by Lisa Cooke | Apr 22, 2016 | 01 What's New, Records & databases
Here’s our weekly roundup of new genealogy records online. This week: Great Britain, Ireland, Sweden, the U.S. and Australia.
AUSTRALIA LAND. Land grant deeds for Tasmania, Australia (1804-1935) are now searchable on Ancestry.com. The format and content varies: sometimes you’ll find the name, location, description, date, payment amount and witnesses. These records come from the Tasmanian Archive and Heritage Office.
AUSTRALIA NEWSPAPERS. Over 700 newspapers digitized by the National Library of Australia (NLA) are now searchable at MyHeritage.com. This collection is also searchable at Trove, the digital newspaper library for the NLA. The benefit to having this collection at MyHeritage.com is that the site uses its Record Match technology to automatically search the newspapers for individuals on your tree, matching on several parameters to improve search results.
AUSTRALIA WWII. A new index to Australia World War II military service records (1939-1945) is available on Ancestry.com. It covers the Australian Army, Royal Australian Navy and Royal Australian Air Force. Records “commonly contain biographical information supplied on enlistment, as well as important details on a person’s service.” See info on ordering the original records from the National Archives of Australia in the Ancestry.com collection description.
GREAT BRITAIN – DIRECTORIES, ALMANACS. Ninety new volumes of directories and atlases (late 1800s and early 1900s) have been added to Findmypast’s online collection, “Great Britain, Directories & Almanacs.” According to the collection description, “Inside you will find the names of prominent people, tradesmen, people who held office, business owners and local civil servants. Discover your ancestor’s address and occupation or explore the history of your home address. The almanacs and directories stretch across three centuries.”
IRELAND – HISTORICAL. A new historical collection relating to the Easter Island uprising is available on Findmypast.com. This collection is free to search until April 27, 2016. According to a company rep, the database draws on “75,000 records that tell the story of one of the most difficult periods in 20th century Irish history. These records, once classified, include eye witness accounts, interviews with civilians and reports of the trials of the leaders of the Rising and their sentences of execution. The release also includes 25,000 search and raid records, giving detailed insights into how the Irish people of the period lived under martial law.”
SWEDEN EMIGRATION. Ancestry.com has posted a new database with over 1.3 million entries of emigrants listed in church books, 1783-1991. That represents about 75% of emigrants, of people leaving the country, during that time span. The records and index are in Swedish. This database was previously available in CD format under the name “Emibas.”
U.S. WILLS. Ancestry.com’s enormous collection of U.S. wills and probate records has been updated for the following states: Ohio, Alabama, New York, New Jersey, Arkansas and Georgia.
Thank you for sharing this list with every genealogist you know who might be interested! We love sharing good news about new genealogy records online.
by Lisa Cooke | Nov 4, 2013 | 01 What's New, Newspaper
Does your local library, historical or genealogical society have a newspaper collection to share? Let the NEH help!
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is accepting proposals from institutions hoping to participate in the the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP). This program creates “a national, digital resource of historically significant newspapers published between 1836 and 1922 in U.S. states and territories.” Guidelines for 2014 are now available and proposals must be submitted by January 15, 2014.
According to the press release, “Each award supports a 2-year project to digitally convert 100,000 newspaper pages from that state’s collections, primarily from microfilm negative. Titles may be printed in Danish, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish or Swedish. The program provides access to this resource through the Chronicling America web site hosted by the Library of Congress. The site currently includes more than 6.6 million newspaper pages in English, French, German, and Spanish, from more than 1100 titles digitized by institutions in 30 states.”
For more program information, please visit the NEH’s program page or this page for technical information from the Library of Congress. Click here to see what institutions have participated.
I can’t say enough good things about this and other initiatives to support more digitized newspapers online. My book How to Find Your Family History in Newspapers will provide you with more about using these awesome resources to flesh out your family’s story, a tried and true research process, and loads of resources. Check it out in paperback or pdf e-book!
by Lisa Cooke | Oct 28, 2016 | 01 What's New
This week, we set sail to the islands with new and updated genealogical records for Hawaiian and Irish genealogy. Passenger lists and denization records shine a light on ancestors who walked the shores of beautiful Hawaii and previously classified records are revealed in the Easter Rising collections for Ireland. Also this week, the Canadian Census for 1901, and records for Maine, Kentucky, and the country of Benin.
