Do you wish you knew more about your ancestor’s everyday life experience? Use social history for genealogy: to fill in the gaps between documented events.
Recently we heard from Barbara Starmans, a social historian, genealogist and longtime listener of three of Lisa’s podcasts. She wrote to share a new blog she started.
“While I’ve maintained my Out of My Tree Genealogy blog for many years, I’ve just launched The Social Historian, a longform story website featuring social history themed articles from across the centuries and around the world.”
Social history is about “the lives of ordinary people,” explains Barbara. “It is a view of history from the bottom up, rather than from the top down…. [It’s about] understanding…how people lived, worked and played in their daily lives. It is often the minutia of someone’s life that tells the story of who they were and what they believed in.”
“By exploring social history, you will be able to research all the circumstances of your ancestors’ lives and to build their life stories from the details you find.” Barbara send us a great list that we adapted and boiled down to a few core topics:
Life cycle: Birth and birthing customs, health and lifestyle practices, medicine, diseases and epidemics, mental health, mortality rates, death and burial customs.
Life at home: Clothing and fashion, food and cooking, housekeeping, land and property, alcohol and drug use.
Life at work: Economy (prices, cost of living and salaries), occupations, working conditions and the labor movement, businesses and employers, social welfare and relief.
Relationships: Morality, marriage and divorce, children and childhood, ethnicity and prejudices,
Community life: Celebrations and holidays, traditions, education, language and literacy, religion/church, faith, crime and punishment, societal unrest, leisure pursuits.
Game changers: War, emigration, inventions, transportation, communication, slavery and emancipation.
Barbara’s social history blog gives lots of great examples of her belief that “beyond just names and dates, those who came before us have a story to tell….By learning about their time and place and how they lived in it, you can add to your understanding of who they were.”
Resources
The Genealogist’s Google Toolbox by Lisa Louise Cooke is packed with strategies for learning about your ancestors’ lives online. There’s an entire chapter on using Google Scholar for genealogy!
Where can you look for social history online? I’d start with these sites:
We know you want to keep up-to-date with where Lisa will be giving her lectures and presentations. This fall, we have three upcoming events. Here all the details:
Lisa Louise Cooke speaking at the Columbus Ohio Metropolitan Library
Upcoming Events: Kansas
The Johnson County Genealogical Society will be holding an all day seminar on the 22nd of October. Lisa’s topics include:
How to Reopen and Work a Genealogical Cold Case
The Great Google Earth Game Show
Tap Into Your Inner Private Eye: Nine Strategies for Finding Living Relatives
Ways to Enhance Your Genealogy Research with Old Maps
What: Johnson County Genealogical Society 2016 Annual Seminar
When: Saturday, Oct. 22, 2016
Where: The Ritz Charles Event Center, 9000 West 137th Street, Overland Park, KS 66221
The event will take place at the Ritz Charles Event Center, 9000 West 137th St., Overland Park, Kansas. Registration is now open. To register online, click here.
Upcoming Event: Texas
Next on the list is the four day conference hosted by the Texas State Genealogical Society. This conference will take place in Dallas on October 27th through the 30th, and includes 35 speakers and an exhibit hall. Lisa will be giving two lectures:
Beginning Evernote for Genealogists
Using Google Earth for Genealogy
What: Texas State Genealogical Society Conference
When: Oct. 27 – 30, 2016
Where: Crowne Plaza Dallas Downtown
Online registration and payment is available through October 21st, but after that date you will need to register and pay in-person at the event, if space is still available.
Upcoming Events: Florida
Lisa’s final in-person speaking engagement for 2016 will be presenting as the Keynote Speaker for the 20th Annual Central Florida Family History Conference.
What: 20th Annual Central Florida Family History Conference
When: Saturday, November 12, 2016
Where: Olympia High School at 4301 S. Apopka Vineland Rd., Orlando, Florida.
You can register for the all-day conference online here. If you have a young person who is interested in genealogy, you’ll want to be aware that all students under the age of 18 are admitted free! Learn more details by visiting the Central Florida Family History Conference homepage.
Can’t Make it to an Upcoming Event?
