Family History Researcher Academy Offing English & Welsh Family History Mini Course

Nick Thorne from The Family History Researcher Academy has a course for those searching for English or Welsh ancestors on his site at FamilyHistoryResearcher.com

The video tutorials deal with some of the mistakes that researchers sometimes make when they are looking for their English or Welsh ancestors in census and birth records. The course also sets out some of the places that you could research for your elusive ancestors in and also sets out how to best begin the search of these British records.

These concise videos were complied by Nick Thorne from his experience of researching ancestors for private clients and working with one of the leading British genealogical research websites for whom he writes case study articles for publication in several of the U.K. family history magazines. He is also the author.

Also available, for a small fee, are downloadable In-Brief Crib Sheets:

Find your English and Welsh ancestors with this easy In-brief 6 page report that reveals which top resources to use and where to begin your search for elusive ancestors from these two countries of the British Isles.

Looks at which websites can be useful for finding English and Welsh ancestors to include those that are free and those that are commercial sites. Reviews how using the websites of The National Archives, The National Library of Wales, County Record Offices, Society of Genealogists and more can help.

Introduces the researcher to the civil registration (vital records) census and going back before 1837 with parish records. Reveals where to look for the records of Nonconformist and Roman Catholics as well as the Church of England.

 

Walking in Your Ancestors’ Shoes

Following up on the recent post, Shedding Light on Brick Wall Ancestors”, it’s time to take a stroll in your ancestor’s shoes.

Assuming you have found a location where your ancestors lived. There are web sites that can whisk you back in time to see what life was like for your ancestor or ancestors during their lifetime.  One web site that may be helpful is HistoryPin which is a user-generated archive of historical photos.  Members of the site “pin” historical images to Google maps, comparing past and present-day locations for places where Google Street View is available.   Members of the site build photo collections of historical content based around themes and locations around the world.  From the Browse All Collections page, enter a city or topic and you will be pleasantly surprised at what you may find.

Books and articles on towns, cities and villages are another valuable resource. Google Books is a good starting point.  Enter the name of the area you wish to research.  Quite often local historical societies or libraries will have books that may summarize an area’s physical geography, settlement patterns and general development.   They may also include biographies of “notable and distinguished residents”.   If nothing of interest is found using just the name of the area you are researching, add the name of a resident with the name of the area and you may just hit an amazing amount of information.

Don’t forget the websites of towns, villages and cities as they often have links to local history and early settlers.  These websites may also have links to local museums or historical societies in the area.

As you continue to study your ancestors and their lives through historical photos and maps, you will gain an invaluable insight into their lives, which will bring your ancestors to life in a much better way than birth, death and marriage information.

Sources:  Wikipedia; HistoryPin;  Google Books and Maps

Shedding Light on Brick Wall Ancestors

We all have brick wall ancestors who just refuse to give up their secrets, don’t we?  They completely baffle you until you want to just give up in total frustration.   You may need to change your focus and shed some light on the cracks in the wall by approaching the problem from another angle.

Lighting the Way with Maps

Many of your ancestors may have resided in several different countries, states, provinces, towns or villages during their lifetimes.    If you have determined the general area where your ancestors lived, one of the best ways to familiarize yourself with these places is by consulting maps.   Once you learn more about where your ancestors lived, you may be closer to understanding the area in which your ancestors lived.

The David Rumsey Historical Map Collection includes over 150,000 maps dating back to the 16th century, with the majority of North and South America as well as Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania.  You can search and download maps for free without creating an account.   If you do find a map you wish to download, click o Export in the upper right-hand corner of the page and then choose the preferred map resolution.

Old Maps Online is another map resource you may want to check out.   It has 400,000 maps from collections all over the world and is very user friendly.  After entering a search location several small historical map images with names and dates will load.   Click on any of these thumbnail images to view the map and see more information.

