So did you figure out what that mystery item was? Chances are you did since it seemed that most blog readers knew exactly what this item is.

If you recall I gave you the following clues:

• This item is made of a lightweight metal (aluminum or tin)
• This was mostly used by women to complete chores in more than one room of the house.
• You would find this for sale in catalogs in the early 20^th
• It could be used in the kitchen but it has nothing to do with food.
• This item saved money
• This one that I bought at an antique store is just one “look.” There are different versions including a version that is square instead of circular.

The item in question is called a soap saver. Its purpose is probably obvious from its name. It held pieces of left-over soap (you know, those small pieces that no one wants to use). You add those pieces to the wire mesh basket and then when doing laundry you could swish the basket in the water and use up that leftover soap. This helped families save money by using all of the soap and would have been used when doing laundry pre-washing machines.

Did you get it right?

How did I figure it out? Well, it took a bit of researching in old retail catalogs. I assumed it dated somewhere around the early 20^th century. I first thought it was a kitchen gadget and in a way it could be, but not for cooking. So I looked through catalogs until I found a photo of it.

Once I had the name, I looked in Google Patents for examples of it. Here’s one that I found.

From there I Googled “soap saver” and found other examples. Because there are modern-day “soap savers” I sometimes added a keyword like “metal” to my search. One article I found from the website Love to Know, included a photo of my soap saver.

Readers figured out the mystery item in any number of ways. There were those who knew what it was because they had a family member who owned one themselves. Like this comment by Anthony Grace:

"I believe this is a device to use up small soap remnants. By agitating it (with a piece or pieces of soap) in washing up water, the user could generate soapy water solution for cleaning pots and pans. I occasionally used one of these items as a child (70+ years ago!) so the answer was in my memory!"

But there were others who figured it out using various online tools including online retailers like Etsy, Google, and Google Lens. In one case a reader commented that she learned how to search using an image and that helped her find the answer (Geoff did a TechZone video about searching using a reverse image search.) In some cases readers even found modern-day examples that you could buy. Edwina Shooter found one for sale in Australia at this website.

It was a lot of fun to read everyone's comments. The reason we didn't publish them as you submitted them is we wanted everyone to have a guess without the correct answering showing up in the comments. One of my favorite comments was from Judy Conklin who wrote, 

"The object presented is a SOAP SAVER. I just Googled the words "old soap saver" and a picture of the object popped up. We had one at home - many years ago. Now, if only birth, death and marriage records were as easy to find!!"

I agree Judy! But any type of research can help improve your overall research skills.

The most common wrong answer was a tea infuser. While they are similar, the metal mesh on this item is too wide and the whole thing is too big for a tea cup. The photo below shows the difference in size compared to my butter dish. It does occur to me I should have provided something to show the scale and I have found tea infusers online that do look similar so that was a good guess. 

Did you figure out what the item was? All those who left a comment with the right answer were put in a random drawing for a free month subscription to Legacy Webinars. The winner of a one-month Legacy Webinar subscription is Ruth Taylor!

Thanks to everyone who participated! 

Gena Philibert-Ortega is an author, instructor, and researcher. She blogs at Gena's Genealogy and Food.Family.Ephemera. You can find her presentations on the Legacy Family Tree Webinars website.

Happy New Year! In January, our thoughts turn to new beginnings and plans. Geoff Rasmussen recently announced the 2022 Legacy webinar schedule. That schedule always gets me thinking about all the education opportunities coming up for the year. So my question is, what do you plan to learn?

It’s easy to respond with an enthusiastic “Everything!” But you may want to take some time to plan out your webinar watching and come up with an action plan so that you can make the most of your webinar viewing. From my personal experiences teaching and watching webinars, I know there are some best practices to consider to get the most from your experience.

6 Best Practices

We are so lucky to live in a time where technology has brought us so much knowledge and information. I remember in college, I had an independent study class that consisted of recorded lectures on VHS tape, and I thought that was very high tech! That early version of the webinar did allow me some flexibility to listen to lectures on my schedule.

But easier access doesn’t always mean that we are doing what we need to, to get the most of the experience (remember my recorded college lectures? I tended to fall asleep due to a heavy work and school schedule).

