The BIRLS Database

Reclaim the Records, a non-profit group of genealogists, historians, and researchers identify important genealogical record sets and try to get them moved to the public domain. One of the record groups that they were successful in getting access to is the Beneficiary Identification Records Locator Subsystem (BIRLS) database that was originally created by the US Department of Veterans Affairs. It provides an index to basic biographical information on more than 18 million deceased American veterans who received benefits from the VA in their lifetime. It includes all branches of the military. On their website you can make a free Freedom of Information Act request for a copy of the file for a deceased veteran. Here is the link to the page to make the FOIA request. 

TxSGS Offers Genealogy Essentials Program

 

January 13 to February 25, 2025

Whether you're new to family history or need help organizing and verifying the records you already have, "Genealogy Essentials" set you on the path to discovering your roots with confidence. All you need is a computer with sound and a desire to learn.  There are eight sessions, two sessions will be released each week. Participants can access the video-based lessons at their convenience, complete practical homework assignments, and engage in guided Zoom discussions with expert instructors each Saturday.  More information is available on the  TxSGS Website

Roundtable Recap – Church Records

December 12, 2024

Do you know what religion your ancestors practiced or which church, synagogue, etc., they attended? The December Roundtable Discussion Group provided many ideas for finding this information and the associated records which could lead to more details about our ancestors.

We often know the religion preferred by our recent ancestors, but what about those we are unsure of? There are a number of possible sources that can provide this information or clues to find it. Newspaper articles, including wedding announcements and obituaries, often mention the church or location of services, give the name of the minister, or even state the person’s religion. Personal Mention type articles could include publicity about church group meetings, such as a Women’s Aide Society, often listing the members or maybe a couple celebrating a special anniversary naming the church they were married at. A christening or baptism might even be mentioned. Civil records can also provide clues such as a death certificate listing the burial place which could be a church cemetery. Once the name of a minister or cemetery is found, further searching in city directories, newspaper sites, or even Google can lead to the specific church or religious affiliation. If you are fortunate to have an ancestor written up in a county or town history, you will probably find their religious affiliation mentioned. History of the local churches including founding members is also often found in these.

Once you have determined the religion your ancestors practiced, there are multiple ways to find records for the specific church or meeting place they attended.

The Family Search Wiki has a section titled How to find Church Records in the United States with advice on how to prepare for your search and where to look for records. Among other things, it provides a list of 50 major religions in the US with links to archive information and also a clickable list of all the states leading to Wiki articles for church records for each state.

A research guide, Church and Synagogue Records for Genealogists, is offered by the Library of Congress (LOC). It includes links to some external websites and databases in addition to search strategies for using the online LOC Catalog. A genealogist, Sunny Morton, shares her knowledge, tips and stories from her research using church records in a featured webcast located on the Introduction page.

Gazetteers can be used to find names of churches in specific areas during specific years. A good tool for this is OldMaps Online.

Colleges, especially those with a religious affiliation, likely have collections and archives possibly containing church records. Swarthmore College is an example, with its large collection of Quaker records.

Historical societies and other state and local organizations often have information, some of which is not available at the larger search engines.

ArchiveGrid includes over 7 million records describing archival materials, bringing together information about historical documents, personal papers, family histories, and more. With over 1,400 archival institutions represented, ArchiveGrid helps researchers looking for primary source materials held in archives, libraries, museums and historical societies. A broad search for ‘church records’ brought up over 68,000 hits. The search can also be narrowed to a specific religion, location, etc.

A few specific sites for international records mentioned during the Roundtable are:

Archion – German church records

National Library of Ireland (NLI) – Catholic Parish Records at the NLI

Matricula – Church records from various European countries

Video options for those of us who like visuals and/or need some inspiration:

A quick search on YouTube for ‘church records for genealogists’ brought up many videos. The search can be refined for a specific denomination or location, too.

Legacy Family Tree Webinars offers webinars about church records, but a subscription might be required to view them.

Remember to check ConferenceKeeper.org for virtual seminars about church records.

Additional tips:

Also search for the maternal/maiden name. Records are sometimes recorded that way for different reasons.

When contacting a specific church and the person says there are no records available, watch for a change in the staff. A new person might be more agreeable to helping.

The records for a closed Catholic church should be available through that diocese.

Books are available to help with this research. One specifically mentioned was How to Find Your Family History in U.S. Church Records: A Genealogist's Guide by Sunny Morton. It is easily found online both for purchase or for viewing at libraries including Haggard Library in Plano.

Genealogy Roundtable

December 12th from 7-9:00pm, virtual

Church records is the topic for the December Roundtable discussion. 

What problems can church records help solve?

What denominations have you found records for?

Where do you find church records?

Join us live via Zoom for this enlightening discussion. 

A Roundtable Recap with information from the discussion, including links to helpful websites, will also be posted to the blog.

 DNA User Group

December 10^th 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.

Genealogy News

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/eventListings.php?nm=38. 

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 8^th 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.