Latest Additions Reach New Milestone in Free Online Historic Record Collections

The latest additions to FamilySearch's online collection of free historic record collections pushes it to 600! That's right, 600 free, original source record collections online from all over the world. The tally of insomniacs will certainly expand as the numbers of family history researchers enjoy the latest updates. This week there are new international records from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, France, Italy, Jamaica, Mexico, Peru, Poland, and Spain. Now take a seat while the list of updates for the U.S. collections are noted—California, District of Columbia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington State, Wisconsin, and the Virgin Islands. Whew! See the table below for details. You can search all of the record collections now for free at FamilySearch.org.

If you are enjoying the steady stream of free records added weekly, please consider "giving back" as a FamilySearch volunteer. You can start and stop volunteering at any time. Find out more at indexing.familysearch.org.

FamilySearch International is the largest genealogy organization in the world. FamilySearch is a nonprofit, volunteer-driven organization sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Millions of people use FamilySearch records, resources, and services to learn more about their family history. To help in this great pursuit, FamilySearch has been actively gathering, preserving, and sharing genealogical records worldwide for over 100 years. Patrons may access FamilySearch services and resources free online at FamilySearch.org or through over 4,600 family history centers in 132 countries, including the main Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Extended 1 week! 25% off GenealogyBank - Exclusive for Legacy Family Tree users

Last week we emailed our Legacy users a special offer on the GenealogyBank newspaper subscription site (U.S. newspapers only). GenealogyBank was so pleased with our partnership that they have extended their 25% off savings for 1 more week (now good through Friday, April 29). That's one year of unlimited access for just $52.46.

Visit www.genealogybank.com/legacysavings to take advantage of this offer. To learn more about their service, you can still view Tom Kemp's webinar, Newspapers: Critical Resource to Complete Your Family Tree in our webinar archives.

Our 8th annual Legacy Genealogy Cruise to New England and Eastern Canada (Sep 29-Oct 8) is almost full - we have two balcony rooms and seven inside cabins remaining, so if you're considering joining us, please give us a call this week.

And if you are single ... we are looking for:

• one male to share an inside cabin with another single male already booked in our Legacy group
• one female to share an inside cabin with another single female already booked in our Legacy group

For more information, please visit http://www.legacyfamilytree.com/CruiseInfo_2011.asp, call our travel agent Christy at 1-888-505-6997, or email her at [email protected].

Anyone with the need to easily share information with others, transfer information from one computer to another, or have access to your own data from another computer needs to watch this recording of Thomas MacEntee's Dropbox for Genealogists webinar. As one of our viewers commented, "Excellent! Just bumped me into a new century," Thomas did a fantastic job of teaching us about this new technology that benefits not only genealogists, but all computer users.

View the recording

If you could not make it to the live event, the 1 hour 32 minute recording of Dropbox for Genealogists is now available in our webinar archives. Visit www.LegacyFamilyTree.com/webinars.asp to watch. The free recording will be available until May 2, 2011.

Pre-order the webinar-on-CD - includes 18 pages of handouts

Own your own copy of Dropbox for Genealogists by purchasing the webinar-on-CD for just $9.95. It includes the recording of the class (1 hour 32 minutes), the complete Q/A session, and 18 pages of handouts (that is not a mis-print...there's really 18 pages). Click here for more information or to purchase.

Special Discount Coupon

The special discount coupon of dropbox that was announced during the webinar is valid for 10% off anything in our online store through Monday, April 25, 2011.

Viewers' comments

• All your webinars are good but this was the best.
• Excellent!  Just bumped me into a new century. :-)
• Fantastic information...I opened my account awhile back...but was fearful of using it...now...Here I Come Dropbox...ready or not!
• I enjoyed the various uses of Dropbox, especially the suggestion in Q & A about sharing web pages.
• I never knew such a thing existed. Thanks again for education me on this application. I'll definitely try it.
• The webinar was very easy to follow.  Mr. Macentee's style was easy to understand. I appreciate this format very much.  A dose of this really invigorates my genealogy. Thanks to you both!
• Thomas MacEntee obviously puts a lot of time into preparing his presentations. It is noticed and very much appreciated! Excellent speaking style and easy explanations make it very fun to learn from him!

