Thursday, October 4, 2012

FamilySearch Tips


No site offers the amount and depth of  free Genealogy/Family History Training that does FamilySearch.org. This post illustrates one example, that of FamilySearch Tips.


Video and Slides(10 minutes)
  • Cost$0 (free)

Description

If your FamilySearch searches haven’t been successful, this presentation demonstrates five techniques that may help. These include:
• Narrowing your search with filters
• Using wild cards
• Adding a relationship
• Adding an event
• Browsing images
The presentation will provide you with additional tools which will give you some alternatives to conducting basic searches.

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Searching For African American Slavery In FamilySearch Wiki

Searching in the FamilySearch Wiki can bring up an amazing amount of information.

You find the FamilySearch Wiki by going to http://familysearch.org/ > click learn > then click ehte Wiki photo > then use the search box.

As an example the search for "African American Slavery" has several articles. This is a poriton of one of them.

Brief History of Slavery in America

Nearly 75 percent of people who arrived in America from Europe and Africa before 1776 were immigrants in bondage. Those from Africa almost always arrived enslaved. Those from Europe were often convicts, indentured servant apprentices, or became indentured servants to pay for the cost of their ocean crossing. In colonial times indentured servitude as an apprentice was considered the normal way to learn a trade (part of growing up), or a normal option for paying a large debt.[1]

In 1619 a Dutch ship blown off course came looking for fresh water near Jamestown, Virginia. At Jamestown the Dutch sold 20 of the African slaves they had captured from a Spanish ship originally bound for Mexico. These were the earliest known African immigrants to arrive in what is now the United States. It was the custom of that time to free servant-slaves after seven years.[2][3]

Caribbean and Brazilian plantations (95 percent of the trans-Atlantic slave trade) usually grew sugar and few slaves survived there for seven years. In America (five percent of the slave trade) slaves lived longer and had children. In the thirteen British-American colonies a milder climate and better working conditions growing tobacco, cotton, hemp, and indigo allowed slaves to live long enough to be freed. But the institution of lifetime chattel slavery applied to people of African descent was slowly accepted and developed when owners were reluctant to free such valuable labor to compete with their former owners. This form of slavery was formally legalized first in British-America in 1654.[4]

All 13 British-American colonies participated in the slave trade before 1780. In the 1750s a slavery abolitionist movement began and grew stronger. Vermont was the first to abolish slavery in 1777 and by 1804 all individual states north of the Mason-Dixon line had gradually ended slavery. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 was a federal law that prohibited slavery north of the Ohio River. Slave labor works best when the assigned task is relatively simple, such as large scale agriculture. Slavery in increasingly industrialized America was becoming too expensive until the invention of the cotton gin in 1793. A healthy young adult male slave was worth about two years wages, so most owners considered freeing slaves an economic hardship. The Constitution of the United States permitted the outlawing of the importation of slaves starting in 1808, but the internal slave trade continued until the end of the Civil War and the Thirteenth Amendment prohibited chattel slavery in 1865.[5]  
 
Fiding Plantation Records


Ante-Bellum Southern Plantations Collection or Repository[7] User Guide FHL First Film
Series A, Selections from the South Carolina Library. University of South Carolina
  • Part 1: The Papers of James Henry Hammond, 1795-1865
  • Part 2: Miscellaneous Collections
  
  
Series B, Selections from the South Carolina Historical Society    
Series C, Selections from the Library of Congress
  • Part 1: Virginia
  • Part 2: Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina
 
  
Series D, Selections from the Maryland Historical Society  
Series E, Selections from the University of Virginia Library
  • Part 1: Virginia Plantations
  • Part 3: Virginia Plantations
  • Part 4: Cooke Family Papers
  • Part 5: Ambler Family Papers
  • Part 6: Virginia Plantations
 
