Finding Funeral Cards Online for your Genealogy

Background | Search With a long tradition both in the United States and Europe dating back to the 1800's, funeral cards (also sometimes called mass, mourning or remembrance cards) are an excellent source of information for genealogists. While not a traditional "vital record", they often provide great clues like death and birth dates, name of the cemetery where the deceased was interred, name of the funeral home, and sometimes even a photo of the ancestor. In her article, Funeral Cards, Elizabeth Kelley Kerstens explained that, "funeral cards were to be distributed to family members, friends, and the surrounding community in a timely manner to alert invitees to the date and time of the funeral. Recipients of a funeral card were expected to attend the funeral or risk offending family members. At a recent paper show, we stumbled across a bunch of funeral cards in a box labelled "all items ten cents each." Search the Funeral Cards Online collection Contributing Funeral Cards What is Ephemera?

Generous Genealogists Genealogy and Local History The Newberry has been collecting genealogy and local history materials since 1887. Staff at the Genealogy and Local History desk can help you explore the Newberry’s rich collections of family histories; local histories; censuses, probate, deed, court, tax, and cemetery records; military rosters; periodicals; genealogical guides; and reference works. Explore the Newberry’s Catalogs and Guides, the primary tools for identifying and locating books, maps, periodicals, and manuscripts relevant to your research. Researchers may wish to acquaint themselves with our Rights and Reproductions and Interlibrary Loan policies for information about requesting photocopies of materials from the Newberry and elsewhere. Registered readers may order microform materials through the FamilySearch Family History Library Film program. The Newberry also offers an assortment of programs that may be of use to genealogical researchers. Genealogies The Newberry has over 17,000 published genealogies. Local Histories

Steven Morse Site A One-Step Portal for On-Line Genealogy Stephen P. Morse An early version of this article appeared in AVOTAYNU: the International Review of Jewish Genealogy (Spring 2004), and a revised version in the Association of Professional Genealogists Quarterly (September and December 2006). In the “old days” genealogical research was done by traveling great distances and then going through dusty archives or using microfilm readers. Unfortunately, many of these websites are not easy to use. The name “One Step” was chosen when I developed my first search tool, which allowed for searches through the Ellis Island records. In this paper I’ll present an overview of what the One-Step website has to offer and, in doing so, will introduce other resources that are available on the web. I’m often asked why I created the One-Step tools when the ability to search the data already exists on other websites. We can now go to the Ellis Island website at ellisisland.org and enter the information. Overview Bingo.