Free Family History Mini-Class : Lesson 8

In our digital age, many otherwise inaccessible historical sources and information are readily online, not just to read, but to search using keywords and names.  You’ll find that they are often provided in formats (such as PDF files) which can be downloaded to a mobile device for use on the go.

Digital resources are an indispensable element of the genealogist’s toolkit, and even more so when access to physical archives and libraries is limited.  Check out the following links, and hopefully you’ll identify sources that you can use in your research.  All of these are free to access.

Books

HathiTrust hosts millions of digitised books from libraries the world over, while

Project Gutenberg has free e-books of many classics and out-of-copyright titles.

Newspapers

Read my previous blog posts here and here for details of some of the essential free newspaper archives online.  Don't overlook these invaluable records of your ancestors' everyday lives.

Historical city & trade directories

Scottish Post Office directories list names, addresses, and trades or occupations of people in urban areas from the 18th century onwards. 

For England & Wales, there are similar Trade & Local Directories from the 1700s to the 1910s.

Area histories

To learn more about the local history of specific counties or parishes, there are the Victoria County Histories covering England, and for Scotland, the 18th- and 19th-century editions of the Statistical Accounts. 

Digital Collections 

Such resources include many images that can bring your family’s history to life.  These are just a few suggestions.

SCRAN offers still, sound and moving images from hundreds of museums, including the Victoria & Albert and National Galleries of Scotland.  View buildings where your ancestors lived, worked, or went to school, objects they might have used, and views they would have looked out on.

The British Library's digital collections include illuminated manuscripts and vintage books with photo-illustrations, which could easily side-track you en route to their wide selection of online maps, or their oral history recordings.

Ireland

Fordham University in New York City provides an extensive list of links to free digital content from Irish libraries, archives and museums, including many sources of use to family historians.

United States

The US Library of Congress’s vast range of subject matter, from music to maps, includes local, social, and business history collections in different formats.  The America at Work, America at Leisure: Motion Pictures from 1894-1915 collection is just one highlight of a fascinating online repository.

The next class will introduce you

to some essential reference tools

for family history research.

Free Family History Mini-Class : Lesson 6

 

A few minutes here will give you the tools to 

root out untrustworthy information online. 

No course would be complete without a visit to the library for a guided tour, and these mini-classes are no exception.  And no skiving off – this is important stuff for your research, especially when it comes to things like social history that helps put your family's lives into context.  

The mini-class’s library is the World Wide Web, which can be a problem: how do you know if the information on a website is reliable?  Answer: be PROMPT.  Look at the site’s

Presentation

Relevance

Objectivity

Method

Provenance

Timeliness

This will help you evaluate the reliability of information you find online.  After all, anyone can set up a website and fill it with whatever they like.  Even double-checking with another website can’t ensure accuracy, as many sites copy and paste from each other.  For instance, looking up Wikipedia is quick and easy, but it’s riddled with stuff that’s inaccurate or just plain nonsense.

So ask yourself: 

• Is the website well laid-out?  Even if it is, that’s no guarantee of truthfulness, but it’s a good start. Glaring spelling and grammar mistakes are a red flag, though.

• Is the information relevant to my research?  Skim read the material to determine if it’s detailed enough for your needs, or perhaps too detailed if you just want a summary of the topic.

• Is the author/organisation behind the site impartial and fair?  Or do they have a specific axe to grind? Make sure their credentials, if they have any, are genuine, and perhaps do some research on the author.

• How was the information gathered?  Was it just copied from Wikipedia, or is there some proper research behind it?  Genuine studies will show their sources and methods.

• Is it a trustworthy source?  If there’s a link that tells you “About” the website, use that to learn more about the source of the information. Find out if the author is an acknowledged expert on the subject.  You might want to contact them for more details, especially if the information is about your ancestors.

• Is the information up to date?  Checking the date on a news story, article or blog post is important.  You don’t want to be caught out by obsolete data.  If you can't see a date anywhere on the website, consider finding an alternative source of information.

This handout goes into more detail about PROMPT.

Put as much thought and homework into your online information sources as you would your online purchases. 

In a future mini-class visit to the library, I’ll share some of the best free online reference sources for family historians.

Next week's class focuses on birth,

marriage, death & census records

Free Family History Mini-Class : Lesson 7

Some of the first and most important genealogical sources you will use in tracing your family tree are birth, marriage, death, and census records.  You can search many of these online at no cost using websites compiled by various organisations, often by volunteers.

If you’re starting out in the British Isles, try using Free UK Genealogy or UK BMD for indexes to England & Wales civil registration, British census returns and parish records. Note that UK BMD provides more than one source for the England & Wales BMDs; their main web page explains this in more detail.

For birth, marriage and death records, both civil and religious, on the island of Ireland, you can search indexes and see free certificate images at Irish Genealogy.ie.  Some great tips on browsing these images are found on Shane Wilson’s blog. 

Perhaps your British ancestors worked or lived (or, indeed, died) abroad; if so, you may find their life events indexed at FamilyRelatives where there are military and consular records of births, marriages and deaths.  You will need to register with this site to carry out a search, but there is no charge for viewing the results or digitally imaged indexes in this category.

