REDLANDS-YUCAIPA MULTI-STAKE
FAMILY HISTORY CENTER
E-NEWSLETTER
Vol. 10, No. 6
June 2010

Phone Number: 909-794-3844. Located at 5th and Wabash in Redlands.
Hours: Tuesday thru Saturday—9:00 to 1:00 Tuesday and Wednesday Night—6:00-9:00pm
Closed Sunday Nights except the 4th Sunday before the Research Class
COMING EVENTS
Saturday, June 12, 2010 at 1:00pm at the Yucaipa Valley Genealogical Society at the Yucaipa Branch Library. Speaker will be Charlie Frye, Chief Cartographer at Environmental Systems Research Institute in Redlands, and president of the Sons of the American Revolution in Redlands, “More than dates and places: Tracing the paths of Revolutionary War Ancestors in GIS”

Sunday, June 27, 2010 at 7:00pm Family History Research Class at the Redlands Stake Center High Council Room. Subject: “Accessing and Using Censuses” Presenter: Leslie Johnson.

National Archive, Pacific Region (formerly known as Laguna Niguel) is now open. http://www.archives.gov/pacific/riverside/ “The National Archives regional archives is located at 23123 Cajalco Road in Perris, California. We are open from 8:00 A.M. to 4:30 P.M. Monday through Friday and the first Saturday of each month (except Federal holidays). No appointment is necessary. We hold only records of the Federal government. This, of course, includes commonly used genealogical records such as the U.S. census for all states and all years available, military records, passenger lists and naturalization records, tribal censuses and other sources of interest to Native-Americans, and Federal land records relating to southern California and Arizona. Since our holdings include nearly 70,000 boxes of original records relating to southern California, Arizona, and Clark County, Nevada and 70,000 rolls of microfilm containing images of records held at the National Archives facilities in Washington, D.C. and College Park, Maryland, we have records on a large number of other topics, and other areas of the United States, besides those I have listed. In addition, we offer Ancestry.com and Footnote.com free at our facility and any copies people may wish to make from these services are free as well. Our email address for sending us reference inquiries is riverside.archives@nara.gov. Our telephone number is (951) 956-2000.” From an email from Mr. Kerry Bartels, archivist at the Nation Archives regional archives. There is a map that shows how to get there on the website.

INFORMATION AND TIPS FROM FAMILYSEARCH
FamilySearch invites you to become a member of the FamilySearch online community. The community resources will become invaluable as you do your own family history work or help others with theirs. In addition, community members’ experience and assistance is needed in building online help for family history enthusiasts and newcomers.
COMMUNITY RESOURCES
FamilySearch Research Wiki
On the Research Wiki you can:
· Find information about resources available for family history research in a
particular geographic area.
· Determine where best to look for records from a specific time period.
· Add information about a place that you’ve been to or researched.
· Add information about records or archives that will help others.
You can access the Research Wiki by clicking this link: https://wiki.familysearch.org/en/Main_Page . You do not need to register in order to contribute to the site if you already have an LDS Account.

FamilySearch Forums
On the FamilySearch Forums site, you can find answers to any question that you may have. Here you can ask about:
· Specific ancestors that you’re trying to find.
· Which records are best for a particular time period.
· Locations of resources.
· Features of new.familysearch.org.
· Any other FamilySearch product or Web site, such as the Indexing site.
To access the FamilySearch Forums, click here: http://forums.familysearch.org . If you register on the site, you will need to set up a user name and password because the Forums site has not yet converted to the LDS Account system. Hint: It is recommended that when you register for Forums, you choose the same user name and password that you use for your LDS Account so that you will not have to change your user information later.
Email received from FamilySearch, May 11, 2010

“Tweets” from the opening session of the National Genealogical Society conference held last week in Salt Lake City. (Editor’s note: I would call these “notes”)
Opening Session - Jay Verkler, CEO of FamilySearch, is talking about technology and how it is advancing so fast.
Verkler is showing a video of the Granite Mountain Vault outside of Salt Lake City The microfilm in the vault holds about 3.5 billion images!! And there is more room to grow!
Some records in the vault are the only copies that exist! Now they are working on digitizing these records.
Digitization was going to take over a century, but with new technology it will take about 10 years!! (Editor’s note: This is probably the most important note of all)
Over 300,000 registered indexers that help with the digitization process!! Learn more at familysearch.org 300 million new records on FamilySearch!!
FS(FamilySearch) has been working on a collaboration effort called Family Tree
Even "deep experts" need to collaborate with other "deep experts"
Now talking about the FS Wiki. "Fundamentally designed for sharing"
Encourages to contribute to the wiki. Learn more at wiki.familysearch.org
Register at beta.familysearch.org