What are some “best practices” to get the most of what you watch this year? Here are 6 I would suggest.

1. What is your goal?

What’s your reason for listening to that webinar? Do you have a specific research type or methodology you want to learn? Take time to write that goal down. When you find yourself not paying attention, you can remind yourself why you are there and what you want out of the next hour.

2. Focus on the Webinar.

No really. I know how it is. You have a webinar playing, and you're checking social media, and answering someone's email. Then you're ordering groceries to be delivered and wondering what you should make for dinner. No, don't do that. Give yourself the gift of focusing, totally being present only on the webinar. If you have to do a quick search of the website the speaker just mentioned, fine. But try to focus on what the presenter is saying. When we simply watch a presentation, we don't retain everything we hear, so imagine how much you retain when your mind is multitasking? According to author and TED Talk presenter Julian Treasure, we only retain only 25% of what we hear so imagine what you're missing in that other 75% [1]. 

3. Jot Down Questions.

Before you even watch the webinar, what do you want to get from it? What do you need to know for your research? Jot those down before the speaker even begins and if those questions aren't answered, consider asking in the chatbox.

4. Take Notes.

Do you take notes when you watch webinars? Note-taking helps you to retain information simply by the act of writing the information down. You can print the handout and annotate it so that it is more meaningful for your particular research.

5. Ask Questions.

Use the chat to ask questions. Your question may not be picked, but you have a better chance if you make sure to ask right away.

6. Summarize.

A TED talk by Julian Treasure (mentioned above) teaches an acronym to use when thinking about listening. That acronym is RASA which stands for Receive, Appreciate, Summarize, and Ask. Receive means to pay attention. Appreciate is one way you can show your listening to a person (using responses like oh, ok). The last two are probably obvious, Summarize what the speaker said back to them, and Ask questions.[2] Even though this is meant for 1:1 conversation, you could do the same thing when listening to a webinar. Remember those notes you were taking? You can note any follow-up actions like searching on a website or checking out a recommended book. After the webinar is over, take some time to jot down the three main points (or more) that are your take-aways from the webinar.

What do you do to prepare to learn from a webinar? What are your best practices? Let’s share ideas in the comments below.

See you at the next webinar!

[1] “5 Ways to Listen Better,” TED (https://www.ted.com/talks/julian_treasure_5_ways_to_listen_better/transcript?language=en: accessed 5 January 2022).

[2] Ibid.

Gena Philibert-Ortega is an author, instructor, and researcher. She blogs at Gena's Genealogy and Food.Family.Ephemera. You can find her presentations on the Legacy Family Tree Webinars website.

The FamilySearch Catalog. Chances are you use it. But are you using all it offers? Case in point: subject headings.

Subject Headings are likely something you’ve encountered in other library catalogs. You will see subject headings in pretty much every library catalog you use, even the FamilySearch Catalog. So what are they? “Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) is a list of words and phrases – called headings – that are used to indicate the topics of library resources. It is used by most academic and research libraries in the United States, as well as by many public and school libraries. It is also used by libraries throughout the world....LCSH brings consistency to library collections by categorizing topics into logical arrangements, and by controlling synonyms, variant spellings, and homographs.”[1] So in a nutshell, subject headings are a way that library materials are cataloged. 

What this means for you is the opportunity to find other works that are similar to your item of interest. This doesn’t always work to our advantage, sometimes there simply aren’t other similar resources in the catalog, but in some cases, you might uncover additional resources. I find this especially helpful in cases where I have conducted a keyword search.

So let’s look at two examples from the FamilySearch Catalog. In this first example, I did a Place search on Spain, Madrid and then chose the category Civil Registration. This is the card catalog entry for the single result in this category.

Notice under Subjects it says Locality Subjects and provides two links:

Spain, Madrid - Census

Spain, Madrid - Civil registration

In this case, the civil registration link is for this entry and no others exist in this category. The census link includes two resources, this entry and another.

