TIP OF THE WEEK –
A GREAT RESOURCE FOR WESTERN
NORTH CAROLINA RESEARCH: the BGSOTC

A terrific genealogical society, the Genealogical Society of Old Tryon County, has published abstracts of many of the surviving documents in western North Carolina. Tryon County was created in 1769 and in 1779 its name was changed to Lincoln County. While Old Tryon County no longer exists, it included the geographic area that is now Rutherford, Cleveland, Lincoln, and Gaston counties of North Carolina, and Cherokee and York Counties of South Carolina, plus portions of several NC and SC counties that border these counties – A LARGE AREA.

This wonderful society’s publication, Bulletin of the Genealogical Society of Old Tryon County (BGSOTC for short) began in 1973, and its issues contain abstracts of all types of records – wills, deeds, court records, family histories, etc. – from all of the counties listed above.

It gets better! They’ve created an every-name index for the issues of the BGSOTC from 1992 to the present, and placed it online at http://www.oldtryon.com/

If you have ancestors in this part of western NC or upper SC, check out this index. You can search for your ancestors from the comfort of home!

SGS has BGSOTC issues from 1998 to the present, so if you find one of your ancestors in the online index, the issue may well be in our collection.

TIP OF THE WEEK –
THE BEST SOURCE FOR FINDING
PROBATE CASES & DIVORCE RECORDS
IN KING COUNTY, 1881-1980

The King County Court Cases Index, 1881-1980 (KC3I, for short) is an SGS database, created by SGS volunteers a decade ago.

This database contains every divorce and every probate case that occurred in King County between 1881 and 1980.

So if you have roots in King County, be sure to check this database!  All you need to do is to request a search via our website; we typically respond within 24-48 hours.

See the SGS website at http://seattlegenealogicalsociety.org/kc3i for more information, or to complete a look-up request online. This service is free to current SGS members.

One caveat: Because of the source from which it was created, the SGS KC3I is a subset of the Superior Court Cases of King County. Our index was compiled using records collected by the Seattle branch of Chicago Title Company.  They were required by law to record every court case that might affect a person’s right to clear title of property. Thus our index includes all probate cases, divorces, and mental competency hearings occurring in King County Superior Court; it does not contain criminal cases, marriages, adoptions, or other types of cases that have no bearing on one’s right to clear title of property.

Remember, too, that this is an INDEX of cases, not the case records themselves; those reside at the King County Court Clerk’s office.

TIP OF THE WEEK – TAKE ANOTHER LOOK AT FAMILYSEARCH.ORG

FamilySearch recently announced a milestone. Their online databases of digitized historical documents now contain more than 2 billion images! These are historical records from all over the world – including Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, Middle East, North America, the Pacific, as well as other regions.

And more images are being added weekly. In the quest to to become fully digitize, their microfilms are being scanned at a rate of 1,000 films per business day.  If you haven’t used FamilySearch.org for research recently,  it might be time to take another look.

One way to stay abreast of record collections that have recently been digitized or indexed at FamilySearch is by reading their online blog.  Scroll down through the articles posted looking for articles titled similar to this,  “New Records on FamilySearch: Week of June 4, 2018”.  Read the full story and it will contain a list of new digitized collections or new indexed collections.

Here are some recent additions Washingtonians may be interested in :

WA, Western District, Naturalizations Records, 1853-1957 – newly indexed
WA, Pierce County Marriage Returns, 1891-1938 – newly indexed
WA, Soldier Home Records, 1891-1945 – newly digitized images-no index

The URL to get to the blog is :
https://www.familysearch.org/blog/en/
SGS MEMBERSHIP RENEWAL – IT’S NOT TOO LATE!
Join or renew your SGS membership for 2018-19. The fastest way is to use our new onine form and pay with a credit/debit card here: Online SGS Membership form

Or, print out a copy of our membership form and send it with your check to Seattle Genealogical Society, P.O. Box 15329, Seattle WA 98115-0329. Here’s the link: Printable SGS Membership form

Thanks for supporting SGS!

TIP OF THE WEEK –

1937-1972 Property Record Cards

If you are doing genealogical research of ancestors in the Puget Sound area, check out the kind of records available to you at the Puget Sound Regional Branch of the Washington State Archives in Bellevue, WA.  From King, Kitsap, and Pierce counties, there are dozens of different kinds of records available; some quite unique.

