We Dig These Gems! New Genealogy Records Online

 

Every Friday, we blog about new genealogy records online. Do the collections below include your ancestor? Don’t forget: tomorrow is Lisa Louise Cooke’s FREE live streaming class on using Google Tools to Solve Family Mysteries–use them to find more records like these! (Details below.)

This week: Irish newspapers, London electoral registers, Ohio naturalizations and Virginia vital records (through 2014!).

IRISH NEWSPAPERS. Subscribers at FindMyPast can now access over a million new Irish newspaper articles. These eight papers have updates: Cork Examiner, 1841-1896, Derry Journal, 1825-1950; Freeman’s Journal, 1820-1900; Roscommon Journal and Western Impartial Reporter, 1828-1864; Saunder’s News-Letter, 1773-1864; Ulster Gazette, 1844-1871; Waterford Chronicle, 1827-1870 and Waterford Mail, 1824-1870.

LONDON ELECTORAL RECORDS. Nearly 3 million indexed records have been added to the free England, London Electoral Registers, 1847–1913 database at FamilySearch.org. The overall collection contains more than 660,000 digital images of electoral registers filmed at the London Metropolitan Archives.

OHIO NATURALIZATIONS. Over 80,000 indexed names have been added to the US, Ohio, Southern District Naturalization Index, 1852–1991. This database covers a prime migration route: north of the Ohio River (records include courts at Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus and Steubenville). The index points toward records that can traditionally be tough to find because people could naturalize at any court.

VIRGINIA VITAL RECORDS. Ancestry subscribers can now access these new databases: Virginia, Divorce Records, 1918-2014, Virginia, Death Records, 1912-2014, Virginia, Marriage Records, 1936-2014 and Virginia, Birth Records, 1864-2014. These records–available through 2014–come from the Virginia Department of Health.

check_mark_circle_400_wht_14064Here’s a tip: Harness Google’s power to search for specific record sets in which your family may appear. Watch Lisa’s free live streaming class TOMORROW, June 6, “Google Tools and Procedures for Solving Family History Mysteries.Click here for details. Can’t watch tomorrow? You can still register to watch the class in the SCGJ archive through July 5.

13 Million Newly Published Genealogical Records from U.S., Australia and Ireland

Findmypast logo captureMore than 13 million new records recently appeared on findmypast.com, thanks to a new agreement between findmypast parent company DC Thomson Family History (formerly brightsolid online publishing) and FamilySearch International.

Among these millions of records are “major collections of births, marriages and deaths covering America, Australia, and Ireland,” according to a FamilySearch.org press release. Millions more records from about 600 additional collections are yet to be added. findmypast hopes these records will help current subscribers and allow the company to expand to non-English-speaking markets.

The FamilySearch press releases describes the overall purpose of the collaboration as delivering “a wide range of projects including digital preservation, records search, technological development and the means to allow family historians to share their discoveries.”

 

Family History Episode 11 – Census Wrap-Up: Decade-by-Decade to 1790

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 December 17, 2013

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 2008-09. So many people have asked about it, I’m bringing it back in weekly segments.

Episode 11: Census Wrap-Up: Decade-by-Decade to 1790

In our first segment we welcome back genealogy researcher, author and lecturer Lisa Alzo. The author of Three Slovak Women, Baba’s Kitchen and Finding Your Slovak Ancestors talks about discovering family traits and putting them in perspective.

Then in our second segment we wrap up our three-episode coverage of U.S. census records with a decade-by-decade overview of censuses from 1880 back to 1790. We talk about special schedules taken during one or more censuses: mortality, slave, social statistics and supplemental, agricultural, manufacturing and the DDD (Defective, Dependent and Delinquent) schedules.

 Updates and Links

For a list of online resources for U.S. federal census data, check out the show notes for Episode 9 at http://tinyurl.com/ShowNotesEp9. More links you’ll want for this episode include:

FamilySearch Photos and Stories: 1 Million Images Uploaded

FamilySearch users have created one of the largest family photo albums in the world in record time: one million images in just under five months. That’s a lot of pictures upload, tagged, linked to relatives and now just waiting for us to go in and snag copies.

Why the massive response? Pick your favorite reason:

  • uploading photos from your computer, smart phone or tablet is easy;
  • If you post a photo, you can share a direct link through Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest or email;
  • pictures are publicly available to anyone (with or without a FamilySearch account);
  • you can caption pictures and tag subjects to link them to their profile in FamilySearch’s family tree;
  • you can collaborate with other descendants to identify everyone in a group photo;
  • the site promises free online storage of your digital images forever (“. Every photo is backed up with a redundant system and preserved in state-of-the-art archive facilities”).

If you have a tree at FamilySearch (which is free), you can easily click to see what pictures others have uploaded of your relatives. Just log in, click Photos, then Find Photos of your Ancestors.

FamilySearch offers these tips for sharing your photos on their site:

“If you don’t have a traditional scanner, you can use your cell phone. Just take a picture of your family photos, use the browser on your phone, and go to FamilySearch.org. Then click on Photos, and proceed from there.

If you know photos that exist of your ancestors but belong to other family members, contact these relatives and ask them to publish the photos to your family’s tree, or set a date to scan or take pictures of their collection. You can also send out a request for family photos over social media to your relatives. If there are family heirlooms (photos, furniture, bric-a-brac, letters, mementos, medals), take pictures of them and upload the photos to the profiles of your ancestors in the family tree. Then stories can be added by anyone to support the photos and describe them. These photos and stories will become keepsakes for everyone to have and will be preserved freely for future generations.”

Check out this 4-minute video on using Photos and Stories feature at FamilySearch, and you can contribute to the next million photos!

Follow Your Commuter Ancestors in NYC Subway Maps

If your ancestors lived or worked in New York City, did you know you can follow them home from work? At least virtually.

New York City Subway History

New York City Subway History

David Pirmann runs a website dedicated to the history of the New York City subway system. NYCSubway.org includes great historical background, photos, maps and other documents.

Start by reading about elevated rail service that began in the 1860s and the development of the transit system since then. Then consult route maps for several time periods, either in the Historical Maps section or the Line by Line Guide (both under the Maps and Stations tab).

The fun part is browsing the rest of the site: learn how “The Great White Hurricane” snowstorm of 1888 paralyzed the city, or how things have worked behind the scenes (fares, power, signals, etc). You can even check out images of abandoned stations and old cars.

Thanks to Gizmodo.com for an article that pointed me to this fun resource.

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