Now let’s look at a different example, this time I conducted a keyword search on the phrase “women newspaper.” This is an example where my keyword phrase probably isn't the best so I could benefit from other suggestions. One of my results was the book, Index of references to American women in colonial newspapers through 1800. Notice that in this case not only are there more links but they are divided by Locality Subjects and Library of Congress Subjects.

Notice that these include Locality Subjects for Genealogy and Newspaper Indexes for the United States as well as Library of Congress Subjects for Women and American Newspapers. In this case, the LOC subjects lead me to no other resources. However, the Locality Subjects lead me to over 100 additional resources. This can be beneficial in helping me locate additional items for my research.

The FamilySearch Catalog is a vital resource for your genealogy. Don't stop at entering a search. Study your results to get the most from your research. Learn more about using the Catalog so your research can benefit. To start, read the FamilySearch Wiki page “Introduction to the FamilySearch Catalog.” 

[1] “Process for Adding and Revising Library of Congress Subject Headings,” Library of Congress (https://www.loc.gov/aba/cataloging/subject/lcsh-process.html: accessed 18 November 2021).

Gena Philibert-Ortega is an author, instructor, and researcher. She blogs at Gena's Genealogy and Food.Family.Ephemera. You can find her presentations on the Legacy Family Tree Webinars website.

I just finished reading actor Stanley Tuccis’ new book Taste - My Life Through Food. In it, he recounts his life and the role food played from his childhood to his young adult years, his marriages and children, to his most recent bout with cancer. It’s more than an autobiography, it is peppered with recipes that he fondly recalls. Readers are privy to simple recipes like his father’s Pasta con Aglio e Oilio (pasta with garlic and olive oil) and Tomato Salad to the more complex Timpano, a special Christmas recipe in the Tucci family.

Reading this memoir is like sitting down with Stanley Tucci and talking, eating, and laughing. He comes across as a “real person” and not a celebrity. His love for Italian food is infectious. I devoured the book in one day.

But this isn’t a book review.

As I read and enjoyed this book I thought about what a great family history book it was and how we  should all consider writing something similar. So often it’s difficult to write a family history because you may not feel like you’re a writer and it can seem like an overwhelming task. But you can write about memories of food! You start with your memories and what you know. Those memories might encompass several generations (in my case I knew one of my paternal great-grandmothers, a cook, very well). You can start with documenting your family (you, parents, grandparents, etc) and your food history. Possible writing prompts include:

• What was a special occasion at your house and what did you eat? 
• What foods did you eat for the holidays (Thanksgiving, Easter, etc)?
• What did you eat for birthdays?
• What did your parents or grandparents serve when you were sick?
• What was an after-school snack when you were young?
• What foods did you eat at your grandparents and how was that different than what you ate at home?
• Did anyone in your family have a garden? What did they grow? How did they use that food?
• Did your family hunt or fish? What recipes were cooked to incorporate that food?
• What are foods that come from your ethnic/heritage background?
• Where did you buy food? 
• What food was considered a treat?
• What rules did your family have around eating (clean plate, have to try everything, etc)?
• What did you eat for school lunches?
• What’s the “weirdest” food your family ate?

You get the picture. From those questions you can write up short stories, maybe just a page or two long. You can add recipes when appropriate and even images of you cooking those recipes, or photos of your family cooking, in the kitchen, at the table, etc. This isn't a cookbook, this is a family food history featuring a handful of recipes.

Tucci’s food memoir isn’t just about him. He introduces us to his parents, siblings, grandparents, and extended family. He then discusses his friends, wives, children and stepchildren. It’s not the story of one man’s obsession with food (although, that’s part of it) it’s the story of ancestry, a homeland, family past and present, and his memories of them. He writes of his mom:

"Food, its preparation, serving, and ingesting, was the primary activity and the main topic of conversation in my household growing up. My mother insists that she was capable of little more than boiling water when she married my father. If this is true, she has more than made up for this shortcoming over the last century. I can honestly say that on the four-burner electric stove she used throughout my childhood and on the gas hob that replaced it many years later, she has never cooked a bad meal. Not once. The focus of her cooking is Italian, pimply recipes from her family or my father’s family.” [1]

Genealogy can be an act of gathering solely names and dates to make generational connections. But a family history narrative that includes memories of food is appealing to family members who are not interested in genealogy.

