Minnesota original land surveyors’ notes and markings and today’s work on those

Paula Stuart-Warren  Land  1 Comment
Map of Minnesota with St Louis County marked in red. (From Wikipedia)

“The monument markers were originally set by U.S. government surveyors in St. Louis County from about 1850 to 1911 — guys in wool hats and plaid shirts carrying chains and a compass and a notebook. They camped in the woods and had little communication with the outside world — but took very good notes that have been preserved to this day.”

I have used many of those notes and maps while doing land research and also out of historical curiosity about material in the Minnesota State Archives in Saint Paul. The wealth of land-related records there is amazing. Other states have some of these same records.

The quote above is from a fascinating article in the March 31st Duluth News Tribune.

To learn more about land records at the Minnesota Historical Society and State Archives, visit www.mnhs.org/ and look several ways:

  1. In the upper right hand corner of the MHS website’s main page, do a variety of searches using key words such as land records, original land surveys, public land surveys, state land office, and be prepared for a wealth of finding aids for materials at MHS and also for links to land-related articles in Minnesota History.
  2. On that same main pages, under the Research tab, click on Library Catalog and being a search using some of those key words. Add place names for specific locations, too.
  3. Under that research tab, also click on Archival Collection Finding Aids and Research Guides by Topic for more information on a variety of land-related topics.
  4. I have my own well-read and marked copy of A Guide to the Records of Minnesota’s Public Lands by Gregory Kinney and Lydia Lucas (MHS, 1985). That guide is online here.

April 21 Family History Conference in St. Cloud, Minnesota

Paula Stuart-Warren  Conferences, Conferences/Institutes  Leave a comment

It’s only three weeks until the big Family History Conference in St. Cloud, Minnesota. It’s at the Stearns History Museum. I am pleased to be the featured speaker with four sessions and there are some other really good sessions on the agenda. The museum will have a brand new World War I exhibit.

Register soon so you will get the first notice of the online syllabus availability.

To view the full program and register: http://stearns-museum.org/genealogy-workshop

End of winter doldrums? Plan a summer genealogy vacation week with friends.

Paula Stuart-Warren  Conferences/Institutes, Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh, GRIP, Uncategorized  Leave a comment

Old friends, new friends, research colleagues, maybe even family. That’s what you’ll find during a week at the Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh. I am thinking of it as my summer vacation weeks. Yes, I will be teaching for a weeks but there will be no SNOW or cold weather! Being in air-conditioned comfort with fellow genealogists eager to learn and share sounds ideal right now.

What do you do next after you searched and searched online and still need to fill in many U.S. family history details? What about learning more about helpful websites that you didn’t know about? What about when you need to know what you should be looking for at the state archives, national archives, or a courthouse? Need to learn more about analysis and methodology?

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could present a research problem to others and have a discussion that ends with tips and suggestions on what to do next to help solve the problem?

All this and more is part of what is taught and discussed during my course, Intermediate Genealogy: Tools for Digging Deeper at the Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh (GRIP). I have been coordinating and instructing in this course and others since GRIP began seven years ago. Join us for this year’s course

  • 29 July to 3 August In Amherst, NY at Daemen College [Buffalo area]

The us is me, Cyndi Ingle, Karen Mauer Jones, and Debbie Mieszala. A special group of experts and so willing to share in-depth knowledge. This course has had students at all levels of genealogical expertise.

See you in July and August? Register today while there are open seats.

Sale on Legacy Family Tree webinars membership through April 1st!

Paula Stuart-Warren  Webinars  Leave a comment

This is a nice discount. Save $20 on an annual Legacy Family Tree webinar membership now through April 1st. A membership gives you access to hundreds of webinars and the handouts from current and past webinars. What topics? Just about anything you can imagine in the world of family history. What genealogist wants to miss this! This is the only way to get the handouts!

Usual membership cost is 49.95 but with the 20% off, you pay only $28.48. I have recorded webinars and handouts as part of this webinar library as do many other excellent professionals in the field.

