We're Moving!

Companies and traffic aren't the only things that merge. Cook Memorial Public Library District has combined all of our blogs into one library-sized blog. It's called Shelf Life.

Besides keeping up with all things genealogy at the library, you will also be able to follow our local history blog, The Past is Present, keep up with library news through The Scoop, and find out about the books, movies, music and more that librarians love to talk about in Read-Watch-Listen. If you prefer to limit yourself to genealogy posts, just click on the "Genealogy" category and you will only see genealogy posts.

If you want to be notified of new posts automatically, you can subscribe to Shelf Life just as you did to Genealogy @ the Library. Just type in your email address and click "Follow." You will be sent an email to confirm your request, and then you will automatically get new Shelf Life posts when they are up.

 

One thing that won't change about our genealogy blog is the content. We will continue to share helpful links, recaps of meetings and speakers, and program previews. And all our old posts have moved over to Shelf Life so you can refer back to them at any time.

 

Come on over to Shelf Life and enjoy!

~Sonia

 

 



FamilySearch magic

Remember my earlier post about finding my great-grandfather John Graf's hometown? I was able to turn that little victory into a veritable goldmine of information about John Graf's relatives (and my long-ago ancestors) in Germany.

When you find a record in FamilySearch, look for the Indexing Project (Batch) Number and click on the hyperlinked batch number down at the bottom of the record.

This gives you all the records that were indexed in the same batch, which is basically all the records from the same source; in my case, all the records from Schrozberg births and baptisms.

But at the moment I'm not interested in all the residents of Schrozberg. I only want to see the ones who are related to my great-grandfather and, by extension, me. I use the "Refine Your Search" option and type in my great-grandfather's last name, Graf, and click Update.

Now you can see that every person in the search results has the last name Graf and lives in Schrozberg. It's a list of 75, not too many to look through to see who is related to me.

But we can make this a little easier to examine and evaluate the records. Use the "Export Results" button to turn this list into a Microsoft Excel list. In this format, it is easier to manipulate the list to find children with the same parents and put them into family groups.

I went back to the batch records and refined by John Graf's mother's maiden name, Goeller, and was able to find more ancestors that way.

At the moment, my head is still reeling from finding all these "new" ancestors and putting them into the family tree. I think this little "trick" works best with vital records. I encourage you to try this bit of magic on one of your own FamilySearch finds and see how your family tree expands by leaps and bounds. Let me know how your searching turns out.

Happy Researching!
~Sonia

Photocopy Exchange Program

For all you family history writers out there: the Allen County Public Library in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, will happily accept a copy of your self-written family history or genealogy. Through their Photocopy Exchange Program, you can donate a copy of your writing to them, which they will bind and add to their collection at their Genealogy Center. They will also send you a copy of the bound book as well.

If you decide to take advantage of this offer, send your manuscript copy to:

The Genealogy Center
Allen County Public Library
P.O. Box 2270
900 Library Plaza
Ft. Wayne, IN 46801-2270

And be sure to mention the Photocopy Exchange Program, lest the library think you are just donating your work to the library without wanting a copy in return.

What a great way to get a bound copy of your writing while at the same time giving it a permanent home in a world-class genealogy library.

Happy publishing!
~Sonia

Deja Vu for Something New

A piece of advice from the collective wisdom of genealogy: Go back and search again.

The larger databases like Ancestry.com and FamilySearch are continually adding new material to their sites, so if you don't go back and search them from time to time, you could miss out on a big find.

Case in point. I have been searching for my great-grandfather's birth place in Germany for years. Recently, I went back to FamilySearch and searched my great grandfather's name, John Graf, born in 1873 in Wurttemburg, a province of Germany.

And holey schmoley, look what the results yielded:

There it is, Schrozberg, John Graf's birth place, in a record that had never come up before. Am I ever glad I went back and searched again. A whole new avenue of research has opened up. Stay tuned for more!

 

~Happy searching,

Sonia

Italian Genealogy

Genealogist Dan Niemiec recently gave us some good hints on how to research Italian ancestors. I do not have any Italian ancestors so I learned a lot about Italian records.

However, some things are the same no matter what your ethnic background. First, do your research in the United States. Second, you must know the immigrant ancestor's home village or parish before you can research in Italy. Third, set up a free account at FamilySearch if you do not already have one.

As far as Italian research goes, here are some new tips I learned:

• Use the catalog at FamilySearch.org. Not may records have been digitized.
• Italy has helpful records beyond birth, marriage, and death. Marriage banns (Pubblicazioni, Notificazioni) are useful if no marriage record is found. Supporting documents (Allegati) are a wealth of information in addition to the marriage record. A death elsewhere might be recorded in Annotazioni de Morti, and births of foundlings were recorded in Atti Diversi.
• Marriage records, because they include the names of the parents, will help you go back through generation after generation.

