| FHC Info | |
Hours of Operation:
Mon: Closed
Fri: 9:30 am-1:00 pm
Saturday:
9:30 am-4:30 pm
Tues, Wed, Thurs:
9:30am-4:30pm, & 7-9:30 pm
Directors: Linda & Kurt Christensen Washington DC Stake Carol & Gary Petranek, Silver Spring MDStake |
| Join Our List |
 |
|
|
|
WDC FHC News
| | |
Upcoming Classes
Saturday, June 21
9:30 - 10:30 Harnessing the Power of Technology in Research Collaboration
Presenter: Carol Petranek
The day of the "Lone Ranger Researcher" is over! Learn how to use an ever-increasing array of technological advances to extend your research networks and collaborate with others.
Saturday, June 28
9:30-11:00 Telling Your Story Through the Collaborative Process
Presenters: Bernice Bennett & Ellen Butler, co-authors, Our Ancestors, Our Stories
Bernice & are co-authors of a recently published book, Our Ancestors, Our Stories. They will discuss general steps to preparing a family history, and share their insights about collaborating with others to create a successful publication.
All classes are free of charge, but registration is requested.
* Join a Focus Group to Enhance Your Research Skills *
Beginning Genealogy: weekly on Tuesday mornings at 10:00. Contact Lorraine Minor at ldgene@verizon.net for further information.
DNA Group: On summer break until September.
RootsMagic Users Group: Meetings are monthly, on the 2nd Saturday at 9:30 a.m.
Irish Group: bi-weekly meetings on the 1st, 3rd & 5th Tuesday evenings at 7:00.
African-American Group: weekly on Monday mornings, 9:30.
|
|
Three Damaging Mistakes Genealogists Make
| | |
by Michael J. LeClerc
Genealogists are no more immune from making mistakes than anyone involved in any other pastime. With practice, we can move past many of them. But even experienced genealogists can fall into bad practices. These are three major mistakes (all avoidable) that genealogists commonly make. Watch out for them!
1. Believing Without Seeing
2. Speed Reading and Assuming
3. Trying to do it All Online
Source: Mocavo blog, May 31, 2014
|
|
Search Historic Newspapers
| | |
What can you find in newspapers?
- birth announcements
- christenings
- church confirmations
- impending nuptials
- wedding announcements
- obituaries
- funeral notices
- legal notices
- probate
- adoptions (before WWI)
- land transfers/sales
- naturalizations
- final claims for homesteads
- tax sales
- sheriffs' sales
- civil suits
- criminal actions
- petitions to administer estates
- election results
- jury lists
- intent to relocate
- judicial appointments
- minutes of government agencies
- village/town board of trustees
- political activities
- appointments of officers
- holiday celebrations
- advertisements
- baby showers
- wedding parties
- school activities
- list of teachers
- teacher assignments
- new students
- students moving to another school
- absences for illness or injury
- sports events
- sports lists
- professional services
- doctors
- midwives
- attorneys/lawyers
- teachers/consultants
- morticians
- artisans of all kinds
(List adapted from Seattle Genealogical Society Bulletin, 1984, p. 70; source: Arlene Eakle's Genealogy Blog)
Where do you find historic newspapers?
by Paul G. Nauta
Countless millions of historic newspapers all over the world are now revealing their secrets as they are being digitally published online. And that means they are much more accessible to family historians-if they know where and how to find them. That was the essence of Lisa Louise Cooke's message in her presentation "Tech Tools that Catapult the Newspaper Research Process" given at The National Genealogy Society 2014 Family History Conference in Richmond, Virginia, on May 8th.
Cooke explained that historical newspapers are rich possible resources for family history information. In their forgotten pages, a determined sleuth can turn up birth, marriage, death records, maiden names, names of ancestors' friends and relatives, insight into their long forgotten community.
And even photographs-which can also be insightful portals to the cultural or sociological content of an ancestor's era.
Read the full article and access newspaper links here.
Source: FamilySearch Blog, May, 27, 2014
|
|
Searching and Using Baptism Records
| |
by Amy Johnson Crow
 | | Searching and Using Baptism Records |
|
|
Million Short - A New Genealogy Search Engine
|
|
Google and other search engines are invaluable when performing standard searches. Genealogists, however, face different challenges in sifting through data which may or may not be of interest in ancestral research. There is now a new search engine, Million Short, that specializes in searching less-common websites which may hold information you are seeking.
