by Lisa Cooke | Jun 10, 2016 | 01 What's New, Records & databases
Here’s this week’s roundup of new genealogy records online: California, England, Australia, and Italy.
UNITED STATES – CALIFORNIA. Ancestry.com has added a new index titled California, Chinese Arrival Case Files Index, 1884-1940. This index includes passenger and crew lists of ships and airplanes arriving in California. Information you may find in these records are: name of passenger, ship name, port of arrival and in some cases, age, gender, birth date, birth place, and port of departure.
UNITED STATES – MILITARY. United States WWII Prisoner of War records for 1942-1947 have just been added to TheGenealogist.com in time for the anniversary of D-Day. These records inlcude U.S. military and Allies who were prisoners of war and internees. Some prisoners of both Germany and Japan are found in this collection. Records include the prisoners name, status, rank, service number, POW camp, and more valuable data.
ENGLAND – DEVON – PRISON RECORDS. Plymouth Prison Records for 1832-1919 at Findmypast include male and female prisoner records and prison officer records for Plymouth Prison in Devon. Recorded information includes name, birth date, offense, sentencing, last residence, residence of relative, physical description, and much more valuable data.
AUSTRALIA – QUEENSLAND – DEATH RECORDS. Findmypast subscribers can now conveniently search Queensland, Australia Death Records for 1829-1964 on Findmypast. These indexed records include: name, registration year, death date, father’s first and last name, mother’s first name, and sometimes her maiden name. (Birth, marriage and death indexes for Queensland are online for free at the State Library of Queensland website. Their death index goes from 1829-1986.)
ITALY – ROMA – CIVIL REGISTRATION. The Italian Civil Registration between the years of 1863-1930 has been newly added to FamilySearch.org. It is not yet indexed, but able to be browsed. Don’t be intimidated by its more than 4 million digitized images! They have broken down the database to be easily browsed by location and year. Marriage banns and residency records are just a two of things covered in this database.
Don’t miss our newest free Genealogy Gems Podcast #192 for more tips and strategies to help you in your genealogy journey. Pop on over and listen now – we’d love to have you!
by Lisa Cooke | Oct 26, 2016 | 01 What's New, Amish & Mennonite |
Anabaptist genealogy records include Amish, German Baptist and Mennonite ancestors. In a past post titled “Amish Genealogy Revealed,” we shared tips for searching out your Amish family tree. Here are more helpful resources submitted by our wonderful readers that you won’t want to miss.
What is an Anabaptist?
The term Anabaptist refers to those religions who reject infant baptism in favor of a believer’s baptism. Amish, Mennonite, and German Baptists fall into the category of Anabaptists.
Anabaptist religions often subscribe to more conservative views and dress. Their families are very much intertwined with their religion, making the study of their history rich in detail and customs.
Anabaptist Genealogy Records: More Amish and Mennonite Family History Resources
We shared in our “Amish Genealogy Revealed,” the resources of the Amish newspaper, The Budget, the Amish church directories, and newsletters and books on Amish families. Many thanks to reader Loren Johns for sharing yet another amazing resource. Loren shared:
As someone who has a couple of hundred thousand Amish in my genealogical database, I enjoyed reading your focus on Amish genealogy. Somewhat surprised to see it!
You did not mention the
most important source for Amish genealogy. It is the
Swiss Anabaptist Genealogical Association, of which I am the secretary. This is a rather informal non-profit association of amateur genealogists interested in Amish and Mennonite genealogy who share their research with each other and with others interested in it, and make it available online.
Further, Mr. Johns shares that the Swiss Anabaptist Genealogical Association (SAGA) maintains a large database of un-merged databases that can be searched simultaneously. He gives an example:
If I search for an Amos J. Whetstone (an Amish name,) I get 17 hits, to three separate men. Amos J. Whetstone (1903-1984) appears in 6 different databases; Amos J. Whetstone (1919-2003) appears in 4 databases; and Amos J. Whetstone (1945- ) appears in 7 databases … so the 17 hits actually represent three men.
This amazing SAGA database contains over 5,000,000 names, though many of those are duplicates. You can imagine the value of such a large database for this specific group. If you are interested in joining SAGA and gaining access to the database, see the membership page
here.
Lastly, Mr. Johns leaves us with this fine tip!
A most important book on Amish genealogy is Amish and Amish Mennonite Genealogies by Hugh Gingerich and Rachel Kreider. It is sometimes called the Amish genealogy “Bible.” It traces all of the Amish immigrant ancestors (144 different surnames) and their families to 1850, where it had to stop lest it explode into an encyclopedia.
Anabaptist Genealogy Records: Resources for the German Baptist or The Old German Baptist Brethren
George Funderburg and family were members of the German Baptist faith.
Another group of Anabaptist’s are the German Baptist, also known as the Old German Baptist Brethren. Here in Ohio, we sometimes refer a particular break-off by their nickname, Dunkards. The Dunkards were given this nickname for their belief in baptism by immersion.
It is my own family ancestors who were among the Dunkards. Luckily, we have a wonderful archive in Brookville, Ohio called Brethren Heritage Center. The Brethren bodies involved with the Brethren Heritage Center are:
- Church of the Brethren
- Conservative Grace Brethren International
- Dunkard Brethren
- Fellowship of Grace Brethren Churches
- German Baptist Brethren
- Old Brethren
- Old Brethren German Baptist
- Old German Baptist Brethren
- Old German Baptist Brethren-New Conference
- Old Order German Baptist
- The Brethren Church
This heritage center offers many books and collections including family histories, maps, letters, diaries, census records, and birth records. In particular, the heritage center website also has a large list of helpful links to begin researching your Brethren ancestors. To see the list of links, click here.