Remember that you can order LDS microfilm from the FamilySearch website and have it sent to the Cook Park library in Libertyville to view there. If you need help, stop by and ask for me.

Buona fortuna!
~Sonia

Ancestor's Town of Origin

At a recent meeting of the Lake County (IL) Genealogical Society we heard Teresa Steinkamp McMillin talk about finding your ancestor's town of origin. She called this "the holy grail of genealogical research," because once you find that, you can research your family in their homeland, across the ocean.

But how to find the town of origin? Be thorough. Check, look, and search. Teresa gave some good ideas of places to look:

• Home sources. This encompasses many, many possibilities, some of which are Bibles, letters, diaries, certificates of all kinds (from births, baptisms, marriages, deaths, naturalizations), photos, etc.
• Immigration lists. After 1898, the last place of residence was listed on the passenger lists. After 1906 the passenger lists had two pages and the second page included town of birth.
• Emigration lists. Hamburg passenger lists give town of birth.
• Naturalization records. After 1906, the Declaration of Intent requested this information.
• Obituaries, especially in foreign newspapers
• County histories, usually for more prominent citizens.

Haven't found the town of birth yet? Don't give up. Teresa's mantra: There is no such thing as a brick wall!

Happy searching.
~Sonia

Timelines

The idea of timelines has come up a few times recently, so it must be time to write about them.

Timelines can be used as a tool for genealogists to arrange, in chronological order, all the information you have found on a particular ancestor or family. Doing so can often reveal missing information or wrong conclusions in your research.

There are several ways to approach making a timeline. The simplest way is just to write out every detail you know about your ancestor. Here is a timeline of my relative Bruce Foley. I was interested in documenting every place he and his family had lived.

You'll notice I have questions and missing information noted, as well as sources for most of the facts. (Looking at this now, I'm embarrassed to say that I need to document every fact, not just "most!") For further research I should find Mr. Foley in the 1900 and 1910 census. I continue to search for his place of marriage to Esther Hedin.

Taking this simple timeline one step further, you could put it into a spreadsheet. A website called Genealogy Decoded has a free Ancestor Timeline Table with a place to document your sources. Follow the link here and click on Genealogy Worksheets.

If you really want to put together an impressive timeline for your ancestor, you might want to use an online source or purchase software. About.com Genealogy and FamilyTree Magazine have some options for you. If you already own genealogy software, check and see if it has the option to produce a timeline from the information you have input.

Finally, for something fun and educational, try OurTimeLines.com which lets you enter a birth and death date for an ancestor, then creates a chart with national and international events within those dates, to put your ancestor's life in context.

The next time you're stuck on an ancestor's research, try making a timeline of the person's life with any of the methods listed above. Perhaps a piece of information will become clearer or you'll see a new direction to take with your research.

Have fun!
~Sonia

Free Weekend of Find My Past

What are you doing this weekend? If you have British or Irish ancestors, be sure to make time to search findmypast.com, which will be free to all users from midday Friday, May 6 to midday Monday, March 9.

According to their announcement reposted in Dick Eastman's online newsletter, you will have access to:

• Over 900 million census records from across the UK, USA and Ireland
• Passenger lists for ships sailing to and from Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and the USA
• Birth, marriage and death records dating back to the 18th century, and the largest online collection of UK parish records
• The most comprehensive collection of UK military records anywhere online
• The largest collection of Irish family history records available online
• Historical newspapers from across the world, including more than 10 million British newspaper pages from as long ago as 1710

If you're unfamiliar with this database, you can watch a Getting Started video on their website and learn all about it. This is a great opportunity to "test drive" a database that you might want to subscribe to.

Let me know if you find anything!
~Sonia

FamilySearch Tips: Getting It All

FamilySearch is the largest and best free genealogy website around, so you want to get everything you can from it. Let's review:

The best way to search FamilySearch website is go to the first search box you see, type in your ancestor's name and place of birth, and press "Search." You'll get thousands if not millions of results and find everything there is to find, right?

Not so fast! First, remember what you learned from the last post and sign in. This will potentially give you access to more records than an "anonymous" search.

Next, search geographically when at all possible, using "Research by Location." Now you're getting somewhere. Click on your area of research on the world map, starting with the continent and drilling down to country or state. You will see a box that shows how many collections, indexed records, and record images they have, as well as the years covered in all the collections.

When you click on "Start researching..." you will have two options: to search the indexed records or browse the image only records. You will want to do both. There is no crossover between these two types of records.

When you search the indexed records you may find images or just an abstract of the information. Make sure you track down the original image of the abstracted record to obtain every scrap of information you can get.