GenealogyInTime has written about it in this article which describes how this search engine works. The video below explains the basic functionality of Million Short. Give it a try!
 | | Million Short Search Engine |
Source: GenealogyInTime blog, June 2, 2014
|
|
It All Comes Down to Place
| | |
by Kimberly Powell
Historic land Ownership Maps Online
Historic land ownership maps and county atlases show who owned land in a given area at a given time. Also displayed are towns, churches, cemeteries, schools, railroads, businesses, and natural land features. Land ownership maps make it easy to view the location and shape of an ancestor's land or farm at a particular point of time, plus its relationship to the land and locations of relatives, friends, and neighbors. The link below leads to a selected list of online resources for locating historic landowner and cadastral maps online, but you'll find even more by using search terms such as county atlas, cadastral map, landowner map, the name of a map publisher (i.e. F. W. Beers), etc. Click here.
Online Historical Map Collections
Whether you're looking for a historic map to overlay in Google Earth, or hoping to find your ancestor's town of origin, these online historical map collections offer don't miss resources for any genealogist. Find topographic, panoramic, survey and other historical maps, many available for free online viewing and downloading. Click here.
Digitized Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps Online
From 1867 to 1977, the SanbornŽ Map Company of Pelham, New York, produced large-scale (usually 50 feet to the inch) color maps of over 13,000 towns and cities across the United States in order to assist fire insurance companies in setting rates and terms. The color-coded Sanborn maps depict the location, dimension, height, and use of buildings, as well as the materials employed in their construction, and other relevant features. The Library of Congress web site refers to these color-coded maps as "probably the single most important record of urban growth and development in the United States during the past one hundred years." Click here.
Source: About.com: Genealogy
|
|
Where to Find Passenger Lists
| |
Tracing the ship journeys of your immigrant ancestors is an undertaking all family historians should do. A helpful resource for this kind of research is ships' passenger lists, which can report your ancestors' full names, what countries they came from, and when they arrived in America.
Since there is no comprehensive online genealogy resource featuring all the passenger lists, researching them is a time-consuming task. To complicate matters, some old passenger records have been lost or destroyed. Don't despair, however-there is hope for research success: many passenger lists have been transcribed or digitized, and are available for online searching. What's more, passenger lists were routinely published in the newspapers of the time; any comprehensive collection such as GenealogyBank's Historical Newspaper Archives will contain thousands of passenger lists.
Read the full article and access its links here.
Source: GenealogyBank blog, May 23, 2014
|
|
| | |
by James Tanner
Why not start your research with YouTube? So, you say, you can't be serious. But yes, I am serious. Once you cut through or ignore all the trash, you find that YouTube has evolved into the go-to place for answering almost any kind of "how to" question and that includes how-to questions about genealogy. My most recent search on Google's YouTube.com on the term "genealogy" came up with 91,200 videos (I always question round numbers, however). On the first page of that search were offerings by Lisa Louise Cooke, Devin Ashby, Ancestry.com, Kenneth R. Marks, Caroline Pointer and many others. Some of these videos had over 30,000 views.
Yes, it is that simple. You go to YouTube.com and search for a topic of interest. Do you want to learn how to use FamiySearch.org? Ancestry.com or MyHeritage.com? They are all there with videos on their programs. In fact, a search on "genealogy FamilySearch" brings up 5,210 videos (there we go with round numbers again).
You may not have realized it but YouTube.com has channels. Anyone or any company that wants to put a series of YouTube videos online can create their own channel. Even Google has a channel. Here are some links to major genealogy channels on YouTube:
The list could go on and on. By the way, YouTube is also a good reference place to find instructions on about anything else you can imagine in the Universe from opening a can to building your own house. Literally. They have everything you can imagine. One major caution. They do have everything and everything is not acceptable for viewing. Take some advice. Use common sense and discretion in your viewing. Search for specific topics and don't open your mind to the garbage truck.
Source: Genealogy's Star May 23, 2014
|
|
Citing Genealogy Sources for Regular People
|
| |
by Diane Haddad
Source citation is something of a hot button in genealogy. It's easy to become petrified you won't do it right, or to imagine that citing sources will take up all your precious research time.
Here are tips from a recent webinar to remember when collecting and organizing your source information:- Document the source of the source. If you use a record from Ancestry.com that was digitized from FamilySearch's microfilm copy of the original, your source citation will include each of these "steps" in the publication process. In this case, the information about the record on Ancestry.com would be followed by the word citing and then the information about the FamilySearch microfilm. There's a good post about this on the Genea-Musings blog.
- Note whether you're using an index or an actual record. Source citations for information from an online index generally indicate this by including the word database. Citations for record images found in online collections generally include the words digital image.
