New England genealogy records top US updates

by | Aug 31, 2018 | 01 What's New, Records & databases

Find New England genealogy records for Vermont pioneers, Boston Catholics and Berkshire, MA residents among new and updated collections online. Also: vital records updates for Idaho, Nebraska, New York state and Tennessee.

Featured: New England genealogy records

Vermont pioneers. Subscription website American Ancestors, the home of the New England Historic Genealogical Society, has added 29 new volumes to its collection, Early Vermont Settlers, 1700-1784. According to the site, the collection focuses on “heads of families who were living in Vermont during this time period. These new sketches profile individuals from the towns of Sharon and Norwich. Fifteen of the sketches come from Sharon.” Additional sketches for Norwich are available at here and here.

Massachusetts church records. Genealogy Giant Ancestry.com has updated its collection of Catholic sacramental records held by the Boston Archdiocese, which now contains nearly a million indexed records. According to the site, “The Boston Archdiocese, erected in 1808, is currently comprised of the Counties of Essex, Middlesex, Suffolk, Norfolk, and Plymouth in Massachusetts, but historically included the states of Connecticut, Maine, all of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont.”  The index links to images published at American Ancestors.

Massachusetts probate. American Ancestors has also added 214,000 new case file papers covering 1901-1917 to its collection of Berkshire County, MA: Probate File Papers, 1761-1917. Wills and probate records are oft-neglected but valuable sources of genealogical information. Click here to read an article on using wills and probate records in your family history research.

More US genealogy records now online

Idaho vital records. Ancestry.com has updated Idaho, County Birth and Death Records, 1863-1970. “This collection contains birth and death records from select counties in Idaho that took place between the years of 1863 and 1970,” states the collection description. “There is also a portion of marriage records that can be found within this collection.”

Nebraska births. Genealogy Giant Findmypast.com has published Nebraska, Omaha births 1874-1887, with names, birth dates, and birthplaces, as well as parents’ names.

New York births. New at Ancestry.com is New York State, Birth Index, 1881-1942, which also has browsable images of the indexes, in case searching doesn’t bring up the person you’re looking for. Use the state certificate numbers from the index to order copies of the original certificates from the state department of health (the collection includes a link). 

Tennessee deaths. Also updated at Ancestry.com is Tennessee, Death Records, 1908-1958. These indexed images of death certificates come from the Tennessee State Library and Archives.

Vital records are vital!

This post features a variety of vital record collections: births, marriages and deaths. That’s because they are essential for constructing your family tree. They uniquely identify your ancestors and they link them to their parents, spouses, and children. Learn more about vital records—and additional resources such as delayed birth records and Social Security applications—in Lisa Louise Cooke’s free Family History: Genealogy Made Easy Podcast, episode 4.
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!

New Genealogy Records this Week: Chicago Catholic Parish Records and More

by | Jun 8, 2018 | 01 What's New, Records & databases | 1 comment

Chicago Catholic parish records top this week’s list of new and updated U.S. genealogy records online. Also: Japanese internment camp testimonies; AK and NC WWI digital archives; CO, GA and NC school records; GA and MT newspapers; ID, NY and OR photo archives; IL maps; MA church records; VA military casualties and WA history.

Featured: Chicago Catholic parish records

Genealogy Giant subscription website Findmypast.com has added more Chicago Catholic parish records to its unique and valuable Catholic Heritage Archive. During the nineteenth century, Chicago was one of the fastest growing cities in the world, with the population increasing twenty-fold between 1860 and 1910 to make it the fifth largest city in the world. Chicago was a veritable boomtown, with its population swelling with European emigrants from Europe, particularly Czech and Polish. The Archdiocese of Chicago was first established as a diocese in 1843 and later as an archdiocese in 1880. It serves the Catholic population of Cook and Lake Counties in northeastern Illinois.

