Hey everyone – I just ran across an email from Footnote.com that they are allowing free access to all their Civil War records for the month of June! WOW! Now, that is an offer that you certainly don’t want to pass on! All you need is to sign up for a free account in order to download the images. Footnote is a site that collects scanned documents (instead of searching just an index like Ancestry does).
Your surname tells a history of your family. Surnames can generally be traced to an origin point and even though people have migrated to other countries, there are still folks who stayed behind with those surnames and live there today. The creators of MapYourName.com have made it easy to see where your surname originated from and if anything, can give you a small clue on where to start looking if you are not sure of the country of origin for your ancestor. Or you may find some surprising occurances of your surname in another location. It’s a fascianting website that I couldn’t stop playing with. I entered just about every surname in my tree to see it mapped.
Once you’ve started making progress in your genealogy research, you will quickly start to notice that you have a growing pile of papers and notes that will need to be organized. Early on in your research, you should locate some free genealogy templates to help you keep track of the families in your tree. Genealogy charts and forms are useful to pencil in names and dates as you come across them to give you a quick visual of how the information fits into the bigger picture. Some people prefer to keep all their research on paper. Others like to transfer it to genealogy software. I personally do a little of both – I like to keep the paper charts as a quick reference if I am going to library. I’m not one to take my laptop with me. I spend too much time in the stacks and don’t want to worry about it walking off! But I do love genealogy software to stay organized overall, especially with hundreds of names.
Posting your tree online can be a fun way to connect with distant relatives. It’s fairly simple to do if you have the right tools. I first came across GedHTree software back in 2001 or 2002. I was searching for an easy way to put my family tree on my personal genealogy web site. Read more »
For most of our ancestors, who were hard working people and didn’t achieve high status during their lives, the only biography that was ever written about them was their obituary. Obituaries are often chock full of information about your ancestor’s family, including names and dates, locations where they lived previously, clubs or churches they belonged to, and what their occupation was. Check out the following resources for free obituaries that you can access online instead of heading to the library to dust off the microfilm!
Rootsweb is perhaps the largest and oldest free genealogy community online. It used to be entirely run by volunteers but in 2004 was acquired by Ancestry.com which provides the funds to support it. Never fear, however, as all of the genealogy records on Rootsweb still remain free to access by anyone. If you haven’t made you way to Rootsweb before, then add it to your to-do list. You won’t want to miss the free genealogy resources! Read more »
The United States has been the destination for millions of immigrants. You can find out if your immigrants entered the United Stated through New York City by checking out Ellis Island immigration records. Ellis Island opened in 1892, taking over from the Castle Garden facility. There is a lot of information about Ellis Island immigration that is available to you on the Ellis Island website. Information such as the island’s history, its immigrants, and its immigration records can be found within it’s easy to use search functions.
Cemetery burial records should not be overlooked in your research. Burial records can substitute for missing death records or add value in their own right to your research of your ancestors. There are many, many free genealogy websites that have transcriptions of burial records, however, most of them are on small sites that perhaps only cater to an individuals family research or maybe a particular county. Your best friend here is Google to try to ferret out those hard to find lists online. Read more »
The Gravestone Photo Project came into being from the brainstorming of one IAGenWeb county coordinator and his son. The first Gravestone Photo Project was from Iowa and now, at least 15 other states have their own Gravestone Photo Projects! As of today, those states include Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Maine, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Utah! The code to create a gravestone project is free and available at the Gravestone Photo Project website. Read more »
It’s not a surprise that Ancestry.com has come up with a new gadget to help you find your ancestors. Recently, Ancestry.com released a new toolbar which you can install to your web browser. What the toolbar allows you to do is grab information off any genealogy website you might be looking at and add it your your free family tree. It can also help you organize any information you have found online and access your family tree very quickly, in the event you don’t have that information at your fingertips (perhaps while you are surfing the Internet on your lunch break at work).
County vital records are one of the most sought after pieces of genealogical information. Vital records are the official records left behind by your ancestors as they moved through life. These are the “facts” about your ancestor – when and where they were born, when and where they got married, when and where they died, and where they were buried.
Another often overlooked resource researchers neglect when searching for their ancestors is land records. There is a lot of information recorded during a land transaction and it could be just the document that ties your research together. The Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) General Land Records Office (GLO) provides a wonderful service as you search for your ancestors’ land records. Read more »
There is a fun new way of looking up your relatives and keeping in touch with your family members. Through the growing number of sites known as Genealogy 2.0 sites, people all over the world can start putting up their family trees online and linking up with distant relatives. These genealogy networking sites serve as a way of connecting with other people who share ancestors with you to help you build your own family tree. Think MySpace for genealogists! By simply registering in these sites, you can already have access to their genealogical resources. Most of these sites are free but there are those that charge subscription and membership fees or pay-per-use facilities, sometimes as upgrades to the free membership.
