New Year's Resolutions (2012)

The countdown to the new year has nearly ended! With that in mind, I've got some thoughts about how we can all make the virtual genealogy experience more pleasant for ourselves and others:

10. I will attend a genealogy society meeting! This may be just a hobby to me, but I can still learn a lot about professional genealogy standards and meet other folks in my area.
9. I will try to publish my family history! It may take me a few years, but I want to be able to share what I've learned with the rest of the family (and those who follow). The product may be a website, a book or even just a short summary of our family's story - and I'll share it with the family and my local library.
8. I will take a Genealogy Vacation! It could be just to the town in the next county where Grandma grew up - or it could be across the Atlantic Ocean - but I want to truly experience the life of my family and understand where they came from.
7. I will not give up when I hit a brick wall! There are other ways around the mountain that blocks my way and I will endeavor to locate a new direction for my search.
6. I will interview at least one relative! I won't put this off any longer - this is the year I will ask Great Aunt Olga about our family. I won't be discouraged by the slow start to the conversation but will instead try to learn all I can before the day comes when she can't tell me.
5. I will work together with fellow genealogy researchers! Sometimes I may be able to help someone who is stuck on their great-grandfather by suggesting a new approach. I will always build goodwill between researchers so the day may come when someone would be willing to help me, too.
4. I will transcribe at least one source record this year! They may not not be records important to my family, but I will attempt to find information from local resources (cemetery, library, church, etc.) to post for others to use.
3. I will not post unsubstantiated data online! For all genealogy "facts," I will always give a source and will consider explaining level of certainty in my notes.
2. I will not re-post GEDCOMs or other third-party family trees! If someone takes the time to send me genealogy data, I will review it and carefully consider the privacy concerns of others before sharing with someone else.
1. I will teach my children about their roots! Even just one family story by the fire during the Holidays could have a lasting impact on the next generation. If they realize how hard our ancestors' lives were, they could learn that all of us can rise above the challenges of life to make a better future!

Happy 2012 and happy hunting!

Taking a Genealogy Vacation

It's Christmas Eve, and I hope this time of year finds you spending time with your loved ones. Maybe they are people you've known all your life or maybe you are just getting to know them this year. Either way, when we are with people who make up our "family" we have an opportunity to learn about the roots of our traditions, beliefs and the places we're from.

Perhaps you are actually in an ancestral place right now - the house your grandparents "built with their own hands" - or you've established a new residence since you were a child. We are better people, I think, when we can find a place on this earth to call our "home" - it anchors us in our daily lives. If you know what I mean, then I'm sure you can understand why taking a "Genealogy Vacation" can have special meaning.

I'm not trying to suggest that you need to know everything about your family before you can embark on this type of adventure. You may not know anything more than "we come from Cleveland." Still, you could ask yourself: "have I ever been there or visited the places that my family talks about?" If the answer is "no," then you have a destination already. For those whose roots come from another continent, finding the ancestral townland or borough of your family could be difficult. But lack of "proof" in this area shouldn't discourage you - it would still be great to experience the culture of your family's home-country.

One more thing: just because it is called a "Genealogy Vacation" doesn't mean you need to carry your notebooks or other research materials with you. Make it fun! The only thing I recommend is that you do a little preparation so that you can truly experience the important places where your family would have travelled, worked and worshipped. If you do the trip right, you may end up having a personal revelation of sorts (e.g., "these people are like me!" or "it feels like home"). Research at an archives would be like a cherry on top but you'll probably want to make the trip fun for everyone else, too.

Some helpful sites for planning a Genealogy Vacation are listed below:

About.com
Eastman's Online Genealogy Newsletter
Genealogy.com
LDS Blogs
MakeMyFamilyTree.com

If you are lucky on your trip, the local people will welcome you "home." May you be that fortunate! Enjoy your trip - and happy hunting!

Paying for Research

This blog entry is an important one - if for no other reason than it could save you money! I've hinted for a few months that you can find a LOT of genealogy information on the web without paying for it. Proper key word searches (coupled with knowledge of how to view cached pages and how to follow basic links into the deepest depths of transcribed-records sites) can keep you going for many years without having to spend a lot of money on this FUN hobby. Eventually, however, you may discover that the data you've found isn't trustworthy or doesn't contain enough to continue.

That's when you need to take a moment to ask yourself some crucial questions about what to do next. I've included a couple of brain teasers for your consideration:

Main versus Collateral?: If you are looking for your direct ancestors and hit a brick wall within the last 100 years, it is probably worth some money to break through to more distant relatives and records. However, if you are trying to learn more about Cousin Frank who disappeared in the 1920s, you may want to put that task on the back burner and move to another person. In either case, just remember that even if pay-for-research services are warranted, you can probably find useful genealogy data at Ancestry.com before you have to pay a professional genealogist.