Recently added are:

  • Over 1.2 million additional records from the mid-1800s up to 1925 have been added to the existing collection of Chicago Catholic Baptisms. Records reveal the date and location of baptism, the names of parents, and their residence. Each result will provide a transcript and image of the original baptism register.
  • Over 597,000 additional records have been added to Chicago Catholic Marriage records. Each result includes a transcript and an image of the original marriage register that may reveal the couple’s marriage date, marriage location, the names of their parents, and the names of any witnesses.
  • Over 229,000 recently added burial records have been added to Chicago Roman Catholic Parish Burials. Images may reveal additional details such as cause of death, residence, place of birth, father’s name, mother’s name, and the name of the priest who conducted the service.
  • More than 430,000 assorted Catholic congregational records from across the archdiocese reveal biographical details as well as where and when your ancestors worshiped. Searched indexed images of an assortment of records.
  • Not finding your ancestors, or want to dig deeper into these records? You can now delve through original registers of baptisms, marriages, and burials page by page in the image collection Chicago Roman Catholic Parish Registers.

More U.S. genealogy records now online

Japanese internment camp testimony. A new digital collection has launched containing testimonies relating to the WWII-era internment of U.S. residents of Japanese descent in the American Commission on the Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians (CWRIC) hearings that took place in 1981. According to an online article in the Northeastern Illinois University Independent, “The collection contains the hearings, testimonies and individual accounts that were held in the internment camps; these hearings were held to investigate the ethical and constitutional objections” of the executive order that led to the forced detainment of about 120,000 Japanese-Americans for about three years.

Arkansas. The Arkansas State Archive has launched “Arkansas in the Great War,” a three-part online exhibit chronicling the history of the state during World War I. According to the state archives blog, “The exhibit was created through Google Arts & Exhibits and contains over 150 high-resolution images of photographs, letters, government documents and maps that tell the story of Arkansas’s involvement in the war. The first section, ‘Mobilizing the State for War,’ profiles Arkansas before the U.S.’s entrance into the war and how the state mobilized to meet the challenge. Part two, ‘The War at Home,’ examines the domestic impact the war had on Arkansans and explores the contributions of women and African Americans to the war effort. The last section, ‘In the Trenches,’ details Arkansans serving in Europe and the events immediately following the end of the conflict.”

Colorado. The University of Denver’s 123-year-old student newspaper, The Denver Clarion, has been archived online at the university’s Special Collections website. The issues aren’t listed fully chronologically and the collection is still growing; check back to find the issues you’re looking for.

Georgia. The Digital Library of Georgia has added new content documenting Atlanta’s Interdenominational Theological Center and Morehouse, Morris Brown, and Spelman Colleges. Yearbooks, academic journals, alumni news, photos, course catalogs and more are now available for these historically African American colleges. Click here to read more and access the collections.

The Digital Library of Georgia has also added newspapers covering Early, Montgomery and Toombs Counties in South Georgia to its Georgia Historic Newspapers website. The collection covers nearly 27,000 digitized pages from six different newspapers dating from 1863 to 1927.

Idaho. The Idaho Transportation Department has launched an archive of 30,000 historic photos it has taken over the years that reflect the state’s history. According to the East Idaho News, “It allows anyone interested to easily access photos as old as 100 years, giving them a look at what the Gem State used to be like. Since its launch a little over two weeks ago, the department has had over 20,000 people access the database.” A collection of historic postcards is also part of the digital archive. Click here to view more about the downtown Boise hotel shown here.

Illinois. Southern Illinois University has published a new online collection of current and historical maps. According to the announcement, “More than 850 maps from the library’s collection have been digitized….The Maps of Southern Illinois Online collection covers the city of Carbondale and the rest of Jackson County as well as other Southern Illinois counties. Included are maps showing county roads, land ownership, proposed developments, aerial photographs, and coal, oil and gas mining maps.

