Transcript Internet Genealogy

Michael J Denis, ([email protected])
Parksville, KY,
for the Boyle County Public Library
23 July 2012
 Learn about some Internet resources which are




available for genealogists
Explore both paid and free websites
Learn how to find information in those websites
Learn searching techniques that will make it easier,
more effective, and less time-consuming to find what
you seek
I assume you have (1) basic familiarity with the Internet
and computer; (2) have begun your family tree; and (3)
understand basic genealogical concepts
 ALWAYS use your common sense. I have seen ALL
these examples, and more.
 An ancestor with 5 children born a year apart, with
numbers 1, 3 and 5 born in Virginia and 2 and 4 born in
England make no sense.
 An ancestor born in 1730 is unlikely to have children
born after 1800, nor are her children likely to have been
born before 1740.
 Find an old US History textbook at a yard sale or flea
market. Using it will show you that your Irish ancestor
probably was NOT born in North Dakota in 1643.
 Just because YOU spell a name a certain way does not
mean your ancestor or other people then spelled it that
way – use metaphone or phonetic searches when
possible. “SOUNDEX” does not work as well.
 It’s unlikely for an ancestor to have two or even three
children with the exact same name unless earlier ones
died. I found one family that had four girls, same
name, same birth and same death dates.
 The date you have may not be correct. When
searching, always use a range (+/- 2 years, 5 years)
unless you are SURE, and even then, a range might
yield better results.
 The earlier the record, the more likely it will be
accurate – birth records are better than death records
for knowing when the person was born.
 There ARE errors in official records; if dates are
different, record BOTH unless you are sure one is
wrong.
 Don’t necessarily believe “family traditions” -grandma was the grand-daughter of a Cherokee
princess. She probably wasn’t.
 Don’t accept someone else’s family tree as being
accurate – stick to historical records as much as you
can. Many researchers don’t use common sense.
Using other people’s family trees for information will
show you very quickly how wrong information can be
propagated WIDELY and WILDLY.
 Keep track of siblings of ancestors; you may find a
breakthrough by way of a brother or sister.
 DOCUMENT, DOCUMENT, DOCUMENT – you don’t
want to go back years later to find where you learned
the information. Been there, done that.
 Ancestry.com at www.ancestry.com is the most
complete and has the greatest variety of sources, both
US and worldwide.
 Cost is $20 a month for the US collection, $30 a month
for the Worldwide collection, but paying by the year
costs less than 12 months.
 Fold 3 at http://www.fold3.com is useful for military
records; cost is $80 a year, but it’s FREE with
membership to the Kentucky Historical Society.
 There are many others, but the cost/value is not a good
deal. Many say “Free” or “Free Trial” but either have less
info than other sites or their free trial is so limited as to
be nearly useless.
 www.familysearch.net is probably the best free site. It is
owned and operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints (The Mormons), but may be used by
anyone.
 www.rootsweb.ancestry.com is also free and has many
resources. In terms of actual records, it is not as
complete as FamilySearch or Ancestry. However, its
family trees and message boards are useful.
 www.ancestry.org is a free website affiliated with
Ancestry.com that has numerous genealogy lessons and
“how to” articles.
 www.cyndislist.com is the Internet’s most complete list
of websites – every topic imaginable.
 www.findagrave.com is a collection of user-submitted
“memorials” for cemeteries world-wide. Even with
80+ million memorials, they estimate they only have
1/10 of the stones recorded that exist; however, it IS
well worth a try and it’s free.
 www.facebook.com – has many genealogy “groups”.
Click “Like” to “join” and find others who are searching
for your people, or just to ask questions, even “how to”
questions, or even start your own family “group.”
 CAUTION with Facebook – privacy issues have
plagued FB even more than the IPO. Set
EVERYTHING to “friends only” wherever you can.
 https://www.facebook.com/genealogytip on Facebook,
just what it says, tip of the day.
 www.facebook.com/KentuckyGenealogy?ref=ts is a
Kentucky genealogy group on Facebook.
 http://www.americanancestors.org/free-databases/,
the non-members accessible portion of the New
England Historic Genealogical Society’s website,
several free databases, concentrating on New England.
 Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter at
http://blog.eogn.com contains 3-5 articles daily; there
is also a subscription version.
 Go to http://search.ancestry.com/search/default.aspx?
 You won’t have access to much without paying.
 Type a first (and middle if appropriate) name in “First
and Middle Names”
 Type a surname in “Last Name.” For married women,
use the maiden name; if you don’t find her, use her
married name.
 Where the drop-down box says “Use default settings”,
click on it and change it to “Restrict to EXACT matches”
and check “PHONETIC Matches”. The default setting
will return hundreds or thousands of wrong leads.
 Checking for phonetic matches will catch various
spellings of the name, as long as they SOUND LIKE
the name you type in – Harlan and Harland, Buster
and Bustard, or Kincade, Kinkaid, Kincaide.
 On places, start with “Restrict to this place exactly.”
If you don’t get enough results, expand to “County,”
“Adjacent Counties”, and keeping working out.
 Under “Collection Priority”, if you’re searching the
US, use the dropdown box to select “United States”
and check the box that says “Show only records from
these collections.”
 www.ancestry.org is a free portion of ancestry.com
and has numerous helpful “how to” articles.
 Their message boards may be useful for asking
questions or finding out what others are researching;
often YOU may find clues in the questions OTHERS
ask.
 If you use “Family Tree Maker” for your genealogy
program, Ancestry automatically synchronizes
Family Tree Maker with your tree on Ancestry.com.
 Also, anyone who you invite to edit your tree on
Ancestry.com, will have their updates automatically
added to your version of FTM.
 Log on to https://familysearch.org/.
 NOTE this is “https” not “http”. Using “http” yields a




