Lisa in the Press

Lisa Louise Cooke Genealogy Gems PodcastPodcaster Interview
August 2018
Oscar Hamilton

How They Do It: Lisa Louise Cooke 
March 4, 2017
Organize Your Family History blog

Interview with the Queen of Genealogy Podcasts
March 4, 2017
Road to Family History blog

YouTube Offers Genealogy Education in Your Pocket
Sept. 2, 2016
NJ.com True New Jersey

Tips for using Google searches to help with family history
Feb. 14, 2016
The Desert News

Family Stories and Google Cousin Bait with Lisa Louise Cooke
November 18, 2015
Write of Your Life Podcast

Strategies for Using Technology in Family History Research
August 6, 2015
Deseret News/ LDS Church News

The Paperclipping Roundtable
May 26, 2015
Paperclipping Scrapbooking Podcast

(NERGC) Presenter Interview: Lisa Louise Cooke
March 9, 2015
Heritage Zen blog

Podcaster News: Women in Podcasting Interview with Lisa Louise Cooke
November 5, 2014
Podcaster News Podcast

The Genealogy Professional Podcast
June 16, 2014
Interview / Profile

48 in 24: Tips for discovering and sharing family history through video with Lisa Louise Cooke
April 1, 2014
Interview with Techsmith

Utilizing YouTube for family history work
February 8, 2014
Deseret News

Capturing your past with Technology: Lisa Louise Cooke of Genealogy Gems
February 5, 2014
Techsmith (Blog)

Fast Class: How to reopen a genealogical cold case
January 15, 2014
Santa Rosa – Press Democrat

21st Century Genealogy: Snagit and Camtasia Help Family Historians Bring the Past to Life
May 10, 2013
Techsmith blog

Technology Making Genealogy Easier
February 7, 2013
By The Deseret News

Interview: Lisa Louise Cooke – Genealogy Gems
February 5, 2013
By The Passionate Genealogist

Tuesday’s Tip – Lisa Louise Cooke’s Genealogy Gems Website
July 10, 2012
By Genea-Musings

Genealogy and Personal History: Lisa Louise Cooke
March 12, 2012
By Association of Personal Historians

Interview with Lisa Louise Cooke Part II
Le Maison Duchamp blog
By Kim von Aspern-Parker
January 2012

Interview with Lisa Louise Cooke Part I
Le Maison Duchamp blog
By Kim von Aspern-Parker
January 2012

Flip-Pal Interviews Lisa Louise Cooke
September 20, 2011

Rootstech Interview: Lisa Louise Cooke
By Joan Miller, Luxegen Genealogy and Family History Blog
February 2011

Lisa Louise Cooke – Creator and Host of the Genealogy Gems Podcast – Episode 12
Marion Vermazen Podcast and Blog
August 30, 2010

Voices of the Past Video Netcast: Genealogy Gems’ Lisa Louise Cooke on establishing roots in the social web
By Jeff Guin
Nov. 11, 2009

MNM Interview: Lisa Louise Cooke Hobbyist Turned National Expert through Leveraging New Media
By Jason Van Orden
April 10, 2009

Lisa Louise Cooke on Pursuing Your Dreams
Change Nation with Ariane de Bonvoisin
March 5, 2009

Family Tree Magazine Launches Genealogy Podcast
Desert News
June 8, 2008

We Dig These Gems! New Genealogy Records Online

We dig these gemsEvery Friday, we blog about new genealogy records online. Do any collections below relate to your family history? Please share with genealogy buddies or societies that might be interested!

AUSTRALIAN CONVICTS. A variety of convict records for New South Wales and Queensland, Australia, are now searchable on Findmypast. The NSW records include certificates of freedom and death records beginning in the 1820s. Queensland data includes convict indexes from 1824-1936.

CALIFORNIA DEATHS. Over 2 million deaths in California from 1905-1939 are now searchable for free on FamilySearch. “The index is arranged alphabetically by the name of the deceased, initials of spouse, age, and date of death. Place of death or county of death is coded.”

IRISH COURT RECORDS. Nearly 22 million records appear in the new FamilySearch database, Ireland Petty Sessions Court Registers 1828-1912. According to FamilySearch, “Most records contains name, address, the date in court, and whether the person was a witness, complainant or defendant. It might also contain other information to the specific case. These records were originally filmed at the National Archives of Ireland and the index was created by FindMyPast.com.”

IRISH MILITARY. Ireland’s National Army Census of 1922 is now searchable at Findmypast. Taken in the midst of the Irish Civil War, it “includes details pertaining to where soldiers were stationed, their ages and their next of kin,” according to the collection description.