Thanksgiving is approaching in the United States, but no matter wherever you are, this is a great time to ask your family about their food memories, swap recipes, and document you family’s food history. 

What precious memories will your family food memoir recount?

Gena Philibert-Ortega is an author, instructor, and researcher. She blogs at Gena's Genealogy and Food.Family.Ephemera. You can find her presentations on the Legacy Family Tree Webinars website.

[1] Tucci, Stanley. Taste. My Life Through Food (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2021) p. 12-13.

Sure, you know the BIG cemetery websites. Chances are, you use them all the time. You may have even uploaded gravestone photos to those websites. But what are the websites with cemetery and burial information that you don't use? Below are 5 to consider as you research your ancestors.

1. Genuki

GENUKI "provides a virtual reference library of genealogical information of particular relevance to the UK and Ireland." Volunteer supported, this website provides all kinds of links and information you need to research the UK or Ireland. Once you locate the place you are researching, you can choose a Cemeteries link, or you can search using the name of the location and the word "cemeteries." This will provide you with links and information about cemeteries in the area, steering you towards cemetery transcription projects.

2. US GenWeb Tombstone Transcription Project

I think old books and websites are sometimes forgotten or discarded because they don't have all the bells and whistles. The US GenWeb Tombstone Transcription project was once one of the few free websites providing researchers with genealogical content. When they began, they had a novel idea. "We need to record these tombstone inscriptions now---before they are lost forever to the winds and the rains. However, many cemeteries have already been recorded by various Genealogical Societies, just as many have not. And, of those recorded, how accessible is that data to the world? If we join together and do this recording, we will guarantee that our ancestors are not forgotten----that their memorials will live on so that future generations may remember then as well as we do."

Today, some of what they provided in terms of indexes can be found elsewhere as digitized materials. However, it still worth checking. The USGenWeb Tombstone Transcription Project can easily be regarded as something you wouldn't need considering what cemetery content is available online. Still, as a volunteer project, you never know what they captured vs. what was perhaps captured afterward. It's still a place to exhaust before giving up on finding a burial. Transcriptions and some photos can be found on the website. It's a pretty basic search and browse but is a must for exhausting US online cemetery information.

3. CanadaGenWeb's Cemetery Project

CanadaGenWeb's Cemetery Project "currently offers a free and searchable listing of over 18,000 known Canadian cemeteries. We are continuously adding new information provided by volunteers." You can search the website by a person or a cemetery. Currently, the website is undergoing some maintenance. Those interested in the website should also join their Facebook page. Joining the Facebook group will help you receive information about updates to the site.

4. Interment.net

Interment.net boasts 25+ million "cemetery records, transcripts, and burial registers, from tens of thousands of cemeteries across the world, all contributed by genealogists, cemeteries, government agencies, and private organizations." You can search and browse by region or special collections (including U.S. veterans burials and mining disasters). This collection is a single-source worldwide collection, which is different than similar websites. They define single-source as "Each transcription we publish comes from a single-source, be it the cemetery office, government office, church office, archived document, a tombstone transcriber. Other websites already do an excellent job of crowd-sourcing a single cemetery together. But genealogists also need to see the original records from a single source. That's what we offer." However, there is something else it lacks that the other big cemetery websites have, photographs. Keep in mind that as you browse, you will need to scroll down the page to find various links to places and cemeteries. For those searching for U.S. ancestors, you may want to read a previous Interment.net blog post, WPA Historical Records Survey about the WPA and its role in the cemetery indexes we use today.

5. Genealogy Society Websites

Obviously, this isn't one website. This is a reminder to check the local genealogical society where your ancestor lived and died (because they could have died in a different location). Genealogy societies conduct cemetery transcription projects that they publish online and in book form. In some cases, they may have this information behind a member paywall. Joining the society and having access to members-only content can be worthwhile. In addition, they are the experts on that location. So even if they haven't conducted a cemetery project, they may have information that can help you in your search. Don't forget they may also research for a fee.

Where is Your Ancestor Buried?

