Thousands of Sanborn Fire Insurance maps and a national Civil War burial database are among new genealogy records online. Also: newspapers in Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, and Pennsylvania; vital records for Idaho, Utah, and Washington; Catholic parish records for the Archdiocese of Boston; Maine cemetery plans; New Hampshire Civil War records and New York passenger arrivals.
Breaking news! The Library of Congress has put online nearly 25,000 additional Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps–and more are coming! Over the next three years, more will be added monthly until all 50 states are covered from the 1880s through the 1960s.
Sanborn maps show detailed information about neighborhoods, buildings, roads and more for thousands of towns in the U.S. and beyond. A sizable collection of pre-1900 Sanborn maps are already online at the Library of Congress (use the above link). Watch the short video below to learn more about them. The full-length class is available to Genealogy Gems Premium Members.
Civil War burials. Ancestry.com’s new database, U.S., Civil War Roll of Honor, 1861-1865, lists over 203,000 deceased Civil War soldiers interred in U.S. cemeteries. “Records in this database are organized first by volume and then by burial place,” says the collection description. Entries “may contain the name of soldier, age, death date, burial place, cemetery, rank and regiment.”
Newspapers. We’ve noticed the following new digital newspaper content online recently:
Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania: Newspapers.com recently added or updated newspaper content for the following newspapers (with coverage shown): Chicago Tribune (1849-2016), Fort Lauderdale News (1911-1991), South Florida Sun Sentinel (1981-2017) and the Morning Call [Allentown, PA] (1895-2017). (With a Newspapers.com Basic subscription, you can see issues through 1922; a Publisher Extra subscription is required to access issues from 1923 onward.)
Hawaii: Newspaper content has been recently added to the Papakilo Database, an online archive of The Office of Hawaiian Affairs. The collection currently contains nearly 12,000 issues from 48 different publications, with a total of 379,918 articles. Coverage spans from 1834 to 1980.
Louisiana: A New Orleans feminist newspaper is now available online at Tulane University’s digital library. An online description says: “Distaff was the first and only feminist newspaper published in New Orleans….Distaff served as a forum for women’s voices in politics, activism, and the arts….A preview issue was published in 1973 and the newspaper continued to be published until 1982. There was a hiatus in publication from 1976-1978.”
Maine cemetery plans. “Many Maine cemeteries have plans originally created courtesy of the Works Progress Administration, which reside at the Maine State Archives,” states a recent post at Emily’s Genealogy Blog at the Bangor Daily News website. The post advises us that all of them–nearly 550–are now viewable online at DigitalMaine.com (search for WPA cemetery plans). “These plans are great for locating veterans; some graves are coded by the war of service,” advises the post. “With such an item in hand one could also visit the appropriate town clerk and locate a civilian’s burial as well, I should think.” Thanks for that tip, Emily!
Massachusetts Catholic church records. The New England Historic Genealogical Society (AmericanAncestors.org) has added 13 new volumes to its browse-only collection, Massachusetts Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston Records, 1789-1900. “This addition, drawn from the collections of St. James the Greater in modern-day Chinatown, includes the largest volume we’ve scanned yet–1,035 pages,” says an NEHGS announcement. The collection description states that an index is being created and will be available to site members in the future.
New Hampshire Civil War records. The free site FamilySearch.org has added about 25,000 indexed names to its collection of New Hampshire, Civil War Service and Pension Records, 1861-1866. The collection contains an “index and images of Civil War enlistment papers, muster in and out rolls of New Hampshire Regiments and pension records acquired from the New Hampshire state archives.”
New York passenger lists. FamilySearch.org has added nearly 1.2 million indexed names to the database, New York Book Indexes to Passenger Lists, 1906-1942. According to the collection description, names are taken from “books of indexes to passenger manifests for the port of New York. The indexes are grouped by shipping line and arranged chronologically by date of arrival.”
