by Lisa Cooke | Nov 4, 2016 | 01 What's New, Records & databases |
Swedish-American newspapers are our first stop as we head off the beaten path. This week you’ll discover special record collections of Burke County, North Carolina yearbooks, photo images for Scotland, and State Militia records. Also this week, German civil registrations, Utah divorces, and lots of Irish goodies.
There are more online records than just those found at Ancestry, Findmypast, MyHeritage, or FamilySearch. Lesser known record collections pack a powerful punch to your family history research!
Swedish-American Newspapers
The Minnesota Historical Society has made some Swedish-American newspapers available online for the first time. This past week, Swedish-American Newspapers were made available through an online portal. Users can explore more than 300,000 pages from 28 different Swedish-American newspaper titles published across the U.S. between 1859 and 2007.
The portal is available in Swedish and English and includes a keyword search.
United States – North Carolina – Burke County – Yearbooks
The North Carolina Digital Heritage Center has a statewide digital publishing program located at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The center works to digitize and publish historic materials online.
Among their digital holdings, more than 60 years worth of yearbooks are now available to view online. The schools covered include:
Yearbooks provide enriching details into the lives of our ancestors and can be especially helpful in finding names of living family members!
United States – North Carolina – Militia
Also for North Carolina, the State Archives there have made their militia records, specifically the troop returns for the 18th and 19th centuries, available online.
The Troop Returns collection includes lists, returns, records of prisoners, and records of draftees, from 1747 to 1893. The majority of records are from the Revolutionary War, North Carolina Continental Line.
Militia records generally include the names of officers and soldiers, and are usually organized by district or county. Continental line records include field returns, general returns, draft records, and enlistment records.
This collection is a work in progress. As more records are digitized, they will become view-able online. In the meantime, see what’s there by checking out a helpful index in pdf form here.
Canada – Books
Though these new books added to the shelves of the Library and Archives Canada are not online, the information may be of value to you. Several new books are available to view in-person at the Library and Archives Canada.
Some of the new listings include:
Obituaries from the Christian guardian, 1891 to 1895, by Donald A. McKenzie (AMICUS 42197735)
American loyalists to New Brunswick: the ship passenger lists, by David Bell (AMICUS 43913838)
The link to the AMICUS record gives the call number you need to find the book on the shelves.
Baptisms and marriage books for several churches also are among the new publications. For a complete listing of the new books, click here: https://thediscoverblog.com/2016/10/28/new-books-in-the-genealogy-services-collection-at-395-wellington-october-2016/
Germany – Civil Registrations
New this week at FamilySearch.org are the Germany Bavaria Nuremberg Civil Registration 1803-1886 collection. This record set is an index only of over 1.2 million civil registrations.
The collection includes birth, marriage, and death records from Nuremberg.
Birth records may include:
- Name of child
- Names of parents
- Place of residence
- Gender
- Date of birth
Marriage records may include:
- Name of bride and groom
- Place of residence
- Name of bride’s parents
- Name of groom’s parents
- Groom’s date of birth and birthplace
- Bride’s date of birth and birthplace
Death records may include:
- Name of deceased
- Age at death
- Place of residence
- Date of death
United States – Utah – Divorce Records
Findmypast has added Utah Divorces to their collections. More than 177,000 records from Utah district courts cover the years of 1997 to 2016. Each result includes a transcript that will reveal the date the divorce was filed, the petitioner, respondent, attorney, case type, and the judgment that was reached.
Ireland – Cavan – Registers
Cavan Registers & Records currently includes only one title named “Crosserlough Census Index 1821.” The 1821 census of Crosserlough, County Cavan, was taken on 28 May 1821. The Four Courts fire in Dublin destroyed the original census documents, but a copy was made prior to this.
There are near 8,000 individuals listed in the 1821 census. Each entry records an individual name, age, occupation and relationship to the head of household.
