Lisa Louise Cooke will be a featured keynote presenter at the Ontario Genealogical Society conference 2016, June 3-5 in Toronto, Canada.
The biggest genealogical event in Canada is coming–and Lisa Louise Cooke will be there! Members of all 34 branches and special interest groups of the Ontario Genealogical Society and other family historians from across North America and around the world will meet in Toronto from June 3-5, 2016 for inspiring lectures, workshops, displays, and other learning opportunities.
Here’s why people are excited about the Ontario conference:
As an internationally-renowned genealogy technology innovator, Lisa will deliver a plenary lecture relating to the conference’s theme, “On the Cutting Edge.” This Saturday morning keynote will be “Future Technology and Genealogy: 5 Strategies You Need.” The audience will be treated to a vision of genealogy research as technology speeds ahead into the future. Lisa will teach five key strategies to employ right now that will make the ride easier–and the results more exciting–than ever.
The Scoop
WHAT: Ontario Genealogical Society Conference 2016
WHEN: June 3-5, 2016
WHERE: International Plaza Hotel,655 Dixon Road, Toronto
REGISTER: Click here for full conference information
Attend Lisa’s Sessions
“Using Google to Enhance Your Genealogy Research,” a workshop outlining a “Google Search Methodology for Genealogy.” The workshop features a variety of free Google tools that can help solve genealogical challenges. You’ll also discover advanced Google search strategies you may not be using but are “must-haves” for high-quality Google search results. You will walk away with a proven Google search methodology, and powerful tips and tricks you can use right away.
“How to Create and Leverage Your Own YouTube Channel for Genealogy.” Don’t let the video revolution pass you by! YouTube Mobile receives more than 100 million views a day and is the #2 search engine on the planet. It’s becoming the first place many people turn to for answers, including fellow genealogists. Video content on your own website can also drive more traffic to your site. This presentation shares Lisa’s tips and tricks for creating a robust YouTube channel that will power-boost your genealogical efforts.
Visit Lisa in the Exhibit Hall
Lisa will be in the exhibit hall at her booth (next to Shop the Hound) signing books, and answering questions. Lisa’s daughter Lacey will be there helping you at the booth. She will have special discounts and a money-saving conference bundle just for this conference.
You won’t want to miss the exhibit hall this year. OGS Conference 2016 will feature a spacious 10,000-square-foot Expo Hall, just steps away from the lecture rooms. There will be displays from genealogical and historical organizations, and commercial exhibitors. You’ll also have an opportunity to check in with all the various branches of OGS and see their specific publications.
About the Ontario Genealogical Society Conference 2016
The entire conference offers something for everyone, and with its convenient location in Toronto, is an easy over-the-border jaunt for many U.S. residents, too. Thursday’s preconference activities include a boot camp for librarians and a session on business skills for genealogists. Friday’s events include off-site tours (World War I history or genetics interest) and workshops including Lisa’s. Saturday’s calendar leads with Lisa’s keynote and then explodes into 24 concurrent sessions and other exciting sponsored events.
Registration
This quick link will take you right to online registration. There are full and partial registration options.
Can’t Make It to the Ontario Genealogical Society Conference 2016? Don’t Fret!
Wish you could catch Lisa’s Google search methodology workshop? Don’t worry–it’s fully described in her book, The Genealogist’s Google Toolbox. This 2nd edition was completed revised and updated for 2015, with thorough, step-by-step instructions on Google search techniques and new chapters on searching for common surnames, Google Scholar and Google Patents (yes, you can use these for genealogy!). Screenshots and detailed explanations will lead you through Google Alerts, Gmail, Google Books, Google Translate, YouTube and Google Earth (multiple chapters on THIS powerful 3D map).
Ancestry.com indexes aren’t always right, making it more difficult to search successfully for your ancestors in old records. In many cases, you can correct those errors and help others find it in the future. Here’s how to do it. When the announcement was...
Learn how to use Google Chrome to identify old photos for genealogy and family history with this quick and easy-to-follow YouTube video!
How to Use Google Chrome to Identify Old Photos for Genealogy and Family History
Take 4 & 1/2 minutes to watch this video from our Genealogy Gems YouTube Channel. Your family history will be glad you did!
Like I said, there is more than one web-browser out there. Maybe you are a fan of Firefox or Internet Explorer, but I want you to head on over to Google Chrome to see this really slick feature.
