TIP OF THE WEEK –
REGISTER FOR ROOTSTECH 2023
Registration is already open for FamilySearch’s yearly conference, RootsTech. RootsTech 2023 takes place March 2-4, 2023, in Salt Lake City, Utah, as well as virtually online. You have your choice: do you want to be there in-person or would you rather attend online? Which ever you choose, you’ll have 180+ class sessions at your disposal.
For more information, visit:
https://www.familysearch.org/rootstech/event/rt2023
TIP OF THE WEEK –
DUBLIN FESTIVAL OF HISTORY
Now in its 10th year, and the 3rd year it has had online access, the three week 2022 Dublin Festival of History is brought to you by the Dublin City Council, organized by the Dublin City Libraries, in partnership with the Dublin City Council Culture Comany. In person or online, the festival is 130+ free events.
For more information on this year’s festival visit the website:
https://dublinfestivalofhistory.ie/events/
Recordings of last year’s festival can be found on Youtube.
TIP OF THE WEEK –
the NATIONAL NORDIC MUSEUM for FREE!
The Nordic Heritage Museum was founded in 1979 and in 1980 it occupied a leased space in the old Daniel Webster Elementary School building in Ballard. By May 2018 the museum had expanded, built and moved into a new 57,000 sqft building on NW Market St, and was renamed the Nordic Museum. In 2019, by an act of the US Congress, the museum was designated the National Nordic Museum. If you haven’t seen the new museum, Thursday would be your chance to see it for free. It is one of many Seattle area museums that offer free entry on the first Thursday of each month.
Here’s a list of history, culture, and heritage themed museums that participate in the free entry on the first Thursday of the month program:
And these two museums are always free:
TIP OF THE WEEK –
SAVE YOUR OWN COPY
You are probably a member of a paid or free genealogy site that allows you to create a link to an image of a record of genealogical importance to you and attach it to a member in your family tree. Do not depend on the link to that image being available to you forever. It is recommended that you always download a copy of the image that is important to you; save a copy on your own media so you will always have the image for your personal use. That way, if something happens and you don’t have access to that site any longer, or the site doesn’t have access to that record set any longer, you still have a digital copy of your own.
TIP OF THE WEEK –
FINDING YOUR FAMILY IN NEWSPAPERS
“Finding Your Family in Newspapers: Using Chronicling America for Genealogical Research”
Presented by the Library of Congress on August 3, 2022 at 3:00pm PDT.
Discover your family’s past through the newspapers of their present. Join Digital Conversion Specialist Henry Carter to learn how to search for ancestors in Chronicling America, a free digital collection of almost 20 million pages from American newspapers published between 1777 and 1963. The presentation will discuss the collection, the search interface, and how to navigate the challenges of working with historic newINspapers. Chronicling America is jointly sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress.
It is free to attend this event. Register HERE.
It will be available for viewing afterwards in the Library’s Event Videos collection.
TIP OF THE WEEK –
INDEX WASHINGTON STATE RECORDS
The Historical Records Project (HRP) for the Washington State Archives has been around for a while. Millions of records have already been transcribed and indexed, which makes them easily accessible to researchers and genealogists. But countless records still need to be done. Volunteers are the lifeline for this project. So that’s where you come in!
Scribe is the online application for entering this data. To volunteer to help you simply Register and Set Up your account, pick which record collection you’d like to work on, and start transcribing. It’s quick and easy. You work on this from the comfort of your own home, at your own pace. Do as many or as few records as you want, quit, and then pick it up again on another day.
Washington Delayed Birth Records is one of the collections that need transcribing and this is a good record collection to start on. They tend to be easy to read. The image of the document appears on the left of your screen. On the right of your screen is the form into which you enter the child’s first, middle, and last name, gender, birth date, father’s first, middle, and last name, mother’s first, middle, and last name. Save the form. Check it over. Here’s your opportunity to Edit if you’ve made a mistake. Once it looks good, hit Finish for that record.
Read the ten page “The Users’ Guide to Scribe” found here:
https://www.sos.wa.gov/archives/hrp/scribe-user-guide-final.pdf
Pay particular attention to the rules. They are on page 6. Here’s a visual reminder to print and keep at hand while you are transcribing:
Any one of these rules is bound to come up early on.
Simply remember if a required item is missing enter the word blank.
But if the item is not required leave the space empty.
Don’t use prefix titles. Don’t use suffix titles. Don’t use punctuation.
So ignore Mr, Mrs, Miss, Sr, Jr, Dr, CPA, Esq, etc. As an example : Mr. John M. Doe, Sr, PhD becomes John M Doe.
If you can help out and would like to Scribe, register here:
https://scribe.digitalarchives.wa.gov/
TIP OF THE WEEK –
FRENCH GENEALOGY FETE!