Ireland – Kilkenny – Registers
Kilkenny Registers & Records are presented as PDFs. The collection includes the Castlecomer Census Index 1901 compiled in 2000 by Tom Delany.
The publication is a summary of the population of Castlecomer in 1901. It lists the names, ages, and occupations of the all the inhabitants. On image number 204 is the beginning of an index of all the names found in the publication to help you.
Ireland – Dublin – Registers
Ten new publications have been added to the collection of Dublin Registers & Records. These new items include school registers, district and street censuses, business directories, and monumental inscriptions. The collection also includes parish records from the Church of Ireland.
Ireland – Newspapers
Over 1.7 million new articles have been added to the historic Irish Newspapers collection. New additions have been made to existing titles including The Irish Times and The Weekly Irish Times.
Newspapers can be searched by time-frame, place, county, and newspaper title.
Scotland – Leith – Photographs
A picture is worth a thousand words, or maybe in this case, a thousand records! A rare collection of photographs from the 1920s in Leith, Scotland is available to view online. This collection was digitized by Edinburgh University.
Though most of the images are of buildings and streets and not well labeled, if you are familiar with the area, something might stand out to you. Take a stroll down memory lane of yesteryear in Leith Scotland by clicking here.
More Gems on Researching Newspapers for Genealogy
Available at www.shopgenealogygems.com
This week we explored Swedish-American newspapers as well as some from Ireland. Perhaps you are in search of newspaper elsewhere in the world. Lisa Louise Cooke presents everything you need to know about How to Find Your Family History in Newspapers. This exceptional book is packed with information on how to find and utilize newspaper collections. Available in book and e-book, you will find
- Step by Step Instructions
- Worksheets and Checklists
- Tons of Free Online Resources
- Websites that are worth Shelling Out a Few Bucks For
- A Massive Amount of Location Specific Websites (International)
- A Case Study that Puts It All to the Test
by Lisa Cooke | Nov 25, 2012 | Genealogy Gems Podcast
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In this episode I’ve got another blast from the past for you. We have reached deep into the podcast archive and retrieved episodes 5 and 6.
In Episode 5 we touch on using the video website YouTube for genealogy, and then I walk you through how to Bring Sites Back From the Dead with Google. Then we wrap things up with a cool little way to Spice Up Your Genealogy Database.
In episode 6 I have a gem for you called Cast a Shadow on Your Ancestors, and we cover the free genealogy website US GenWeb
Episode: # 05
Original Publish Date: March 25, 2007
MAILBOX
Email this week from Mike O’Laughlin of the Irish Roots Cafe: “Congratulations on your podcast! I am sure it will help many folks out there. I was glad to see the fine Irish families of Scully and Lynch on your latest show notes!”
GEM: You Tube Follow Up
Note: The Genealogy Tech Podcast is no longer published or available.
- YouTube in the news – the concern was raised by Viacom this month about YouTube benefiting from their programming without compensating them, which could mean copyright infringement. While the course of YouTube could change depending on the outcome of this suit, the attraction for family historians remains strong because of the nature of the content.
- Software mentioned:
Pinnacle. Final Cut for MAC. Limits with Movie Maker
- I posted 2 videos – A Nurse In Training Part 1 & 2
Genealogy Gems YouTube Channel Click the Subscribe button to receive notification of new videos
GEM: Bring Sites Back From the Dead with Google
When you get a “File Not Found” error when clicking on a link, it doesn’t mean the information is always gone forever. You may be able to find it in the Cache version.
Google takes a snapshot of each page it examines and caches (stores) that version as a back-up. It’s what Google uses to judge if a page is a good match for your query. In the case of a website that no longer exists, the cache copy us a snapshot of the website when it was still active hidden away or cached.
Practically every search result includes a Cached link. Clicking on that link takes you to the Google cached version of that web page, instead of the current version of the page. This is useful if the original page is unavailable because of:
1. Internet congestion
2. A down, overloaded, or just slow website – Since Google’s servers are typically faster than many web servers, you can often access a page’s cached version faster than the page itself.
