Friday, February 26, 2016

Website: FamilySearch.org - Part 3


This last blog article on FamilySearch.org will cover the different types of trees that are on this site:

Pedigree Resource File, Ancestral File, IGI, Community Trees and Family Tree
  • Pedigree Resource File: A growing collection of genealogies submitted by users
  • Ancestral File: A static collection of genealogies submitted by users before 2003
  • IGI: Information of over 430 million ancestors contributed by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
  • Community Trees: A collection of sourced genealogies from specific times

To get to this section, simply click on "Search" and in the drop down click on "Genealogies". Here you'll be able to enter in information you have and the results will come from first four groups listed there.  


You can add additional information as this is a partial view of the form. You can add the spouse and parents names also here to get better results.

The last section is Family Trees. In order to view these you need an account, you do not need to be member of The Church of Latter-day Saints to have an account. 

To sign up you simply click on "Free Account" at the top on the right and enter the necessary information. Once that is complete you can begin your search by clicking on "Find" which looks like this:


Remembering that this is tapping into billions of names that can help you further your research. All these trees are submitted by individuals, some have sources, pictures, etc. and many do not. It is a great place to either begin or to see if someone has more than you on a family line. Either way, it is an great resource to genealogists all over the world.

We'll tackle another website next week, in the mean time, spend some serious time in FamilySearch.org, and you may find more than you expect!

Comments Are Always Welcome!


Building Bridges for All Generations!

claire@timelessgen.com


 (c) 2005-2016, Timeless Genealogies, All Rights Reserved




Friday, February 19, 2016

Website: FamilySearch.org: Part 2


Last week we reviewed the "Learning Center" and the vast collection of "Online records". This week we will take a look at the "Scanned Books" and the Family History Library Catalog.

To go to the scanned book section, one clicks on "Search" at the top, scrolls down and clicks on "Books" and lands here:

One can search the more than 2000 digitized collection of scanned family history and genealogical publications from 12 different libraries. 

Allen County Public Library, BYU-Harold B. Lee Library, BYU-I David O. McKay Library, BYU-Hawaii Joseph F. Smith Library, Church History Library, Family History Library, Houston Public Library -Clayton Library Center for Genealogical Research, Mid-Continent Public Library - Midwest Genealogy Center, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Onondaga Conty Public Library, University of Florida, George A. Smathers Libraries and the Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records. 

Some of the scanned books can be read by anyone from their home and others require you to be at a Family History Center, either way, it is a great assets to the genealogical community throughout the world.

To access the catalog, again go to "Search" and this time click on "Catalog". This will bring you to where you can enter the search information for a particular place, or a subject or even the title to one of the books that has been scanned.


The format of what you are searching for could be on microfilm, microfiche, in-house book, a scanned book, or an online record collection, each will be identified to assist you in locating the record set.

If it is a book in-house, they are not lent out, one would have to visit the Family History Library or order the item either in microfilm or microfiche format to be sent to a local Family History Library. Often times the book is also available closer to your current home, this can be checked through the OCLC WorldCat.

If the item is on microfilm or microfiche it can ordered and sent to a local Family History Center, ordering of these films or fiche can now be done online, here is a link to the ordering resource.

When searching for records from a specific place, one simply enters in the location and they are brought to that screen where a listing of what is available is provided. One simply reviews it and locates what is needed, the format will be stated and depending on that format will determine the procedure to get the relevant records either online or sent to a local Family History Center.

One simply checks each section they are interested in and follow the above directions to obtain a copy of the records needed for research.

Next we will cover Family Trees...

Comments Are Always Welcome!


Building Bridges for All Generations!

claire@timelessgen.com


 (c) 2005-2016, Timeless Genealogies, All Rights Reserved












Friday, February 12, 2016

Website: FamilySearch.org


There is a lot to be said for FamilySearch.org, from access to help videos, online records, scanned books, the catalog and family trees it is an amazing website and has a lot to offer anyone doing research today.

Each of the items mentioned could take a blog article all by itself so today we'll discuss the first two items and continue it into Part 2 next week. The first item is the large variety of helpful tutorials to guide you from beginner through to narrowing down a particular country and its records. 




There are hundreds of videos here to help everyone. A quick glance from the above image shows some of the countries represented here to help others research in those localities. There are 255 for beginners, 14 foreign languages represented with a variety of topics. To get to this section go to the Help up in the top right hand corner, click it and then click "Learning Center", type in the box what you looking for and enjoy the lesson which usually comes with a handout!

The next area is the online records which is vast. The count as of when this blog is being written is 2,062 different collections. Again these collections cover many parts of the world and not just the United States.




As you can see, a number of countries are represented as well as a large span of dates of records available.

When searching through these records, sometimes you will have access to the actual image and other times you will see a transcription, it all depends on the agreements set up for access to the records.

Additionally, not all records are indexed, some will be viewable by browsing, if this happens, way points have been put in to help with viewing those records.

Whether you choose a collection to research in or get to that collection through the "Search Historical Records" fill in form, you will definitely find much to aid your research!

These two features alone make this site worth a visit. We'll review more from this site next week.


Comments Are Always Welcome!


Building Bridges for All Generations!

claire@timelessgen.com


 (c) 2005-2016, Timeless Genealogies, All Rights Reserved



Friday, February 5, 2016

Website: Archive.org



The Internet Archive was founded in 1996 to build an Internet library with the purpose of offering permanent access for researchers, historians, and scholars to to historical collections that exist in digital format.

