Family History Day: Sources for New York State Research

My last lecture of Family History Day was “Sources for New York State Research” by Christopher Challender Child.  As someone from Western New York, whose ancestors are also from Western New York, lectures like this can be disappointing, as they often focus only on New York City.  Luckily, Christopher covered records for the whole state.

NEHGS actually has a site specifically for those of us with NY ancestors: NewYorkAncestors.org.  This includes databases and articles specifically for New York.

State census records are some of the best things to look at for your NY ancestors, particularly since the 1892 state census is a wonderful substitute for the 1890 federal census.  There are also marriage and death records for June – July 1855 and 1865 located with the census of that year.

Other records he recommended were tax records, poor house records, and mug books.

Family History Day: A Dozen Ways to Jumpstart Your Family History Project

The third class I went to for Family history day was also given by Lou Dennis Szucs.  This time she spoke on ways to jumpstart your family history project.

Often time, we feel stuck in our research as genealogists.  Maybe we hit a brick wall or we just don’t know where to turn next.  In these cases, Lou first recommends going back over what you have.  When was the last time you looked at all of your documents for information you may have missed or didn’t realize was important the first time around?  Even just writing the information out in a new way, such as a timeline, may give you a new idea.  Also, make sure you are looking at the witnesses, sponsors, neighbors and fellow passengers on those documents, as they can often give you clues about your family (or may even be your family!).  One of my favorite bloggers, Tina, has been doing this recently.  She is going through her entire document collection, cleaning up her database and posing about it on her blog Gen Wish List.  She has found a multitude of items and is only on the letter “L”.

It is also important to continually look for new sources.  This can be done by looking at new Ancestry.com databases, going to your local library (or your ancestors local library), using sources new to you (in my case mortuary records and mortality census records), and checking out family history societies and museums.  Also remember that the 1940 US census will be released April 2nd!

Can you speak for 5 minutes on every place your people came from/lived?  I can’t either, but think it’s a great idea.  Writing up sketches of ancestral homelands is another great way to jumpstart your research.  Include the history of the area, maps, and things such as major occupations, churches, and organizations.  I also like the idea of writing sketches of organizations your ancestors belonged to, such as churches or fraternal organizations, and their employer, as this will give you more insight into their life.

You should also be writing up biographical sketches of your ancestors themselves.  This goes along with her first point of seeing what information you have.  Do not just put dates, but try to show their personality as well.  You can turn these sketches into your own personal mug book. 

Lastly, it is important that we network with others.  You can do this through genealogical organizations, on message boards, on a blog, Facebook, or using Ancestry.com member trees.  The more ways you get your information out there, the more likely you will find others who are related or can help break that brick wall. 

Family History Day: Immigration Records on Ancestry.com

On 17 March 2012, I attended the Family History Day sponsored by ancestry.com and the New England Historic Genealogical Society in Tarrytown, New York.

The first workshop I attended was “Coming to America: Finding Your Ancestor's Arrival Record on Ancestry.com” by Juliana Szucs Smith.

Juliana discussed the differences in arrival records throughout the history of America.  Pre-1820 are the hardest to find, as manifests were not required and those that were created did not tend to survive.  One of her tips was to check works such as the Great Migration Project and old publications for abstracts of lists.

In 1820, passenger lists were required.  Although there is not a lot of information available on these forms, it is always exciting to see your ancestors name listed.  One of Juliana’s best tips for this era is to look at the end of passenger lists, where births and deaths that occurred on board are often located.

In the 1890s, manifests expanded to include information such as marital status, last residence, final destination, if they had been in the US before, name of relative they were joining, ethnic background, and the name & address of a relative in the old country.  These more recent lists can help your research tremendously.

It is also important to remember that not all immigrants came straight to the USA.  It was cheaper to travel to Canada or Mexico, so many people went through there first.  Ancestry.com has passenger lists and border crossing lists for these countries as well.

Just like today, it is possible that your ancestors went back to their homeland many times and will be found on a multitude of passenger lists (or border crossings).  Passports were also popular around the World Wars for those traveling back home so that they could easily get back to the US.  Ancestry.com has these, as well, and the best of these even have photographs attached.

For more information on immigration, check out the Oral History Project by Ellis Island, Theshipslist.com, Jewishgen.org/infofiles/manifests, Germanroots.com/ei.html and books such as They Came in Ships, Forgotten Doors and Germans to America.

Part 5 of The Genealogy Reference Desk Institute

To get to the beginning of this series, go here:-)


Laura Prescott, APG President, spoke on Timelines: Placing Your Heritage in Historical Perspective.  I had not realized the importance in using timelines for your research and plan on using them in the future much more often.


By using timelines, you can see important events that happened in your ancestors lives, which may have influenced their decisions and movements.  You can also use them to migration and settlement patterns, look at military and career paths and track your ancestors through the census, among other things.


Many genealogy programs have timeline options, but there are multiple other places to create them.  The most interesting one is Google Maps.  I have often used this for directions, but was unaware of their My Maps feature.  By adding addresses, you can create a timeline of your ancestors movements, homes or cemetery cites.  You can even add photos, videos or text and then embed the map into a blog post or email it to others.


After Laura, Drew Smith, librarian, author and half of the Genealogy Guys was the last speaker of the day.  His presentation, Using Web 2.0 Tools with a 101 Knowledge Base, was an explanation of using Web 2.0 tools in the library.  I have been reading his book, Social Networking for Genealogists and recommend checking that out for a more thorough explanation of his program than I can give.


