Join me for Elevenses with Lisa, the online video series where we take a break, visit and learn about genealogy and family history. (scroll down to watch the video)
Genealogy Consultation Provides a Strong Hypothesis
My 45-minute consultation with a genealogy expert Kate Eakman at Legacy Tree Genealogists broke things wide open on my Irish family lines and gave me the information and resources I needed to make all of the progress I shared in this episode. It’s the best investment I’ve made in my genealogy in a long time. They have experts in all areas. Learn more about how easy it is to book a consultation here.
After my consultation I needed to update my research plan and get to work collecting more genealogical evidence.
Let’s quickly recap what happened when I started working on my brick wall last week in episode 18:
Margaret Lynch’s death certificate said her parents were James Scully and Bridget Madigan.
Her obituary said she was born in Limerick Ireland.
There was one couple by those names in Limerick, having children and the right time. There is a gap in the records where Margaret should be.
Her husband Michael Lynch dies in Stillwater MN. St. Michael’s Catholic church. Found their marriage record in Stillwater. It was a large booming town, and a good place to focus. The Lynch family had a farm across the river in Farmington, Wisconsin.
My research question: Was this couple we found, James Scully and Bridget Madigan, who married in Kilcolman, Limerick, Ireland in 1830, the parents of Margaret Scully?
What Kate Eakman of Legacy Tree Genealogists helped me do in my 45-minute consultation:
Become acquainted with a variety of excellent Irish research websites
Located the indexed marriage record for James and Bridget
Located the original marriage record for James and Bridget
Located the indexed baptismal records for all of the children who had James and Bridget listed as their parents.
A Genealogy Research Plan for Collecting Evidence
After the consultation I developed a new research question: Are the children that we found records for in Ireland the siblings of my Margaret Lynch?
My research plan included:
Verify if there were any other couples by the names James Scully and Bridget Madigan married in Ireland, particularly in the time from of circa 1830. (Location of source: RootsIreland.ie)
Search in the U.S., starting in the area where Margaret lived, for each child. I’m looking for records that name these same parents, and show the child at an age that correlates with the baptismal date.
I identified several sources I believed would help me accomplish my goals.
Marriage Records – I conducted a search for James in Bridget in all counties in Ireland. I discovered that the couple Kate found during my consultation is the only couple in the RootsIreland database with those names married in Ireland. This gives me more confidence that I have the correct couple.
U.S. Records – Armed with the names and ages of the children of James and Bridget, it was time to return to America. I needed to search U.S. records to see if any of the children came to America (perhaps living near Margaret) and if these parents were named.
Records to look for:
U.S. Federal Census (Ancestry, FamilySearch), and State Census (Minnesota Historical Society, Ancestry, FamilySearch)
Death records (Minnesota Historical Society, FamilySearch.)
Before I began my search I created an excel spreadsheet to capture the information. I included columns for what their ages should be in each census.
Using a spreadsheet to track my findings.
Now I was ready to start the genealogical hunt!
U.S. Census
Search each sibling one at a time in the census.
Focus on Washington Co., Minnesota (marriage and death location for Margaret & Michael Lynch)
Move on to Polk County Wisconsin, and greater Wisconsin.
Search both U.S. Federal Census & State Census
Top locations identified for this search: Ancestry.com, Familysearch.org, Minnesota Historical Society
Results:
Found individuals matching the sons in Stillwater and Baytown (Washington County)
Found Bridget Scully (Mother) living with various sons in various census records.
Immigration years listed for some of Margaret’s siblings.
Found in the 1870 U.S. Federal Census: James, Thomas, Daniel and Bridget.
I created folders for each sibling marked MAYBE and collected the records on my hard drive.
Learn more about hard drive organization in Elevenses with Lisaepisode 8.
Searched FamilySearch and the Minnesota Historical Society for a death record for each son.
Found Thomas and James.
James Scully and Bridget Madigan listed as parents
Ages matched
Next step: order the death certificates
Newspapers
Next I searched the Minnesota Historical Society website for newspapers.
