Show Notes: Are you trying to work on a genealogy brick wall, and you think the records you need might be at the National Archives? In this video, I’m going to show you a new way that you can get answers and hopefully get the records quickly.
The National Archives is a great place to do that, but as I’ve mentioned before in this video, their website can be a bit daunting. However, I’ve got some good news. They have updated the website, and tucked away in that update is a special area where you can ask questions and get answers from many different sources including the staff at the National Archives.
It’s called History Hub. This updated platform is a place where the staff will actually answer your questions. You’ll also get responses from other archivists, librarians, museum curators, genealogists, and history enthusiasts. We all have areas of expertise and a wide array of experience, and the new History Hub makes it easier to help each other.
Before you can ask a question or help answer a question, you’ll need to register for a free History Hub account. To do so, click the Create your History Hub account now link on the home page. Type in the account name you want, enter your email address and a password and click the box to agree to the terms of service.
If you are a returning History Hub user, you will need to reset your password and re-accept the community Terms of Use when you first log in.
Be aware that accounts that have not been used for over 1 year are automatically deactivated. So, you can email them at historyhub@nara.gov and they will reactivate your account.
Searching History Hub
Searching for answers at the History Hub is pretty simple and easy to do. You can enter your question in the “Ask” field on the History Hub homepage, or within a specific community. And we’ll talk about communities in just a second.
Let’s first ask a question. There’s a very good chance that someone else has already asked a very similar question to the one you have and there may already be a lot of contributions that will have the information you need.
Go to History.gov and type your question or some keywords into the Ask box. Don’t click the Ask button just yet. Give it a second to show you any potential answers that are already on History Hub. They will appear as a list below the Ask box.
Again, those answers will build up over time, so if when you ask your question you don’t see a similar answer, that’s OK. Go ahead and click the Ask button now and you’ll be taken to a page called Ask a Question in Researchers Help where you can write up your question. Include any relevant information you already know, such as names, dates, and places, and also mention specifically where you’ve already looked. That’s going to help them help you.
You can also add Tags to your question so that if someone searches for a tag, your request will also pop up. And be sure to check the box at the bottom so that you’ll be notified when someone replies to your post.
There are a couple of things to understand and keep in mind. First, all questions are public. So don’t post your phone number or other personal information about you or other living people.
Second, all questions are reviewed and moderated to make sure they comply with History Hub’s Terms and Conditions which again you can read when you sign up for your account. They only moderate and answer questions on weekdays during regular business hours, so patience is a virtue here.
In addition to the Ask a Question box, you’ll find a search bar at the top of the page. This search field searches the entire History Hub website. It’s very similar to the Ask a Question search bar in that once you enter your search terms, you’ll want to wait and let it populate possible answers that are already on the website. It will show you Forums, blogs and communities where your terms are being discussed.
You’ll also find a link to Advanced Search in the bottom right corner of that prepopulated list. This gives you a place to filter down in several creative ways which is very handy if you’re looking for information on a pretty broad topic or one that has had a lot of activity on History Hub.
History Hub search example
They even give you an RSS feed for your specific query. So, if you use an RSS reader to follow blogs and podcasts, you could add this link to it to sort of bookmark this search and keep up to date on the activity on this topic. If you don’t use a Feed Reader currently, but that sounds interesting to you, check out a feed reader like https://feedburner.google.com/ or just google Feed Reader.
Browsing History Hub
Even if you don’t have a specific question, History Hub is worth browsing. There are a couple of ways to do that.
Top Questions where you can look through the most popular questions and topics. This also includes threads from related forums. Use the filters underneath the title of this section to focus even more.
Activity Stream which features the most recent conversations.
Explore Communities. History Hub currently hosts 19 communities, including “Researchers Help,” Military Records, Genealogy, and more. To see them all, click on Communities at the top of any page on the History Hub website.
At History Hub you can not only ask questions, you can also answer them. Since all of us have expertise in our own areas of genealogy, History Hub encourages everyone to share their knowledge and experience with other users who are new to archival and genealogical research. So, you can help out a fellow genealogist by clicking Reply at the bottom of their post and sharing what you know about the topic.
Notifications, Updates, and Subscriptions
As I mentioned before, this site is building up content over time. So, you’re probably going to want to follow topics, and History Hub offers a couple of ways to do that.
Forum Updates & Notifications
If you’re interested in following a particular topic, such as Census Records, or Army and Air Force Records, you can get updates by email and on the platform for all new questions and answers in that specific forum. To do that, click on any community’s Question and Answer Forum tab, then click the Turn Forum notifications on link in the sidebar of that Forum’s homepage.
Subscribe to Community Updates
You can also receive daily or weekly email updates within a specific community, including new blog posts and questions. To do that on any Community Overview page, click “Email digest options” in the right column sidebar.
Getting Help with History Hub
History Hub Help Files: Getting Started. Again, this website is newly revamped, so they are still working out the bugs. You can report any problems or ask questions in theTechnical Help and Support Forum.
In this episode, we’re focusing on early Virginia genealogy.
