Arizona is not exactly perceived to be in the forefront of places where people do genealogical research but the collections listed below are mind boggling extensive. Arizona is perceived as a place where people from the Midwest go to live and to retire. To the contrary, our heritage (I live in Arizona) actually dates back hundreds of years to Native American and Spanish roots. Historically, the population has been sparse, but recently, with the boom in sun belt living, the state capital,…
Continue
Added by James Tanner on September 30, 2009 at 6:03pm —
No Comments
Donald Lines Jacobus, FASG (1887-1970) is generally recognized as the founder of the modern school of genealogy in the United States. See NGS Genealogy Hall of Fame Members. He is credited with "elevating genealogy to the high degree of scholarship it now occupies." There were, of course, other researchers who were influential in setting a more professional standard for family history, such as Gilbert Cope in Pennsylvania, Colonel Lemuel Chester and Henry F. Waters from New England. Read more:…
Continue
Added by James Tanner on September 30, 2009 at 4:46am —
No Comments
According to the official Website, as of September 28, 2009, all of the Stakes in the Provo, Utah Temple District had access to New FamilySearch. Some of the Stakes in the Ogden, Utah Temple District also had access on that date, the remaining Stakes in the Ogden, Utah Temple District will gain access on October 5, 2009.
Read more...
Added by James Tanner on September 29, 2009 at 7:14pm —
No Comments
Sometimes when I am doing genealogical research online, I can't see the forest for the trees. Let me give an example. I enter a surname into a Google search, something common, like "morgan." In the first go around, I get over 15 million results. Now, who can actually use 15 million surnames? In the nature of search engines, the most popular results come up at the top of the list, so I get things like the Morgan Motor Company and Morgan Stanley financial services. Following my own advice, I try…
Continue
Added by James Tanner on September 29, 2009 at 3:02pm —
No Comments
Almost two years ago, we were introduced to the New FamilySearch program. Since that time, I have spent a considerable time working with and teaching about, this interesting program. Although, it is still not available to those who do not belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), and not even to all the members yet, the program has had a huge impact on the LDS community.
Read more...
Added by James Tanner on September 27, 2009 at 7:00am —
No Comments
One of the questions I often get is how do I keep up with all of the different Websites. There is a huge amount of information out there on the Internet and it can be daunting to try to follow even one limited topic like online genealogy. However, there are a number of Web tools that make following blogs and other Websites manageable.
Read more...
Added by James Tanner on September 27, 2009 at 6:00am —
No Comments
One measure of the effectiveness of a genealogy Website is the number of visitors. Although still not a major player in the online world of genealogy, the FamilySearch Wiki is steadily growing in its resources and usability. As of September 25, 2009, the homepage had been accessed 371,941 times. Since this is the number of times some pages are accessed in one day, the number itself is not impressive. What is impressive is to view the list of new pages added by logged-in users. There were nearly…
Continue
Added by James Tanner on September 25, 2009 at 8:33am —
No Comments
By September 28, 2009, the Provo Temple District, which includes all of the Student Wards and Stakes at Brigham Young University, will have full access to New FamilySearch. In addition, the Ogden Temple District is scheduled for its first Stake access on September 28th also. With these two Stakes going online, that leaves only the Mount Timpanogos Temple District in Utah Valley and the remaining Temple Districts in the Salt Lake Valley itself to get access.…
Continue
Added by James Tanner on September 23, 2009 at 5:20pm —
No Comments
More records have been added to the FamilySearch Record Search Website. These include the following: (All descriptions from the Website with the spelling corrected).
Read more...
Added by James Tanner on September 23, 2009 at 8:57am —
No Comments
Like Wyoming, Alaska is large with a small population. It is the least densely populated state of the U.S. See Wikipedia. I have only known a few people over the years who actually were born and raised in Alaska. As shown below, some of the online resources are actually in other state repositories.
Read more...
Added by James Tanner on September 23, 2009 at 8:52am —
No Comments
Sweden is not known for having free online records. You may have heard of Genline, a commercial Swedish Website with 17,453,462 online images comprising approximately 34,600,000 pages of images. This is a subscription site charging up to $285 US for a year subscription. However, you can also pay by the day, $11 US, or 20 days, a month, a quarter or three years. It is a fabulous Website for Swedish research. But they have the same records that were microfilmed by The Church of Jesus Christ of…
Continue
Added by James Tanner on September 20, 2009 at 10:02pm —
1 Comment
Although Wyoming is the least populous state in the U.S., it is the tenth largest by size. Its online resources are not as extensive as other more populous states but still significant. A Google search for Wyoming digital resources will show a lot of links from other state collections which include historical material from Wyoming. One example is the Western States Marriages Record Index which includes some marriages from Wyoming.…
Continue
Added by James Tanner on September 20, 2009 at 5:19pm —
No Comments
In a comment to my September 13, 2009 post about collecting names vs. family history, one of the comments named me a "pretentious genealogist" apparently because I "vehemently abhor 'name collectors'." I guess I was also surprised to find out that I was a "self-proclaimed expert" so I went back and re-read my own article. After a review, I did find a few more things to say about name collectors, even the variety claimed by the commentator.…
Continue
Added by James Tanner on September 19, 2009 at 5:58pm —
No Comments
FamilySearch has issued an updated list of FamilySearch Affiliates. To quote the Website, "FamilySearch Certified Affiliates are third-party companies and organizations that provide products and services with features that are compatible with FamilySearch programs. Certification indicates the affiliate’s declaration of compliance with FamilySearch requirements. Note that these products and services are independently developed and supported by their respective organizations, not by…
Continue
Added by James Tanner on September 18, 2009 at 6:43pm —
No Comments
Record Search Pilot, the online digital collection of images and indexes from the FamilySearch Indexing project, has added a large number of new collections to their resources. All of the following descriptions are from the Record Search Website. These include"
Read more...
Added by James Tanner on September 17, 2009 at 8:23am —
No Comments
With this post, I start a new series. I will devote one post (or more) to each state's online digital archive collections useful to genealogists. I do not pretend that my list will all inclusive, I think that might be a physical impossibility since new collections are coming online at a furious rate. Where appropriate, I will comment on the content of the sites.
Read more...
Added by James Tanner on September 15, 2009 at 8:51pm —
No Comments
Just when you might possibly believe that there were no more huge collections of online genealogy resources, along comes The United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization with its Archives Portal. Styled as an international gateway to information for archivists and archives users,
Read more...
Added by James Tanner on September 15, 2009 at 8:48am —
No Comments
Thanks to
Renee Zamora's post of 14 September 2009 for the update on the release of New FamilySearch to the Wasatch Front Temple Districts. I have been looking at the Utah/Idaho releases on a regular basis but I guess I got busy and missed the latest news. I guessed that Provo would probably be next Temple District...
Read more...
Added by James Tanner on September 15, 2009 at 8:11am —
1 Comment
"A thorough understanding of the modern land law is impossible without a knowledge of its historical background." Moynihan, Cornelius J. Introduction to the Law of Real Property: An Historical Background of the Common Law of Real Property and Its Modern Application. St. Paul, Minn: West Pub. Co, 1962.
Read more...
Added by James Tanner on September 14, 2009 at 8:44pm —
No Comments
You might as well face it, the amount of information contained in land records is huge, but it is locked up in arcane and often obsolete legal terminology. Understanding the language unlocks the information in these old records. The modern concept of land ownership or estates have their origins in the 13th Century in England and the methods of land ownership in the United States are derived almost entirely from very early English precedents. The word "estate" itself, dates from feudal times and…
Continue
Added by James Tanner on September 13, 2009 at 10:15pm —
No Comments
