A county clerk’s ‘Genealogy Corner’ gets national recognition

Paula Stuart-Warren  Databases, Research, Vital records  Leave a comment

If you have heard me at seminars, you know that I often say things similar to “these records are so good because I don’t have family in that locality” or in that particular set of records.

I have several localities where I wish my family had settled just because of the great information online from the county or city. A few of these are:

Then my news feed delivered news of another county with a great genealogy service and that has received a national honor from government colleagues. The Collin County [Texas] Clerk and staff have been “awarded the 2014 Best Practices Award from the National Association of County Recorders, Elections Officials and Clerks (NACRC).”  Just two of the online databases for this county are:

  •  Marriage indexes, dating back to 1864
  •  Birth indexes, dating back to 1903 with some delayed birth records from the 1800

Read the full article from the McKinney Courier Gazetter by clicking here. To access the county’s Genealogy Corner click here.

You may have already guessed that I have no ancestral connections to Collin County, Texas! Dangitall.

2 days left to register: Nov 22 genealogy seminar in Tennessee

Paula Stuart-Warren  Seminars  1 Comment

It’s been a while since I did presentations in Tennessee. That changes on November 22, 2014 when I will be the speaker for the Middle Tennessee Genealogical Society’s all-day seminar. I will be presenting four topics and will be around all day to help audience members with genealogy questions. These are my topics:

  • Railroad Records and Railroad History: Methods for Tracking
  • The Three Rs: Reading, ‘Riting and Research in School Records
  • The WPA Era: What It Created for Genealogists
  • Controlling Chaos: Organizing your Genealogical Materials

The event takes place near Nashville, in Brentwood. You must register by November 14th to be assured of a seat. The brochure and registration information is here: http://mtgs.org/calendar/2014%20Seminar%20brochure.pdf

Free weekend at Findmypast!

Paula Stuart-Warren  findmypast.com  Leave a comment

 From a Findmypast press release:
 

Explore Findmypast’s billions of historical records for FREE this Veterans Weekend
 
Free access to all Findmypast’s historical records throughout Veterans Weekend and a Live Broadcast to be held on Saturday afternoon featuring an expert panel of historians and genealogists
 
This Veterans Weekend, we want to help everyone find their First World War ancestors and learn more about their family history.
 
So we’re delighted to announce that this Veterans Weekend, we’ll be opening up our archives and giving unlimited free access to billions of records and newspaper pages from all over the world. That means that between 7am on Friday, November 7th and 7am on Monday, November 10th (EST), absolutely everyone will have access to all our historical records, including:
  • Global record sets that include census, birth, marriage, and death records from the 1600s to the present. 
  • Millions of local newspaper pages from around the globe spanning 1710 to 2014. 
  • Largest collection of local records from England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland dating back to 1500.
  • Military records dating from 1760, encompassing the U.S. Civil War, World War I and World War II.

  • Passenger lists and naturalizations, covering the United States, Canada, England, Ireland, and beyond.
  •  Local histories, genealogies, and exclusive access to PERSI (the PERiodical Source Index)
And much, much more!As well as millions of other records that will give everyone the opportunity to explore their family history and bring their past to life.
It’s not only new users who will be able to take their family history research further this weekend. Those with current Findmypast Local subscriptions (with an active Britain, Ireland, US & Canada or Australia & New Zealand subscription) will be able to access all our historical World records during the free access weekend. Those with active World subscriptions will have an additional three days added on to their subscription.
Find out more at our dedicated Free Weekend page.
Live Broadcast
This Saturday 8th November, we will be hosting our first ever Live Broadcast. Featuring an expert panel including Findmypast’s Director of Family History, Joshua Taylor, military historian Paul Nixon, and Who Do You Think You Are?’s Lead Genealogist Laura Berry, the broadcast is designed to help everyone get further with their family history research.
The talks will cover a wide range of topics – from getting started to breaking down brick walls – and viewers can choose to watch the entire event, or tune in for specific presentations.
The Live Broadcast will be shown at http://new.livestream.com/innerear/findmypast at 10am (EST) on Saturday 8th November. All of the presentations can also be watched on demand after the broadcast on the Veterans Weekend section of our blog.

