PICRYL is a massive public-domain search engine with over 25 million images, making it one of the largest free visual history platforms in the world. While most genealogists have never heard of it, PICRYL can provide something that traditional genealogy databases cannot: Photographs and illustrations that visually reconstruct the world your ancestors lived in. Even […]
Category: QuickSheets
In short, Dead Fred is a photo archive. The site has been in existence for over 20 years. From the website: “Dead Fred’s Genealogy Photo Archive, a free, fun photo genealogy research website devoted to helping you visualize your heritage!” If you are interested in obtaining a photo of your ancestors, you should try Dead Fred. There […]
Reclaim the Records is a non-profit organization that strives to obtain genealogical record collections that “ought to be” in the public domain but are restricted by government organizations. They file FOIA and Open Data requests to obtain the records and if that fails to succeed, they go to court. Once records are obtained, the organization […]
NARA has a great list of 35 Genealogy Research Topics, which has links to further detailed discussions about the topic, as well as guides to other relevant resources and links to collections (both online and offline). The following PDF lists all the Genealogy Topics, along with the inks to the NARA site. Download the Quicksheet […]
The Ellis Island Database is one of the most popular databases for researchers trying to find their immigrant ancestors who arrived at the Port of New York. It has passenger records and ship manifests for about 65 million people, and it has records from 1820 to 1957. The following PDF discusses how to search the […]
When researching your genealogy, it helps to know where documents and other resources are. Here is a list of 50 top institutions in the United States. The list includes museums, genealogy centers, libraries, societies, etc. Visit these websites and the institutions in person if you are able. Download the Quicksheet To obtain the three-page Quicksheet […]
In order to succeed at newspaper research, you must search in the right location, and you must search in the appropriate date range. You MUST know before you search if the database includes titles in the locations that you are searching. You must know where to find the titles to match the correct locations and […]
We have a tendency as researchers to underappreciate the value of the documents or articles that we already have acquired, and spend our time looking for new “stuff.” There are so many “facts” and clues that can be retrieved from these artifacts if we just pay attention. And they are just sitting there staring at […]
Maybe it’s just me, but I have never heard anyone write or talk about using Alumni Records in their genealogy research. I use them personally and have discovered mountains of information in these gems. I contend that alumni records are part directories, part newspapers and magazines, part biographies, part obituaries, part yearbooks, part vital records, […]
Institutional records are a record set that are sometimes overlooked and a record set that can be difficult to locate and acquire. Many people don’t think to look for institutional records as part of their genealogy research as in the past people who spent time in institu- tions were not always talked about out of […]