Eastern European Focus Group  Begins

Our new Eastern European Focus group will meet monthly on the 4th Saturday at noon, beginning October 25. Participants will receive instruction on how to research and access resources in Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Slovenia, Ukraine, and Belarus. Sessions will begin with a brief overview of a specific topic, then adjourn into the FHC for hands-on research. This is offered on a drop-in basis; no registration is requested.

Upcoming Classes

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.

Eastern European Group: monthly on the 4th Saturday at noon; begins October 25; focus countries: Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Slovenia, Ukraine, and Belarus.

Irish Group: bi-weekly meetings on the 1st, 3rd & 5th Tuesday evenings at 7:00.

by Duncan Kuehn 

Prior to the Civil War, more than 85% of American males owned property! This astonishing statistic shows the importance of using and understanding land records when researching our ancestors....  

During the Civil War, records were destroyed across many areas in the South-some accidentally by fire, others deliberately by Union troops. Southerners had begun classifying slaves as property similar to land. This was a political move to prevent the North from encroaching on their property rights. When Northern troops attacked Southern towns and cities, they often targeted courthouses to destroy documents recording property-and therefore records of slave ownership. 

After the war, Southerners were anxious to protect their property rights and quickly re-filed their land claims. Sometimes these reconstructed land deeds list previous owners and their relationships, providing valuable family history information and clues. 

Read the full article which describes various land records and where to access them here.

There might be severe mistakes unbeknownst to you as far as working on your family tree. The following is a list of just a few. Check and correct, if necessary, any such errors.

First, see that you place a source for all your research. It can save you from redoing the same search a couple years later and you will have a listing to back up where the information, photos, documents, newspaper articles, etc you do have came from.

Second, NEVER accept someone else's data and information unless you verify it yourself with several reliable sources (primary and secondary sources). Checking it against another person's tree is not using reliable sources. I have seen so many major errors in other peoples' family trees, you wander 'what were they thinking?' Just because it is on the Internet does not make it correct. 

Keep a good reliable email address just for genealogy research and correspondence. Make is an address you will keep. It might be 5 to 8 years between the times someone sees a genealogy database or message you have and when they email you - possibly with some strong primary resource. You wouldn't want to miss that information.

Hold onto all family related data, names, dates, documents, records, photos, etc you locate. Make it in digital format for easier storage, but do keep everything and label it. It will surprise you how down the road, a certain name or location will surface and it can now provide the full explanation to a certain relative.

Go back over specific family lines at least once a year and especially if it has been several years. There can be new databases available now that you didn't have a few years ago. Also you have learned more about a family line and you need to re-analyze earlier information with any recent data collected. Re-examine old documents, letters and photos for anything you overlooked years before. 

by Kimberly Powell

Contrary to popular belief, U.S. customs officials or Immigration Services did not create ship passenger lists. Ship manifests were completed, generally at the point of departure, by steamship companies. These passenger manifests were then submitted to the immigration officials upon arrival in the United States.

U.S. immigration officials were known to add annotations to these ship passenger lists, both at the time of arrival or many years later. These annotations may have been made to correct or clarify certain information, or to reference naturalization or other relevant documents.

Annotations added to passenger manifests at the time of a ship's arrival were made by immigration officials in order to clarify information or to detail a problem a passenger's entrance to the United States.

For example:

X - An "X" to the far left of the page, before or in the name column, signifies that the passenger was temporarily detained. Look at the end of the manifest for that particular ship to see the list of all detained aliens.

To read the full article which describes annotation marks and what they mean, click here.

Another excellent and comprehensive resource, Manifest Markings, can be found here.

Source: About: Genealogy, September 9, 2014

Finding the maiden names of the women in our tree is one obstacle that needs to be overcome. Often they are cloaked with their husband's names, like Mrs. John Williams or Mrs. A. Smith. Even after the husband dies, you may see them listed as Widow Williams. But there is hope. Here are some sources that can reveal that elusive maiden name.

• Vital records
• The records of siblings
• Church records
• Middle Names
• Probates
• Obituaries
• Witnesses and sponsors
• Cemeteries
• Home sources
• Military pensions 

Tracing our female ancestors can be challenging, but tools like online databases and every-name indexes to census records make it easier than ever to learn more about the heroines in our family tree.

Portsmouth New Hampshire Records

Sean Furniss of the Fairfax Virginia Genealogy Society has created a searchable index of over 40,000 records from Portmouth, NH. They include pdf copies of several FHL films and some NH State Archive records. If interested, send an email to info@wdcfhc.org to receive a link.

Dutch Genealogy