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!