What's Actually Online?: Some records just aren't available anywhere but the place where they were created. The Web has grown exponentially during the last few years but there are still pockets of records from Third World Countries, US States with privacy laws (etc.) that you can't find on the Internet even if you pay for a membership at Ancestry. That's crucial, too, since you could end up paying for a lot of data you already have. Instead, I recommend you consider putting your money to good use on a trip to your ancestral home-town (with pre-arranged meetings with the Parish Priest or Archivist).

Source Document versus Transcribed Index: Do you want a copy of a certificate? You will probably have to pay someone for it (online, library or genealogist). But are you about to pay for an online membership so you can see the family tree posted by "joe.smith (at) worldnet.com"? I would advise strongly against that, since the family tree may be full of errors that simply steer you in the wrong direction. Most likely, anyway, the person who posted the tree got the information from a source document you can access somewhere else.

The bottom line is: Be very careful not to get lured into memberships when the return is minimal. Don't get me wrong - there are lots of valuable resources on pay sites. You may find that your family research is at a point where you have exhausted all other avenues to continue. Great! That makes spending the money on a membership or professional genealogist well worth the effort. For the rest of us, though, there are plenty of interviews, libraries, cemeteries, microfilms (etc.) to review before we take the leap. Happy hunting!

Finding a Military Hero in Your Tree

We should be proud of the sacrifices of the military servicemembers who defend the everyday freedoms we enjoy - including the ability to pursue happiness in the form of a genealogy hobby! Have you ever wanted to learn more about those heroes? Perhaps you are even aware of one in your own family and want to honor their service with a meaningful tribute in the family history. So, where to begin?

You can locate conflict-specific records at several sites - with records like draft registrations, enlistment documents and casualty reports. One of the best online resources for this kind of information is Fold3, so named after the "tri-fold" American Flag presented to the grieving family at a military funeral. You can search a variety of indexes there - and even access the original source data (at certain times of the year for free!). Additional index records at Ancestry and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) can also direct you to a good starting point for locating a military relative.

A good search for military information should also include a Google search for fraternal veterans organizations (or even war specific groups) that often post and/or store basic servicemember information online. Some of these sites may also allow for a form of social networking for you to find some of Grandpa's old Army buddies. You would probably be surprised at the number of people who want to trace the service history of their loved-one - even when they don't have genealogy research interests.

Here are some good examples of military genealogy sites I've found in web searches:

B-29.org
Great War Society
American Merchant Marine at War
Navy Memorial

If you discover your veteran in one of the indexes above, you may be able to view a copy of their service record. Visits to the National Archives site in downtown Washington, DC, often yield results but if you can't travel, you should explore the new options provided by the NARA at their site: Veterans' Service Records. Happy hunting!

Famous - or Notorious?

If you have ever searched for yourself on the web, you may not actually find anything (not even about the prize pig you entered in the Lauderdale County Fair last year). Maybe you can find your name listed with participants in the recent Turkey Trot - but, unless you won the race there probably wasn't an interview published in the paper ("Yes, I am the greatest - but I owe it all to genetics!"). Joking aside, did you notice what DOES appear on the web? It is usually the most famous or infamous person with your name (AKA "the squeaky wheel", the "black sheep" or "show-off"). It has been that way for years, too. We obviously know about Julius Caesar because he was a great showman and soldier - but we probably couldn't find the name of his next door neighbor.

What does any of this have to with genealogy? Well, it is a basic fact of human nature that most people live their lives in relative obscurity. Unless their existence intersected with a census or mass immigration, you may be disappointed to learn that the only "proof" of their existence is a barely-legible name on a vital record or (if you are REALLY lucky) fading words on a tombstone.

Of course, you could have had famous or notorious ancestors - you should hope you did, actually! Count your blessings if you know that Aunt Martha ran a brothel on Bourbon Street (shocking!): you'll probably find more than you ever dreamed about her - stories about how she smuggled bootleg liquor during Prohibition or was arrested for lewd behavior (but then released on the word of the Mayor). Aunt Martha became "famous" (at least for genealogy purposes) because she was interesting. Even today, do the newspapers care about the 95% of us who get up in the morning and work all day, settling into our Lazy-Boys at night? Of course not.

One thing that does happen, luckily, is that the relatives of notorious people are sometimes listed in scandalous stories or obituaries (much to their horror, I'm sure). Maybe you'll even get a break and find that someone in your family was an eyewitness to an important event. Perhaps when Billy the Kid was killed some of your folks came out of the woodwork to report "they knew him back when." With all of the published articles in the last 300 years, you are bound to find information about your family in the margins of history. And then you can tell the rest of your family about how Aunt Martha's ill-gotten gains actually paid for the family home on Canal Street... Happy hunting!