Click here to sign up.

 

Please let the presenters know that you appreciate their webinars so they will keep producing them.

p.s. I am an affiliate and do get a small benefit if you sign up with my link.

 

 

Hennepin County, Minnesota ancestors? Hennepin History magazine now digitized!

Paula Stuart-Warren  Hennepin County, Historical Societies, history, Libraries, Uncategorized  1 Comment

From the Hennepin County Library system about a new addition to its special collections:

“76 years of the magazine “Hennepin History,” the official publication of the Hennepin History Museum, are now online in the Hennepin County Library Digital Collections. The magazine has been published continuously since 1941. Articles range in length and scope, but cover all aspects of the county’s history–from people to places, and more. The magazine is full-text searchable.

Founded in 1938 as the Hennepin County Historical Society, Hennepin History Museum is dedicated to bringing the diverse history of Hennepin County and its residents to life through exhibitions, a research library, collections, and educational programs. Its mission is to collect and preserve the history and stories of Hennepin County.”

I spent some time doing some searches in these back issues and know that I will be spending many more hours doing the same!

 

Genealogical inclusion: not everyone has children; not everyone is short; are you leaving out some genealogy family and friends?

Paula Stuart-Warren  Uncategorized  5 Comments

Genealogy is a pretty inclusive topic but not 100%. Maybe someday it will be. Audiences and presenters at classes, seminars, conferences, and institutes are made of up tall, short, skinny, wider, white, red, brown, black, gay, straight, transgender, married, single, divorced, widowed, adopted, fostered, cousins, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, nieces, nephews, men, women, aunts, uncles, moms, dads, and grands of all types. We are young, older, and in-between. Researchers, librarians, clerks, archivists, farmers, bus drivers, nurses, lawyers, and others come in all sizes and other labels, too.

I am a genealogical educator, researcher, and consultant. My clients have included married, divorced, straight, gay, a drag queen, Canadian, Native American, Saint Paulite, and almost any other designation. I am straight, married for 35 years, now divorced (not by choice), middle-aged (my brain says so), wider, and a daughter, parent, grandparent, aunt, grandaunt, niece, grandniece, and unfortunately very short woman.  What labels do you tag on yourself? Don’t forget religion, political leaning, education, and other topics, too. (more…)

Top Ten Reasons to Sign Up For This Acclaimed Intermediate Level Genealogy Course at GRIP

Paula Stuart-Warren  Conferences/Institutes, Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh, GRIP  2 Comments

This summer I get to teach an intermediate level genealogy course twice. Even better, I have wonderful co-instructors to help me. We bring many years of experience, knowledge, and teaching to the course. What’s the course you ask? Intermediate Genealogy: Tools for Digging Deeper at the Genealogical Research Institute of Pittsburgh (GRIP). I have been coordinating and instructing in this course and others since GRIP began seven years ago. Join us  for one of these two weeks:

  • July 22 to 27 in Pittsburgh at La Roche College
  • 29 July to 3 August In Amherst, NY at Daemen College [Buffalo area]

Top Ten Reasons to Sign Up For This Acclaimed Intermediate Level Genealogy Course

  1. Learn in a setting away from home where you immerse yourself and avoid laundry, bills, grass-cutting, and cooking meals.
  2. You want to learn about records and methods in order to find that paper trail of documentary evidence to correlate with DNA evidence. This becomes the story of those ancestors, cousins, aunts and uncles
  3. You have surpassed the beginning research level and need to learn about more records, libraries, archives, and websites and why and how to use them.
  4. You need hands-on practical activities including work on doing source citations.
  5. The syllabus. The syllabus. The syllabus. Did I mention the extensive syllabus for this course? It’s full of knowledge, reminders, online links, suggested books with comments on why, charts, images, and more.
  6. Problem Solving. Students in this course have the opportunity to submit a personal research problem and have it crowd-sourced by the instructors and fellow students.
  7. No running from room to room to grab a seat in a session before the room fills. You have a seat and get to know your fellow students and the instructors in the setting for this institute.
  8. Those instructors! We all bring many years of experience and are knowledgeable on a wide variety of records, localities, and topics.
  9. We’ll keep you updated on a variety of genealogy/family history “things.”
  10. This course provides a solid foundation for future work in other courses at GRIP. It improves your knowledge of resources, repositories, analysis, and research strategies.