Register for our upcoming webinars (free)

• Preserving Family Photographs: 1839 to the Present - Wednesday, May 4, 2011
• Further Your Research and Unify Your Family Reunion with Beautiful Genealogy Charts with Janet Hovorka - Wednesday, May 11, 2011
• Google Docs for Genealogists with Thomas MacEntee - Wednesday, May 18, 2011
• Google Forms for Genealogists with Thomas MacEntee - Wednesday, June 1, 2011.
• Ready, Set, Write! Share Your Family's Story with Lisa Alzo - Wednesday, June 29, 2011
• The Power of DNA in Unlocking Family Relationships with Ugo Perego - Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Click here to register.

Here at Legacy Family Tree we give away a lot of stuff - free webinars, free technical support, even free software. Many genealogy societies, websites, libraries, universities and even speakers do the same. So the question is, should all genealogy be free?

Every genealogist, webinar viewer, and blog reader should read today's article published by Thomas MacEntee. He did a masterful job of explaining the topic. He begins with the parable of "well, you pay your plumber, don't you?"

Please read his article at http://www.geneabloggers.com/genealogy-free/.

Dick Eastman also wrote a fantastic article about this topic a little over a year ago. Please read his article by clicking here.

Here at Legacy Family Tree, we will continue offering our free webinars, free technical support, and even our free software. But we are only able to do it because of the great people and organizations we partner with, and especially because of the support of our wonderful customers - you!

April 15, 2011 – Surprise, Arizona: The 2011 Legacy Genealogy Cruise – an annual event in its 8th year – is pleased to announce that professional genealogist and technology educator Thomas MacEntee (and popular webinar speaker) will be joining the event as its featured speaker. The 9-day genealogy cruise takes place beginning September 29, 2011 and visits New England and Eastern Canada on the luxurious Royal Caribbean’s Explorer Of The Seas ship.
 
Over a nine-day period, MacEntee will offer presentations related to genealogy technology including “They’re Alive – Searching for Living Persons,” “Managing Your Genealogy Data,” “Google for Genealogists,” and “Backing Up Your Genealogy Data”. He will join Legacy Family Tree’s Geoff Rasmussen and others who will offer classes on Legacy and other genealogy technology.
 
The 8th annual Legacy Genealogy Cruise, held in the fall when the New England foliage is brilliant in every imaginable color, starts and ends in New Jersey and visits the following ports: Cape Liberty Cruise Port, New Jersey; Portland, Maine; Bar Harbor, Maine; Saint John, New Brunswick; Halifax, Nova Scotia; and Boston, Massachusetts.
 
For more information, or to register, visit http://www.legacyfamilytree.com/CruiseInfo_2011.asp. Not only will you have the vacation of a lifetime, but you will do so in good company with other genealogists.

Hope to see you all there!

All three of my sisters and both of my sister-in-laws have a personal blog. And thanks to something DearMYRTLE taught in her More Blogging for Beginners webinar, I, too, have a personal blog.

While I've now published 939 articles in this Legacy News blog, I've stayed away from having a personal blog for a couple of reasons. First, I have wanted a blogging service that is 1) free, 2) very easy to use (so my kids can also blog), and 3) advanced enough to have some design control. While I use and love Typepad for our Legacy News blog I have not wanted to pay the $8.95 a month for their service for a personal blog. (They do have a free service called TypePad Micro, but it does not offer enough of what I want.) Blogger.com's free service has everything I want except that it adds that Blogger nav bar at the top which I have never liked. That nav bar removes the feeling that my blog is mine.

I am so happy DearMYRTLE taught me how to remove that nav bar. Her simple step-by-step instructions included in the webinar-on-CD's handouts gave me exactly what I needed to overcome my personal blogging obstacles.

My personal blog is not much to look at yet. I've left nearly all the settings at their defaults for now. But it has given me an easy way to share my family's happenings with extended family and friends. And since I already had my own domain name of GeoffRasmussen.com, Blogger let me use it for my blog's address. I like http://blog.GeoffRasmussen.com much better than their default of www.GeoffRasmussen.Blogspot.com. If I want, I could restrict my blog so only those I invite can view it.

