Sorry/Not Sorry I'm Not At RootsTech

This week sees the annual RootsTech family history conference, in Salt Lake City, USA, celebrate its tenth anniversary.  If you live (as I do) far too many miles away to contemplate a visit, here are some free ways to get involved and benefit from the speakers and other experts.  The event starts on Wednesday 26th February and runs until Saturday the 29th.

You can join the fun from afar (or wherever you are) by

☙ watching free RootsTech sessions live

☙ keeping up with what’s happening on the RootsTech blog 

☙ catching up with previous events at the video archive 

☙ following Twitter hashtags #RootsTech and #NotAtRootsTech

☙ checking out the official RootsTech Facebook page

Many other blogging genealogists will be at the conference, so look out for their postings on social media.

Killing Off Ancestors From the Comfort of Home, Part 2

In Part 1 I covered death certificates, church death and burial records, interment registers, and monumental inscriptions – all great sources for identifying when and where your forebears died.

Here, in Part 2, I’ll discuss a few more tried and trusted methods of locating your ancestors who have gone to join the choir invisible.

First of all, probate records.  In order for heirs to inherit property, many legal systems require a written record; this is called a will, or a testament in Scots law.  Also included may be an inventory of the deceased’s moveable possessions.

To find testaments or inventories of someone dying in Scotland, search the free index at ScotlandsPeople (1513-1925).  The results provide details of the deceased, such as their occupation or residence, which may help narrow down your search. 

Probate records at the National Archives of Ireland’s website are grouped into three sections: Prerogative and diocesan wills 1596-1858, Calendars of wills and administrations 1858-1922, and Will registers 1858-1900 

In England and Wales, the majority of wills were administered by the Church of England’s Prerogative Court of Canterbury from 1384 to the beginning of 1858.  You can learn about these documents and how to access them online at The National Archives.  Their index is free to use (charges apply if you wish to download a copy of a will, although they are free to view onsite at Kew). 

Probate records from around the world can be found via FamilySearch – tick the “Probate” box and any other options which would help your search.  Images of many records are available, and all are free to view.

At home, you might find funeral-related documents among the family papers: undertakers’ bills, memorial programmes, mourning cards, etc.  Other useful items could include military memorabilia such as telegrams or paybooks.  For British and Commonwealth forces, not only burial locations and photographs but grave registration, headstone, and other documents can be found in individual entries at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s website.

Newspaper family announcements can be a valuable source of information when tracking down deceased relatives, particularly in more recent times when online tributes are becoming popular.

A few examples of these are

• Family Notices 
• Legacy (formerly iAnnounce) 
• Ryerson Index (Australian newspapers) 

For earlier centuries, the official UK government newspaper, the easily-searched Gazette (and its regional editions) carried family and probate notices, as well as military promotions.  PDF images of its pages can be viewed and downloaded.

Also check out my two previous posts on free searchable newspapers:

https://scotsancestors.blogspot.com/2019/05/read-all-about-it.html

https://scotsancestors.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-sensational-and-factual.html

Killing off Ancestors From the Comfort of Home, Part 1

Certificates

Does the oldest member of your clan have a stash of family papers? Maybe you’ve inherited ownership of the documents and photos that your mother carefully collected.  Whichever it is, there are very probably death certificates in amongst them. 

These are the official designation of someone’s demise, although they are notoriously the least accurate kind of certificate, given that the person they refer to isn’t around to correct any errors on them.  Sometimes the relative who registered a death was distressed, misinterpreted what was being asked of them, and didn’t answer the questions correctly - hence the discrepancies with what appears in other documents.  The other possibility is that they just didn’t know the maiden surname of their father’s mother, and either said so, or made one up on the spot to avoid embarrassment.  Awareness of these potential mistakes, coupled with careful research, will allow you to weed out any misinformation.

Burials

A number of sources are used to record when and where someone was buried.  These include church or parish records, interment registers, and graveyard inscriptions. 

Check out the availability of UK church burial or death records using GENUKI or the Online Parish Clerks

and search them using FreeReg.

Faith records from Britain and other countries may be found and searched through

FamilySearch’s Catalog.

Local authorities or other bodies responsible for the upkeep of cemeteries should have records of burials and cremations, or at least be able to direct you to where they are kept.  A quick phone call to your council office can be very useful, even to simply determine which department is in charge: parks, sanitation, public health or whatever.  The website related to the council or even an individual cemetery may provide information about the layout of the grounds, as well as opening hours and contact details for cemetery staff. 

Headstone inscriptions can give details not found anywhere else, although beware the slip of the stonemason’s chisel.  Verify the date(s) on gravestones using other sources where possible.  Again, parish clerk or GENUKI web pages can direct you; they may contain links to online indexes of specific graveyards. 

Contact the family history society for the area you’re interested in to see if they have conducted any cemetery surveys, perhaps publishing their findings in booklet or website format.

And if you’ve already got books of monumental inscriptions on your shelves, why not go through them again, especially if it’s been a while since you consulted them.  I’ve had lots of success with this strategy by matching names found in my recent research with printed gravestone transcriptions that I've owned for years.

Of course there are always the two major free graveyard online resources:

Billion Graves 
and

FindAGrave 

All of the above are not the only free resources for tracking down your family’s deceased members – in the next blog post I’ll share some further tactics to help you locate them.

Free family history worksheets ... and where to find them

This week, I thought it would be useful to share some free family history charts, forms and worksheets to help you plan your research and record what you find, whether you’re visiting a record office or interviewing a relative about their recollections.  

Below are a few websites where you can freely download a variety of document templates specifically designed for use in genealogical research.  You can find many more of these online, but be aware that some websites exist solely to get you to download documents that may harm your computer.  Always check that the site is trustworthy before using its resources.  If you have a subscription to a family history website, it may provide downloadable forms you can use.  

☙ Be sure to check out my tips at the end of the post

for more ideas for creating and using your templates ☙ 

·         FamilySearchWiki: Use appropriate forms  Family group records, pedigree charts, research logs, and the very focused research assessment form.  This helps you to set research goals and then make plans to achieve them. 

·         Irish Genealogy Toolkit: Free family history forms  Individual, family, and multi-generation charts; a relationship calculator for when you can’t figure out how many times removed your cousins are; suggested questions for interviewing relatives; and Irish 1901/1911 census worksheets for good measure.  Note: the Irish census has different column headings from the rest of the UK so for other parts of the British Isles census, use the templates in the next link.

·         FamilySearchWiki: Genealogy research forms  Blank census worksheets – rather than spend money on printing images, copy the information you need from a census page onto one of these Ancestry templates for the UK and North American census returns.  Having a different template for each year is particularly useful when it comes to the British 1841 census.

☙  Draw up your own charts, worksheets and diagrams in a plain notebook for convenience when out and about researching. 

☙  Birth, marriage and death certificates tend to follow the same format throughout the years, within each country.  Blank templates of each of these, with all the column headings pre-printed, would save a lot of time when working at a record office.

☙  Make copies of worksheets (printed or handmade) and store them in a "road trip" ring binder - handy to lean on when copying down a gravestone inscription or war memorial information.  Filing your sheets in polythene punched pockets will keep them safe and dry.

Being prepared with these forms ready to pick up at a 

moment's notice will save you time and frustration later on!