Old film footage can make your family stories truly unforgettable–even for those relatives who seem to forget every fact you tell them about your genealogy! Follow these tips to find old film footage and video online.
If a picture’s worth a thousand words when you share your family history, how much more do you think a video is worth?
A while back, we told the gripping story of Betty McIntosh, a Honolulu reporter-turned-World War II spy. What fun it was to research and share on the blog! The post has multimedia sources threaded throughout: an image of a young Betty from the CIA’s website, news articles, oral histories with more memories of Pearl Harbor, a YouTube video interview with Betty, and even a dramatic radio broadcast clip from the day of the attack, when the media was trying to reach the mainland with news of the attack.
We found all those sources via Google searching. And while we could go into great depth on how to find each of those kinds of sources (and I do, in resources such as my book, The Genealogist’s Google Toolbox), in this article, I wanted to share some tips on finding old film footage online, using Betty as a case study. Think about how you might use these tips to look for old video or films related to your family history–and let me know what you find! I’d love to hear from you.
How to find old film footage online: 4 tips
1. Search for your topic on YouTube, the world’s largest video-sharing website. My book The Genealogist’s Google Toolboxhas an entire chapter devoted to YouTube searches for family history, so I won’t go into great depth here. I will tell you to think of search terms that pertain to the family history stories you want to share: a person’s name, a place, an event in history, or even an occupation or industry. Enter those search terms at YouTube.com.
Betty lived in the 20th century and was recognized publicly for her work during her own lifetime. So there was a good chance that old film or video would exist about her. And they do! A YouTube search brought up video interviews with her, such as this one:
2. Repeat the searches on Google. YouTube searches can only bring up what’s actually been put on YouTube. Google searches are much wider, across millions of websites, and you may find some other wonderful resources. When your Google search results come up, click Videos to narrow your results:
You’ll have some duplication with results from YouTube. In the case of Betty McIntosh, I found two additional videos that didn’t come up on YouTube. One of them was at NBC News.com and the other was an hour-long interview on C-Span!
3. Run multiple searches on both Google and YouTube. Repeat your searches with various search parameters to broaden or narrow your results, or to capture different kinds of results. In Betty’s case, keywords such as spy and reporter were important to filter out unwanted results.
Remember that Google and YouTube aren’t specifically designed for searching for name variants like your favorite genealogy website is. So these sites may not recognize nicknames or other name variants, such as “Elizabeth” instead of “Betty.” Also search by surnames only, maiden and married names and even initials. Here’s a quick video tutorial I did on using asterisks to search for name variations on Google:
4. Pay attention to copyright restrictions if you want to share old film footage, such as if you’re making your own family history video. For example, I found these copyright restrictions for using C-Span video (noncommercial use is allowed and there’s even a handy video clipping tool right on the site if you want to clip part of it and save it).
AUDIO PODCAST SHOW NOTES: In episode #290 of the Genealogy Gems podcast, Lisa Louise Cooke covers 5 of the top gems that came out of 2024. Use these to boost your family history now!
Watch the Video
Listen to the Podcast Episode featuring 5 Genealogy Gems
Get all the basic details on LiveMemory on the show notes page for Genealogy Gems Podcast episode #289.
Since the launch MyHeritage has added a set of 10 custom animation options. Now you can choose the action and resulting emotion for more fun. You can choose from emotional gestures such as hugging. laughing, kissing, dancing, and singing. You can also go more playful with zero gravity, underwater, rain, balloons, and even add a T-Rex to the scene!
With the newest update your videos will now be stored in your MyHeritage account. This makes them easily available through the app gallery. Photos with a LiveMemory™ have a play icon on the bottom. Tap the photo, then tap “LiveMemory” to play your video. You can also download the video to your device.
It’s now easy to share your videos with friends and family directly from the app to Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, Bluesky, WhatsApp, and other social media. Tap the Share button at the bottom of the screen, then select the social media platform of your choice.
Tips from MyHeritage for Best Results:
Make sure you have the latest updated version of the MyHeritage mobile app installed.
MyHeritage recommends that you upload “an iconic family photo with interesting content. If you upload an ordinary selfie or a photo showing two people standing, there is no scene to speak of and the output video may look boring, unless you use one of the custom animations.
The results can vary depending on the resolution of the original photo and the angle of a person’s face. If you aren’t satisfied with the results, try uploading higher-resolution photos or photos with larger, more visible faces.”
Ancestry added loads of new records in 2024. The best way to quickly find and review them is in the Card Catalog: 1. Go to https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/catalog/ 2. From the Sort by drop-down menu select Date Added 3. Records will be listed starting with the most recently added. They will be marked New.