MORE NEWSPAPER SITES
GenealogyBank http://www.genealogybank.com ($)
Ancestry http://www.ancestry.com ($)
WorldVitalRecords http://www.worldvitalrecords.com ($) (Free at the Portal)
NewspaperARCHIVE http://www.newspaperarchive.com ($)
Google News Archive (1840 – current) http://www.google.com/archivesearch
Google News Timeline Labs http://newstimeline.googlelabs.com/
Chronicling America http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/
ICON: the International Coalition on Newspapers
Click the Database link on the menu and select “ICON Newspaper Database”, and “Links to other Databases.”

Lisa’s Top 5 Newspaper Tips
TIP #1: Only A Fraction of Papers Are Visible Online
TIP #2: Create Your Go-To Bookmark File
TIP #3: Newspapers Are Secondary Sources
Tip #4: Look To The Future! Many newspapers run or have run columns that feature articles from decades earlier. Lesson: Don’t just search the year of the event.
Tip #5: Ask For Help Be sure and use that “Contact Us” link you find on library and archive websites to ask questions about which newspapers existed, where they are located, etc. Answers from the experts can save you from going on a wild goose chase for a newspaper that doesn’t exist. Lisa Louise Cooke’s Webinar

NEW: GOOGLE NEWS TIMELINE
This product presents search results in chronological order, including current and historical news, scanned newspapers and magazine articles and other data sources – all displayed on a graphical timeline. By using a host of customization options, you can quickly filter through results to obtain those that have greater relevance for your research. I am giving you a link to a youtube video presented by Lisa Louise Cooke showing how to use this site and how it will help you with your genealogy. It is about 5 min. long.
http://www.youtube.com/user/GenealogyGems#p/u/13/wrn1gt_CvN0

Free Access to Historical Newspapers on Footnote.com
Footnote.com is offering free access to all the historical newspapers on the company's web site. On Footnote you will find newspapers ranging from small towns to major cities and dating back to the 1700’s. Whether a historian or a genealogist, historical newspapers are one of the best resources that provide a unique window into the past.
Continue reading "Free Access to Historical Newspapers on Footnote.com" »

Findmypast.co.uk to take over worldvitalrecords.com.au The following announcement was written by http://www.findmypast.co.uk/home.jsp Australian online service will be relaunched as findmypast.com.au supported by Gould Genealogy & History. The National Genealogical Society Conference in Salt Lake City provides the backdrop for a joint announcement today by three leading players in the world genealogy market. FamilyLink.com, Inc.’s WorldVitalRecords Australasian operation is to be taken over by leading UK family history website findmypast.co.uk and run in partnership with Gould Genealogy & History of Australia.
The website currently known as WorldVitalRecords.com.au will be relaunched next month under the new name of findmypast.com.au. It will initially provide subscription access to mainly Australian and New Zealand content. The plan is then to fully integrate both content and features from the findmypast.co.uk website as soon as possible.

World Vital Records -Enhancement to our Find a Grave Results, Find A Grave Photos
WorldVitalRecords brings together various content providers in one place to make it easier to find your ancestors. One of our partners is the website Find A Grave, http://www.findagrave.com/. Part of your search result on WorldVitalRecords may include the photos from Find A Grave. This new database, Find A Grave Photos found at http://www.worldvitalrecords.com/ helps you easily find a gravestone photograph and learn more about it at Find A Grave's website. You can also browse or search this database through it's homepage. The first installment of 150,000 images is currently available on WorldVitalRecords. This database as well as the Find A Grave database, are free to all visitors of WorldVitalRecords.

Need a scout project? How about digitizing a cemetery. Take pictures of tombstones. If the graves have not been entered on Find A Grave, upload the pictures with the information on the tombstones.

BITS AND PIECES

Ancestry has launched a new wiki that includes two books - The Source: A Guidebook to American Genealogy and Red Book: American State, County, and Town Sources. The wiki can be found at the Ancestry Wiki. This is still a beta site.

