Ancestor Bingo

We played an Ancestor Bingo game as part of Tuesday's workshop. Maureen and Debi won prizes for gathering the most signatures on their bingo sheets. Here are the totals of the attending members' matches.

My Ancestor...

Was a twin - 2

Lived in Quebec - 2 

Played a musical instrument - 6

Lived to be 100 - 2

Was a farmer - 8

Celebrated 50 years of marriage - 8

Was a census taker - 1

Was born in Scotland - 4

Passed through Ellis Island - 5

Served in the Civil War - 6

Lived in New York - 5

Created a brick wall for me - 7

Was adopted - 1

Worked for the railroad - 7

Had more than one spouse - 6

Was a teacher - 5

All About Cemeteries

Our guest speaker last week was Alisa James, who runs the genealogy classes at Vista Grande Library, and her topic was "Cemeteries Are Not Just for the Dead." 

Her main focus was on the proper way to clean your ancestor's headstones. She also mentioned taking before and after pictures. She showed tools for "gently" clearing away the area around the gravestone and others for removing lichen and moss. Water should be used and a product called D/2 solution also works well. Alisa also stressed the "don'ts" of working with gravestones, as harsh tools and chemicals will only hurt the marker.

Alisa demonstrated ways to use FindAGrave and Billion Graves for researching our ancestors.

Thanks, Alisa, for an educational class!

Workshop November 12

Maureen provided a basic introduction to Fold3, a subscription-based military website which is now owned by Ancestry. You can visit the site to learn which records are free (Maureen provided a list on her handout), or register for a free seven-day trial, or use it via Ancestry's Library edition at Vista Grande Library or gain access at the local Family History Center. Fold3 is also included in Ancestry's All Access subscription.

Service records, pension records, draft registrations and military cemeteries are some of the records included on the site. There are some non-military records, but most of them are accessible on other websites.

You can search the site by country, military conflict, branch of service, time period and/or name. You can also browse "publications," Fold3's term for their record collections. Searching is not necessarily intuitive, but be persistent.

Thanks, Maureen!

Fold3

Our topic for this week's workshop is the subscription site Fold3. Many pay sites offer free access at different times of the year, and Fold3 is opening its World War I and World War II records to the public until midnight, November 11 supporting Veteran's Day.

Take advantage while you can, and learn more about it from Maureen Tuesday night.

November 5 Welcome Back!

We began the 2024-2025 season with a look at several of the search options on FamilySearch. We viewed records, images, catalog and research wiki under the search tab. Following the presentation, Annie demonstrated tips for using each of those selections on the website.

Records can be found by Searching Historical Records, Finding Collections and Searching by Place. Use surname searches and filter by types of records beginning with census and moving on to vital records. In Collections and Place areas it's a good idea to begin with a location and then narrow your choices.

Images are digitized but unindexed records. It's helpful to begin with a location here. Using England and then Devon brought up 7,000 results, but we could then narrow to a specific village in Devon before searching the microfilm pages.

Catalog items should also be searched by location. Under Lowestoft, Suffolk, England we found records for individual churches and searched the actual microfilm. Many of the catalog items have an index.

The research wiki is a vital part of the FamilySearch website. You can find information about most locations even at the county or village level. Each page will have a tab to access online genealogy records for that place.

November News

We will begin workshops on Tuesday, November 5 with a review session on FamilySearch. Other topics for the month include Fold3, Tombstone Care and a special genealogy roundtable. There will be time each week for assistance with genealogy research. Be sure to bring your computers or other devices.

Vista Grande Library has changed the date of their genealogy classes to the first Monday of each month. Annie will present "County Histories" on November 4 at 10 AM. Join us if you haven't heard this topic--or if you'd like to listen again.

Heads up! Next February we will have a class called "Taking Care of Family Heirlooms." A roundtable is scheduled for the week following where members can share or describe one of their family treasures. Bring something with you this year!