#3 FamilySearch new records updates
FamilySearch also added millions of new records. Most were added to existing collections, expanding them even further. FamilySearch also used AI to generate indexes for many of their existing collections making them much more usable. This all means it’s worth revisiting collections where you came up empty in the past. If you’re looking for free international records, FamilySearch is hard to beat! It includes,
Chronicling America is a huge collection of free digitized old newspapers from the United States. However, in the past it did not include all of the newspapers available through the Library of Congress website. Now all digitized newspapers have come under one search umbrella with the new Chronicling America website.
Chronicling America is in the process of transitioning from the legacy Chronicling America interface to a new Chronicling America interface and back-end search infrastructure. Read more about it.
Search the 4,000+ newspaper title with the Advanced Search at Chronicling America.
Use the interactive map at Chronicling America to search for family history in old newspapers.
#5 AI Increased Use in Genealogy
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is here and will be with us in 2025 and many years to come. AI has been incorporated into genealogy websites for quite some time. However, in 2024 we saw a real uptick in genealogists using stand alone AI sites like ChatGPT, Gemini, and others to assist with their research.
If you’re going to start using these AI sites, keep a couple of key things in mind.
1) It’s not a person. No matter how realistic it sounds, or how many times it refers to itself as “I”, it’s not a real person. This is important to remember as you’re interacting with it. When AI talks to you like it’s a person, and you work with it for a period of time, you can start to have the impression or the feeling that it knows what it’s talking about. It can come across as authoritative. You can get the impression that it understood what you asked for, and that’s just not the case. It’s a language tool, and it’s trying to put together what it thinks makes sense based on what it has already “learned”.
This means you must be in the driver’s seat and stay in the driver’s seat. Continually analyze what you’re getting from AI. Think about what it is “saying: Go check it out and verify the information and get more evidence to back it up.
2) It’s not a stand-alone search engine. At this point AI isn’t ready to be used as a stand-alone search Q and A tool. However, it does have strengths we can use today for such activities as: • Translating typed text, • Summarizing large documents, • Reassembling information into desired formats, • Finding information buried within a document. • Quickly determining if particular items appear in a document.
It can do much of the legwork, thereby speeding up the research and writing process.
If I had to predict, I would say we’re going to see AI and search merge more and more. In fact, over at Google’s Gemini, we’re noticing that it sometimes provides users with a check this at Google button. For now though, be aware that Google’s search results are not fully represented in Gemini’s responses. Go search it separately on Google, and then review the results provided. Make sure you can actually find sources for yourself that verify everything that AI tells you.
Learn more about AI and Genealogy with Genealogy Gems:
We love the ease with which we can search online, but a genealogy research trip can offer exceptional and unique rewards. If you have been apprehensive about visiting a courthouse or archive, follow our 4 step plan for a successful genealogy research trip that could lead to your own amazing discovery!
By J. D. Cress [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
I am spoiled. Spoiled because I did not join the genealogy craze before the dawn of the internet and the power that using the Web brings to our family history research. I don’t know the pangs of writing 100+ letters to possible relatives and then waiting…waiting…and waiting to hear back from at least one!
In my genealogy world, if an answer can’t be found on one of my favorite genealogy website repositories (like FamilySearch, Ancestry, or Findmypast) then a quick Google search usually does the trick.
However, we new genealogists of the Internet era may be banking on the fact that “everything” we need is online. This is obviously not true. In fact, many local libraries and archives are under-staffed and under-funded making digitizing of their holdings difficult. This is why making a genealogy research trip is a really good idea.
The Unprepared Genealogy Research Trip
Several years ago, I made my first research trip. I was woefully unprepared. On a whim, I drove three hours on a weekday to “go to the courthouse.” I arrived at lunch time…and it was closed for an hour. Sigh. However, a nice receptionist suggested I go to the local public library just down the street.
When I arrived at the tiny corner building, I asked at the circulation desk for the history department. She seemed a little taken back, but said, “We have a little room in the basement with some local history and genealogy things.” Note to self: not all libraries are large enough for a “history department.”
In the basement room, no one was on duty, but a nicely printed instruction sheet of what was available and how to use their files laid on the table. “I guess I just dig in,” I thought, and off I went.
Though this was my first genealogy research trip, it proved to be very fruitful. In a scrapbook simply titled “Walls Family,” I found a Xerox
copy of an article from an 1874 newspaper. In this article, my fourth great-grandmother (Susannah Harmarson Walls) had been interviewed because she was the oldest living woman in the township. Her interview began, “I was born in Delaware. The exact year, I do not know, but I suppose I will be 86 years of age on the 16th of July next. My father’s name was Levin Harmarson. He died when I was only three years of age. My mother’s name was Mary Woodard.”
The interview included the story of her mother re-marrying, the family leaving Delaware for Wheeling, Virginia, and she marrying her step-brother there. Then, they traveled on into Scioto County, Ohio. She named each of her eleven children and their spouses.
