Here’s Where Can You Get Free Genealogy Records this Labor Day Weekend

It’s a holiday weekend, so you know what that means? Genealogy record websites that are usually only available by paidFree Access to Genealogy Records subscription open up some of their collections for free.  Here’s where you can get access to family history resources this weekend:

MyHeritage
providing free access – from August 31 through September 2, 2013 – to all US Census records.
Click here to Search Now

Ancestry
providing free access to its collection of Immigration and Travel records through Labor Day including:

  • passenger lists
  • passports
  • border-crossing records
  • citizenship and naturalization records

Requires a free Ancestry.com account  Click here to Search Now

 

Genealogy Crowdsourcing: 4 Strategies and 4 Tips for Your Brick Wall!

While at RootsTech 2014 I had an opportunity to talk with my friend, author and genealogy podcaster Drew Smith (The Genealogy Guys) about the how to conduct effective crowdsourcing of genealogical ideas and solutions, a technique he covers in his new book Advanced Genealogy.

Genealogy Crowdsourcing Strategies
1. Facebook – Search for a Facebook Group
2. Mailing Lists on RootsWeb
3. Message Boards on Ancestry
4. Search Google as message board posting will appear in results

Genealogy Crowdsourcing Tips:
1. Tell people what you already know.
2. Be specific about what you are looking for.
3. Take what you already have and go back and review it. You may notice things you missed.
4. Vocalize the problem to a person with a fresh set of eyes.

If you’d like to pick up a copy of Drew’s book and you use this link Advanced Genealogy Research Techniques to purchase it from Amazon, you’ll also be supporting the free Genealogy Gems Podcast– thank you!

Family History Episode 20 – The Genealogical Proof Standard

Originally published 2009. Republished February 25, 2014

https://lisalouisecooke.com/familyhistorypodcast/audio/fh20.mp3

Download the Show Notes for this Episode

Welcome to this step-by-step series for beginning genealogists—and more experienced ones who want to brush up or learn something new. I first ran this series in 2008-2009. So many people have asked about it, I’m bringing it back in weekly segments.

Family History Genealogy Made Easy Podcast

Episode 20: The Genealogical Proof Standard

In this episode we are going to cover a powerful process for doing your genealogy research. It’s called the Genealogical Proof Standard or GPS.

If you’re new to research you may hear some terms that you’re not familiar with. This is the ideal time to start getting familiar with them because it may save you going back and re-doing some of your hard work later down the road.

If you’re an experienced researcher, you may already have had some experience with the GPS. But even if you have, you likely haven’t heard it quite like this. My very special guest is Mark Tucker, a software architect by day and an avid genealogist evenings and weekend. And it’s safe to say Mark has a passion for genealogy and he brings his computing expertise to genealogy in some pretty exciting ways, most recently by process mapping the Genealogical Proof Standard – the GPS – into a visual aid that will help you navigate your way to a successful family tree. (Update: Mark’s Think Genealogy blog is no longer available.)

In our first segment Mark tells us how he got started using the Genealogical Proof Standard, why he created the GPS map, and what it will do for you to improve your genealogy research. Then he gives us an overview of the Genealogical Proof Standard and the various tools that go along with it.

In our second segment we talk about how the GPS map can be effectively used for breaking down your research brick walls.

What is the GPS?

The Genealogical Proof Standard speaks to the quality of our genealogy research process, as outlined in the BCG Genealogical Standards Manual. BCG stands for the Board of Certification of Genealogists, and it’s an internationally recognized organization that certifies qualified genealogists who meet their standards.

The idea behind the GPS is that it provides standards generally accepted in the field of genealogy research. Historically the GPS has been thought of in conjunction with professional genealogists. But more and more it is being used by family historians everywhere who want to do a quality job of climbing their family tree.

The Genealogical Proof Standard is really like a process map. It maps out the proven steps that a good genealogist takes to answer their family tree questions.

Proof is a fundamental concept in genealogy. In order for your research to really be accurate and dependable, each conclusion you reach about an ancestor must have sufficient credibility to be considered as proven. To make sure that conclusions you come to about your family are accurate they really need to meet standards of the Genealogical Proof Standard (The GPS). The GPS consists of five major criteria:

  • You have to be sure that you have conducted a reasonably exhaustive search.
  • You need to have complete and accurate source citations.
  • You need to do the analysis and correlation of the information that you’ve found. It’s not just enough to find a fact, you have to look at it within the context of all of the fact and make sure that it fits together in a way that really makes sense.
  • If that analysis brings to light the fact that there are conflicts when you put your data together, then your next step is to go back and work to resolve any conflicting evidence. You’ll want to look for additional resources to solve the question at hand.
  • You need to be able to write a sound, reasoned, and coherent conclusion. If you can summarize your findings in a way that makes sense and you can show your proof you know that you’re in good shape and your hard work meets the Genealogical Proof Standard.

The GPS is not just a tool for professional genealogists, but it’s also a tool for you and your research. It actually makes a lot of sense, and it’s pretty simple when you break it down into the 5 basic steps:

  1. Conduct a reasonably exhaustive search;
  2. Document complete and accurate source citations;
  3. Analyze and correlate all of the collected information;
  4. Resolve any conflicting evidence;
  5. Write a sound reasoned, and coherent conclusion.

GPS Resources

Mark’s Genealogy Research Process Chart and Powerpoint presentation “Navigating Research with the GPS.” (Unfortunately this is no longer available.)

Learn more about Genealogy Ethics and Standards at the Board for Certification of Genealogists.

The Historical Biographer’s Guide to the Research Process Quicksheet, a laminated quick reference guide by Elizabeth Shown Mills.

FamilySearch: Civil Registrations, Military, SSDI and More!

It’s hard to keep up with the content constantly being added online at FamilySearch! If you (like me) spent the past month squeezing the last bit of travel anlaying_low_with_laptop_400_clr_5364d sun from the summer, you may have missed some great new content. Here’s a recap:

This month, over a half million indexed records and images have already shown up from Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Guatemala, Italy, New Zealand and the United States. Highlights include updates to the United States Social Security Death Index, images from the Czech Republic, Censuses, 1843–1921, collection, indexed records from the Hungary, Civil Registration, 1895–1980, collection, images from the new U.S., Indiana, Naturalization Records and Indexes, 1848-1992, collection and the Italy, Mantova, Mantova, Censuses (Comune), 1750-1900, collection, and indexed records from the U.S., Maine, State Archive Collections, 1718-1957, collection.

In August, FamilySearch.org added more than 45 million indexed records and images from BillionGraves and from Italy, the U.S., England, New Zealand, Sweden, Italy, Jamaica, Chile, Honduras and more. Notable U.S. additions are updates to the New Orleans Passenger Lists and newly-indexed war collections, including: the United States, World War II Prisoners of War of the Japanese, 1941-1945, collection, the United States, Korean War Battle Deaths, 1950-1957, collection, and the United States, Casualties of the Vietnam War, 1956-1998, collection.

A few more cool additions include:

  • More than a half million images to a growing collection of Italy’s Civil Registrations;
  • Nearly a million indexed Jamaican and a quarter million Chilean civil registrations;
  • More than 2.5 million indexed recods from New Zealand passenger lists (1855-1973);
  • Nearly a half-million indexed names from Boston passenger lists (1820-1891);
  • Over 41 million indexed names added to the U.S. Public Record Index.

Search these and 3.5 billion more records at FamilySearch.org. Records are always free to search here, thanks both to the organization itself and thousands of volunteers around the world who index records. Join the effort here!

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