Official blog of Genealogy Friends of Plano Libraries. Be sure to follow us on Facebook. Send news to newsletter@genealogyfriends.org
December 12th from 7-9:00pm, virtual
Church records is the topic for the December Roundtable discussion.
December 10th from 7-8:30pm, virtual and
in-person
The Leeds Method will be the topic of discussion at the
next DNA User Group session. See this method put into practice to help a GenFriends
member with a DNA problem. More information about the Leeds Method can be found
at https://www.danaleeds.com/the-leeds-method/.
A free tool to construct Leeds charts has been
developed by David Nowotnik of the Genealogy Association of Colleyville. This
tool, the Leeds Chart Generator, can be found at https://sites.google.com/view/colleyvillegenealogy/member-contributions/leeds-chart-generator.
David is hoping to participate in our DNA User Group session.
The Texas Czech Genealogical Society (TCGS) invites you to attend the January 25, 2025 in person event “From the Czech Lands to Texas” at the Caldwell Civic and Visitor Center. You do not have to be a TCGS member or of Czech heritage to attend. Everyone is welcome. Detailed information and registration forms are on the TCGS website https://www.txczgs.org under “Events” https://txczgs.org/
NARA has announced some new features in the Advanced Search. Researchers can now search the Catalog for all contributions: Tags, Comments, Extracted Text, and Transcriptions, and the page where the contribution is found is highlighted with a green box around the thumbnail and a link to the page. These improvements should make it easier to search the NARA catalog.
FamilySearch recently added 49.8 million new records from 49 countries including over 22 million additions to the United States City and Business Directories. This FamilySearch Blog article has more information and links.
Save up to 50% through December 2024 with the RootsMagic Holiday Special! Check out their sale here. Be sure to use the code HOLIDAY2024.
UPDATE - RootsMagic issued an update today, December 9th, to fix the Relationship Chart issue. For RootsMagic 10 users - According to a reply from the @rootsmagician to a post in the RootsMagic Users Facebook Group, do not run the Relationship Chart report or else you will lose data you subsequently add or edit in that session. An update with a fix will be released soon.
My Heritage announces the publication of four huge new collections of
names and stories extracted from newspaper pages on OldNews.com. The new
collections, containing more than 3.4 billion records, are searchable on
MyHeritage, with the full images of the newspaper pages available on OldNews.com via direct
links from MyHeritage. Additional collections still to be published in
December 2024 will collectively add more than 10 billion records to
MyHeritage’s historical database, expanding it by 50%!
Registration is now open for the Research Like A Pro With DNA Study Group facilitated by Diana Elder and Nicole Dyer with Family Locket Genealogists. Click here for more information and early bird registration. The Spring 2025 sessions start February 5th.
Sale extended through Dec 7th! American Ancestors Cyber
Monday Sale ends December 2, 2024. Enjoy $30 off a new membership.
Sale extended through Dec 8th! Get 50% off a full
year’s webinar membership (new memberships only) at Legacy Family Tree Webinars.
Learn more here. Offer expires December 6,
2024.
Newspaper.com is offering 40% off new Publisher Extra subscriptions now through December 8, 2024. Click here for details.
Fold3 Cyber Week Sale – 40% off now through December 8th for new memberships. View offer here.
Learn new skills with virtual on-demand Encore sessions from the 2024 TxSGS Family History Conference! Conference access is available for purchase through December 31, 2024 for access through February 2, 2025. Click here for details and to register.
FreeBMD is an ongoing project, the aim of which is to transcribe the Civil Registration index of births, marriages and deaths for England and Wales, and to provide free Internet access to the transcribed records at https://www.freebmd.org.uk/. The database was last updated on Wed 27 Nov 2024 and currently contains 295,385,672 distinct records (397,999,729 total records). On Tue 26 Nov 2024 FreeBMD users did 206,777 searches. (More information)
The Complete Guide to FamilyTreeDNA: Y-DA, Mitochondrial, Autosomal and X-DNA by Roberta Estes is now available in full color. More information is available at the FamilyTreeDNA Blog.
Fold3 Cyber Week Sale –
40% off now through December 8th for new memberships. View offer here.
Newspaper.com is offering 40% off new
Publisher Extra subscriptions now through December 8, 2024. Click here for details.
NARA has partnered with FamilySearch to have AI extract the text from all 2,322,137 pages of the Case Files of Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Applications Based on Revolutionary War Service, ca. 1800 - ca. 1912! These records are available in the National Archives Catalog, https://catalog.archives.gov/id/300022?utm_campaign=AIandRevWarPensions&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter
Korean War era draft cards from Alaska and Wyoming are now available on Fold3. More states to follow in 2025. The Fold3 Blog has information here https://blog.fold3.com/korean-war-era-draft-registration-cards-now-available-on-fold3/
Top Ten AI Genealogy Breakthroughs of 2024 webinar by Steve Little is free through November 27th at Legacy Family Tree Webinars, https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/top-ten-ai-genealogy-breakthroughs-of-2024/ Steve is the AI Program manager for the National Genealogical Society. Learn more about him at https://aigenealogyinsights.com/author/digitalarchivst/
My Heritage is introducing LiveMemory: Bring Your Photos to Life in Video. It's free for a limited number of videos. https://blog.myheritage.com/2024/11/introducing-livememory-bring-your-photos-to-life-in-video/
Want to learn more about the history of Thanksgiving? The Mayflower Society has information about the history and customs here https://themayflowersociety.org/learn/thanksgiving/ You can also learn more about the Mayflower passengers at https://themayflowersociety.org/passenger-profiles/
November 14,
2024
Land records
were the topic for the November Roundtable Discussion Group. The discussion
reminded all of us that land records can be found with a variety of other
records, not just deeds.
