Local newspapers reflect the social and cultural life of their communities and thus remain a vital source of information for community members and scholars alike. Enhancing access to this valuable information encourages the study of British Columbia history and brings research material to both historians and genealogists across the province and beyond.

On December 11th, 1858, in the midst of a gold rush, a man with the improbable name Amor de Cosmos inked up an old hand press and launched a newspaper — the British Colonist — into the world.    Published in Victoria, it became the leading paper in the colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia, and was the paper for the province of British Columbia until the emergence of Vancouver and competitors in the 1890’s.  The “Online Edition 1858 – 1951” is a treasure trove of information about early British Columbia.

The University of British Columbia archive, “The BC Historical Newspapers Project” features digitized versions of historical papers from around the province. The titles, which range from the Abbotsford Post to the Ymir Miner, date from 1865 to 1994.

Victoria Newspapers 1858 – 1936 – The University of Victoria has an ongoing project to provide access to four indices of approximately forty-five thousand summarized transcripts of articles first appearing in newspapers published on Vancouver Island between 1858 and 1936.

Sit down with a cup of tea and enjoy reading yesterday’s news – you never know what you just may find!

Quick — where is the image that you downloaded of your great-grandfather’s will? How about the photo of your grandmother that you scanned or the GEDCOM that your cousin sent to you? Organizing digital files is a necessary task, but it can also be frustrating.

Amy Johnson Crow recently had the opportunity to interview Drew Smith, co-host of the Genealogy Guys podcast (along with George Morgan). Drew literally wrote the book on organizing genealogy, especially those digital files.

Key takeaways:

• ​Having a structure is key.
• Structure depends up what you need (the project, theme, etc.)
• A good structure will be both searchable and browsable.
• Organization is personal; it needs to work for you.
• Think about how you name your files.

To view the complete video of the interview, please click here.

Source:  Amy Johnson Crow

Success in finding ancestors often comes from two things: knowing when certain types of records exist and knowing where to find these records.

Genealogy In Time Magazine has prepared a date guide to English genealogy to help you trace your ancestors from England and Wales. Instead of following the traditional method of looking at types of genealogy records, the guide takes a different approach and looks at genealogy research from a chronological perspective. This more innovative approach has several advantages. In particular, a chronological perspective will help you:

• Identify when certain record sets first became available.
• Help clarify key turning points in your genealogical research.
• Gain a better understanding of the historical context of your ancestors.
• Provide a perspective on how certain events may have influenced the availability of ancestral records.

You can read this genealogy date guide from end-to-end to gain a better understanding of how to trace your English ancestors. You can also use this guide as a handy reference source when you hit a brick wall in your genealogy research. Either way, this guide is organized around a need to solve the problem of how to find your English ancestor.

Source:  Genealogy in Time Magazine

Family History Daily has a very interesting article on common mistakes we all seem to make.  As you know, family history research is a fascinating and rewarding hobby, and it’s getting more exciting all of the time. With new records and tools and research methods appearing every day, there are seemingly endless opportunities to explore and collaborate.

But, as most of us already recognize, there are also endless opportunities to make mistakes. And, in the connected world of online research, those mistakes can spread like wildfire.

One very important part of our family history research that can easily go awry is the connection between generations. More than any other area, this one is the most vulnerable to the kind of mistakes that can completely crush the accuracy of an entire branch of our tree.

To read the entire article and perhaps gain some insight into not making the all-to-common mistakes in connecting generations, please click here.

Good luck with your ancestor hunt!

Over the years Ancestry has made changes to its image viewer.  The latest change is one you just might not realize is there and if you are a long-time user you may be wondering where some features went.  If you are a new Ancestry user, you might thing the image viewer is a bit lacking. It turns out that some of the most powerful features of the image viewer are hiding behind a simple icon.

If you are looking at a census return image, it isn’t immediately obvious what you are looking at, even though the name may be highlighted in yellow.

That information (and more besides) is hidden behind one of the icons on the right-hand side of the page. Look below the green “SAVE” button and you’ll see several icons, including one that has a straight vertical line with an arrow pointing left. When you click that icon, you’ll get an expanded menu with more information and more options. On that expanded menu, you’ll get three tabs.

• The Detail tab (as shown above) provides the information that was indexed for that record.
• The Related tab has links to other records that Ancestry thinks pertains to that person.
• The Source tab includes a source citation, information about where this image came from, and the ability to browse other years and locations in this collection (the options for browsing vary by collection.).

Good luck with your research!

Newspapers are an invaluable source of information for genealogists, ranging from the social pages – births, marriages and deaths –
to articles of interest about your ancestors.  There are about 2,600 historical newspapers that are available online for free. All publication dates for each newspaper are not online and not all newspapers ever published in Canada are either. But the 2,600 newspapers that are available online are a great place to start.Several provinces have province-wide online databases, whether sponsored by a government agency or university or library, and other provinces have multiple collections. Alberta, British Columbia, Quebec and Ontario all have sizable collections. Most of the other provinces have added many more digitized newspapers as well.

Click here for more information on accessing the newspapers currently available.

Source:   Ancestor Hunter

Note:   On our website, one of the pages in the Genealogy Toolbox, Parksville, Qualicum Beach  & Area Resources, contains a link to newspapers on microfilm in British Columbia and also a direct link to the Victoria newspapers from 1858 – 1926.

Happy hunting!

Some online genealogy databases allow you to search on names using wildcards—characters that can stand in for any letter of a name—to catch alternate spellings of the name.

A wildcard is a character that substitutes for another character or string of characters when searching a database.  Using wildcards will find different spellings and name variants.

On most sites, an asterisk * stands in for zero or more letters in a name, and a question mark ?  stands in for exactly one letter. Various websites have different rules for using these wildcards, though.

Ancestry – you must have at least three non-wildcard characters in a name. You can use a wildcard as the first or last letter, but not both. After an initial search, you can change your wildcards using the Refine Search panel on the left side of the results screen, but what you’re really doing is performing a new search.  (Ancestry’s blog post has more in-depth instructions)

FamilySearch.org – you can use a question mark (?) to represent one missing letter. An asterisk (*) can replace zero or more characters. You can use both wildcards in the same search if desired. You must have at least one letter in the search box, and you can place the wildcard at the beginning, middle, or end of a search field. 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 (read more on the FamilySearch blog).

Scotland’s People – 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.

If wildcards aren’t giving you the information you need there are other ways to search.  Three methods you may want to try are:

1. Try leaving out a surname when searching and just use a first name with a known attribute such as an occupation or place of birth. Not all databases allow this type of search but it is worthwhile trying if possible.
2. If you are fairly sure where someone lived, then try browsing through images of the records for that area to look for possible matches.
3. If you have found a possible match for a person on a database but the name presented just doesn’t look correct (or even probable) try saying the presented name out loud. For example “Marilous” could be Mary Louise.

Last, but certainly not least, be sure to keep a Research Log while you are searching.  Write down who you searched for, where you searched for them, which search variations you tried, and what your results were. This will help keep you from spinning your wheels and duplicating your research time as you move ahead with your research.

Good luck with your searches!