The information in this one interview was particularly helpful. Before this, we had no idea when or where Susannah and Levi married, and finding the spouses of their children had proved difficult!
Though this was an amazing find, I wonder what other records, items, or photographs I might have dug up had I prepared ahead of time. Perhaps, I would have had time to dig more into their microfilm holdings, archived pictures, atlases, or even had time to go to the local cemetery.
The Prepared Genealogy Research Trip
Fast forward several years and I am making much more prepared genealogy research trips. Get the most from your next genealogy research trip by following these 4 important steps:
1. Run a Narrative Report. Start creating your genealogy research trip plan by printing out a narrative report of your targeted family line. This can be done with the reports feature found in genealogy database programs like RootsMagic.
2. Look for holes in your research. Carefully read through the report looking for holes in your research or where you may be missing a source. In this case, a “hole in your research,” may be the missing marriage date of a couple, or the missing birth date of a child. Circle these “holes” and make a list of what the needed piece of information is to correct it and where you can find it.
Example: Clark County, Ohio. Need a death date for Edmund West. County didn’t keep death records that early. Likely died between 1830-1840. Check probate record books, estate files, tax records, cemetery records, and tombstones at Wilson Cemetery.
Maybe you have a birth date, but no source. A source is the proof of a particular fact. For example, a good source for a birth date is a birth register or even a marriage record. If you are lacking sources for your genealogy facts or are not sure how to begin sourcing your genealogy, learn more about that here.
3. Decide what repositories you will need to visit. After creating your list, determine where these items are held by asking yourself important questions, such as: Will I need to visit the courthouse, a library, an archive, cemetery, or all the above?Which location will produce the most results? Should I visit the archives first, or the courthouse?
4. Contact each repository ahead of time. Finding out the days and times when each of these places is open before you go is a must! Try to pick a day when all, or most, of the places are open so that you can get a lot done. If this isn’t possible, consider making an extended stay overnight to accomplish your goals.
Keep in mind that not all websites are up-to-date. Just because the library says it is open from 10 to 5 every day but Sunday on the webpage doesn’t necessarily mean that is still the case. Always call each establishment to verify days and hours of operation.
Remember, there are newspapers, maps, documents, and pictures just waiting to be uncovered. By thinking about what you want to achieve while on your trip and what information you need to find and where, your genealogy research trip can be a successful one. Happy hunting!
More on Genealogy Research Trips
Still feeling unmotivated to get on the road, read or listen to these features for inspiring tips to make a courthouse records research trip in your near future!
Looking for an easy way to make a big difference? Help collect Holocaust newspaper articles printed in your local newspapers for the History Unfolded project of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Do it on your own, or with your local genealogical or historical society!
What is History Unfolded?History Unfolded is a project that seeks to expand our knowledge of how American newspapers reported on Nazi persecution during the 1930s and ’40s so we can better understand what Americans knew about the Holocaust as it was happening.
To help achieve this, the History Unfolded project asks people like you to search local newspapers from the 1930s and ’40s for Holocaust-related news and opinions and then submit them online to the museum. The newspaper articles you submit will be used to help shape the museum’s 2018 exhibit on Americans and the Holocaust and related educational materials. The articles will also be made available to scholars, historians, and the public.
Who Can Contribute? Everyone! History buffs, students, teachers (with) an interest in the Holocaust and access to a newspaper from the 1930s or ’40s, either online (using Newspapers.com, for example) or through a physical archive, such as a library. Simply create an account with History Unfolded (to get started.)
How Do I Contribute? History Unfolded has created a list of more than 30 Holocaust-related events to focus on. Choose one of these events to research, then search for content related to that topic in an American newspaper of your choice from the 1930s or ’40s. After you find an article related to one of the events, submit it online to the museum through the project’s website.
Newspapers.com and History Unfolded You can contribute to this important project whether or not you use Newspapers.com to do so. But using Newspapers.com makes it even easier to submit the articles you find. Simply use Newspapers.com to create a clipping of an article you’ve found, then submit that clipping through the submission form on the History Unfolded website. The submission form has a special tool created specifically for Newspapers.com users that makes submitting your clipping a snap.
Your help with this project will help shape our understanding of the Holocaust and the lessons it holds for us today. For more information on how to get involved, visit the History Unfolded website.
Get involved! Click here to read about more ways to volunteer in our global genealogy community. Your efforts make a huge difference.
ested I go to the local public library just down the street.
Newspapers.com and History Unfolded You can contribute to this important project whether or not you use Newspapers.com to do so. But using Newspapers.com makes it even easier to submit the articles you find. Simply use Newspapers.com to create a clipping of an article you’ve found, then submit that clipping through the