Give a Little, Gain a Lot

You may already have benefited from indexed records as you’ve researched your family tree online and perhaps wondered what goes into compiling these time-saving databases.  One way is through the genealogy community getting together and giving just a little time to make free indexes possible. 

For the last few years, Who Do You Think You Are? magazine has sponsored “Transcription Tuesday”, in partnership with several recordkeeping organisations.  Simply put, it involves you reading a digitised original record and typing key pieces of information from it into a spreadsheet or free software, on your computer at home.  Full instructions are given for each project, especially where handwriting or language may present problems for the English reader. 

The results of your participation are then compiled into free-to-search indexes to the records, making them much more accessible and saving time trawling through them looking for names.  These datasets will be made available through the sponsoring organisations.

This year’s Transcription Tuesday takes place on the 4^th of February.  Why not check out the four projects on offer and see which one you’d like to contribute to on the day?  I’ve included details and links below for each project, and added WDYTYA? Magazine’s “difficulty rating” for a bit of context, with a grade of 1 being the easiest.

Stobs Camp Internment Research Centre – to take part in this project, download a spreadsheet from this Google Drive link.  Stobs was a WWI prisoner of war/detention camp in the Scottish Borders and this will be the perfect transcription job for you if you are a military history buff or you can read a bit of German or French.  Graded 3 for difficulty

Royal Navy – this project aims to build a free database of RN ratings and officers from WWI, and it’s being jointly run by The National Archives, the National Maritime Museum, and the Crew List Index Project.  If you would like to work on these records, email crewlists@nationalarchives.gov.uk by 21 January.  Graded 2 for difficulty

Ancestry West Midlands Police Records – this could be the most fiddly project to join as it requires you to have an Ancestry account (you can sign up for free with them) and download special transcription software from their Ancestry World Archives Project page.  The project aims to index constabulary records from the mid-19^th century to the 1940s.  Graded 2 for difficulty.

FamilySearch Parish Registers – including parishes from a variety of English counties, this year’s FamilySearch project covers nonconformist church records.  Sign up at https://www.familysearch.org/indexing/.  After Transcription Tuesday, you can continue indexing with FamilySearch on their wide range of records from around the world.  This is an ideal project if you haven't transcribed or indexed records before.  Graded 1 for difficulty

Transcription Tuesday is a great way to collaborate and give back to the genealogy community.  You could even get together with family or fellow genealogists and hold your own transcription event.  If you use social media, you can share how you're participating on Twitter with the hashtag #TranscriptionTuesday or on Facebook at the WDYTYA Magazine group.

The Sensational and the Factual

Back in May last year, I wrote a post covering a few free online newspaper websites (you can see it here).  The other day I noticed one of the subscription newspaper services promoting their access to the Illustrated London News, and I thought, “That’s odd, I was sure there was a free website for that.”  

And, indeed, there is: John Weedy’s Collection of the ILN from Victorian times to 1973.  Browse his site to experience the sensational and the factual.  Listed for each issue are headlines, sometimes obituaries, fascinating cover pages and other illustrations. You can also choose a specific year to explore using the grid section of the page. 

This led me to revisit the free newspaper sites I have bookmarked on my web browser, some of which I've listed below.  Then as now, journalists wrote and published stories from around the world, so you shouldn’t dismiss searching for your relatives in newspapers from other countries – you could find them mentioned in the last place you’d expect. 

📜 Papers Past – the website of the National Library of New Zealand, which contains not only newspapers but magazines, journals, letters, diaries, and parliamentary papers.  Search using your own terms, or explore by title or region.

📜 Trove –  hosted by the Australian National Library.  I covered this site in last year’s post, and yesterday they posted an appeal for help in correcting the text in their online news collections.  Since much of the indexed text has been interpreted by computer, there are errors that will be obvious to human eyes and easy to edit.  This is a great way to “give back” to the research resources you enjoy at no cost, as it will increase the accuracy of search results.  Learn more about the project here. 

📜 Chronicling America – the United States Library of Congress hosts digitised newspaper images from 1789 to 1963.  These are searchable by keywords, dates and states, or if you know the name of the newspaper, by title.

📜 Old Fulton New York Postcards – despite the name, this low-tech site covers newspapers from the U.S. and Canada for 1795-2007.  Enjoy listening to some vintage radio drama while you search the site, and be sure to peruse the Help page, which also includes a link to let you browse the historical photos and papers that the site holds.

I couldn’t finish this whistle-stop tour of free newspaper collections without mentioning the fantastic services provided by public libraries and archives around the world.  If you like nothing more than leafing through the original newspapers your ancestors would have read, this is a superb option.  Contact your nearest library or record repository to find out about their hard-copy collections.

Do Something Different in 2020!

Are you looking for inspiration, motivation, focus in your research for the coming year?  Maybe 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks can help.  It’s not a programme, not necessarily a commitment (at least not to anyone but yourself!) – it’s simply a tool you can use to search for, write about, organise, or photograph someone or something in your family tree.  

Perhaps your research notes have been piling up over the last while (it's OK, we all suffer from this 🌝), or you’ve been meaning to sort through some family memorabilia.  Use Amy Johnson Crow’s #52Ancestors prompt as a reminder to yourself – and then share what you do or find.  Amy suggests:

“You can blog, post on your favorite social media, send an email to your cousins -- whatever you want to do to share something about that ancestor. The point is to get you to take that knowledge that you have and the discoveries that you've made and get them out of the filing cabinet/computer/pile of papers and do something with it. How you share it is up to you. (If you do post something on social media, please feel free to use the #52Ancestors hashtag!)”