For many other countries as well as the UK and Ireland, FamilySearch’s indexes and images (both indexed and unindexed) are freely accessible.  You can search or browse civil registration/vital and census records, and video learning courses are provided to help you use them.  Creating a FamilySearch account is free and allows you unlimited access to all the website's resources - see this earlier post for a few of the things you can do.

Finally, if you’re trying to calculate someone’s birth date using their age on a census, here’s a handy chart to pinpoint the various dates on which censuses took place in the UK, Ireland, and the US. 

Free Family History Mini-Class : Lesson 5

In this week’s mini-class, I'm looking at graveyard research, and how to get the most out of visiting your ancestors' final resting place.  But it's not just a matter of grabbing a pen and paper and heading off to the cemetery... 

Before you go...

☙  Speak to relatives who may know the whereabouts of family graves, or have paperwork relating to burials.

☙  Contact cemetery or local authorities to find out about a graveyard’s opening hours.  Some offer look-up or research services - sometimes for a fee - which might make your search easier.

☙  Check for the existence of layout plans or maps for large cemeteries. Public libraries (and their websites) or council offices sometimes hold copies of these.  GENUKI is a useful source of information about burial grounds - as are the groundskeeping staff in the cemetery.  If you can't find a plot, ask them.

☙  Use online sources to identify ancestral grave sites and memorial inscriptions - try FindAGrave, BillionGraves (and their free mobile apps), and for those who died in wartime, Commonwealth War Graves.  Smaller churchyards and other burial grounds may also have been surveyed and the inscriptions made available on the Internet, and a good online search should track them down.   

☙  Family history societies produce indexed cemetery publications which you can buy directly from them, or from organisations like the Family History Federation or the Scottish Genealogy Society.  Public libraries often hold copies of these monumental inscription books for local parishes.  Search their online catalogues to find out what they have on their shelves. 

During your visit...

☙  Don’t try and scrape lichen off gravestones as this will do more harm than good. A safe way to clean a memorial is to wash it carefully with a damp cloth, perhaps using a very soft brush afterwards to remove dirt residues.  Don't be tempted to use abrasive cleaning materials which can cause irreparable damage to masonry.

☙  Damage to memorials can also be inflicted by rubbing with chalk, crayon, or any other materials to try and read or record the engraving on a stone.  Record the inscription with a photograph instead.  This will allow you to take a note of the setting as well as the information on the headstone.

☙  Use non-invasive methods like foil reflectors, artificial or natural light and shade to highlight worn and hard-to-read inscriptions.  Or do what my friend Anne did and wait for the sun to providentially break through the clouds!  You can learn more about looking after gravestones from Historic Environment Scotland.

☙  Be careful of unstable stones and soft ground.  Follow cemetery authorities’ advice regarding visits, health and safety, and care of graves.  Take heed of signage on site which may alert you to hazardous areas of the cemetery.

☙  Look on the back of ancestral headstones for more names - sometimes there wasn't enough room on the front!

After you return home...

☙  Check dates and names from headstones with certificates and other sources. Beware of gravestone "typos" – if a name was added well after the event, or if the deceased’s age was uncertain, the inscription may contain inaccuracies.  

☙  If you’ve photographed headstones you may wish to upload them to FindAGrave or BillionGraves, along with a transcription of the wording on them. Sharing what you’ve found can connect you with others researching the same families.

☙  Add what you’ve found to your records, remembering to use pencil if you haven’t double-checked the information yet.

☙  Share your findings with your family, especially those relatives you asked for help beforehand.

Next time, I'll show you how to tell

the good from the bad on the Internet.

Free Family History Mini-Class : Lesson 4

In this lesson, I’m looking at organising the information you find about your family.  This could be on a visit to a record office, a graveyard, or in conversation with a relative.  If you want to start with what you have at home, check out my post on shoebox genealogy.  Whichever method you choose, you’ll need something to help you make sense of all the details you’ve recorded in your notes.

To start with, you should decide if you’re going to store your family tree on paper, in electronic format, or perhaps both. 

Paper options

·       ☙  A good hard-backed notebook, with a page for each individual or family. The kind with alphabetical index tabs built in is ideal.

·       ☙  A loose-leaf folder or lever arch file for family sheets, which you can organise by surname or family line. This is a really flexible system - polythene pockets can protect your records and keep related documents together

·       ☙  Index cards, one per person – but beware, this can grow very rapidly and take up quite a bit of space!

·       ☙  Once things really take off, you may want to splash out and get a filing cabinet.  This is a great method for storing copies of documents as well as your family history notes and charts.

Electronic options

·       ☙  If you’re comfortable using database or spreadsheet programs, you might like to consider adapting an existing package like Access, a cloud-based app such as Google Sheets, or a free office suite of programs. 

·       ☙  Install specialised genealogy computer software on your laptop or PC – check out some of the many free packages available to download.  Try some out before deciding on one with the features you want.

·      ☙  Use a genealogy website with online tree hosting facilities – and you don’t need to have a paid subscription with them.  In a previous blog post I compare a few of these companies’ free offerings.  

Next time, I'll look at how to plan and

carry out a cemetery visit in search

of family gravestones.