Your Guide to Using Newspapers for Genealogical Research

I've done some recent updating of my newspaper page, in preparation for a talk I gave this week. And I was happy to read on Eastman's Online Genealogy blog that the first of the newspapers scanned in the National Digital Newspaper Program are now online. NDNP is a successor of sorts to the United States Newspaper Project, which was responsible for getting thousands of newspapers microfilmed. When I went to the site to check it out -- Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers -- I was happily surprised to find they offer a directory of newspapers published in the U.S. I suspect it is an updated version of Gregory's American Newspapers 1821-1936: A Union List of Files Available in the United States and Canada, but it doesn't say that.

While I am grateful for all the newspapers now being made available digitally, the current situation is quite frustrating.

First, it is extremely difficult to find what has been published digitally. You must check such a variety of subscription databases. And even if you have access to several or all of them, checking is not easy because they are constantly updated, so each time you check, you find everything you already found, plus what is new. If only there were a way to limit these searches to content added after a certain date. Ideally, of course, they would recognize you and offer to check for new content only.

Another problem is that OCR (optical character recognition) that allows us to search for any and all words in the publication simply can't be accurate on the quality of print found in newspapers -- especially very old, microfilmed newspapers. So there are a LOT of false hits. Lots and lots of false hits. And probably some misses that we'll never know about. The software does seem to err on the side of caution, looking for anything that might even conceivably be construed as the letters you are looking for.

And finally, even with millions and millions of pages being posted, it is still drop in the bucket. Your chances of finding the very newspaper for the time period you need are quite slim, even if you are willing to pay subscription costs (oruse the large libraries which are willing to pay for the newspaper electronic resources so as to have them available to patrons), as well as scour the intranet to see what is provided for free.

The final word: for much of our research we will still have to order the microfilmed copies on interlibrary loan and go through the pages one by one to find the information we seek.

Guide to Researching South Carolina Ancestors is now finished

I finished the South Carolina page. I hope those of you with South Carolina roots will find it helpful. I've done no research in this state, so welcome advice on good sources. Whenever I look for material on the web, I'm struck by how difficult it can be to navigate sites. A number of reasons contribute to this: poor website design, ambiguous language, hurried readers such as myself, who don't take time to read what is there. It is easy to become confused or overlook important pages. I try to give important links within a site on my Guides pages, but it is too unwieldy to do so for everything.

A case in point is the South Carolina Department of Archives and History Digital Collections page, which is linked to from their main page, where it advertises "Archives' Documents and Images Online". This page specifies a number of projects: Confederate pension applications 1919-1938 , insurance file photographs 1935-1952, grand jury presentments 1783-1877, national register of historic places and a collection named "curiosities". Then mention is made of a current project -- the scanning of colonial plats.

At the top we are told that all of these collections can be searched in an index, and indeed, clicking on most of them takes you to the index page. A link to the index is also provided at the top.

Once on the index page, however, we are pleased to discover that in addition to the collections named on the preceding page, there are also files of criminal journals 1769-17776, legislative papers 1782-1866 and will transcripts 1782-1855 and a mysterious index to a mysterious "multiple record series 1675-1929." and plats for school land grants 1784-1868-- presumably not the colonial plats listed on the front page. Not listed as being included in this index are the grand jury presentments, the colonial plats or the curiosities.

Underneath the chart of included topics is a table of boxes. We can choose to click Help - - Copies - - SCHAH Hme -- Search Page -- Corporate Names -- Document Types -- Locations -- Topics -- Series List.

Well given a good database, any blue blooded genealogist is going to click the most attractive link: Search Page. Once on the search page, we can search all databases or select individual databases from a drop down list. Missing from the drop down are the grand jury presentments database, colonial plats and curiosities but when I search all databases for individuals named Smith, the first hit I get is one for what appears to be a colonial land grant -- is this the plats?

More clicking on the links at the bottom of the page gives me more -- and better -- information, but it is still confusing. By this time, I'm long past ready to give up. Rather than try to figure it all out, I elect to just do the search, on all databases, and collect what information I get with gratitude. I never do know exactly what I'm searching or if I'm missing something, but I hope that by cutting a wide swath, I'll get most, if not all, of what is offered.

I'm certainly not going to fault web page designers for not coming up with a perfectly clear navigation system, that anticipates my every whim and pops an answer up just when I need it, although I do make a plea for web designers to take time to test, edit and revise sites, so material is presented as clearly as possible. The point I take from all this is that it often takes a great deal of time and effort to understand the whole of what a website offers. If I want to benefit from the site, I must spend the time and make the effort.

