In honor of Independence Day in the United States, AmericanAncestors.org is offering free access to databases on early New England ancestors starting TODAY through July 8.
If you have Mayflower, Pilgrim or Puritan ancestors (or want to confirm the rumor that you do!), you’ll want to take advantage of this offer from the New England Historic Genealogical Society. For many years the society has been researching “the 20,000 men, women, and children who crossed the Atlantic between 1620 and 1640, seeking opportunity and relief in New England.”
The Great Migration Study Project, as their work is known, has resulted in several databases, nine of which are open to the public for FREE during the first week of July 2015:
The Great Migration Begins. This database “attempts to identify and describe all those Europeans who settled in New England prior to the end of 1633,” states an NEHGS press release. “As a rough estimate, about 15 percent of the immigrants to New England arrived in the fourteen years from 1620 to 1633, with the remaining 85 percent coming over in half as many years, from 1634 to 1640.”
The Great Migration Newsletter. “This database comprises Volumes 1 through 20 of the Great Migration Newsletter, published between 1990 and 2011. Each 32-page issue contains one or two feature articles, a column with editor’s comments, and a review of recent literature on the Great Migration. Each issue also contains a section with detailed coverage of one of the towns settled during the Great Migration, or of a specific critical record, or group of records.”
The Great Migration: Immigrants to New England, 1634-1635, Volumes I—VII, A-Y. (7 separate databases) “As many as 2,500 people immigrated in 1634 and again in 1635….In May 1634, the population of Massachusetts doubled in just one month….Each alphabetical entry for a family or individual includes:
Place of origin, if known
Date and ship on which they arrived in New England, if known
Earliest known record of the individual or family
First residence and subsequent residences, when known
Return trips to their country of origin, whether temporary or permanent
Bibliographical information such as birth, death, marriage(s), children, and other important family relationships, church memberships, and civil and military offices held.”
Click here to access these databases for free between July 1-8, 2015. (Registration at AmericanAncestors.org is required as a FREE Guest Member.)
Looking for more FREE New England genealogy resources? Check out these blog posts!
Genealogy Gems Podcast Episode 224 In this episode we recap 2018, and explore additional ideas to help you organize your home movies. Whether you have 8MM film, VHS tapes, Mini DV tapes or DVDs, this episode has what you need to preserve and organize them. Download...
Wish someone could read your Kindle e-book to you? Your iPhone can. Here’s how to turn a Kindle ebook into an audiobook. For free.
Turn eBook into AudioBook
I love to read. But when I’m on the road, doing chores or working out, it’s easier to listen to books. Sometimes I purchase an audio format or find one at my local library. But audiobooks are pretty expensive, and they’re not always available for the books I want.
So what if I have an e-book already on my Kindle and I want my iPhone to read it to me? It can.
Here’s how to turn a Kindle ebook into an audiobook on an iPhone 5s:
1. Customize VoiceOver settings. On your iPhone, go to Settings > General > Accessibility.
2. Set the reading speed. On the VoiceOver screen, go down to the Speaking Rate bar and adjust it to a speed you like: toward the turtle image for slower, and toward the running rabbit for faster.
3. Choose the reading voice. On the same screen, you can select the voice you want to hear. Choose Speech. Under Default Dialect, you can choose among several English-speaking reading voices, categorized under U.S., Australian, U.K., Irish and South African English. Or tap “Add New Language” to enable one of many other languages.
4. Open your Kindle app (or download it here).
5. Choose a book from your Library. Or go to Amazon.com, select Kindle Store under the All Departments dropdown menu on the search bar, and search for titles (or search “Kindle free books” for free Kindle books to read). You should also check with your local library about borrowing Kindle ebooks.)
6. Open the book. Tap the book and swipe left to page forward through the front matter until you want to start reading.
7. Ask Siri to “turn on VoiceOver.” You can also do this manually by going back to Settings > General > Accessibility. Once you turn on VoiceOver, it reads everything to you. I find it annoying and more difficult to navigate in the iPhone with VoiceOver on, so I don’t enable it until I am ready to use it. After Siri confirms that VoiceOver is enabled, press the Home button once to return to your Kindle book.
8. Start the audio reading. A black border will appear around your Kindle book page. A voice will start to give you instructions. Swipe down with two fingers to begin reading continuously (beginning with the current page and continuing through the book until you stop.
9. Double tap the screen to stop reading and bring up the menu options.
If you’re used to audiobooks read by actors and professional readers, you’ll miss their polished performances. But the voice works for me in a pinch, when I just want to listen to an e-book I already have on my Kindle.
Why not try this with the current Genealogy Gems Book Club featured title, The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson? Click on the book title to order the Kindle e-book. It’s a perfect summer read: a light-hearted romance with colorful characters and a compelling historical backdrop at the outset of World War I.
AUDIO PODCAST SHOW NOTES: Food has always been at the center of family life, so if you want to know more about your family’s history, a logical and tasty place to start is with your family’s culinary heritage. The food they ate and the recipes they cooked can actually tell you a lot about them, and my guests today can help you uncover those stories.
My guests in this episode:
Ashley Covelli is the food photographer, recipe developer, and culinary instructor behind the website Big Flavors from a Tiny Kitchen.
Lisa Lisson is the genealogy researcher behind the Are You My Cousin? YouTube channel.
Together they produce and host Passing the Plate, a podcast that explores the intersection of family history, cultural heritage, and culinary traditions.
