Upper Midwest Genealogy Institute Registration, April 21st!

Paula Stuart-Warren  Institutes, Minnesota Genealogical Society, Uncategorized  , , ,  Leave a comment

If you’ve checked my Speaking calendar lately you likely noticed this listing.

August 8-9, 2025. Two-day in-person Institute as part of the Minnesota Genealogical Society‘s education programs. The NEW Upper Midwest Genealogical Institute (UMGI)! Join us for this special institute held at the Midwest Genealogy Center in the Saint Paul/Minneapolis suburb of Mendota Heights. Amidst other great presenters, I am presenting two sessions. Full details https://mngs.org/upper-midwest-genealogy-institute.

“The 2025 UMGI focuses on finding and using records to solve Upper Midwest research problems. UMGI’s Upper Midwest focus includes Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, the Dakotas, and neighboring portions of surrounding states.”

REGISTRATION IS OPEN on Monday, 21 April 2025. Visit the UMGI page on Monday to register. Before then visit https://mngs.org/upper-midwest-genealogy-institute to learn about the lineup of sessions, instructors, hotel arrangements, and other details.

 

 

Historical society newsletters for the win! Hennepin County, Minnesota coroner records digitized.

Paula Stuart-Warren  GRIP Genealogy Institute, Minnesoa Historical Society, Minnesota  , , , ,  Leave a comment

One of the sessions I am teaching at this June’s virtual GRIP course Beyond Digging Deeper: Sources Methods, and Practices, is “Mining the Written Words of Repositories, Societies, and their Staff.” A perfect example of this is one of the electronic newsletters I receive from the Minnesota Historical Society. Via that I learned about this digitization effort. “The digitization team often works on large projects that can span several months. The Hennepin County Medical Examiner Reports/Coroner Record Books are a collection of 48 boxes of large bound volumes of records dating from October 1906-1989. The team had previously digitized and published the first 25 volumes, spanning years 1906-1934. This month we published an additional 32 volumes, taking us up through 1958, and will continue this work until the entire collection has been digitized.” You can view the finding aid and records at https://www2.mnhs.org/library/findaids/gr02297.xml. I have not used these yet, so we are all beginning at the same point. A warning that some of this type of records can have contents that are not pleasant to read, even though they are not the actual autopsy report.

 

 

Doane Robinson papers added to the South Dakota Digital Archives

Paula Stuart-Warren  Historical Societies  , , ,  Leave a comment

The Brookings Register (South Dakota) of 18 March 2025, carried an article “South Dakota’s historic Doane Robinson papers digitized, put online.” This amazing collection includes a wide array of correspondents and other material related to this well-known historian and author. The finding aid is excellent, and I was able to search by names and places. Now I need some more free hours to investigate further. The digital images are beautiful.

 

 

Watch FREE right now, Neglected Gold in Older Genealogical and Historical Periodicals

Paula Stuart-Warren  periodicals, Webinars  , , ,  4 Comments

I really enjoyed presenting this webinar last Friday. If you don’t have a Legacy Family Tree Webinars membership, you can still watch (or rewatch) it FREE through April 18th. https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/neglected-gold-in-older-genealogical-and-historical-periodicals/. We are lucky to have webinar hosts Marian and Geoff to guide us and I appreciate Legacy Family Tree Webinars and MyHeritage for making this education possible.

I highly recommend a year’s membership so you can watch almost 2,400 webinars already presented and access the syllabus material for the next year including for this presentation of mine. My affiliate link (a small amount helps support this blog) for memberships is http://legacy.familytreewebinars.com/?aid=1739

 

 

 

 

Pipestone County Museum in Minnesota adds online newspapers

Paula Stuart-Warren  Minnesota, Newspapers  , , ,  Leave a comment

A news release in the Pipestone County Star from 11 April 2025 brings some welcome research news about free online newspapers. Pipestone County is in southwestern Minnesota, borders South Dakota, and is surrounded by several other Minnesota counties. The newspaper database currently holds the years 1879-1916 and the plan is to add additional years via Advantage Archives. The full story is at https://www.pipestonestar.com/articles/museum-launches-online-newspaper-archive/

One of my favorite parts of the story is this comment from the Museum’s Executive Director, “We don’t want to be gatekeepers of history,” Hoskins said. “We want to be enablers for people.” I hope they are still able to obtain some grants and that users keep contributing to the effort.

