by Lacey Cooke | Apr 14, 2019 | 01 What's New, Records & databases
Jump for joy! At the top of the list of new genealogical records this week are new collections for Southern English county of Devon. You’ll also be able to explore big updates to vital records collections for the Netherlands. Finally, check out new and updated newspaper titles for Connecticut, Illinois, and more throughout the U.S.!
Featured: Devon County, England Genealogy Records
If your ancestors lived in Southern England, you won’t want to miss these new and updated collections for the county of Devon, available at Findmypast!
Devon Port Books: This brand new collection covers ships administered in the Devon ports of Appledore, Barnstaple, and Bideford between 1595 and 1705.
These records will include names of the ship’s masters and merchants, the ship’s name and the year it was entered in the port book, the ship’s cargo, tonnage, and trade type, and the ship’s registry, administration, departure and destination ports.
Devon Baptisms: This collection of Devon parish registers includes many exclusives you won’t find anywhere else online and has grown again. The latest additions date back to the 1750s, with much of this collection stretching as far back as the 1500s. The additions cover four parish churches in the county:
- Appledore, Independent Chapel
- Appledore, Ebenezer Baptist Chapel
- Appledore, Methodist Chapel
- Bideford, Methodist Circuit
Northam, Devon 1919. Image from Findmypast.
Devon Burials: New additions are from the parish of Northam. Findmypast’s dedicated search page allows you to filter by burial and death year, burial place, denomination and archive, making it quick and easy to find what you’re looking for.
Devon Land Tax and Valuation Records: Did your family own a public house or live and work in an orchard? Land tax records could help you find out. New additions from Northam and Clovelly have been added to this collection. In the records you’ll find information on:
- The land owner’s and occupier’s names
- The year or year range that the events were recorded
- The year the valuation took place
- The sum of money paid on the property
The Netherlands – Updated Records
Ancestry.com has updated their records collections for the Netherlands. These collections consist of indexes held at various archives throughout the Netherlands.
Each collection includes a link to the original record on the source website, which is WieWasWie. Ancestry.com does not support or make corrections or changes to the original data. To learn more about these records, please refer to WieWasWie’s website.
Tip: Use the Google Chrome web browser! Google Translate is built-in and you can use it to translate foreign language websites and text. Learn more about busting brick walls with Google:
U.S. Newspapers
Historic newspapers can be a goldmine of genealogical information.
Genealogy Bank makes big updates regularly, making it a fantastic newspaper resource. New content has been added to 109 titles from 34 different states in the U.S. Some of the largest additions include:
- California
- Connecticut
- Illinois
- Texas
To see all updated titles and states,
click here. Discover family history in millions of historical newspaper articles from 1690-1980, including obituaries, birth records, marriage notices, and more facts about your ancestors.
Is your family history protected?
As you accumulate more and more genealogy records and data about your family history, you’ll want to be sure that those precious documents are saved from destruction! It’s a good idea to digitize your most important records and papers, in case the originals are lost or damaged.
The next step is to then back up your computer! Lisa uses and recommends Backblaze.com for cloud backup.
For a few dollars a month, Backblaze will continually back up your computer files to a remote server. In the event of any loss (including a computer crash), you can download them again. Learn more and sign up for a free trial at www.Backblaze.com/Lisa!
Lacey has been working with Genealogy Gems since the company’s inception in 2007. Now, as the full-time manager of Genealogy Gems, she creates the free weekly newsletter, writes blogs, coordinates live events, and collaborates on new product development. No stranger to working with dead people, Lacey holds a degree in Forensic Anthropology, and is passionate about criminal justice and investigative techniques. She is the proud dog mom of Renly the corgi.
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!
by Lacey Cooke | Mar 29, 2019 | 01 What's New, Records & databases
New genealogical records this week include a big update to Genealogy Bank’s newspaper database, including titles from 31 states.
Also new are Massachusetts passenger lists, a Connecticut digitization project, and oral histories for WWII veterans and for Irish history.