Now that you have a general overview of where your ancestor lived, it’s time to zoom in even more to see the towns, buildings and streets where they lived.   The Sanborn Map Company has published fire insurance maps covering the residential, commercial and industrial sections of close to 12,000 towns and cities in the United States, Canada and Mexico.   These maps were created to help fire insurance agents assess hazards, but these maps show many details of interest to family historians such as the size, shape and use of all buildings, names of streets and businesses, properly lines and house numbers.    Even though the names of streets and numbering of residences and businesses may have changed over time, these maps are an invaluable resource for genealogists.

How to Find Genealogy, Family History and Local History Books in the Internet Archive

We always are hunting for more information about our ancestors, and the Internet Archives’ online service might be just what you need to help further your genealogy research.  The following is an article from Dick Eastman’s July 6, 2017 On-line Genealogy Newsletter.

  “Would you like to electronically search through 129,577 genealogy books? You can do that on the Internet Archives’ online service. Not only can you search these books, but you can do so electronically. A search for a name might require a few seconds, not hours or days in the manner of a manual search through printed books in a library.

The Internet Archive (also known as The Internet WayBack Machine Archive) is a San Francisco–based non-profit digital library with the stated mission of “universal access to all knowledge.” It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, movies/videos, moving images, and nearly three million public-domain books. This online library now has a collection that fills more than 15 petabytes. NOTE: 15 petabytes is equal to 15 million gigabytes.

The Internet Archive’s collection is growing daily. Best of all, the use of the Internet Archive is always FREE. There is only one class of available service: FREE. There is no upgraded, or ‘pro’ version. The Internet Archive is funded solely by voluntary donations, so everything is free.

The Internet Archive has always collected genealogy, family history, and local history books. However, searching through the huge collection used to require imaginative search terms to find specific references. For instance, searching all of the Internet Archive for references to my last name of Eastman used to find a few genealogy books buried in a listing of hundreds of books related to photography. In addition, a search for family names often also produced listings of book authors who shared that name, even if the book had nothing to do with genealogy. A search for a family name that is also a common English word, such as Black or Street was almost hopeless. Luckily, a change made some time ago has now reduced the search problems.

The Internet Archive now has a dedicated section just for genealogy, family history, and local history books at https://archive.org/details/genealogy. You might want to go to that address first and then conduct a search there.

When writing this article, I went to https://archive.org/details/genealogy, found the box labeled ‘Search this Collection’ and performed a search for: Eastman. That search found thirty-seven books. Unlike searches I have performed in the past, all the books were either (a) books about Eastman genealogy or (b) genealogy or local history books that had the name Eastman someplace within the book. In fact, quite a few of the books were local histories for towns where Eastman families had settled. One book was a history book written by Ralph M. Eastman although the book did not appear to contain any genealogy information. I also tried searching for geographic locations, such as ‘Penobscot County,’ and had equally good success.

A few of the books listed in my searches were about U.S. Civil War histories. Those books had little or no genealogy information but contained great information about the soldiers and sailors who served during that war.

Many of the books were originally published in the 1800s; all of the ones I found were published prior to 1923.

The front covers of each book were displayed, and clicking on the image of any book cover immediately showed the contents of the book. Once I clicked on a book’s image, full source citations also were displayed for that book, including: author(s) name(s), publication date, publisher’s name, Internet Archive call number, number of pages within the book, the name of the person or organization who contributed the book and even the name of the OCR software used to convert the book to text

The searches seem to work best for surnames of families that have been in North America for a century or longer. It does not work well for recent immigrants with eastern European or Oriental or Hispanic names. After all, these books are out of copyright; therefore, almost all were published prior to 1923. Don’t look for more recent immigrant families in this collection. Almost all the books listed are in English although a very small number may be in other languages.

The addition of a dedicated genealogy section on the Internet Archive is an incremental improvement but a very welcome one indeed. It greatly simplifies the searches for genealogy, family history, and local history books in this fabulous online resource.

I suggest you might want to go to https://archive.org/details/genealogy and search for any surnames of interest. You never know what you might find. You probably want to bookmark that address. Did I mention that the service is FREE?”

 Source:  Dick Eastman blog post, July 6, 2017