different, but less useful, website.
Some records are searchable, others are images to
browse.
Their records are worldwide with strong concentrations
in the US, Canada and northern and western Europe.
Clicking “Learn” at the top gets you into free articles and
courses to help you.
The articles are also in Deutsch, Español, Français,
Italiano, 日本語, 한국어, Português, Русский, Svenska
and 中文.
 Go to http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi
 Type in SURNAME
 In drop-down box, select “metaphone” – that way you’ll
get all names that “sound like” the surname you typed
 Type in GIVEN NAME
 Enter a birth, death, or marriage year and use “+-5
years” to narrow down unless you KNOW the exact year.
 For PLACE, start general (Kentucky), then move to
specific if needed (Danville)
 Enter “Father,” “Mother,” “Spouse” if known.
 Check “Has Descendants,” “Has Notes,” and “Has
Sources” for the most complete results.
 ONCE AGAIN, these are user-submitted family trees.
Use them ONLY as a guide, not as a Gospel.
 The Rootsweb discussion boards can yield much
information. It is organized geographically, topically
and by surname. The Boyle County board had 1045
threads with 2459 messages as of June 18.
http://boards.rootsweb.com/?o_iid=33216&o_lid=33216
&o_sch=Web+Property
 Also an Ancestry.com website, but free to use many of
their services.
 http://genforum.genealogy.com/index.html, their
message boards, are FREE and are very useful.
 Their family trees have the same issues that
Ancestry.com’s trees have – lack of accuracy – so use
with great caution.
 Typing names in quotations – “George Washington”
yields fewer results than George and Washington (49
million vs. 541 million).
 Adding a spouse in quotations – “George Washington”
“Martha Custis” cuts it down to 69,000.
 Adding “+family history” or “+genealogy” may help.
The “+” means the word or phrase MUST appear in the
result. Typing “George Washington” + “ family
history” yielded 1,280,000 results.
 Often, the first results are ads. Scroll down to get to
the “good stuff.”
 Salt River Genealogy (families of western Boyle Co) at




http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~kyboyle2/Index.h
tm
Boyle County Genealogical Association at
http://boylekygenealogy.org/
Kentucky Historical Society at
http://history.ky.gov/
Kentucky Historical Society digital collections at
http://www.kyhistory.com/cdm/ includes newspapers
and other historic artifacts
Kentuckiana Digital Library at http://kdl.kyvl.org/ has
historic newspapers, photographs, Sanborn fire
insurance maps
 Similar collections for Louisville, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio,
Virginia and Tennessee can be found at
http://digital.library.louisville.edu/,
http://www.idaillinois.org, http://www.in.gov.memories,
http://www.ohiomemory.org,
http://www.virginiamemory.com/collections and
http://diglib.lib.utk.edu/dlc/tdh.
 The Internet Archive at http://archive.org/index.php has
books as well as sound and moving images – all restrictionfree.
 Google Books at http://books.google.com/ has many free,
out-of-print family genealogies and local histories online.
Search for a name, then on the left click on “Free Google
eBooks”