July 14, 1789 is the day that marks the symbolic start of the French Revolution. Bastille Day, celebrated on July 14th each year, is France’s largest national holiday. In honor of Bastille Day, FamilySearch has scheduled four back-to-back webinars on French genealogical research. Register through your FamilySearch free account. Here’s the schedule for Family History Library Bastille Day 2022:
8:00 AM MDT/7:00 AM PDT; Reading French Civil Registration Records (60 min) – This class will cover basic French paleography by teaching you how to read and navigate French civil registration records.
9:15 AM MDT/8:15 AM PDT; Accessing the Archives of France Online (45 minutes) – Every department in France has placed the records of greatest genealogical value online, freely accessible to all. This class will demonstrate some tips and tricks to help you navigate these websites.
10:15 AM MDT/9:15 AM PDT; How Geneanet Can Help You with French Research (45 min) – The website Geneanet.org is one of the best resources for French research. Not only does it contain thousands of family trees, it also houses indexed collections of genealogical society publications, books newspapers, and vital records. Learn how to access each of these collections and use them to optimize your French research.
11:15 AM MDT/10:15 AM PDT; Using the French Genealogy Website Filae (45 min) – Come learn the basics of navigating and searching on the website Filae. This site is a wonderful resource when searching your French ancestry.
These webinars, as well as other July webinars, are listed on the Family History Library Webinar Calendar for July 2022 :
https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/img_auth.php/f/f7/07_July_2022.pdf
TIP OF THE WEEK –
“SEATTLE AT GETTYSBURG” TOUR
The Gettysburg campaign was a military invasion of Pennsylvania by the main Confederate army under General Robert E Lee in the summer of 1863. The Union army may have won a decisive victory, July 1–3, 1863, but there were heavy casualties on both sides.
Did you know Seattle has a GAR Cemetery Park? Me neither. It’s up on Capitol Hill, literally a stone’s throw from the more known Lake View Cemetery.
Did you know Seattle has a historian that specializes in walking tours, presentations, and local history stories linking Seattle citizens to the Civil War? Me neither. But I hear the tours are very entertaining, as well as informative.
Civil War Seattle, which has a website and a Facebook page, is kicking off the summer walking tour season with “Seattle At Gettysburg” tour on July 2 and July 3 for the special, and clever, price of $18.63.
Experience the story of the Battle of Gettysburg through the eyes of the dozens of Seattle Civil War veterans who fought there. To register for the tour, visit :
https://www.civilwarseattle.com/tours
Even if you are not interested in taking a tour at this time, go to the website and read the BLOG. There is some good information there.
TIP OF THE WEEK –
NYC RECORDS GO ONLINE!
This tip comes from Jill Morelli, past president of SGS, and her source for this tip is the March 16, 2022, blog by Judy Russell, the Legal Genealogist. And by the way, we are so excited to have Judy Russell lined up for our fall seminar!
Do you have New York City connections? In March 2022, the NYC Municipal Archives launched free online access to millions of NYC historical vital records – birth, death, and marriage. Finally! In the past, we only had the index on Ancestry, and while helpful, it was a derivative record and did not contain all the information available on the originals.
If you want to read more about the launch of this record set, Judy Russell (our Fall Seminar speaker) discussed it in her daily blog The Legal Genealogist: https://www.legalgenealogist.com/2022/03/16/nyc-vitals-online/
In mid-March, 9 million records were available online with another 4 million yet to be digitized and uploaded.
The record set is a little hard to find, so bookmark it if you plan to spend much time there: https://a860-historicalvitalrecords.nyc.gov
The easiest way to access the records for your ancestor is to find the index entry at Ancestry. Make note of the certificate number. Now, go to the NYC site and enter that certificate number.
The site has a Browse All tab: just insert your certificate number.
The site has a Search tab: here you can search by certification or by name.
In both cases you can search on a particular borough.
The site does warn us that 25% of all births before 1909 were never reported.
Happy Hunting!
TIP OF THE WEEK – ASK YOUR UNITED STATES
AND CANADA RESEARCH QUESTIONS
FamilySearch holds several online classes/webinars each month to educate us. In this coming week alone, there are 3 on the schedule! As always the classes/webinars at FamilySearch are free, but you are asked to register in advance. Start time for each of these 3 webinars is 10:00 AM MDT; that is 9:00 AM PDT. It is recommended you enter the webinar 15-20 minutes before the start time.
If you have a US or Canada research question, consider attending the webinar on Thursday. You will be invited to submit your question in advance when you register.
Here’s where you can check out what FamilySearch classes/webinars are coming up:
https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Family_History_Library_Classes_and_Webinars