American Dynasties 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. Before digging, I’d like to help you navigate NARA’s catalog and provide some tips on how to make the most of it. Each time you click on a catalog entry in your search, you are presented with a page that has important descriptive information. Record Group informationID number for that entryMicrofilm publication number if the collection has been microfilmedThe branch of NARA that has custody of the archived record and it’s contact information Fig 1 & 2. Remember that names will only appear in the catalog if they are included in the title or description. All the refining tools are on the left side of the page. Fig 3. Fig 4.
Notes from Nature People have been collecting specimens from the natural world for centuries - minerals, plants, fungi and animals. Today, there are an estimated two billion specimens housed in natural history museums around the world! These biological collections document where species and populations exist now and where they existed decades and centuries before, so they hold irreplaceable information necessary for uncovering the patterns of changes in species distributions and ecosystem composition over time. Scientists use such data and information in order to address key environmental issues we are facing right now, such as the impacts of climate change and how diseases affect wildlife and humans. For the information held in these collections to be used to its full potential there must be better digital access to these data. People and Partners Multiple collections, containing specimens representing over 200 institutions, are currently involved with Notes from Nature. Notes from Nature and You
Small Town Noir | Small-time true crime from New Castle, Pa. Teaching with Historic Places--a Program of the National Park Service NEW! Arthurdale: A New Deal Community Experiment Explore Arthurdale, West Virginia, and discover a town founded during the Great Depression when First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt championed subsistence homestead communities for struggling Americans across the country. In this lesson, learn about the impoverished Appalachian mining town that Arthurdale's homesteaders left and the Progressive-era theories about communal work, school, and rural life they tested at their new home. Meet 21st Century State Standards with TwHP Teaching with Historic Places lesson plans, based on the inquiry method, provide teachers with materials and question sets that encourage analytical thinking. Teaching Teachers Power of Place Professional development materials include articles, media presentations, how-to guides, classroom case studies and other helpful resources. Preserve America Find TwHP lessons featuring historic sites in Preserve America Communities.
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. My relatives in Maryland are from Montgomery County and Somerset County. Likewise, for Montgomery County, the database only covers marriages through 1875: So even though the title of the database states that the records are through 1899, that range does not mean that every county is covered for those years. Another similar example is shown below in the database for Tennessee Marriages. The source information informs me that Hardin County is not included in this collection: The World War I and World War II draft registrations are popular databases on Ancestry.
City Nature Making of America aking of America (MoA) is a digital library of primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction. The collection is particularly strong in the subject areas of education, psychology, American history, sociology, religion, and science and technology. The collection currently contains approximately 10,000 books and 50,000 journal articles with 19th century imprints. For more details about the project, see About MoA. Making of America is made possible by a grant from the Andrew W. New Additions: We have recently added a new feature, subject browsing. 99 more volumes focusing on New York City were added to MoA in June 2007. 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. Here’s how: On the Person screen, scroll down the page to find the Sources section. B) Adding sources from a record search. Another common way to attach sources found in FamilySearch’s record collections is from the source itself. This is how it works: After doing your search, click on the record of interest to get a screen like the one above.
Pullman: Labor, Race, and the Urban Landscape in a Company Town | Home Though located more than fifteen miles from Chicago's "Loop," the neighborhood of Pullman in many ways stands at the center of American history. For over a hundred years, Pullman has embodied and reflected many of the social and economic developments that have shaped America. Built in 1880 by the Pullman Palace Car Company to house its factory workers, the community became the site of one of the largest labor conflicts in American history in 1894. This website tells the story of Pullman in all of its complexity, from the company town from which it began to the vibrant inner-city neighborhood it remains today. For further reading and research on the Pullman Company and the Pullman community, see our additional Resources.
Archiving Early America - Your Window Into America's Founding Years 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. Undoubtedly, Irish genealogy will remain challenging for many researchers, especially for those whose immigrant ancestors didn’t leave behind readily discovered information about their origins in Ireland. 1. The jewel in this site’s crown, an indexed collection of more than 700,000 names in Roman Catholic parish registers, made an unheralded debut only last year, much to the delight of Irish researchers. 2. 3. 4. 5. You must register before you start to explore the records. 6.
Spatial History Project The Spatial History Project at Stanford University, a part of the Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA), is made possible by the generous funding of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education (VPUE), DoResearch, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and The Wallenberg Foundation Media Places Initiative. The Spatial History Project at Stanford University is a place for a collaborative community of students, staff, and scholars to engage in creative spatial, textual and visual analysis to further research in the humanities. We are part of the Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA) along with Humanities+Design and the Literary Lab on the top floor of Wallenberg Hall. We continually seek fruitful collaborations with faculty at Stanford and beyond, and hire motivated students year round.