There's nothing wrong with using the BIG cemetery websites but don't forget that they all rely on volunteers, so they may not have what you need. Other volunteer projects might be focused on the history of that locale, have access to historical materials, or conducted transcriptions earlier before destruction to a gravestone made it impossible to read or view. If you don't initially find what you need, remember to check older websites to exhaust your online search. 

Gena Philibert-Ortega is an author, instructor, and researcher. She blogs at Gena's Genealogy and Food.Family.Ephemera. You can find her presentations on the Legacy Family Tree Webinars website.

The other day I presented a lecture on searching newspaper websites. During my hour-long presentation, I discussed different tips and methods for using digitized newspaper search engines. I talked about tools that these websites provide that filter results to reveal relevant hits. All of the information I presented was vital to understanding how to use digitized newspaper websites for genealogy research. But, even after all the techniques, I discussed there was one thing I left out—the importance of learning from other genealogist’s experiences.

Can Anyone Help?

The great thing about genealogy in an age of technology and massive amounts of online information is that genealogists, whether researching for clients or themselves, utilize social media, blogs, and websites to document their research experience. Their articles and posts include what they found or didn’t find, as they review the steps and tips they use to search genealogy search engines.

One example of a free newspaper website is Fulton History (also known as Old Fulton Postcards). This free digitized newspaper website provides various search options beyond just entering a name in a search engine. Options include using stemming, fuzzy searches, and synonyms that help you expand your search and find ancestors even if their names are misspelled.

As I searched for more information about the Fulton website, I noticed blog posts that described users' search experiences. For example, Cliff Lamere's web page titled Using the Fulton History Newspaper Site provides some valuable tips, including how to adjust for OCR errors. Vital information for searching any digitized newspaper website.

The Genealogical Society of Bergen County's web page provides information about Boolean searches as well as proximity searches. Once again, helpful for the Fulton website but also significant when searching others.

Look for Help Outside of the Website

Genealogy relevant websites provide FAQs and educational tutorials to help their users make the most of their search. However, there is a benefit to learning from the experiences of independent users who have navigated the website successfully and make that information available online. By conducting a Google search with the name of the website or database, joining a Facebook group for website users, or asking other genealogists via your social media web page, at a genealogy event, or in a genealogy society, you may learn more about how to search a website successfully.

That's the type of information we all need to find our ancestors in online databases.

Gena Philibert-Ortega is an author, instructor, and researcher. She blogs at Gena's Genealogy and Food.Family.Ephemera. You can find her presentations on the Legacy Family Tree Webinars website.

I recently had a genealogist write to me about a dilemma that many of us face. He was the organizer of a recent church-sponsored event and wondered how to make family history interesting to the community. He had suggested that maybe asking event participants to tell stories about their ancestors might help, but he wondered what other suggestions I had.

Good question. As the keepers of the family history, we are charged with not only remembering our ancestors but making their stories available and accessible. But this can be a challenging task. After all, not everyone likes history, let alone family history.

The idea of storytelling, which has been stressed in the last decade or so in the family history world, is good. After all, everyone likes a good story. Making family history less about words and numbers on a chart and more illustrative is vital.

I’ve had this issue of making family history interesting come up anytime I’ve been asked to teach family history to a non-family history group such as the Boy Scouts or church groups. How do you get people interested in family history? How do you get your family interested in their family history? (which can be just as challenging.) When I brainstorm how to do this, I think in terms of types of activities, games, art, interviews, food, and technology. Yes, giving a talk is an obvious way to teach family history to those not initiated into our pursuit, but what other ways can you interest people of all ages?

Some ideas I have are:

Games: Cards with an ancestor’s names/bio on them, Family history inspired bingo cards, scavenger hunts.

Art: Large family history wallcharts and markers to color branches, add information and drawings. Family history inspired decorations, photo albums, coloring books made from family photos.

Interviews: Offering the space and equipment to allow people to interview family. Include prepared questions to help get the conversation going. Also, encourage individuals (even children) to tell their stories and document their lives.

Food: Let's face it, we all eat, so sponsor a potluck, food contest, or a bakeoff using ancestral recipes. Teach participants how to create a family cookbook, pass out recipe cards, swap family recipes, and offer cooking lessons with grandma.

