Dublin City Libraries release free Digital Repository

 Dublin City Libraries and Archive Digital Repository was released last with some 43,000 historic photographs and documents freely available to search and download. The material includes photographs, postcards, letters, maps, and historical memorabilia.

Highlights of the collection include the Fáilte Ireland Photographic Collection with images dating from the 1930s onwards of people, places and tourist locations from across Ireland, and the Dublin City Council Photographic Collection

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Free or Almost Free Genealogical Education

One of the sources of free or almost free genealogical education is the proliferation of blogs that exist today. Signing up to have the blog postings come to your inbox is an easy way to learn from the experiences and expertise of others in the field of genealogical research. The risk in doing this too often is information overload. At some point in time you want to stop reading and actually do some research and recording related to your own family.

How much information is too much information and which bloggers should you follow?

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Take Another Look At Your Documents

Do you merrily go along downloading documents and only look at what you were looking for?  We are all guilty of doing that!    Janine Adams on Organize Your Family History blog talks about what can happen when you read the fine details on the document you downloaded or perhaps take a look at the documents you do have with a fresh eye.

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The FAN Club

The FAN Club, if you haven’t heard of the term coined by genealogist Elizabeth Shown Mills, is a cluster of people in the milieu surrounding a mystery ancestor, and may present some viable clues about those research brick walls we struggle to overcome. The acronym FAN stands for friends, associates and neighbors.  But what do these terms mean, and why does it matter? We all have those ancestors who seem to have dropped straight out of the sky and don’t connect to anyone of their same surname. Or an ancestor whose surname is Jones, Smith, Williams, or Davis, and everyone in the community shares their same surname. Then there are the women, whose maiden names and parents can often be a mystery lost to the past. Researching an ancestor’s FAN club may not be a magic bullet in those situations, but it can come pretty close.

Legacy Tree Genealogists talks about how you can effectively use the FAN club principals to further your research.

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It’s Complicated: Unique Relationships in Historical Records

Leslie Albrecht Huber on the FamilySearch.org blog talks about how relationships can be complicated. Everyone knows that. There are many songs, movies, and plays out there detailing the tangles and twists of relationships, each with their own dose of dramatic flair. And despite what anyone might say about life being simpler in the good old days, complicated relationships are nothing new…

Every one of us has plenty of these messy relationships in our family tree. Sometimes the juicy details get lost in the abyss of history, but other times family stories that offer glimpses into our ancestors’ complicated relationships survive. Occasionally, evidence of these relationships has been preserved in the records …  continue reading.

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Good luck with your research!

Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness

If the recommendation to “think globally, act locally” is applied to genealogy, Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness comes to mind. You probably can’t travel everywhere you’d like to go to research your family tree. When you have a simple request or two that would normally require you to travel to a location more than fifty miles away, a RAOGK volunteer close to the area might just be able to help.

Once you’ve registered on the RAOGK website, you’ll have access to a directory of volunteers informing you where each person is based and what tasks each is willing to help with. Volunteers do not charge for their time, but only for reimbursement of actual expenses such as photocopies, postage, and occasionally parking fees. Common services include doing lookups, taking tombstone and cemetery photos, and locating a document at an archive and copying it. To learn more about how to submit a request, check out their FAQ section. And don’t forget to say thank you or perhaps even volunteer your services.

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Ancestor Search

Are you researching your ancestors in England Wales?  Ancestor Search is a website that provides guidance on WHERE to find information on your English and Welsh ancestors from the basic “where to start” information and on to links to various research sites and information.   Well worth taking the time to go through the information on this site.

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General Registry Office – England

GRO indexes have been on line for some time but sometimes we forget that it is now easier and cheaper to order certificates via the government’s own official website. Certificates cost £9.25 including postage.

Searching is free but you do have to register first.  You have to register to use them.  Go to http://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/ then click on order certificates online >register/login in upper right corner box, then register to create an individual account.  It is free.

It is a bit cumbersome in that you can only search in five-year blocks and only either male or female but if you are searching for a birth record, you will be able to find the mother’s name from 1916 back to 1837.

Good luck with your research!

Gail Deaver has added more than 100 groups and pages to the latest edition of Facebook for Canadian Genealogy on her Genealogy à la carte page.  

On the list, you will find hundreds of Facebook groups and pages. They have been separated into Canadian provinces and territories, and special interest areas, such as Acadian, British Home Children, cemeteries, DNA, family names, First Nations, military, New France, newspapers, old photos, United Empire Loyalists, and US groups with a focus on French Canadian and Acadian family history.

Visit the Facebook for Canadian Genealogy section on the Genealogy à la carte website to view the entire list.

Thank you, Gail, for providing this valuable and helpful information.

Following up on our recent post about Climbing Brick Walls Strategies, “is this really my ancestor”  is a question we have all asked at one time or other.

Jessica, from her “Do as I Am Doing” blog has a post that may be helpful to ensure that the person you are researching is really the correct person.

“One of the most difficult parts of genealogy research is determining if the records you come across really are for the particular individual you are researching…”

She then goes on to list some basic things to check when you find a new record just to make sure you do have the right person.  You should, of course, consider every part of a record to determine if it really is your ancestor, but hopefully this will be a good starting point for you.

Good luck with your research.

ORGANIZE YOUR GENEALOGY

We spend a lot of time researching and, at times, we may have all sorts of non-sorted information cluttering our desktops, file cabinets or even just covering the dining room table.   There is never a good time to take the time to sort and organize paper, but at times it becomes a necessity.   To help you along with your organizing, FamilyTree Magazine is offering a .pdf file that can be downloaded, “Twenty-Three Tips to Organize Your Genealogy”.  

