Celebrate Family History in the Coming Holiday Season

Are you wondering what you can give to a family historian who has everything? Hoping to share your excitement about genealogy with family members? FamilySearch may have just come up with the answer. It's one that won't break your budget. This week the organization announced the availability of two new DVDs that will be of interest to genealogists of all experience levels. I must admit that I have not seen the finished products, but I was privileged to have been present for the two live events that were captured for these DVDs. They were recorded at the National Genealogical Society Annual Conference in April in Salt Lake City. I was particularly impressed by "A Celebration of Family History". I will admit that I was part of the "positive response" mentioned in the promo on the linked webpage.  I sought out a member of the Local Arrangements Committee for the conference and suggested that an opportunity would be lost if a DVD of the event was not made available. My order for both disks is already in the mail. If you can only afford one, I would suggest Celebration which is appealing on many levels. However, at the price of under $5 each, both are a steal! 

French Family History Records Free This Weekend

Dick Eastman passed along an announcement that may be useful to many of you in his Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter. The item is titled "Millions of French Family History Records Free This All Saints Day Weekend on Ancestry.ca." For details follow the link above to Dick's post from last night.

National Archives and Change

Last Friday I blogged about a new online ordering process for documents being implemented by the US National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Is that just the tip of the iceberg of change underway?  Dick Eastman in a recent post in his newsletter referred to NARA's reputation as "an agency that has long been known for changing slowly, if ever." David Ferriero, the relatively new Archivist has characterized himself as "Collector in Chief" and taken a number of other steps to update the stodgy image of the agency he heads.

Check out his blog post, "Open to change," this week and see what he has in mind. What do you thing of the proposals he makes? He ends his post:

"I am calling on all of you to be champions of change as we move forward. Staff, researchers, and citizen archivists will need to be flexible and forward looking, open to the challenges, and ready to participate.

Are you in?"

1852 California State Census on Ancestry.com

Ancestry.com has announced the availability of the 1852 California State Census for its U.S. Deluxe and World Deluxe Members. It is also available in the Ancestry Library edition at about 2,000 locations. If you have ancestors who came to California in the Gold Rush or were already there, this may give you a chance to document their presence. Although the 1849 California constitution directed a census to be taken in 1852, in 1855, and every 10 years after that, the 1852 census was the only one that was completed. 


Ancestry's announcement explains the importance and limitations of this enumeration:
"The gold rush would bring about 300,000 people to California between 1848 and 1854. The 1850 U.S. Federal Census tallied California’s population at 92,597. The 1852 California state census count came in at 260,949 (neither census would include the entire Native American population). Not only did the 1852 census provide a record of an additional 150,000 people, but records from three counties from the 1850 census - Contra Costa, San Francisco, and Santa Clara - have since been lost or destroyed. In addition, the accuracy of the 1850 census was called into some question because of the rapid growth and mobility of the population at the time as miners poured into the state. Three counties are missing from the 1852 census records: Colusa, Sutter, and Marin. Also, the images for Butte County are included, but due to the condition of the images no names were able to be captured from them.


For the most part state censuses were taken in years ending in "5" so they would fall halfway in between the federal censuses. Sometimes they asked for information that the national enumerations never asked. A couple of examples sometimes included were how long have you lived in this community and in this state. Ancestry also has one or more state census for the following states: 

Alabama
Colorado
Florida
Illinois
Iowa

Kansas
Minnesota

Mississippi
Missouri
Nebraska

New Jersey
New York
North Dakota 

Wisconsin
Oregon
Oklahoma

South Dakota

Washington

US National Archives Ordering Process Goes Digital

The process for ordering documents from the US National Archives has now gone digital. According to a mailer distributed by the National Archives Trust Fund Board, you can now "order online at archives.gov/order and get your digitized National Archives records faster and at no extra cost!" Of course as with most thing the devil is in the details. The statement quoted above is limited by "Some exclusions apply."