Tech Center: Have computers set up and teach how to find a relative in the 1940 census. Make available pedigree charts, family group records, and blank census forms. Hold contests for the most exciting occupation, the most family members in the same household, or the youngest/oldest family member in the 1940 census.

I believe that people like not just to hear stories; they want to see images, interact, and try something new. Engaging in only storytelling can be difficult, so having a variety of activities, whether a community event, a family reunion, or Thanksgiving, can be helpful.

So readers, what do you suggest? I want to hear your ideas about how do you make family history "fun" for the non-genealogist? 

Gena Philibert-Ortega is an author, instructor, and researcher. She blogs at Gena's Genealogy and Food.Family.Ephemera. You can find her presentations on the Legacy Family Tree Webinars website.

This is not a blog post about cookbooks or food history. But it does use a cookbook as an example.

This is a blog post with an important search reminder. That reminder is: You need to search for your ancestor using more than one name for that ancestor.

Whenever I give presentations, I stress the importance of searching websites using name variations for an ancestor. These name variations could include initials, creative spellings (misspellings), abbreviations, and nicknames. If it is a married female ancestor, you must consider not only her birth name but also variations of her husband's name/s. During certain time periods women, but not all women worldwide, went by Mrs. [his name].

Sometimes as we search one database or record set and find our ancestor, we assume that’s it and there’s no need to continue our search. After all, we found what we need. But in reality, when we think of a database that contains something like court records or historical newspapers, it’s possible that our ancestor could be mentioned more than once and in different ways.

A cookbook that I’m studying reinforced the need for exhaustive searching when we conduct genealogy searches. The 1916 Eastern Star Cookbook from Huntington Park, California includes the names of women and men who contributed recipes.

As I went through the cookbook, I noticed that some women were mentioned multiple times and by different versions of her name.

Consider recipes submitted under these names:

• Laura Brewer
• Laura M Brewer
• Miss Brewer

Now Laura and Laura M might very well be the same woman or it could be two different women. Miss Brewer is still a possibility for Laura. But I would need to research all three to verify. If it’s not the same woman, it could be a relative. That too would need to be further researched.

One woman is listed four different ways in this cookbook:

• Ollie Cowdin
• Ollie I. Cowdin
• Mrs. Ollie Cowdin
• O. C.

One name variation that is missing is her husband’s name, Mrs. [His name] Cowdin. Now if I were to continue this research on a genealogy website, I would also want to search for her using these and her other name variations based on her maiden name.

Why does this cookbook example matter? Although most of us for the most part go by one name throughout our lives we need to consider that a name can appear in any number of ways for various reasons or no reason at all. Taking that into consideration, we need to keep a list of name variations for our ancestors and use that to search for them in genealogically relevant records.

Gena Philibert-Ortega is an author, instructor, and researcher. She blogs at Gena's Genealogy and Food.Family.Ephemera. You can find her presentations on the Legacy Family Tree Webinars website.

There is no doubt that genealogists like free stuff. While not everything is free in genealogy (nor should it be), you can access some excellent guides, articles, and other genealogically relevant items at no cost.

Aside from free genealogy websites, there are other freebies that you can download or view online to enhance your genealogical education or provide tips and resources to find that brick-wall ancestor. Most of us are familiar with free websites such as Cyndi’s List and Linkpendium but what else is out there that you might not have considered? Here are a few items I’ve found that you might want to bookmark.

1. The National Genealogical Society Free Resources

Are you a member of NGS (the National Genealogical Society)? If you are, you know that they provide membership benefits including their publications. But do they offer anything for free to the genealogy community? Yes! And those free resources benefit all genealogists. First, go to their webpage, Free Genealogy Resources. Two items to pay special attention to are the NGS Magazine Complimentary Articles and the NGS Monthly Complimentary Articles. These articles can help you with everything from research methodology to learning more about reading an NGSQ article.

2. The Ancestor Hunt QuickSheets

The Ancestor Hunt is a great place to find links to online newspapers, but in actuality, the man behind the website, Kenneth R Marks, offers more than just links and videos about newspapers. Check out his Quick Reference Guide link for "quicksheets" on genealogical records such as probate, pensions, naturalization, and cemetery records, to name a few, as well as lots of historical newspaper information. He currently has 40 of these guides to help you with your genealogy.