When you browse the images only, don't be put off by the number of records to browse. The records are often divided into a manageable number of images to look through. Take your time and be grateful you can do this on your computer rather than a microfilm reader. (We'll tackle that step next time!)

Happy researching!
~Sonia

FamilySearch Tips

From time to time I will post tips for using the FamilySearch website. It is a vital website, and you will want to use it to the fullest extent.

Today's Tip:
Register for a free account. Sign in every time you use the site.

Why? Some information and some images are restricted, accessible only to registered users. Don't miss out because you don't have an account.

Click on "Free Account" in the top right corner. Supply your name, make up a user name and password, then give your email and a few other bits of information. Make sure you remember your user name and password.

Once you've registered, sign in (click on "Sign In" in the top right corner) and then type your User Name and Password in the boxes every time you use the site. Now you'll see everything that's available for you to see.

 

 

Happy researching!

~Sonia

British Genealogy

Last night at the Lake County (IL) Genealogical Society meeting, Maureen Brady gave an information-packed presentation on doing genealogy in the British Isles. If you have ancestors from the British Isles (loosely defined for our purposes as England, Scotland, Wales, the Isle of Man, the Channel Islands, Northern Ireland, and the Republic of Ireland). Here are some of the databases she mentioned:

• GENUKI (UK and Ireland Genealogy), most useful for getting background information and learning about topics like the history and geography of the area you're researching. Free.
• Deceased Online includes indexes and images of sexton records for cemeteries and churchyards for England, Scotland and Wales. It is not complete but being added to. Searching is free. To view the records you must buy credits or have a subscription.
• Findmypast is a good site but not easy to use. Useful for British military information. Subscription or pay-as-you-go, also free at Family History Centers.
• Scotland's People is the official government site for all Scottish records. Pay-as-you-go with credits.
• IrishGenealogy.ie is a sort of "gateway" site. Use its index to find records in other databases.

In addition to the above databases, of course you will still want to use the old standbys: Ancestry, FamilySearch, CyndisList, and even Google.

And remember, these sites are adding new material and records all the time. Check them every week.
~Sonia

Look for Page 2

Here's something to watch out for when you're searching and finding records in an online database like Ancestry: look and see if there is a page 2 to the image that you have found. The two examples below should tell you why.

Example 1: A World War II Draft Registration card for Charles Peterson gives all the information you might expect, including address, birth date, and place of employment, even a fairly nice signature:

Page 1

But take a look at the next screen and you might find something surprising:
Page 2

Charles Peterson is 5'8", 165 pounds, blue-eyed, blond, and blind. You might never have known this about your ancestor if you hadn't looked for page 2.

Example 2: On line 3 of the passenger list below we find Hedvig Rosalie Helgeson and learn her place of birth and that she lives in Winnetka. (She had probably left the country and was now coming back)

However, when you look on page 2, you will learn more about Hedvig Rosalie:

Line 3 now tells us the name and address of Hedvig Rosalie's father, not to mention the facts that she is 5'6", has brown hair, and is in good health, and is going to see her friend in Winnetka, Hans Philips. A close inspection of page1 might have given us a clue that there is more. Notice the incomplete heading at the top of the page: "List or Manifest of Alien Passengers for the United."

Often we are so excited when we find our ancestor in a record that we don't take time to examine the record fully or look for more. The next time you find an ancestor in an online database, remember to slow down and look for page 2!
~Sonia



You've Got To See This!

Local Author Appears on PBS' Genealogy Roadshow

Libertyville author Gail Lukasik filled out an application for PBS' Genealogy Roadshow, saying, "I'm a mystery writer with a family mystery I couldn't solve." The producers of the show interviewed her and accepted her for their program which will air on January 20, 2015 on WTTW, Channel 11 at 10 p.m. Make sure to watch to discover the secret that Gail promised her mother to keep until after her mother's death, involving her New Orleans grandfather and the Civil War.

Genealogy 101 CORRECTION

Our Genealogy 101 class this Saturday will be held in the Meeting Room at Cook Park Library in Libertyville. I apologize for giving the wrong information in the previous post.

See you at Cook Park Library on January 10, 2015, 9:30 - 11:30 a.m.
~Sonia

Genealogy 101

If you're curious about getting into genealogy research but don't know where to start, here's your chance. Attend our Genealogy 101 program this Saturday morning, January 10, 2015, 9:30 - 11:30 a.m., at Aspen Drive Library . We'll start at the beginning with home sources, talk about the building blocks of genealogy, make sure you know how to cite your sources, and give a preview of the different genealogy records you will need to know.. Call 847-362-2330 to sign up or register from our weblink.