One of the most popular record sets is the King County 1937-1972 property record cards for historical house photographs and property records.

The Puget Sound Regional Branch is open Wednesday through Friday, and by appointment only. They do welcome voice mail and email requests, and that may be all you need. They will send, or email, the documents they located for you. The records accompanying the photograph will include some ownership information, generally back to 1937, sometimes further back.  If you would like earlier information, it might be possible to schedule a time for you to view the earlier tax records.

They cannot look up records with only a street address. You will need the property tax ID number, or a legal description. Once I had no tax id to give them as the 1900 house and its address no longer exists (at some point in time it was replaced by a condo development), but I gave them a tax id of a house that I determined to be near by the old house, and the property legal description I found in the old Sanborn Insurance Maps at the downtown Seattle Public Library. They were able to find me photographs and pages of information on the original 1900 house.

You may contact Puget Sound Regional Branch Archives by voice mail at (425) 564-3940, or by email at PSBranchArchives@sos.wa.gov

Their website is :
https://www.sos.wa.gov/archives/archives_puget.aspx

TIP OF THE WEEK – 
NASE RODINA QUARTERLY

A resource for Czech, Slovak, Moravian, Bohemian, Rusyn, and German-Bohemian genealogy, Nase Rodina “Our Family” is a Quarterly published by the Czechoslovak Genealogical Society. You can find it in the SGS Library. We have copies dating from 1989 to Dec 2017. If you have Bohemian (Czech), German-Bohemian (Bohmisch), Hungarian, Moravian, Ruthenian (Rusyn), Silesian, Slovakian, or Jewish ancestry this is a resource for you. Stop in and check it out.

TIP OF THE WEEK –
FAMILYSEARCH COMMUNITY RESEARCH GROUPS

Here’s another great educational opportunity from the folks at FamilySearch.

It has recently created a new tool for you to get genealogical research help in the comfort of your own home. So if you can’t make it to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, use the area groups within the online community to find the research help that you need. And of course, it’s free! You do need to join FamilySearch, but that is free also.

Come get involved and make the research groups more valuable for everyone! Find answers, post questions, browse, find or create or join a group, help others.

Get help – you can:

• ask questions
• upload documents and get help with translation
• participate in discussions
• learn about upcoming webinars
• discover new resources

Give help – share your knowledge and skills:

• answer questions
• translate documents for others
• share new resources

There are numerous community research groups in three main categories:

• International Research Groups – from Albania to Zimbabwe
• North American Research Groups – Alabama to Wyoming
• Specialty Research Groups – 23andMe Newbies to The Nextgen Genealogy Network

For more information about how to sign up and use the site, see this link:
https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/FamilySearch_Genealogy_Research_Groups

TIP OF THE WEEK –
HISPANIC READING ROOM
If you are researching Hispanic ancestors of Spain, Portugal, the Caribbean, or Latin America,  are you aware there is Hispanic Reading Room at the Library Congress and the room has a website? The reading room is open to the public, but before you head off that way, why not check out the excellent materials available to you on the website.  It is in English, Spanish, or Portuguese.

The website is at:
http://www.loc.gov/rr/hispanic/

TIP OF THE WEEK –
GET THE MOST FROM ANCESTRY DNA

If you have not linked a public family tree to your Ancestry DNA results you are not utilizing the most powerful feature of Ancestry DNA.  If you have a public family tree in Ancestry, be sure to link it to your DNA results. If you don’t have one, create one from scratch or upload one as a gedcom file.  Without a linked family tree, Surnames, Maps, and Locations tabs will contain no information. You also need a linked public family tree for the DNA Circles function to work. The larger your tree, the more dynamic your results will be, but even a few generations is better than no tree at all. 

TIP OF THE WEEK –
SGS Bulletins – Past and Present

The Seattle Genealogical Society, founded in 1923, is an educational organization devoted to promoting interest in family history, preserving records, and furthering genealogical research –  not just for Seattle, but nationally and worldwide.

The SGS Bulletin, published by the Seattle Genealogical Society since 1952, provides a wealth of information for genealogists and local history researchers. The SGS Bulletin includes transcriptions of genealogical records from the Seattle area and beyond, along with articles about genealogy research and methodology.

• Library Collection
• Special Collections
• Go to Special Collections Online