Tracing Immigrants

If you know where your family came from, you probably will not need to locate a record of immigration to a new country. You can skip that step and look for them in their homeland. But for most people, a crucial clue to family origins can be found in records originally created to record the ethnic and health background of potential new citizens. Fortunately, while a visit to Ellis Island (and the Statue of Liberty) may be interesting and meaningful (more genealogy tourism ideas!), you don't actually have to go any farther than your computer screen to track down ancestors. Some examples of sites that can assist you include:

Australia

State Records NSW

Public Record Office Victoria

Canada

Library and Archives Canada

United States

Ancestry.ca

CastleGarden.org

Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation

Each of these web resources provides a different type and scope of information but if you are lucky, you could find the name of the town where your ancestors lived. Review all available pages that come up in the searches: there is a chance that a second scanned document contains additional information about the person. One example of this is an additional page that identifies the name of a relative - sometimes in the "old world" but also (possibly) the person's contact in the new country. Be cautious of accepting spellings of towns or cities - and surnames. Remember, someone had to listen to the words of your relative and copy down what they heard even when they might not have understood the language of the immigrant. Spellings where thus inadvertantly changed on the spot - and the true identity of a home of origin could also be significantly changed. Still, you might get closer than you ever did in the corner of the world where you live - so don't give up easily. Happy hunting!

Runaway Family Trees

In some earlier posts, we talked about how you need to be willing to live with your family trees being posted on other websites or used by researchers you've never met for their projects. But even if you feel good about your evidence, names, dates and the overall structure of your project, you should also consider what it is like to be on the receiving end of erroneous online genealogy information. Let's look at some examples of how you can be burned by runaway family tree data:

(1) Leaps of Faith: Suppose you've got a common enough surname and family lore that connects your family with famous (or infamous) people in history. Starting from that point, you may make some pretty big leaps to connect to a line that you can't directly prove. You'll probably find it appealing to grab the first online family tree you find with "your ancestor." But if you assume that family is yours, you may (incorrectly) come to believe you have made a connection with the Sixteenth Century (or earlier) - when, in reality, you've skipped a step along the way. Never start your search with a conclusion! That would be like Detective Goren assuming the first person he interviews is the killer (the show would be over in 10 minutes!). For this reason, I'm personally not a fan of Ancestry's advertisements that feature the comment "I saw this little leaf"...

(2) Viral Errors: Probably more devastating to your search (in terms of wasted time and unwarranted excitement), this situation develops when many, many, many people have used the same incorrect information in their trees and posted the errors online. I've seen examples of well-meaning folks who published an incorrect family relationship or date on their websites and realized it soon afterwards - but not soon enough to prevent the mistakes from carrying over to many other sites. By the time you come along with your Google search, the "viral error" has spawned myriad more - and caused a cascading effect of inaccuracies across the web. It ends up being a scenario something like when a doctored photo or edited video goes viral - and that never works out well for anyone...

(3) Unreasonable Connections: It's rare, but I've encountered situations where someone who is clearly not related to a family has taken data they found on the web and forced the "square peg into the round hole." OK, maybe it was a mistake - but are you prepared to discuss that with them? Often, people won't be willing to admit they didn't hit the jackpot - and they may shoot the messenger. If you are lucky, it will be a meaningful opportunity to share evidence (and theories) and even examine potential connections. On the flip side, you may be unable to convince them that they are contributing to the "viral error" effect I described above. This, then creates more problems for future researchers.

A family tree posted on the web may contain true information, but you need to personally verify each generation backwards from yourself to the earliest known ancestor. Look for your relatives in the census and city directories and follow up with vital records - that is the only way to be "sure" you didn't jump to a conclusion. As a precaution, I recommend you always discuss any uncertainties in your published work. Remember: if you carefully research details and don't assume anything, your web search for news stories, photos and other potential trees can add much needed flesh to the skeleton of your basic family history. Happy hunting!

10,000th Name Added to MS Death Index

There are now over 10,000 names in Virtual Genealogy's Statewide Index to Mississippi Death Records! To access this important resource, click on the word "Databases" above (or click here). Expect more projects like this to appear on our site in the future.

