Family History Library Has New Director–New Direction?

Diane-Loosle-3The biggest family history library in the world just got a new boss! Diane Loosle is the new Director of the flagship Family History Library (FHL) in Salt Lake City, Utah, and the first woman to hold this job. She has exciting ambitions for the FHL and I look forward to seeing how they unfold.

Diane mentions three specific goals she’ll focus on between now and the end of 2014:

  • “Become more family and youth-oriented through providing interactive, discovery experiences.
  • Enhance the services of the library through new collaborative research areas and better access to research staff.
  • Engage more patrons from the geographic community surrounding the library.”

As an example of the first objective, a FamilySearch press release says Loosle wants to “study the role of the Family History Library and 4,700 satellite branches worldwide…and how to make them discovery centers for people of all ages, not just a research facility.”

“Our centers are great places to do genealogical research,” Loosle says. “[But] we need to figure out how to balance the needs of researchers while increasing appeal to those with other family history interests. You can’t attract a younger audience and offer the same experiences. We need to offer fun experiences and activities for the entire family that will increase love, appreciation, and understanding of their ancestors.”

I admit I’ve wondered about the future of satellite family history centers as increasingly folks stay home to research online. So I look forward to seeing how she will reinvent these community resources to serve today’s (and tomorrow’s) genealogical researchers.

Loosle comes to this job with great credentials. She is an accredited genealogist who has been with FamilySearch for 19 years, where she championed new customer service initiatives. She also has an MBA, strong business and leadership skills. She is described by a senior executive at FamilySearch as “one of the most qualified and capable to ever serve in this position.”

Congratulations, Diane! We look forward to seeing what’s coming next.

Five Disbanded Irish Regiment Records in New and Updated Collections

This week in new and updated genealogical collections, enlistment books for five disbanded Irish regiments of the British Army are now available online. Additional collections include records for the Scots Guard, English parish records, Australian funeral notices, New Zealand passenger lists, and Pennsylvania church records.

dig these new record collections

Britain – Military – Disbanded Irish Regiments

The National Army Museum has recently made the enlistment books of the five disbanded Irish regiments available online. This collection allows users to find information on soliders serving in these regiments during 1920-1922.

After the creation of the Irish Free State in 1922, the five regiments of the British Army recruited in southern Ireland – the Royal Irish Regiment, the Connaught Rangers, the Leinster Regiment, the Royal Munster Fusiliers and the Royal Dublin Fusiliers – were disbanded.

These books have now been digitized and for the first time, the records of nearly 12,000 soldiers can be searched online – by unit, place of birth, place of attestation, and year of attestation.

Researchers can see the original scans of each soldier’s entry and may find the recruit’s age and trade on enlistment, names of his next of kin, date of marriage, and the birth date of any children.

The entries also include his address and his rank and character upon discharge.

Britain – Military – Service Records

Over 4,000 records of personnel files and enlistment registers pertaining to the Scots Guards have been added to the British Army Service Records – Scots Guards 1799-1939 at Findmypast. The Scots Guards were one of the Foot Guard regiments of the British Army. They were originally formed to be the personal bodyguards of King Charles I of England and Scotland.

Each record includes a transcript and most include several black and white images of the actual records. The detail within each record may vary, but likely include:

  • First and last name
  • Birth year and birth place
  • Service number (i.e. regimental number)
  • Rank, Regiment, and Unit/Battalion
  • Residence

England – Cornwall – Church Records

This week at FamilySearch, more records have been added to the England, Cornwall Parish Registers, 1538-2010 collection. This collection contains church records from the counties of Devon and Cornwall, covering the years of 1538-2010. The collection also includes some material for nonconformist chapels which were filmed at the Cornwall Record Office at the time of filming Church of England registers. There are also some typed transcripts of Society of Friends marriages included for certain areas of the county.

Minister’s recorded all the baptisms (officially termed “christenings”), marriages, and burials which took place in his parish each year. These records are wonderful substitutes when the civil records can not be located.

The amount of information found on these christenings, marriages, and burials will vary over time, however, you might expect to find:

  • Names and ages of the recorded person
  • Parent’s names and residences
  • Witnesses names and information

England – Warwickshire – Church Records

Also at FamilySearch, new records have been added to the collection titled England, Warwickshire, Parish Registers, 1535-1984. This collection contains baptismal, banns, marriage, and burial records. Banns and marriage record entries appearing together are the most common in this collection. Approximately half the records in this collection are after 1837 entries, and less than twenty percent are pre-1753.

Australia – Queensland – Funeral Notices

Also at Findmypast, a new collection titled Queensland, Mackay, Funeral notices and funeral director records is now available. In this collection, you will find over 44,000 transcripts of records kept by the local firms Melrose & Fenwick and Mackay Funerals, as well as other funeral notices published in the Daily Mercury. Some of these funeral record indexes may provide your ancestor’s age at death and funeral date. The notices posted in the Daily Mercury cover the years of 1955-2012. These notices may also contain the birth year, burial date, and place of the deceased. These records may be particularly helpful if you have been unable to find a death record for your targeted ancestor.

New Zealand – Passenger Lists

New Zealand, Archives New Zealand, Passenger Lists, 1839-1973 is a helpful collection you will find at FamilySearch. This collection contains immigrant registers from New Zealand, covering the years of 1839 to 1973. The collection contains primarily New Zealand immigration passenger lists, although crew lists make up a significant portion as well. Approximately ten percent of the collection is a mixture of other travel-related documents, including goods manifests.