It was amazing to hear a presentation by someone who's podcast I listen to on a regular basis.  Using Web 2.0 tools to educate patrons, as well as to provide access to resources and services, is something I have become very interested in for school and future employment situations.  This workshop was a basic overview of these topics for librarians who have been out of school for awhile and need to learn the basics of Web 2.0.


This was a wonderful workshop and I am looking forward to continuing my education in this matter.  Workshops are held four times a year, before the two ALA conferences, before the NGS conference and before the FGS conference.  If you ever have the option to attend, I recommend it highly.

Part 4 of The Genealogy Reference Desk Institute

To get to the beginning of this series, go here:-)

The Genealogy Reference Desk Institute had lunch sponsored by ProQuest.  As such, they did a presentation on some of their library services, such as HeritageQuest and Ancestry Library Edition, both of which I use on a regular basis.

They also told us about their new library product: ProQuest Digital Microfilm.  ProQuest will go into libraries and digitize their microfilmed newspaper holdings so that users can have access to it remotely.  It will also be searchable, users can crop and save the articles they want and enhance brightness and contrast.  According to ProQuest, this will "reduce film damage and loss as will as the need to use and maintain microfilm readers/printers."  ProQuest will also help they libraries with getting the rights due to copyright.  It will be interesting to see how many libraries take this on.  I know it would help me out as I do not get to Buffalo nearly enough to go through newspapers there.

The next session was on timelines by Laura Prescott, which I will post tomorrow.

Part 3 of The Genealogy Reference Desk Institute

For Part 1 and Part 2 of the series:-)

The third session was titled "My Family is Boring, May I Borrow Yours?: Integrating Historical Research into Historical Inquiry" by Christine Baron.  Christine discussed her work in searching for a way to make the famous Old North Church of Boston into a cite for learning by visitors.

This was one of the most fascinating and useful parts of the day, as Christine and her staff are not genealogists, do not want to be genealogists, but see the value in genealogical interpretations.  Their goal was to "put the people back in the pews," and genealogists at the NEHGS helped them get beyond names and dates, connecting families while using primary and secondary sources.

Although many people have preconceptions about historians versus genealogists, Gex Xers (and Y as well) just want expertise.  These are the people genealogists can reach to expand their users.  What kind of projct would benefit from a genealogist?  Questions about social inter-relationships within a communitty, research involving individuals with common names and technocratic teams without deep idealogical divides.

With the help of genealogists, Christine came up with OldNorth.com and the online program Tories, Timid or True Blue?  This shows students why history is fun, namely the spirit of inquiry and intellectual risk - which is also why genealogy is fun!  Students get to look at primary documents to solve mysteries and learn important things such as "you can't trust everything you see."  I highly recommend looking at the program and using it as a way to get children interested in history and genealogy.

Programs such as these are the future of digitizing information and documents.  The field of digital humanities is fast growing, as people no longer want to know what is being put online, but what one is going to do with it once it's there.

After this session came a presentation by lunch sponsor by ProQuest, which I will discuss tomorrow!

Part 2 of The Genealogy Reference Desk Institute

Please see part 1 of this series.

The second session of the Genealogy Reference Desk Institute was "An Overview of American Colonial Records" by David Dearborn, staff genealogist at the NEHGS and Fellow, American Society of Genealogists.

David began the presentation by telling us the cardinal rule, "Colonial records were not created for the benefit of 21st century genealogists."  A rule that needs to be remembered for all records, in my opinion, not just those of the colonial time period.

What I learned most about these records is that it is important to learn about the area one is researching, as every area is different and borders changed drastically over time.  Towns were invented in the colonies.  Prior to this, there were ecclesiastical parishes, manors, et cetera, in England, but not a governmental area without a religious basis.

The earlier back your ancestry is in the colonies, the easier it is to find information for a few reasons.  First, there were few people here, so it is relatively easy to follow them.  Second, land records were very well kept and most people owned land.

My ancestors did not immigrate until long after the colonial period, but it was interesting to hear about research strategies.  David also handed out a reading list with many books and articles I will be seeking out.

I will be discussing the third session tomorrow and it was a fantastic one!

The Genealogy Reference Desk Institute

On Friday, 15 January, I attended the American Library Association's "The Genealogy Reference Desk: Where Everyone Knows Your Name" at the New England Historic Genealogical Society. The NEHGS is located in the historic Back Bay area of Boston in a gorgeous old bank.

The first session was "Sustainability in Genealogical Collections" by D. Brenton Simons, president of the NEHGS. He began by discussing the the Society, which was formed in 1845. They currently have a reference librarian whose entire purpose is to be online to "spread the intellectual capital." I had never realized how much information they have on areas outside of New England, which is shown in their online catalog and portals such as their new AficanAmericanAncestors.org (coming February 3rd). They are even changing their journal name to "American Ancestors" and we were the first outside of staff to get a sneak preview at the cover.

He went on to discuss the importance of a service culture in libraries, quick tips for libraries during economic downturns and strategic planning information. My favorite tip he gave was that your goal should always be "aim to thrive, not just survive." This is what has helped them to thrive during the poor economy when so many others have not.

I will continue my report on the Institute tomorrow, when I will discuss "An Overview of American Colonial Records" by David Dearborn.

Week in Review: 11 Jan 2010 – 17 Jan 2010

After being sick for the first half of the week and in Boston for the second, I did not accomplish any research, blogging or transcribing.  Luckily, the conference I attended in Boston (ALA midwinter) had an optional Genealogical Reference Workshop at the NEW ENGLAND HISTORIC GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY!!!  Starting tomorrow I will do a series of posts on what I learned there and the amazing speakers I saw, which included Laura Prescott, APA President and Drew Smith from The Genealogy Guys Podcast