3. The National Archives Palaeography Tutorials

One aspect of research that can be difficult is reading older handwriting. If this is one of your stumbling blocks, you'll want to check out the National Archives (UK)'s palaeography tutorials. Their webpage explains that “This web tutorial will help you learn to read the handwriting found in documents written in English between 1500 and 1800." Tips, tutorials, practice documents, and reference sheets for money and measurements make this a must-have for genealogists.

4. PhotoTree One-page Guides

Have vintage photos that you are trying to date? Not sure if they show great-grandma or her mother? PhotoTree.com's Identifying Photographic Types webpage includes 1-page guides to identify 19^th-century photographs. Scroll down to the Photograph Characteristics section and click on the photograph type to learn more. This page with information about Daguerreotypes includes the various components of the framed photo so that you can understand everything about it, including what you can’t see in the photograph case.

5. The Newberry Library Research Guides

Make sure to check library websites for guides that can benefit your research—case in point, Chicago's Newberry Library's Research Guides. Although the library is in Chicago, these guides are a variety of genealogically relevant topics from Adoption records to Catalog Search Strategies, Germanic Genealogy, Jewish Genealogy, and Royal Lines. Most likely, a search through the approximately 80 guides will reveal at least one guide you could use to enhance your research.

Yes, there's no such thing as a free lunch, but some generous genealogists and organizations provide free content that benefits the genealogy community. These five examples are just a few to explore.

Gena Philibert-Ortega is an author, instructor, and researcher. She blogs at Gena's Genealogy and Food.Family.Ephemera. You can find her presentations on the Legacy Family Tree Webinars website.

I am a big fan of historical fiction stories set in the 19^th or 20^th centuries. I think the way that the authors incorporate historical research with invented dialogue can teach us as family historians interesting ways to tell our ancestor’s stories.

These historical fiction accounts might also uncover genealogically rich sources that we hadn’t considered before. Most of these novels have been researched by using genealogical databases and historical newspapers. In some cases, they are inspired by a specific source. That’s the case with the book, The Book of Lost Friends by Lisa Wingate.

The inspiration for this novel comes from “lost friends” advertisements placed after the American Civil War. These advertisements were placed by the formerly enslaved who were looking for family members that they had been separated from, hoping to reunite their families.

From https://www.hnoc.org/database/lost-friends/index.html

These advertisements appeared in various newspapers but The Book of Lost Friends is based on one newspaper, in particular, the Southwestern Christian Advocate. According to the book,

In their heyday, the Lost Friends ads, published in the Southwestern Christian Advocate, a Methodist newspaper, went out to nearly five hundred preachers, eight hundred post offices, and more than four thousand subscription holders [in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Arkansas]. The column header requested that pastors read the contents from their pulpits to spread the word of those seeking the missing.

The newspaper encouraged those that had found family via the advertisements to report back. As Lisa Wingate writes, these advertisements “were the equivalent of an ingenious nineteenth-century social media platform.”[1]

The author was introduced to the Lost Friends ads via the Historic New Orleans Collection which hosts a searchable database of the ads with digitized copies courtesy of the Hill Memorial Library, Louisiana State University Libraries. The database introduction explains that it includes 2,500 advertisements that appeared in the newspaper between November 1879 to December 1900. Researchers can search the database (https://www.hnoc.org/database/lost-friends/search.php) by name, year, or location.

For those interested in reading the Southwestern Christian Advocate, it can be found online via the institutional subscription newspaper databases offered by Gale. To learn more, see the Library of Congress Chronicling America’s newspaper directory.

[1] Wingate, Lisa. The Book of Lost Friends. (New York: Ballantine Books, 2021)p. 378. Additional information about subscribers comes from the database homepage at https://www.hnoc.org/database/lost-friends/index.html.

Gena Philibert-Ortega is an author, instructor, and researcher. She blogs at Gena's Genealogy and Food.Family.Ephemera. You can find her presentations on the Legacy Family Tree Webinars website.