The DAILY genealogy technology newsletter for genealogy
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the vendors like it or not!
Now available: Thom's Irish Almanac and Official Directory for 1845 - 1900
Directories are an excellent resource, supplying information not readily available elsewhere; they are often the only source that actually states someone’s exact occupation. A will may describe them as a merchant, whereas the directory will identify them as an ironmonger, grocer or wine merchant etc. Precise address and parish of residence are also commonly given. The only classes absent from these directories are the most disadvantaged: small tenant-farmers, landless labourers and servants.
I know a lot of readers of this newsletter use Google Reader to read the articles here and on a bunch of other web sites. Unfortunately, Google is going to shut down the popular service on July 1, 2013. This is obviously inconvenient for those using Google Reader but, fortunately, there are many good replacements.
The following announcement was written by the Irish Genealogical Research Society:
With the launch of its brand new website, IrishAncestors.ie, the Irish Genealogical Research Society (IGRS) has significantly widened access to parts of its outstanding library collection, long acknowledged as the most important collection of Irish genealogical material in private hands.
The following announcement was written by FamilySearch:
FamilySearch has added 1.7 million indexed records and images this week with new browsable image collections from Austria, Paraguay, and the United States. Notable collection updates include the 13,110 images from the new Arizona, Maricopa, Mesa City Cemetery Records, 1885-1960, collection and the 105,745 indexed records and images from the New Zealand, Immigration Passenger Lists, 1855-1973, collection. See the table below for the full list of updates. Search these diverse collections and more than 3.5 billion other records for free at FamilySearch.org.
Want to find birth announcements, marriages, obituaries, and even social gossip about you ancestors? NewspaperArchive often is the place to look. NewspaperArchive.com focuses on small, local newspapers. Those papers typicaly contain news articles, community news, national news, local news, sport news, current news, classified ads and historical data.
Now you will be able to view NewspaperArchive at your local library if that library subscribes to the new offering from ProQuest. Not all libraries will do that but I suspect that many will.
Steven Gibbs has been involved in a monumental effort for some time. He has been indexing the marriages of the parishes of the Bedfordshire (England) Registration District, from 1837 to 1901. These years were not extracted for the International Genealogical Index (IGI) and apparently are not available online anyplace else.
The effort is still "in progress" but Steven has already extracted thousands of marriages. He has placed the extractions on the web site http://www.sgibbs1.freeserve.co.uk/ParishRegistersPage.htm. Best of all, the information is available free of charge.
The following announcement was written by FamilySearch:
FamilySearch added an additional 10.5 million indexed records and images in the last two weeks. The largest portion of this update includes the 8,613,673 images added to the New York Probate Records from 1629 to 1971, increasing this collection’s images by 63 percent. Other notable collection updates are the 699,800 indexed records and images from the Brazil, Rio de Janeiro, Immigration Cards from 1900 to 1965, and the 307,448 images from the Peru, Lima, Civil Registration from 1874 to 1996. See the table below for the full list of updates. Search these diverse collections and more than 3.5 billion other records for free at FamilySearch.org.
For what seems like years, we have all been told that the new Family Tree, the first of several site enhancements for FamilySearch.org, would become available to everyone "some day." Well, some day is here: it is available to you and to me and to everyone else right now.
The new database contains information about millions of deceased individuals and you are invited to add your information as well. With the new Family Tree, you can:
One computer expert working alone has built a collection of digitized historic newspapers at http://fultonhistory.com/ that is much bigger and more popular than one created by a federal bureaucracy with millions of dollars to spend. Armed only with a few PCs and a cheap microfilm scanner, Tom Tryniski has played David to the Library of Congress’ Goliath. His site presently has more than 21,790,000 old New York State historical newspaper pages. He now is also adding newspapers from other states.
Every newspaper in the state of Minnesota is sent to the Minnesota Historical Society, in accordance with state statutes. For decades, every newspaper (at last count about 425, mostly weeklies) was made accessible to the public via microfilm. However in the midst of a budget crunch, on June 30, 2009, the state closed its microfilm lab.
