Why Your Genealogy Research Could be Going to the Dogs

 

Did your Irish ancestors have a dog? Over 3.5 million Irish Dog Licence registers have been added to a collection already online at

“More Besties from the Clonbrock Estate.” Taken September 22, 1883. National Library of Ireland photograph, posted at Flickr Creative Commons National Library of Ireland on the Commons page. No known copyright restrictions.

FindMyPast. “Now containing over 6 million records, the Irish Dog Licences list not only the name, breed, colour and sex of your ancestor’s four legged friend, but also the owner’s address and the date the licence was issued, making them a valuable census substitute,” says a recent FMP press release.

Also new on the site are other notable collections, as described by FMP:

  • Trade Union Membership registers (3.4 million+ records) with digitized images of original records books from 9 different unions. The documents include details about individual members such as payments made, benefits received, names of spouses, and a number of unions published profiles of their members or those who held offices. Many unions kept detailed records for when a member joined, paid their subscription, applied for funeral benefits or superannuation (retirement). These records allow you to follow your ancestor’s progress within the union and perhaps uncover previously unknown details of their working lives and careers. The documents can also include details about the trade unions themselves, such as directories of secretaries, meeting dates and times and items of trade union business. Many trade unions also included international branches from Ireland to Australia to Spain and Belgium.
  • Indexes to over 28,000 articles in 2000+ PERSI-indexed periodicals. These include magazines, newsletters and journals, according to location, topic, surname, ethnicity and methodology. (Learn more about PERSI on FindMyPast in our blog post on the topic.)
  • Peninsular War, British Army Officers 1808-1814 dataset, compiled by Captain Lionel S. Challis of the Queen’s Westminster Rifles shortly after WW1. Using Army lists, Gazettes, despatches, official records and regimental histories, Challis gathered information on more than 9,600 officers who fought for control of the Iberian Peninsula during the Napoleonic Wars and recorded them on index cards. Each record contains an image of the original handwritten index cards and a transcript.
  • South Australia Births 1842-1928. Over 727,000 records and date back to when the compulsory registration of births first began in 1842. Sourced from an index transcribed by volunteers from the South Australian Genealogy and Heraldry Society Inc., each records consists of a transcript that usually includes the child’s full name, gender, date of birth, place of birth and registration number. The names of both parents will also be included and in some cases the mother’s maiden name will also be present. South Australia’s colonial origins are unique in Australia as a freely settled, planned British province.
  • South Australia Marriages 1842-1937 contain over 457,000 records. Each record includes a transcript that can contain a variety of information such as the first and last names of the bride and groom, their ages, birth years, marital status, the date and place of their marriage as well as their fathers’ first and last names.
  • South Australia Deaths 1842-1972 contain over 605,000 records and span 130 years of the state’s history. Each record consists of a transcript that usually lists the deceased’s full name, gender, status, birth year, date of death, place of death, residence, the name of the informant who notified authorities of their death and their relationship to the informant.

Ancestry_searchAre you making the most of your online searches at FindMyPast and other genealogy websites? What about on Google? Learn more about search strategies that work in this blog post!

RootsMagic + MyHeritage = Heritage Magic!

If you’re a MyHeritage user, you know how powerful their search and record matching technologies are–and how many records and trees they have. If you use RootsMagic, you know how adeptly this family history software helps you build and maintain your master family tree. Now you can work more heritage magic by combining these powerful family history tools!

MyHeritage’s Smart Matching™ and Record Matching technologies have been integrated into newly-released RootsMagic 7 in a feature called WebHints. Whenever new records become available that match people in your RootsMagic tree, MyHeritage will send you a clickable alert. It’s kind of like having Google Alerts for MyHeritage embedded right within MyHeritage! Some records will be free to view; others will require a MyHeritage subscription. Either way, don’t you want to know what’s out there that you might be missing? (Bonus: WebHints also include hints from FamilySearch.org!)

Lisa Louise Cooke's Genealogy Gems PodcastPersonally, I’m so pleased to see this collaboration. RootsMagic is a longtime sponsor of the free Genealogy Gems Podcast. MyHeritage also sponsors our podcast now, too. These companies offer products I love to share with readers and listeners because they are truly “genealogy gems.”

