Genealogy This Week - 24 April 2010
Our weekly compilation of interesting new tools, resources and stories for genealogists. This week it is all about genealogy brick wall solutions. Here are four of them:
US National Archives Publishes Complete List of Subscription Genealogy Records – The US National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has partnered with Ancestry.com and Footnote.com over the years to provide certain genealogy records on Ancestry and Footnote’s websites. These two website typically charge a subscription fee to access these NARA records. NARA has never published a complete and comprehensive list of these fee-based genealogy records until this week. The range of these NARA genealogy records span federal census enumerations, military service records, pension records, passenger arrival records, naturalization records and African American records as well as many other types of records. This long list published by NARA is up to date as of March 2010 and contains direct links to the record sets at Ancestry and Footnote. This is an extremely valuable list and we would encourage anyone encountering a genealogy brick wall to consider using this master list as a starting point for tracking down genealogy records. The list can be searched by keyword by hitting Ctrl-F on your keyboard and then entering the keyword in the pop-up search box at the bottom of your screen. [Link]
Tracking Down People – Here is a wonderful genealogy brick wall solution. Scirus is an amazing website for tracking down relatives who may have published a scientific paper anywhere in the world. The database contains 370 million items and goes back to before 1900. The Advanced Search page allows you to search by author. This site is also a great place to look for local histories. If a local history exists then Scirus has probably indexed it. Scirus tends to provide more directed results for genealogy-type queries than broader search engines like Google. We would recommend that all genealogists spend some time playing around with this site. Access is free. [Link]
Tracking Down US Government Employees – Here is another great genealogy brick wall solution. If you are trying to track down a living relative in the US then you should check to see if they work for the US government. This website allows you to search by name (including just last name). This website will provide full name, place of work, job title and even salary. Actually, this might be a fun website for checking out your neighbours. Access is free. [Link]
Tracing Names of British Origin – Here is our fourth and final genealogy brick wall solution of the week. If you are trying to trace a last name that has British origins then you should try the website British History Online. Simply go to their text search section and type in the last name. You might be surprised at the quantity of material that appears. As well, this is a great site for finding local British histories. Access is free. [Link]