Now the Minnesota Historical Society (MHS) has created a new, and probably better, plan: a digital newspaper database for researchers, called Minnesota Newspapers Online. It should launch within two years.
Thanks to a recent digitization project, more than 60 years of Door County newspapers are now available online. The 6,325 issues include 12 newspaper titles which were published in Door County between 1862 and 1923.
Findmypast.co.uk has announced a project to publish millions of Yorkshire parish baptism, marriage and burial records.
Spanning the years from 1538 into the 20th century, the records cover parish church registers and bishops’ transcripts from most of Yorkshire. The collection includes approximately 15 million records, which includes images of the registers, as well as transcripts.
The following announcement was written by FamilySearch:
March 1, 2013
FamilySearch added an additional 6.6 million indexed records and images in the last two weeks. Included in this update are 15 new collections: 1 from Canada, 1 from Guam, 4 from Italy, 1 from Russia, and 8 from the United States. Among these collections are the China Collection of Genealogies from 1239 to 2010, the new Guam, Judicial, Land, Obituaries, and Census Records from 1712 to 2000, the Slovakia Church and Synagogue Books from 1592-1910, and the United States, New England, Petitions for Naturalization from 1787 to 1906. See the table below for the full list of updates. Search these diverse collections and more than 3.5 billion other records for free at FamilySearch.org.
A new database launched Wednesday lets Britons curious about their family history uncover information that some might wish to forget: their ancestors owned slaves. Researchers at University College London spent three years compiling a searchable listing of thousands of people who received compensation for loss of their "possessions" when slave ownership was outlawed by Britain in 1833.
The database has details of around 46,000 individual claims and awards made to those who either owned slaves or benefited indirectly from ownership.
“Unknown No Longer: A Virginia Slave Name Database” was launched by the Virginia Historical Society in the fall of 2011. The database contains information about slaves, including records kept by slave owners in Virginia.
The New Bern-Craven County Public Library’s Family Bibles Collection is online, featuring Bibles that date from 1723 to the mid-1900s, with information on many families in Eastern North Carolina. The online collection, which has 35 Bibles, is a project of the library and the Craven County Genealogical Society of North Carolina.
The African American genealogy website, OurBlackAncestry.com (often abbreviated as OBA), is developing an online repository of records that name the names of people who were enslaved. Working with a major genealogy company, OBA aims to create a platform where African American researchers will be able to search, view and download copies of records with the click of a button. This service will be provided FREE of charge and there is no limit to the number of pages/records that can be digitized, the more the better.
At the recent Who Do You Think You Are? Live! event held in London, TheGenealogist.co.uk announced the addition of three new record sets that will interest many people researching U.K. genealogy. They are: Casualty Lists, Naturalization and Denization Records, and War Memorials Records.
A major announcement was made today at the Who Do You Think You Are? Live conference in London, England. While not explicitly mentioned in the announcement, this looks to me to be a major expansion by Mocavo.com into the U.K. marketplace:
Today at the Who Do You Think You Are? Live conference in London, England we are excited to announce our new partnership with the FreeBMD Trust. The FreeBMD Trust shares Mocavo’s commitment to bring all of the world’s genealogical information online for free putting everyone’s family history within reach.
Beginning today, Mocavo community members can search nearly 300 million FreeBMD records through the Mocavo search engine. Information from FreeBMD will also be automatically matched to Mocavo members’ family trees. When one of our community members finds information from FreeBMD, they will be able to review that information in full detail on the FreeBMD Trust’s websites at freebmd.org.uk, freecen.org.uk and freereg.org.uk.
The National Archives (of England and Wales) and findmypast.co.uk are cooperating to place 2.5 million records online, dating from 1770 to 1934, including murderers, drunks and petty criminals. This is believed to be the biggest collection of historical criminal records from England and Wales. The documents include mug shots, court papers, and appeal letters. The Crime, Prisons & Punishment records will be crucial to your research as they contain information about your ancestors that isn't available in other records.
Now available: Thom's Irish Almanac and Official Directory for 1845 - 1900
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