Why Google Chrome Image Search Works
Google Chrome can do a lot of amazing tech things. By learning how to use Google Images, you may be able to finally identify some of those old pictures you have stuffed around the house! This technique works especially well for identifying locations, maps, and high profile buildings. Why does this work? Google has a stellar process for surfing the web (they call it “crawling”) and indexing everything it finds. This effort builds an incredible wealth of information, including information on all of the photos and images it comes across. Google Chrome, Google’s web-browser, can use this data to quickly match your image to other images Google has crawled on the web. Not only can it find the image, but it can bring along with it any other information (such as details about the image) that is attached to the image. And that can all mean big answers for you!
Take It Further: Identify Original Locations of Images and Photos
In my video, I share with you how I used Google Chrome to identify an old family postcard. In this blog post today, I want to share another tip for using Google Chrome to identify old photos. It never fails.
If you’re like me, you get pretty excited as you make family history discoveries. You might find yourself saving documents and pictures to your computer without accurately sourcing from whence they came. Six months later you find yourself wondering, “Where in the world did that image come from?”
Google Chrome can help. Just use the step-by-step instructions found in the video to upload the image to Google Images, and click the Search by Image button. Voila! Google finds the match and you uncover the website where the image came from! This saves valuable time (and I think we can all use more of that) and provides the information you need to properly cite your image source.
Sharing is Caring
Thanks for watching and reading, friends. Did you share this tech-tip video with your genie buddies? I hope you did. For more tech-tips and savvy tricks, be sure to subscribe to our Genealogy Gems YouTube Channel.
I used the British Newspaper Archive to make a shocking discovery in my husband’s family history was made with the help of these three powerful strategies. Read on to learn how to find more information on your ancestors in online historical newspapers. (This British Newspaper Archive link is an affiliate link and we will be financially compensated if you make a purchase. This helps support our free content like this. Thank you.)
The Research Question
Ever since I first started researching the family of my husband’s grandfather Raymond Harry Cooke, I have been aware that his mother, Mary Ann Susannah Cooke (maiden name Munns), died at a young age, around 40 years old.
What I didn’t know was how she died.
Mary Ann Susannah Cooke
In fact, Mary Ann Susannah Cooke has been one of the most elusive recent direct ancestors I’ve pursued. Up until about a decade ago we had never seen her face.
The image of Mary Ann (above) came to us through one of Bill’s first cousins. I had tracked her down in hopes of learning more about their shared grandfather, Raymond. Once we met I was thrilled to discover that Raymond had lived with her until his death at the age of 93 in 1987.
The cousin brought with her a dusty old box of his belongings. Inside we discovered the first and only known image of Mary Ann. (Genealogy Gems Premium members can learn more about this discovery and the methodology used to find the long-lost distant cousin in the Premium video class 9 Strategies You Need to Find Living Relatives.)
On the back of this cardstock image were notes written in Raymond’s own hand. The handwriting leads me to believe he may have added the notes later in life. This meant that I needed to be especially careful as I analyzed the information as it was likely from childhood memory.
As you can see on the back of the image, Raymond states that Mary Ann died about 1915, and that her birthday was September 3. The birthday was close but incorrect. The actual recorded birth date was September 6.
The date of death was much farther off. Death records from the county of Kent show that Maryann was buried August 20, 1908, a full seven years earlier than Raymond remembered.
It’s not a surprise that his dates were off the mark. Raymond was just 14 years old when Mary Ann died. But the question remained: how did she die?
The Search
About five years ago, after writing a blog post about the British Newspaper Archive, I decided to do some digging in historic newspapers to see if I could find anything about Mary Ann’s death in Tunbridge Wells, England in 1908. With a search of Mary Ann Cooke in the website’s powerful advanced search engine I located the answer within minutes. It was devastating.
The Courier, August 31, 1908:
“Tunbridge Wells Woman’s Sad Death: Drowned in a Water Tank. The Inquest.”
“Mr. Thos. Buss, district coroner, held an inquest at the Town Hall, Tunbridge Wells, on Saturday morning, touching the death of Mary Ann Cooke, aged 41 years, whose body was found in a tank at the roof of her house, 49 Kirkdale road, the previous day.”
Suffering from prolonged depression, Mary Ann had drowned herself upstairs in the family home’s water tank. The newspaper provided a blow-by-blow of the coroner’s inquest, and the heart-breaking testimony of her husband, Harry.
And then came the final shock: Harry and Mary Ann’s 14 year old son Raymond had discovered the body.
After absorbing the story of Mary Ann’s untimely death, I was keen to see if I could learn more about the family. This is where some very powerful search strategies came into play and helped me find MUCH more in the British Newspaper Archive.
