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!

Jake Fletcher writes, “How could genealogy possibly be overwhelming? You might be saying to yourself after reading the title of this post, that genealogy is what in fact keeps me from feeling overwhelmed.

While genealogy is fun and relaxing, it also challenges us to process a lot more data and information then we may normally encounter. Our brain doesn’t treat genealogy like any other part of our daily life; when it’s overwhelmed, it lets us know. This can make us feel frustrated, defeated, and less interested in genealogy then we once were. So how does someone work to avoid this?”

Please click here to read the entire article.

Source:  Legacy News

This is the first of a series of short articles on writing the stories of our ancestors.

Our ancestors are much more than a compilation of birth, marriage and death dates on a pedigree chart. They were real people with real lives filled with unique stories worth sharing and remembering.  Why not write about an episode or event that brings your ancestor to life?  Some possibilities might be: a story of their survival (war, accident, fire, etc.), the story of their immigration to a new country, the everyday hardships they endured, or a unique life experience or encounter.

Qualicum Beach Family History Society members are invited to enter a “Tell Us a Story” contest.  $100.00 will be awarded to the entrant whose entry, in the opinion of the judging panel, best meets the contest criteria.  Note:  This contest is open to members only.

But you don’t need to enter a contest to tell the story of one or more of your ancestors.   If their stories are not told, the struggles and joys of their lives will never be known by their descendants.

Think about who you want to write about and why.  Which ancestor creates the most interest for you personally?  He/she may not be famous or well known, but there is a reason why you find this ancestor fascinating.  That reason will make writing about that person much easier.  The most important thing is to start telling the story – don’t think you can’t do it, just start and the words will flow.

Write as if you were telling a story and edit later.  Writing is the most important first step.    Editing, punctuation and grammar are a later step.

Add information about what was happening in the world at the time, if it is appropriate.   An example would be immigration.  Why did they leave their home; what caused them to leave, why did they choose the country they emigrated to?  The conditions surrounding this and any other decision are a part of the story.

Sourcing can be added as (a) footnotes or (b) a sourcing index at the end of the article.  There is no best way, just what is easiest for you. If there is no sourcing for an event, outline the steps to prove the conclusion for that particular event.

Images can be added but are not necessary.   Keep the images at a medium size with appropriate captions.   No image is much better than a fuzzy or unclear image.   Don’t let too many images overwhelm the story.   The words should tell the story and the images only add to the story.

Read your story aloud to yourself and perhaps to others.  Reading will pinpoint errors or the flow of the story better than reading it several times.

Most importantly, this is supposed to be an enjoyable experience, don’t stress over it, just write from your heart and the story will tell itself.

What are hooks and closers?  You will learn all about that in part two of this series of articles.

Further to a recent post on our Facebook page about researching in the BC Archives, there is so much more than registrations of births, marriages and deaths, available for genealogy research.   These birth, marriage and death registration forms have been placed on the Internet in two places — on the BC Archives website and on the FamilySearch website.

But there is so much more to researching your ancestors than birth, marriage and death records.   If possible, you want to follow the family through land records, Wills and any other documents that may be available.  A recent article, BC Archives The Place to Go for Family History, by Dave Obee, Editor-in-Chief of the Times Colonist  provides much more information on the many other records that are available for genealogy research at the Royal BC Museum & Archives and also a fascinating insight into his own family history research.

Happy researching!

There are directories, and then there are directories!   Usually we rely on city directories to find information about our ancestors, but there are also other directories that may provide clues to your ancestors’ lives.

 City Directories

 City directories are a treasure trove of information for genealogists, fleshing out the lives of your ancestors with the places they lived, where they worked, who else was living with them at the time and other tidbits of information that may not be found elsewhere.

A list of the Canadian directories that are available online for free can be found at the Genealogy à la carte website.

Another site that is extremely helpful is Miriam Robbins’ site, Online Historical Directories, containing a list of many places where you can find online city, county, and other directories. Some are at free websites; others are at subscription sites. Some have digitized images of the directories, and others are merely transcriptions. This is a work in progress, so it is not complete by any means, but it will definitely be useful in your research.

Newspaper Directories

Newspaper directories were sold to advertisers who were looking for places to promote their goods and services. They provided brief descriptions of the newspapers and the towns where they were published.

American and Canadian newspapers

 Advertisers learned back in the day (and what genealogists can learn today) from a newspaper directory:

• Names of newspapers published in a city or town
• Frequency of a newspaper
• Circulation statistics
• Number of pages
• Population of the town
• Major industry or business
• Name of railroad or river that ran through the town.

There were two major newspaper directories during the late 19th and early 20th centuries,Rowell’s American Newspaper Directory and N.W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper Annual and Directory.

The US Library of Congress has compiledthirty-four digitized Rowell’s and Ayer’s American Newspaper Directories, from 1875 to 1920, – but here’s the good news for genealogists north of the US border. These American directories include Canadian newspapers published at the time.  In the case of the 1884 directory, forty-eight states, eight provinces and the Northwest Territories can be found in the Index in the first pages. Then, you can take a look at their ad.