3. The owner’s recently removing the page from the Web
Sometimes you can even access the cached version from a site that otherwise require registration or a subscription.
If Google returns a link to a page that appears to have little to do with your query, or if you can’t find the information you’re seeking on the current version of the page, take a look at the cached version.
Hit the Back button and look for a link to a “cached” copy at the end of the URL at the end of the search result. Clicking on the “cached” link should bring up a copy of the page as it appeared at the time that Google indexed that page, with your search terms highlighted in yellow.
If you don’t see a cached link, it may have been omitted because the owners of the site have requested that Google remove the cached version or not cache their content. Also, any sites Google hasn’t indexed won’t have a cache version.
Limit: If the original page contains more than 101 kilobytes of text, the cached version of the page will consist of the first 101 Kbytes (120 Kbytes for pdf files).
Really looking for an oldie but a goody? Try the Wayback Machine
It allows you to browse through 85 billion web pages archived from 1996 to a few months ago.
To start surfing the Wayback, type in the web address of a site or page where you would like to start, and press enter. Then select from the archived dates available. The resulting pages point to other archived pages at as close a date as possible. Keyword searching is not currently supported.
GEM: Spice up your database
- Search Google Images, then Right click and save to your hard drive.
- Use Silhouettes
- Find something that represents what you do know about that person. It really does help you see them more as a person and less as an entry in your database – their occupation, a reader, a sport, etc.
Episode: # 06
Original Publish Date: April 1, 2007
You can learn more about Jewish roots at the 350 Years of American Jewish History website JewishGen, The Home of Jewish Genealogy
GEM: Cast a Shadow on Your Ancestors
In the episode #5 I shared a little gem that would spice up your genealogical database – adding silhouettes and artistic images to the file of an ancestor when you don’t have a photograph.
Probably the most famous silhouette these days are the silhouettes used by Apple for advertising the iPod digital music and audio player. It may surprise your teenager or grandchild to learn that the first silhouettes were done hundreds of years ago.
Back then silhouettes (or shades as they were called), they paintings or drawings of a person’s shadow. They were popular amongst English royalty and the art form quickly spread to Europe. A silhouette can also be cut from black paper, and was a simple alternative for people who could not afford other forms of portraiture, which, in the eighteenth century, was still an expensive proposition.
The word took its name from Étienne de Silhouette, but it’s uncertain as to whether his name was attributed because he enjoyed this art form, or as the story goes because the victims of his taxes complained that they were reduced to mere shadows.
Either way, the popularity of Silhouettes hit new heights in the United States where they were seen in magazines, brochures and other printed material. But they faded from popularity as Photographs took over in the 1900s.
As a follow up, I want to share with you a simple technique for creating your own silhouettes. You can use ordinary snapshots to create a visual family record.
- Take a photo of a person in profile against a neutral background.
- Blanket the photo background with white acrylic or tempera paint
- Fill in the image with a heavy black permanent marker, curing the shoulders down for a classical pose.
- Add fun details like cowlicks, eyelashes, hats, and jewelry that express the person’s personality with a fine felt-tip pen.
- Photocopy the doctored photos onto quality art paper. Since glossy papers work print best, you could also use your computer scanner to scan the image into your hard drive. From there you can add it to your database, or print it out onto glossy photo paper for mounting.
To represent folks in your family tree, create a silhouette of your father to represent his Great Great Grandfather, and add a farmer’s hat and rake to represent his profession of farming. Chances are dad has inherited some of his profile anyway. Have fun with it and be creative. But of course be very sure to label to silhouette appropriately as a creative interpretation rather than a literal rendering.
You can also do silhouettes of your family including extended family and arrange the portraits together on a wall. Use black painted frames in a variety of shapes and sizes and hang in a way that represents the family tree / relationships.
