I suspect many of you begin your day like I do, browsing through my local newspaper over breakfast. I know some of my ancestors did the same thing. I can remember my grandparents coming to visit and poring over every item in the newspaper, exchanging sections, and discussing items of interest. In a letter he wrote home during World War I, my grand-uncle requests that my great-grandfather send him copies of the local newspaper to read while he was stationed in France.

These days we not only have the current news available online, we can travel through time and read the same news that our ancestors sat down and read over their morning joe. Ancestry.com doubled the size of its Historical Newspaper Collection last year and it includes not only newspapers from the U.S., but also from Canada, England, and Scotland.

Next time you sit down and browse through the local news, take a few extra minutes and browse through a local paper from an ancestor’s era. If their hometown paper isn’t available, look for the newspapers of nearby towns or larger cities. They’ll still carry the same national stories and discuss the latest trends, and you may run across stories relevant to your ancestor’s lives.

Click here to search the Historical Newspaper Collection at Ancestry.

Moving Between Censuses
Never assume that a family resided in the same place between censuses. When available, another good resource is the state census. Some states such as Illinois and Kansas had state censuses which were done every ten years, between federal censuses (1825, 1835, etc).

For many years I tried to figure out why a few branches of my husband’s line left Dunklin County, Missouri, and ended up in Alexander County, Illinois. I looked at the 1865 census to see if they had moved there by that time. I didn’t find them in Alexander County but did find them in Massac County, Illinois.

To my surprise I also found my husband’s direct-line great-great-grandparents as well as a long lost half-brother of that great-great-grandfather. His great-great-grandparents had moved back to Dunklin County by 1870 to the same area they were living in 1860, so checking the 1865 state census alerted me to the fact that they had moved around between censuses.

Why did they leave? The family was originally from Indiana. The area in which they lived in Dunklin County, Missouri, was populated with more Confederate sympathizers than Union. The family most likely left to not only support but allow some family members to join the Union forces.

Debbi Geer
St Ann, Missouri Continue reading →

The year was 1836 and the Texas Declaration of Independence from Mexico was hurriedly drawn up even as General Antonio López de Santa Anna and 4,000 Mexican troops surrounded the Alamo where less than 200 Texans were besieged for eleven days. At the end of the siege, more than 180 of the rebels were killed and “Remember the Alamo!” became a rallying cry in the fight for Texas independence.

Texans were even more enraged when nearly 400 more rebels who had surrendered were executed and burned at Goliad, Texas. 

The tide turned when 900 Texans under the leadership of General Sam Houston launched a surprise attack on Santa Anna’s 1,200 troops at San Jacinto on April 21st. In eighteen minutes, half of the Mexican troops were killed and Texans had taken control of the camp. General Santa Anna was captured the following day and his defeat gave birth to the Republic of Texas.

In the Midwestern United States, larger territories were being carved into smaller territories that eventually became states. As a part of this process, in 1836, Crawford, Brown, and Michilimackinac Counties split off of Michigan Territory to become Wisconsin Territory.

The formation of Wisconsin Territory was a step toward Michigan Territory becoming a state, which would happen the following year. But another step needed to be taken to maintain the fragile balance between slave and free states. To keep the number of states equal, southern leaders wanted Arkansas to be granted statehood and on 15 June 1836 it became the 25th state.

After the South Australian Colonisation Act of 1834 became law in February 1836, the first ships bound for the new colony left England with 600 immigrants.

1836 was an important year for family historians in the UK as legislation passed an act requiring the registration of births, marriages, and deaths. The law would go into effect in July of the following year. 

Contributed by Lavender Borden
This is a photo of my third great-grandfather, John Foxall Wathew, born 1805 in Walsall, England, died 1872. He was a goldsmith and watchmaker. I was sent the photo by someone I have never met, through the Internet.

Click on an image to enlarge it.