Featured Genealogy Records: U.S. Newspapers
Genealogy Bank is a fantastic resource for newspapers and they’ve made a big update this week. New content has been added to 87 titles from 31 different states in the U.S. Some of the largest additions include:
To see all updated titles and states, click here. Discover family history in millions of historical newspaper articles from 1690-1980, including obituaries, birth records, marriage notices, and more facts about your ancestors.
More about Historical Newspapers for Genealogy:
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Massachusetts Passenger Lists
Over at MyHeritage, you’ll find a new collection of Boston, Massachusetts Passenger Lists, 1891-1943. There are 4.8 million records in this data set, so if your ancestors immigrated through Boston, this could be a gold mine! Here’s a little bit of information about the collection from the description:
“Information available varies due to significant changes to immigration laws during the span of this collection. The most common information available includes the passenger’s name, sex, age, date of arrival, and name of the ship.
More detailed passenger manifests collected additional information including marital status, birth information (date and location), nationality, last residence, home city, port of departure, as well as the names and addresses of family members in the United States and home country. This collection is comprised of NARA publication T843.”
Connecticut Historical Footage Digitization
Tasha Caswell is the research and collections associate for the Connecticut Historical Society and thanks to her keen nose and film background, she was able to save valuable historical footage from being lost to decay. She noticed a smell reminiscent of vinegar that meant these films were in danger of deteriorating.
“She alerted the other members of the collections department, and soon afterward they applied for a grant to preserve and digitize the invaluable films — many of them home movies that had been donated through the decades.
The result: now the public will be able to see these gems on the Connecticut Digital Archive.
“Thanks to that grant for about $24,000 from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the society was able to loan approximately 75 films to a company called George Blood LP, which specializes in digitizing audiovisual media.
CHS has about 50 more films in its collection but will have to apply for another grant to complete the digitizing project. The grant, received in September 2017, also allowed them to digitize thousands of photos and negatives as well as maps, architectural drawings, lithographs and posters.”
Click here to learn more about this project and how you can help. Tasha says, “I’m hoping people watch our films online, and if they have information about what’s depicted, they can contact us.”
Oral Histories
We recently stumbled upon two fascinating oral history resources now available online that we think you might enjoy.
First is the Voices of Liberation project, which has been set up to commemorate more than 100,000 service personnel who died in 1944.
The voices of Second World War veterans and their relatives are being recorded to mark the 75th anniversary of some of the conflict’s most momentous battles. It was started by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, which hopes the archive will be a fitting tribute to the dead and highlight its cemeteries and memorials across the world. The public can contribute to this project at https://liberation.cwgc.org/.
If you have Irish ancestors, you might enjoy exploring Irish Life & Lore‘s oral history collections, totaling 3,000 hours. It was founded by Tralee-based oral historians Maurice and Jane O’Keeffe.
From their website: “Through our decades of work in the compilation of audio recordings and books for educational and commercial purposes, thousands of Irish voices from all regions of the country have been captured and archived for the future.” You can browse their collections and listen to samples, and individual recordings are available for purchase.
Tapping into Newspapers for Genealogy
If you’re interested in learning more about your family history, you’ve probably heard of several people say “be sure to check old newspapers!” Sounds great, right? But which newspapers were around back then? And where are they now?
Lisa Louise Cooke’s hit book provides you with a fool-proof research process including step-by-step instructions, worksheets and checklists, and a case study that puts it all together. Her methodology applies to newspaper research no matter where your ancestors came from and settled.
Click here to grab a copy of How to Find Your Family History in Newspapers, available in both print and digital download.
Lacey has been working with Genealogy Gems since the company’s inception in 2007. Now, as the full-time manager of Genealogy Gems, she creates the free weekly newsletter, writes blogs, coordinates live events, and collaborates on new product development. No stranger to working with dead people, Lacey holds a degree in Forensic Anthropology, and is passionate about criminal justice and investigative techniques. She is the proud dog mom of Renly the corgi.
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!
by Sunny | Mar 30, 2018 | 01 What's New, Records & databases
See if you can find U.S. ancestors using these new online resources (many of them free!): U.S. Supreme Court cases; an African American research guide; newspapers serving Illinois, Iowa, North Carolina and Texas; orphan train riders and Rhode Island burials since 1647. Also, your help is requested to help build an important database of African American soldiers in the Civil War.