Locating Cemetery Records

One important genealogy resource that often gets overlooked by researchers is the information written on a cemetery stone. While the quality of some markers is poor (e.g., sandstone), they often outlast the records of even our modern society. So if a courthouse was burned to the ground during the US Civil War or French Revolution, something carved in granite may still exist to prove the existence of your ancestors. But how do you find it? In the past, you had to walk through cemeteries and hope that there was an index posted on-site. Or, you had to contact the administrators of the property and send them money to search the records. These days, you may not have to go to a cemetery - even if you are fortunate enough to live in the same town where your family members are buried. As I've said before, though, visiting places that preserve the history of your family provide a greater reward than simply trusting the Internet sources... So, if you can, get out there and have an adventure at the local cemetery - it may be just a simple matter of locating the family plot and documenting the names on the stones. Don't forget to contact the family church - especially if they run the cemetery - their records are probably more extensive and contain additional details. On the flip side, you may not find anything, even when the caretakers say your family is there. I once visited a cemetery where the only visual evidence of my family being buried there was the section and row markers the church provided - there weren't even any tombstones (there was, however, a curb-stone that showed the family name). For each dead-end, though, I've also had some luck.

If you can't visit a cemetery but you want to know more about your family, you can use the web to track down burial records. Here are some great sites you can use:

Find-A-Grave
Interment.net
USGenWeb Tombstone Transcrtiption Project

You may even be lucky enough to be able to view a picture at their site, taken by someone who cataloged the burials in that cemetery and posted them online. In addition to the links above, you may want to check out the records that some major Catholic Dioceses have posted on the web - here are just a few:

Basilique Notre-Dame de Montréal Cemetery
Catholic Cemeteries of St. Louis
Milwaukee Catholic Cemeteries

Last point: We haven't talked about this a lot, but you should consider posting things (photos of cemetery stones included) that you find during your research, even if they aren't "yours." Our goal as virtual genealogists should always be to augment web resources for all family history researchers - everyone benefits that way. Happy hunting!

Virtual Genealogy Hits 1,000 Links!

There are now over 1,000 web-links to digital birth, marriage, death, census and city directory records at Virtual Genealogy! The 1,000th link was a digitization project by the University of North Carolina at Greensboro: Greensboro City Directories (1879-1923). Check out our web site and share new online resources in the reader comments!

MS Death Index passes 5,000 Names!

We've got more than 5,000 names in the Mississippi Death Certificate Index (1912-1943)!

A Visit to the Family History Library

I was able to visit the Family History Library in Salt Lake City in September, something I've been wanting to do for many years but never had time. It was amazing! You've never seen so many microfilm rolls in one place. The building is located in the pretty downdown area (near Temple Square).

The Pros:
Hours are reasonable and parking isn't too much of a problem (free on Saturday). The library has five floors: US books (3rd), US films (2nd), family histories (Main), Europe and Latin America (B1), UK & Ireland (B2). There are dozens of computers on each floor - scores of film readers - row after row of research materials. There was a whole section with special documents that don't ever leave the FHL - so if you wanted to view one of those, you'd obviously need to go there. The people who work there are very nice and I saw several of them assisting newbies - and making some progress. I spent three full days there - taking breaks out in the Square and eating nearby. Each evening I checked out something nearby before heading back to my hotel (Mormon Tabernacle Choir, LDS Church History Museum and some of the historic buildings and art - all very interesting). Salt Lake City is a great place to visit!

The Cons:
After the visit, it is my honest opinion that only a hard-core genealogy nut would actually enjoy a trip to the FHL. Most of the material that was easily accessible to the average visitor can be ordered through a local Family History Center. A lot of the resources that I used while there were on the computers! To maximize your success, you also need to prepare for weeks to be ready for the trip - it isn't something you can decide to do on the spur of the moment as you pass through town on I-15. I was fortunate because I was doing a surname survey, which meant I powered through every book I could and wrote down all the listings I found on that last name. I did attempt to locate something for a friend, but was overwhelmed by the size, scope and sheer magnitude of everything that was available (can you say "kid in the candy store"). A visit to the place is definitely Big League Genealogy - not for the weary-eyed or easily discouraged.

If you plan to take a genealogy research vacation to the FHL, I recommend you utilize their website to prepare. You will want to be prepared to use every available minute looking at specific microfilms or books - and not be sidetracked by the shiny computers! I am aware of the irony: this is a blog about online genealogy. But, as you've seen from earlier posts, I'm also a supporter of pursuing the hands-on resources whenever possible. If any others of you have ever visited the Library, please post something about your trip in the reader comments. For the rest of you, put it on your "Bucket List." Happy hunting!

Launch of Mississippi Death Index

The newest digital genealogy item at Virtual Genealogy is our launch of a brand new database project: the Statewide Index to Mississippi Death Records (1912 - 1943). This unique resource should be very useful to anyone who wants to research the death records of the Magnolia State but can't access the original microfilms. We welcome your ideas, transcriptions and proofreading - contact webmaster (at) cooganresearchgroup [dot] com!