Massachusetts. The New England Historic Genealogical Society has been busily adding more digitized records to its subscription collection at AmericanAncestors.org. Among their recent additions are:

 

  • Norfolk County, MA: Probate File Papers, 1793-1877. Made possible through our partnership with the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Archives, this database contains 20,904 probate cases filed between 1793 and 1877, and more than 515,000 individual file papers.
  • More parishes added to Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston Records, 1789-1900. New parishes include St. Mary (Randolph), St. Mary (Marlborough), St. Patrick (Stoneham), St. Mary (Lynn), St. Joseph (Haverhill), Immaculate Conception (Marlborough) and St. Margaret (Dorchester).
  • Digitized records from two Boston churches, the Federal Street Church(1787 to 1796) and the New North Church (1798 to 1814), as well as the West Church of Granby, Massachusetts.
  • FREE TO VIEW: the digitized diary of Mehitable Williams of Mansfield, Massachusetts (written between 1765 and 1770), and the journal of Richard Hazen (written while he surveyed the coast of Maine from 1750 to 1751).
  • More than 1,500 pages of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), Boston record collection; members can click here to access the collection and search case files. Anyone may read a related HIAS case study, “Effectively Stateless,” posted on Vita Brevis.

Montana. Over 1.6 million pages of the Billings Gazette have been digitized as part of a partnership with Newspapers.com, reports the Billings Gazette online. Newspapers.com subscribers may click here to explore that paper and the rest of the site’s offerings. Another tip from the Billings Gazette: “Lee Enterprises, which owns The Gazette, also has a similar agreement that digitized its sister publications in Butte, Helena, Hamilton and Missoula. (The Gazette’s archives may be accessed with a subscription at billingsgazette.com/archives.)”

New York. North Country Public Radio has announced the launch of its new archive, “North Country at Work,” covering upstate New York history. According to the site, its purpose is “exploring the work history and contemporary economic landscape of each of the communities in the Adirondack North Country. Our starting point is photographs—images of people at work, the tools they use, the spaces their work occupies or impacts…We expand to personal stories, oral histories, and other content to deepen our understanding of how the livelihoods of people across northern New York looked in earlier times.”  The public is invited to contribute.

North Carolina. The State Archives has added 60 new items to its North Carolina in World War I digital archive. Among the items are correspondence from a woman at the Front, war journals, field notebooks and other papers. Click here to read about and access the new additions.

Also for North Carolina, now at Digital NC you can “browse through 175 issues of The Stentorian, the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics’ (NCSSM) student-run newspaper,” states the Digital NC blog. “NCSSM is a residential high school located in Durham, NC. It was founded in 1980 to provide a two-year public education to high school students focusing on science, math, and technology. The Stentorian covers student life and school events spanning the last four decades, from 1981 to 2017.” Click here to read more.

Oregon. The Portland Mercury reports that “The Multnomah County Library just launched a new digital collection of photos and documents chronicling Portland’s African American community over the years. Called ‘Our Story: Portland through an African American Lens,‘ the collection melds archives from Oregon Historical Society Research Library, Oregon State University, and City of Portland Archives.”

Virginia. A newspaper, The Virginian-Pilot, has launched an online database “of every Virginian who lost his or her life serving abroad in the military since the Sept. 11 terror attacks. The database includes a short story about each one, compiled from news reports across the country, obituaries, memorial websites, social media posts and YouTube videos, among others.”

Washington. A partnership between state and educational leaders has produced Primarily Washington, “an online education portal designed to bring lesson plans together with the primary sources in our collections,” according to the state Secretary of Education’s blog. “The Primarily Washington portal currently contains 6 lesson plans, on topics including the Everett Massacre, Territory to Statehood, teaching elections, and Legacy Washington’s Korea 65 exhibit. Drawing from our plethora of newspapers and items in our Classics in Washington History digital collection, more lesson plans will be added this summer. The portal also presents the Emma Smith Devoe Scrapbook Collection, a wide-ranging set of early 20th-century newspaper clippings and other documents about important contemporary topics such as women’s suffrage.”