Results:
170+ articles
Two obituaries for Bridget Scully! (8 children, immigration year, husband died in Ireland implied)
Found James Scully working with his brother and his obituary
Research Tip: Look at a map and identify nearby towns and larger cities. Expand your search to these areas.
I found a James Scully in the 1860 census with Bridget and his brothers, and working with Thomas in many newspaper articles.
Bridget’s obituary said she came to America with 8 children. 7 had baptismal records in Ireland. James and Margaret were not found in the baptismal records but were confirmed in U.S. records to have the same parents. That would be a total of 9 children. It’s possible one of the daughters that have not yet been found in U.S. records may have died in Ireland prior to their leaving for America.
I then combed back through my Lynch binder – I might spot something that I marked as unsure, or that might jump out at me now that didn’t 20 years ago.
Found History of the St. Croix Valley I had photocopied a section. Names Daniel Scully (who I have since found in the census, newspapers and death records) and says his parents are James Scully and Bridget Madigan!
Looked the book up in Google Books. It’s fully digitized. Now I can extensively read and search it.
Tech Tip: Clip and combine newspaper clippings with SnagIt software
Clipping and saving newspapers poses a unique challenge for genealogists:
Clipping a small portion of a very large digital newspaper page can result in a low resolution file.
If you clip an article you don’t always capture which newspaper and issue it came from
Articles often continue in different locations on the page or pages, making it impossible to capture the entire article in one image.
I use SnagIt software to clip my newspaper finds. I can then save them to Evernote or archive them on my hard drive. SnagIt can save your clippings in wide range of file types and can even clip video. Get Snagitwith our affiliate link and get a discount for a limited time. (thanks for supporting our free content!)
How to combine multiple clippings with Snagit:
Clip the paper title and date
Clip the article
Clip any additional applicable sections of the article
In the SnagIt menu under Image click Combine Images
Drag and drop the clippings into the desired order
Click the Combine button
Save the combined image: In the menu File > Save As (you can select from a wide variety of file types)
Use SnagIt to combine newspaper clippings – Get Snagit discounted with our affiliate link.
Research Tip: Using Street Addresses in Google Earth
When you find a street address, whether in a newspaper, city directory, census or other genealogical record, use it to find the location in the free Google Earth software program. You can then save an HD quality image of the location.
How to find a location in Google Earth (on a computer):
Type the address into the search field in the upper left corner
Click the Search button
The map will automatically “fly to” the location and a pin will mark the general spot.
Hover your mouse pointer in the upper right corner of the to reveal the navigation tools. Click the plus sign to zoom in closer.
How to view the location with Street View:
Zoom in relatively close so that the street and buildings are distinctly visible.
Just above the zoom tool you will find the Street View icon (the yellow “peg man”). Click on the icon and drag it over the street in front of the building / location. Don’t release your mouse. It may take a second or two for the blue line to appear indicating that Street View is available in that location. If no blue line appears street view is not available.
When the blue line is visible, drop the Street View icon directly onto the blue line in front of the location you want to view. by releasing your mouse. If you miss the line and the picture looks distorted, click the Exit button in the upper right corner and try again.
Once on Street View, you can use your keyboard arrow keys to navigate. You can also click on further down the street to move forward that direction.
How to save an image of a street view location:
Position yourself in the best view of the desired location using your mouse and keyboard arrow keys as described above.
In the toolbar at the top of the screen, click the Image icon (it looks like a portrait-oriented page, near the printer icon)
A Title and Description box will appear at the top of the screen beneath the toolbar. Click it and type in a title and description for your image if desired.
You can adjust the size (resolution) of the image you will be saving by clicking the Resolution button above the title box.
When you’re ready to save the image to your hard drive, click the Save Image
Learn more about using Google Earth for genealogy in Elevenses with Lisaepisode 12.
Order the video training series at the Genealogy Gems Store featuring 14 exclusive step-by-step video tutorials. The perfect companion to the book The Genealogists’s Google Toolbox by Lisa Louise Cooke.
After a week of post-consultation research:
Question: Who were the parents of Margaret Scully born in Limerick Ireland on approximately July 9, 1840?