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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF GENEALOGY (A service of Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter)

The Encyclopedia of Genealogy is a free content encyclopedia created by its readers, people like you. The Encyclopedia of Genealogy is available to everyone, free of charge. Everyone can also contribute  information, again free of charge.

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Just for Fun:

Ever wonder what day of the week you or a relative were born on? Click here for an on-line time and date calendar.

Do you have one or more brick walls that you just can’t seem to climb?  We all have them, those ancestors who just refuse to be found!

Every so often you may want to revisit an ancestor to see if you can break through his/her brick wall.    The first step is to organize and analyze your research to find clues as to what information may be missing.   If you need assistance in climbing over the wall, there are several resources available from Qualicum Beach Family History Society:

1. “Successfully Climbing a Genealogy Brick Wall” is a document on our QBFHS website outlining the basic steps to revisit your research and find new sources to conduct further research.
2. The Genealogy Toolbox on our QBFHS website (click on the link on the top toolbar) is another valuable resource with links to a variety of resources. Also don’t forget the tips and hints links with even more links to a variety of websites in many different countries.
3. Our local Qualicum Beach Family History Centre is available for your research on Mondays and Tuesdays each week. Not only are microfilm and microfiche readers available, but there is also an extensive research library.   The computers at the centre have free access to several subscription websites, including Ancestry and FindMyPast, among several others and we have knowledgeable volunteers available to help you both from the Family History Centre and the Qualicum Beach Family History Society.  For more information on what is available at our local Family History Centre, please click here.
4. Special Interest Groups – we currently have special interest groups led by very knowledgeable people on England & Wales, Scotland and Ireland. If you are researching in these countries, this may be where you can receive assistance.
5. Our Qualicum Beach Family History Society Library is another resource with a large number of books on a variety of genealogy subjects. It is available at the Family History Centre when it is open, Mondays and Tuesdays and is well worth a visit.  Please click here to view our library catalogue.
6. Ask for assistance at our monthly meetings during our members’ moments section of each meeting. You may be pleasantly surprised to see how many people are willing to offer suggestions as to how to break down that brick wall.  If you are not currently a member of QBFHS, information on joining our Society is available here.

Good luck with your research and may your brick walls come tumbling down!

Have you wondered what a wild card is but didn’t like to ask?  Wild cards are special symbols that are used in searching to represent a certain number of unknown letters in a word.   This can be helpful when searching for surnames with various spelling options.

An asterisk  *   represents zero to six characters.

A question mark  ? will replace one letter.

Using the word Johnson as an example, substituting an asterisk for “so” in the name, John*n will find Johnson, Johnston, Johnsen, or Johnstone, among other name combinations.  Substituting a question mark for the “s”, John?on would find Johnson or Johnsen but would not find Johnston.

The use of wild cards is restricted to keywords and names that have at least the first three letters specified in most applications, but that rule is not always true, as some sites will allow for fewer letters.

As an example, when using Google * stands for an entire word.

Several genealogical databases allow wildcard searches (check the “advanced” search or database instructions).  Ancestry.com offers several wildcard search options for its many databases, as does Find My Past and many other major genealogical websites.

• In Ancestry and Family Search databases names that differ by one letter use the ? mark as a wildcard. A search for Johns?n will return both Johnsen and Johnson.

Search alternate spelling with the asterisk * which represents 0 to 5 unknown characters. The query Bolan* will return results for Bolander, Bolanger, Bolandre, etc. A query for Smel*er will search for Smeltzer and Smelzer among others.

• In the Scotland’s People database you can substitute * or % for zero or more characters. Substitute ? or _ for one character only. These characters can be substituted anywhere in the surname or forename and can be employed in various combinations.
• The FindMyPast database is similar to Ancestry and Family Search as it recognizes both the ? mark and asterisk*. You can use an asterisk* in a search field where you suspect there may be an alternative spelling. This will pick up places where a letter may be missing, repeated, or incorrect.

For example, a surname search for Fo*kes will return results with spelling variations that include Foakes, Fokes (*acting as a zero character), Folks, Fookes, Forkes, Foukes, Foulkes and Fowkes. If you are sure that there is only one incorrect letter, you can use the ? symbol. For example Sm?th, will return results for both Smith and Smyth.

You can use as many wildcards as you need to in a search field, so the results returned for search term Bla*k*mo*r*include the following variants: Blackmoer, Blackmoore, Blackmor, Blackmore, Blackmore Lee, Blacksmore, Blakemore and Blakmore.

Another search method, Truncation, also called stemming, allows you to search for all variations of a word with multiple endings.  It uses the root word followed by a truncation symbol at the end.  Different databases and search engines use different symbols. The asterisk (*) is the most common, but check the help pages of the database to verify which symbol to use.  Some databases automatically search for plurals but others do not.  Truncation searching ensures that plural versions of your search term are included in your results.

Examples:

• comput* will search for computer, computes, computing, etc
• histor* will search for history, historical, histories, etc.
• child* will search for child, children, childs, childhood, etc.

Good luck with your research!

All of us need to ask questions when we’re doing our genealogy research. Whether you’re talking with a librarian, a courthouse clerk, or a cousin, there are some strategies you can use to get your questions answered.

Amy Johnson Crow on her blog gives some hints and tips on the correct way to phrase and ask questions.     She begins by saying you should actually ask a question.

“Actually Ask a Question

“I’m trying to find Joseph Dickinson.” Ok, that’s nice, but what specifically are you trying to find? His birthplace? When he was born? When and where he died? His parents?

Pretend you’re on Jeopardy and phrase it in the form of a question.

Where was Joseph Dickinson born?

It’s easier (and more productive) for the other person to answer when there’s actually a question.”

To read Amy’s complete blog post, please click here.  And while you are on the page, be sure to click on the link for questions to ask a librarian when you are researching at a library.

Good luck!