Join us LIVE on your computer tonight for Connect with FGS

Paula Stuart-Warren  Conferences/Institutes, Federation of Genealogical Societies, FGS  Leave a comment

How much can you learn about the upcoming February 2015 Federation of Genealogical Societies conference in 30 minutes? Join Cyndi Ingle, J. Mark Lowe, and me online tonight!

We are part of the inaugural edition of Connect with FGS. It is hosted by Caroline Pointer and Linda McCauley. Cheryl Hudson Passey is one of the FGS conference ambassadors and she will be on the show, too.

We are on live at 9 ET, 8 CT, 7 MT, and 6 PT.

You can watch all our smiling faces on Connect with FGS live from the FGS YouTube Channel or from the FGS Google+ Event.

For more details visit the FGS Voice blog and also learn how to view the program later. http://voice.fgs.org/2014/10/fgs-launching-monthly-hangout-on-air.html

The Voice blog also carries many other conference, FGS, and general genealogy news.

Beyond online: important genealogy guidebooks for your shelves

Paula Stuart-Warren  Books  Leave a comment

This past weekend I promised the audience at the South Dakota state archives that I would post a list of some basic genealogy guidebooks that are important to beginning and even more advanced researchers. If you are only checking online resources and yet wondering what else there might be, these guides will fill you with tons of ideas and places to look. This is not a list of all that is available

1.    Croom, Emily Anne. Unpuzzling Your Past. 4th Ed. “Expanded, Updated and Revised.” Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Publishing Co., 2010.

2.    Eichholz, Alice, ed. Ancestry’s Red Book: American State, County and Town Sources. 3d ed. Provo, UT: Ancestry Publishing, 2004 [Overview guide to all of the states. [Online edition is part of Ancestry’s free Wiki <www.ancestry.com/wiki>.]

3.    Greenwood, Val D. The Researcher’s Guide to American Genealogy. 3d ed. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 2000.

4.    Hinckley, Kathleen W. Your Guide to the Federal Census. Cincinnati: Betterway Books, 2002. [Includes case studies, appendices, glossary, forms, hints, and more. The best census guide! Out of print but in many libraries.]

5.    Morgan, George. How to Do Everything Genealogy. 3d ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012. [Update will be out in 2015!]

6.    Rose, Christine and Kay Ingalls. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Genealogy. 3rd ed. New York: Alpha Books, 2012.

7.    Szucs, Loretto Dennis and Sandra Hargreaves Luebking, eds. The Source: A Guidebook of American Genealogy. 3rd ed. Provo, UT: Ancestry, 2006. Now online at Ancestry’s wiki <www.ancestry.com/wiki>

Registered for the NE Illinois Lake Co Genealogy Seminar 8 Nov?

Paula Stuart-Warren  Illinois, Lectures, Seminars  Leave a comment

I am home from a successful full day of presentations at the Cultural Heritage Center in Pierre, South Dakota. It’s the home of the state historical society and the state archives. The audience was extra friendly as was the staff.

This next weekend I am off to northeastern Illinois to do a full day seminar. It’s 8 November at the Round Lake Beach Cultural and Civic Center. The Lake County Genealogical Society is the host. Debbie Mieszala, CG and Daniel Hubbard, Ph.D. are also presenting lectures that same day.

My four lectures are:

  • Your Anytime Library: Success in the Virtual Stacks
  • Research Reports for Ourselves: More than a Research Log
  • Midwestern Gems: Back Issues of Genealogical, Historical, and Sociological Journals
  • Major Midwestern Archives and Their Records

The lectures and syllabus material is recently updated just for the attendees.

You may register at the door, but as with other day-of-event registrations, lunch and syllabus is not guaranteed for those who did not preregister. Caterers and printers usually need several days advance notice of the total numbers. My advice? Get there plenty early. It’s a nice meeting place. Another reason to attend is that I have been told there are some really nice door prizes, vendors, and a silent auction.

The details are here: http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~illcgs/lcigs%20flyer%202014%20final.pdf

U.S. National Archives free online lectures today

Paula Stuart-Warren  National Archives  Leave a comment

Today is the first of three days to join the free U.S. National Archives 2014 Virtual Genealogy Fair. It runs on YouTube on October 28, 29, & 30. The first lecture each day begins at 10:00 a.m. eastern time. There are four presentations each of the days.