A few more good-to-know facts:

  • RootsMagic assures users that “information sent by RootsMagic to MyHeritage for matching is never collected or shared, and is deleted after matching to ensure the complete privacy of RootsMagic users and their data.
  • You do have the option to turn off WebHints if you need to for whatever reason. In the software, go to Tools, File Options, and then uncheck WebHints.
  • MyHeritage matching technologies are also being integrated by Dutch genealogy software Aldfaer and the online genealogy services of Coret Genealogie in the Netherlands.

Is it time for you to try a free trial of RootsMagic and MyHeritage? Test drive them both with their freebie versions (still powerful and totally compatible with the paid upgrades). Click here to learn about RootsMagic 7 (and the free version, RootsMagic Essentials) and here to learn about free and paid subscription options at MyHeritage.com.

What are you finding in your WebAlerts on MyHeritage (or by searching the site yourself)? I’d love to hear from you! Post your discoveries on the Genealogy Gems Facebook page!

DAR Bible Records Now Online

Sudweeks marriage cert cropped

This decorative marriage certificate and the Births page below come from a Sudweeks family Bible I helped return to the Sudweeks family.

The Daughters of the American Revolution Library (DAR) has a free online collection of searchable records. Its Genealogical Research System allows anyone to search databases of ancestors, descendants, members, its Genealogical Research Committee reports and more. Now it’s added another databases: Bible records.

“DAR collections contain thousands of Bible records from the Family Register sections and other pages,” states a news release from Eric Grundset, DAR Library Director.  A new database contains “approximately 30,000 Bible records taken from our Genealogical Records Committee Reports. This is an ongoing project as member volunteers review the GRC database to post more materials found in those nearly 20,000 volumes. As time progresses, we will add other Bible listings from other sources in our collections.

“At the present time, if someone wishes to order copies of a specific Bible record, they will need to contact the DAR Library’s Search Services for copies. We are developing the steps for the ordering of pdfs of all of the DAR Bible records for online ordering in the near future. Documentation that is less than 100 years old is restricted for privacy reasons.”

Sudweeks birthsFamily Bibles in years past served as a family’s private vital records registry, where the names, births, marriages and deaths of loved ones were inscribed. A Bible record may be the only place to find some of those, especially for the distant past and for children who died young. But it’s also the most intimate kind of vital record to find, a family’s log of its own kin.

Grundset reminds us that “DAR Collections are not limited to the period of the American Revolution or to the families of DAR members.”

Merry Cemetery Displays ‘Dirty Little Secrets’ of the Dead

A gravestone creator in a small town in Romania took his mission seriously to memorialize the dead. But he did in, er, “living color,” so to speak. With plenty of colorful images and even dirty little secrets and gossip carved onto tombstones of the local residents at the “Merry Cemetery.”

The “Merry Cemetery” Sapanta, Romania. Image credit: “Merry Cemetery – Sapanta – Romania 01”, by Adam Jones (Adam63). Wikimedia Commons image at- http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Merry_Cemetery_-_Sapanta_-_Romania_01.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Merry_Cemetery_-_Sapanta_-_Romania_01.jpg.

As reported in the New York Daily News,  the woodcarver responsible for over 1000 gravestones in the “Merry Cemetery” would wander through town, taking notes on people’s quirks and secrets. Some flaws–drinking and carousing among them–are memorialized colorfully on their tombstones. On other stones, you’ll find his sad laments for the untimely passing of a child or the death of an adult by  a sad accident.

“There’s no point in hiding secrets in this small town in Maramures, so people’s lives are captured honestly in their epitaphs,” reports the article.

The woodcarver was Stan Ion Patras, who lived from 1908-1977. Conscious of the legacy he was leaving–and perhaps anxious to tell his own story rather than have someone else do it–Patras carved his own tombstone before he passed away. He trained his replacement, who continues to add to the brightly colored crosses.

Here’s another detail I thought was neat: Patras’ folk art was highly symbolic. According to a New York Times article on the cemetery, “The portrait of the deceased is central, surrounded by geometric designs in symbolic colors: yellow for fertility, red for passion, green for life, black for untimely death. The color scheme is keyed to the subject’s life — if, for example, the deceased had many children, yellow carries the design. Some crosses are crowned with white doves representing the soul; a black bird implies a tragic or suspicious end. The background is always blue, the color of hope and freedom.”

What’s the most fascinating cemetery you’ve ever visited? What’s the most memorable epitaph you’ve ever found? Share it on our Genealogy Gems Facebook page!

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