Today there are over 150 billion web pages. About 240,000 movies, over 500,00 audio items, over 1,800,000 texts, 1600 educational items, and over 30,000 software items and it grows bigger each and every day.

The over 1,800,000 texts are a great help to genealogists everywhere. These resources range from scanned copies of parish registers to biographies, histories and all types of records to aid in family history research. Let's start with parish records, we put "Vermont Parish Records" in their search records and came up with the Rutland, VT West Parish Records covering 1773-1881:

One can search this page by page or search for a particular family surname. Doing a search for "Family Histories" brings up 578 results. Here is the Ashton Family Histories:


This book is over 1000 pages long with stories, photos. charts and an index.

The next part of this website in the "Way Back Machine", this is a wonderful asset to all doing research.



Type in the Internet address for a website and view it over time as it was scanned by Archive.org. The best part of this is the websites which are no longer available, you are able to go back to them and view their contents. Here is a screen shot from the early days for the Internet Archive.


As you continue your research, consider the Internet Archive as another place to find lots of help with your Family History research!

Comments Are Always Welcome!


Building Bridges for All Generations!

claire@timelessgen.com

 (c) 2005-2016, Timeless Genealogies, All Rights Reserved











Friday, January 29, 2016

Website: Stephen Morse One-Stop Webpages


When doing research you often come to a point where you have an immigrant who came to the United States. Stephen P. Morse's website is one of the best sites to use to locate your immigrant ancestor. He has multiple "One-Step" pages set up for each of the incoming ports. 

These ports include Ellis Island, Castle Garden, Baltimore, Boston, Galveston, New Orleans, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Hamburg, Canada and others. These one-step forms are easy to use and will help you locate your ancestor. Here is a sample form that one fills out to conduct a search:


Another 'One-Step' form that he has set up is for Census searches for the United Statesm England, Canada and New York. Again his forms get straight to the data and bring back results from the information you have entered. Here is a section that shows what the census covers:




There are many additional tools available for genealogist on this wonderful website, be sure to take advantage of all of them!

Comments Are Always Welcome!


Building Bridges for All Generations!

claire@timelessgen.com

 (c) 2005-2016, Timeless Genealogies, All Rights Reserved












Friday, January 22, 2016

Website: Linkpendium


Since 2002, Linkpendium has been helping individuals with their immense collection of links and helps to all those who are conducting Family History/Genealogical research.

The owners', Karen Isaacson and Brian (Wolf) Leverich were the founders of the RootsWeb genealogical community website which began back in 1996 and merged with Ancestry.com in June, 2000. We'll talk about RootsWeb next week. To view their full background and history click here.

Karen and Brian have done a wonderful job of providing a "one stop place for genealogical links" from around the world. They even provide a break down of all the work that is done on the website to maintain it and add new links, they are amazing!

The fist thing you see are the 50 states with clickable links as above, clicking on one of those states takes you to that state's links as well as those for each county with the number of links in parenthesis, as usual, some counties have more information than others. For this article I choose my birth place, Rhode Island, there are only 5 counties which makes it easier to display!



Providence being the oldest county has the largest amount of links. Once there it is broken down by types of records from Biographies to cemeteries to vital records and everything in between! To add to that they provide Mailing Lists and Message Boards for each area, I've had great success with help from the community and you will too.

They also have a link section on Surnames Worldwide which currently has 9, 213,508 links! Looking for one of my ancestors' surname provided me with a lot of links to check out for "Marotte":


This is a great site to bookmark and use often. It has much to offer researchers.

The site also allows you to add a site you find that can help others, each page has a link you click where you can do just that.


With the community helping each other brick walls will come tumbling down and new sites will continue to aid all researchers. 

Thanks to Karen, Brian and all who help to make this site a wonderful resource for family history and genealogical research!


Comments Are Always Welcome!

Building Bridges for All Generations!

claire@timelessgen.com

 (c) 2005-2016, Timeless Genealogies, All Rights Reserved



Friday, January 15, 2016

Website: Cyndi's List



This week's website is "Cyndi's List", a place where one can locate links that take you to other online genealogical research websites. It could be called the encylopedia of genealogical and family history websites, it is that good.

Cyndi started this websight back in 1996 as a personal online reference to valuable websights for the Tacoma-Pierce County Genealogical Society. According to her "About Cyndi" section, the original list had 1,025 links. Today, in 2016, there are 333,947 links. She adds links as they are provided to her and checks for broken links, etc. it is a full-time job.

This is a free websight, however, there is a "Donations" button to help with all the costs associated with maintaining a very active website.

The website is very well organized by "categories" and a tab for New Links. In addition she provides a daily dose of family history through The Cyndi's List Daily and has a "Mailing List" one can sign up and receive emails regarding updates to the site. One can keep up to date and perhaps discover a new site which contains valuable genealogical data to help further their research.

The categories are in alphabetical order with easily navigation by letter. From Acadian, Cajun & Creole to Writing Your Family's History and everything in between, there is something for any family history enthusiast to the genealogical professional and so much more.

One category that might appear strange is "Myths, Hoaxes & Scams". A click of the first section brought up 12 topics, here are the first 2:

Myth: Everything in print (books, Cds, databases, Internet) is accurate and reliable

Myrth: Family crest or coat of arms

This section is worth going through. The "Beginners" section has much to offer:


Here is a cut from the categories listing:




Take some time over the next few days and discover all Cindi's List has to offer as you continue on your family history and genealgical research jouney.

Comments Are Always Welcome!


Building Bridges for All Generations!

claire@timelessgen.com

 (c) 2005-2016, Timeless Genealogies, All Rights Reserved