Pennsylvania researchers might want to check out the Ancestor Tracks website, which has free township warrantee maps for many counties and other resources for learning about early Pennsylvania landowners. You can get the full maps, atlases and more on Ancestor tracks’ Early Landowners of Pennsylvania books and CDs.

At the National Genealogical Society conference, we came across a site called ShipIndex.org. It indexes historical resources that refer to ocean and river vessels. If you search or browse on the site to a page for a vessel, you’ll get citations to find more details in resources such as Ships of the World: An Historical Encyclopedia by Lincoln P. Paine. You can subscribe to the site for additional resources.

“How to Use New Familysearch Correctly” by George W. Scott. New FamilySearch Instructor at Lindon Utah FHC. Can be downloaded free or purchased at Stevenson’s in Provo for $3.95. Google “George Scott – New FamilySearch” for further information and additional video tutorials or click on http://www.usingfamilysearch.com/
Submitted by Jack Moser

Genealogical Tip
Print one bibliographic page for each book or source you plan to use.
Documenting your research is extremely important. However, it frequently slows down on-site research. To allow you to spend more time with the materials when you go to a library or archive, create one sheet for each book or record you plan to search. If you've used the online card catalog, copy and paste the bibliographic information into a word processor, using one sheet for each book. Make research notes on the sheet for use at the library or archives. Then when at the facility, you can make additional notes regarding the success (or failure) of your search. If you make copies from the source, attach them to the sheet for ease in tracking sources and entering data when you return home.
Source: "Time-Saving Tips for Genealogists", by Michael John Neill, Genealogy.com
Thank you to Marsha Green

Genealogy Tip of the Day
If someone walked up to you and said "Hi, I'm your third cousin, once removed," would you know what they meant? Most of us don't think about our relationships in such exact terms ("cousin" seems good enough), so many of us aren't very familiar with what these words mean. When working on your family history, however, it's important to understand the various types of cousin relationships.
First cousins are the people in your family who have two of the same grandparents as you.
Second cousins have the same great-grandparents as you, but not the same grandparents.
Third cousins have in common two great-great-grandparents and their ancestors.
When cousins descend from common ancestors by a different number of generations they are called “removed.”
Once removed means there is a difference of one generation. Your mother's first cousin would be your first cousin, once removed. She is one generation younger than your grandparents and you are two generations younger than your grandparents.
Twice removed means that there is a two-generation difference. Your grandmother's first cousin would be your first cousin, twice removed because you are separated by two generations.
Just to complicate matters, there are also many cases of double cousins. This situation usually occurs when siblings from one family marry siblings from another family. The resulting children, grandchildren, etc. are double cousins, because they share all four ancestors in common. These types of relationships can be difficult to determine and it is usually easiest to chart them one at a time (through one family line and then through the other line).

To Google or Not to Google
We are all familiar with the many large genealogical databases that we can join to search their resources, but what if we want to find resources on our own without joining a website?
Many of the resources we can get through genealogy databases can be found for free if we know how and where to search. A search engine such as Google will help your search be a productive one. I personally like to use a search engine that has an "advanced search" screen. The advanced option makes filtering your search results easier. You are given fields such as "All these words", "Exact phrases", "Any of these words", or "None of these words". Sometimes this is not important but if you are searching for Jeffery Mason Massachusetts, you may get every stone mason in Massachusetts named Jeffery and these are added results that can make finding the correct information more tedious. I searched for Jeffery Mason Massachusetts with a regular search box with no extra tools and found 280,000 search results. I could see that most of these did not have anything to do with Jeffery Mason. I added "Genealogy" to that search box and trimmed the results down to 35900. Still too many to find what I need. I then went to the advanced search option in Google. And moved "Jeffery Mason" to the field that said "this exact wording or phrase" and searched. This returned 174 results. Much better. I then added "stone brick mortar" to the field "But don't show pages that have any of these unwanted words:" Now the results were 10. You can change the combination any way that you like.
You might reverse the name phrase to "Mason, Jeffery" and this would bring different results. If the person lived in various towns, you might enter "Boston, Worcester, Salem" in the field "one or more of these words:". This would give your search a variety of words to include. As you can see, using a search engine to search is only limited by your imagination for entering search combinations...
Source: Paula Vilburn, Ogden Regional Family History Center Newsletter, April 2010