Featured collection: U.S. Supreme Court cases
“More than 225 years of Supreme Court decisions acquired by the Library of Congress are now publicly available online – free to access in a page image format for the first time,” reported a recent Library of Congress press release. “The Library has made available more than 35,000 cases that were published in the printed bound editions of United States Reports (U.S. Reports).”
This collection is comprised of “official reports of decisions for the United States Supreme Court dating to the court’s first decision in 1791 and to earlier courts that preceded the Supreme Court in the colonial era,” or in other words, cases originally published in bound volumes 1-542. “This collection of Supreme Court cases is fully searchable. Filters allow users to narrow their searches by date, name of the justice authoring the opinion, subject and by the main legal concepts at issue in each case. PDF versions of individual cases can be viewed and downloaded.” We noticed this in a tweet from The Legal Genealogist Judy Russell, who makes a case for the genealogical value of Supreme Court cases in this article on her blog.
Find US ancestors in more new online resources
A new African American research guide
The Maryland State Archives has published a new guide, Researching African American Families at the Maryland State Archives. (Clicking on the link will take you directly to a PDF version of the guide). The introduction states, “A strong tradition of record keeping from the earliest days of settlement has resulted in the preservation of a vast amount of material relevant to African American history. This material can be found primarily at the Maryland State Archives in Annapolis, where the permanent public records of state, county, and local agencies are conveniently centralized. Records concerning African Americans, once neglected by professional historians and genealogists alike, provide new insights into the Maryland experience for people of color.”
Even if your African American roots are not in Maryland (or if your Maryland roots are not African American), you can still likely learn about important record types and research tips!
African American Civil War Soldiers Database
The African American Civil War Soldiers project recently launched an effort to build “a comprehensive database of the estimated 200,000 soldiers who formed the United States Colored Troops” during the Civil War. According to the website, this project aims “to improve our knowledge of the African Americans who fought for freedom in the American Civil War, to provide descendants of the soldiers with access to information on their ancestors, and to present students of history with primary documents from a pivotal moment in African American history.”
Volunteers are requested to help transcribe “images of the soldiers’ military service records, which have been photographed and scanned by the National Archives and Records Administration and Fold3. From these, we are collecting detailed individual information such as name, age, height, place of birth and enlistment, as well as evidence of battles fought, injuries and causalities sustained, and honors and promotions won.”
It’s easy to start transcribing: there’s no software to download or learn, and you don’t even need to register. If you click “Get started,” you’ll be taken directly to an image to transcribe (a quick series of pop-up screens will give you a quick orientation about the type of document you’ll be transcribing and how to do it). The example shown below comes from a “Company Descriptive Book, the first card in each soldier’s file. This card contains information on the soldier’s origins and enlistment.”
As an aside, we also noticed that the web host of the African-American Civil War Soldiers Database, Zooniverse.org, also has another volunteer project to transcribe the handwritten conference notes of U.S. Supreme Court justices.
Newspapers across the U.S.
Illinois and Iowa. Subscription site Newspapers.com has published issues of the Quad-City Times (Davenport, Iowa) dating from 1855-2014. This paper covers southeast Iowa and northwest Illinois. According to an email news release, “Newspapers.com also has a host of papers from the Quad-City Times family tree, including the Daily Leader, the Davenport Weekly Leader, the Davenport Weekly Democrat and Leader, Weekly Davenport Democrat, the Democrat and Times, the Daily Times, the Davenport Weekly Gazette, and the Democratic Banner. Some of these papers go all the way back to the 1850s, giving you more than 160 years of Iowa and Illinois history!
North Carolina. Digital NC continues to post new, free newspaper content on its site. Recent additions include the weekly The Hertford County Herald (Ahoskie, NC) for 1914-1923; More issues of the Watauga Democrat (Boone, NC, serving the western part of the state; coverage now spans 1923-1963); and the Cherokee Scout (Cherokee County)—now with nearly 2,500 issues from 1923-1971.
