Pennsylvania Genealogy Brick Wall Strategies

It’s a common Pennsylvania genealogy brick wall: “My ancestors are from PA—but I don’t know where!” Pennsylvania expert Jim Beidler has strategies that may help narrow down the needle-in-a-haystack problem of identifying your ancestor’s home county. Here, we also add tips on how to follow through—including how to access record images for a major Pennsylvania birth index at FamilySearch.

In the free Genealogy Gems Podcast episode #218, I shared listener Tammie’s question about finding a PA family who had lived in Ohio and throughout the Midwest during the late 1800s. She followed leads online and offline, even visiting a Mennonite archive in Pennsylvania, but couldn’t pinpoint their origins in Pennsylvania. So I invited Pennsylvania research expert Jim Beidler to share some strategies that could help Tammy—and everyone else with Pennsylvania genealogy brick walls.

In case you didn’t catch that episode yet, here’s a summary of some of his top suggestions, along with some step-by-step instructions on how to implement Jim’s strategies.

“Yes, but WHERE in Pennsylvania were they from?”

Jim reminds us that Pennsylvania has 67 counties. That’s a big haystack in which to find a needle! So you either need to make the haystack smaller—by winnowing down the number of possible counties—or make the needle (your ancestor) easier to spot.

Look for children’s birth records

If you can locate a birth record for any child in the family you’re researching, it may indicate where in Pennsylvania the child was born. (If you can find one for the last child born in Pennsylvania before the family moved, you may be able to determine their last area of residence in the state.)

Statewide birth registration didn’t start until 1906 and wasn’t fully implemented until 1915. (Search a free index of births at the Pennsylvania State Archives for 1906-1912  or indexed images for 1906-1910 at Genealogy Giant Ancestry.com.) But 39 counties kept birth records for 1852-1854, too (search these at Ancestry.com as well).

Church birth or baptismal records may also prove helpful in Pennsylvania. Start by accessing the free FamilySearch database Pennsylvania, Births and Christenings, 1709-1950 (you’ll need a free login). Because it’s just an index, you won’t see the original record. But you’ll see a note on the lower right referring to a “GS film number.” Copy that number.

Next, open the FamilySearch Catalog (from the home page, you’ll find it under the Search menu). Click the option to search by film/fiche number (#1 in the image shown to the right). Then paste in the GS film number you copied (#2).

That will bring up the name of the collection. In this case, that “Birth registers, 1860-1903, for the city of Philadelphia.” Click on the collection to see whether online access is available. In the case shown below, it is, as indicated by the bright red text by the arrow.

Clicking through shows that it’s even been indexed. (Note: to view these images, you need to be at a Family History Center, FamilySearch affiliate library or log in as a member of FamilySearch’s sponsoring church (Mormons).)

Findmypast.com (one of the Genealogy Giants subscription websites) also has collections that may prove helpful:

Another set of helpful indexes to early Pennsylvania church records is a multi-county series by the late John Humphrey. It’s not as easy to access but worth the effort. Some of these are searchable for members of the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania. You can also find these as published volumes organized by county (he indexed several counties in southeast Pennsylvania and the indexes).

If you can determine when a child was born but not where in Pennsylvania, Jim has another strategy to try. Look at the next U.S. census taken after that birth and see where the family’s surname occurs. If it’s a less-common surname, you may be able to narrow down the number of counties.

Search Pennsylvania tax lists

Pennsylvania residents paid property taxes but also taxes on certain kinds of personal property (so they didn’t need to be landowners to appear in property records). Jim explains several different kinds of tax records from colonial times forward. Here’s a summary of places to start your search online:

More help for your Pennsylvania genealogy brick wall

Listen for free to the full Genealogy Gems Podcast episode #218, which will be available on Thursday, June 14, 2018. You’ll hear more tips from Jim, including what to do when you’ve exhausted your online research options and need to start researching offline. Hear tips on researching at the state archive and state library and how to understand Pennsylvania land records (how they were supposed to be and how they actually are).

