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Jun 2006 Issue
by LaRae Free Kerr
It’s Clear the Clutter time! Inevitably, as I collect materials for columns, I have snippets of advice, addresses and URLs that pile up. They’re all valuable but not big
enough to warrant their own columns. It’s time to clean up. Hopefully, some of my clutter-clearing will be priceless to you.
Exciting new programs are coming to genealogy through the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. To learn more view the PowerPoint presentation by David Rencher at www.familysearch.org. When the welcome page comes up, click on “recent and Archive articles” then “FGS conference sees bright future” and finally, “A Sneak Peak.”
The most important points from this lecture are first, the reiteration that indexing by volunteers world-wide has begun (email FCH-InternetIndexing@ldschurch.org to volunteer); second, instead of continuing to use location as the prime finding tool, name searches will soon be possible on most records at familysearch; and third, all records in the Granite Mountain vault will be digitized which makes the name searching possible. These three steps plus the LDS Church’s determination to make connecting pedigrees feasible will revolutionize genealogy research, I believe.
An example of the usefulness of a name search over a locality search can be found at www.genealogical.com, the sales site of the Clearfield Company of Baltimore, MD. Most commercial book sellers let you look up the locality and make a wild guess as to whether your ancestors are included. But on this site, you can look up your ancestor’s full name. I was nonplussed to find books with nuggets about my ancestors I have not yet searched! If I can’t find the listed books in libraries, I can buy the CDs. Many of the CDs are discounted at any given time. This URL is going on my favorites list.
Rencher, in his Power Point presentation, also mentions that 5,000 of 170,000 published family histories whose copyrights have expired are being digitized and are available from the Harold B. Lee Library at BYU. Please note that these are not usually Mormon histories. To access these histories go to www.lib.byu.edu. Go to “online collections at BYU” then “All Collections.” Scroll way down to “Family History Archives.”
Or just go to www.lib.byu.edu/fhc/ and enter ancestors’ names.
Be sure to check “Upper Snake River Valley Idaho Histories” and “Overland Trails” which includes diaries of people who traveled the Mormon, California and Oregon Trails, and any other collections that might include family information. Wouldn’t it be great to find a family photo, for example.
To access an index to letters, diaries, oral histories and personal narratives from more than 2,500 collections of oral history in English from around the world, go to www.inthefirstperson.com. Information from more than 9,000 individuals is indexed. Even if you don’t find a relative, you may find details about an occupation or locality useful to your family history.
The University of New Hampshire Library’s Government Documents Department has digitized 1,500 USGS topographical maps for the New England states and New York. The long out-of-print maps cover the 1890’s to the 1950’s and can be accessed at http://docs.unh.edu/nhtopos/nhtopos.htm. (from “Show Me” State Genealogical News. Winter 2005).
The Federal Resources for Educational Excellence (FREE) federally-supported site includes resources from more than 35 federal organizations, many of which are valuable to historians and researchers. Go to www.ed.gov/free and type “family history” in the search slot to find instructions for oral histories; explanations for the necessity of primary documents; manuscripts from the Federal Writers’ Project 1936-1940; stories from the American Veterans project and many more.
Enter “DNA” in the search slot to find material explaining how cells and DNA work. Everything on the site is available to school teachers, so often the materials work well for parents and children. Enter your state of interest to find historical maps, first-person narratives, treatises on forts and wildlife as well as ethnic communities, though not all topics are available for all states. Look under pioneers for activities for children or any other topic useful to your research.
For those whose ancestors settled in Kansas Territory, Kansas State Historical Society and the Kansas Collection, University of Kansas have put together a virtual repository for Territorial Kansas 1854-1861 at www.territorialkansasonline.org. This site includes government documents, diaries, letters, photographs, maps, newspapers, rare secondary sources and historical artifacts for those who experienced “bleeding Kansas.”
Kansas’ neighbor, Illinois, has several historical/genealogical facilities online. The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library (formerly the Illinois State Historical Society) URL is www.alplm.org. The Illinois State Archives, whose card indexes I wrote about recently, can be searched at www.sos.state.il.us/departments/archives/archives.html.
Find out about vital records at www.idph.state.il.us/vitalrecords. The Illinois State Genealogical Society address is www.rootsweb.com/~ilsgs.
Great clutter, wouldn’t you say? Hope some of it was really good for you.
To contact LaRae Free Kerr, M ED: itsallrelatives@sfcn.org.