Contributed by Carri Maioriello, Los Angeles, California
This is a photograph of my third great-grandmother, Mary Higgins Dowd, born 1822 in County Cork, Ireland. She immigrated to Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1891. The photo was probably taken between 1860-1880 in County Cork, Ireland.

This week I was thrilled to see the addition of 987,415 U.S. Naturalization Records to the site. These are images of the original documents, which are loaded with great information. This release includes records from the states of New York, Pennsylvania and California.

In an effort to get these records out to you sooner rather than later, Ancestry released the images with a light index including name, state, record type, court type, court, court location, naturalization number, roll description and archive series. To capture the remaining rich information (birth date and place, country of origin, parents, occupation, residence, etc.), these records will soon be released to the World Archives Project. You can learn more about the World Archives Project at www.ancestry.com/worldarchivesproject.

Here’s a sample from the naturalization collection for Eugene Razler who was living in New York. (Note, this is only one of the pages. There are actually four pages of documentation for Eugene.) Click on the image to enlarge it.

Click here to search the U.S. Naturalization database.

 

“A Conference for the Nation’s Genealogists” is an annual event of the Federation of Genealogical Societies. It moves all around the U.S. and the 2-5 September, 2009 host is the Arkansas Genealogical Society and the place is Little Rock, Arkansas. The conference theme is Passages Through Time which symbolizes the journey taken as we learn more about our ancestors, their place in history, and the lives they led.

Join your fellow family historians, librarians, editors, archivists, historians, writers, professional genealogists, software developers, book and database vendors, volunteers, and the growing number of younger genealogists as we network, learn, share, and even have some fun. You might meet a 3rd cousin you didn’t know about or someone from an ancestral home town.

The FGS conference registration system is alive & kicking. It’s simple to find: just click on this link for the FGS Conference Website www.FGSConference.org.  Once you are on the page, the links to the conference program and registration are on the left. The registration link for the Exhibit Hall is also live.

Choose from more than 160 lectures, workshops, and other learning opportunities presented by speakers from all over the U.S. over the course of four days. With the conference in Little Rock, there are plenty of sessions related to Arkansas roots, but the program offers something for just about everyone. Lectures about research in other states, on specific ethnic groups, libraries and archives, research methodology, technology, migration, military records, and some unique topics will grab your interest. A special feature of the first day is a selection of lectures devoted to assisting volunteers running genealogy societies and their websites, publications, classes, meetings, and special events.

This year’s conference is being held in Little Rock’s Statehouse Convention Center. The Exhibit Hall, on-site registration area, and the lecture rooms are conveniently located in the same building that is easily walkable. One host hotel, the Peabody, is attached to the convention center. The Doubletree is less than a block’s walk.

Be sure to click on the button for the Conference Blog www.FGSConferenceBlog.org to learn more conference details, about the city of Little Rock, the hotels, the trolley for getting around and about the lectures, speakers, and special events. The blog is updated frequently.

FGS and AGS invite you to join us as we learn more about Passages Through Time.

About FGS
The Federation of Genealogical Societies was founded in 1976 and represents the members of more than 500 genealogical societies. More information about FGS is available online at www.fgs.org

All my life I have tried to pluck a thistle and plant a flower wherever the flower would grow in thought and mind.
~ Abraham Lincoln

U.S. Deluxe

• Social Security Death Index (Updated through December 2008)

World Deluxe

• England & Wales, Birth Index: 1916-2005 (Updated) 
• New South Wales, Australia, Certificates of Naturalization,
  1849-1903

More…

• View a list of all new and updated databases
• Learn more about what’s new at Ancestry.com 
• Search the Ancestry.com Card Catalog
   

Ever wondered what great-grandma’s hometown in Ireland looked like? Google the town. Need to know if a historical figure has ties to your family history? Google his or her biography. Is that disease great-grandmother and her sister died of hereditary? Google the disease. Where did grandma get that crazy teapot? Google the manufacturer’s name that is on the bottom and add some descriptive keywords. In many cases, the answers to questions like these are just a few clicks away.