(more…)

Jewish ancestry? An online beyond the basics course

Paula Stuart-Warren  Jewish  Leave a comment

I saw a notice about this in Nu? What’s New? It’s the “The E-zine of Jewish Genealogy From Avotaynu.”

A long-time friend, Gary Mokotoff, is editor of this e-zine.  Minnesota has many areas with large Jewish populations. I grew up in such an area, the Highland Park area of Saint Paul.

 

Complex Genealogical Research in the U.S.
Looking for someone in the U.S.?

If despite basic online research you have not yet found the Hebrew names, birth year or town for your U.S. immigrant consider this course as it focuses on the more complex documents our ancestors generated including Naturalization, Passports, Death Records (Probate, Obituaries, Cemeteries), Newspapers, City Directories, Immigration Ports other than Ellis Island, Major Archives and Libraries, Military records, Internet Research and miscellaneous State and Federal Government Records.

Read the full description, cost and enrollment info in this course from JewishGen Education here.

 

 

Online & On Track: Railroad Indexes and Finding Aids on the Internet (Webinar)

Paula Stuart-Warren  Railroads, Webinars  3 Comments

“Learn about online personnel and payroll records, indexes, books, railroad employee and union magazine indexes, inventories of railroad records, indexes of insurance claims, identified photographs of people, trains, and stations, architectural drawings, and links to other free websites and finding aids. Some of these lists give a person’s name, birth date and place, railroad jobs held, and more. An extensive handout gives links to these and many others.”

I recently recorded this webinar for Legacy Family Tree webinars and it’s available in the subscriber library. In case you don’t know, anything to do with railroad records and history is a hot topic with me.

Not a subscriber? It’s an affordable cost for this huge library of webinars. Click here to learn more and start your subscription. You also get access to the syllabus for the presentations.

For this presentation, the syllabus is full of live inks to the material discussed. I am an affiliate of Family Tree webinars and the small percentage I receive from subscriptions allows me a bit extra to help with the costs of researching and updating presentations.

 

Descended from immigrants to the U.S. from 8 other countries

Paula Stuart-Warren  Family, Immigration  2 Comments

My ancestry is truly a mixture of immigrants. My ancestors came to the U.S. from eight (8!) other countries. I am so honored to be their descendant.

They came to the United States from:

  • Canada
  • Denmark
  • England
  • France
  • Germany
  • Ireland
  • Scotland
  • Sweden

DNA testing has shown that some of their ancestors had roots from other places. I am more Irish than anything and that might upset my English Great Great Great Great Grandfather George Copping. He wasn’t too fond of the Irish immigrants in the area of Rawdon, Quebec, Canada. He was an immigrant himself! Nor did he like the French-Canadian Catholics.  His Granddaughter Margretta Georgina Reinhardt married Arsene Daoust (Sam Dow) one of those French-Canadians!

The real point of this post is to show that my ancestors made the effort to travel to the U.S. and it wasn’t easy. They sought something better or may have been escaping something like the famine in Ireland. I am grateful that they made the choice. I am also grateful that I discovered researching family history. Not only was it my hobby to learn about my own family but I believed in education and standards and it became my occupation.

I love Midwestern research and I love Native American research. That has been a main part of my research work for more than 20 years and I am fortunate to work with my oldest son in that work. We make a special team with our experience in many aspects of Native American research and enrollment issues.  Neither of us has any Native American blood but have come to respect those who do and love our work to help others learn more about their ancestry.

Think a bit about your own ancestral ties. Immigrant ancestors to whatever country they chose or to a country you chose?