Free Genealogy

California's San Fernando Valley Digital Archives

2011-11-26T06:24:00.001-05:00

The Oviatt Library at the Californian State University at Northridge has several collections that are worthy of consideration as genealogy sources. Two collections in particular stand out: San Fernando Valley History Digital Library and Latino Cultural Heritage Digital Archives. The first contains, images and historical documents from public and private collections in the San Fernando Valley. It covers the valley from the early 19th century through the end of the 20th century. The Latino digital collection is a portion of a larger collection at the library and provides access to materials that "document the experiences of Latino/Chicano leaders and organizations of the Los Angeles and San Fernando Valley area."
http://digital-library.csun.edu/LatArch/

Great Britain - Internet Library of Early Journals

2011-11-17T06:18:00.001-05:00

The Internet Library of Early Journals is an interesting site of older newspapers from Great Britain and is a project developed by the Universities of Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester and Oxford. Its goal was to digitize substantial runs of 18^th and 19^th century journals and was first completed in 1999. No new material has been added since. The collection includes runs of at least 20 consecutive years of the following journals: Gentleman's Magazine, The Annual Register, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Notes and Queries, The Builder and Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine.
There's not a great deal of genealogical information here but interesting reading none the less.
http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/ilej/

Dig Memphis - The Digital Archive of the Memphis Public Library & Information Center

2011-11-03T05:13:00.002-04:00

Dig Memphis is the digital archive made available free on line by the Memphis Public Library & Information Center. Memphis and Shelby County Room has a huge collection of local history and is now making some of its collection available digitally. They are adding new items regularly, so check back frequently. There are several sub collections; two in particular caught my eye: German Heritage and the Arthur Webb Collection. The first looks at German immigrants in Memphis from the 19th and 20th century. The Webb collection contains materials collected by the author who was a journalist, genealogist and historian, specializing in local African-American history. He died in 2006 but his collection of information is now available on-line. Those are only two of the many available. If your family has any connection to early Memphis on either side of the river, do visit this site.

http://memphislibrary.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/

Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County (Old and Rare Books)

2011-10-25T05:19:00.000-04:00

The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County has a growing digital book collection. One particular collection caught my eye. This one is filed on their web site as "Old & Rare Books : 900 - History, Genealogy & Geography."
I found family histories, city directories and telephone books, local history, military regimental histories, pension abstracts, DAR lineage books, and more. If you are looking for material from Southern Ohio and Northern Kentucky, this is a good place to start. The nice thing about this collection is that you have the choice of reading on-line or downloading the book to your own computer in a PDF format. It's free to access and use.

http://virtuallibrary.cincinnatilibrary.org/VirtualLibrary/vl_OldRare.aspx?ResTypeID=12

Some Vermont Vital Records of the Early 19th Century, 1802-1838

2011-10-20T21:45:00.003-04:00

In all my searching Vermont is one state where the number of digital history or on-line genealogy records is quite limited. The Vermont Historical Society has one collection of early Vermont vital records transcribed from index cards found in two drawers of a filing cabinet at the society. They consist of items relating to Vermont deaths and marriages were compiled by John Elliott Bowman from various newspapers, chiefly dated between 1802-1838, with a single reference to a 1796 issue of the Keene, N.H., Rising Sun, and one of the same year to Spooner’s Vermont Journal. It is not known how extensive the initial research was or if all issues of the listed publications were searched. The site presents a list of the newspapers from which information was gleaned, and time spans represented.

This link takes you to the description page. At the bottom you will find the link to a PDF document you may view on-line or download.
http://vermonthistory.org/index.php/some-vermont-vital-records-transcription.html

BLM - Bureau of Land Management

2011-10-12T06:46:00.001-04:00

Did your U.S. ancestors buy land from the Federal Government? You can find out and search by state. This site contains Federal land conveyance records for the Public Land States, including access to images of more than five million Federal land title records issued between 1820 and the present. The site also has images related to survey plats and field notes as far back as 1810. I checked out the site and searched for a distant relative that I know participated in the "land rush" in the Oklahoma territory and found a digital image of the original document showing that the land was transferred to him. Currently their mapping feature is not active, but they do promise to have it functional sometime soon.