KENTUCKY VITAL RECORDS. Nearly 10 million names appear in the new FamilySearch index, Kentucky Vital Record Indexes 1911-1999. The database includes “indexes of births, marriages, and deaths from January 1911 to July 1999. These indexes were created by the Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives from data files obtained from the Office of Vital Statistics.”

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Here’s a tip: if you live far from your ancestors’ hometown, why not make a virtual visit? Google Earth is a powerful, free, interactive 3D map of the world. Use it to “fly” over a hometown or even drop down into a Street View that lets you see what’s there now. Maybe you’ll find an old home, neighborhood, school, courthouse, church, cemetery or other landmark relating to your family. Learn more in our free Google Earth for Genealogy video. Click here to watch it!

 

Link Your Home Movies to Your Family Tree

figure_at_3d_movie_800_13404More old home movies are being digitized and more historical footage is coming online. Do you know how to integrate these with your family tree or blog? Wouldn’t it be great to show that you found great-grandpa in four censuses, the SSDI and a 1937 news reel showing him driving his fire truck? (That really did happen to me. Click here to read about it and see the footage.)

Here a few ways you can share your old family footage online:

1. If you have have a free Google account, then you have a free YouTube channel! You can upload old footage as well as movies YOU make of still images. Then you can use the Share > Embed feature to include the video on your own genealogy blogs. Click here to watch an inspiring video Lisa made about her ancestor, a nurse in training.

2. If you have Legacy Republic digitize your old family movies, you can upload them through your Legacy Republic account into your FamilySearch family tree. (Click here to watch a video about how it works.)

3. Add an online video source citation to your Ancestry tree. Create a new source in an ancestor’s individual profile. The Source Citation section asks for any URL related to this citation. Enter the URL. Then it asks whether you have media items to attach. You will be walked through the process of uploading video from your own computer. If you choose the option to record a video, Ancestry will access your computer’s microphone and camera and record you speaking for up to 12 minutes.

tv_film_icon_400_wht_15178 (1)Wish you knew more about how making or finding family footage? Learn more here:

  • Genealogy Gems Premium members can click here to access a Premium podcast and video on how to create your own family history video (learn more about Premium membership here).
  • Click here to watch Lisa’s free YouTube series about blogging your family history or click here to listen to free Family History Made Easy podcast episodes about genealogy blogging (episodes 38-42).
  • Learn about finding and using old film footage on YouTube and other websites in the updated-for-2015 2nd edition of The Genealogist’s Google Toolbox (there’s an entire, expanded chapter on YouTube that inspired my own find of that 1937 newsreel).

 

Oldest Known Photographs of Cities: Did Your Ancestors Live Here Then?

London. Paris. Athens. Berlin. Bombay. Rome. New York City. Copenhagen. Dublin. Edinburgh. Jerusalem. The oldest known photographs of these cities and more are featured in this post at Abroad in the Yard.

Boulevard du Temple, Paris, by Louis Daguerre, 1838. Wikimedia Commons image, Scanned from The Photography Book, Phaidon Press, London, 1997.

Boulevard du Temple, Paris, by Louis Daguerre, 1838. Wikimedia Commons image, Scanned from The Photography Book, Phaidon Press, London, 1997.

I love the details in these photos that are usually left to our imagination. An 1858 image of a Toronto thoroughfare was likely taken in at its best, since the photo was part of a (failed) bid to become Canada’s capital. And yet the streets are still muddy enough you wouldn’t want to step off that freshly-swept sidewalk, especially if you were in a long dress.

You can read the shop signs in these pictures. See signs of construction and destruction, an eternal presence in these metropolises. Count the number of levels in the tall tenements and other buildings that sheltered our ancestors’ daily lives without air conditioning, central heat or elevators.

Despite the busy city streets shown here, they don’t look busy. So much time had to elapse during the taking of the image that anyone moving wasn’t captured. Only a few loungers and the shoe-shine man (and his customer) appear in these photos of busy streets.

Although not shown in the blog post above, my favorite historical image of a city is the Cincinnati Panorama of 1848, the oldest known “comprehensive photo” of an American city. The resolution of this series of photos is so high, you can see details the photographers themselves couldn’t possibly have caught. The panorama can be explored at an interactive website, which offers “portals” to different parts of the city and city life when you click on them. Whether you had ancestors in this Ohio River town or not, this is a fascinating piece of history.

Looking for pictures of your ancestor’s hometown or daily life? There are some great search tips in Lisa’s newly-revised and updated 2nd edition of her popular book, The Genealogist’s Google Toolbox. Maybe you already use Google to search for images. Learn how to drill down to just the images you want: black and white pictures, images with faces, images taken of a particular location during a certain time period and more!

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