Check out the Art Café Network website for a Short History of Silhouettes by Katherine Courtney.
For More detailed how-to information, they have additional pages on cutting visit http://artcafenetwork.net/meet/kat/silhouette/cutting.html
2 Silhouette books to turn to:
Silhouettes%20:%20Rediscovering%20the%20Lost%20Art<img%20src=”http:/www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=genegemspodc-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0970115105″%20width=”1″%20height=”1″%20border=”0″%20alt=””%20style=”border:none%20!important;%20margin:0px%20!important;”%20/>%20″ >Silhouettes: Rediscovering the Lost Art
by Kathryn K. Flocken
Old-Fashioned Silhouettes (Dover Electronic Clip Art) (CD-ROM and Book)
GEM: GenWeb Pages
Last year the website celebrated its 10th Anniversary. The USGenWeb Project consists of a group of volunteers working together to provide Internet websites for genealogical research in every county and every state of the United States. The Project is non-commercial and fully committed to free access for everyone. Organization within the website is by state and county.
You can go to the homepage of the website and click on the state of your choice from the left hand column. From the state page you can select the county you wish to search in. However, when I know they name of the county I want to search in, I’ve found it’s often quicker just to search at google.com and do a search like “genweb sibley county mn” The choice is yours.
Remember to use the Google search gem that I gave you in episode one (see episode #134 http://www.genealogygemspodcast.com/webpage/episode-145-a-blast-from-the-past ) to quickly search within the county website. Many don’t have search engines of their own, and so that’s when I first really started using that search technique. These county sites are often very rich though, and after a focused search, it’s rewarding just to wander the site. It will help you become more familiar with the county!
You’ll likely find databases of Births, Deaths, Marriages, townships histories, plat maps, surnames, and a host of other topics. Because each county has its own volunteer coordinator, the information you will find varies from county to county. And as always, info is being added regularly, so you need to book mark them and return on a regular basis to see what’s new.
Be sure and share your resources as well. That’s the power behind the GenWeb project – volunteers. Volunteering your county resources will enrich other’s experience and will likely lead to connections that will continue to further your own research.
Book Mentioned in this episode:
The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Online Genealogy, Second Edition
by Rhonda McClure
Check out this episode
by Lisa Cooke | Aug 8, 2019 | 01 What's New, Church
A project that began in 2017 to digitize important sacramental records in the history of Boston’s Catholic Church has just been expanded. Here’s the latest on this important project from American Ancestors and the Archdiocese of Boston.
Historic Catholic Records Online Project Expansion
Announced by American Ancestors and the Archdiocese of Boston
20 Additional Years of Records—from 1901 through 1920—and more than 60 Additional Greater Boston Catholic Parishes Are To Be Added to the Historic Digital Genealogy Project at AmericanAncestors.org
August 7, 2019—Boston, Massachusetts—American Ancestors and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston (RCAB) today announced an expansion of its ongoing program to digitize important sacramental records in the history of Boston’s Catholic Church. This expansion of a project collaboration announced in early 2017 will effectively double the original 11 million names of parishioners to be included when the project is completed to encompass a total of approximately 21 million names—a treasure in research terms for historians, genealogists, scholars, and the public at large. Images are available to browse now. Name-searchable records will be available in an expanded database from American Ancestors on their award-winning website AmericanAncestors.org.
These historic records document several sacraments of the Catholic Church in Boston and surrounding towns including baptism, confirmation, holy communion, marriage, and the anointing of the sick. They are valued for research because they contain detailed information about the Catholic parishioners of greater Boston, their relationships with each other, the church, and often the community.
When announced in January 2017, the Historic Catholic Records Online Project—the first of its type in the U.S. to digitize a significant number of sacramental records from any U.S.-based Catholic archdiocese—encompassed 154 parishes in 84 towns within the Boston Archdiocese, covering the years 1789 to 1900.
