The 1890 United States Federal Census was almost completely destroyed in 1921 by fire and water damage. Only fragments remain. But there are alternative collections that will help us with finding ancestors in the 1880 to 1900 time period between federal censuses. I have put together a Quick Reference Guide that has links to […]
Category: QuickSheets
City and business directories are available online from all over the U.S. and Canada and are what I consider another important (and underutilized) set of information that can assist you in advancing your family history and genealogy research. So, what kinds of directories are available to the researcher? Naturally city and business directories, but also telephone directories, […]
When researching our ancestors, one of the most important events is their death (otherwise they wouldn’t be ancestors, they’d be relatives? – but I digress). Determining the date and location of death is important as we document the major events in their lives. Most folks limit their search to the obvious repositories, whether online or […]
The Internet Archive has been around since 1996 and has a magnificent assortment of genealogical materials in many different categories of interest to genealogy researchers. It is a major resource; not to be missed. I refer to it several times a week, and it is a major resource for all the links that The Ancestor […]
I have been researching online historical newspaper sites for several years, both the free ones as well as the subscription-based sites. Their software capabilities, independent of the size and quality of their scanned collections, break down into two parts: How do you search the site and find “stuff” How do you download and save the […]
As we all know, there are no photos available for all of our ancestors, especially many of those who lived primarily in the 1800s or earlier. On the other hand, we may have photos in our collection in what I call my “Unknowns,” where they have not been identified, and may never be identified. So […]
In my opinion, online newspaper research is more of an art than a pure science. However, that does not mean that it should be undisciplined. On the contrary, the best way to waste your time is to perform research with no discipline. Sure, when you get a new name in your tree (or not yet […]
If you are looking for birth records, including certificates, you need to know the timing of each state’s requirements. Each state in the U.S. started requiring birth registrations in different years. Generally, some types of records were created prior to the official state laws, either at the county, city, or town levels. But state records […]
If you are looking for death certificates, you need to know the timing of each state’s requirements. Each state in the U.S. started requiring death registrations in different years. Usually some type of records were created prior to the official state laws, either at the county, city, or town levels. But state records weren’t required […]
The fact is that all old newspapers ever published in the United States are not online. Much less than you might think. So let’s just say for now that 15 to 30% of all U.S. newspaper pages have been digitized. Personally, I think that’s a very high number, but…… That leaves about 70-85% that are […]