Publishing a Family Tree Online

A few weeks ago we discussed the genealogy research goal of preserving your genealogy research for posterity. Apart from writing a book and donating a copy to a local library, posting your family history online is probably the best way to ensure that all your hard work can be enjoyed by relatives and used by other researchers. You have a few options with web publishing:

(1) Use Family Tree Web Sites
You may want to contribute your genealogy data to a site that specializes in collecting trees and making them searchable. It really is the easiest way to publish your family history on the Web. To begin, you'll have to register to post. Each site has varying degrees of protection for your data and may also limit the amount of information that you can post about your family (i.e., you may not be able to add anecdotes and photos). Still, the vital information (births, marriages, deaths) you've collected will appear on the Internet for others to find. Examples of web pages that you can use include:

Ancestry.com
Archives.com
Geni.com
Rootsweb.com

The sites allow you to decide which names or other information appear on your tree. Be cautious of publishing information about living individuals (remember our discussion about Internet Privacy) - the word "Living" is better than the actual name of a person. It might even be better to completely omit some individuals - be careful in this area so you don't anger your relatives. After you've added names and other identifying information to your tree, you'll want to add your source information (if possible). This is a great thing to do, since it shows you have seriously examined the details of your family history and found documentation to support your findings. If you have doubts about something, make sure you add a note about them so other people won't just assume uncertain data are facts. With most sites, you can continue to update the information. The end result of all this effort is that these types of online family trees can be searched by other people. This means (hopefully) that you may one day be contacted by another genealogy researcher!

(2) Create your own Site
If you have a lot of information to post beyond simply names and birth, death and marriage dates, you may want to create your own web site. You don't have to be a geek to do this! Almost all commercially available family tree software has the capability to create the web page - including all art work, photo formatting and text organization. As someone who creates web pages for fun and had to learn several different computer languages, I highly recommend that you go this route. Examples of software programs to use include:

Brother's Keeper
Family Tree Maker
Legacy
Lineage

After you've bought the software, you'll need to follow the directions to create a web site. Some of the programs come with free web space (often for a limited time) and you just need to upload your pages to the server. In other cases, however, you will need to buy a domain name and utilize a web-hosting service. I've been using Blue Host since 2005 and I like their product. The best thing about having your own pages is that you can control every bit of the formatting. It really provides the most freedom you could ever have to create a lasting monument to your family - even more than a book, which may require several editions to "get it right."


Always remember what we talked about when you share data on the web: once it is out of your hands, you can't control where it goes. If you can live with the knowledge that some website in Kazakhstan has hijacked your data and posted it somewhere else on the web, you'll be in business. Happy hunting!

DNA Testing

The cutting edge of genealogy research in the Twenty-First Century is definitely the DNA test. We're not talking just about simple paternity test, either! You have the option of testing (1) the Y-chromosome (Y-DNA, used to compare males with their ancestors) or (2) mitochondrial (mtDNA, used to compare the children of a certain female). There are also (more comprehensive) tests that can help to create a family framework for people in a given group (you've heard of King Tut, right?). The best thing about DNA testing is that it can be used to show the ethnic background of a person - especially useful if you have NO idea where your family originated. If you decide to do a test, you can choose from several companies - we've listed a few below:

Ancestry.com
Family Tree DNA
Genographic Project
Sorenson Foundation

Results from any of these companies should be comparable (although it make take some effort) because the same markers are usually tested. The process is simple:

(1) Request kit (online)
(2) Collect sample (swab inside of mouth)
(3) Return sample (packaging provided)
(4) Be patient! (testing takes > month)
(5) Access results (online)

If you have results from two different people, you can compare the values of each marker (your specific number is called an allele) to see whether many match. Remember: the more markers you test, the more reliable the results. I've used this great site to compare results with other people - it should help you determine whether you are related. Happy hunting!

We've Posted Links from Six Continents!

We reached a major milestone today: there are now links to online digital genealogy records from six continents located at our site, Virtual Genealogy! A majority of the links are from North America, Europe and Australia - but we're working hard to locate more from other parts of the world. Check back often!

Genealogy Research Goals

One of the greatest things about genealogy as a hobby is that you can easily keep busy for years trying to refine and extend your family history. But to prevent your hair from turning prematurely gray, you will probably want to have a few goals when you start:

(1) Temporal Terminus
With the first goal, you need to be able to know when to stop looking (really!). Sometimes, the records will solve that dilemna for you (many countries didn't keep comprehensive registers, others were destroyed during centuries of warfare). But are you trying to identify every ancestor? I recommend you seriously consider narrowing the search to one surname or "side of the family." You can always come back to a different search later.