Those with Canadian ancestry can get all the information they need when undertaking a genealogy research project through the internet. Canada genealogy information is available in a collection of databases developed by the Canadian Genealogy Centre in the Library and Archives Canada. The Library and Archives Canada has a significant collection of cultural and historical information captured in documents and made accessible to genealogists and the general public. Not only is this Canada genealogy institution responsible for collecting and preserving these records, audio-visual materials, photographs, and other pertinent documents, it is also responsible for acquiring and sharing the materials to as many people as possible. Read more »
I’ve created a little video for you that shows you how to take the results from your search at the BLM-GLO website and view them live in Google Earth!! I show you how to take the township and range information, input it into a conversion tool and voila – instant map of your ancestor’s land! You can then create a whole file of these land records in Google Earth and save the maps as part of your research. I hope you enjoy the video and please share the link with others if you did 
I thought you’d like to know about the new hit show “Who Do You Think You Are?” premiering March 5, 2010. The NBC series features Lisa Kudrow, Sarah Jessica Parker, Spike Lee, Matthew Broderick, Susan Sarandon, Emmitt Smith, and Brooke Shields, and takes each celebrity on a heart-warming journey back in time as they discover more about the ancestors who came before them.
Perhaps the best and largest free ancestry search tool available today on the Internet is FamilySearch.org. This website is a non-profit service provided by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. This Church is also known as LDS and their followers as Mormons. The LDS Church believes strongly in the sacredness of family and preserving heritage. For over 100 years, it has been involved in gathering and preserving all types of genealogical records from around the world. The LDS genealogy service is sponsored through donations and therefore is free to anyone who is pursuing research of their family tree. Read more »
By it’s very nature, the Internet allows people from all over the world to connect with each other. For genealogists, this opens up a wide variety of possibilities. Genealogists love to talk with each other about research and exchange stories about their ancestors. One of the places you can REALLY get down to specifics and find people to help with your research or just exchange ideas or chitchat, is a genealogy forum, also known as a genealogy message board. Basically, this is a website where people can post topics or questions and other people can answer or have a conversation. You can find so many clues or other tidbits that will lead you down the right path in your genealogy research. There are a few large genealogy forums and many, many more smaller ones where you just might find that missing link. Read more »
It’s truly amazing how much information is available online now. I started searching for genealogy online back in 1999 or so and I was stunned back then! Not only can you find transcribed records these days but there is a wealth of other information to help you create a “picture” of your ancestors.
Your Social Security Number is how you are tracked by the Federal government from the time you are born until the time of your death. This number is used everywhere from your health insurance, employment, and taxes to your utility bills and driver’s license. It is a unique number that will forever and always belong to your identity. Fortunately, this number can also help you locate ancestors who died in the 20th century and beyond, as almost all United States citizens obtained Social Security numbers after the Social Security Act was passed in 1935. Read more »
Castle Garden in New York City was one of the processing centers where immigrants from all over the world passed through when they immigrated to the United States. Castle Garden immigration records are available for the 10 millions plus immigrants to the United States passing through this port even before Ellis Island was opened. Castle Garden was in operation from 1830 to 1892, which was when Ellis Island was opened.
The most well known site on the Internet for finding your ancestors in free passenger lists is the Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild (ISTG). The ISTG has been online since September 1998 with a few volunteers who transcribed passenger lists. The ISTG now has over 500 volunteers who are completing this important work to be published on their website. As of today, there are over 9,000 passengers lists that have been transcribed! The lists that they transcribe are mainly from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) microfilm collection.
If you have not run across the site Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness (RAOGK) while searching your ancestors for free online, you are in for a real treat! The RAOGK has over 4000 volunteers who are willing and able to perform a variety of genealogy research tasks for free! The volunteers donate their time just to help out other genealogists. However, you are required to reimburse the volunteer for items such as postage, copies, or mileage, which seems only fair if someone is going to drive out to a cemetery and take pictures for you! Only recently did they allow volunteers to charge for mileage since fuel prices have gone up.
Family Tree Magazine recently recognized Virginia as one of the top 10 states for genealogy research. Once you visit the Library of Virginia online (or in person) you will agree that it is one of the best free Virginia genealogy resources available to you. Virginia can be called the ancestral home of millions of Americans so chances are, you might have a Virginian in your family tree! Several of my lines originated in Virginia and I now call the state home (by coincidence!) and have personally been to this wonderful library in Richmond.