Utah birth certificates. Nearly 33,000 names have been added to an existing FamilySearch database, Utah, Birth Certificates, 1903-1914. “This collection consists of an index and images to birth certificates acquired from the Utah State Archives,” says the site. “The records are arranged by year, county, and month within a numerical arrangement by box and folder number. Many of these volumes have indexes at the beginning or end.”
Sanborn maps are a rich resource for genealogy–but they’re just one kind of map that can lead to genealogical gems! Lisa Louise Cooke teaches tons of strategies for using maps to chart your family history in her Genealogy Gems Premium video series. Discover these for yourself with a Genealogy Gems Premium website membership.
Thanks for sharing this great news on Sanborn maps and more with your genealogy friends!
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!
Live show air date: July 23, 2020
Join me for Elevenses with Lisa, the online video series where we take a break, visit and learn about genealogy and family history.
Book your 45-minute consultation with a professional genealogist like I did here.
Click here to learn more about 45-minute genealogy consultations.
An Irish Genealogy Brick Wall
This week I’m taking you on a bit of my own genealogical journey. It’s that one line of my family that crosses the pond to Ireland with my 2X great grandparents. I first learned about Michael Lynch and Margaret Scully as a child from my maternal grandmother. They were her husband’s (my grandfather’s) grandparents. She didn’t know much about them.
Margaret Scully born in Limerick Ireland 1840
Michael Lynch born in Ireland in 1818
In 2000 I got an opportunity to sit down with my grandfather’s sister – the historian of that generation of the family – and ask her about them. She was nearly 90 years old at the time, and she told me the family lore that Margaret was supposedly from a more well-to-do family, and Michael was not.
Aunt Bea in 1937
“He was a groom. And they eloped. I don’t know where they came in. I don’t know which port, but I think it was Canada.”
A few years later after Aunt Bea’s passing I got in touch with some distant Lynch cousins through a bit of online genealogical research. They were descended from Ellen’s siblings who had stayed in the area where the Lynch family had lived (Western Wisconsin and Eastern Minnesota).
These distant cousins supplied with a few more pieces of the puzzle.
They mentioned Kildysart, though my notes are unclear whether that was the possible location for Michael or Margaret.
There had some sketchy parents’ names through family lore and Margaret’s death certificate.
Margaret’s parents were supposedly James Lynch and Bridget Madigan.
Michael’s were possibly Michael Lynch and Johanna Healy but no evidence was provided.
I searched extensively several years ago but was unable to find a passenger list record. I did find the family in East Farmington, Wisconsin. where Michael purchased land and ran a dairy farm.
East Farmington Wisconsin postcard
My research questions were:
Who were the parents of Margaret Scully born in Limerick Ireland on approximately July 9, 1840? Where in Ireland was she born?
My Aunt Bea said Margaret was from county Cork. This was based on her conversations with her mother Ellen. However, Ellen left Wisconsin as a young woman and lived her adult live in California, far from her family.
The Wisconsin cousins were sure Margaret was from Limerick. They believed Michael was from Cork. Considering that their parents had known Margaret well, I put more stock in their information.
Then the cousins produced Margaret’s obituary from Fargo ND where she died a widow living with her son John in 1929. I clearly stated she was born in Limerick. I became even more confident that Limerick was the place to focus.
A secondary question which would be a bonus was ‘where were Michael and Margaret married?’ Was it true that they had eloped in Ireland and came to America via Canada as my aunt had said? And did any of her brothers and sisters come to America as well?
I’m not an expert in Irish genealogy. I have interviewed a few experts over the years, so you might think I would have jumped right into this Irish research. Instead, I found it a bit daunting.
So, earlier this month, I sat down for a 45 minute consultation with Kate Eakman. She’s a professional genealogist with Legacy Tree Genealogists specializing in Irish research among other areas.
My consultant: Professional Genealogists Kate Eakman
These 45-minute consultations are designed to evaluate what you have, and kick start or restart your research.
As a seasoned genealogist, I want to do the research myself. This short focused consultation was perfect for helping me move forward with confidence.
Before we discuss the path we followed in the consultation, let’s talk a moment about how to prepare for a genealogical consultation.
