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. 

• FamilySearch Family Tree: Overview & Navigation,Tues, May 17, 2022
• Research Process: The Ins & Outs, Wed, May 18, 2022
• Ask Your United States & Canada Research Question, 
  Thur, May 19, 2022

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

TIP OF THE WEEK –
SALT LAKE TRIBUNE ONLINE
  133 YEARS OF THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE are now keyword searchable and available to the the public online thanks to a partnership between the University of Utah –  J. Willard Marriott Library, Newspapers.com, a division of Ancestry, and The Salt Lake Tribune. The site now covers the  years 1871-2004 of the Salt Lake Tribune. There are over 6.7 million pages on this site and another 2 million pages  will come online in the next two to three years.

The Tribune issues can be accessed through Utah Digital Newspapers, a collaborative project based at the J. Willard Marriott Library since 2001.  Powerful searching options allow users to find terms in combinations or terms that appear in proximity to one another. Check out “How to Use Advanced Search” help here: 
https://digitalnewspapers.org/help/search_results

TIP OF THE WEEK -IN NEED OF TRANSLATION  

This issue’s tip came out of this month’s Second Saturday Speaker Series presentation by Carolyn Schott. There is a Facebook Group called Genealogical Translations and their purpose is just that, the translation of genealogy documents only. It is a private group so you must ask to join. This group might be the answer to your prayers.  Here’s how they describe themselves: 
  “Genealogical Translations was established to provide amateur family researchers a place to have their genealogical documents translated. We are a global volunteer group whose members help other members by offering free translation of their genealogical documents such as vital records, postcards, obituaries, and more, in languages including – Dutch, French, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Latin, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and many others!

▶ Before posting, new members are expected to familiarize themselves with the Posting Format and Group Rules, and all other Featured posts.” 

TIP OF THE WEEK –
MARYLAND LAND RECORDS

Here’s a tip came from a fellow SGS member for everyone interested in land records of Maryland.  

All land records for Maryland are available online from the Maryland State Archives at this URL: http://www.mdlandrec.net

Use of this site is free, but you will need to create an account. Here’s the blurb from their main home page expressing their intent:

“The Maryland Judiciary, the 24 elected Court Clerks of Maryland and the Maryland State Archives have joined in partnership to provide up to date access to all verified land record instruments in Maryland. This service is currently being provided free to all those interested in testing the system. Users are encouraged to provide feedback and inform the Maryland State Archives of any problems encountered.”

Once you have arrived at the home page, use the drop-down menu in the upper left part of the page to select your county of interested, and you’re off and running.

While these same land records are available via FamilySearch, most of them fall under that “restricted access” requiring you to be at a FHC or affiliated library to access the image. From the MDLANDREC website, you can view and download Maryland land records from the comfort of your home.

TIP OF THE WEEK –
WEBINAR ON USING PERSI
BY ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBARY
Context is what changes genealogy from a collection of names and dates to our ancestors’ stories, and stories will get the attention of our otherwise disinterested family members. This webinar conducted by Allen County Public Library, Fort Wayne, Indiana addresses how to use the newly reconstituted PERSI database, searching by location to discover context for your genealogy research.

Watch the video here: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eS7i1_omczw&t=3s
The Allen County Public Library is an invaluable resource for genealogical research. PERSI (the Periodical Source Index) is the largest subject index to genealogy and local history periodical articles in the world. This one hour webinar comes highly recommended by your fellow SGS members. 

WANT TO SIGN THE PETITION TO REOPEN THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES RESEARCH ROOMS?
  Some feel 2 years is long enough and NARA can safely reopen the research rooms with some safety precautions in place. If you’d like to sign the petition or learn more about the campaign, visit:
https://www.change.org/p/incoming-archivist-of-the-united-states-reopen-national-archives-research-rooms 

TIP OF THE WEEK –
BRITISH COLUMBIA HISTORICAL
  NEWSPAPERS AND A WEBINAR
  Jill Morelli passed along this tip; it originally came from Valerie Beaudrault. The University of British Columbia has made the BC Historical Newspapers database, a digital collection of 168 newspaper titles published between 1859 and 1995, available on their website. Toward the bottom left hand side of the web page is an alphabetical selection list of the newspaper titles. And to the right of that list is a map that pinpoints the home of each publication. To explore a specific title, click on it in the alphabetical selection list toward the bottom of the page. But if you want to search the entire collection, that search box is located toward the top of the web page. Newspaper page images can be downloaded and saved. Here’s the link to the website:  https://open.library.ubc.ca/collections/bcnewspapers

If BC is an area of interest for you, check out the webinar “Genealogical Gold in British Columbia” with Dave Obee, Canadian genealogist, journalist, and author. It is scheduled for Friday, February 18, 2022 at 11:00 AM PST. This is one of many free webinars hosted by Legacy Family Tree.  Register at:
https://familytreewebinars.com/webinar/genealogical-gold-in-british-columbia/