http://www.glorecords.blm.gov/

Our Roots - Canada's Local Histories On Line

2011-10-07T17:06:00.000-04:00

We're staying in Canada for another post. This one from the Universities of Calgary and Laval in cooperation with a list or organizations too numerous to list here. Our Roots has nearly 6000 digital texts with nearly 1.5 million pages of information about Canadians and Canada. This one is similar to Google Books and Archive.org and contains books that are out of print or at one time only available in distant collections inaccessible via the Internet. And, yes there are genealogies and many local histories. You can browse or search by title or browse by subject. It is free, but you will need to register on your first visit.

http://www.ourroots.ca

New Tecumseth Digital History Site - Ontario, Canada

2011-10-02T17:27:00.000-04:00

Here's a small but useful site for those that might have a connection to Tecumseth County in the province of Ontario, Canada. While concentrating on local history, this site has a genealogy section, too. The material here focuses on four main settlements: Aliston, Beeton, Tecumseth and Tottenham. In the genealogy section there are three collections of data:

Tombstone Inscriptions St. Paul's Cemetery This one has tombstone inscriptions for all persons buried in St. Paul the Apostle R.C. Cemetery up to and including 1990.

Simcoe County Militia: Rebellion of 1837 - Muster Rolls and Pay Lists of the Volunteers which served in the Simcoe County Militia during The Rebellion of 1837.

Alliston Funeral Register 1885-1908 -This material is from the registers kept from 1885-1908

http://calendar.county.simcoe.on.ca/partners/newteclib/history/index.html

Denver Public Library Digital Collection

2011-09-29T06:06:00.001-04:00

The digital collection available from the Denver Public Library has a great deal of free information about the settlement of the Western US and like most collections of its size contains photographs, maps, drawings and other material extracted from the Western History/Genealogy Department's collections. For genealogical researchers, the Creating Communities section caught my attention and features Denver city and householder directories dating back to 1873.
http://digital.denverlibrary.org/index.php

New Hampshire State Papers (starting in 1623)

2011-09-22T05:55:00.000-04:00

If you have ancestors with New Hampshire roots, you might want to look at the "New Hampshire State Papers" at the state's Archives and Records Management office. This collection available for download in PDF format contains documents relating to the Province of New Hampshire from the earliest period of its settlement. Volume 1 contains materials starting in 1623. This material is free to download and is in PDF format requiring Adobe Reader or some other program that can open PDF files. Keep in mind these are large files. So, if you have a slow connection, it might take a while.
http://www.sos.nh.gov/archives/nhstatepapers.html

West Texas Digital Archive

2011-09-15T21:00:00.000-04:00

The West Texas Digital Archives (WTDA) is project of the Abilene Library Consortium and is funded by the Dodge Jones Foundation and the Dian Graves Owen Foundation. This collection is housed in the facilities of several institutions:

The WTDA contains photographs, newspapers, city directories, yearbooks, letters, oral histories, periodicals, manuscripts, journals, documents, maps, audio files, and more. It also includes the newsletter of the 12th Armored Division Memorial Museum. The Howard Payne University collection includes several searchable copies of Texas Journal of Genealogy and History.

http://wtda.alc.org/

Wyoming Newspaper Project

2011-09-14T20:38:00.001-04:00

Anyone reading this blog on a regular basis already knows that I have a keen interest in on line newspapers. I just discovered another on-line collection. This one is in Wyoming and contains newspapers printed in Wyoming between 1849 and 1922. As of May 1, 2011, this collection had 794,563 full page newspapers images available and eventually will have more than 900,000. The pages were converted from microfilm and are now fully searchable. You can: browse by city, by county, by year or simply browse all titles.

http://wyonewspapers.org/

Railroad History Archive - UCONN

2011-09-11T09:03:00.000-04:00

I'm a firm believer that when doing genealogy research no stone should be left unturned. You never know where you will find that one missing piece of information that connects a family puzzle. Here is one place that may not appear to be of value at first, but dig deeper and you may find something through the the resources they link to at the Railroad History Archive at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center at the University of Connecticut.