Preparing for a Consultation with a Professional Genealogist
There are three things you can do ahead of time to help a professional genealogist help you.
1. Be clear what you want to accomplish.
It’s only 45 minutes, so one clearly defined research question is best. Avoid “I just want to find whatever is available”. It needs to be a specific question.
I wanted to specifically find out who Margaret’s parents were which I expected would also tell me where she was born.
2. Gather what you already have in advance.
I didn’t have much, but I made every effort to distill the known facts down in a list. I then added all source information I had for those items.
To get the most from a consultation it is important to not only share what you have but the strength of the source. Many of my sources were family lore. These rank low on reliability. The death certificate my cousin sent me ranked higher.
Remember time is limited and costs money, so don’t bog the genealogist down with EVERYTHING you have. Focus on the items that a relevant to the question.
3. Briefly jot down what you’ve done so far.
You may have tried research avenues that were fruitless in the past. You definitely don’t want to spend precious time in the consultation going back over those. Making a list of what you did, and the outcome clears the way for your consultation time to be spent on new strategies.
A Consultation with a Professional Genealogist
My consultation in this episode of Elevenses with Lisa is focused on Irish research. You will see us using many of the most valuable online resources available.
But if you don’t have Irish ancestors, I encourage you to listen carefully to the process. The questions she asks, and her approach to finding answers. You may be pleasantly surprised to hear some things that can translate to your research process.
From the website: “The Primary Valuation was the first full-scale valuation of property in Ireland. It was overseen by Richard Griffith and published between 1847 and 1864. It is one of the most important surviving 19th century genealogical sources.”
The value of family stories
“These family stories always have some kernel of truth to them, even if they seem outlandish. There’s something that’s true. Her parents were wealthy, or he was a groom, even if it wasn’t this falling in love with a groom and running away and getting married.” – Kate Eakman
More Strategies
Spend some time looking for children of the suspected parents (James Scully and Bridget Madigan)
Children may have been baptized as “girl” or “infant.” Look for these while searching.
After finding the parents James Scully and Bridget Madigan, the next step was to look for parish registers at the National Library of Ireland. Search parish registers by clicking on Family History Research > Visit Catholic Parish Records. They are not indexed by name. You have to know who you’re looking for and where. But if you have an idea of the parish, you can enter that. Choose Baptism and the year and month in known.
If you are not sure about the name of the location, search for it at the NLI to see if their system recognizes it or suggests a slightly different spelling.
We then headed back to RootsIreland.ie to look for marriage records.
From the website: “All civil marriage records from 1845 to 1944 are now available online to members of the public, along with the release online of birth register records for 1919 and death register records for 1969. Over 15.5 million register records are now available to the public to view and research online on the www.irishgenealogy.ie website. The records now available online include: Birth register records – 1864 to 1919; Marriage register records – 1845 to 1944 & Death register records – 1878 to 1969.”
Kate likes to sort results by date.
First and last name won’t always be together in the results.
Searching for Records in North America
Kate and I dug for and discussed U.S. records that might lend more information that could help with the search in Ireland such as:
Marriage Records
Passenger Lists
Military Records
Documents relating to his work as a civil servant
Researching forward (known as Reverse Genealogy) could lead to collaboration with more cousins and the discover of letters or other helpful items.
My consultation with a professional genealogist specializing in Irish research left me newly found records and the confidence to continue exploring Irish records. I also had in hand a list of steps I could take to move forward:
Compile a list of all of James and Bridget Scully’s children.
Find birth, marriages and deaths for the children.
Look for siblings in America (start with Farmington, Wisconsin area)
Research the sponsors of the baptisms
Conduct a browsing search of the Parish Records for a baptism that lines up with Margaret Scully’s known birth.
Check this web site to confirm what’s available before you start searching more in Ireland. I searched for Kildysart and found it here!
Our Finds During this Genealogy Consultation
I was very satisfied with the progress we made in just 45 minutes!
