You’ll Feel Lucky with Free Access to Irish Records for a Limited Time

You will all feel a little lucky this week with new and updated genealogical records for Ireland and several states across the U.S. Records from Nevada, Nebraska, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota are on the list. Updates to two of the Freedmen’s Bureau record collections will wrap up this week’s records you can dig into.
dig these new record collections

IRELAND – RECORDS, GUIDES, AND BOOKS

The New England Historical and Genealogical Society is offering access to their Irish resources for FREE for a limited time. So hurry before it ends on August 9th and see what luck you have digging up your Irish ancestors.

You will need to sign-up, but remember, it’s free. Once you have logged on, you will begin your search here.

Many Irish researchers have difficulty finding records because of the destruction of the Public Record Office in 1922. Not only can you browse the records available, but also the subject guides and books for Irish genealogy.

UNITED STATES – PENNSYLVANIA – NATURALIZATION RECORDS

The Chester County, Pennsylvania website has made their naturalization indexes available for the year span of 1798-1935. To search their indexes is free, but there is no name search field. You may have to scan several pages to find the record that may interest you. The database is also available to search from Ancestry.com and allows you to search by name, date of event, and place of origin.

The index of naturalizations include the name of the individual, name of native country, and a date. The original record could hold additional information. You can request a copy of the original record from their webpage. To learn more about that, click here.

UNITED STATES – NEVADA – MARRIAGE & DIVORCE

The most difficult records too find are often those that were created within the last 50 years. Due to the scarcity of recent records, we are pleased to see Ancestry has added a new database titled Nevada, Marriage Certificates, 2002-2015. You can search by name, date, location, and spouses name.

The digital image of the marriage records differs from year to year and location to location, but generally, you will find the couples’ names, ages, date and location of the marriage, and the person who officiated the wedding.

Nevada, Divorce Records, 1968-2015 has recently been updated on Ancestry as well. This index includes nearly half a million divorce records. You can use the index to locate the county the divorce took place, and then contact that county for the original records. You won’t find the reason for divorce in this index, but you can find the county of divorce and the divorce file number that will help locate the further records you want.

UNITED STATES – NEBRASKA – PASSENGER LISTS

A passenger list database for Omaha, Nebraska? Yep, but these are passenger and crew lists of air manifests between the years of 1958-1965. The collection is titled Omaha, Nebraska, Passenger and Crew Manifests of Airplanes, 1958-1965. If your Omaha relative did a lot of air travel, these records may be of interest to you. These records were were recorded on a variety of forms turned over to the Immigration and Naturalization Service. Some details included the name of the airline, type of aircraft, flight number, places of departure and arrival, dates of departure and arrival, full name, age, gender, physical description, military rank (if any), occupation, birthplace, citizen of what country, and residence. For military transports, you may even find the next of kin, relationships, and addresses. Later, manifests may include visa or passport numbers.

UNITED STATES – MINNESOTA – PASSENGER LISTS

The same is true in this database, Minnesota, Passenger and Crew Lists, 1957-1962 at Ancestry. This collection includes both air travel and ships coming into Minnesota ports. The original records were originally digitized by the National Archives and Records Administration. Information you may collect from these digital images include:

  • Name
  • Age
  • Gender
  • Ethnicity, nationality or last country of permanent residence
  • Destination
  • Arrival date
  • Port of arrival
  • Port of departure
  • Ship name

UNITED STATES – GEORGIA – BONDS AND LICENSES

Ancestry has added the Savannah, Georgia, Licenses and Bonds, 1837-1909 database this week. You will find digital images of records from the City of Savannah’s Clerk of Council relating to people and businesses. These records usually include the name of person’s name, occupation, name of business, record date, record place, and subject.

UNITED STATES – FREEDMEN RECORDS

FamilySearch has updated two of their existing collections within the Freedmen Bureau Records. The United States, Freedmen’s Bureau Ration Records,1865-1872 and the United States, Freedmen’s Bureau, Records of the Superintendent of Education and of the Division of Education, 1865-1872 have been able to be browsed for some time. While not all the records have been indexed by name for easy searching, many have. You will want to first run a search by your targeted name. You can browse all the digitized images, but it won’t be easy. The ration records are not filed by county, but by film number. However, if you want to browse the collection of education records, they are searchable by state, then date.

MORE GEMS ON IRISH GENEALOGY

Beginning Irish Genealogy: Tips and FREE RecordsIrish censuses Irish genealogy Irish family history

A Comprehensive Way to Learn How to Research Irish Genealogy

Irish Genealogy: Find Your Poor Ancestors in Ireland

Family History Episode 21 – RootsMagic and Irish Genealogy Research

 

Listen to the Family History: Genealogy Made Easy podcast by Lisa Louise Cooke. It’s a great series for learning the research ropes and well as refreshing your skills.