http://railroads.uconn.edu/index.html

The archive is comprised mostly of "individual collections of administrative records, photographs, maps, timetables, ephemera and many other types of archival materials. The collections focus almost exclusively on the history of the railroads of southern New England, particularly the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad." Be sure you also check out the "collections list" for additional records. I must tell you that the University does make it known that "personnel records and worker files were not included in the donation of the corporate records and there is virtually no personal information about the company's workers" in this archive. However, make sure you click on "Links to Railroad History Resources in the United States." You will find many links to other railroad resources where you may find something. Some of the links are free resources and some are fee based, such as the U.S. Railroad Retirement Board. They have a fee similar to the NARA for the research.

Revisit - Family Search

2011-09-06T05:15:00.003-04:00

As I return from the summer hiatus, my first posting is a revisit. If you haven't visited Family Search from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, this might be the time. I know a great deal of information has come on line since my last visit, most notably census images from U.S. Census. Also in the past year they have added an index to the 1881 Census of the UK, although actual images are not yet available. I think you will be pleasantly surprised. Here's the link:
https://www.familysearch.org/ and their Twitter handle is @FamilySearch so you can keep up to date on the very latest, instant news from the site. They also have a YouTube channel - FamilySearch YouTube.

Short Hiatus

2011-06-05T11:19:00.002-04:00

Will be taking a short hiatus during the summer months. Back in September.
Have a great summer.
Jerry

University of Pennsylvania - On Line Books - Genealogy

2011-05-29T06:03:00.001-04:00

The University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) has a robust digital collection of books on line. As of Friday May 27, 2011 the total is over 1 million free books. The link here takes you directly to the genealogy collection. The collection is not restricted to Pennsylvania but also includes books from England, Scotland, Ireland, Canada and various states.

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/browse?type=lcsubc&key=Genealogy

Farm, Field and Fireside Collection - Historical Agricultural Newspapers

2011-05-20T07:15:00.000-04:00

The Farm, Field and Fireside collection is a group of historically significant U.S. farm weekly newspapers published in the late 1800s to early 1900s. It's housed at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It's another of the many free newspaper collections now available on-line for free. You can print, download, or e-mail individual articles. Here's a list of the newspapers currently available:

    Banker Farmer (1913-1927)
    Berkshire World and Cornbelt Stockman (1910-1926)
    Better Farming (1913-1925)
    Chicago Livestock World (1902-1917)
    Chicago Packer (1907-1939)
    Farmers' Review (1879-1918)
    Farmers Voice (1898-1913)
    Farmer's Wife (1906-1939)
    Farm, Field and Fireside (1884-1906)
    Farm, Field and Stockman (1885-1887)
    Farm Home (1899-1920)
    Farm Press (1906-1913)
    Illinois Farmer (1856-1864)
    Lancaster Farming (1955-1981)
    National Rural and Family Magazine (1898-1900)
    Prairie Farmer (1841-1923)
    Western Rural (1868-1883)
    Western Rural and American Stockman (1879-1894)
    Western Rural and Livestock Weekly (1896-1898)

http://www.library.illinois.edu/dnc/Default/Skins/FFF/Client.asp?Skin=FFF&AW=1305889561870&AppName=2

New York - Putnam County Courier Newspaper

2011-05-12T07:20:00.000-04:00

Here's another collection of free local newspaper pages. This one for the Putnam County Courier, published beginning in 1849, focuses mainly Dutchess, Putnam and Westchester counties in New York and is provided by the Mahopac Public Library. This is the area in New York between the Hudson River and Danbury Connecticut.

http://www.localarchives.org/mahopac/Default.aspx

British Newspapers

2011-05-07T19:04:00.000-04:00

Two million pages of 19th century newspapers are now on line. The Penny Illustrated Paper and The Graphic are free of charge. Some portions of this site are not free and are accessible with a subscription. But, we'll take whatever is available for free. The Penny Illustrated Paper was published weekly in London between Oct 12, 1861 - May 24, 1913 and The Graphic, also a London weekly was in print from Jan 01, 1870 - Dec 29, 1900. Both are free to search and access on this site.