Keep track of your online discoveries

Ever found something online–perhaps at a site like those mentioned above–then forgotten where it was? Watch Lisa Louise Cooke’s free video for FANTASTIC tips on organizing your online life. Your searches, your discoveries, your emails–whatever content you use online, Lisa’s got a way to organize it so you can find it again!

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!

New Irish genealogy records and more

by | Mar 23, 2018 | 01 What's New, Genealogy Giants Websites, Irish, Records & databases

New Irish genealogy records top this week’s list of noteworthy new family history collections online from around the globe. Also, find records for Austria, Brazil, France, Germany, Guatemala, Spain, Wales and the U.S. (FBI criminal files and collections for CO, ID, IL, KY, MA, TX, WV. All these collections come from the Genealogy Giants: Ancestry.com, FamilySearch.org, Findmypast.com and MyHeritage.com.

Featured:  New Irish genealogy records online

The fabled luck of the Irish—or at least that of their descendants—continues throughout March, with significant new Irish genealogy records coming online. Subscription site Findmypast.com has updated its indexes of the Irish civil birth and marriage register images hosted online at IrishGenealogy.ie:

  • The updated Irish Births Index consists of over 2.7 million indexed entries. “As well as listing the date and location of your ancestor’s birth, these new transcripts provide a variety of additional details including the names of both parents (including mother’s maiden name), father’s occupation and full dates of birth.”
  • The updated Irish Civil Marriages now boasts over 2.6 million records. “These new transcripts…also provide a variety of additional details including the names of the couple’s parents, their fathers’ occupations, their residence and marital status.

Findmypast.com also posted more new Irish genealogy records:

  • Antrim Histories & Reference Guides. Search George Benn’s authoritative work, A History of the Town of Belfast from the Earlier Times to the Close of the Eighteenth Century (1877). “It contains historic maps and illustrations as well as a chapter on noted inhabitants mentioned in seventeenth-century records including names such as Captain George Theaker, Arthur Chichester, Hugh Doak, Thoams Waring, George McCartney, and more.”
  • Armagh Records & Registers. Browse 600 pages of Historical Memoirs of the City of Armagh (1819) to learn more about the history of Northern Ireland. “It contains biographical accounts of both Protestant and Roman Catholic archbishops, a narrative of important events, an account of the establishment of the Presbyterian congregations and the history of various customs and manners.”
  • Church of Ireland Histories & Reference Guides. This collection has two PDF publications: The National Churches: The Church of Ireland (originally published in 1892) and Some Worthies of the Irish Church (published in 1900). Learn more about the history and practices of the Church of Ireland.
  • Dublin Registers & Records. Over 2,000 records have been added to this collection of PDF images of “parish records (baptisms, marriages, and burials) from the Church of Ireland, census indexes, school registers, monumental inscriptions and printed histories. The records span from the 1600s up to 1800.”
  • Irish Tontines Annuitants 1766-1789. “Over 153,000 annuity statements, accounts of deaths, death certificates, and marriage certificates relating to the subscribers and nominees of the Irish Tontine….The records in this collection have been released in association with the National Archives and cover the English tontine of 1789; the Irish tontines of 1773, 1775, and 1777; and the life annuities of 1766 to 1779.”
  • Ireland, American Fenian Brotherhood 1864-1897. “Over 125,000 records from British Foreign Office correspondence regarding the American Fenian Brotherhood during the years from 1864 to 1897. Records include newspaper cuttings, letters, telegrams, lists of prisoners, and a number of photographs…. The collection includes accounts of the Brotherhood’s incursions into Canadian territory during the years 1866 to 1871.” Subscribers may also browse American Fenian Brotherhood records from 15,000 volumes of British Foreign Office papers.
  • Royal Irish Constabulary History and Directories. This collection has been updated. It contains “an assortment of pay records, lists, directories, commendation records, treasury books, Constabulary Code books and training manuals.”

