A Wide Range of New and Updated Genealogy Records

by Lisa Cooke | Nov 3, 2019 | 01 What's New, Records & databases

The newest genealogy records to hit the Internet are exciting because of the wide range subjects they cover. Peruse these carefully because there just may be a genealogy gem waiting just for you!

New and Updated Free Records from FamilySearch

The newest additions to the FamilySearch collections are global in their reach, and best of all they are free. Here’s the latest:

American Samoa
American Samoa, Vital Records, 1850-1972
2,874 Added indexed records to an existing collection

Argentina
Argentina, Salta, Catholic Church Records, 1634-1972
98,907 Added indexed records to an existing collection

Brazil
Brazil, Santa Catarina, Civil Registration, 1850-1999
4,072 Added indexed records to an existing collection

Canada
Manitoba Church Records, 1800-1959
58 Added indexed records to an existing collection

Chile
Chile, Catholic Church Records, 1710-1928
2,670 Added indexed records to an existing collection

Colombia
Colombia, Bogotá, Burial Permits, 1960-1991
18,221 Added indexed records to an existing collection

England
England, Oxfordshire Parish Registers 1538-1904
826 New indexed records collection

England, Yorkshire Marriage Bonds and Allegations, 1613-1887
960 New indexed records collection

England, Bedfordshire Parish Registers, 1538-1983
376,993 New indexed records collection

England, Devon Bishop’s Transcripts, 1558-1887
33,158 Added indexed records to an existing collection

England, Warwickshire, Parish Registers, 1535-1963
20,994 Added images to an existing collection

Finland
Finland, Tax Lists, 1809-1915
73,007 Added indexed records to an existing collection

France
France, Vienne, Census, 1876
20,638 Added indexed records to an existing collection

Peru
Peru, Cemetery Records, 1912-2013
565 Added indexed records to an existing collection

Peru, Huánuco, Civil Registration, 1889-1997
6,480 Added indexed records to an existing collection

Peru, Junín, Civil Registration, 1881-2005
365 Added indexed records to an existing collection

Peru, Prelature of Yauyos-Cañete-Huarochirí, Catholic Church Records, 1665-2018
680 New indexed records collection

United States

Alabama Deaths, 1908-1974
697 Added indexed records to an existing collection

Alabama, County Birth Registers, 1881-1930
6,638 Added indexed records to an existing collection

Alabama, Friends of Magnolia Cemetery, Funeral Books, 1911-1965
6,606 Added indexed records to an existing collection

California, Lassen County, State Board of Health, Burial Permits, 1931-1988
800 Added indexed records to an existing collection

Georgia, County Delayed Birth and Death Records, 1870-1960
7687 Added indexed records to an existing collection

Hawaii, Board of Health, Marriage Record Indexes, 1909-1989
10,729 Added indexed records to an existing collection

Illinois, Stark County Circuit Court, Stark County Naturalization Records
560 New indexed records collection

Louisiana, New Orleans, Interment Registers, 1836-1972
12,755 Added indexed records to an existing collection

Louisiana, Orleans Parish, Birth Records, 1819-1906
30,826 Added indexed records to an existing collection

Mississippi, Adams County, Natchez Death Index, 1835-1905
168 Added indexed records to an existing collection

Missouri, County Marriage, Naturalization, and Court Records, 1800-1991
5,678 Added indexed records to an existing collection

Nebraska, Grand Army of the Republic, Burial Records, 1861-1948
364 Added indexed records to an existing collection

North Carolina, Wake County, Death Records, 1900-1909
2,537 Added indexed records to an existing collection

South Carolina, Charleston County, Charleston, Birth Registers, 1901-1926
601 Added indexed records to an existing collection

Tennessee, Board of Health, Shelby County, Memphis Death Records, 1848-1913
1,061 New indexed records collection

Texas, Harrison County Delayed Birth Records, 1860-1933
196 Added indexed records to an existing collection