A Premium Membership to Genealogy Gems will give you access to over 30 of Lisa Louise Cooke’s video classes. From Evernote to DNA, Cloud computing and advanced research techniques, you will find this a great resource for your learning and inspiration. For more information on becoming a Premium Member, click here.
Welcome to this step-by-step series for beginning genealogists—and more experienced ones who want to brush up or learn something new. I first ran this series in 2008-09. So many people have asked about it, I’m bringing it back in weekly segments.
Episode 29: Immigration and Naturalization Records for Family History, Part 1
In this podcast episode, one of my favorite experts talks about one of my favorite topics: immigration and naturalization records. Stephen Danko, PhD is a genealogy lecturer and a very popular blogger. In this episode he’s helping U.S. genealogists cross the pond through the use of immigration and naturalization records. He’ll talk to us about the challenges we’ll face in locating these records—and some documents you may not even know existed: certificates of arrival.
In the next episode, we’ll continue our conversation with a discussion of Departure Passenger Lists. Departure information from European ports is often available on microfilm at the Family History Library, on Ancestry.com or other websites. Some of the passenger steamship lines themselves kept departure lists, like the White Star Line or the Red Star Line, and these are on microfilm.
Here are my favorite tips from the episode:
Once you find an ancestral hometown, use Stephen Morse’s advanced search tools (see below) to look for others who arrived from the same place. This can help you identify other relatives, friends and others who part of a group or chain migration.
Usually we start with the most recent records and work backward. But when we look for immigration and naturalization records, look FIRST for immigration papers. THEN look for naturalization papers they may have filed later. You know they arrived—but not every immigrant naturalized, and their naturalization papers may have been filed in multiple places and may not be indexed.
Beginning in 1926, applicants for naturalization who arrived in 1906 or later had to be issued a certificate of arrival. These certificates were issued after their names were confirmed by the government on the original passenger lists. Between 1926 and 1943, information about certificates of arrival was noted on the original passenger lists.
The certificate of arrival information helps you in two ways:
The date tells you about when they applied for naturalization
The first part of the certificate number is the naturalization district (Northeast, Midwest, West coast, etc), to help you narrow down where to look.
Anything that helps you narrow down a search for naturalization records helps!
Updates and Links
About 70 million immigration and naturalization records have been indexed in recent years through an enormous community indexing project led by FamilySearch. Check out their site (below) to see what records are searchable now.
Are you using your iPad for genealogy? Or a tablet computer? You should! There are SO many family history-friendly apps out there! And the list of what you can do with your iPad or tablet just keeps getting longer.
That’s why I’ve updated my Premium Video, “Genealogy on the Go with iPad.” The iPad is built for hitting the road and is ideally suited for family history due to its sleek lightweight size, gorgeous graphics and myriad of apps and tools.
In this class I teach you “the tablet mindset,” the best apps for the tasks that genealogists want to accomplish, and my updated Top 10 list of iPad Tips and Tricks. By the end of class you will be able to turn your iPad into a family history powerhouse!
Genealogy Gems Premium members can watch my newly-updated video class (53 minutes) and download the updated handout. Click here to learn more about Premium membership.
Recently I heard from listener Tom, who is trying to document Civil War veterans from Washington state. “I am taking pictures of their headstones,” he says. “I currently use just a spray bottle and soft brush to wash away the 100 years plus of dirt so I can better see and photograph the inscriptions. Do you have a better way to clean and photograph or maybe rub the headstones?”
I don’t recommend tombstone rubbings because each time a genealogist does that it wears the headstone down just a little bit more, causing deterioration.
However, I have a better solution for how to read a faded tombstone. I created a free video based on an article I wrote for Family buy serc medication Tree Magazine. It’s called Grave Transformations and you can watch it for free on Family Tree Magazine’s YouTube channel or just watch below. The idea is that instead of touching the headstone at all, you can simply manipulate your photographic images of it instead! Watch the video and you’ll see those faded letters come back into view. It’s pretty cool!
Did you know the Genealogy Gems You Tube Channel has over 70 free videos on a wide variety of genealogical topics? Click to go to our channel’s home page. Be sure to click the SUBSCRIBE button on the channel so that you won’t miss our new videos when they are published!
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