A good candidate for James Scully in Griffith’s Valuation
James and Bridget Scully’s marriage record at Roots Ireland
James and Bridget Scully’s original marriage record at the National Library of Ireland
Baptisms for seven of the couple’s children.
A large gap where Margaret’s birth would have been.
We found Kildysart in county Clare. (I’m still not sure where that fits in by I now suspect the place is associated with Michael Lynch and not Margaret Scully.)
Postscript to My Consultation with a Professional Genealogist
I was so encouraged by our research session, that I combed back through the papers I had collected over decades in my Lynch binder. There I found a death date for Michael Lynch given to me by one of the distant cousins. The place of death was Stillwater, Minnesota.
A quick look at a map revealed that Stillwater, Minnesota was just 21 miles down and west across the Saint Croix River from East Farmington, Wisconsin.
On a hunch I did some digging and I discovered that Michael and Margaret were married at St Michael’s church in Stillwater, MN!
Marriage Question Solved!
Book a 45-Minute Consultation with a Professional Genealogist
Thank you to Kate Eakman of Legacy Tree Genealogists for sharing her expertise and helping me make significant progress on my genealogical brick wall!
Click here to learn more about 45-minute genealogy consultations.
A 45-minute consultation with a professional genealogist is just $100. If you decide to book please go to www.LegacyTreeGenealogists.com/GenealogyGems By using our link you are helping to support this free show at no additional cost to you. Thank you! Exclusive Gems Offer: Save $100 on larger full-service genealogy research projects with codeGGP100
Looking for enumeration district maps for the U.S. Federal Census? You’re not alone!
1940 Census Enumeration District Map, Oklahoma, Wagoner County, http://research.archives.gov/description/5836456
Recently Genealogy Gems podcast listener Michelle in Denver, Colorado, wrote in with this question:
“Where can I find individual enumeration district maps? I don’t need a state-wide map showing the divisions between enumeration districts, but a map showing the numbered households within a single enumeration district.”
My answer: How to find Enumeration District Maps
First, here’s a little back story from the National Archives (U.S.) website:
“An enumeration district, as used by the Bureau of the Census, was an area that could be covered by a single enumerator (census taker) in one census period. Enumeration districts varied in size from several city blocks in densely populated urban areas to an entire county in sparsely populated rural areas.
Enumeration district maps show the boundaries and the numbers of the census enumeration districts, which were established to help administer and control data collection. Wards, precincts, incorporated areas, urban unincorporated areas, townships, census supervisors` districts, and congressional districts may also appear on some maps. The content of enumeration district maps vary greatly.
The base maps were obtained locally and include postal route maps, General Land Office maps, soil survey maps, and maps produced by city, county, and state government offices as well as commercial printers. Census officials then drew the enumeration district boundaries and numbers on these base maps.” (Check out the full article here.)
Enumeration district maps are not available in all years and all locations. 1940 ED maps are available on the National Archives (U.S.) website. (Scroll down to item 3 for instructions on getting to these through the Online Public Access search.) You’ll see that only the enumeration district numbers and street names are marked on the maps. Individual homes are not.
You might be wondering, are there enumeration district maps before 1940? They are limited but the answer is yes. Enumeration District maps are also available for the 1900 through 1930 censuses. You can browse and download the maps for free at FamilySearch. Search for title The United States enumeration district maps for the twelfth through the sixteenth US censuses, 1900-1940.
Next, turn to the book Cartographic Records of the Census Bureau for a listing of maps available back into the 19th century at the National Archives. It’s available as an ebook which you can read online or download for free from Google Books. This book is an invaluable resource for finding much early maps at available at the National Archives on microfilm.
If you just want to find the enumeration district number of an address you already know, go to the Unified Census ED Finder at Steve Morse’s One-Step genealogy website.
At the top of the Unified Census ED Finder page start by selecting the census year (currently 1870 through 1950.) Next, enter as much information as you know about the location such as the county. Select the city from the list of cities displayed. You will then be able to enter street-level information. If you select “other” from the city list, you can then type in the city or town name. Continue to follow the prompts and instructions.