Anabaptist Genealogy Records – Share Your Knowledge
If you have Anabaptist heritage, you may be aware of additional Anabaptist genealogy records that we have not mentioned. We would be delighted if you would share that information with our Genealogy Gems community in the comments below. We look to you to be an inspiration and teacher to us here at The Genealogy Gems Podcast, and you always come through. Thank you!
by Lisa Cooke | Feb 16, 2014 | 01 What's New, Adoption, Beginner, History
Mrs. Ella Watson, a government charwoman, with three grandchildren and her adopted daughter [reflected in the mirror]. Image from The Gordon Parks Archives in the Library of Congress.
Most of us probably have adoptees somewhere on our family trees. Do you know how to research them? It’s not the same as the adoption research people do nowadays to find their birth parents.
Formal, legal adoption wasn’t common in the U.S. until the late 1800s. (State adoption laws didn’t even exist until after Massachusetts passed the first one in 1851.) Before that, if mom and dad couldn’t take care of a child, a relative, neighbor or friend took that child in, or the child was sent to a county orphanage or poor home. In even earlier days, orphaned or poverty-stricken children were also sold by their towns into indentures.
The Adoption History Project at the University of Oregon has a great timeline of adoption history in the U.S. Check it out to see what was going on when your family member was adopted.
To learn more about adoption and genealogy research, check out these links:
FamilySearch Wiki U.S. Adoption Research
All About Adoption Research by Maureen Taylor
RootsWeb’s Guide to Tracing Family Trees: Adoption
by Lisa Cooke | Sep 2, 2018
PC: Subscribe in iTunes
1. Copy the following address
itpc://lisalouisecooke.com/Premium_Feed/feed.xml
2. Open iTunes
3. From the menu select FILE and then SUBSCRIBE TO PODCAST
4. Paste the address into the box and click OK
5. You will be prompted to enter your Premium membership username (not your email address) and password
6. The feed will launch in your Podcast Library and the most current episode will download. You may be prompted a second time to enter your username and password in order to download episodes.
7. Click the GET ALL button to download all of the available episodes.
by Lisa Cooke | Jan 14, 2017 | 01 What's New, Newspaper
Newspapers can fill in the gaps to the long-lost stories of your ancestors. These tips will help you narrow your search in digitized WWII newspapers for experiences directly relating to the war and to the lives of your ancestors.
In this previous post, I provided step-by-step tips for locating WWII-era newspapers. Those tips helped you locate the actual newspapers. In this post, I’ve got 7 tips for to help you focus on narrowing down a large list of results in search of war-related family stories.
Tip 1: Try Various Name Combinations in WWII Newpapers
If you are keyword searching in digitized newspapers, remember to try different name combinations. A man may be identified by just his first initial and last name. During the 1940s, a woman might be referred to as “Mrs. Ted Johnson” instead of Barbara Johnson.
Tip 2: Search for Addresses
You might find a family identified as “the Johnson’s of 132 Cherry Lane,” so try using street addresses in your searches, remembering that “Lane” might be spelled out or abbreviated. You may also find the family listed by their town or township. An example of this might be “the Johnson’s of Brown township,” or “the Johnson’s of Conover.”
Tip 3: Expand Your Search to Events and Organizations
Use any search terms you already know about for your family in World War II: a military unit, a battle or local service organization, or a war effort project that the folks back home may have helped out with. Do family stories mention rationing, air raid drills, bomb shelters, blackout rules, or one of the women getting a job at a certain factory? All these make excellent search terms.
Tip 4: Take Time to Browse
Browsing the pages will give you a sense of how the war affected everyday life at home. You may find recipes that make the most of ration allowances and reminders about blackout rules and curfews. You may even find tips on how to conserve gasoline or how to be fashionable without silk stockings!
Almost every news item on the front page of this Jan 8, 1943 issue of the Euclid News Journal (OH) has to do with the war. It’s easy to see how the war affected everyday life of this small Ohio city on the shores of Lake Erie. Issues of this paper are searchable at the Euclid Public Library website (click image to view more issues.)
Tip 5: Be Aware of Newspaper Stoppages
If your family lived in an area that came under attack or was occupied, the local newspapers may have stopped printing. In that case, search other papers to see if they reported what was going on in your ancestor’s town.
Tip 6: Keep an Eye on the Homefront
For relatives who served in the military, watch for updates in local papers about how they were faring on the fronts during the war. Watch for casualty lists of the wounded, dead, and missing. Here’s something cool: newspapers also printed maps showing the progress of the war on the various fronts.
Tip 7: History Provides Hints
If you’re looking for reports about soldiers’ bodies returning home and funeral services, it will help to know that according to an article in The Wall Street Journal, the War Department didn’t start bringing back remains until the fall of 1947 because of the huge logistical challenges involved. Over 93,000 American soldiers who died in World War II are buried overseas in one of the American Battle Monuments Commission cemeteries.
Making the Most of Newspapers for Family History
Find more tips like these in my book, How to Find Your Family History in Newspapers. You’ll find step-by-step instructions for my foolproof research process, along with everything you need for success: worksheets and checklists, tons of free online resources (and websites worth paying a few bucks for), a massive amount of location-specific websites (U.S. and international)–and a case study that puts it all to the test!