In our first segment, I’ve invited a professional genealogist to join us to help pave the way for tracing our ancestors back to Virginia just prior to the Revolutionary War. Jeri Satterwhite-Dearing specializes in early Virginia research in her work as a professional genealogist with Legacy Tree Genealogists. In this podcast episode she explains some of the biggest challenges you’ll face when researching early Virginian ancestors, the records you should be looking for, and some of the best resources.
In the second segment, I’ll cover a list of the best websites for Virginia Genealogy.
Fort Wayne, Indiana is the home of the second largest free genealogy library in the country. Make your plans to visit today. Learn more at https://www.visitfortwayne.com
Formerly known as Virginia Heritage, this website is a “consolidated database of finding aids that provides information about the vast array of manuscripts and archival materials housed in Virginia and West Virginia.”
From the website: “Part of the online presence of the Library of Virginia, the state archives and reference library. The Library maintains vast and varied collections of print materials, manuscripts, archival records, newspapers, photographs and ephemera, maps and atlases, rare books, and fine art that tell the history of the commonwealth and its people.”
From the website: “The Virtual Jamestown Archive is a digital research, teaching and learning project that explores the legacies of the Jamestown settlement and “the Virginia experiment.” As a work in progress, Virtual Jamestown aims to shape the national dialogue on the occasion of the four hundred-year anniversary observance in 2007 of the founding of the Jamestown colony.”
Every genealogist should know how to search the FamilySearch Catalog, a portal to nearly 750 million FREE historical record images you won’t find anywhere else on the site! These digitized records are being updated DAILY by camera teams who are digitizing...
This episode’s got a bit of holiday sparkle! Lisa Louise Cooke welcomes Genealogy Gems Book Club author and Victorian lifestyle expert Sarah Chrisman to the show to talk about Victorian holiday traditions, some of which may still live on in your own life. Following that conversation, Lisa shares a fun description of Victorian-era scrapbooking: how it’s different than today’s scrapbooking hobby but also how it reminds her of modern social media.
More episode highlights:
Three success stories from Genealogy Gems listeners: a Google search with great results, a brick-wall busting marriage record and yet another YouTube find for family history (people keep telling us about those!).
Your DNA Guide Diahan Southard chimes in with what she likes so far about MyHeritage’s new DNA testing service.
An internationally-themed German research conference and a makeover for the Scotland’s People website.
The newly-relaunched ScotlandsPeople website has several exciting new features:
Mobile-friendly web design and an enhanced search function;
A quick search option for searching indexed records by name and an advanced search for specific types of records;
Free access to several records indexes;
More than 150,000 baptism entries from Scottish Presbyterian churches (other than the Old Parish Registers of the Church of Scotland) have been added and more are coming, as well as marriages and burials;
More types of records held by National Records of Scotland are coming, including records of kirk sessions and other church courts;
Explore the site for free, including handy how-to guides for using Scottish records such as statutory records, church registers and census returns.
MAILBOX: GOOGLE SEARCH SUCCESS STORY
From Joan: “I used one of the handy hints from your presentation at the South Orange County California Genealogical Society’s all day seminar in Mission Viejo, CA. I entered some of my common named ancestors, used the quotes, added a time frame and included some key words, like locations. Most of what I found were my own queries and posts. That shows it works!….
One thing I was amazed at was a multi-page article I found: ‘The Lincoln Kinsman,’ written in 1938. It included a lot of information on the Bush family [which is another of her family lines]. The article even included what I think is my ancestor Hannah Bush Radley.” (Click here or on the image above to see a copy of “The Lincoln Kinsman” at Internet Archive.)
Listen to a free 2-part series on cold-calling distant relatives or others as part of your genealogy research: “Family History: Genealogy Made Easy podcast, episodes 14 and 15.”
BONUS CONTENT for Genealogy Gems App Users:
A handy cheat sheet with 14 tips from that series on cold-contacting distant relatives. It’s updated with brand-new suggestions, including ways to find potential relatives’ names during the research process. The Genealogy Gems app is FREE in Google Play and is only $2.99 for Windows, iPhone and iPad users.
Gay entered “Freeport Texas history” in YouTube and found historical newsreel footage of the opening ceremony of a local water treatment plant. She and the women in her family were seated on the front row. Here’s a screenshot from that footage: maybe this is a stylish young Gay in sunglasses? (Watch the video here.)
Lisa Louise Cooke uses and recommends RootsMagic family history software. From within RootsMagic, you can search historical records on FamilySearch.org, Findmypast.com and MyHeritage.com. By the end of 2016, RootsMagic expects to be fully integrated with Ancestry.com, too: you’ll be able to sync your RootsMagic trees with your Ancestry.com trees and search records on the site.
Keep your family history research, photos, tree software files, videos and all other computer files safely backed up with Backblaze, the official cloud-based computer backup system for Lisa Louise Cooke’s Genealogy Gems. Learn more at http://www.backblaze.com/Lisa.
INTERVIEW: VICTORIAN CHRISTMAS WITH SARAH CHRISMAN
Sarah Chrisman lives her life every day as if it’s the Victorian era. Her clothing, household, pastimes, chores and more all reflect the time period.
