by Lisa Cooke | Mar 27, 2015 | 01 What's New, Maps, Premium Video, United States
If your family lived in the U.S. between the late 1800s to mid-1900s, you should look for their home on Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps.
The Sanborn Map Company published maps from 1867 to 1970 to evaluate fire insurance liability in urban areas. The maps are detailed street plans on large sheets of paper—one sheet shows about four to six city blocks.
You can learn a lot about your ancestor’s house and neighborhood from these maps, or research the history of your own old house. These maps show building outlines, locations of windows and doors, building use (including the names of most public buildings), property boundaries, house and block number, street names and more.
Here’s an example of how I’m using Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps for my family history. Below is the Sanborn Fire Insurance Map for San Francisco in 1905. My great grandparents house has long since been torn down, but I know that the original address back before the great earthquake of 1906 was 1144 Kentucky Street. The Sanborn Fire Map for this neighborhood sheds light on why they picked this location when they first married. Not only is it on Kentucky Street where my Great Grandfather Charles worked the Kentucky Streetcar line as a conductor, but it’s right next door to an Emergency Hospital complete with two ambulances and 2 horses. Why is this significant? Because Great Grandmother Ellen was a nurse when they met!
Learn how to use these under-valued genealogy resources and where to find them in my NEW Premium video on using Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps. In the video I demonstrate using the maps in Google Earth, which is something you may not find anywhere else! The companion handout for the class is a guide to finding Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps online.
Not a Premium member yet on our site? For one low price, you get a full year’s access to my full video archive with more than two dozen classes (click here for a current list) and about 100 Premium podcast episodes, with exclusive interviews and in-depth how-tos (click here for a current list). Click here to learn about additional membership benefits and how to join!
by Lisa Cooke | Aug 26, 2013 | 01 What's New, Craft & Displays, images, Inspiration, Organization, Photographs, Publishing
Hands up, how many of you have ever created (or considered creating) an album or scrapbook to showcase your family history finds, life story, career or hobbies – or those of a loved one? Well, the Library of Congress has posted a new FREE video about how to create and properly preserve digital or traditional archival scrapbooks.
It’s a 72-minute video by various experts with a downloadable transcript on these topics:
- basic preservation measures one can do at home for long-lasting albums and scrapbooks;
- pros and cons of dismantling old scrapbooks and albums in poor condition;
- how to address condition problems;
- preservation considerations for digital scrapbooks and albums
- how to participate in the Library’s Veterans History Project.
Check it out!
by Lisa Cooke | Jan 14, 2016 | 01 What's New, Book Club
The first Genealogy Gems Book Club featured selection for 2016 has been announced. It’s a mouthwatering memoir of food and family. Check it out! 
The newest Genealogy Gems Book Club selection was just announced in the Genealogy Gems Podcast Episode 187! The new title is Orchard House: How a Neglected Garden Taught One Family to Grow
by Tara Austin Weaver.
Tara is most famous as the author of Tea & Cookies, recognized as one of the top 50 food blogs in the world. Orchard House is her recently-published memoir. Tara’s recipe for Orchard House is one part food, one part gardening and two parts family drama, liberally seasoned with humor and introspection. The “book jacket” summary from the publishers describes it this way:
“Peeling paint, stained floors, vine-covered windows, a neglected and wild garden—Tara can’t get the Seattle real estate listing out of her head. Any sane person would see the abandoned property for what it was: a ramshackle half-acre filled with dead grass, blackberry vines, and trouble. But Tara sees potential and promise—not only for the edible bounty the garden could yield for her family, but for the personal renewal she and her mother might reap along the way.
So begins Orchard House, a story of rehabilitation and cultivation—of land and soul. Through bleak winters, springs that sputter with rain and cold, golden days of summer, and autumns full of apples, pears, and pumpkins, this evocative memoir recounts the Weavers’ trials and triumphs, what grew and what didn’t, the obstacles overcome and the lessons learned. Inexorably, as mother and daughter tend this wild patch and the fruits of their labor begin to flourish, green shoots of hope emerge from the darkness of their past.
For anyone who has ever planted something they wished would survive—or tried to mend something that seemed forever broken—Orchard House is a tale of healing and growth, set in the most unlikely place.”
A note of thanks from Lisa for purchasing the book, if you so choose, through the links provided. Each purchase helps support the free Genealogy Gems podcast.
BOOK CLUB EVENTS COMING SOON!
RootsTech Book Club Open House: Thurs, Feb 4, 10am-11am at the Genealogy Gems booth #1230 in the Exhibitor Hall. Stop by and chat about books or family history or 
both! Free bookmarks, display copies of featured titles a win chance to win a great Book Club prize just for suggesting a book.
FEBRUARY: Catch a sneak preview of Orchard House (and a couple more book suggestions to whet your literary appetite) in the Genealogy Gems podcast.
MARCH: We’ll play an excerpt from an exclusive interview with Tara Austen Weaver in the free Genealogy Gems podcast. Genealogy Gems Premium website members will be able to listen to the full interview in March’s Genealogy Gems Premium podcast.
Love the Genealogy Gems Book Club idea? Click here to check out all the titles we’ve recommended in the past.
by Lisa Cooke | May 12, 2015 | 01 What's New, Apps, Conferences, images, United States
Are you heading to NGS this week along with us and thousands of others? Download the NGS app if you haven’t already. This free, multi-event app will work for all current and future conferences of the National Genealogical Society (U.S.).
According to conference organizers, the NGS 2015 app can “help you make the most of your trip to St. Charles before, during and after the conference.” They recommend attendees begin using it now “so you can plan and improve your conference experience.” But the app will continue to be viable in the future as they add additional events to it.
Features include:
- The Dashboard to keep you organized with up-to-the-minute information
- About the NGS 2015 Family History Conference to keep all conference information in one place
- Alerts of important real-time communications from NGS
- Twitter feed to follow and join in on the conference can you buy medication online from canada chatter. The Twitter hashtag is #NGS2015GEN.
You can also
- Sync your schedule across multiple devices
- Locate exhibitors you plan to visit
- Access a list of Local Places based on Category
- Connect, message, and share schedules with your colleagues through the Friends feature
- Link to syllabus material for each lecture, which will be available about 29 April 2015
The NGS Conference App is available for iOS, Android, Blackberry, Windows Phone, and web-enabled devices. Click here to download or search your app store for NGS Family History Conferences.
Are you new to attending a big genealogy conference? Click here to find a video that will help you know what to expect, how to prepare and how to get the most out of attending a conference.
by Sunny | Apr 5, 2018 | 01 What's New |
Genealogy Gems Premium Podcast Episode 157 is ready for you! This episode features a variety of must-have tips for the family historian: courthouse research strategies, identifying old family memorabilia, and using YDNA to learn more about your paternal line....