3 Powerful Newspaper Search Tips
1. Look for Search Clues in the Articles You Find
Finding an historic article on your ancestors can feel like the end of the research road. But actually, it’s just the beginning!
Go through the article with a fine tooth comb. Make note of every http://laparkan.com/buy-sildenafil/unique detail that could possibly be used in an additional newspaper database search. Here’s a list of what I found in the article about Mary Ann’s inquest. In the following steps I’ll show you how we put some of these into action.
Addresses – The Cooke’s address of 49 Kirkdale Road in Tunbridge Wells, was mentioned twice within the first two sentences of the article.
Name variations– I’m not talking about a variation in spelling, although those are certainly worth noting. In the case of newspaper research I’m referring to the varying ways that people are referred to in the newspaper. In the inquest article, Mary Ann Cooke was also referred to as “Mrs. Cooke.” This got me thinking about other ways that Mary Ann might be referred to, such as Mrs. Mary Ann Cooke, Mrs. M. A. Cooke, etc. In England, a boy Raymond’s age might be referred to as “Master Cooke.” Write down all variations you find, and then continue your list by adding the additional possibilities you can think of.
Neighbors– Mrs. Pout played a vital role on the day of Mary Ann’s death, and she served as a witness at the inquest. This was the first I had heard of her, and her name definitely made it onto my list of “searchables.”
Friends and Acquaintances – The names of Donald Thurkill (an employee of Mary Ann’s husband Harry), and the various doctors (Dr. Abbott, Dr. Grace, and Dr. Nield) were among the names I noted.
Occupations– Harry Cooke is described as a “coach builder.” Future searches of “coach builder” and “Cooke” together could prove fruitful in the future.
After assembling a comprehensive list of additional searchable words and phrases, I headed back to the British Newspaper Archive to search those leads.
2. Look Beyond Known Names
All of the naming variations I made note of in step number one could now be put to work. But before doing so, I realized that each option I came up with could actually be searched in two ways: Cooke with an “e” and Cook without an “e”. And I knew it was worth doing, because unfortunately my own name is misspelled in print on a regular basis.
Searching both “Mrs. Cooke” and “Mrs. Cook” resulted in even more articles. And in the article about “Mrs. Cooke,” Raymond was referred to as “Master Cooke.” Indeed, even more articles existed under that name as well. In the following example, I found Raymond’s name displayed three different ways!
3. Go Beyond People
While finding your ancestor’s name in print in the newspaper is exciting, don’t underestimate the power of searching for other bits of information. Searching for addresses where they lived can put you in the middle of a wealth of new information about your family.
It isn’t necessary to include the surname of your family. In fact, I highly recommend that you don’t. The property where they lived has a history of it’s own. Simply searching the address can give you a kind of “house history” set of search results. These articles can potentially reveal who lived there before your family, descriptions of the home and its contents, and who your family sold the property to. In both the buying and selling of the property there is the potential to learn more about your family and possible further connections to others in the transactions.
In my case, I located an article about the Cooke home by searching the address 49 Kirkdale Road.
In the search results I discovered an article about the home being put up for sale several years before the Cooke family owned it. It was interesting to note that the previous owner had also been a coach builder, so it was a logical purchase for Harry Cooke when he decided to start up a coach building and horseless carriage mechanic shop of his own.
The final article I found in the British newspapers was also found only by address. The Cooke name was never mentioned, but indeed it did provide the slightest mention of the family: “Owner going abroad.” This article advertised the family home being put up for sale in 1912 in anticipation of their emigration.
I admit I got a lump in my throat as I read of Mary Ann’s beloved pianofortes being sold. She was a skilled and talented musician who often played violin at the Tunbridge Wells Opera House and at garden parties around the countryside, and clearly she enjoyed playing the piano at home as she owned not one, but two “pianofortes.”
With the description of the inside of the home in the inquest article, the outside of the home in the “house for sale” newspaper advertisement that Harry first responded to, and now this article describing their possessions as they prepare to move to Canada, my newspaper research painted a much more complete picture of the Cooke’s life in Tunbridge Wells, England.
Wish you could catch Lisa’s Google search methodology workshop? Don’t worry–it’s fully described in her book, The Genealogist’s Google Toolbox. This 2nd edition was completed revised and updated for 2015, with thorough, step-by-step instructions on Google search techniques and new chapters on searching for common surnames, Google Scholar and Google Patents (yes, you can use these for genealogy!). Screenshots and detailed explanations will lead you through Google Alerts, Gmail, Google Books, Google Translate, YouTube and Google Earth (multiple chapters on THIS powerful 3D map).
