This was followed by stints as Head of Ecommerce at Betfair, and Managing Director of TUI-owned Crystal Ski Holidays. She joins Findmypast from Addison Lee, where she was Chief Customer Officer of Europe’s largest car service company. Tamsin lives in London with her family, and is Digital Trustee of the Imperial War Museums.”
Ben Bennett is Executive Vice President, North America and International at Findmypast.com, “focused on helping families stay connected in the United States and other markets across the globe.”
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Just last year, if you had asked me if I thought anyone could catch AncestryDNA in their race to own the genetic genealogy market, I would have been skeptical. However, it is clear that MyHeritage intends to be a contender, and they are quickly ramping up their efforts to gain market share and your confidence.
MyHeritage began 2018 by making a much-needed change to their DNA matching algorithm, which had some errors in it. They were able to adjust it, and now it is humming right along, telling our second cousins from our fourth. Another development, launched in February, is the addition of a Chromosome Browser.
Much like you would browse the library shelves for the perfect book, or browse through the sale rack for a great bargain, you can use a Chromosome Browser to look through your chromosomes for the pieces of DNA you share with your genetic cousins.
Chromosome Browsers can be everything from a fun way to review your genetic genealogy results, to a tool to assist in determining how you are related to someone else. Let’s go over three tips to help you make use of this new tool.
There are actually two different kinds of Chromosome Browsers in MyHeritage: one to view only the segments you share with one match (the One-to-One Browser), and a browser where you can see the segments shared with multiple matches (the One-to-Many Browser).
To get to the One-to-One Browser, head over to your match page and find a cousin for whom you would like to see your shared DNA segments. Click on Review DNA Match, then scroll down past all the individual match information, past the Shared Matches and Shared Ethnicities until you see the Chromosome Browser.
To find the One-to-Many Chromosome Browser, you can use the main DNA navigation menu at the top of the MyHeritage homepage. Click on DNA, then on Chromosome Browser, as shown below.
In the One-to-Many Chromosome Browser you can compare yourself, or any account you manage, to anyone else in your match page. To choose a match to evaluate, just click on their name and they will be added to the queue at the top, as shown here.
Clicking on Compare will then allow you to see the actual segments you share with each person:
In this One-To-Many view, each individual match gets their own line for each chromosome. Since we have added 7 people to the Chromosome Browser, there are seven lines next to each chromosome number. Each match not only gets their own line, but also their own color. So you can easily match up the lines on the chromosome to the match that shares that piece of DNA with you. For the majority of people the majority of the time, these Chromosome Browsers are just another fun way to visualize the connection you have with your DNA match. In the end, it doesn’t matter where you are sharing on the chromosome, just how much DNA you are sharing. You can obtain that information from your main match page and never look at this Chromosome Browser image, and still make fantastic genetic genealogy discoveries.
Another feature of the Chromosome Browser on MyHeritage is the Triangulation tool. To understand how this works, you first need to understand that you actually have two copies of each chromosome. Two copies of chromosome 1, two copies of chromosome 2, etc. One copy is from mom, and the other from dad. However, in the Chromosome Browser image, you see only one line for yourself (in grey). Therefore, when you see someone matching you on chromosome 14, for example, you don’t know if that person is matching you on the chromosome 14 you got from your mom, or the chromosome 14 you got from your dad.
Likewise, if you see two people whose shared piece with you looks to be in the same location on the same chromosome, you can’t tell if they are both sharing on the same copy of that chromosome, or if one match is related to your dad’s family, and the other match is related to your mom’s family. However, this is what the Triangulation tool does for us. It tells us if two (or three or four, etc.) matches are sharing on the same copy of the same chromosome. Be careful when you use this tool, though. Many erroneously assume that when they see a segment shared between multiple people, that indicates the presence of a recent common ancestor for all of those people. However, that is not always the case.
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.
Ready to start exploring what the MyHeritage DNA chromosome browser may tell you about your family history? You have two options. Click here to upload your autosomal DNA test results from another company to MyHeritage for FREE. Or click here to order a MyHeritage DNA test kit. Either way, you can start using all the great tools at MyHeritage DNA!
Lisa Louise Cooke, Host and Producer
Sunny Morton, Editor
Diahan Southard, Your DNA Guide, Content Contributor
Michael Strauss, Military Minutes Content Contributor
Hannah Fullerton, Production Assistant
Lacey Cooke, Service Manager
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