Originally published 2009. Republished March 4, 2014

https://lisalouisecooke.com/familyhistorypodcast/audio/fh21.mp3

Download the Show Notes for this Episode

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 2008-2009. So many people have asked about it, I’m bringing it back in weekly segments.

Episode 21: RootsMagic and Irish Genealogy

Lacey Cooke guest-hosts this double-feature episode on two big topics in family history: RootsMagic genealogy software and how to get started in Irish research.

In the first segment you’ll from Bruce Buzbee, president and founder of RootsMagic Genealogy Software. He talks about his industry-leading software, RootsMagic, which you can try in basic form for free (RootsMagic Essentials) or purchase with all the bells and whistles (totally worth it!) for $29.95.

And in our second segment you’ll hear from Judith Wight. This is a very timely conversation since we are soon to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day and Judith is a professional genealogist whose specialty (and personal passion) is Irish research.  This is your chance to learn from a master about how to find those elusive Irish ancestors! Listen for her tips on finding Church of Ireland records, civil registrations, estate records and how history helps us understand gaps in the records.

More Irish Research Links!

Irish Genealogy

RootsIreland

 

 

 

We Dig These Gems! New Genealogy Records Online

Each week we scour announcements of new genealogy records online and share those we think our readers most want to know about. This week, it’s all about Irish and US records!

IRELAND CENSUS RECORDS. MyHeritage.com has added to its site “over 8.7 million Irish census records from the 1901 and 1911 censuses [which record every household member]. Both collections are completely free and contain images.”

IRELAND PARISH RECORDS. Findmypast.com subscribers now have access to an exclusive index to the National Library of Ireland’s free online collection of digitized-but-not-indexed registers from 1000 parishes, with over 10 million baptisms and marriages. According to a FMP press release, “This is the first time that the collection has been indexed with the images linked online, making the search much easier and the records more accessible. As a result, family historians will now be able to make all important links between generations with the baptism records and between families with the marriage registers. These essential records cover the entire island of Ireland, both Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.”

(US) DUTCH REFORMED CHURCH RECORDS. Ancestry.com has added a new collection of Dutch Reformed Church records (1701-1995)  from 14 states and has updated a separate but similar collection of Dutch Reformed Records (1639-1989).

US MARRIAGES. Findmypast has just released an enormous collection of marriage records from across the United States. “Containing over 450 million names from 1650 to 2010…the US Marriages collection will, when complete, include over 100 million records, 60% of which have never been published online before.” A third of the data (about 33 million names) are already online.

More Irish Research Gems

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!

National Archives Citizen Archivist Program: Calling all Genealogy Volunteers!

The National Archives Citizen Archivist program is recruiting help to tag, transcribe, and comment on records in the U.S. National Archives catalog. This is a great way for genealogy volunteers to help others discover their family history in the National Archives and learn for themselves what’s there.

National Archives Citizen Archivist

The National Archives Citizen Archivist Program

Have you heard? The U.S. National Archives is looking for Citizen Archivists! What is a Citizen Archivist, you ask? A Citizen Archivist is a virtual volunteer that helps the U.S. National Archives increase the online access to their historical records. This is done by crowdsourcing metadata about their records through tagging, transcribing, and adding comments to the U.S. National Archives catalog.

As a Citizen Archivist, you will be volunteering your time to make historical and genealogical records more accessible to the general researching public to help them with their research. This could include genealogists, historians, writers, and other researchers that will benefit from your volunteer work. And who knows, maybe you will find records that belong to your ancestors!

How to Get Started as a National Archives Citizen Archivist

First, you will need to go to the “Citizen Archivist Dashboard” at the U.S. National Archives website. Once there, you will need to register to be a Citizen Archivist (see the screenshot on the right for where to click). Registration is free but you do need this account to be able to contribute to the project. Once you are registered and logged in, you can then navigate to the catalog and choose records from the curated missions.

The “missions” are groups of records that need transcribing or tagging to help the records be more accessible to researchers working online. Some of the missions that are needing transcribing are “Fugitive Slave Case Files,” “Native American Reservations,” and “The Truman-Churchill Telegrams,” just to name a few. New missions are added to the site regularly, so be sure to check back often to see what is new that you would like to work on.

Who Can Contribute as a Citizen Archivist?

National Archives Citizen ArchivistAnyone who has a computer and the willingness to volunteer time to this project can contribute. You do not need to commit to any amount of time; you can work at your own pace as you have the extra time. There is even a support community available through the “History Hub” that can answer your questions as you work through the records. (You can click on that at the bottom of the list shown in the screenshot above.)

So, if you have some time on your hands and want to help make historical and genealogical records more accessible online, why not become a Citizen Archivist today? Click here to get started–or click below to read more ideas about how to give back to the genealogy community.

The Unclaimed Persons Project

Help Curate Holocaust-Era Newspaper Articles

Transcribe GPS Gravestone Images at BillionGraves

 

 

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