It’s live and there is an opportunity to ask our questions at the end of each talk. No need to register, just log in online. To learn the schedule and obtain the handouts: http://www.archives.gov/calendar/genealogy-fair/

FGS free talk show online debuts Nov 6 with 3 “interesting” guests

Paula Stuart-Warren  Conferences/Institutes, Federation of Genealogical Societies, FGS  Leave a comment

Want more information about attending a big FGS genealogy conference? Join me, Cyndi Ingle, and Mark Lowe on Connect with FGS that debuts November 6 at 9:00 p.m. EST. We are all speakers at the 2015 Federation of Genealogical Societies conference being held next February in Salt Lake City in conjunction with RootsTech. Caroline Pointer and Linda McCauley host the show.

Connect with FGS will be a 30 minute FREE show broadcast on the first Thursday of the month as a Google+ Hangout and also on the FGS YouTube channel. Between now and February it will focus on the FGS 2015 conference scheduled for February 11–14 in Salt Lake City, but other FGS news and events will also be discussed.

Mark recently posted on Facebook that we will have a crazy time on this hangout. Yes, we will! It will be informative about FGS and the conference but I think we each might have some ideas up our sleeves. Will 30 minutes be enough for us? Will Caroline and Linda be able to rein us in?

To learn more about this new monthly event, check out the free FGS Voice blog
http://voice.fgs.org/2014/10/fgs-launching-monthly-hangout-on-air.html

For more about the conference https://www.fgsconference.org/

Brief genealogy news from the past week

Paula Stuart-Warren  Cemeteries, Daughters of the American Revolution, Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy, SLIG  Leave a comment

I am in the midst of packing to move in a few weeks and am doing three seminars in other states in the next month so my blogging may be limited. I still have some neat things to share and decided to blog about them in brief. 

  1. From time to time I see newspaper articles about generous individuals that are preserving the memory of downtrodden people whose death and burial may have gone largely unnoticed or marked. The Chicago Tribune carried such an article last week about Barry A. Fleig and the Cook County Cemetery at Dunning in the Chicago area. You might need a subscription to view the story. The Newberry Library’s genealogy blog posted about the results of his work on the Dunning Cemetery. Learn more about this project and do a search of the database at http://www.cookcountycemetery.com/. According to that website “With over 38,000 burials spanning some seventy years, it served as an institutional cemetery for the Cook County institutions. These consisted of the County Poor house and farm opened 1854, the Insane Asylum opened 1869, the infirmary opened 1882, and the Consumptive hospital (TB), opened 1899 and was the official Cook County potters field serving the poor and indigent of the county.”
     
  2. The Daughters of the American Revolution in Washington, DC no longer charges non-members to use its library. It’s a beautiful place full of books, periodicals, films, databases, traditional library tables, and great staff. Most of the books are on open shelves and the browsing is fun. www.dar.org 
     
  3. This Friday, October 31 (also known as Halloween!) is the last day for the $50 registration discount for the January 2015 Salt Lake Institute of Genealogy. Three courses still have a few seats. www.infouga.org

Hmmm. Genealogy and personal cremation urns?

Paula Stuart-Warren  Uncategorized  Leave a comment

According to a story in today’s Bring Me The News, a firm located here in Eden Prairie, Minnesota is urging people to designing an eternal vessel “as unique as the life it represents.” As in a specialty urn for your beloved family member’s ashes after cremation. Not only is it a specialty item, these are done via a 3-D printer!

“Requests so far have included urns in the shape of a guitar, a car, a piano, and a cowboy hat, as pictures on the firm’s Facebook page show.”

Is this a product for a family historian? We like to remember our dear departed relatives for more than just a date and place. We want to know more about the, what they did, and how they lived. We ask our older relatives about their hobbies, favorite things, and what they like to do. Might we want to keep our loved ones’ ashes in a container specially designed for them?

Might they design a model microfilm reader or a scanner for a genealogist? How about an urn designed to look like an archival box, laptop computer, or DNA kit? How about a tombstone shape with all the proper information on it?

Read the full story here: http://bringmethenews.com/2014/10/24/firm-uses-3-d-printers-to-create-personal-cremation-urns/