Answer: James Scully and Bridget Madigan, married in Limerick, Ireland June 13, 1830. (Though I feel confident about this, I still have additional records I want to find in order to further solidify this conclusion.)
Question: In what Parish was Margaret Lynch born?
Answer: Most likely Kilcolman based on the baptismal locations of her siblings.
My Next Research Steps:
Browse search through the baptismal parish records at NLI 1839-1842 for Margaret, and 1834-1836 for James Scully.
Look for marriages of Margaret’s female siblings, and family burials.
(Contact St. Michael’s church, Stillwater, MN.)
Go through newspapers.com – there are several Minneapolis and St. Paul papers running articles from Stillwater.
Resume my search of passenger list records with the newly revised date of c. 1851.
Search for the death record of Bridget’s husband James at RootsIreland and NLI.
How to Book a Genealogy Consultation
My 45-minute consultation with a genealogy expert Kate Eakman at Legacy Tree Genealogists broke things wide open on my Irish family lines and gave me the information and resources I needed to make all of the progress I shared in this episode. It’s the best investment I’ve made in my genealogy in a long time. They have experts in all areas. Learn more about how easy it is to book a consultation here.
Learn More:
For more step-by-step instructions for using Google Earth read my book The Genealogist’s Google Toolbox available at the Genealogy Gems Store.
Recommended Genealogy Gems Premium Member Videos with downloadable handouts:
You Just Found Your Event Speaker! Your next genealogy event deserves a dynamic, educational and entertaining presenter! A genealogist since childhood, a background in theater, and hundreds of presentations around the world position Lisa as a world-class genealogy...
We have five strategies for researching disasters for family history. They come in response to a listener email about her own “disaster-prone family.” Use these tips to learn about natural or man-made disasters, epidemics, travel accidents, and more that affected your ancestors, and very possibly more about your ancestors role in these events.
View of Eastland taken from Fire Tug in river, showing the hull resting on it’s side on the river bottom. Wikimedia Commons image; click to view with full citation.
It might seem a little sad to search out disasters, epidemics, and accidents in the lives of your ancestors, but it certainly helps us see things in a different light. Genealogy Gems Editor Sunny Morton has shared recently how enthralling it has been for her to dig deeper into her ancestor’s experience of living through the Johnstown Flood. She used many of the tools I write about extensively in my book The Genealogist’s Google Toolbox (Google Books, Google Earth Pro, and even YouTube) to add an amazing amount of meat to the bones of the story.
I also recently received an inspiring letter from Natalie, a Genealogy Gems Premium Member about how researching disasters in her family history turned her into a passionate genealogist. Here’s what she said:
“Dear Lisa and Company,
I just subscribed to your Premium podcast and must say that listening to Premium Podcast episode 143 affirmed that I made an excellent decision!
I also had family members who were in the Johnstown Flood, since that’s where my family initially immigrated. My parents and I were born there and [I] have heard of stories of the Great Flood of 1889 since I can remember. There was a long-standing family story about my 2nd great-aunt, Julia Pfeiffer Rohr, being pulled out of the floodwaters by her hair.
Ironically or not, my ancestors relocated to Chicago a few years after the Johnstown Flood, only to have my maternal grandmother’s sister (who was a few months away from her 19th birthday) killed while aboard the Eastland [steamship in 1915]. Not sure why some families are ‘disaster prone’ through the generations, but ours seems to be one of those.
I learned about the Eastland Disaster as an adult when my mother’s half-sister in Chicago wrote and shared a family history with me. As a Twin Cities journalist, I published an article (click here and go to page 5) in one of the community newspapers about the disaster.
Still, at the time, I found next to nothing on the Eastland, which was both frustrating and puzzling. [Since then,] I’ve done a ton of research on the event and have written larger pieces, including a to-be published book. I didn’t intend to become an expert on a shipping disaster, but that’s what happened. Also, this marked my entrance into the amazing world of family history.”
5 Tips for Researching Disasters in Family History
Learn more about the disasters your own family experienced with these 5 tips that I shared with Natalie in the Genealogy Gems Premium Podcast episode 145. Although these tips are for researching the Eastland disaster specifically, you can absolutely put them to work for you!
