Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter

Your Ancestors Traveled Along the Interstate Highway

The thought of your ancestors of 100 or 200 years ago traveling along a modern-day interstate highway may seem amusing as interstate highways didn't exist until the 1950s. Yet, it is quite possible that your ancestors traveled along the same routes as today's interstates, plus or minus a very few miles.

Westward migration in the United States usually took place in the path of least resistance: on riverboats where practical or on pathways along rivers when boat travel was not available. In cases where there was no river to follow, overland travel generally went along the path of least resistance, too: through valleys, through mountain passes, and perhaps straight across the flatlands and prairies.

Tips for Finding Females that Matter to You

Julie Miller is a professional genealogist and a well-known speaker and author. She has written a newspaper article that should be required reading for all beginning genealogists. Shucks, I know a bunch of us "old timers" can also benefit from this article!

Julie writes:

Identifying females is one of the hardest challenges genealogists face.

Preparing, Protecting, Preserving your Family Treasures

Many of us possess family heirlooms. They may be old family photographs or marriage certificate or a handmade quilt that is more than 100 years old. Whatever the object(s), they are handed down from generation to generation and are cherished by each new recipient.

What happens if your home is flooded or in a hurricane or tornado or other disaster? Even a simple burst water pipe or a few roof shingles blown off in a thunderstorm can result in damage to all sorts of things, including heirlooms.

No one likes to think about disasters, whether natural or man made, but thinking ahead and preparing, together with knowledge about first steps, can save those family treasures from ruin.

Genealogy Myths: Real, Fool’s Gold, or Both?

Family stories are a wonderful thing. They often give you insights into the lives of your ancestors. However, beware! Not all family stories are true. Many such stories are fictional. Yet, even the stories that are either entirely or part fiction may contain clues to facts.  Good genealogical practice requires that we admit the fiction. But the next step the genealogist takes separates art from science. Before we discard these stories altogether, we need to mine them for nuggets of truth. Let’s look at a few of the more common “family legends” to see which ones you can mine for real gold.

Myth #1: Our name was changed at Ellis Island.

How to Mine Courthouse Deed Records

Sharon Tate Moody has written a short, but excellent, tutorial on the organization of land records at U.S. county courthouses. I would suggest this be required reading for all genealogy newcomers. In fact, some of us old timers could benefit from it as well. For instance, she explains the Cott and Russell index systems.

Syrian, Lebanese Immigrants arrived in U.S. in 1870s

If you have Syrian or Lebanese ancestry, you might want to read an article by Tamie Dehler published in the Tribune-Star:

Early Syrian and Lebanese immigrants to the United States began arriving in this country in the 1870s. These people were from the areas we now call Syria and Lebanon, but the land was then a part of the Ottoman Empire, and had been ruled by the Turks since 1519. The modern-day nations of Syria and Lebanon had not yet been created. Within the Ottoman Empire, Greater Syria bordered the eastern Mediterranean and was made up of parts of modern-day Iraq, Syria, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, the Palestinian territories, and part of southern Turkey. The Mount Lebanon area included primarily the city of Beirut and surrounding areas.

The immigrants had Turkish passports and most often called themselves Syrians. Most were Christians.

Isolating the Problem with Missing Genealogical Data

Writing in the King's County (New Brunswick) Record, Diana Lynn Tibert has an excellent article on how to solve some of those genealogy problems:

"Some individuals are mysterious. For whatever reason, they leave scant evidence they existed. At times, it might feel as if they didn't want to leave a footprint in history and wanted only to escape into anonymity. Or maybe they simply lived by meagre means.

What Is "Second Cousin Once Removed?"

A term often found in genealogy is "removed," specifically when referring to family relationships. Indeed, almost everyone has heard of a "second cousin once removed," but many people cannot explain that relationship. Of course, a person might be more than once removed, as in third cousin, four times removed.

Finding Your Female Ancestor in the Newspaper

Researching your elusive female ancestor can be difficult. Surname changes at marriage and the seemingly lack of records documenting the lives of women can make it difficult to conduct research in the same way you would for a male ancestor.

Writing in the WorldVitalRecords.com Family History Bulletin, Gena Philibert Ortega offers some suggestions on how to find more information about those elusive female ancestors. She especially suggests newspaper announcements of weddings, anniversaries, birthdays, and other celebrations. She also gives references to several online sources of digitized newspapers.

How Genealogists use Social Networking

Gena Philibert Ortega has written an interesting article about social networking for genealogists. She, and three guest authors, describe their successes with this new generation of web development that is all about collaboration and communication.

You can read the article in the WorldVitalRecords.com newsletter at http://www.worldvitalrecords.com/news/Volume3Issue41/?page=feature.