(2) Standard of "Proof"
I could write about this goal for hours - and it would bore you. It may sound crass, but short of digging up an ancestor (and getting an autopsy), you can never be absolutely sure of anything. Information that is available (on the Internet, especially, but also in church records and state archives) is only as good as the honesty or memory of the person who reported it to the authorities. On top of that, the spelling skill of the person who recorded it, the quality of the surviving record (and integrity of the information if it was copied or transcribed from handwriting to typewriting) and the reliability of your own eyesight or note-taking ability can factor in level of certainty. So, you may never be able to "prove" anything at all. But you can probably trust evidence-supported assumptions and make educated guesses.

(3) Experience your Roots
If you are lucky enough to have an ancestor who knew the exact origins of the family, that may provide you an opportunity to (at least) find the ethnic and cultural source of your roots. I've been able to visit a few places where my family used to live (so far: an old farm town in Nebraska and ancestral locations in Canada and Italy). These trips were very meaningful - more than any piece of information I ever found in a library. My wife and I (and even my kids) ate the food, spoke with the people, wandered the streets and even attended the awe-inspiring churches of my ancestors. All of this was possible because my grandmother and my aunts and uncles remembered family addresses. But I've also got a few dead-ends (one is the elusive location of my great-great-grandfather's birthplace in Sweden). Cryptic details (e.g., "they lived somewhere in Germany", "he came over on the Mayflower", "we're related to royalty") can be frustrating - but getting to the bottom of those stories can lead you to very rewarding tales of your own.

(4) Preservation and Production
Keep records of every contradictory date, conflicting storyline and memory fragment. Someday, you may be the only one who ever heard any of the information. One thing you should definitely consider - making your research work available to others in the family. You can create an online family tree or use family tree software to generate web pages that you can post on your own server. Better yet, you could even prepare a written document (e.g., book). With the prevalence of copy services today, you don't even have to spend a lot to preserve your findings for posterity. If you take the extra step of donating your work to an educational institution or library, future researchers can enjoy the benefits of your product for many years to come.

Remember, all research (both online and offline) should be an adventure! "Brick walls" are only reminders of the adage "if genealogy was an easy hobby, it wouldn't be fun." Happy hunting!

Virtual Genealogy Hits 500 Links!

There are now over 500 web-links to digital birth, marriage, death, census and city directory records at Virtual Genealogy! The 500th link was a URL consolidation project by Online Historical Directories: Providence City Directories (1824-1921). Check out our web site and share new online resources in the reader comments!

First New Zealand Links Posted

Genealogy links from New Zealand have been added to our database at Virtual Genealogy. More great genealogy links from around the world are added every day - we hope you'll visit the site to see them!

First Ireland Links Posted

The first genealogy links from Ireland have been added to our database at Virtual Genealogy. We'll soon add more online links from the "Emerald Isle" - and from other regions. Check back often!

First United Kingdom Links Posted

We have posted the first genealogy links from the United Kingdom at Virtual Genealogy. New links from around the world are being added every day - keep checking for updates!

Internet Privacy

Watch out! There are a lot of people snooping around on the Internet, trying to locate individuals - and not all of them have the best of intentions. This is important to remember when you begin sharing genealogy data with email (an example from the earliest days of the Web is forwarding a GEDCOM file), social media (e.g., Facebook) or with a Family Tree website. Despite your best intentions, you can inadvertantly be drawn into a situation where you aid identity thieves or simply pass information that was never meant for public consumption. You should ask yourself a few questions before you get too far into the world of virtual genealogy. Do you really want to deal with these privacy issues? Do you have a personal criteria that will assist you in knowing what to share and what not to share? Did you actually get permission from everyone in the family before you posted the family tree on the internet? If the answer to those questions is "Yes", you're way ahead of most folks who are conducting their research on the web. Just remember, you can only control some of what is going on - once you send or post it, it is free to spawn across cyberspace. I'm sure you know what I mean (you do "Google" yourself periodically, right?). Here are a couple of sites to review for more information:

Ancestorhunt.com
Clarence Coogan Web Page
Genealogy.com
National Genealogy Society
Rootsweb

Remember, you just have to be mindful of the risks involved - maybe not to you, but to other relatives (close or distant). Eventually, you will be contacted by someone who wants all traces of their existence purged from your records on the Web. Don't take it personally, they may just not want everyone in the world to know when their birthday is... I recommend you keep the information in files at your house and move on to the next discovery. As a hobby, genealogy has some great rewards - just make sure no one has to pay for them with loss of their privacy. Happy hunting!

First Australia Links Posted

We've now added links for online digital records from Australia at Virtual Genealogy! More links for the land Down Under will follow very soon - keep checking for updates.