- Census citations vary by year. Because of the differences in US censuses over time, the information in census citations varies slightly by year. For pre-1850 population schedules, cite the page number and line number. For 1850 and later, cite the page number and family or dwelling number. Also note the schedule you used (population, manufacturing, etc.).
- Keep citations with the source. Include source citations in your online tree or genealogy software when you attach the record, and wherever you add or update a fact or event derived from that record. Most programs have a source management feature to help you create and use citations.
- Add citations in the margins or to the back of paper copies. Use a photo-editor or Acrobat to add citations to digital copies. You also can keep a database of numbered citations, and add the numbers to your family tree facts and copied records.
- Source family stories. In family history narratives, add numbered footnotes at the bottom of the page or endnotes at the end of the text. Place the corresponding numbers within the text, where you mention information from each source. Word processing software can automatically format footnotes or endnotes and renumber the notes as you edit.
|
|
Quaker Calendar and Dates
| | |
by Lisa Arnold
There is no doubt about it: Quaker dating in letters and meeting minutes is confusing! When you begin researching Quaker records, you may be tempted to "correct" the dates that you find. You would not be alone in thinking this way.
Let's take a look at the reasoning behind the Quaker calendar and dating practices and how to interpret them.
Early Friends objected to the names of the days and months in the English language because they were of a non-Christian origin. Sunday was called as such by the Saxons because it was the day they sacrificed to the sun. Monday was the day they sacrificed to the moon; Thursday was the day they sacrificed to the god Thor; and so on. Quakers thought it inconsistent for Christians to continue using the names of heathen idols.
In an effort to distance themselves from these references, they created their own calendar terms using numbers, which seemed to them to be the most rational approach. Days of the week were known as "First Day" for Sunday, "Second Day" for Monday, and so forth. They used no other names but these, either in their spoken conversations or in their letters. Similarly, the months of the year were known as "First Month" for January, "Second Month" for February, and so forth. If you were a Quaker, you were expected to adopt these practices in your daily life.
This informative article contains additional information, plus tables that show conversion charts for days and months before 1752. Click here.
Source: Ancestry.com blog, May 22, 2014 |
|
Genealogy "Tips of the Day"
|
by Michael John Neill
The Importance of the Original. One of the researchers on my Family History Library trip found a transcription of a death record for a 19-year old relative that indicated he was married. She was beginning to search for the wife (and possible child or children) in the following census record. I suggested she look at the original death record to see if there were additional clues about the wife on the certificate. There certainly were. The certificate had been transcribed incorrectly. He was single, not married. Don't forget that the originals matter and reference them when you can.
Is It Extant and Complete? When searching any database that claims to be for an entire geographic area, determine if there are spots or areas where information is missing. There may be one county or town whose 1820 census records are missing and if are not aware of that you may search the database needlessly.
Do You Know the Order? When using records that are not indexed, make certain you know the order in which they were recorded or the order in which they were filed. Was it by date of the item? Was it by date the item was recorded? Was it by license, document, or casefile number? Was it by the date the case was started? Was it by date the case was settled? Or was it simply some random, arbitrary order?
Abbreviations. The abbreviation "inst.," as in "7th inst.," refers to a date in the present month. "Ult.," as in the "8th ult.," generally refers to the previous month
Local Papers After They Leave. Newspapers (especially smaller weekly ones) often mention former residents long after they have left the area. Never assume that your relative will stop being mentioned in a paper after they have left the area. Sometimes those references to a person after they have left the area are more informative than those references to them when they are living in the area.
Grandma Said So. When Grandma (or Grandpa) talks about events that happened before their birth, it is possible they are wrong. Not because they are lying out of malice, but simply because someone didn't give them the correct information, they have confused two stories, or they are simply mixed up. What starts to crack some genealogy brick walls is when we realize they are built on a foundation centering on a story that was not quite true.
|
|
Research Tips & Resources
| |
African-American Research Blog Radio
Bernice Bennett has a Thursday evening radio show dedicated to African-American research: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/bernicebennett
Veterans Affairs Grave Locator
To search for burial locations of veterans, click here.
British Newspaper Archive
You can now explore 8 million newspaper pages at The British Newspaper Archive.
Ohio Records Online
Ohio History Connection Blog updates their online record collection. Click here.
|
Thank you for subscribing to Generations. We hope this publication will motivate you to successfully begin or continue your family history research. We would like to hear from you! Please submit your questions, research tips, and favorite websites to us at info@wdcfhc.org
Sincerely,
Carol Petranek, Newsletter Editor
Linda & Kurt Christensen
Gary Petranek
Co-Directors, Washington DC Family History Center
10000 Stoneybrook Drive, PO Box 49
Kensington, MD 20895
|
|
|
|
|