The circulation numbers are indicated in the newspaper description by a letter of the alphabet, such as B or J. To understand what these represent, look at the Key to Circulation Rankings after the title page of the directory. For example, B means the circulation did not exceed  50,000 and J means the circulation did not exceed 1,000.

If your ancestors owned a business, look at the Index of Advertisers. You may find their name among the hundreds who advertised each year.

Once you identify which newspapers were available in a particular town, you can Google the newspaper name to find out if it has been digitized, visit your local library for microfilm copies, look at Library and Archives Canada’s website  to find out if they have microfilm copies, and/or visit the Library of Congress’ Chronicling America for digitized US newspapers.

Of course we are not only researching in Canada and the United States.   There are also directories to be found for other countries.

FamilySearchWiki provides a list of directories in England  and Wales.   The publication of directories, originally alphabetical lists of the names and addresses of tradesmen, was very much a consequence of the growth of permanent shopping and trading centres in the 18th century.

If you are searching for directories in other countries, use Google to find sites that may have listings of directories.   A simple Goodle search using the term Historical United Kingdom Directories found several helpful sites.

Lastly, Ancestry.com or their other sites (Ancestry.ca, Ancestry.co.uk, etc.) have very large collections of directories that may be helpful in your research endeavours.

Good luck!

Sources:                                             
Genealogy à la carte
Miriam Robbins online directories
Google
FamilySearch.org

Facebook – you either love it or hate it, but at some point you may find that it actually becomes your friend!

Facebook is a social networking site that makes it easy for you to connect and share with your family and friends online. Originally designed for college students, Facebook was created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg while he was enrolled at Harvard University. By 2006, anyone over the age of thirteen with a valid email address could join Facebook. Today, Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with more than one billion users worldwide.

Have you ever wondered why people like using Facebook? After all, there are already a lot of other ways to communicate online, such as email, instant messaging, and so on. What makes Facebook unique is the ability to connect and share with a lot of people at the same time.

I never thought that I would encourage people with an interest in family history research to take a long hard look at Facebook and where it can take you. Having said that, I have found that Facebook is so much more than seeing posts from friends who want to tell all their friends about a great movie they just saw or their favourite television show.   What you may find with Facebook is that it is another on-line research tool other than Ancestry, FindMyPast or Family Search.

What are some of the benefits of Facebook?

• If you are conducting United States research, there are over ten thousand genealogically and historically oriented Facebook pages in the United States listed on two hundred and eighty-eight pages with an index. That, according to Katherine R. Willson, is a list that grows constantly! Her website, com, has a link to a PDF file, “Genealogy on Facebook” that you are able to download and keep. Do take the time to take a look at the other pages on her site as she provides a lot of information that may be helpful to you.
• Many, if not all of us, do a significant amount of research in Canada. For that list we turn to Gail Dever and her site, Genealogy à la Carte. Again, take the time to surf around her site, clicking on some of the links under “Archives” for posts that may interest you.  Scroll down a bit to find the link to “Facebook for Canadian Genealogy”, a list of almost eight hundred Facebook groups and pages that can help genealogists research their ancestors who lived in Canada. In addition to listing resources for all Canadian provinces and territories, genealogical and historical societies, national and provincial archives, museums, military, photos, New France, British Home Children, First Nations, United Empire Loyalist groups, vintage photos, military history, and special interests (English and French) are included.  This list was last updated June 2016. She doesn’t list the Facebook links by number, but there are twenty-six pages of them!

In either of these files, just pick a subject, perhaps a surname or a hometown. Use CTL+F to open a search box where you type in “Smith” without the quotation marks, for example. In the US list, “Smith” gets 48 hits. In other words, there are forty-eight Facebook pages that have something to do with Smith. Or just use Katherine’s index.   Gail’s Canadian list has large groups of page sorted by Province. So you can scroll through or use the CTL+ F strategy.

Note:  The shortcut  CTL+F works in just about any document or web page.

If you are researching other countries, genealogy topics or other sites of genealogy interest, enter “genealogy” in the top Facebook toolbar and then click on the search engine.   There are literally hundreds, if not thousands of Facebook genealogy pages that may be of interest to you.

Narrow down the search by adding a specific term, i.e. “Genealogy British Columbia” , narrow down your search by groups, pages, etc.; change the reference to Genealogy BC or otherwise narrow the search to find sites that may be of specific interest to you.   Consider following the pages of local libraries, societies or other institutions which may help you with your family history.

Once you become comfortable using Facebook you may want to join or start your own genealogy group for your specific area of interest.   It is a great way to find others who are researching in the same area as you.

Information pages on Facebook allow organizations, non-profit organizations, businesses and brands to communicate broadly with people who “like” them.   By liking their pages, you will receive their postings on your Facebook news feed.   For example, to receive postings from the Facebook page for Qualicum Beach Family History Society, click “like” on any post.

Have I convinced you that Facebook can be your friend?  Give it a try, there is nothing to lose and perhaps a lot to gain!