Here are a few more things to keep in mind as you find and use ED maps:
In cities, there are often two columns of numbers in the census population enumeration (typically on the far left of the page). There’s house number and the number representing the order in which the enumerator visited the house (which has nothing to do with the house number). If you can’t find a relative in once census, pull the address from one census and use it in the Steve Morse database above to pull up the enumeration district for your missing decade.
Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps can be helpful when searching for old Enumeration District Maps.
Depending on the year you are researching, try to locate a Sanborn fire insurance map for the area. Sanborn maps do include drawings of individual homes and include their house number. Genealogy Gems Premium Podcast Episode 47 is all about Sanborn fire maps. On the show notes page I even include a list of links to many Sanborn map collections, organized by state.
Final Thoughts: The Newest ED Maps Available Online
The 1950 enumeration district maps are now available for free online. Read my article The 1950 Census for Genealogy and watch the video to learn how to access them for free.
In this episode, I chat with Angela Walton-Raji, expert in U.S. and African-American research, about tips for interviewing relatives and taking your African-American family tree back to the era of slavery.
Other highlights of this episode include:
A RootsTech 2017 recap, with info on archived streaming sessions;
Great news from Findmypast about its new Catholic Heritage Archive;
A ground-breaking study from AncestryDNA that identifies specific migration patterns among genetically-related clusters of people;
Follow-up mail from Lisa’s Episode 200 celebration;
An expert Q&A on finding relatives who don’t appear in the census where you expect them to;
A teaser clip from the upcoming Genealogy Gems Book Club interview with Annie Barrows, author of The Truth According to Us.
ROOTSTECH 2017 RECAP
Genealogy Gems booth streaming sessions are on the Genealogy Gems Podcast Facebook page. “Like” our page, and then scroll down to Videos and click See all (shown here).
You’ll find:
Lisa Louise Cooke: Google search methodology for genealogy, using Google Earth for genealogy and creating memorable, easy family history videos;
Diahan Southard: Understanding your DNA ethnic pie chart;
Amie Tennant: Digital journaling and scrapbooking;
Sunny Morton: Jogging your memories and “Genealogy Jackpot” (on researching her ancestors’ survival of the Great Johnstown flood of 1889.
POPULAR ROOTSTECH STREAMING LECTURE “THE BIG 4” NOW ONLINE
Start creating fabulous, irresistible videos about your family history with Animoto.com. You don’t need special video-editing skills: just drag and drop your photos and videos, pick a layout and music, add a little text and voila! You’ve got an awesome video! Try this out for yourself at Animoto.com.
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: ANGELA WALTON-RAJI
Angela Walton-Raji instructs the African-American Genealogy Research Essentials webinar.
Angela’s oral history questions: What to ask your elders
Did they happen to know anyone who had been born a slave when they were a child?
Who was the oldest person that you remember when you were a child? And did that person ever talk about anyone who may have been enslaved?
What do you know about where the family was from? (Were we always from Georgia, or, were we always from Pennsylvania, or was there a time when we came from another place? (Read more about the Great Migration she mentioned.) Why did we move? Who remembers that journey?
Were people involved in the Civil Rights movement, in the Garvey era, with the Freedom Riders, or other important events in their lifetime? What kinds of things did they see?
Who in the family participated in the military (in World War II, I, the Spanish-American War)? African-American military units through the mid-20th century were still referred to as Buffalo soldiers. (She mentioned the Triple Nickel, a unit of all-black World War II paratroopers.
Lisa Louise Cooke uses and recommends RootsMagic family history software. From within RootsMagic, you can search WebHints on FamilySearch.org, Findmypast.com and MyHeritage.com. Soon RootsMagic will also be able to search records and even sync your tree with Ancestry.com, too.
EXPERT TIP ON FINDING ANCESTORS “MISSING” IN CENSUSES
Read their Q&A: Kate Eakman takes on a Gems listener question from someone who has already done a lot of work trying to locate a relative in the 1940 U.S. census
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.
