Monday, May 10, 2010

REDLANDS-YUCAIPA MULTI-STAKE
FAMILY HISTORY CENTER
E-NEWSLETTER
Vol. 10, No. 5
MAY 2010
National Genealogical Society Conference Among the many activities in Salt Lake City during the last week in April was the announcement: "FamilySearch Shares Plans to Digitize Billions of Records Stored at Granite Mountain Records Vault". Go to and read more. http://newsroom.lds.org/ldsnewsroom/eng/news-releases-stories/familysearch-shares-plans-to-digitize-billions-of-records-stored-at-granite-mountain-records-vault

NEWS FROM FAMILY SEARCH
The new face for FamilySearch.org will probably be showing up early in June. Record Search is now being beta tested. The name will be changed to Historical Records and we will be able to sign in to more records. They are looking to add 5 billion more records including some “Super Collections”. Family Tree (formerly New Family Search) will only be accessible through the new site. The question everyone asks is “When will Family Tree be available to non members?’ The answer is sometime before the end of this year.
Bryce Roper, Product manager for Family Search

Bryce’s Top Tips for Getting the Most Out of FamilySearch:
1. Try putting in less information in your search
2. Search the appropriate record group
3. Start with the most recent record
4. Try searching a name without dates
5. Try different spellings
6. Use the filters on Record Search up at the top in the blue bar
7. Keep in mind that many records have been digitized but not yet indexed. Try
browsing them. (They do however include meta data)
8.Look at the list of collections and see if it says “Images Only”


FAMILY SEARCH INDEXING UPDATES (April 28) From 168 Collections to 341 Collections and Still Growing Go to http://pilot.familysearch.org/recordsearch/start.html and then click the "Search or Browse our Record Collections" in blue below the input boxes. When the next screen opens click on the green box "Browse Collections".

Here is a list of a few of the NEW amazing ones:
CANADA - 12 BRAND NEW COLLECTIONS
Canada Births and Baptisms 1859-1932
Canada Deaths and Burials 1664-1955
Plus many more
UNITED STATES - 67 BRAND NEW COLLECTIONS
7 in Arizona
Delaware Marriages 1713-1953
Idaho Births and Christenings, 1856-1965
Idaho Deaths and Burials, 1907-1965
Idaho Marriages, 1978-1898 - 1903-1942
United States Census, 1910
Unites States Deaths and Burials, 1867-1961
United States Marriages, 1733-1990
Utah Births and Christenings, 1892-1941
Utath Deaths and Burials, 1888-1946
Utah Marriages, 1887-1966
Wyoming Marriages, 1877-1920
EUROPE - MANY IN EACH COUNTRY
Austria, Belgium, Channel Islands, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Gibraltar, Iceland..... Can you imagine ~ Iceland Marriages 1770-1920 and Births and Baptisms, 1620 - 1881; Isle of Man, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Great Britain, Wales, Argentina, Bahama, and MORE and MORE

ORGANIZING YOUR FILES Did you know that FamilySearch has suggestions for organizing your files? To access the organizing materials:
1- Go to http://www.familysearch.org/ >Research Helps tab >Click on Articles > Go to “O” > Scroll down to Organizing Your Genealogy Using Computers [Description], [PDF] Organizing Your Paper Files [Description] [PDF], Organizing Your Paper Files Using File Folders [Description] [PDF] or
Organizing Your Paper Files Using Binders (Notebooks) [Description] [PDF]. Hint: Every time you see “Example” click on it to bring up a picture.

SUCCESS STORY “ In your last newsletter I went to the church history site and discovered my 4th great grandfather’s journal excerpt from crossing the plains. Now I have 8 lines of my ancestors that I can definitely identify which company they were in, it was a great experience. I am hip high in finding my non-member mother’s line and it gets frustrating. So…it was wonderful to find this information on my father’s line, those great early church pioneers. It gives me heart to keep plugging along.”
Kim Reichmann

BRITISH NATIONAL ARCHIVES
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/
This site has lessons on how to use the site. Click on the above link,. Go to the Features and click on the Quick Animated Guides or click on Education and choose how you would like to learn how to use the site. There are Lessons, workshops, Videoconferences, Virtual Classroom and/or Podcasts.
Records popular with family historians include:
census records for England and Wales from 1841 to 1911
military service records – most of our military service records predate the 1920s, and some date back as far as the 17th century
other records of service, including documents on Metropolitan Police officers, merchant seamen and railway workers
lists of ships' passengers arriving in or departing from the UK between 1878 and 1960, and naturalisation records wills from the Prerogative Court of Canterbury (the senior ecclesiastical court in England) from 1384 to 1858