Today’s announcement extends the project’s reach to cover records through the year 1920—adding 20 additional years of sacramental records to the project and eventually bringing more than 60 new parishes within it—all formed within the Boston Archdiocese after 1900.
Catholic parishes in the towns of
- Billerica,
- Danvers,
- Dracut,
- Forest Hills,
- Groton,
- Mattapan,
- Methuen,
- North Andover,
- Saugus,
- Sharon,
- Shirley,
- Swampscott,
- Wakefield,
- Wilmington,
- and Winthrop
will now be included—covering important phases of greater Boston’s early 20th-century history and stories of immigration, social, and cultural change.
Boston
Brenton Simons, President and CEO of American Ancestors, also known as New England Historic Genealogical Society, celebrated the amplification of the project, noting “Throughout our 175-year history, New England Historic Genealogical Society has collected and shared countless manuscripts, artifacts, data, and other resources that tell the inspiring story of the American family. The expansion of this historic collaboration between the Boston Archdiocese and American Ancestors will enrich the research of family historians in America and beyond and be especially informative in Irish, Italian, and French Canadian genealogy. Newer parishes from the 1900s add Lithuanian, Polish, and Portuguese genealogical data of interest.
“I offer our deep gratitude to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston for recognizing the historical value of this data—especially Thomas Lester, the Archivist and Records Manager of the Archdiocese, whose forward-thinking vision toward preservation and collaboration inspired this important project and its expansion we are announcing today,” Simons said.
Lester, as the Boston Archdiocese’s leading advocate for records preservation, stated “We recognize the value of this collection to many groups, foremost among them historians and genealogists. This second, expanded phase of our project with American Ancestors, is a result of the overwhelming positive feedback received during the initial phase announced with them in January 2017.
“Use of the records by researchers around the world has exceeded our original expectations and we are excited to offer additional content, with more insights, and deeper glimpses into the history of the Roman Catholic people and parishes in greater Boston. Of equal importance is that we are continuing to create a digital backup to help preserve these irreplaceable records.”
“The completion of the expanded project, covering all records through the year 1920 is now anticipated to be by the year 2029,” stated Molly Rogers, Database Coordinator for American Ancestors, “with all browsable (non-indexed) and indexed names from all parish archives expected to be online by that time.”
The project is enormous in scope, with a large amount of data to be digitized and then laboriously, manually indexed, transcribed, and, in most cases, translated to English for name-searching capabilities.
Some of the first records from this expanded time period—browsable images of pages from parish archives—are available and may be viewed at AmericanAncestors.org/image-example by members of American Ancestors and by non-members alike, with a free online registration as a Guest Member at AmericanAncestors.org/membership/guest-users. Searchable records (indexed by name) are available only to subscribing members of American Ancestors—visit AmericanAncestors.org/Join.
Volunteers coordinated by the staff of American Ancestors undertake the greater portion of the work of scanning and indexing the Historic Catholic Records Online Project documents.
Much of this effort is carried out at the American Ancestors headquarters in Boston’s Back Bay. In 2017, American Ancestors launched a Historic Catholic Records Fund to enable philanthropy to support the project. Information about contributing to this fund can be found at AmericanAncestors.org/catholic-records-fund.
# # #
About American Ancestors and New England Historic Genealogical Society
American Ancestors, also known as New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS), with its national headquarters located in Boston’s Back Bay, is the oldest and largest genealogical organization in America. It serves more than 260,000 members and millions of online users engaged in family history nationally and around the world. It is home to a world-class research library and archive, and an expert staff.
American Ancestors offers an award-winning genealogical research website at AmericanAncestors.org with more than 1.4 billion records and maintains a publishing division which produces original genealogical research, scholarship, and educational materials, including Mayflower Descendant, a quarterly journal of Pilgrim genealogy and history.
Resources for Using Church Records for Genealogy
Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links and Genealogy Gems will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on these links (at no additional cost to you). Thank you for supporting Genealogy Gems!
by Lisa Cooke | Apr 2, 2014 | 01 What's New, Census, Maps
Looking for enumeration district maps for the U.S. Federal Census? You’re not alone!