United States, GenealogyBank Historical Newspaper Obituaries, 1815-2011
98,269 Added indexed records to an existing collection

United States, Iowa Naturalization Records, 1859-1990
55,114 New indexed records collection

United States, Louisiana, Passenger Departures from New Orleans, 1867-1871
5,123 New indexed records collection

United States Census (Slave Schedule), 1860
4,429,408 Added indexed records to an existing collection

Virginia, Slave Birth Index, 1853-1866
13,135 Added indexed records to an existing collection

Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Pilgrim’s Rest Cemetery, Interment Records, 1880-1979
300 Added indexed records to an existing collection

Wales, Anglesey, Parish Registers, 1538-1912
281,418 Added indexed records and images to an existing collection

The Latest from Ancestry.com

Obituaries are a staple of genealogical research. Here’s the latest from the folks at Ancestry:

“Ancestry® updated its collection of US obituaries by combing through millions of digital obituaries to key names, relationships and other facts so members can now easily search these records with just one click.

This initiative first announced at RootsTech uses new sophisticated artificial intelligence technology.

The new Newspapers.com Obituary Collection and the upgraded Ancestry U.S. Obituary Collection will expand Ancestry’s unparalleled historical record collections that enable people around the world to uncover their family history, spark their own journey of discovery and inspire meaningful conversations.

Obituary collections include over 262 million worldwide obituaries and death announcements with almost 1 billionsearchable family members
US Obituary Collection, 1930-Current search is the world’s largest, searchable digital archive, now includes 4x more searchable family members
Newspapers.com Obituary Index includes facts from nearly 200 millionNewspapers.com obituaries
Newspapers.com is the largest online newspaper archive, with over 525+ million pages of historical newspapers, including obituaries, from thousands of printed newspapers across the United States and beyond.

Members with an Ancestry All Access or Newspapers.com Basic subscription have a 1-click option to view the full obituary on Newspapers.com. Some images may require a Publisher Extra subscription as certain newspapers require additional licenses to view their content.”

Visit Ancestry here.

Visit Newspaper.com here.

Other Unique Collections Updated

From the State Archives of North Carolina blog comes a very interesting addition ton an existing Civil War digital collection:

A selection of 12 volumes from the Soldiers’ Home Association have been added to the Civil War digital collection. These volumes document the history of medical care for veterans and the elderly around the turn of the 19^th century.”

“These volumes provide recorded information on veterans’ military service, illnesses or injuries that might not have been recorded elsewhere. Some volumes include patients’ requests for their burial and funeral wishes. The volumes included are listed below:

Roll Book, 1890-1911

Record of Inmates, 1896-1924

Record of Inmates, 1925-1936

Record of Clothing Issued, 1926-1934

Hospital Patients, 1908-1916

Hospital Register, 1911-1919

Hospital Register, 1925-1930

Hospital Night Orders, 1918-1919

Hospital Night Orders, 1919

Hospital Night Orders, 1924

Hospital Night Orders, 1928-1929″

New British Genealogy Records

1801 Census

Discover your Scouse ancestor’s address, occupation and who they were living with in 1801. Findmypast now offers over 13,000 new and exclusive early census records. Don’t miss the images because they provide additional information about your ancestor’s abode.

The 1801 census was the first official census to be carried out in Britain. It estimated the population of England and Wales to be 8.9 million, and that of Scotland to be 1.6 million.

The 1801 census comprised two parts:

the first was related to the number of people, their occupations, and numbers of families and houses.
The second was a collection of the numbers of baptisms, marriages and burials, thus providing an indication of the rate at which the population was increasing or decreasing.

Click the following link to search the collection: 1801 Lancashire, Liverpool Census

Cornwall Burials

Over 75,000 new records covering 52 parishes across the Cornish peninsula are now available to search at Findmypast.

These transcripts reveal 5 key pieces of information:

when your ancestor was buried
where your ancestor was buried
their age at death,
residence
and relatives’ names.