WORLD VITAL RECORDS
Abstract of North Carolina Wills, 1663 - 1760
This invaluable work of reference contains abstracts of every will found in the office of the Secretary of State of North Carolina. While it covers the period 1663 to 1760, it does contain a few later wills. The work is arranged alphabetically according to the name of the testator. The abstracts give the name of the testator, place of residence, names of wife, children, legatees, witnesses, and probate officers, names of plantations mentioned, and remarkable items or noteworthy passages in wills. The extensive 200-page index contains all the names mentioned in the will abstracts–nearly 20,000! An appendix containing indexes to each of the will books is yet another outstanding feature of this monumental work.
WorldVitalRecords adds Italian Passenger Lists
The Center for Immigration Research created this series to promote access to information about German, Russian and Italians immigrants to the United States. The information was extracted from ship passenger lists in the records of the U.S. Customs Service (NARA Record Group 36).
There are records of passengers who were U.S. citizens or non-U.S. citizens planning to continue their travels, returning to the U.S., or staying in the U.S. Most of the records are of passengers arriving at the Port of New York, although there are some records of passengers arriving at the following ports: Baltimore, Boston, New Orleans, New York, and Philadelphia. Each of the passenger records may include name, age, town of last residence, destination, and codes for passenger's sex, occupation, literacy, country of origin, transit and/or travel compartment, the name of the ship, the port of departure, date of arrival and the port of arrival.
WorldVitalRecords allows wildcards where you type in the first three letters of a first and or last name and then an asterisk. So a search for John Smith might look like Joh* Smith, Joh* Smit* or John Smi*. With a name like John, the wildcards will help you catch variations like Johnny or Johnnie.

GOOGLE TRANSLATOR You can use Google to translate words, phrases and documents, http://translate.google.com . This online translator is handy for words or phrases. Enter a search phrase in your own language to find information in other languages. A number of languages (from Afrikaans to Hungarian to Yiddish and more) are available for translation. Consider using the Google Language Tools to translate commonly used genealogy term, such as archive, baptism, marriage, cemetery, church, etc., into the native language of your ancestor to gather results posted online from other countries. (Editors note: We had a woman come into the FHC the other day. She was translating a book about the history of the town, her ancestors came from, in Italy.)

BITS AND PIECES
DEAD FRED Dead Fred’s Genealogy Photo Archive is a free, photo genealogy research website (or photobase) devoted to helping you visualize your heritage. Search for images by name, date, location, photographer and other criteria. You can also post your won photos to the archive. The site also has an extensive collection of mystery photos, whish are interesting to browse. It huge, searchable database contains 16937 surnames and 98160 records. It has had 1817 reunions of photographs with their rightful owners. Sign up for a free newsletter to learn about recent updates to the site. http://www.deadfred.com/
Internet Genealogy Magazine

Genealogy Today.com
The other day while browsing around the Internet, I decided to re-visit a genealogy site that has been around since 1999. The longevity of this site says that there is something very right going on. The name of the site is Genealogy Today, www.genealogytoday.com.
The first thing you will notice is the labeled tabs across the top of the site, Getting Started, Family History, Research Tools, Advanced Topics, What's New, and Other Stuff. Each of these areas by themselves are chock full of information, but they are only gateways to much more information. Kathryn Brannigan Walizer

MacFamilyTree 5.7 Released
The following was written by Synium Software:
The modern genealogy software for your Mac is available in version 5.7 now, which sports a great number of useful new features and improvements of existing ones. You'll find yourself being more productive due to our completely renewed Source Management, the Facts pane in the Person Editor and Family Editor, direct Audio and Video recording as well as the improved Kinship Report. MacFamilyTree 5.7 is a free update for all existing version 5 users. Continue reading "MacFamilyTree 5.7 Released" »
OneClickTempleTrip.com Combs LDS Genealogy Database
The following announcement from OneGreatFamily.com will be of interest to members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), commonly known as Mormons:
April 1, 2010, Springville UT – OneClickTempleTrip.com is launching today, giving members of the LDS Church a quick and easy way to identify ancestors they can take to the temple for ordinance work. OneClickTempleTrip.com ties directly to new.FamilySearch.org, the well-known and comprehensive genealogy database built and maintained by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), commonly known as Mormons. The new web site has been certified by FamilySearch for temple ordinance work.
Continue reading "OneClickTempleTrip.com Combs LDS Genealogy Database" »

Maryland Archives website http://www.msa.md.gov includes published volumes of Archives of Maryland. Baltimore Historical Society: 1883-1972.
Note from the description that: “The ongoing Maryland State Archives publication series, Archives of Maryland Online, currently provides access to over 471,000 historical documents that form the constitutional, legal, legislative, judicial, and administrative basis of Maryland's government. Online access enables users to research such topics as Maryland's constitutions and constitutional conventions' proceedings, session laws, proceedings of the General Assembly, governors' papers, and military records. This project allows the Archives to place into electronic form and preserve for future generations records that are scattered among a number of repositories and that often exist only on rapidly disintegrating paper.”

WORTH CHECKING OUT American Libraries It has links to digitized books. I found on it an Adams book and a Chipman book. http://www.archive.org/details/americana
From Dianna Rounds

PODCASTS You can listen to these genealogy podcasts, about an hour each. They cover a variety of subjects, interviews and misc. info, etc. They have show notes that cover what they have been talking about and links to what has been discussed, at Genealogy Gems http://www.genealogygems.tv/ or the Genealogy Guys at http://www.genealogyguys.com/ .
Ipod Users, Genealogy Gems and Genealogy Guys Podcasts are free at Itunes.