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.
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:
Learn more about nonpopulation schedules and other census records in Ancestry’sThe Source.
In this episode we’re talking about this unique moment in time where we have access to the 1950 U.S. Census but we don’t yet have the full index.
The 1950 census must be indexed so that we can search for relatives by name, location and much, much more. You can help with this exciting project, and no special skills or background are required. Jim Ericson of FamilySearch 1950 Census Community Project explains what’s happening and how you can get involved.
Don’t miss the Bonus audio for this episode. In the app, tap the gift box icon just under the media player. Get the app here.
Get the Free Genealogy Gems Newsletter
The Genealogy Gems email newsletter is the best way to stay informed about what’s available with your Premium eLearning Membership. Sign up today here.
Here’s our weekly roundup of new genealogy records online. Do you see anything you should be searching for your ancestors?
Featured: U.S. – SOUTH DAKOTA CENSUS. The 1945 South Dakota state census collection at Ancestry.com has been updated. According to a FamilySearch.org collection description (where it can also be searched for free), “This 1945 South Dakota State Census is an every-name list of the state’s inhabitants as of 1945. The records are handwritten on printed cards and are arranged alphabetically by surname. People enumerated in the census are recorded individually; the census records do not show individuals in family groups.” It’s wonderful to see census records access pushing past that 1940 blackout!
AUSTRALIA VITAL RECORDS. Findmypast.com has updated collections of birth, marriage and death records for Western Australia. Transcripts for all three record sets appear to be taken from original civil registrations, which began in 1841.
SPAIN MUNICIPAL RECORDS. A free collection of Cádiz municipal records (1784-1956) has been updated with over 155,000 new browsable images at FamilySearch.org. The full collection (some of which is indexed) includes “civil registration records, censuses, military records, and other miscellaneous records microfilmed and digitized at municipal archives in the province of Cádiz, Spain.”
U.S. – LOUISIANA WILLS/PROBATE. Ancestry.com’s collection of wills and estate records for Louisiana (1756-1984) has been updated. Indexed images represent nearly 3/4 of Louisiana parishes.
U.S. – NEW YORK CHURCH. Findmypast.com has updated its collection of New York State Religious Records, 1716-1914. Find indexed images of baptisms, marriages and deaths from dozens of churches from various denominations. You can even search by denomination, church name, county or full text.
U.S. – NORTH CAROLINA MARRIAGES. There’s a new index with over 53,000 entries from North Carolina civil marriage bonds and certificates (1763-1868) at FamilySearch.org. Click here to see a description of the index’s coverage.
U.S. – NORTH DAKOTA FUNERALS. An index to records from North Dakota funeral homes hosted by the Red River Genealogical Society is newly indexed at Ancestry.com and can be searched for free. (Click here to search the index on the host website.)
This decorative marriage certificate and the Births page below come from a Sudweeks family Bible I helped return to the Sudweeks family.
The Daughters of the American Revolution Library (DAR) has a free online collection of searchable records. Its Genealogical Research System allows anyone to search databases of ancestors, descendants, members, its Genealogical Research Committee reports and more. Now it’s added another databases: Bible records.
“DAR collections contain thousands of Bible records from the Family Register sections and other pages,” states a news release from Eric Grundset, DAR Library Director. A new database contains “approximately 30,000 Bible records taken from our Genealogical Records Committee Reports. This is an ongoing project as member volunteers review the GRC database to post more materials found in those nearly 20,000 volumes. As time progresses, we will add other Bible listings from other sources in our collections.
“At the present time, if someone wishes to order copies of a specific Bible record, they will need to contact the DAR Library’s Search Services for copies. We are developing the steps for the ordering of pdfs of all of the DAR Bible records for online ordering in the near future. Documentation that is less than 100 years old is restricted for privacy reasons.”
Family Bibles in years past served as a family’s private vital records registry, where the names, births, marriages and deaths of loved ones were inscribed. A Bible record may be the only place to find some of those, especially for the distant past and for children who died young. But it’s also the most intimate kind of vital record to find, a family’s log of its own kin.
Grundset reminds us that “DAR Collections are not limited to the period of the American Revolution or to the families of DAR members.”
Every Friday, we blog about new genealogy records online. Do any of the collections below relate to your family history? This week seems to be all about U.S. records: newspapers, military and railroad employees.
U.S. NAVY SURVIVORS. A new collection with nearly 2 million records from case files of Navy approved pension applications (1861-1910) is now searchable on Fold3. These include Civil War survivors and later Navy veterans.
U.S. NEWSPAPERS. Over 450 historical newspaper titles for all 50 states (1730-1900) have been added to GenealogyBank. Over 160 of the papers date to the 1700s. Notable are an Ohio (Northwest Territory) paper from 1795, a New Orleans paper from 1803 and a Detroit paper from 1817.
PENNSYLVANIA NEWSPAPERS. Notable recent additions at Newspapers.com include nearly 400,000 pages of the Wilkes-Barre Record (1881-1949PA) and over 400,000 pages of the Standard-Speaker (1961-2000, Hazleton, PA).
U.S. RAILROAD RECORDS. Ancestry subscribers can access the Chicago and North Western Railroad Employment Records, 1935-1970. The line passed through Wisconsin, Minnesota, SD, Iowa and Nebraska. The collection includes Social Security numbers (born before 1912) and applications (with parents’ names), birth and death date, residences and occupational details.
Google search tip: Though no longer actively digitizing and indexing newspapers, Google News Archive can help you locate online content for specific newspapers. Click here to access its alphabetical listing of newspapers. You can also enter keyword-searches in the search box on that webpage for all the newspapers listed here. There’s an entire chapter on the Google News Archive and what it can still do for us in The Genealogist’s Google Toolbox by Lisa Louise Cooke, fully revised and updated in 2015.
