Genealogy and Local History Blog

Monthly Archive: April 2020

Genealogy

Genealogy: Civil War Ancestors

The American Civil War has been referred to the Civil War, War of the Rebellion, and the War Between the States. Whatever it’s called, many genealogists want to know if they had ancestors who fought in it. Today’s post will discuss ways to learn whether any of your ancestors wore the blue or the gray (or both!) between 1861 and 1865. To identify a potential Civil War soldier, determine his birthdate. Most soldiers and sailors were between 18 and 30 years old, and would have been born between 1831 and 1846. However, some of them could have been as young as 10 or as old as 70, so that widens the span to between 1791 and 1854. If your potential soldier died between April 1861 and June 1865 in a Southern state, or he was from a Southern state and died in a different Southern state, this may indicate that...

Genealogy

Genealogy: Revolutionary War Research

Many people doing genealogical research wonder if, or have been told that, their ancestors participated in the Revolutionary War, or the American War for Independence. Military action began with the confrontation between British troops and local militia at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, on 19 April 1775, and ended with the signing of the Treaty of Paris on 3 September 1783. This post will discuss a few ways for you to find out if one or more of your ancestors took part in the great event that started with “the shot heard ‘round the world.” During the course of your research, you may discover a clue that your ancestor might have participated in the war. Depending on what information that clue provides, you can use it to search for additional information that may confirm your findings. Even if you don’t find clues, there are other criteria you can use to determine...

Genealogy

Genealogy: Government Documents

Government documents are a little-known genealogical resource that can yield great benefits to genealogists. If your ancestors interacted with the federal government in some way, there may be records that document those transactions. Some kinds of these are well-known, such as federal census records, military records, passenger lists, and immigration and naturalization records. Today we’ll discuss a few of those records, along with a few that aren’t well-known, and show how you can access them. “A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation” Home page: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/ This free collection consists of a linked set of published congressional records (primary source documents) of the U. S. from the Continental Congress through the 43rd Congress, 1774-1875. All these materials may be viewed on-line as digital facsimile page images; some also have fully or partially searchable transcribed text. Two sets of documents on this site have great genealogical value – The U. S....

Genealogy

Genealogy: Black Sheep Ancestors

One kind of ancestor that genealogists may or not look forward to finding is a “black sheep” or “skeleton in the closet.” Researchers often chuckle about the so-called “horse thief” in the family. In some instances, there’s “that relative” that everyone knows about but nobody talks about. Black sheep ancestors are people who made bad or questionable choices, committed some kind of crime, or did something considered scandalous or roguish in their day. Several factors can determine how much researchers choose to reveal about such ancestors, depending on the type of misdeed, how long ago it occurred, and the presence and feelings of living relatives. There is no “blanket” answer to this question; each instance should involve looking at the ramifications of sharing. Probably the most important consideration involves living descendants and how discoveries might affect them. Some descendants may be fine with public knowledge of what happened, while others...

Genealogy

Genealogy: Court Records

Court records are important resources for genealogists for many reasons. They can establish family relationships, places of residence, and provide various kinds of family history information. Unfortunately, they tend to be difficult to use because they’re not usually well-indexed, there are many different kinds of records, and court names and jurisdictions changed over time. Also, researchers will need to learn lots of legal terms and abbreviations in order to understand the legalities in these documents. Fortunately, you can get a good basic understanding of court records and legal terminology by using some resources included later in this post. In the U. S. several types of courts exist. They include federal, state, and local courts, each designed to handle certain types of legal cases. The federal court system was established in  1789, and district courts were established in each state. Some states were divided into two or more districts as the...

Genealogy

Genealogy: Church Records

Church records can be a valuable asset to genealogical research in several ways. They began in the U. S. in the early 1600s, but civil registration or recording of births, marriages, and deaths was not generally required until after 1900. Sometimes church records are the only records containing vital record information. Therefore, they are a valuable substitute when vital records do not exist. Many churches of different denominations kept such records as births, baptisms or christenings, marriages, deaths, and burials. Unfortunately, many of these records have not survived, but it’s usually worthwhile to check with the church about availability. The types of records kept by churches depends on what mattered most to them in terms of their belief systems. These may include births, baptisms, christenings, communions, confirmations, admissions, removals, lists of Sunday school attendees, church censuses,  financial records, and even newsletters. The kind of information kept by a specific church...

Genealogy

Genealogy: Public Land Records

At the close of the American Revolution in 1783, the new United States was cash-poor and land-rich. To help fill the federal treasury and ensure an orderly settlement of lands west of the original 13 colonies, Congress devised a system of settlement to encourage westward movement. The result was the Rectangular Survey System (RSS) or Public Land Survey System (PLSS). This post is meant to give you an idea of how western lands in the U. S. were laid out for settlement and how you can find out if your ancestor bought some of this land from the federal government. The Land Ordinance of 1785 and Northwest Ordinance of 1787 established the PLSS to control the survey, sale, and settling of the new land. Land was systematically surveyed into square townships, six miles on each side. Each township was then subdivided into 36 sections of one square mile each, or...

Genealogy

Exploring Family History with Nancy: Virtual Collections

Genealogists want to physically visit libraries and other institutions to find their ancestors, but did you know that you can visit many of these places virtually through their digital collections? These resources may contain a wide variety of materials you can use to find your ancestors or supplement your family history with some local history. You may find books, maps, documents, photographs, and artifacts, just to name a few. These collections are available on state, public, academic, and special library web sites as well as historical and genealogical society sites. One good way to locate a digital library or collection is to Google search terms such as the state and/or locality and either “digital library” or “digital collections”. The first photo shows search results relating to Nebraska. We can see results from academic, public, and state libraries in just this short list. If we look at the digital collections of...

Exploring Family History With Nancy

Genealogy

Genealogy with Nancy: A Guide to Online Resources for Digitized Historical Books

Before the digitization of books, genealogists had to either visit a library in person to use a book or attempt to request it through interlibrary loan. Today there are an amazing number of FREE digitized books that genealogists can access with an Internet connection. Today we’re going to look at some web sites containing digitized historical books. FamilySearch The FamilySearch Digital Library is a free virtual online library of rare historic books contributed by large public libraries and societies that can help you discover rich, unknown details about the lives of your ancestors. This makes the Library a priceless online repository of some of the greatest hidden historic treasures. The collection, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, began in 2007 and is invaluable to genealogists and family historians. When you click on the link below, it will take you to the FamilySearch Digital Library. You need to be logged into...