Free Civil War Records: Find Your Ancestors with These 4 No-Cost Resources May 9th, 2017 marks 152 years since the U.S. Civil War ended, but the numerous records created by the War Between the States still provide a glimpse into the lives of those who served. If you had family in the US in the mid-19th century than there is a very good likelihood that some of your own ancestors served in this pivotal conflict. 5 Tech Tools That Will Revolutionize Your Genealogy Find out how these award-winning genealogy technology tools, introduced at FamilySearch's RootsTech conference, will change how you do genealogy research. Designed to encourage innovative technology tools in the family history industry, FamilySearch’s Innovator Showdown is a highlight of its annual RootsTech genealogy conference in Salt Lake City each winter. This year, more than 40 applicants from the United States and Europe vied for nearly $200,000 in cash and prizes sponsored by Amazon Web Services, the Kickstarter Seed Fund, the Sorenson Legacy Foundation and others. In the 2017 showdown, each of the five finalists had three minutes to present his or her innovation and win over a panel of judges and a live audience, and four minutes to answer judges’ questions. Prizes went to the judges’ top three picks as well as the audience-chosen People’s Choice Award recipient. We’ll introduce these award-winning tech tools and websites that will change how you do genealogy research.
Genealogy HowTo - Issue Apr 20, 2017 - MyTrees.com Newsletter by Cynthia Carman The internet has become the premier place for libraries to publish their catalogs and in many cases provide the printed, graphic, or index resource online. What a boost for the genealogist! Gone are the days of scouring through volumes of books for a reference to a book or other record about your family.
11 Best Websites for Researching Irish Ancestors Genealogy research in Ireland has its challenges, but more and more websites are helping you overcome them. These 11 are the web’s best bets for tracing your Irish ancestors. If you’re tracing (or trying to trace) Irish ancestors, you may have heard that “all the records burned in the fire”—the 1922 Four Courts Fire at the Public Record Office in Dublin, an unfortunate event of the Irish Civil War. But this is a myth that online Irish family history databases are doing their level best to shatter, and rightly so. How to Add Sources on FamilySearch.org Since Family Tree is a collaborative tree and we all share the same ancestors, it’s important to verify the information you enter and provide sources to show others where your information came from. On FamilySearch’s Family Tree, now it’s easy to attach actual images of the sources. Here are the most common scenarios and some tips to help: A) Adding sources to individuals from the Person screen. Perhaps the most basic way to add a source is by attaching one you already have to an individual on the Tree. For example, I have a scanned copy of the birth certificate of my great-great-great-grandfather, Edmond Harris, that I would like to attach to him.
Legacy News: Using the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) Online Catalog for Research With the growing size of digital collections now available, an online catalog is simply no longer just a research tool. They are now online databases where you can do original research. I have used numerous online images from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) catalog in past Legacy News posts as examples of documents that may include an ancestor. Searching Ancestry databases Since Ancestry remains the primary website online for genealogists, I’d like to share a few tips for researching its databases. For the first example, below you’ll see the search page for a typical database, this one for Maryland Marriages, 1667-1899: Most people would put the names of their ancestors in the search box, and if the search came up empty, they’d conclude the marriage record wasn’t there. That’s a big mistake.
10 Records That Every Genealogist Should Acquire Genealogy requires a great deal of detective work. As you dig further back through the generations, the documentation may become harder to find. Every document you can obtain is a valuable source of information. How to plan the ultimate trip to trace your roots in Ireland What is it that draws millions of visitors to Ireland each year? The stunning landscapes, the friendly people, the charming towns and cities with their centuries of history, certainly. For the 70 million people around the world who make up the extended Irish diaspora, it’s also the promise of a long-lost home and the discovery of an ancestral connection. It’s no coincidence that so many first-time visitors to Ireland have talked and written about the startlingly wonderful feeling of belonging they get when they first set foot on Irish soil. Whether you’re looking to do a deep dive into your Irish heritage and reconstruct your family tree, or hope to get a more historic understanding of the journey your ancestors took as they bravely departed from Ireland, there’s an abundance of meaningful ways to connect with your roots as you travel throughout the Emerald Isle. Witness where they came from