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.
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.
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.
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.
The Undocumented Genealogy Trails History Group - Start your free family research here Parable of the Polygons - a playable post on the shape of society This is a story of how harmless choices can make a harmful world. These little cuties are 50% Triangles, 50% Squares, and 100% slightly shapist. But only slightly! In fact, every polygon prefers being in a diverse crowd: You can only move them if they're unhappy with their immediate neighborhood. Once they're OK where they are, you can't move them until they're unhappy with their neighbors again. “I wanna move if less than 1/3 of my neighbors are like me.” Harmless, right? drag & drop unhappy polygons until nobody is unhappy: (just move them to random empty spots. don't think too much about it.) And... our shape society becomes super segregated. Sometimes a neighborhood just becomes square, and it's not their fault if no triangles wanna stick around. In this next bit, unhappy shapes automatically move to random empty spots. run this simulation a few times. what happens? What's up with that? Small individual bias can lead to large collective bias. Equality is an unstable equilibrium. Woah.
RAOGK - Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness The Persistence of Myth: The Causes of the Civil War | Teaching Tolerance - Diversity, Equity and Justice Although there is little controversy among historians about the centrality of slavery in causing the Civil War, the myth of a “debate” persists. And with President Trump’s recent, historically inaccurate comments about the Civil War, this issue has once again been dragged into the spotlight, galling historians and history teachers. The notion that there is any controversy only serves to advance the ideology of white nationalists and so-called Lost Causers. In promoting this “alternative” view, these groups seek to undermine the role of slavery in secession, in the development of American capitalism and even in the creation of the United States. As historian James W. The issue is critically important for teachers to see clearly. Comments or narratives that do not place slavery at the center of the Civil War not only diminish the experiences of those who were enslaved and present-day African Americans, but they also undermine the enterprise of studying history.