Family Search is now offering a full text search as
one of their experiments in Family
Search Labs, and a link to it can be found as you scroll
down the homepage after logging in. Images are being added all the time. Clicking
on any of the buttons at the top of your search results will allow you to
filter further down to more specific years, locations, and types of records. The
summary of the document is helpful in deciphering the image and may also be
downloaded. Video tutorials have been created since the full text search was
announced earlier this year, but more recent videos such as this one from EasyGenie show the current search box.
It was noted
during the Roundtable meeting that land records are mentioned in numerous types
of documents including wills, probate, court records, etc., not just deeds. A
brief full text search in Family Search gave me further documentation placing
ancestors in specific areas at specific times. I also unexpectedly found in a
court case that my GGGrandparents who had always lived in Illinois owned land
in Comal County, Texas. The wife’s name was listed first in each mention
indicating she possibly inherited the property, and now I have more clues to
follow.
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), General Land Office (GLO) records site is an extensive
resource offering access to more than five million records including Federal
land titles, land patents, survey plats and field notes, tract books, and others.
In addition to their own records, GLO provides Resource Links for states and general research.
Their Reference Center includes a glossary to help us better understand land related terms.
Other
sources for land record information include:
Tax
records – The Family
Search wiki has some good information about tax records and includes links to articles about state-specific
taxation records here. The Ancestry Family History
Learning Hub also provides information about historical tax records in this article. Tax records can provide information
about the location, value, size, and type of property our ancestors lived on,
such as a farm or a home in town, and whether or not it was rented or owned.
Census
records – The
Federal census can provide a location and whether a property was owned or
rented. Some states also had a state census every five years which can provide
additional location and property records. Agricultural census schedules taken
in 1850, 1860, 1870, & 1880 recorded information about farm value,
livestock, and crops, but these did not include small farms. NARA offers some information about the Agricultural schedules and
other nonpopulation census records. There is a list by state showing where some
of these records can be found towards the bottom of the page. Some records are located
at sites such as Ancestry and Family Search while others are only found at
State Archives, State Historical Societies, etc.
Maps – Some of the types of maps we
talked about at the October Roundtable are also helpful for finding land
records. Plat maps list the owner of parcels of land. Gazetteers provide place
names, some no longer in use, which can help us narrow down the location of our
ancestors.
Old
newspapers – Land
transactions were often reported in the local newspaper.
Bounty
land records –
Family Search has a very informative wiki, United States Military
Bounty Land Warrants, providing information and research links. A Google search also brings
up free online resources such as Kentucky’s Revolutionary War
Warrants Database and
Library of Virginia’s Revolutionary War
Bounty Land Claims. These are both national databases, not state specific. Update - NARA has partnered with FamilySearch to have AI extract all pages of the Case Files of Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Applications Based on Revolutionary War Service, ca. 1800 - ca. 1912. They are available in the National Archives Catalog.
State,
county, and town records – State agencies such as a state archive, general land office, or
historical society are all good resources. County and city level entities will
also probably have some historical records. Any of these should also be able to
tell you where to locate records that they do not have. Area universities often
have historical holdings, too.
Road crew
records – This
source was new to me. A Google search for ‘historical road crew records Travis
County’ brought up the article Early Travis County
Road Records at
the Travis County Archives explaining how the road crews were chosen from the
residents in the area for work on those county roads. It also has links to
records viewable on the Portal to Texas History such as this book which includes local road maps with
property owners listed. Other searches I tried at the state and city levels
turned up a variety of results. These records are definitely worth checking into
especially if you know of a road with the same name as your ancestor who lived
in that area.
Deed
books – These are
usually recorded at the county level, and most counties have some records
online. The county website should have a link to the county recorder or
register’s office. Greenville County, South Carolina, has a very efficient Register of Deeds
Digital Archive site
allowing me to easily locate and view deeds and other information for ancestors
living there as early as the late 1700s. A different county in a different
state offered a free search giving the number of results, but they were only
viewable after paying a fee.
Laws – Each state has their own rules pertaining to how land is divided, bought, taxed, inherited, etc., and those laws can change over time. The Advancing Genealogist website has a tab, Law Library Index, with links to law information for many of the states, territories, and some special topics. This could be useful for trying to sort out an odd situation with your ancestor’s land.
'BLACK FRIDAY' DEALS ALREADY!'BLACK FRIDAY' DEALS ALREADY!
UPDATES!
Giving thanks for Citizen Archivists