Click here to search the Cornwall Burials collection.

Kent Burials

And finally, Findmypast has added 12,000 new records to their collection last week. The majority of these new additions cover Swanscombe municipal cemetery and will reveal where and when your ancestor was buried as well as the names of their spouse and father. Click here to search the Kent Burial records.

New Records Coming Soon

Recently announced on the University of Georgia website:

“Through a new partnership with Google, about 120,000 of the Libraries’ 4.5 million volumes will be digitized, allowing further access to literary, historic, scientific and reference books and journals through UGA’s library catalog as well as one of the largest digital book collections in the world.”

“In addition to more modern materials that will be available for preview online, other examples of volumes available in full text include shipping registers from as far back as 1764 and Atlanta city directories dating back to 1870.

The project also advances a longstanding effort to provide digital access to state and federal government publications, and free digital access will be available to works by Balzac, Sir Francis Bacon, Robert Louis Stevenson, Thomas Hardy and other historically significant authors, thanks to UGA Libraries.”

Read the full post here.

What Did You Discover this Week?

Did one of these new and updated digital genealogy collections deliver what you’ve been waiting for? Please share your discovering in the Comments below. And click here to subscribe to the free Genealogy Gems newsletter to receive all the latest in new and updated genealogy records for your family history.

Trove: Australia Digitized Newspapers and More

by Lisa Cooke | Apr 24, 2016 | 01 What's New, Australian, Digital Archives, Libraries, Maps, Newspaper

This free video (below) introduces Trove, The National Library of Australia’s online catalog and digital archive for all things Australian.

If you have roots in Australia, I hope you are using Trove. When I first covered it in the Genealogy Gems podcast a while back, it was a fairly new resource and I shared how it is chock full of 76 million digitized newspaper articles. Now that number exceeds 200 million records! The site has expanded its other content, too. If you haven’t looked for your Aussie roots on Trove recently, you’re really missing out!

Trove helps you find and use resources relating to Australia. It’s more than a search engine. Trove brings together content from libraries, museums, archives and other research organisations and gives you tools to explore and build.

Trove is many things: a community, a set of services, an aggregation of metadata, and a growing repository of fulltext digital resources.

Best of all, Trove is yours, created and maintained by the National Library of Australia.

That’s how the site introduces itself, and it sure lives up to its claim. As shown in the video below, Trove lets you search among “zones” of online content:

digitized newspapers; journals, articles and data sets;
online and offline books, audiobooks, theses and pamphlets;
pictures, photos and objects;
music, sound and video files;
maps, atlases, charts and globes;
diaries, letters and personal papers;
archived websites;
people and organizations; and
a zone for user-created lists.

You can browse these zones individually or search them all with a single click. You can search for just items available online, in Australian-only content, or just in libraries you specify. Creating a free user ID allows you to personalize your experience and participate in online forums. From my U.S. perspective, it would be like having the Library of Congress main website and all its offshoots such as Chronicling America rolled up together with WorldCat, ArchiveGrid, Internet Archive and its Wayback Machine–but focused entirely on my country.

When it comes to those nearly-200 million newspaper articles, you can search these by keyword or browse by newspaper title, state, date, category (article, ad or list) or tag. Refine search results by place, title, category, whether illustrated, decade and even the length of the article. You can even sign up to receive alerts to newly-posted material that matches your search criteria.

Remember, newspaper research in genealogy isn’t just about obituaries or wedding anniversary announcements. It’s about understanding the daily lives of our ancestors, and I share more strategies on uncovering these gems in my book How to Find Your Family History in Newspapers (available as an e-book or in print).

Here’s a video from the National Library of Australia with an overview of Trove:

Click here to search newspapers on Trove now.

MORE Australia Genealogy Gems

New Australia Genealogy Records Online

AncestryDNA in Australia and New Zealand

Assisted Immigration: Queensland Passenger Lists

Look Where You Can Find PERSI and Your Family History

by Lisa Cooke | Jul 27, 2013 | 01 What's New, Findmypast, Research Skills

If you’ve ever used the Periodical Source Index (PERSI), you know what a genealogy gem it is. PERSI is a master index to thousands of genealogical and historical periodicals, published by the Allen County Public Library’s Genealogy Center (ACPL). According to the Journal Gazette, PERSI contains about 2.5 million citation and adds another 100,000 a year. This is where you go to see if someone’s written about your family or ancestral hometown in state, regional, ethnic, local and other journals and newsletters.

You can currently search PERSI through the HeritageQuest Online databases at your local library and with your Ancestry.com membership. But the trick is accessing those articles once you find them. The best way right now is to order them directly from ACPL (click on Article Fulfillment Form). It costs $7.50 USD to order up to 6 articles at a time, plus $.20 per page and you get the articles in the mail.

Now findmypast.com has big plans to make PERSI easier to use. Findmypast.com is becoming the new online host of PERSI, and they plan to link digital images of as many articles as possible to the index. “PERSI unearths hidden gems for genealogy researchers,” says D. Joshua Taylor, lead genealogist for findmypast.com. “We look forward to working with various societies and publications to get permission to digitize their articles.”

That sounds like an enormous undertaking, but certainly one that’s long overdue and will pay off for family history researchers. I’ll keep you posted on their progress!

What Makes Findmypast a Genealogy Giant

by Sunny | Jun 27, 2018

Here’s what makes Findmypast a Genealogy Giant Findmypast ranks as one of the Genealogy Giants: one of the world’s biggest and best genealogy websites. It’s a must-use site for tracing your roots in England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales. Findmypast also offers...

We Dig These Gems! New Genealogy Records Online

by Lisa Cooke | Jul 31, 2015 | 01 What's New, Australian, Census, FamilySearch, Findmypast, images, Irish, Military, Records & databases, United States

Every Friday, we blog about new genealogy records online. Do any collections below relate to your family history? Please share with genealogy buddies or societies that might be interested!

AUSTRALIAN CONVICTS. A variety of convict records for New South Wales and Queensland, Australia, are now searchable on Findmypast. The NSW records include certificates of freedom and death records beginning in the 1820s. Queensland data includes convict indexes from 1824-1936.

CALIFORNIA DEATHS. Over 2 million deaths in California from 1905-1939 are now searchable for free on FamilySearch. “The index is arranged alphabetically by the name of the deceased, initials of spouse, age, and date of death. Place of death or county of death is coded.”

IRISH COURT RECORDS. Nearly 22 million records appear in the new FamilySearch database, Ireland Petty Sessions Court Registers 1828-1912. According to FamilySearch, “Most records contains name, address, the date in court, and whether the person was a witness, complainant or defendant. It might also contain other information to the specific case. These records were originally filmed at the National Archives of Ireland and the index was created by FindMyPast.com.”

IRISH MILITARY. Ireland’s National Army Census of 1922 is now searchable at Findmypast. Taken in the midst of the Irish Civil War, it “includes details pertaining to where soldiers were stationed, their ages and their next of kin,” according to the collection description.

KENTUCKY VITAL RECORDS. Nearly 10 million names appear in the new FamilySearch index, Kentucky Vital Record Indexes 1911-1999. The database includes “indexes of births, marriages, and deaths from January 1911 to July 1999. These indexes were created by the Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives from data files obtained from the Office of Vital Statistics.”

Here’s a tip: if you live far from your ancestors’ hometown, why not make a virtual visit? Google Earth is a powerful, free, interactive 3D map of the world. Use it to “fly” over a hometown or even drop down into a Street View that lets you see what’s there now. Maybe you’ll find an old home, neighborhood, school, courthouse, church, cemetery or other landmark relating to your family. Learn more in our free Google Earth for Genealogy video. Click here to watch it!