Genealogy Tech Talk

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Basic Research Strategy

 START WITH YOURSELF & MOVE BACKWARDS. • Get Organized (fill out a pedigree chart)

• Talk to Ancestors

• Research in the U.S. Census

• Research in Vital Records

Basic Research Strategy

Ancestry.com

Ancestry.comThe Home Edition of Ancestry.com also has user-contributed data such as family trees.

HeritageQuest

WorldCat

Exercise 1

What can we learn by reading a census page?

Census Basics

Each decade, enumerators have used different modes of travel to take them from interview to interview. (Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Public Information Office.)

A word of caution…Census research is not always straightforward

1.The census misrecords a name, or there is name variation.2.The census indexer misreads a name3.The family story is wrong

Examples:

Mason Edgar McCarty (actual name) -> Nathan E. McCarty (census misrecords) -> Wattan E. McCarty (indexer misreads)

A word of caution cont’d…Vincenzia Carbone immigrated in 1915 from Corleone, Sicily --> after living in the U.S. she changed her name to the English version: Virginia Carbone

A word of caution cont’d…

Great-Grandfather Jake McCarty -> is actually Great-Great-Grandfather Jacob McCarty

Vital RecordsBirth, marriage and death records.

Free internet sites to look for Vital Records include:

USGen Web: http://usgenweb.org/

Cindy’s List: http://www.cyndislist.com/usvital.htm

Death Indexes & Records: http://www.deathindexes.com/

Centers for Disease Control: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/w2w.htm

Genealogy Roots Blog: http://genrootsblog.blogspot.com

Family History Library Catalog: http://www.familysearch.org/eng/Library/FHLC/frameset_fhlc.asp

Exercise 2

How can we request a copy of an original Social Security application using Ancestry.com?

Social Security Record

• Full name• Full name at birth (including maiden name)• Present mailing address• Age at last birthday• Date of birth• Place of birth (city, county, state)• Father’s full name “regardless of whether living or dead”• Mother’s full name, including maiden name, “regardless of whether living or

dead”• Sex and race• Ever applied for SS number/Railroad Retirement before? Yes/No• Current employer’s name and address• Date signed• Applicant’s signature

Newspapers and Obituaries

Newspapers and Obituaries

Local Public Libraries (small community newspapers on microfilm) Statewide Repositories (Sutro Library - Branch of the California State Library with a large genealogy and family history resource collection.) Major Commercial Digitization Projects – ProQuest has digitized The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Atlanta Constitution, etc. ProQuest has a product called ProQuest Obituaries that extracts just the obituary from these papers. Genealogy Bank - Newsbank offers access to the San Jose Mercury News. Ancestry’s home subscription also offers a number of digitized newspapers. Free Digitized Newspapers - The Library of Congress has started a major newspaper digitization project called Chronicling America.

City DirectoriesCity Directories are the predecessor to today’s phone books. The bulk of them were

published in the period 1860-1930. They listed city residents (Name, Home address, Job title, Place of employment) and city institutions. City directories are great tools for genealogists for two reasons:

• They track individuals in the years between censuses.

• They provide an annual snapshot of a city: its churches, schools, street addresses and other basic information that researches find useful.

There are a number of places that tend to hold city directories in print format e.g. your local public library. Digitized city directories are available from a number of websites. Ancestry offers some digitized directories. USGenWeb might also have some. Increasingly, book digitization projects such as Google Books at http://books.google.com/ and the Open Content Alliance/Internet Archive at http://www.archive.org/ include digitized copies of city directories.

Local Histories & Family Histories

Local histories were a popular genre for subscription-based publishers. Canvassers would gather historical information about the county while simultaneously selling the publication. As a result, these books are packed with detail about local residents.

County histories typically record the history of each town and township in a county, describe the founding of institutions such as churches and schools, and contain biographical sketches of county residents.

Most family histories were self-published in small runs and are fairly rare. The bulk of family histories published in the United States describes early Anglo-American families, because these families were the most popular subject for genealogical publishing before the 1970s. In the 1970s, the genealogical field broadened, and a more diverse group of Americans published their family history.

