According to a Chicago Tribune article,

If all goes as planned, newly digitized versions of county records such as birth and death certificates and marriage licenses will be available beginning in January on one searchable Web site that will revolutionize how such research is done, [Cook County Clerk David] Orr said…

The Web site is part of a massive yearlong effort to digitize the county’s 24 million vital records, which date to 1871, when record-keeping began after the Chicago Fire wiped out previous stockpiles, clerk’s office spokeswoman Kelley Quinn said.

The records have been scanned and indexed are are currently being loaded into a server and the website should be available in January. Once a record is found, there will be a fee to download and print non-certified copies of the records.

This is a really neat picture sent in from Lora Herrera. Click on the image to enlarge it. Thanks for sharing it with us Lora!

This photo was taken in Franklin County, Pennsylvania sometime in the late 1800s. Among the women in the photo is my great great grandmother, Charlotte Cozar Calimer (1856-1935), sitting to the left in the background, her face partially visible.  Plucking the feathers from the birds was one of the jobs Charlotte did from time to time to help support her family. 
 
Lora Herrera

 

A mind always employed is always happy. This is the true secret, the grand recipe, for felicity.
~ Thomas Jefferson

Posted This Week:

• Arizona Marriage Collection, 1864-1982 (Updated)
• Varmland, Sweden, Parish Records, 1661-1895 (176,990 records)
• Social Security Death Index (Updated through July 2007) 
• View a list of all new and updated databases 
• Learn more about what’s new at Ancestry.com 
• Search the Ancestry.com Card Catalog

In honor of Labor Day, take a look at some occupations of your ancestors and learn more about the impact your ancestors’ work might have had on their lives. Learn more about how to do this by reading Celebrate Ancestral Occupations, by Paula Stuart-Warren. And don’t forget to make a record of more contemporary occupations too. Start with your own and include your resume in your family history. Future generations will want to know more about the jobs you’ve held too!

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In last week’s newsletter, I began a series of articles that will take a look at the various search options available at Ancestry. This week’s installment will focus on Exact Search. The Exact Search stands in stark contrast to the Ranked Search, which we discussed last week. Where the Ranked Search is a bit “fuzzy,” the Exact Search is precise. It does exactly what we tell it to do–much like we’d all like our children to behave!

The danger here is that one piece of information not entered exactly as it appears in the database can throw the whole search. With Exact Search, less is more–the less information you add, the more hits you get. That’s why it’s best when doing an exact search, you want to start with just a few basic facts and then narrow your search slowly until you get a manageable number of hits. Rotate in and out different pieces of information, based on which search terms are more or less likely to be correct. For example, a given name is probably less likely to be misinterpreted by a transcriber than a surname, particularly an uncommon surname.

How Do I Do an Exact Search?
To start an Exact Search, simply check the box at the top of the search template that says, “Exact Matches Only.” As I mentioned last week, you want to be aware what type of search you’re performing because this option is “sticky”–it will default to the last search type you used. I try to make it a habit when I’m entering my search criteria to double check and make sure I want the type of search that is selected. Sometimes I swear gremlins come in and change it on me.

Exploring the “Less is More” Concept
To illustrate the “less is more” concept, let’s do a “play-along search” like the one we did last week. From the Advanced Search page, enter:

John Szucs, born in 1906 in the U.S.A. in Ohio Continue reading →

You never know where the next clue in your genealogical odyssey will appear. Sometimes, if you’re like me, you take the information provided by the only resources you have–family stories and traditions–and run with them. After a while, though, you begin to think that someone threw you a curve ball, perhaps inadvertently or perhaps not. You reexamine everything you have and then try to make some sense of it. When it doesn’t make any more sense than it did before, this is called a BRICK WALL! I know that I’ve had any number of them, and that most of them have been cracked, broken, demolished, and/or swept away through collaboration with other researchers.