About the Author: Lisa Louise Cooke is the Producer and Host of the Genealogy Gems Podcast, an online genealogy audio show and app. She is the author of the books The Genealogist’s Google Toolbox, Mobile Genealogy, How to Find Your Family History in Newspapers, and the Google Earth for Genealogy video series, an international keynote speaker, and producer of the Family Tree Magazine Podcast.

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links and Genealogy Gems will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on these links (at no additional cost to you). Thank you for supporting Genealogy Gems!

How to Use the FamilySearch Catalog: Your Ultimate Portal to Free Genealogy Records

Every genealogist should know how to search the FamilySearch Catalog, a portal to nearly 750 million FREE historical record images you won’t find anywhere else on the site! These digitized records are being updated DAILY by camera teams who are digitizing records around the world–and digitizing microfilmed collections at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Recently, the free genealogy giant FamilySearch.org announced that its browse-only digital record collections have topped 2 BILLION! About 750 million of these are only searchable from the FamilySearch Catalog. The Catalog is where they put all new images collected DAILY from digitized microfilms or from their digital camera operators around the world. These images may still need some organizing and fine-tuning, but they’re an up-to-the-minute asset you will appreciate when you need them to take the next step in your research.

The Catalog also shows you information about books, maps, compiled family histories and other valuable genealogical resources that aren’t online but are available at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah or perhaps through Inter-library loan from another library. Yet another reason to search the Catalog! So here’s how to do it….

How to use the FamilySearch Catalog

To use the FamilySearch Catalog, go to www.familysearch.org and log in. (Creating a free login is optional, but you’ll get much better access to records on the site–click here to learn more.)

Under the main Search tab, select Catalog:

Now, search for the family history resources you want. Let’s say I’d like to find birth records for my ancestors who were living in the city of Johnstown, Pennsylvania. I enter that location. FamilySearch automatically gives me options for standard place names (which include the county). I choose “United States, Pennsylvania, Cambria, Johnstown” from the list shown below and click Search:

The FamilySearch Catalog gives me a list of all subject categories relating to Johnstown, Pennsylvania. I see “Vital Records.” This includes birth records, so I click where the red arrow points in the screen shot below to open another list of entries, the first of which is shown in the box below:

Click on that boxed item to see its Catalog entry, shown in part below. Scroll down to the list of Film/Digital Notes, and you’ll see information about available formats for each item. That little camera icon on the right means digital images are available for those items (the round icon that looks like an old film reel means it’s still just available on microfilm). Click on camera images to view digitized records.

For any records that aren’t yet digitized, use the Catalog entry link shown below to go to WorldCat.org, a free multi-library catalog with millions of entries. This catalog may lead you to other copies available at libraries near you, or at available through libraries that participate in inter-library loan. (Click here to read an article about using WorldCat for genealogy.)

KEEP UP WITH FAMILYSEARCH AND THE OTHER GENEALOGY GIANTS

Genealogy Gems is your home for learning how to get the most out of the giant genealogy websites: Ancestry.com, FamilySearch.org, Findmypast.com and MyHeritage.comClick here to see unique, side-by-side comparisons of these fantastic resources. You may be missing out on resources you need simply because you aren’t aware of them yet!

Genealogy Gems Premium eLearning members can check out my in-depth tour of the hinting tools used at all four genealogy giants in Genealogy Gems Premium Podcast episode #152. Not a member yet? Click here to learn about becoming one.

About the Author: Sunny Morton

About the Author: Sunny Morton

Sunny is a Contributing Editor at Lisa Louise Cooke’s Genealogy Gems; her voice is often heard on the Genealogy Gems Podcast and Premium Podcasts. She’s  known for her expertise on the world’s biggest family history websites (she’s the author of Genealogy Giants: Comparing the 4 Major Websites); writing personal and family histories (she also wrote Story of My Life: A Workbook for Preserving Your Legacy); and sharing her favorite reads for the Genealogy Gems Book Club.

Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links and Genealogy Gems will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on these links (at no additional cost to you). Thank you for supporting Genealogy Gems!

Pin It on Pinterest

MENU