Local Histories & Family HistoriesWorldCat

To locate a print history of…

A county:(name) county, (state) – history(name) county, (state) – biographyExample: Santa Clara County, California – History or Santa Clara County,

California - Biography

A family:(Surname) familyExample: McCarty family

Local Histories & Family Histories

Family History Library catalog at http://www.familysearch.org/eng/Library/FHLC/frameset_fhlc.asp

Use the “surname search” option.

Exercise 3Locate a family history for the McCarty family who lived in

Pocahontas County, West Virginia in

HeritageQuest & Ancestry.com

Cemetery RecordsWorldCat

To locate a print index…

County, state - genealogy or perform a keyword search

Example: Santa Clara County, California – Genealogy

Or

Jewish Cemeteries Istanbul

FindAGrave.com

Immigration Research• Passenger records

• Naturalization records

Colonial era to 1820: In these early period of immigration, passenger lists were fairly spare- they did not record a great deal of information about the immigrants.

1820-1880: More manifests exist from this time period, and many were preserved and microfilmed by the National Archives.

1880-1957: For this period, detailed manifests exist for most U.S. ports. Many of the records are available digitally through commercial and free websites.

For the post-1820 era, researchers can see the original passenger lists on microfilm. The National Archives’ website at http://www.archives.gov/genealogy/immigration/passenger-arrival.html lists what records are available on microfilm.

Immigration Research

Ellis Island Database: http://www.ellisisland.org/Castle Garden Database: http://www.castlegarden.org/

Castle Garden and Ellis Island were arrival stations for international passengers traveling to New York City. Castle Garden was active from 1855 to 1890, and

Ellis Island served from 1892 to 1954.

Passenger Records on Ancestry.com

Ancestry has been aggressively digitizing the microfilmed passenger lists from the National Archives, covering the period of 1820-1957. These records are similar to those included in the Ellis Island database, but also cover other ports such as New Orleans, Boston, Philadelphia, and San Francisco.

Exercise 4

What can we learn by reading a passenger record?

Naturalization Records

Naturalization is the legal process whereby immigrants become citizens. The naturalization process changed over time in the U.S.

Colonial Period: Naturalization was uncommon in this period. British subjects did not need to naturalize when coming to the American colonies. Some non-British immigrants did take an oath of allegiance to the British crown, and scattered records of those oaths exist.

1790-1906: During this period, naturalization records were filed at a local court. Women automatically assumed their husband’s naturalization status during this period, so few women are well documented in the naturalization records of this era.

Naturalization Records

1906-1922: In 1906, the Federal government standardized the naturalization process under a new administrative body, the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization. Naturalization records from this period contain a great deal of information, including place of birth, date of birth, port and date of entry, name of ship, and names of spouses and children.

1922-2002: In 1922, Congress passed a law ending the automatic naturalization of women married to naturalized citizens. This motivated more immigrant women to naturalize than in previous years. Otherwise, the naturalization process remained largely the same until 2002, when immigration and naturalization was placed under the authority of the Department of Homeland Security.

Naturalization Records

Christina Schaefer’s Guide to Naturalization Records of the United States is an essential reference work for locating where the records of a particular county or state are held.

Naturalization Records

Another option for researchers is to search for ancestors in foreign records prior to immigration. For example, if an ancestor immigrated from England in 1885, researchers can search for them in the 1881 British Census.

International ResearchAncestry.com (Offers some foreign Census records, Address Books, Discussion Boards etc.)

Family History Library (Do a Place Name search to see what’s available on microfilm)

JewishGen (Great place for Jewish ancestry research worldwide)

The Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names – Yad Vashem (Find Holocaust records)

WorldCat (Search for print material such as census, burials, etc. for ILL)

ShtetlSeeker database from JewishGen (A geographic tool to search current and historical places in Europe, North Africa, Central Asia and the Middle East.)

The Internet (Perform a keyword search using your favorite search engine)