Texas. The Portal of Texas History website is adding more free newspaper content: the Cleveland Advocate and its sister publications, Dayton News and Eastex Advocate, and two other defunct newspapers – Illustrated Paperboy and Cleveland Journal. A news report describes the Portal of Texas History as “a gateway to Texas’s earliest history with newspapers dating back to 1829, seven years before Texas became a republic,” with 5.7 million individual newspaper pages, and “the largest single-state free digital repository in the nation for newspapers.”
Orphan Train riders
A new collection at subscription giant Ancestry.com, New York, Orphans Placed in the New York Foundling Hospital and Children’s Aid Society, 1855-1925, gathers the names of nearly 18,000 poor, abandoned or orphaned children who were placed under the care of New York City orphanages and eventually shipped to families in the western United States to be adopted. These children are popularly known as “orphan train” riders. According to the collection description, “Information as to the identities of a large number of these children has been preserved in federal and state censuses taken between 1855 and 1925, as well as in the 1890 New York City police census, and represents a potential boon to the descendants of these foundlings. This collection contains a two-volume work that encompasses the “Orphan Train Riders” from NYFH.” Tip: Have fun learning the stories of some of these children in Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline, a NYT best-selling novel and a Genealogy Gems Book Club pick.
Rhode Island burials
The New England Historic Genealogical Society has announced a new database on its subscription website, AmericanAncestors.org. Rhode Island: Historical Cemeteries, 1647-2000 “includes 450,000 individuals buried in Rhode Island,” states a company email. “More than 900,000 names transcribed from tombstones are included. This database provides tombstone transcriptions, and birth and death records. Some entries include tombstone images and GPS coordinates.” The project is part of a volunteer-driven collaboration with the Rhode Island Historical Cemeteries Transcription Project.
Find US ancestors in more new online collections
Did you miss these recent announcements about US records that are new online? Check them out!
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!
by | Oct 23, 2015 | 01 What's New, African-American, Ancestry, British, FamilySearch, Findmypast, Military, Newspaper, Records & databases, United States
Millions of marriage and divorce records in the U.S. lead the pack for new genealogy records online this week. Alabama Civil War and post-Civil War records, along with British and U.S. newspapers, round out the list. Take a look! Which of your ancestors may be newly-mentioned online?
ALABAMA CIVIL WAR SOLDIERS. A Civil War-era database of soldiers (including those exempted from service, those who served in the militia or home guide and soldiers from other states who have Alabama connections) is now on Ancestry. Data was extracted from the state archives’ card file that was created throughout the 1900s. (Not an Ancestry subscriber? Click here
to get started.)
ALABAMA VOTER REGISTRATIONS. Now available on Ancestry is an 1867 Alabama voter registration that was one of the first statewide records to name African-American adult male residents. Some counties’ records are missing and others did not fully include all qualified residents, but this is still a valuable record collection, with name, race, county of residence, precinct, length of residence, loyalty oath reference information and sometimes other remarks.
BRITISH NEWSPAPERS. Over 3.5 million new articles from 22 newspaper titles from England, Scotland and Wales are newly available on Findmypast.
US MARRIAGES AND DIVORCES–ANCESTRY. Ancestry has added new marriage indexes for West Virginia (1931-1970), Maine (1892-1985) and Jackson Co, Missouri (1840-1895), updated its Idaho divorce collection (1947-1964) and added a new collection of Oregon divorce records (1961-1985).
U.S. MARRIAGES–FAMILYSEARCH. FamilySearch has added hundreds of thousands of indexed county marriage records to free collections for Colorado, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Washington. Louisiana’s collection alone contains over a million entries, and Pennsylvania’s dates to the 1600s.
U.S. NEWSPAPERS. Nearly half a million digitized newspaper pages from the Oakland Tribune (1874-1975) are among the newly listed or updated collections at Newspapers.com. So are nearly 200,000 pages each from The Des Moines Register and DeKalb, Illinois’ The Daily Chronicle.
Thank you for sharing these new and updated records collections on your society Facebook pages and with your genealogy-loving friends and relatives. You’re a GEM for helping us spread the good news!