http://newspapers.bl.uk/blcs/dispBasicSearch.do?prodId=BLCS&userGroupName=blcsuser

Columbia River Basin Ethnic History Archive

2011-05-04T06:07:00.000-04:00

The Columbia River Basin Ethnic History Archive (CRBEHA), a project of Washington State University Vancouver, the Idaho State Historical Society, Oregon Historical Society, Washington State Historical Society, and Washington State University Pullman focuses on the story of the region’s ethnic groups, people identified as having African, Asian, European, or Latin American heritage. This digital collection brings together selected highlights of the ethnic collections from leading repositories in Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. Native Americans are not included in this collection. The CRBEHA focuses on relatively recent migrants to the region, groups with less extensive available archives.
http://archive.vancouver.wsu.edu/crbeha/browse.htm

Wyoming - American Heritage Center - University of Wyoming

2011-04-25T11:22:00.000-04:00

The American Heritage Center is the University of Wyoming's collection of manuscripts, rare books, and materials from the university archives. Of particular interest here is the "Digital Collection" containing thousands of photographs and documents, plus motion picture and audio recordings.

The collection list is vast, but the following caught my eye:

Swan Company Records
Thaddeus Capron Family Papers
Morton E. Post Family Papers
James Bertenshaw Family Letters
Wyoming Stock Growers Association Records
Zdenek Salzmann Arapaho Indian Research
Beck Family Papers
Wyoming Pioneers Oral History Project
Alcott Farrar Elwell Scrapbook
Branding Iron (Laramie Wyo.) Records
J.S. Pittenger Letters
James K. Moore Family Papers
Buffalo Bill collection

Here is the main link:

http://digitalcollections.uwyo.edu:8180/luna/servlet/allCollections

Yukon Genealogy

2011-04-22T06:40:00.001-04:00

My first exposure to the Yukon was a TV program I watched as youngster - Sgt. Preston of the Yukon (and his wonder dog King). I also once owned one square inch of land in the Yukon complements of Quaker Oats. I guess the deeds were never filed, so my fortune in Yukon gold is long gone. But there were many that went west to find gold in the Yukon. This site "follows the lives of those who came after the Klondike stampede." Yukon Archives includes material from the Dawson Museum and other records of the brave people that settled there. The site makes available a search engine that draws from eight separate databases. They have been compiling this data since 2002.

http://www.yukongenealogy.com/content/ykgen_db.htm

Jacksonville Republican - Northwest Alabama Newspaper

2011-04-10T08:30:00.001-04:00

More and more historical newspapers are showing up on line in digital collections. The Jacksonville Republican first appeared in print in 1837 and was published almost continuously until 1904. There was a short break at the end of the Civil war. It is one of the oldest newspapers in Northeast Alabama. This collection is housed at the The Houston Cole Library, Jacksonville State University, Jacksonville Alabama. This digital archive contains issues from the beginning of publication to December 1895.

http://www.jsu.edu/library/collections/jacksonville_republican.html

Memphis Public Library Digital Archives

2011-04-07T15:41:00.000-04:00

The Memphis and Shelby County Room of the Memphis Public Library & Information Center was established in 1971 and houses thousands of books, reports and pamphlets, 600 maps, 12,000 photographs, and hundreds of oral histories. It is also where you will find the Memphis Information File, which contains over four hundred thousand vertical files of newspaper and magazine articles, pamphlets, manuscript collections which include correspondence, photographs, maps, financial records, contracts, and newspaper clippings of individuals and organizations. The digital version which we link to here contains a small portion of this vast collection. But, the fact that it is available digitally is worth noting and will give you hours of interesting reading and perhaps even some informaiton you may not have had access to previously.

http://memphislibrary.contentdm.oclc.org/index.php

Digital Collections at the Connecticut State Library

2011-04-03T06:26:00.000-04:00

This collection featuring materials from the library, the Museum of Connecticut History, and the state archives is quite robust and contains many sub-collections. The following caught my attention:

Personal and Family Vital Records
Newspapers of Connecticut
Religious History
Town History

http://cslib.cdmhost.com/index.php