 
Series F, Selections from the Duke University Library
  • Part 1: The Deep South
  • Part 2: South Carolina and Georgia
  • Part 3: North Carolina, Maryland and Virginia
  • Part 4: North Carolina and Virginia Plantations
  • Part 5: William Patterson Smith Collections
 
 
Series G, Selections from the Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin
  • Part 1: Texas and Louisiana Collections
  • Part 2: William Massie Collection
  • Part 3: Bank of the State of Mississippi Records, 1804-1846
  • Part 4: Winchester Family Papers, 1783-1906
  • Part 5: Other Plantation Collections
 
 
Series H, Selections from the Howard-Tilton Library, Tulane University, and the Louisiana State Museum Archives  
Series I, Selections from Louisiana State University
  • Part 1: Louisiana Sugar Plantations
  • Part 2: Louisiana and Miscellaneous Southern Cotton Plantations
  • Part 3: The Natchez Area
  • Part 4: Barrow, Bisland, Bowman and Other Collections
  • Part 5: Butler Family Collections
  • Part 6: David Weeks and Family Collections
 
 
Series J, Selections from the Southern Historical Collections, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
  • Part 1: The Cameron Family Papers
  • Part 2: The Pettigrew Family Papers
  • Part 3: South Carolina
  • Part 4: Georgia and Florida
  • Part 5: Louisiana
  • Part 6: Mississippi and Arkansas
  • Part 7: Alabama
  • Part 8: Tennessee and Kentucky
  • Part 9: Virginia
  • Part 10: Hubard Family Papers, 1741-1865
  • Part 11: Hairston and Wilson Families
  • Part 12: Tidewater and Coastal Plains North Carolina
  • Part 13: Piedmont North Carolina
  • Part 14: Western North Carolina
 
 
Series K, Selections from the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Library, The Shirley Plantation Collection, 1650-1888  
Series L, Selections from the Earl Gregg Swem Library, College of William and Mary
  • Part 1: Carter Papers, 1667-1882
  • Part 2: Jerdone Family Papers, 1736-1918
  • Part 3: Skipwith Family Papers, 1760-1977
  • Part 4: Austin-Twyman Papers, 1765-1865 and Charles Brown Papers, 1792-1888
]
 
Series M, Selections from the Virginia Historical Society
  • Part 1: Tayloe Family, 1650-1970
  • Part 2: Northern Neck of Virginia; also Maryland
  • Part 3: Other Tidewater Virginia
  • Part 4: Central Piedmont Virginia
  • Part 5: Southside Virginia
  • Part 6: Northern Virginia and Valley
 
 
Series N, Selections from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History  

Slavery in Ante-Bellum Southern Industries Collection or Repository[8] User Guide FHL First Film
Series A, Selection from Duke University Library    
Series B, Selection from Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill  
Series C, Selections from the Virginia Historical Society
  • Part 1: Mining and Smelting Industries
  • Part 2: Railroad and Canal Construction Industries and Other Trades and Industries
   
Series D, Selections from the University of Virginia Library
  • Part 1: Mining and Smelting Industries
Series E, Selections from the McCormick-International Harvester Collection

Registers of Slaves and Freedmen and Manumission Papers

By the time of start of the Civil War in 1861 about ten percent of African Americans were free. Most free African Americans carried their own papers, but these could be stolen. In order to distinguish between slaves, runaways, and free African Americans, many counties or states in the upper South, and border states kept one or more sets of registers or papers. Some had registers of slaves. Some kept registers of blacks, freedmen, "free men of color," or "free negroes." Some kept copies of manumission papers of people freed from enslavement. To find these kinds of registers or papers look in county courthouse records. They are most likely found in the court papers, or among the land and property deeds, or occasionally in probate records, or even with taxation records. Sometimes these kinds of records are found at state libraries, archives, or historical soci

The Slave Trade Registers

The Constitution allowed the outlawing of the importation of slaves to the United States after 1808. Between then and the Civil War the internal slave trade became an important business in the Southern United States. Most states regulated the slave trade. A few kept records of slave traders and their businesses. Look for such business registers at state libraries, archives, historical societies, or county courthouses.

Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database


The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database Internet site contains references to 35,000 slave voyages, including over 67,000 Africans aboard slave ships, using name, age, gender, origin, and place of embarkation. The database is about the slave trade between Africa, Europe, Brazil, the Caribbean, and the United States.


 

Saturday, September 29, 2012

FamilySearch Wiki Is Your Number 1 Research Tool

This great resource which is growing is not the place to find your ancestors - rather it's the place to find out where to find them.

In training a recent missionary he wanted to find out where his indian ancestors obituaries could be found. We went to the Wiki and was directed to that answer plus a great section of interviews that the Chocktaw Nation members had to go through to receive benefits from the Choctaw Nation.

The Wiki made it easy to find and the results were astounding, finding documentation on ancestors known, and names of many othe ancestors he had not yet located.

To find the Wiki, go to https://familysearch.org/ and click on learn.

Click the photo as you see on the left.

Note the Family Search Wiki is a free collection of family history articles provided by family history enthusiasts from around the world. The wiki makes it easy for people to share research information and useful tips. Research Wiki articles are valuable resources for anyone who wants to learn more about their family history.

The search bar appears and you are on your way.
 
 

Friday, September 28, 2012

Friday Is For Fun: Agreed?

Grown-ups are obsolete


Did you know that if I agreed with you, we'd both be wrong? Are you aware that we never grow up, we only learn how to act in public? Isn't it true that war does not determine who is right - only who is left?

Thursday, September 27, 2012

Finding Genealogy Records On Line by FamilySearch

Large bank of Computers--shutterstock_43319644

In the past very few years, online genealogy records have grown to the point that the larger databases are talking in terms of billions of records. How can you begin to comprehend that many records? Where do you start and where does your searching online end, if it ever does? What do you do when you search for an ancestor’s name and there are thousands of results? And of course, the main question is, if you already know enough about your ancestor to search for him or her in the huge database, why do you need to do the search?

Some of these questions are very difficult to answer and some of the answers depend on your own research goals. But first, when I am talking about a really big online database, what am I including in that title?

By far the largest database of genealogical information is found in the commercial website Ancestry.com. But there are a number of larger databases that would qualify for inclusion under any set of criteria. Read the entire article, click here

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Plan For RootsTech 2013

The RootsTech Conference is coming in March. Beginner or expert, you won't want to miss it. I would say that last year at RootsTech my entusiasm for doing family history research was jettisoned into a new feeling of confidence and excitement. There will be a large variety of topics and displays from vendors.

The 3rd annual RootsTech conference offers new and exciting resources for individuals of all skill levels:
  • More Exciting Classes & Workshops
  • 40% Bigger Expo Hall
  • New! Getting Started Track & Developer Day
There are a lot more exciting announcements and early bird pricing at the website, click here.

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Learning Family Tree - Power Point And Videos

The Family Tree is a new approach to genealogy. It is unlike any tool you've used before. You will connect with others who share a common interest in your genealogical lines. Together, you compare findings, weight evidence, and decide what information is most correct. The history of your work and the rationale for change are preserved for others to see. You'll find great satisfaction in your family research because you are part of a team working towards the same goal - the most accurate, complete, and enduring family tree ever produced.

This version of Family Tree supports full navigation of your genealogy tree. You can: Explore trees, families, and individuals. Edit and improve data about a specific individual. Attach sources, including links to online sources. Watch and receive notifications about changes to ancestors.

To gain access to FamilySearch Family Tree: Click here

Very helpful training videos by topic are here: Click here






 Power Point Presentations By Bridget Jordan, Family History Training Zone

4.33 Minutes of El Divo That Never Grows Old, "Amazing Grace"

I know that there is a God, Creator of all things. It blesses my life immensly to understand that.