Ancestry.com has updated a few of its own Irish genealogy records collections (original data for the Irish Catholic registers comes from Celtic Catholic Registers, digitized images):

More new genealogy collections worldwide

Austria. Nearly 34,000 indexed records are part of a new free collection at FamilySearch, Austria, Carinthia, Gurk Diocese, Catholic Church Records, 1527-1986. According to the site, this is a “collection of church books containing births, marriages, and deaths held at the Diocese of Gurk in Klagenfurt, Austria.”

Brazil. More than 100,000 records have been added to an existing free FamilySearch collection, Brazil, Santa Catarina, Catholic Church Records, 1714-1977. Also recently updated is its collection of Brazil, São Paulo, Immigration Cards, 1902-1980.

France. FamilySearch has added two new free census collections for France: upwards of 150,000 indexed names in France, Hautes-Alpes, Census, 1856 and over 66,000 names in France, Hautes-Alpes, Census, 1876. According to the collection descriptions, these are complete listings of the census for Hautes-Alpes in these years.

Germany. About 10,000 records each have been added to existing FamilySearch collections, Germany, Prussia, Brandenburg and Posen, Church Book Duplicates, 1794-1874 and Germany, Schleswig-Holstein, Kreis Steinburg, Civil Registration, 1874-1983.

Guatemala. Over 687,000 names have been added to the free FamilySearch collection, Guatemala Civil Registration, 1877-2008. According to the site, documents report “births, marriages, deaths, indexes and other records created by civil registration offices in Guatemala. Some of these records have been indexed and are searchable as part of this collection. Additional indexed records will be published as they become available.”

Spain. Over 22,000 names have been added to the free FamilySearch collection, Spain, Diocese of Cartagena, Catholic Church Records, 1503-1969. “These records include: baptisms, confirmations, pre-marriage investigations, marriages, deaths, indexes, testaments, and parish financial and land records. Some of these records have been indexed and are searchable as part of this collection. Additional indexed records will be published as they become available.”

United States. Subscription giant Ancestry.com has posted a new collection of F.B.I. Deceased Criminal Identification Files, 1971-1994. According to the site, “This database contains details about deceased individuals extracted from criminal identification files from 1971-1994….Details vary widely by form, but details in this index may include the following: name, birthplace, birth date, gender, race, death date, eye color, hair color, height, and weight.”

Various U.S. state-level collections include:

Wales. Subscription site Findmypast.com has added over 43,000 new records to its collection of Monmouthshire Electoral Registers. According to the site, “The new additions consist of handwritten Gwent registers spanning the years 1832 to 1849 that will allow you to discover where your Welsh ancestor lived and the type of property they owned or rented. The early handwritten registers (1832-1839) are presented as images and transcripts and the later printed registers are presented as portable device formats (PDFs). The format of each register can vary depending on the constituency or the year of the register but most will reveal a combination of your ancestor’s abode, property type, property location, property name, year, constituency and district.”

Learn more about the Genealogy Giants

I keep my eye on the Genealogy Giants for you!  All four, Ancestry.com, FamilySearch.org, Findmypast.com and MyHeritage, boast billions of historical records that can help you find your family history at home and abroad. But learning about each can be overwhelming! Click here for an introduction to these sites: what they have in common and what sets each apart. You’ll want to know so you can get the most out of them!

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!

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.

New State Genealogy Records Online

by | Mar 2, 2018 | 01 What's New, Records & databases, United States

Local and state genealogy records can be some of the best resources for tracing your family history in the United States.

Check out these new or updated collections from 15 different states: AR, FL, GA, ID, IL, IN, MD, MA, NE, NJ, NM, NC, SC, TX and WY.

State genealogy records now online

Arkansas. The University of Arkansas at Little Rock website reports that “a history class at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock has created a new digital index of Phillips County death certificates from 1917 to 1922. Dr. Brian Mitchell’s American Urban History Class created the index during the fall 2017 semester and donated the archive to the Arkansas History Commission so it can be made available for public use.”