And as do most sites, this site has a clearly marked link "CONTACT US". Whenever I've done so, I've always received prompt, courteous and knowledgeable answers to my question. I highly recommend adding this step to those above.

5 Things You Didn't Know About Me...

Why am I writing this? Because I've been "tagged" as one of a series of genealogy bloggers. It's in an effort to try to get the genealogy bloggers more well known, a cause I fully support. So here are my five...

1. I don't really understand blogging! Actually, if you've read any of my blogs, you may have already figured this out. I've been stumbling through it and until recently haven't really searched to find what else is out there. But now I've I've been finding and google-bookmarking those I find for the past few weeks. I also use bloglines to give me a webased collection of rss feeds for those I want to track. So I'm slowly figuring it out. Tips and hints welcome.

2. I just learned recently that I have a (very distant and very indirect) connection to Yul Brynner. As a child, my husband's mother lived in a Russian community called Novina. Novina was a resort in Korea that catered to Russians in exile and Yul Brynner's father was connected to that resort, and perhaps the Brynners were related to the Yankovsky family of her step-father. Yul's son, Rock Brynner, has researched his family's origins and recently published a book about his family, Empire and Odyssey: The Brynners in Far East Russia and Beyond. My husband and daughter have ordered the book and are now in communication with researchers who also have interest in Novina, so I will write more about this in a separate blog.

3. From the third grade through the 7th, I went to a one room school, where I was the only one in my grade. The teacher was visibly displeased when she learned what grade I was in, since it meant adding a grade to her already full day. Each day she would call each grade up to the front of a room for a recitation in a round of subjects. First grades k-8 would be called up, one by one, for reading, then for arithmetic, then after lunch these rounds would be repeated for for social science and science. Penmanship every day for twenty minutes after lunch hour. This was also the time when the teacher held surprise desk checks to make sure our desks were neat. My desk never surprised her... it was never neat. We also had spelling, but I forget how she fit that in and art class was every Friday afternoon. Once the teacher learned I could read, my daily routine consisted of turning in my math assignment and very rarely being called up to recite. The rest of the time was all mine to read whatever I wanted. I thought it was a fine education.

4. I can't sing and am not musical. All my in-person friends and family know this, of course, but so far I've been able to keep it a secret on the web.

5. I can't keep up with everything I promise I'll do. Oh... that's no secret to anyone?

Updated the census page

Good grief! I was thrilled and appalled to see that my census site got mention on the rootsweb list. Thrilled, of course first... but then I immediately wondered if it had bad links. So I checked... and it sure did. I couldn't believe how many. Some due to my own carelessness...some because the sites had disappeared and some for reasons that mystified me.

At any rate, I got to work and the page is sparkling clean now -- or was as of five minutes ago -- and I've run Xenu Link Sleuth on the rest of the site and will get to the numerous bad links it found over time.

My next page... South Carolina.

Your Guide to Using Archives for Genealogical Research

Working on a webpage for private manuscript sources necessitated doing one on using archives. Most genealogists are very proficient at using libraries, but some are hesitant to make full use of archives. They seem more daunting... and as I prepared this page, I could see why! But material in archives is getting more and more accessible and I hope this web page will help you renew your efforts to find material in archives.

Click on the header of this blog to see Your Guide to Using Archives for Genealogical Research.

Your Guide to Using Diaries, Letters, Personal Papers and Other Manuscript Sources

I got this site up today, in preparation for that talk I mentioned in my earlier blog. Researching this topic reminded me how much is out there...and how many ways there are to find that material. The web has provided a terrific boost to our ability to find manuscript sources, but as I worked on these pages I am reminded again at how much valuable information is in the print sources. Not only will the print sources guide you to information you may not find on the web, they also provide the information needed to make better use of the web. For example, if you use a print source to find diaries of interest to you, you can then search the web using some of the key words found in the description. The two sources.. print and web...simply enhance each other. Neither is best, neither is comprehensive.

Click on the heading of this blog to go to the website Your Guide to Using Diaries, Letters, Personal Papers and Other Manuscript Sources

Putting an old diary online --the diary of Louise B. Hancock

I was preparing for a talk I'm giving on diaries and manuscripts and came across this site, which is part of a larger one on e-scrapbooking. This diary begins in 1916, when Louise was still in high school and ends it in 1919.