Listen to the Podcast Episode
To Listen click the media player below (AUDIO ONLY):
SHOW NOTES
Documenting Family Recipes
Ideas for documenting the recipes of family members:
Go to the store together to shop for the ingredients.
Cook side by side.
Take detailed notes.
Feel it, taste it, and document those details.
Have them scoop the amount needed into an empty bowl so you can measure for exact measurements.
Note sensory indicators. (What it should look and smell like.)
Be very curious about everything going on!
Record video of them cooking.
Sharing Recipes
Update the recipes so that they can be enjoyed by modern cooks.
Consider updating recipes to accommodate various dietary restrictions.
WRAPUP: Action Items
Digitize and organize family recipes and recipe-related materials.
Reach out to other family members to gather additional information and memories about family recipes and culinary traditions.
Experiment with modernizing and adapting traditional family recipes to make them more accessible for contemporary home cooks.
Explore opportunities to share family recipes and culinary heritage.
Passing the Plate podcast episodes recommended:
#34, 35, 36, and Lisa’s grandmother’s cornbread recipe episode.
Get 20% off a Publisher Extra subscription. Click here and use coupon code GenealogyGems
Genealogy Gems Podcast App
Don’t miss the Bonus audio for this episode. In the app, tap the gift box icon just under the media player. Get the app here.
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Searching for birth parents? This adoption research success story involved several proven techniques: mapping DNA matches, research legwork–and years of patient determination.
Adoption Research Inspiration
This inspiring letter about adoption research came to me from Liz:
“Dear Lisa,
Thank you for your part in a major milestone of my genealogy research! You motivated me, educated me, and shared many wonderful resources throughout hours and hours of your podcasts. After listening to you talk with Diahan Southard a few times, it finally dawned on me that I should contact her to help me better understand DNA and its impact on my research.
Here’s the “story” as it unfolded for me.
During much of the last 30+ years my brother-in-law, Chuck, searched constantly for his birth mother. Chuck maintained hope that information he requested from the state of Michigan or newly available electronic adoption records might give him enough clues to help him find his mother. Six or seven years ago, Chuck was disabled by a stroke and a few years following the stroke vascular dementia robbed him of his ability to continue the search for his mother. In January 2015, we were able to get Chuck (despite the dementia) to spit in the test tube and provide a DNA sample. Little did we know he would be dead by Thanksgiving. As I wrote Chuck’s obituary, I realized I could offer one other piece of assistance to Chuck’s widow and children. I offered to continue his quest to find his birth mother.”
Then Liz outlined the steps she took to carry on the search:
“After gathering the limited detail we had (birth date, location, possible mother’s name and age) I began my research in earnest. Ultimately I:
created a “proposed” family tree for Chuck based on Chuck’s birth mother’s surname and his birth location,
reviewed Chuck’s DNA matches and
began to narrow down the family tree.
I used Diahan Southard’s website tutorials as the foundation for my analysis, put together a PowerPoint presentation with my research and theory and presented the information to her in a video conference. She found no fault in my logic and helped me plan my next steps: the search for Chuck’s birth father.”
Eventually, the paper trail and the genetic research came together to tell a story:
“Last week my niece finally received the adoption records from the state of Michigan, eighty-six years after Chuck was born, over twenty years after Chuck first requested them and almost a year after his daughter requested the records. I am impatiently awaiting my copy! What I do know so far:
Postcard of Harper Hospital, MI, posted on RootsWeb (click to view).
My research (thanks to you and Diahan and DNA) accurately determined the identity of Chuck’s mother.
She had a very difficult young life and died of TB—tuberculosis – when she was just 25 years old in 1939.
Chuck’s mother became pregnant with Chuck while a ward of the state and an Inmate at a girls school.
Chuck’s mother became pregnant during a time when the school “farmed out” Inmates to Harper Hospital to work as nurses’ aides.
Both Chuck’s mother and her sister checked on Chuck after turning him over to the state, both in an attempt to get him back and to learn how he was doing.
It was heartwarming to learn that Chuck actually had a birth family who cared about him! I wish he had known!”
WOW, what an incredible story! Congratulations to Liz on such thorough and persistent research. I feel very sure that Chuck knows that not only did he have a birth family that cared, but also a wonderful sister-in-law (although I would guess he well aware of that even before he passed.)
I’m also thrilled that Genealogy Gems was able to play some part in Chuck and Liz’s story.
Get Ready for Adoption Research Success
Are you looking for someone’s birth parents? Get started with the DNA strategies Liz used:
Take a DNA test from a company such as AncestryDNA, which has an enormous database of testers and family trees. Click here to learn more about your DNA testing options.
Map your DNA test results using Google Earth and/or, if you test with AncestryDNA, the site’s tool within an individual DNA match view for identifying locations you have in common on your tree. Click here to learn more about using Google Earth for genealogy by watching my free full-length video class on using Google Earth for genealogy.
Share your DNA results on other websites (such as Gedmatch) to increase your chances of finding matches.
To access Diahan’s great video tutorials on her site that Liz used, click here— as a Genealogy Gems reader you’ll get a great discount on them.
Along with DNA evidence, create the best paper trail possible, as Liz did. Scour all available records and follow up on all possible leads for any information about the birth parents. In this instance, Liz needed to rely on records created by or about institutions, such as the hospital and state girls’ school. Genealogy Gems Premium members will find tips for finding and using these records in my newest Premium video tutorial, Institutional Records. (If you’re not a member yet, click here to learn more. )