United States – Hawaii – Passenger Lists
This week at Ancestry, a new collection titled Hawaii, Passenger Lists, 1843-1898 is now available. It is searchable by name, birth, date of arrival, or date of departure. Specifically, this database includes passenger lists for ships arriving at and departing from ports in Hawaii between 1843 and 1898. This is both an index and a collection of digital images. Information may include a given and surname, age, gender, nationality or last place of residence, destination, ship name, and the date and place of departure or arrival. The names found in the index are linked to actual images of the manifests, digitized from originals at the Hawaii State Archives.
United States – Hawaii – Denization Records
Another new collection at Ancestry is the Hawaii, Denization Records, for 1846-1849, 1883-1898. Denization is the process used to grant a status similar to permanent residency and gave rights to denizens, such as the right to own land. These records are actually applications made by handwritten letters before 1895 and pre-printed application forms after that.
Information will vary, but may include:
- Name
- Age
- Occupation
- Place of origin
- Arrival date
- Record date
- Current residence
United States – Hawaii – Certificates of Identification
Lastly, Ancestry’s new collection Hawaii, Certificates of Identification for Chinese Arrivals, 1895-1898 may help find those connections back to mainland China.
This collection of certificates of identification for Chinese arrivals may include:
- Name
- Date of arrival
- Ship
- Permit number
- Photograph locator
Note: Photographs are not available in this collection. Photographs of arrivals were taken and kept in a Deposit Book. You can obtain copies of these photographs from the Hawaii State Archives using the locator information that is provided on each certificate.
Ireland – Easter Rising Collection
Findmypast has added over 48,000 additional records to their Easter Rising & Ireland Under Martial Law 1916-1921 collection. If you are not familiar with the Easter Rising, it took place on Easter Monday, April 24, 1916. A group of Irish nationalists announced the establishment of the Irish Republic and staged a rebellion against the British government in Ireland.
These were once classified records, but have now been digitized and can be browsed. These unique records document the struggles of life under martial law in Ireland and also contain details of both soldiers and civilians who participated or were affected by the Easter Rising of April 1916.
The collection contains the names of the hundreds of people who were detained and interned in prisons across Ireland, England, and Wales. Further, the internment files contain reports on individual detainees which record their charges, trial, and sentence as well as personal letters from prisoners or their relatives testifying to their innocence. Locating an ancestor in this collection would be a very special find.
Canada – Census
Findmypast has just added the Canada Census for 1901. It contains over 5.1 million records. The 1901 census was the first Canadian census to ask questions about religion, birthplace, citizenship, and immigration.
Each record includes a transcript and link to the digital image of the original census form. These census records will also list the name, date of birth, place of birth, marital status, relationship to head of household, race or tribe, immigration year, and naturalization year of each household member.
United States – Maine – Military
FamilySearch has added two new collections this week and one of them is Maine, World War I Draft Registration Index, 1917-1919. I don’t know if we have mentioned lately, but FamilySearch.org is free for everyone. This new collection for Maine is just one of hundreds available for genealogy records.
Records found in this collection generally conta
in the following information:
- Name
- Place and date of birth
- Marital Status
- Residence
- Nationality and race
- Occupation
- Relatives’ names
United States – Kentucky – Marriages
This past summer, the Special Collections Research Center at University of Kentucky Libraries and the Fayette County Clerk’s Office developed a pilot project that will ultimately provide online access to Colored Marriage Indexes between the years of 1866-1882 and 1958-1968. The purpose of the project is to provide researchers with greater online access to these documents pertaining to African Americans in Kentucky.
The four volumes of the Colored Marriage Indexes are used to locate early marriage bonds of African Americans in Lexington, Kentucky. These indexes contain the name of each bride and groom and the page number of the marriage bond held at the Fayette County Clerk’s Office.
The digitized versions of the indexes are now freely available to the public on ExploreUK, UK’s digital library. The typed indexes have been run through optical character recognition (OCR) and are searchable.
Africa – Benin – Deaths
Death records may contain the following information:
