by Lisa Cooke | Aug 14, 2015 | 01 What's New, FamilySearch, images, Immigration, Italian, Records & databases, School Records, United States
Here’s our weekly list of new genealogy records online. Do any collections below relate to your family history? Please share with your genealogy buddies or with societies that might be interested!
ITALY CIVIL REGISTRATION. Over a million total indexed Italian civil registrations have been added to FamilySearch for Bario, Caltanissetta, Genova, Mantova, Pesaro e Urbino and Pescara. See and search (for free) all available records here.
MEXICO CHURCH RECORDS. FamilySearch also just updated their Mexican church records by the millions, from Aguascalientes to Zacatecas. The biggest updates are for the Distrito Federal (Mexico City) and Pueblas. Search these here for free.
SOUTH DAKOTA SCHOOL RECORDS. Nearly 3 million indexed names have been added to this free collection at FamilySearch. According to the database description, “School records, including teacher’s term reports, school census and attendance records located at the South Dakota State Historical Society in Pierre. Records are generally arranged by county, year and school district number.” It looks like this is a work-in-progress and more indexed records will be added.
US ALIEN CASE FILES. Nearly half a million In 1940, immigrants in the U.S. who had not naturalized had to register and be finger printed. Case files resulted! Nearly a half million indexed records from all over the U.S. are part of this new FamilySearch collection. (Residents of Guam; Honolulu, Hawaii; Reno, Nevada; and San Francisco, California are not part of this collection.)
US CENSUS RECORDS. Updates, corrections and additions to their U.S. federal census collections have been posted recently by both FamilySearch (1790 and 1800) and Ancestry (1880 and 1920 as well as the 1850-1885 mortality schedules). No additional detail was provided about specific changes to the collections. We blogged a few months ago about why FamilySearch was re-indexing part of the 1910 census; read it here.
Sign up for our weekly newsletter, and this weekly round-up of major new record collections will be among the “gems” you find in it! With your sign-up, you’ll receive a free e-book on Google search strategies for genealogy. Simply enter your email address in the box in the upper right-hand corner of this page. Thank you for sharing this post with anyone else who will want to know about these records (and this weekly blog post.)
by Lisa Cooke | Mar 6, 2015 | Australian, British, Findmypast, images, Irish, Newspaper, Records & databases
Beginning today, try FindMyPast for FREE –all weekend long!
Over 2 billion historical records will be available to search beginning Friday, March 6 and ending Monday, March 9 (start and finish at midday London time (GMT)). Local subscribers will have World access during this time and World subscribers get an extra three days tacked onto their subscriptions.
What kinds of records are we talking about? According to FindMyPast:
- “Over 900 million census records from across the UK, USA and Ireland;
- Passenger lists for ships sailing to and from Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and the USA;
- Birth, marriage and death records dating back to the 18th century, and the largest online collection of UK parish records;
- The most comprehensive collection of UK military records anywhere online;
- The largest collection of Irish family history records available online;
- Historical newspapers from across the world, including more than 10 million British newspaper pages from as long ago as 1710;
- An easy to use online family tree builder which allows you to import and export your tree if you’ve built it elsewhere;
- Our automatic Hints feature, which automatically searches our records for you and suggests potential matches to the people you add to your family tree.”
You may also find these resources helpful:
Webinar on Finding Female Ancestors. To celebrate International Women’s Day, at 7am EST on Sunday 8th March, Findmypast will host a webinar on searching for women in historical records. Women are usually tougher to find than men in old records because a) they were mentioned much less frequently and b) their names changed with their marital status.
Getting Started Video. Findmypast has created a new Getting Started video which will be available to view beginning this weekend.
Find out more at Findmypast’s dedicated Free Weekend page.
by Lisa Cooke | Feb 18, 2015 | 01 What's New, Google, Google Earth, images, Maps
On January 28, 2015 Google announced that Google Earth PRO is now available for FREE! Not just a free trial. Google is allowing everyone to get a free key to Google Earth Pro!
In the past the software fee was hundreds of dollars. But now you can get Google Earth Pro for free and gain the ability to do things like “measure 3D buildings, print high-resolution images for presentations or reports, and record HD movies” inside Google Earth.To get your free key to Google Earth Pro sign up here. After submitting the form, you will be emailed the free license key. Copy the license key from the email, then click the link provided to download Google Earth Pro app for PC and Mac.
Everything I’ve taught you about using Google Earth still applies, but now you have more tools than ever!
Since I announced this in the last Genealogy Gems Newsletter, I’ve received several questions. Here’s what you need to know about Google Earth Pro:
From Sheri: “I did get it to finally work…..instead of my phone number running together….I added the dashes between the numbers and then it went through. FYI….in case you hear an issue from others.”
Thanks for the tip Sheri. Most likely the problem you were running into after the big announcement that Google Earth Pro went free was the sheer amount of traffic the site received. Googlers swarmed the site, and any people found it took several attempts to get a successful download. As time passes, it should get quicker and easier to download.
From Kathy: “I downloaded the Google Earth Pro BUT now I have regular and Pro on my computer and all the spots marked in regular seemed to have transferred to Pro—Question—should I now uninstall the regular version?”
Answer: That decision is really up to you. I’ve decided to keep both for a while, but only do work from this point forward in Pro. If in a few months everything is still running smoothly, then I will probably delete the old free version just to free up disk space on my computer. For now, it certainly doesn’t hurt to leave it there.
The good news is that both programs appear to pull from the same files on your computer. This means that when you create a file in Pro, you will also see it in your Places panel in the free version.
Question from Dea: “I downloaded Google Earth Pro on my main computer. I now want to use the same license key for my laptop and android, as I signed up for 2 to 5 users. I assumed that I could use the same license key. When I tried to sign up on my laptop it said I already was a user, but do not know how I can access it from my laptop. Help!”
Answer: Although the sign up page asks how many users will be using the program, my understanding is that each download key is for one device. I would guess that the user question is about how many people might be using the application on that device. (Unfortunately the website isn’t clear on this point.) I’m basing this on the fact that when it was a paid version, you had to purchase a license key for each device.
As with the original free version of Google Earth, each device you download Google Earth to has it’s own unique Places Panel. In other words, files you create on your desktop computer don’t show up on your laptop. This is because the files are stored on that particular device and not on the Cloud (for privacy reasons).
So the bottom line is that to get another license key for another device you will need to use a different email. If you only have one email address, you could create a second free email in Gmail just to have an email you can use.
Dea’s Reply: “Thank you for such a prompt reply. I am sure there must be more than one of you. I do not know how you get so much accomplished….saw you at Midwest Roots in Indianapolis and, again, at a webinar for our Genealogy Society in Terre Haute, IN. You are an excellent speaker, teacher as well as entertaining.”
Lisa: Now I’m blushing!!
Answers to more questions:
Do you really need Google Earth Pro? Probably not, because Pro was created originally for businesses. However there are some pretty cool extras that you get by going Pro:
- Movie-Maker: Export Windows Media and QuickTime HD movies, up to 1,920×1,080-pixel resolution. (Sweet!)
- High-resolution printing: Print images up to 4,800 x 3,200 pixel resolution. (The free version max: 1,000 pixels.)
- Spreadsheet import: Ingest up to 2,500 addresses at a time, assigning place marks and style templates in bulk. (My geeky side is getting giddy!)
- Exclusive pro data layers: Demographics, parcels, and traffic count.
- Advanced measurements: Measure parking lots and land developments with polygon area measure, or determine affected radius with circle measure.
Resources:
Want to learn more about using Google Earth specifically for genealogy? Check out this free video class.
And there are several chapters on using Google Earth for genealogy in my brand new book The Genealogist’s Google Toolbox Second Edition (2015). You can pick up as a special bundle here with my 2 disc DVD set Google Earth for Genealogy.
by Lisa Cooke | Aug 16, 2011 |
CONTACT US We welcome all of your questions and feedback! We read each and every email and will respond as soon as possible. Do you have questions about your Premium eLearning Membership?Please visit our FAQ page for answers to most questions and troubleshooting...
by Lisa Cooke | Dec 27, 2013 | 01 What's New, British, Conferences
It’s always a joy for me to get to get out and about and meet readers and listeners in person. In July 2014 there’s a wonderful opportunity for us to get together in person, talk genealogy and experience the joy of travel: the Unlock the Past Cruises for their 2014 British Isles Cruise!
I’ll be joining eight other incredible genealogists to bring cruisers an exciting assortment of family history classes aboard the beautiful Marco Polo ship (right). Check out the Presenters page
You’ll have around 40 topics to choose from, held mostly in the evening so there will be loads of time to explore the breathtaking landscape.
Itinerary:
- day 1 – depart Tilbury, London – 6pm (boarding from 12.30pm)
- day 2 – at sea
- day 3 – Invergordon, Scotland – 7.30am-10pm
- day 4 – Kirkwall, Orkney Islands – 7am-6pm
- day 5 – Stornoway, Outer Hebrides – 7.30am-10pm (transfer to shore by tender)
- day 6 – Tobermory, Isle of Mull – 7.30am-4pm (transfer to shore by tender)
- day 7 – Dublin, Ireland – 8am-5.45pm
- day 8 – St Mary’s, Isles of Scilly – 9am-6pm (transfer to shore by tender)
- day 9 – St Peter Port, Guernsey – 7.30am-6pm (transfer to shore by tender)
- day 10 – Honfleur, France – 9am-5pm
- day 11 – arrive Tilbury, London – 9am
My understanding is that this cruise is filling up very quickly so if you’re interested be sure and click here for more details.
Here’s our weekly list of new genealogy records online. Do any collections below relate to your family history? Please share with your genealogy buddies or with societies that might be interested!
Sign up for our weekly newsletter, and this weekly round-up of major new record collections will be among the “gems” you find in it! With your sign-up, you’ll receive a free e-book on Google search strategies for genealogy. Simply enter your email address in the box in the upper right-hand corner of this page. Thank you for sharing this post with anyone else who will want to know about these records (and this weekly blog post.)