Listen as Lisa and Sarah talk about the Victorian Christmas tree; gift-giving, crafts, decorating and things that might surprise us about holiday celebrations during that time.
First Wheel in Town: A Victorian Cycling Club Romance. This is from her series of light-hearted historical fiction set in an era she knows well!
Sarah Chrisman joins me again later this month on the Genealogy Gems Premium podcast episode 142 to talk about what it’s like to live every day like it’s the late 1800s. Don’t miss it! Not a Premium member? Click here to learn more about the perks of membership!
Legacy Tree Genealogists provides expert genealogy research service that works with your research goals, budget and schedule. The Legacy Tree Discovery package offers 3.5 hours of preliminary analysis and research recommendations: a great choice if you’ve hit a brick wall in your research and could use some expert guidance. Click here to learn more.
The Victorians coined the phrase “scrapbooking:” they literally pasted paper scraps into books. As an embellishment, those who could afford to bought “relief scraps,” such as the ones shown here. These were like the precursors of modern sticker sheets or die cuts, printed just for the scrapbooking hobby. You could buy colorful images of everything from flowers or children to animals, or angels or Father Christmas. These images were raised or embossed on the paper, which is why they called them reliefs.
Relief scraps could be used as embellishments around other items on scrapbook pages, but sometimes they were the only decoration on a page, arranged in pretty patterns.
I don’t think there is any dispute that the four major online resources for genealogy include Ancestry.com, FamilySearch.org, Find My Past, and My Heritage. Of those four, only Ancestry.com has attempted any real integration of DNA test results into traditional genealogy.
That is, until recently. On May 19, 2016 MyHeritage announced that they will be adding a DNA matching service to their offering, and then on November 7th announced they would be conducting DNA tests themselves. Now, MyHeritage has enjoyed partnerships with 23andMe and Family Tree DNA for quite some time now, but those partnerships have been woefully underutilized and are little more than an affiliate service, where MyHeritage provides a discounted rate to test at those companies.
There is no question that the launch of DNA Heritage fully into the genetic genealogy market is exciting news. In fact, it is something I have been pushing for ? we absolutely need someone to challenge AncestryDNA. Competition is good.
In September they began to provide matching results for individuals who had uploaded their results. As of today, uploading your results is still free, so if you have been thinking about it, you may want to take advantage sooner rather than later. As expected, the matches are only as good as the depth of the database, and it is early in the game, so their database is small, but even now we can get an idea of what to expect from MyHeritage as they take their first steps into genetic genealogy.
One of the most exciting elements of their November 7th announcement is their development of a Founder Population project where they have handpicked individuals to represent their reference population for calculating ethnicities. They plan to launch with 25 population groups, but will likely increase to 100 in a fairly short amount of time. This is a far more advanced ethnicity report than is currently offered anywhere else.
After you have figured out how to download your raw data from your testing company (see my instructions here: http://www.yourdnaguide.com/transferring), and then managed to add it to My Heritage (you have to add a family tree to MyHeritage to do this, see further instructions in their May press release), and waited the requisite time to process, you will receive a notice that you have new DNA matches.
For a full review of the features and ins and outs of where to click and what to look at, please refer to the September blog post from MyHeritage.
As for my favorite features, I like how they list all the possible relationships that make sense between you and your match taking into account multiple factors like your age, gender, and your genetics instead of a simple, generic range like 2nd-4th cousins. The accompanying chart that visually shows you all possible relationships is also very helpful. You can access it by clicking on the little question mark icon next to the relationship suggestions. I like that these suggestions remind us that our genetic relationships have different genealogical interpretations. Meaning that genetically, a 2nd cousin once removed, a first cousin twice removed, and a second cousin, all fall within a similar genetic range and it is impossible to determine your exact relationship based on the genetics alone.
I also like that they are providing all three genetic descriptors of your relationship: total amount of shared DNA, how many segments are shared, and the size of the longest piece of shared DNA. While this more of an intermediate to advanced piece of your results, it can be important as your relationship analysis becomes more involved.
One unique claim made by MyHeritage in their press release about their matching feature addresses a main concern that genetic genealogists have: the lack of pedigree information provided by their matches. MyHeritage claims that 95% of their DNA samples have pedigrees attached. That is remarkable! However, from my own quick calculation of my matches, the number with pedigrees is more like 60%.
They also indicated that they will soon be doing a bit of pedigree analysis for you by providing a list of shared surnames and locations between you and your match based on the pedigrees you have both submitted. This will certainly be a welcome addition.
According to the November 9th Q and A they haven’t decided yet if the ethnicity features will be available to those who only transfer, and they hint at many more features they have in the works that may only be offered to those who purchase their test.
In short, the MyHeritage site is currently functioning much like the top three genetic genealogy sites (Ancestry, Family Tree DNA, and 23andMe) and like the free tool Gedmatch, offers a meeting place for those who have been tested at one company to meet those who have tested at another, with the added bonus of a promise of new features on the horizon.
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!
See if you can find U.S. ancestors using these new online resources (many of them free!): U.S. Supreme Court cases; an African American research guide; newspapers serving Illinois, Iowa, North Carolina and Texas; orphan train riders and Rhode Island burials since...
First Wheel in Town