While we (Legacy Family Tree) were one of the early pioneers of blogging in the genealogy industry, I've been slower to adopt it for personal use, but am excited about it now. As my students at last weekend's Root Cellar Spring Seminar in Sacramento learned, it really is easy to get started. Using Blogger.com, it took us less than three minutes to set up our new blog and begin writing.

If you missed DearMYRTLE's two webinars on Blogging for Beginners, they are available in our webinar-on-CD collection here. Each contain four pages of handouts with simple step-by-step instructions. They give you everything (and more) that you need to enter the blogosphere.

Happy blogging!

from FamilySearch.org:

What a grab bag of records added this week! Let's see—for its online patrons' free viewing pleasure, internationally, FamilySearch added church records from Costa Rico and Mexico, Bishop's Transcripts and Poor Law records from England, Hindu pilgrimage records from India, municipal records from Spain, and civil registrations from Nicaragua and Peru. In the U.S., those with Arkansas and Oklahoma ancestors are going to have a proverbial field trip with the 500,000 new county marriage records added—and the indexes are linked to the original images! Additional records were also added for Maine and Texas. See the table below for details. You can search all of the record collections now for free at FamilySearch.org.

If you are enjoying the steady stream of free records added weekly, please consider "giving back" as a FamilySearch volunteer. You can start and stop volunteering at any time. Find out more at indexing.familysearch.org.

FamilySearch International is the largest genealogy organization in the world. FamilySearch is a nonprofit, volunteer-driven organization sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Millions of people use FamilySearch records, resources, and services to learn more about their family history. To help in this great pursuit, FamilySearch has been actively gathering, preserving, and sharing genealogical records worldwide for over 100 years. Patrons may access FamilySearch services and resources free online at FamilySearch.org or through over 4,600 family history centers in 132 countries, including the main Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah.

If you are in the Ogden, Utah area, please join us for an evening of Legacy Family Tree instruction on Tuesday, April 19, 2011. The class will be held at the Ogden Family History Center (539 24th St.) from 7:00-8:00pm and will be taught by professional genealogist and fellow Legacy user, Warren Bittner. For more information, please contact Emil Hanson.

Hope to see you there!

by Thomas Jay Kemp, NewsBank’s Director of Genealogy Products

People just beginning to research their family history often concentrate on their local newspaper or other newspapers published in their state. This is a sensible way to begin—but it is only a starting point. Many beginning researchers think they don’t need newspapers published outside their town, city or state. However, as this article explains, valuable family clues can be found in newspapers published outside your local area; family details can sometimes turn up in the most unexpected places.

Here’s an interesting example from my own experience, one that taught me an important lesson. When I first began researching 46 years ago, I found an obituary about my ancestor Edward Kemp (1863-1926) published in the New England Historic Genealogical Society’s Register (NEHGS Memoirs. January 1928. pp. 103-104).

The obituary said that this Edward Kemp was born in County Cavan, Ireland. That would have been crucial information for my Kemp research at that time—I was trying to figure out where in Ireland my family had come from. But the obituary also said that Edward lived and died in New York City so I erroneously concluded he was not my relative. I thought our family was “only” from Stamford, Connecticut.

It would be years later that I would again find Edward’s obituary in the Register. The second time I recognized him immediately as my cousin. By then I knew that the family was from County Cavan. I stared at that information and wondered—how was it I didn't find this earlier? Then I remembered that I had found it years earlier, but I had tossed it aside because he was from New York City and I thought that was outside the area I needed to search.

This taught me an important Genealogy Tip: Families and individuals move to other parts of the country, and you’re probably not aware of all the places your ancestors lived. They might have ended up in a completely unexpected place, somewhere you would never have thought to look for them. Expand your newspaper research so that you can find your family obituaries, articles, and documents—no matter where in the country these items were published. Don’t assume you only want your hometown newspaper.

Let me give you an example, framed on the type of basic question researchers often ask: “What do you have on Stamford, CT?”