Using Message Boards

They've been around a long time - probably as long as the Internet itself - but do you use message boards in your online genealogy search? They might seem passe, but they do have information you may want to review before giving up at a "brick wall" (or, at least, before purchasing genealogy services). Wading through the messages can be daunting, especially with some websites archiving their traffic since the late 1990s. But there is valuable data on those boards (surname discussions, family reunion information, transcribed text from original sources, etc.). Best of all, you may even find other people who are researching the same lines that you are. Here is a short list of some of the major boards still in use:

Ancestry
Genforum
Rootsweb

Remember, a lot of folks have changed their email addresses over the years. You may find a great piece of information someone put on the board in 1998 - but you probably won't be able to discuss it with the poster. Don't be discouraged: at least you found something new! Besides, there is a chance that the person could still be posting on the board with a different login or email. Browse around a bit to see if their name appears somewhere else in the site. If you are good with Google, you can even use it to narrow results: when you search, add the text "site:______" next to the keyword (e.g., site:boards.rootsweb.com). This should identify specific messages and keep you from having to browse the entire message board site. If you want to know when the boards are updated, you can sometimes join a mailing list. That provides you with new information and will only be sent to you and other people with current/viable email addresses. To locate Rootsweb's lists, visit Find a List Search. Happy Hunting!

First Canada Links Posted

We've posted new links to online digitized records from Canada at Virtual Genealogy! More links will follow for the provinces and territories of the Dominion very soon. Keep checking our site for updates.

Finding an Obituary

I touched on this in an earlier post, but I wanted to examine the idea further. An obituary or death notice can provide vital information: relationships, birth and marriage dates, locations where the family lived and (most importantly) the names of living relatives. Remember, these sources are not always correct! Still, you may find that "gem" in an obituary... One of the great things about the internet is that (at least since the mid 1990s) newspapers have created extensive archives of their publications. Some sites have even scanned their old records and now have digital collections of their entire history (e.g., New York Times). Most papers can't or won't do that, though, and they have simply posted transcribed text on the web for papers published in the last 20 years. In most cases, it will cost you money to read anything other than the title and first sentence. Here is a list some of the sites I've used:

Google News (check the Archives!)
Highbeam.com
Legacy.com
Library of Congress
Newspaper Archive

OK, now that you know where to look, what can you find? At least one of the sites (legacy.com) makes it easy - their searches are designed for surnames. With the others, you'll need to carefully search to see if the results indicate it is worth spending any money. You can't just rely on typing in your surname and finding data. You would then have to sift through thousands of irrelevant articles, wasting valuable time. Instead, let me recommend that (in addition to the surname) you add the following phrase: "friends and family are invited." These words appear in most obituaries and may help to eliminate ten versions of the story about your Great Uncle Fred fell down in the middle of Fifth Avenue during the parade... Other keyword ideas are "survivors include" and "by his/her beloved wife/husband." Happy hunting!

First US Links Posted

Links to online digitized records from the United States have now been posted at Virtual Genealogy. Keep checking back to our site because we will continue to add links to the database. Other regions will soon follow.

What Types of Resources are Available?

OK, so you know about Google searches... And you may remember that I also previously mentioned Ancestry.com. Here are some of the lesser known sites that specialize in providing links and/or online databases

FamilySearch
Fold3
Cyndi's List
RootsWeb

Don't forget to check out the links listed at virtualgenealogy.info! I'm going to try to write a lot more about web resources like these. The best thing about them is that some of the information contained on such sites is "original source data" - vital records (including certificates), directory and census information (transcribed and digitized copies). I'm sure that, like me, you will spend hours devouring the information available at those sites. But, as we discussed in an earlier post, be cautious in trusting everything you locate. I've seen examples of immigrants during the Civil War era "lying" about everything from their name (no kidding) to date/location of birth. Then there is the drunk census enumerator (he had to be!) who called your Grandma "Augustus" (and male!) when her real name was Josephine... The copies of digitized records online have improved over time, but they are still only as good as handwriting, microfilming and your eyesight. Take your time. These days (with the widespread availability of records), it is unlikely that we could ever "lose" something as monumentally important (and, believe me, IT WAS) as the 1890 Federal (US) Census. You can come back to the online records tomorrow... Happy hunting!