Florida. Subscription website Newspapers.com recently added these titles: “Tampa Bay Times (formerly the St. Petersburg Times), as well as the Tampa Tribune and the Tampa Times.” According to the site, “The Tampa Bay Times, currently Florida’s largest paper, got its start in 1884 as a small weekly paper called the West Hillsborough Times. During the 1890s, the paper moved to St. Petersburg and the name was changed to the St. Petersburg Times, a title it would retain for more than a century.”

Also: the Florida Department of Law Enforcement has created a new statewide database of “cold cases.” It features more than 400 unsolved cases, according to this article.

Georgia. The blog of the Digital Library of Georgia has announced “the addition of over 10,000 digitized pages of African American funeral programs to the Augusta Public Library’s Eula M. Ramsey Johnson Memorial Funeral Program Collection. Spanning 1933-2017 and consisting of over 3,000 programs, the digital collection provides both a rich source of genealogical information and local history about the African American community. Programs are freely available online through the DLG.”

Also at the Digital Library of Georgia: Henry L. Benning Civil War materials are now available online. During the Civil War, Henry L. Benning “served as Colonel of the 17th Georgia Infantry in twenty-one engagements including Antietam, Gettysburg, and Chickamauga… Benning’s war correspondence deals with his service throughout the war and includes orders sent to him, reports of engagements, both those sent to him and those he submitted to his superiors.”

Idaho. Genealogy giant Findmypast.com has published Idaho, Southeast Counties Obituaries 1864-2007. The collection includes over 9,000 browsable images of “obituaries collected and printed in various Idaho newspapers. The collection is not confined to deaths that occurred in Idaho; obituaries of native Idahoans who died out of state were sent in to Idaho newspapers and are also included. Discover biographical details including key dates and life events of those included in these records.”

Another of the giants, Ancestry.com, has published Idaho, Old Penitentiary Prison Records, 1882-1961. According to the collection description, “This collection contains prison records from between the years of 1882 and 1961. The various documents found in this collection may contain the following information: name of inmate, age and race of inmate, birth date and place, marriage date and place, date of trial, date of pardon, date of conviction, spouse of inmate and other miscellaneous information such as physical attributes and the crime committed may be found.”

Illinois. Illinois State University reports that back issues of the university newspaper, The Vidette, are now online. “The archive currently holds approximately 75 volumes—from the first edition dating back to February of 1888 to May of 1963. Within those 75 volumes, there are 2,621 issues and over 21,300 pages. The Vidette Digital Archives plan to continue adding more volumes in the future.”

Indiana. Now at genealogy giant and subscription website MyHeritage.com is a collection of Indiana Newspapers, 1847-2009, a collection of 1,014,820 pages in 44 newspaper titles. The largest numbers of pages come from The Rochester Sentinal, Times-Union, The Madison Courier, Warsaw Times-Union, The News-Sentinel, Warsaw Daily Times and Warsaw Union.

Maryland. MyHeritage.com has also published  Maryland Newspapers, 1790-2009, a collection of 475,492 pages in 10 newspaper titles. Titles in this collection include (Baltimore) Afro-American, (Baltimore) American and Commercial Advertiser, Baltimore Herald, The Hancock News, The Maryland Herald, The Weekly Herald, The Baltimore Bee and American Eagle.

Massachusetts. The New England Historic Genealogical Society has recently added to its collections on AmericanAncestors.org:

  • new parishes available in the image-only Archdiocese of Boston database, Massachusetts: Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston Records, 1789-1900: Anthony of Padua (Brighton), St. Margaret (Dorchester), St. Rose of Lima (Chelsea), fourteen volumes from St. Stephen’s in Boston’s North End (this parish was initially known as St. John the Baptist, and served primarily Irish immigrants);  and St. James the Greater in Boston is located in what is now Chinatown, although many Irish immigrants lived in the neighborhood in the 1800s.
  • new sketches in Western Massachusetts Families in 1790. This database focuses on families listed in the 1790 census in historic Berkshire and Hampshire Counties, an area which also includes parts of modern Franklin and Hampden Counties. The new sketches are: Asaph Stebbins, Daniel Smith, Eldad Parsons, Elijah Bardwell, Israel Cowles, John Cowles, Sr., Joseph Bardwell, Joseph Bardwell, Jr., Martin Bardwell, Obadiah Bardwell, and Timothy Cowles.
  • new volumes in Mayflower Families Fifth Generation Descendants, 1700-1880: Billington, John (Vol. 21), Hopkins, Stephen (Vol. 6), and Alden, John (Vol. 16, part 5).

Nebraska. Subscription site Newspapers.com reports these new additions to its lineup: “the Lincoln Journal Star and some related papers: the Lincoln Star, the Nebraska State Journal, the Weekly Nebraska State Journal, the Sunday Journal and Star, the Courier, and the Lincoln Evening Call. Coverage for the Lincoln Journal Star alone spans more than a century (1881-2009) and includes nearly 1.6 million newspaper images.

New Jersey. Genealogy giant MyHeritage.com has published New Jersey Newspapers, 1859-1946, a collection of 277,295 pages in 7 newspaper titles. Titles in this collection include Paterson Daily Press, Daily True American, Newark Sunday Call, Camden Democrat, The Bayonne Herald, The Paterson Weekly Press, The Political Intelligence and New Jersey Advertiser.

New Mexico. Ancestry.com has published a new database relating not just to New Mexico history but the “old” Mexico that preceded it. Materials in the collection New Mexico, Census, Military, and Other Records of Mexico, 1821-1846 “vary but include records from the provincial administration, treasury, legislative, local government, judicial cases, military, Indian affairs, and some period newspapers. Lists in the hacienda, military, and miscellaneous record groups have been indexed; other record groups can be browsed by year and record group.

North Carolina. The State Archives of North Carolina announced a new digital collection: Secretary of State Wills. “The digital collection contains wills from 1663 to 1789. These are loose original wills probated in the province. After 1760 most original wills were kept by the clerk in the county in which they were probated, though there are some wills after 1760 in the collection.”

Additionally, more newspaper content continues to appear on Digital North Carolina. Click the announcements below to read more details:

South Carolina. A new digital history resource explores Latino history and communities in the Low Country. “Las voces del Low Country” is the name of the exhibit and it “documents the little-known history of Latinos in the Charleston area through oral interviews conducted between 2012 and 2014, photographs, historic documents, and artistic images.” Click here to read more about it.

Also, Findmypast.com has published (or updated) several collections relating to South Carolina:

·         South Carolina, Will Transcripts 1782-1866 (an index to more than 181,000 will transcripts)

·         South Carolina, Plats for State Land Grants 1784-1868 (an index to more than a quarter million records)

·         South Carolina, Legislative Papers 1782-1929 (more than 228,000 records)

·         South Carolina, Criminal Court Records. (transcripts for 1769-1944)

·         South Carolina, Records of Confederate Veterans 1909 – 1973 (index of lists and pension applications)

Texas. Findmypast.com has published  Texas, Laredo Arrival Manifests 1903-1955, with over 1.3 million records. “Explore images of arrival manifests from the border town of Laredo in Texas. This National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) collection will enable you to discover your ancestors’ names, ages, nationalities, and physical descriptions.”

Wyoming. The University of Wyoming has put online a digitized version of a state atlas designed for use by schoolchildren. But these maps may be valuable for understanding the geography of your Wyoming ancestor’s life, too. Click on the Interactive web pages tab to see a list of maps. Among them are those relating to physical geography, but also related to people. For example, there are maps showing emigrant trails, landmarks and forts; railroad expansion, stage roads and cattle trails; migration in and out of the state; land ownership and more.

More state genealogy records and tips

Local and state research is often the key to discovering your U.S. ancestors! Read these articles for more gems on finding genealogy resources in states and locales across the country.

 
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!

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