There is no doubt that this is an exciting time to be a genealogist. Here at Genealogy Gems, we are announcing new record collections online every month, advances in genealogy databases and their ability to retrieve the information we are looking for, and of course, DNA testing. There really has been no time in history where such a wealth of information about our past has been so readily available to so many.
In another ground-breaking development in the DNA world has been a recent publication in a scientific journal by the scientific team at AnccestryDNA. It is titled, “Clustering of 770,000 genomes reveals post-colonial population structure of North America.” Or, in more understandable terms, “Your DNA can tell us where you came from in America in the last 500 years.”
Wow, right? So how did they do this?
Well, the power really is in the numbers. In this particular paper they used 770,000 people, but now that they are approaching having testing 4 million people, you can bet the same principles will be applied to a larger data set and we will see even more as a result. But even though it takes a large data set to accomplish this, it really all still comes down to the relationship of two people.
To start, Ancestry determines how just two people are genetically related. Then they find how those two are related to a third, again, looking only at pairs of people. This goes on and on and on until everyone in the group as been compared. Then we use a graph to plot those relationships, with those more closely related clustering around each other. Then the real key, the point where we see the marriage of genetics and genealogy: they add in the family history information for each of these individuals in the cluster. What they found was astounding. They have displayed the data in Figure 3 in the paper:
Distribution of ancestral birth locations in North America. Summary map from Nature Communications; click to see article with full explanation of map data. Image used with permission of Ancestry.com.
It is a map of the United States with colored dots scattered across the landscape. The location of the dots corresponds to the genealogy of those tested, while the color of the dots relates to their genetic clustering. Those who clustered closest together are the same color. The result is a nearly perfect rainbow, with each color holding its respective spot on the map, with very little overlap between groups. (There are actually two maps in the paper, just to make things easier to see.)
We might be tempted when looking at the maps to think, oh, well, of course there is a large population of European Jews in New York, everyone knows that, no breakthrough there. But it IS!! This isn’t their family history, or their accent or their culture that is telling us this, it is their genetics!
As if that wasn’t exciting enough, further on in the paper they describe how we can trace migration patterns of different groups over just a few generations. In the paper they specifically mention French Canadians and Cajuns/Acadians, but this same principle can theoretically be applied to dozens of other groups.
For example, let’s say you have an ancestor in Texas about 4 generations ago, but you aren’t sure where she came from. If technology like what is published in this paper ever reaches your testing company, your DNA could tell you that you fit into the Lower South group, meaning that your ancestor likely hails from, well, the South!
This is just a glimpse into what the advances in genetics are bringing to your genealogy toolbox. So hang on to your hats, and keep tuned in here at Genealogy Gems for all of the latest updates.
It’s the summer of 1938, and wealthy young socialite Miss Layla Beck is now on the dole as a WPA worker, assigned to write a history of the small town of Macedonia, West Virginia. As she starts asking questions about the town’s past, she is drawn into the secrets of the family she’s staying with and drawn to a certain handsome member of that family. She and two of those family members take turns narrating the story from different points of view, exploring the theme that historical truth, like beauty, is often in the eye of the beholder.
Annie Barrows is also the co-author of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. This novel takes place after World War II in a London recovering from the Blitz and an island recovering from German occupation. At the heart of Guernsey is an unlikely love story and the inspiring tale of a community that took care of each other in their darkest days with humor, compassion and good books.
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!
This marriage advice for newlyweds, written by a loving mother in 1940, shows that some principles for a happy marriage are timeless—including a respectful mother-in-law who stays out of the marriage. Genealogist Margaret Linford shares an excerpt from 500 pages of...
Sanborn maps are a rich resource for genealogy–but they’re just one kind of map that can lead to genealogical gems! Lisa Louise Cooke teaches tons of strategies for using maps to chart your family history in her Genealogy Gems Premium video series. Discover these for yourself with a Genealogy Gems Premium website membership.