However, this appears to be a significant step in the direction of faster service to the genealogy community. The mailer you can:

Enjoy the convenience of ordering Nation Archives documents online. Pay the same as you do for paper copies and get your digitized documents faster!" (again some exclusions apply) "Digitized records of most interest to genealogists include--
* Immigration and Naturalization Records
* Land Files
* Military Service and Pension Records
* Court Records
* World War I Draft Registration Cards
* Native American Records
* Census Pages"
You are invited to call 800-234-8861 for details if you do not find what you want to know on the order page.

Footnote and Ancestry

Four weeks ago Dr D reported that there had been agreement for Ancestry to acquire iArchive along with its flagship database Footnote.com. This morning came a notice that the deal officially was completed today. As you may know there has been speculation among the genealogy community as to whether Footnote would continue to operate independently or would be absorbed into Ancestry. As of today the former option is being pursued.


The following is extracted from an email sent to current Footnote customers: 
"The plan is to continue to run Footnote.com the way we have always run Footnote.com." 
"It has been exciting to see Footnote.com grow over the past 4 years. Footnote.com started with only 5 million historical documents and today we have nearly 70 million searchable documents, over 1 million members, nearly 100,000 Footnote Pages, and over half million annotations added." 


So, at least for now, it looks like both will continue to operate as they had been operating. Will it continue? Is this a model of how other acquisitions such as Genline will be managed? Stay tuned for the rest of the story in future months.

Search Ancestry a New Way

The Ancestry.com blog has announced a new way to search that tries to collect the ten most likely "hits" for a person for whom you are searching. Your search can be modified on the fly and you can link to related individuals as you go. After you get used to it I think you will like it. It is still being tweaked at this time and feedback is being solicited. Try it out soon and get your chance to help refine this very powerful tool before it goes prime time.

Maps of Missouri

The University of Missouri Libraries are developing a great resource for genealogists and other researchers. Among other images in its Digital Library are great collections of maps. I will mention only two of these in this post.

Sanborn Fire Insurance Map Company published detailed maps of cities and towns to enable insurance companies to assess risk. These are great for finding buildings during the last half of the 19th Century and the first half of the 20th Century. If your Missouri ancestors lived in one of the almost 400 towns covered by this series, you may be able to find them in one or more of these maps.

If on the other hand, your ancestor lived on a farm, you will want to check out the Plat Book collection that covers almost all the entire state of Missouri.These were published in 1930 so the locations shown were ownership of land prior to that time.

These are just two collections contained in this impressive Digital Library. You also will want to explore the other treasures that can be found here.

The Huntington's Early California Population Project

Thank you to Martha Graham for her tip about this site:

"The Early California Population Project (ECPP) provides public access to all the information contained in California's historic mission registers, records that are of unique and vital importance to the study of California, the American Southwest, and colonial America.

Within the baptism, marriage, and burial records of each of the California missions sits an extraordinary wealth of unique information on the Indians, soldiers, and settlers of Alta California from 1769 - 1850."


While the site is very data rich if you are researching early California ancestors, it is difficult to navigate. The site is free but does require registration. This cooperative project is made possible through major grants from:

The John Randolph Haynes and Dora Haynes Foundation

Additional support was provided by:

The Dan Murphy Foundation

Giles W. & Elise G. Mead Foundation

USC / Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute 

Family Bible Index

To many, Family Bibles are considered the Holy Grail of genealogy research. For those few lucky researchers who are able to find one, these can be a very thrilling and useful discovery. 


"Index to Early Bible Records" currently lists over 6,000 Bibles that have been placed online from a variety of locations or are available from the Family History Library or the DAR Library.

Bible records are not always the "Gospel" truth when it comes to family information. It must be evaluated with the same scrutiny as any other source of information. The first thing to check is the copyright date of the Bible. If it is later than some of the information included in it, then even a "Bible record" is NOT a primary source. Those events were not recorded at the time or near the time of the events it lists. It is a good sign if the entries appear to have been made with different pens. That is one indication that events were recorded at different times--hopefully as each event occurred. With those caveats in mind, explore this Index, and good luck in finding one for your family.