Search at https://www.pipestonestar.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Web-Archive.jpg. Some Pipestone newspapers are already digitized via the free Minnesota Historical Society’s newspaper hub. https://www.mnhs.org/newspapers/hub

 

 

Libraries: joy, love, value, history, culture, education, community, and necessary

Paula Stuart-Warren  Libraries  2 Comments

My parents didn’t take my sisters and me to the library when we were children. My paternal grandmother unknowingly made up for that with many gifts of books for me. Once I was old enough to ride my bike about a mile to the Highland Park branch of the Saint Paul Public Library system, I was hooked on what the library held.
I devoured books that were designed for my age group and later progressed to books for teens. This branch didn’t have a large reference section at the time but what the main library in downtown Saint Paul held was akin to providing me with candy. I could take the bus to that library from home or high school. I loved browsing in the stacks, discovered old newspapers on microfilm, and a newspaper clippings index. I took my children and grandchildren to libraries.

City and county public libraries are golden. Many have access to scholarly databases, newspapers, and even some of our usual genealogy subscription sites. My city library, county library, and a neighboring county library system each have some different online sites. Some I can access from home and others with a visit to the actual library. For my county library, that means a chance to browse through the Friends of the Library used book area.

This is National Library Week and it’s in the midst of federal support for our libraries, historical societies, archives, and museums being taken away. We need to make our voices heard so we don’t lose these wonderful institutions.

 

Free BCG-Sponsored Webinar April 15

Paula Stuart-Warren  Board for Certification of Genealogists, Webinars  , , ,  Leave a comment

Press Release from the Board for Certification of Genealogists (BCG).

“A Matrimonial Advertiser:” Tracing the Treacherous Trail of an Early 20th-Century Romance Scammer by Sharon Hoyt, CG. Tuesday, April 15, 2025, 8:00 p.m. (EDT)

Research on a man’s mysterious second marriage identified his wife as a romance scammer who preyed on Civil War veterans. This case study shows how evidence correlation and reasonably exhaustive research cut through the lies and misdirection in a woman’s records to establish her identity and reveal her sometimes deadly deception.

Sharon Hoyt, CG is a researcher, speaker, and author from California’s Silicon Valley. Her primary research areas include New England, New York, the Midwest, Canada, and England. She is happiest when on the trail of a family story, particularly when it involves the Civil War. Sharon’s research has been published in the National Genealogical Society Quarterly, The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, and Minnesota Genealogist. She is the winner of the National Genealogical Society’s 2017 Family History Writing Contest and the Minnesota Historical Society’s 2016 Michael Clark Family History Writing Award. She holds a master’s degree in Library and Information Science.

When you register before April 15 with our partner Legacy Family Tree Webinars (http://legacy.familytreewebinars.com/?aid=9366), you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar. Anyone with schedule conflicts may access the webinar at no charge for one week after the broadcast on the Legacy Family Tree Webinars website.

“BCG promotes continuing education as essential for competent family history research,” said President David Ouimette, CG, CGL. “We appreciate this opportunity to provide webinars focused on standards that help genealogists and family historians build their knowledge and skills and hone their craft.”.

 

 

Join me in two free genealogy webinars April 9 & 11

Paula Stuart-Warren  Webinars  ,  Leave a comment

April 9, 2025. Wednesday evening free Webinar. 7:00 p.m. EDT, 6:00 pm CDT. Hosted by the Virginia Genealogical Society. My topic is “The WPA Era: Free Records Boon from the Government.” The presentation includes a section related to the New Deal and WPA activities in Virginia and details to find books, records, indexes, and online material from all over the U.S. The handout is available to VGS members as is a recording of this presentation and others in the VGS lineup.


April 11, 2025. Friday Afternoon Free Webinar. 2:00 EDT, 1:00 CDT. Legacy Family Tree Webinars. My topic is “Neglected Gold in Older Genealogical and Historical Periodicals.” To register using my affiliate link helps support my website and blog. http://legacy.familytreewebinars.com/?aid=9377.

A $49.95 annual membership in Legacy Family Tree Webinars provides handouts and access to almost 2,400 past webinars and 9,500 pages of accompanying syllabus material. My affiliate link for memberships is
 http://legacy.familytreewebinars.com/?aid=1739

Fold3 Update on Digitization of War of 1812 Pension Files

Paula Stuart-Warren  Ancestry, Federation of Genealogical Societies, FGS, fold3.com, Uncategorized  , , ,  3 Comments

The War of 1812 U.S. pension records have been on subscription site Fold3.com for many years. It’s an ongoing project that began under the auspices of the former Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS) and the U.S. National Archives. FGS embarked on a fund-raising project to ensure these were digitized and then remain FREE for researchers. We owe a big thanks to Fold 3 and its parent company, Ancestry.com for hosting these records on Fold3. My email today contained the following notice. These can be found at US, War of 1812 Pension and Bounty Land Warrant Application Files, 1812-1815 (https://www.fold3.com/publication/761/us-war-of-1812-pension-files-1812-1815. The “Read on” refers to https://blog.fold3.com/update-on-the-war-of-1812-pension-files.