1. Start with Google.The world’s leading search engine, Google.com can lead to rich resources you may never find in a local library or archive. In the case of the Eastland disaster, a Google search immediately brought up a website dedicated to the event. The casualty list had everyone’s name, age, gender, marital status, ethnicity, and the cemetery in which they were buried.
2.Next, we go to Google Books, where Google takes you deeper and more specifically into historical books. Using the Eastland disaster as our criteria, the first result was a published final report by the American Red Cross’ disaster relief committee on what happened, and how the affected families were helped. Several published histories of the disaster were also listed there. These can be purchased, or you can find copies of them through inter-library loan at your local library. If you just want to see which books in the search results can be read for free, click the Tools button under the search box, and a new menu bar will pop up. Click Any books, then choose Free Google eBooks, like so:
Watch my free video tutorial on finding free e-books on Google. This video is one in a series of tech tip videos available for free at my YouTube channel. Click the Subscribe button while you’re there and you will be notified each time a new genealogy video is published.
3. Keep checking back! New things come online every moment of every day. In 2015, historical video footage about the Eastland disaster was discovered and identified in an online archive (see my blog post about that). But of course it’s impossible to rerun the same searches every day looking for new and updated material. The answer: set up a Google Alert for your search query. That way Google will do the searching for you, and you will receive an email only when Google finds new and updated items that match your search terms. Read my article on How to Set-up Google Alerts for step by step instructions on how to set up your own Google Alerts. Then read How to get the Most out of your Google Alerts for Genealogy.
4. Search YouTube separately. YouTube has several video clips of the Eastland disaster. The Chicago Tribune has wrapped that historical video clip into a short video documentary that includes additional photos their researchers discovered. You’ll also find an animation from the Eastland Disaster Historical Society that recreates what happened and how. Read chapter 14 in my book The Genealogist’s Google Toolbox, Second Edition which is devoted to using YouTube for your genealogy research.
5. Explore Gendisasters.com.This site compiles information on all kinds of tragedies from the past: tornadoes, fires, floods, and buggy-related disasters are just a small sampling of what they cover. You can search by type of disaster, but if you’re not quite sure how it might be filed (like was it a drowning or a ship disaster?), then search by year or place. I looked for Eastland disaster first under ship disasters, and I saw that events are listed alphabetically by place, specifically by city in most cases. There isn’t a way to jump easily to “Chicago,” so I had to scroll through several pages, but I did find it under Chicago, IL Steamer Eastland Disaster, July 1915. Since I already knew the city and date, I could have gotten to it faster by searching under those tabs, but I sure saw just how many events are cataloged at Gendisasters.com. It’s amazing!
Avoid Disaster with the Right Tools
Lastly, some of the disasters you are researching may have a website dedicated to it. The Eastland disaster webpage has several interesting pictures of the ship and the disaster itself. There’s a nice long narrative about the tragedy and some transcribed newspaper articles, as well.
Researching disasters for family history can be exciting and enjoyable. The world wide web is truly like a time machine. See what other ways you can use Google for genealogy in my book, The Genealogist’s Google Toolbox.Effective Google searches, Google Earth, Google Alerts, and Google Translate are just the tip of the iceberg! You will become a Google guru in no time.
VIDEO & SHOW NOTES: Learn how Archives.com can help you find your family history. We cover getting started, finding records, building your family tree and answer the question as to whether you should use it if you already use another genealogy website.
Why Use Archives.com?
If you’re new to genealogy, returning after taking a break, or just need a new place to search, Archives.com has a lot to offer. I’m going to show you how to get started with this affordable website packed with genealogical records.
The folks at Archives.com asked me to make a video sharing what I think about their website, so full disclosure, they are sponsoring this video. However, they have no clue what I’m going to say. For the past 17 years that I’ve been podcasting and just shy of that I’ve been publishing videos at the Genealogy Gems YouTube channel, I’ve always given you my honest opinion and shared my best strategies. So let’s get started and do that right now as I answer some of the most common questions about Archives.com.
What Makes Archives.com Unique?