1940 Census Enumeration District Map, Oklahoma, Wagoner County, http://research.archives.gov/description/5836456
Recently Genealogy Gems podcast listener Michelle in Denver, Colorado, wrote in with this question:
“Where can I find individual enumeration district maps? I don’t need a state-wide map showing the divisions between enumeration districts, but a map showing the numbered households within a single enumeration district.”
My answer: How to find Enumeration District Maps
First, here’s a little back story from the National Archives (U.S.) website:
“An enumeration district, as used by the Bureau of the Census, was an area that could be covered by a single enumerator (census taker) in one census period. Enumeration districts varied in size from several city blocks in densely populated urban areas to an entire county in sparsely populated rural areas.
Enumeration district maps show the boundaries and the numbers of the census enumeration districts, which were established to help administer and control data collection. Wards, precincts, incorporated areas, urban unincorporated areas, townships, census supervisors` districts, and congressional districts may also appear on some maps. The content of enumeration district maps vary greatly.
The base maps were obtained locally and include postal route maps, General Land Office maps, soil survey maps, and maps produced by city, county, and state government offices as well as commercial printers. Census officials then drew the enumeration district boundaries and numbers on these base maps.” (Check out the full article here.)
Enumeration district maps are not available in all years and all locations. 1940 ED maps are available on the National Archives (U.S.) website. (Scroll down to item 3 for instructions on getting to these through the Online Public Access search.) You’ll see that only the enumeration district numbers and street names are marked on the maps. Individual homes are not.
You might be wondering, are there enumeration district maps before 1940? They are limited but the answer is yes. Enumeration District maps are also available for the 1900 through 1930 censuses. You can browse and download the maps for free at FamilySearch. Search for title The United States enumeration district maps for the twelfth through the sixteenth US censuses, 1900-1940.
For censuses before 1900, the government used voting districts as enumeration districts. Find voting district maps in the Library of Congress book, Ward Maps of the United States : A Selective Checklist of Pre-1900 Maps in the Library of Congress. (The links here lead to WorldCat search results for these titles. WorldCat will tell you about libraries that have these books.)
Next, turn to the book Cartographic Records of the Census Bureau for a listing of maps available back into the 19th century at the National Archives. It’s available as an ebook which you can read online or download for free from Google Books. This book is an invaluable resource for finding much early maps at available at the National Archives on microfilm.
Enumeration District (ED) Map Finder
If you just want to find the enumeration district number of an address you already know, go to the Unified Census ED Finder at Steve Morse’s One-Step genealogy website.
At the top of the Unified Census ED Finder page start by selecting the census year (currently 1870 through 1950.) Next, enter as much information as you know about the location such as the county. Select the city from the list of cities displayed. You will then be able to enter street-level information. If you select “other” from the city list, you can then type in the city or town name. Continue to follow the prompts and instructions.
Here are a few more things to keep in mind as you find and use ED maps:
In cities, there are often two columns of numbers in the census population enumeration (typically on the far left of the page). There’s house number and the number representing the order in which the enumerator visited the house (which has nothing to do with the house number). If you can’t find a relative in once census, pull the address from one census and use it in the Steve Morse database above to pull up the enumeration district for your missing decade.
Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps can be helpful when searching for old Enumeration District Maps.
Depending on the year you are researching, try to locate a Sanborn fire insurance map for the area. Sanborn maps do include drawings of individual homes and include their house number. Genealogy Gems Premium Podcast Episode 47 is all about Sanborn fire maps. On the show notes page I even include a list of links to many Sanborn map collections, organized by state.
Final Thoughts: The Newest ED Maps Available Online
The 1950 enumeration district maps are now available for free online. Read my article The 1950 Census for Genealogy and watch the video to learn how to access them for free.