You can learn all about the idea and sign up for the free prompts at Amy's website - but it’s entirely up to you how you decide to use it. You could continue for a short time and then set it aside, permanently or temporarily.  You might be inspired to begin another, more personalised family history activity or to take your research in an altogether different direction.  What matters is that you feel motivated to start, maybe by doing a simple thing like sharing a photo with a relative – which could spark a conversation about your family.

Meanwhile, if you're looking for some instant inspiration, check out my previous blog post of quick-fix, moneysaving bite-size family history activities.

However you decide to continue working on your family tree in 2020, I wish you every success and hope you’ll return here often for more ideas and inspiration to help you.  Happy New Year!

Festive Family History Greetings!

I hope you have a peaceful and happy Christmas, and wish you all the best for 2020.  More frugal family history tips in the year to come!

(Photo credit: wallace1298 at https://www.deviantart.com/wallace1298/art/Nollaig-chridheil-agus-bliadhna-mhath-ur-721038685
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License)

Money-saving tips for family historians

January 2020 issue of Family Tree

Normally, I wouldn't recommend spending your hard-earned cash on a magazine, but in this case I'm prepared to make an exception, as it has advice on doing family history for free.  The January issue of Family Tree contains an article written by the Frugal Family Historian, full of money-saving genealogy tips.  Available in all good UK newsagents! 😊

Free Apps for Family History On The Go!

Who Do You Think You Are? magazine's forum app

There seems to be a mobile app for just about anything these days, including family history.  The ones I’ve listed below are, naturally, all free to download and use, although companies like Ancestry and FindMyPast charge for the full use of their main websites. 

Free apps are, in effect, a method of attracting new customers for the commercial organisations.  They can be extremely useful when you are away from home and don’t have access to your records, especially when the opportunity arises for some unexpected research!

Some apps allow you to organise, access, and investigate your family tree while on the go, in different ways.  Others are specifically aimed at graveyard research, either remotely or on-site.  This blog post is not meant to be a comprehensive listing by any means, and of course there are other apps which you can buy for your phone or tablet.  I've just chosen a few with which I'm familiar.

BillionGraves App

BillionGraves in particular is aimed at encouraging users to photograph cemetery headstones and upload pictures to its website.  It uses GPS technology to help you locate a gravesite when you’re out and about, and to share what you find with other users.

Similarly, FindAGrave has introduced this function with their app, powered by Ancestry, and you can learn how to use it by clicking on the “Tutorials” button on the website.

Most (if not all) of these apps are available for Android and Apple devices.  There is no charge for any of them.  Some of those that enable you to access your online tree are

☙  Ancestry

☙  FamilySearch Family Tree

☙  FindMyPast

☙  Heredis

If you’ve ever tried to photograph a page of a book or document, only to find your picture is unreadable, consider using an app such as CamScanner which acts more like a scanning device than a camera, producing sharper images.  Just make sure you download the free basic account.

Finally, Who Do You Think You Are? magazine has an app to connect you to its user forum, where you can ask and answer genealogy questions - very handy if you're visiting a new ancestral area and the archives are closed for the day!

Frugal Family History Tip  Remember to read an app’s customer reviews as well as all the product information in your online store before deciding to download it.  Frequent updates can mean changes in the way an app functions, and users are normally quick to point out any glitches or faults that may have developed. 

Time Travel

Gearrannan Blackhouse Village, Isle of Lewis, Outer Hebrides

Do you remember the first boost you got in researching your family's history?

I was about 18 years old and a friend who knew my heritage referred me to someone he thought would have useful information on my father’s side.  Dad’s family came from North Uist, a small island parish in the Western Isles of Scotland, and apparently someone local to me had researched many families of these islands, the Outer Hebrides.  I rang this gentleman and he asked me a little about my parentage.  He excused himself to get a file, and a few moments later said, “Then your grandparents must be…”  The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.  I made an appointment to visit and find out what else this man knew about my ancestors.

And it turned out he knew more than possibly anybody else on the planet.  Bill Lawson was then, and is now even more so, the most knowledgeable Hebridean genealogist, having interviewed and researched thousands upon thousands of individuals whose blood flows from these islands, not only in Scotland but across the ocean.  Last night a documentary about the remarkable work he carried out together with his late wife Chris aired on the Gaelic TV channel BBC Alba (pronounced ‘Alabah’).  Don’t worry if, like me, you don’t speak Gaelic – subtitles are provided.  I highly recommend that you watch it.

Bill Lawson (Photo courtesy of BBC Alba)

For me, seeing this programme was like travelling back in time to the day I visited Bill in his Paisley flat in the late 1970s.  His extensive library, his extraordinarily detailed and well-organised files of families from Lewis to Barra, his prodigious knowledge and astonishing memory were all still there.  If it were not for him and his willingness to share what he has collected, myself and countless other family historians would be struggling to piece together a much smaller jigsaw.  He is, quite simply, my family history hero.

If you are able to watch BBC television programmes, this link should take you to the documentary, "Bill Lawson - Sar Shloinntear (The Genealogist)" https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000c088