Genealogy Searches on the Web

A lot of folks trust Google to search the web. Not a bad idea, actually - even for genealogy research. But you should ask yourself this question before you begin: What am I trying to find? Maybe you just want to locate an obituary for Grandma. Or maybe you want to see if your family appears in the 1930 US Census. In each case, you should be able to locate something like that online (you may have to work pretty hard for the obituary, but it can be done). The key is not to expect Google to post the answers on the first page of results. You will probably need to use many different keywords and check out the different parts of their site (Google News, Google Books, etc.). If you've figured out that there are two or three prominent figures with your surname who dominate the results, you can narrow your search (and remove them, if you want). I'm not sure how familiar you are with using punctuation on a web search, but using a minus sign ("-") in front of a name you don't want to read about can score big dividends. Don't forget to enclose exact phrases with quotation marks. Use the Google search features ("custom [date] range") and, under "more search tools", the Timeline. to post the results in such a way that you can skip through items you don't want to see. Before we finish with searches on the web, I should mention that results may lead you directly to a site like Ancestry.com. Before you get a membership, you should realize that your family history will probably not magically appear on the Internet - even on that kind of site. But there there are definitely many useful digital records there (census, city directory, vital records, etc.). One great way to access these resources is to get a library card - then you can search for free at your local branch before deciding whether to purchase a membership. Happy hunting!

Perils of Online Genealogy

If you just started your family tree, you probably expected that the Internet would be a great source of information for you. That may be true - but only to a certain extent. The biggest problem you will face is that there are other people posting genealogy data online - and a lot of it is incorrect. You may initially be excited to find a record of your family that extends back to the time of Charlemagne, but you should be cautious (if not, very wary) of that kind of "jackpot" - especially early in your search. Real genealogy success will take years effort, including painstaking reading, multiple library visits, countless interviews with relatives and (most importantly) fact-checking. These efforts are part of the reward, too! The bottom line is that you should collect all the information you can from online searches but wait to accept it until you are able to find corroborating evidence in original sources. However, you should even be suspicious of the validity of those types of documents. In addition to family histories you find online with incorrect information, you may discover that digitized records or online databases also contain errors. Your virtual genealogy search should be treated like a crime scene: one piece of information isn't going to "break the case," but several pieces build a better one. It may take a few years to feel truly confident about what you've found on the Web - you'll need to be patient. Rule of thumb: use the information you find on the Internet in your genealogy search - but use it wisely... Happy hunting!

VirtualGenealogy.info

Our new website, Virtual Genealogy, is now up and running! We are collecting as many links as we can find to sites on the web that contain digitized records: vital (birth, marriage, death), census and city directory. We need your help to find more! Please contribute links or report broken ones as you tour the site. We welcome your submissions and suggestions.

The first link we've posted is one for the 1930 US Census. Many more will follow!

Conducting an Interview

Before you begin a virtual genealogy search, you may want to make sure you have already collected the data that is already available offline. One of the most important parts of creating a family history is preserving the stories of relatives. Often, there will never be a way to retrieve these unique experiences and overlap with real history unless YOU actually are the person who records the information. Remember Aunt Martha? You see her every year at Thanksgiving Dinner - and you've heard her tell the story about Great-Great-Grandpa and the Oklahoma Land Run of 1889. But did you (or anyone) ever get a video camera and sit down with her to record her memories? You might be surprised, but if you wait just a little longer, Aunt Martha and ALL of her memories will be gone forever. You can't retrieve that from an online database! People who are living today remember things that others haven't seen or heard. I highly recommend you take the time to (at least) jot down some of the things you've already heard - and think of some questions to ask the next time you are together as a family. Don't be shy: Aunt Martha will fuss about "why do you want to know this?" and "I can't remember something that long ago." Be patient and assure her that you want the younger generation to remember all the things that the family experienced. There is no better way to discover how lucky we are today than to hear a story about life in the Dust Bowl or fragments of the tale of an Italian family's harrowing ocean crossing in the dead of winter. One more piece of advice: don't dismiss the improbable yarn about connection to some major event or person. If there is one thing I've learned, it is that our older relatives (without multi-media distraction) listened a lot more than we do and probably forgot more than we have ever known about our family. Lastly, make copies of your video or type up your notes in an email. They may not care about it now but someday, the rest of the family will start asking if anyone remembers... Happy hunting!

Welcome!

The purpose of this blog is to help people who are seeking their family history on the internet. As someone with nearly 20 years of experience with using the web to track down genealogy information, I wanted to share the lessons I've learned. One of the most important is this: using the internet to locate family roots will never be as effective as interviewing relatives, visiting the Special Collections Room at a local library or wading through the tall grass of an old farm cemetery. I've done these things, too - and they have made the "hobby" (or, as I've seen it, "life-long passion") truly meaningful. Don't get me wrong - there are a lot of good things about using the internet. For one thing, you don't need to have the money to travel to far-away family locations. You can also browse the web at 3:00 AM... I've often seen the internet "jump-start" a stalled quest for information. Sometimes, it provides a small piece of the puzzle - just when things seemed hopeless. So, I'll dedicate this project to making it easier for you to find online genealogy resources. Very soon, I'll start up a companion site with a collection of useful links to online genealogy research. If something on our site is useful to you during your family history search, please let us know (you can like us or join our group on Facebook!). Happy hunting!