When Larry Johnson saw it on E-bay, it caught his interest and he purchased it. He and his wife(Annette Lamb) then set about finding out everything they could about the person who kept the diary and the environment she lived in. Using official records, yearbooks, books that covered the history of the events of that time, census records and a variety of other sources, they created a vivid and detailed account of the life of a young woman.

It turns out that Louise Hancock is no one's direct ancestor. She married in 1922, but suffered from tuberculosis and died at the age of 25 in 1924, leaving no children. Larry Johnson and Annette Lamb brought her back to life... and on their site they tell how they did it. It's a great site... combining human interest, inspiration and instruction.

Updated my page on Sweden

I usually don't link to a site that is completely in a foreign language, so I was pleased to learn that the SVAR website has an English language portal and I updated the page to add that link. I also added a link to the Swenson Swedish Immigration Research Center. I don't have Swedish ancestors -- if I did, I'd be busy planning a trip to that facility!

Bobbie's Genealogy Classroom

My website is intended as a background for classes I teach and talks I give, as well as a handy way for me to keep track of important websites and information. I don't yet have pages up for every topic and even when a page is up, it constantly needs to be updated. I keep plugging away at it, bit by bit... but it's hard to keep track of what has changed. At the bottom of some (and eventually all) pages is a date last updated, but that doesn't give any information about changes. I thought I'd use this blog to track changes. I hesitate to add something because each time I work on the blog, that's a change I'm not making. But I will try to use it to track some of the major changes I make. In the meantime, I hope you visit my website and find something useful. I appreciate notification of bad information and suggestions of material I might want to include.

I already knew that...

This is an etc. blog, with only a slight genealogy connection. A few days ago a friend sent me a a tip that the Sanborn maps are available electronically at our University Library. She prefaced it by saying "You probably already knew this..." (I didn't) and today at coffee mentioned that she almost didn't send me the information, since I probably already knew it.

I've been noticing lately, with some irritation, how quick people are to inform the bearer of any information "Yes, I knew that." Now why would you announce that? Is it to be sure everyone knows how much you know? Is it to chide the person for wasting your time by saying what you already knew? Is it to cut the conversation off, then and there? I can't think of one gracious reason for making such a statement.

When I said it was only slightly genealogy related, the connection was not the Sanborn maps. It is that often at the LDS library, where I volunteer, or at conferences or in discussions, people say things that I -- and a lot of other people who have been doing genealogy a long time-- already know. This is especially so when talking to someone who is new at research and just learning these amazing and varied bits of information that make research so challanging. In my opinion, it behooves us all to refrain from announcing that we already knew that and rather encourage the discussion and passing of information necessary to enable people to become proficient users.

You probably all already knew that.

Average Time of Indenturship

Today I had to find out approximately how long one could expect an ancestor to work as an indentured servant. I had heard an average of 7 years, but could I find a source for that information? Anthing that explained it in more detail? I did a quick and dirty search of my reference books and found nothing, so I turned to the web. I googled the word and found a helpful defintion on a Houghton-Mifflin site, "The Great American History Fact Finder" Here is the definition given there:

" a person who worked without wages, usually for a period of five to seven years, in exchange for payment of the person's passage to the American colonies. The contract, called an "indenture," entitled the servant to food, clothing, shelter, and medical attention. Devised by the Virginia Company in the late 1610s, the system provided cheap labor. It is estimated that one-half to two-thirds of all European immigrants to the colonies participated in the system, some voluntarily, some as victims of penal servitude. The practice disappeared after 1800."


An entry at Wikipedia / The Free Dictionary.com makes this note, indicating an indenturship of ten years was not uncommon.

"Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons".

Well... here it is 2004 and I still haven't figured out blogging. But something brought it to my attention lately and I remembered that I had started a blog somewhere, so here I am again. Still trying to get junk from the past out of my life, which means I've come to know and depend on Purple Heart, Recyle Ann Arbor and any other place I can find that might find a use for accumulations of various sorts. By far my BIGGEST accumulation, though, is paper... mostly genealogy info I've collected over the years. I'm trying to get it in all in the computer, but so far I've not come close and I'm getting carpal tunnel syndrome. Since three years have gone by, I suppose I should change the name of the blog. It started out "Life at 56" Given my track record, I don't think it is a good idea to rename it with any numbers. I think I'll make a genealogy blog out of it.