Some of these record images may be difficult to make out due to ink bleeding through or poor handwriting.

If you are able to find your ancestor listed on one of these passenger lists, you may also find the following information:

  • Full name of each passenger
  • Adult or child
  • Male or female
  • Country of emigration
  • Port of entry and date of arrival
  • Estimated age
  • Occupation
  • Total cost of passage and how paid
  • Name of ship and port of embarkation

United States – Pennsylvania – Baptisms, Burials, & Marriages

Pennsylvania baptisms 1709-1760 at Findmypast contain over 4,500 transcripts of original baptismal records kept by Christ Church in Philadelphia. Each record will likely list a name, birth year, baptism date and location, and the names of both parents, including the mother’s maiden name. Rembmer, baptismal records are a great substitute for a birth record.

If Pennsylvania is your targeted research area, you might also be interested in the collection titled Pennsylvania burials 1816-1849. This group of transcripts number over 1,000 and are the transcripts of the original death records from Susquehanna County. Most records will contain your ancestors name, date of death, and place of burial. They may also include important biographical details such as birth years, occupation, residence, names of parents, and name of spouse.

Lastly, over 17,000 new marriage records for Pennsylvania have been added to the United States Marriages at Findmypast. The entire collection now contains over 140 million records. Each record includes a transcript and an image of the original document that lists the marriage date, the names of the bride and groom, birthplace, birth date, age, residence as well as fathers’ and mothers’ names.

Ireland – Newspapers

Two new titles have been added to the over 177,000 articles in the Irish Newspapers collections at Findmypast. The Tyrone Courier and the Mayo Constitution, are now availabe to search. You will be amazed at the wonderful detail found when using newspapers for genealogy!

More Gems on Military Research

Check out the following helpful articles from our Genealogy Gems blog:

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Genealogy Just Got More Exciting! The 1940 Census is Here

It’s not every day that a new record group becomes available that will help you learn more about your family history. But yesterday, April 2, 2012 was one of those special days! Who will you be looking for?  Do you plan on volunteering to help with indexing?

National Archives Releases 1940 Census

Washington, D.C. . . Ever wondered where your family lived before WWII;  whether they owned their home; if they ever attended high school or college; if they were born in the United States, and if not, where?  Unlocking family mysteries and filling in the blanks about family lore became much easier today with the release of the 1940 census by the National Archives and Records Administration.  By law the information on individuals in the decennial censuses, which is mandated by the U.S. Constitution, is locked away for 72 years.

1940 census archives.com

In a 9 A.M. ceremony in the William G. McGowan Theater, Archivist of the United States David S. Ferriero declared the 1940 census officially open. This is the 16th decennial census, marking the 150th anniversary of the census.  Performing the first search, Mr. Ferriero said, “It is very exciting for families across America to have access to this wealth of material about the 1930s.  Many of us will be discovering relatives and older family members that we didn’t know we had, picking up threads of information that we thought were lost, and opening a window into the past that until now has been obscured We now have access to a street-level view of a country in the grips of a depression and on the brink of global war.”

Dr. Robert Groves, Director of the U.S. Census Bureau added: “Releasing census records is an odd event for us; we spend all our lives keeping the data we collect confidential. However, once every 10 years, we work with the National Archives and Records Administration to release 72-year old census records that illuminate our past. We know how valuable these records are to genealogists and think of their release as another way to serve the American public.”

For the first time, the National Archives is releasing an official decennial census online. The 3.9 million images constitute the largest collection of digital information ever released by the National Archives.  The free official website http://1940census.archives.gov/, hosted by Archives.com, includes a database of Americans living within the existing 48 states and 6 territories on April 2, 1940.

“There is a great synergy between the National Archives and Archives.com stemming from our passion to bring history online,” said John Spottiswood, Vice President, Business Development, Archives.com.  He continued, “It has been a tremendous opportunity to work with the National Archives to bring the 1940 census to millions of people, the most anticipated record collection in a decade. In a short period, we’ve built a robust website that allows people to browse, share, print, and download census images. We encourage all to visit 1940census.archives.gov to get started on their family history!”

The census database released today includes an index searchable at the enumeration district level.  An enumeration district is an area that a census taker could cover in two weeks in an urban area and one month in a rural area.

To make the search for information easier, the National Archives has joined a consortium of groups to create a name-based index.  Leading this effort, FamilySearch is recruiting as many as 300,000 volunteers to enter names into a central database.

Questions asked in the 1940 census, which reflect the dislocation of the Great Depression of the 1930s, will yield important information not only for family historians and genealogists, but also for demographers and social and economic historians.  We learn not only if a family owned or rented their home, but the value of their home or their monthly rent.  We can find lists of persons living in the home at the time of the census, their names, ages and relationship to the head of household.  For the first time the census asked where a family was living five years earlier: on April 1, 1935.  This information might offer clues to migration patterns caused by the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression.  For the first time in the census, a question relating to wages and salary was asked. Persons 14 years old and over were asked questions regarding their employment status:  Were they working for pay or profit in private or nonemergency government work during the week of March 24–March 30, 1940?  Were they seeking work? How many hours did they work during the last week of March? How many weeks did they work in 1939?  What was their occupation and in what industry?

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