Like many other genealogy websites, it has billions of genealogy records. However, the subscription is a fraction of the cost of other big name websites. That makes it ideal for beginners, or if you just need a new place to dig for records in addition to your other subscriptions. Start with a free 7-day trial to find out what Archives can do for your genealogy research.
What Does Archives.com Offer?
The main focus of the website is searching for genealogical records. And they have billions of the most popular.
Archive.com is owned by Ancestry, and according to the folks at Archives there is some overlap, just like there would be with other genealogy records sites. But Archives does include records you won’t find on Ancestry, and there are records on Ancestry that are not on Archives. Since Archives is much less expensive, it’s worth a look.
What Record Collections are Included?
The easiest way to find out if Archives.com has the record collections you want is to go to the Collections page at https://www.archives.com/collections or click Collections in the menu.
They currently have 650 record collections that include billions of individual records.
Use the filters on the Collections page to browse by Keywords, Record Type or Country. Click the down arrow on the Record Type filter to get a quick overview of the types of records the site focuses on.
In addition to some of the traditional types of records like birth, marriage, death, census and immigration, you’ll find some special collections such as Memory Pages, Surname Histories, and CityDirectories.
If you’re trying to find ancestors in the “old country”, check the Countries filter list before you start searching. No point in looking for records for a country that they don’t have.
How to Search for Records at Archives.com
In genealogy, we start with ourselves and work backwards. Your grandparents are a great place to start searching. When searching for records, I recommend that you start with a particular ancestor in mind and fill in as many details as you can about them before you move further back in your family tree.
There are three different ways to start searching:
Use the search fields at the top of the home page.
Click the Advanced Search link to go to a more robust search page.
Or click SEARCH in the menu which also takes you to the Advanced Search page.
I recommend going straight to the Advanced Search page. This way you can cut out the results that don’t match and zero in on the time frame and also the type of records you want to find.
In searching for genealogy records it’s important to balance searching narrowly enough to get to what you want while searching broadly enough not to miss something.
When searching for less common names, try just searching on the name without clicking the Exact match box. This will keep your results fairly broad and provide an opportunity to see how many and what kind of results you get. By not narrowing the scope of the search, you’re less likely to miss a record that has a slight name deviation.
Take a moment to quickly scroll down and see how many are close matches. Chances are it’s just a fraction of the total results. In my case, there were only about 9 close results out of over 40,000.
If the name you are searching is fairly common, then adding a location and life events with dates can help differentiate people and results.
A Beginner’s Basic Guide
Archives Record filters are in the general order that you need for genealogy:
Gather Death, Marriage and Birth records first.
Fill in with Census Records throughout your ancestors’ lifetime.
MilitaryService and Immigration Records are also really important milestones to find.
Fill in even more like City and Telephone Directories which were often published yearly.
Check out Family Trees that might include your ancestor, and Media records that can further fill in their story.
Can You Build a Family Tree?
Yes! Archives.com includes a family tree builder users can attach their records to and a discovery engine that helps users find new records about their ancestors. Start with your parents or grandparents.
You can search other people’s family trees from the Advanced Search page. You can also create your own tree. Archive’s provides a nice, simple user interface to build out a family tree online.
I just want to say that in my opinion, the very best place to build your family tree is in genealogy database software that you use on your own computer. That way you always have control of it no matter how long you have a subscription to any website. But if you’re just getting started, this is a great way to get your feet wet
If you’ve already created your tree on your own computer, then you can export it as a GEDCOM. That is the universal file type for genealogy family trees specifically. You can then upload that file to Archives.com and work with it from there.
My online family trees are not what I call my ‘master family tree’. That is on my computer. So why do I create an online tree? The reason is simple. It’s a great way to generate Discoveries and connections. I use it to generate clues and record hints.
Archives.com makes it easy to create a family tree. Start with yourself, add your parents, and what you know about your grandparents, and you are off to the races! Or, as I mentioned before, you can upload an existing GEDCOM file.
As soon as you set up your tree on Archives and start looking at records, you will start generating Discoveries automatically. It’s a way to speed up the research process and make genealogy easier than it’s ever been before.
I just subscribed to your Premium podcast and must say that listening to 