Free Genealogy Resources at Your Nearest FamilySearch Center

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also known as the Mormons), has gathered a huge amount of genealogical information.  Their Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah is the largest such facility in the world, with millions of books and  microfilmed records, as well as many on microfiche.  There is no fee for searching any of the records available in the library.  They are completely FREE for anyone to search. 

Of course, not everyone lives near Salt Lake City, or can afford the time and money to travel there. For most of us, we can use a nearby "catalog office" that allows us to access most of the same information that is in Salt Lake City.

Revolutionary Roots

Did your ancestors fight in the American Revolution 233 years ago? Thousands of men answered the call to arms in 1776. These thousands probably have many millions of descendants today. Many Americans can find a Revolutionary War veteran in the family tree if they expend a bit of time and effort. Luckily, there are a number of online and offline sources to help you in that search.

Finding Revolutionary ancestors isn’t much different than finding anyone else in your family tree. You always start with yourself and then work your way back, one generation at a time. You can search the online databases as well as the traditional resources, such as census records, vital records, and especially, Revolutionary War pension applications. However, you should be aware of several unique sources of records that contain information about Revolutionary War soldiers.

One excellent tutorial to read is "Finding Your Patriot: Basic Sources for Starting Revolutionary War Research" by Curt B. Witcher, available on Ancestry.com (without subscription) at: http://www.ancestry.com/library/view/news/articles/1561.asp.

Free Downloadable Genealogy Charts and Forms

Looking for some blank forms that you can fill in during your genealogy research? You can download free, high-quality blank forms online from several web sites and print them on your own printer.

Family Tree Magazine has a huge collection of downloadable forms on the company's web site. The forms include pedigree charts, research calendars, note-taking forms, deed indexes, research journal, correspondence logs, family group sheets and census extraction forms. You can see this impressive collection of forms at http://www.familytreemagazine.com/forms/download.html

It Takes Details to Bring Your Ancestors to Life

Sharon Tate Moody has written an excellent article that perhaps should be required reading for all beginning genealogists: "People new to genealogy often are surprised to learn they can't "do their family history" on the Internet in a weekend. In fact, those of us who have been working on our families for 30 or 40 years know it might take more than one lifetime to get it all done."

You can read Sharon's entire article at http://www2.tbo.com/content/2009/may/24/tr-it-takes-details-to-bring-your-ancestors-to-lif/life/.

Video Teaches Correct Citations of Online Sources

Mark Tucker has created a YouTube video that describes the process of source citations. The seven-and-a-half minute video consists of two sections. The first section discusses some of the current issues with citing sources especially when it comes to online sources. The second section demonstrates an approach to quickly and accurately cite online sources. As Mark states in the video, "The technology needed to accomplish this exists today."

100 Genealogy Resources to Discover Your Ancestry

Suzane Smith has written an article entitled “100 Genealogy Resources to Discover Your Ancestry.” I think a list like this should be given to every  genealogy novice. This list does look good.

“100 Genealogy Resources to Discover Your Ancestry” at: http://phlebotomytechnicianschools.com/?page_id=52.

A Sanity Check for Your Genealogy Data

Are you confident of the accuracy of your genealogy data? You might be amazed at how many databases I see that include mothers giving birth at the age of eight, marriages at age twelve, or deaths at the age of 135. Sometimes you even find a person with a birth date prior to those of the parents. Download almost any GEDCOM file from the Internet and I suspect you can find similar problems.

Such errors are easy to create. Sometimes selecting the wrong person in original records can cause such errors. Copying someone else's errors can cause other errors. Mistakes also occur because you had a keystroke error when entering the data; attempting to type 1835 on the keyboard can easily result in 1845 being pressed on the keys.

Histpop — The Online Historical Population Reports Project

The University of Essex has created a collection of British Historical Population Reports. The site contains no entries about people listed in the census records but does provide a wealth of background information of interest to genealogists, historians, and others.

Family Stories and Other Fairy Tales

Do you have a family story handed down over the years? Perhaps an ancestor was a ship's captain. Or perhaps the family name was changed at Ellis Island. Or some lady in your family tree was a Cherokee princess. Another story I have heard many times is that some immigrant was the illegitimate child of the Russian czar or another royal person. Proving such stories can be difficult for one very simple reason: they often are not true! A more common scenario is a family story that contains a bit of truth but was embellished over the generations.

If you are using a family story to try to find an ancestor, I'd suggest that you consider the possibility that the story is only partially true or at least was built on some amount of facts. I can offer two examples from my family's stories plus a third example from someone else's family.

How to Trace Your Family Tree without Spending the Family Fortune

Esther Rantzen has written an article that will be of interest to anyone researching ancestors in England or Wales. She describes the services of the General Register Office that is now available online on Directgov. Some commercial companies charge as much as GBP30.00 for a birth certificate but each certificate costs from just GBP7.00 if you order online via Directgov.