I have been seeking the details about my great-uncle Brisco Holder for more than twenty years. I have searched census records, posted messages on message boards and mailing lists, searched in libraries and archives, and tried in vain to research the veracity of family stories. All of this has been to no avail–until recently. Let me share the story as briefly as I can. Continue reading →

Many genealogists use obituaries as a part of their research. They can easily be a clue to additional records or sources, but must be used with care. It is important to remember that the information contained in an obituary can be incorrect, misleading, or incomplete. The confusion is compounded when an obituary contains all three errors.

The deceased might have been married three times, but only the last spouse is listed in the obituary. Children of the deceased may be named, but they may not have the same set of both parents and none may be the child of the spouse listed in the obituary. Lists of children may even be incomplete, especially if there has been a family squabble or an estrangement.

Individuals listed as children may actually be step-children of the deceased. The step-parent/step-child bond may have been a very strong one and the step-parent may have been a parent to the child in all the important ways, but the obituary may not make the distinction which the genealogist typically wants to make.

And there can easily be unintentional errors due to inaccurate knowledge on the part of the obituary informant.

An obituary may be an important part of your genealogical research, but the information it contains should be used with care and as a pointer to other records. Many times the obituary’s purpose is to notify newspaper readers of the death and funeral of the deceased. Those details are usually correct; other details should be used with caution.

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Month-by-Month Scrapbook of Tradition
My parents, born in the early 1900s in Newfoundland, Canada, rarely talked about their lives growing up. A few years ago, as scrapbooking came into vogue and with so much info available on the Web, I thought, “Why not do an album based on the months of the year in my parents lives?” I loved the project and it took about six months.

Life was very hard for my parents and fishing was paramount, so weddings, parties, etc. were done in the off-season. I found out what a wedding entailed and what clothes were worn, etc. I looked at deaths (viewings at home), and related traditions. They held a “Mummers’ Parade” at Christmas. There were so many traditions that I’d known nothing about–what their daily life was like, how important the church was, singing–they loved creating songs–and having ‘kitchen parties.’
 
I learned so much that I’d never known and recommend this to your readers.
 
Carolyn ‘Whiffen’ Murray Continue reading →

The year was 1807 and Europe was embroiled in the Napoleonic Wars. By this time Napoleon had solidified his hold on Western Europe and victories to the east, particularly at Friedland, would lead to the Peace of Tilsit between Russia, Prussia, and France. 

Late in 1806, Napoleon had declared that no French and allied ports should allow trade with its enemy, Great Britain. Denmark was at the time neutral in the conflict, but Britain feared that it would fall to Napoleon and with it, the Danish fleet. Britain demanded custody of the fleet and upon refusal, in early September, began the bombardment of Copenhagen. After four days of bombing, Denmark surrendered its fleet of seventeen ships of the line, seventeen frigates, sixteen smaller vessels, and twenty-six gunboats to Britain. Denmark sided with France for the remainder of the war.

In March, the U.S. Congress passed “An Act to prohibit the importation of slaves into any port or place within the jurisdiction of the United States, from and after the first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and eight.” Britain followed shortly after with the Slave Trade Act of 1807, which prohibited British ships from engaging in slave trade and imposed a fine of £100 per slave. 

There was tension between Britain and the United States and that tension brought the countries closer to war when the H.M.S. Leopard opened fire on the U.S.S. Chesapeake to forcibly capture four alleged British deserters. Only one of the captured men was proven to be a deserter and the attack killed three men and wounded eighteen more. In response, U.S. President Thomas Jefferson issued a proclamation ordering British ships out of U.S. territorial waters.

With Britain continuing to impress U.S. sailors into service in the Royal Navy, Jefferson was pushed to further action. (In early 1808 James Madison reported the number of impressed seamen as 4,028.) In December, Congress passed the Embargo Act which prohibited all trade outside U.S. ports. While it manages to temporarily keep the country out of war, it had little impact on its desired targets and overall did more harm to U.S. merchants.

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