The question should be more precise: “What do you have on my ancestor Grace Stewart, who was born and married in Stamford, CT?”

To track down some answers, I turned to GenealogyBank and began searching its 815 million records.

I began with the known facts:

• Her maiden name: Grace Toms
• Approximate year/place of birth: born about 1896 in Stamford, CT
• Spouse: she married Charles Stewart
• Other information: the rest of the Toms family lived/died in the Stamford area

I immediately ran into two problems:

• Initial searches found lots of results, but not the specific individual I wanted
• Charles Stewart and Grace Stewart are common names

A broad search for Grace Stewart using all of GenealogyBank’s material yielded 4,165 results—that was just too many to sort through to find her:

I then narrowed my search to just the recent Newspaper Obituaries collection to see if I could locate her obituary notice. That cut the number of results down to 170—I could sift through those one by one, but that would still take me quite a bit of time.

I decided to narrow my search still further before examining individual records. At the bottom of the Search Results Page there is another search form that lets you refine your search. I did this by entering “Connecticut” in the Keywords box:

This time, however, I got zero hits.

So I turned to search for her husband: Charles Stewart.

A broad search for Charles Stewart using all of GenealogyBank’s material yielded 51,290 results—many more than for his wife, and way too many to sort through to find him:

Just as I had done with his wife, I then narrowed my search to just the recent Newspaper Obituaries collection to see if I could locate his obituary notice. That cut the number of results down to 735, which I then narrowed still further by entering “Connecticut” in the Keywords box. This turned up one obituary, but it was not the Charles Stewart I was looking for.

All right, let’s try another approach. Family history research is, after all, a patient pursuit. I went back to examining Grace Stewart in the Newspaper Obituaries collection, but this time I added her middle name “Toms” to the Keywords box:

Nothing. Zero hits again.

OK, another try. I added “Stamford” to the Keywords box:

Success! This time I found her:

Clicking on her obituary link brought up the actual document:

It’s a very rewarding feeling when you track down and find the exact ancestor you were looking for! But as this search showed, you have to be determined when researching your family history. Don’t be discouraged if your initial search turns up zero hits. Modify your search a little, refine it, then try again.

And don’t forget the important Genealogy Tip: Families and individuals move to other parts of the country, and you’re probably not aware of all the places your ancestors lived. They might have ended up in a completely unexpected place, somewhere you would never have thought to look for them. Expand your newspaper research so that you can find your family obituaries, articles, and documents—no matter where in the country these items were published. Don’t assume you only want your hometown newspaper.

In the above example, knowing that Grace Stewart was born and married in Stamford, Connecticut, I could have spent countless hours examining all the Stamford papers, or even all the Connecticut papers, without ever finding her obituary. That’s because she ended up living and dying in a place I had no reason to expect: Washington, D.C. But there her obituary was: printed by the Washington Post.

GenealogyBank has powerful search tools that allow you to focus on all the newspapers in one state, one city, or just one specific newspaper—when you have good reason for such a narrow search. In addition, GenealogyBank gives you the ability to search over 5,000 newspapers from all 50 states, because sometimes when a narrowly-focused geographical search won’t do, a broad sweep can turn up unexpected results!
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Huge Historical Newspaper Archive at GenealogyBank.com

One of the key sources for online newspapers is GenealogyBank.com. Featuring more than 5,000 U.S. newspapers with over 1 billion names from all 50 states, GenealogyBank is one of the most extensive online historical newspaper archives available anywhere, designed specifically for family history research. Over 95% of our newspaper content is exclusive to GenealogyBank. By providing access to rare and hard-to-find newspapers from 1690 to the present day, GenealogyBank gives researchers the opportunity to discover unique, long-forgotten information about their American ancestors.

Special Offer for Legacy Family Tree readers – Join Now and Save Over 75%!
For a limited time, annual memberships are at their most affordable if you join before April 21, 2011. For only $4.66 per month, you’ll save over 75% off the monthly rate and over $180 a year.

There’s never been a better time to explore your family history. You are just a few clicks away from fascinating facts and stories from your family’s past.

SAVE 75% and Get Unlimited Searches