Club 1890

Were you invited?

Ancestry has just introduced a new, invite-only membership tier: Club 1890.

The price? $5,000.

Listen to Amy Johnson Crow's analysis at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9DJgT2-J5Q

July 1

 

Cemeteries Tab

FamilySearch sent a Memorial Day email reminding us of the tab for cemetery research under the Search function. Mine said "You have 17 ancestors buried in the Scandinavia Lutheran Cemetery." Their names, relationship to me, birth and death information was all included. Scrolling down led to a map where you could explore other graveyard locations. 

It was a good reminder of that fairly new feature on FamilySearch.

March Roundtable

During our final meeting of the season we held a roundtable to share new information learned about an ancestor OR a goal for the coming months. Here are some responses:

Nancy - learned a lot from researching Canadian vital records for her presentation and is still working on transferring names and records to the FamilySearch tree.

Beth - is continuing her research and has a list of people to contact regarding DNA results. She also hopes to visit a local family search center near her home.

Roger - continues to work on finding what happened to his great grandparents at the end of the 1890s in Texas.

Maureen - plans to work on a presentation about her Frederick Crittendon research. She has recently made a contact/new friend in Northern Ireland through a DNA connection.

Annie - found a clipping on a tree in Ancestry that helps to explain a mystery in one of her family lines.

Dick - continues to attach sources on the Family Tree and work on merging duplicates.

Roger - is new to FamilySearch and is making great progress. He has learned more about his mother's adoption and her birth parents.

Don - will continue to consolidate information from other trees.

Bonni - visited the coal mining museum in Trinidad and learned a great deal about mining in general and about the mining accident involving her grandfather.

Workshop - March 25

Nancy did a great job with a difficult task! Every Canadian province has different regulations regarding vital records, and she managed to give us a clear understanding of the "whats" and "wheres" of those records. 

Her best suggestion is to start at the FamilySearch Wiki, where you can learn where to find online records, understand the requirements about privacy and link to websites where you can order copies of your ancestors' birth, marriage, and death records.

Nancy used several examples from her own research that demonstrated what information might be available on a particular record.

Thanks, Nancy, for that educational class.

Using Maps for Genealogy

Tuesday's topic was all about maps. Annie provided several reasons for using maps in your research, including confirming boundaries, surveying your ancestors' neighborhood, finding ancestral addresses, plotting the family property lines and identifying migration routes.

We looked at state and county boundary maps, topographic maps, Sanborn maps, military maps, panoramic maps and demographic maps. Other examples were Google maps, plat maps for both the U. S. and Canada, migration routes and railroad maps.

Most of these maps can be found on the Library of Congress website, but there are many other specialized sites for map research. Googling the type of map is another good idea. 

Workshop - March 11

Beth gave us a comprehensive view on migration from Ireland to Canada. She talked about some of the reasons, including the Great Famine, economic hardship, the colonial connection because of the British Empire and incentives offered by British and Canadian authorities. Beth also discussed where and why the Irish settled in each province.

Part of the presentation explained what travel across the Atlantic was like, particularly during the early 1800s, when Beth's ancestors arrived in Canada. Most interesting was her family information about travel and settlement.

Thanks, Beth, for educating us about immigration from Ireland!

Roots Tech Report

I hope many of you enjoyed at least one of the classes provided by Roots Tech this year. The first year it was an online event most of the classes were required to be from 5 to 20 minutes (to accommodate short attention spans?). I'm happy to report that most of the presentations are now back to about 45 minutes with questions at the end. Some of the shorter classes (20 minutes each) had two parts.

Unlocking German Ancestry: three presenters. One covered German research in the U. S., a second reviewed research in Germany including many helpful websites, and the third talked about resources to help interpret the records in German, including handwriting suggestions and German word lists.   Excellent

Mining the Census: two parts. A basic primer and great for beginners.

I also watched several classes that covered pre-1850 research, cluster research, analyzing records, etc. All gave me some new ideas about my own searching. All of the presentations included printable handouts.