Genealogy in Black and White

This is an interesting blog  on genealogy from an African-American perspective.

City Directories

This article   from the Florida Memory Blog discusses what information can be found in city directories. Polk city directories for Brooksville covering 1959 to the early 1990's are located at the Train Depot Museum  in Brooksville. The 1926 Brooksville directory can be found on Ancestry.com in the library's e-resources.

Christmas shopping

What can you find for the genealogist on your list? Family History Magazine has some suggestions. We like this one for nostalgia buffs.

ebay

If you're looking for a place to purchase hard-to-find genealogy books, such as family or place histories, give ebay a look. You might find a great deal on something really useful. Some items you can purchase outright; others require a bidding process. If you are not familiar with ebay, click on the "Help and Contact" link on the top of the home page i Use the search box at the top to find what you are looking for- for example, a search for "genealogy florida".  Some of the items are collections of many books placed on searchable DVDs.

Here's another tool for your genealogy toolbox, especially if you are a newbie: genealogyintime.com has search engines, helpful articles, and lists of various sources to assist with your research. Its also a good place to learn about the newest data available on the Web. You can subscribe to a their weekly newsletter to keep up to date. We learned about this from  Links and Bridges, the newsletter of the Genealogy Society of Hernando County. To learn more about the GSHC, click here.
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Cherokee roots

This article from Slate.com explains why almost one million Americans claim Cherokee ancestry.

Canadian Genealogy

New from the archives of Canada: a database of individuals who immigrated to Canada as porters or domestics between 1899 and 1949....This just in: the Naturalization Records database, covering 1915-1944, has been updated with an addition of 68,000 names. Volunteers are needed to extend it to 1951. Source: ResearchBuzz

NARA Genealogy Fair recordings

In an October post, we mentioned the National Archives on line genealogy fair. ResearchBuzz has provided links to the presentations on YouTube:

Day 1
Day 2
slides and hand-outs

National Archives Digitization priorities

Speaking of NARA, the agency asked the public what it wants digitized, and had a tremendous response. This article  from the NARA blog talks about where the focus will be over the next 18-24 months. Looks like quite a bit will be of interest to genealogists, especially those searching for naturalization or military-related records. Thanks to Research Buzz for both this information and yesterday's.

NARA Genealogy Fair on YouTube

Read here about the National Archives Genealogy Fair  to be broadcast live on YouTube on October 21st and 22nd. Experts will speak on a variety of topics, and you will have the opportunity to ask questions. If you can't tune in for the live presentations, recorded versions will be available online.

Valuation Rolls from Scotland

Free until October 13th: Valuation rolls from Scotland, circa 1855, on the Scotlands People website.
Thanks to SpittalStreet.com and ResearchBuzz.com for passing this along.

"Find a Grave" Event

If you're looking for an activity for your club, genealogy group, or family, the next Ancestry's  Find a Grave Community Day is October 17th. Contribute photos of graves in your local cemeteries

Google Books

Google Books is another good place to look for old family histories and other books of interest to genealogists. You can use the advanced search to zero in on what you are looking for. Some works are available in their entirety online. Others may only have a few chapters available online, with an option to buy the entire book.
You can also record the title and author and request that the library borrow it through interlibrary loan. If the book is held by a Florida library participating in the Navigator ILL system, you may be able to borrow it for free. Otherwise, their will be a fee, which will vary depending on where the book is coming from.

Preserving your genealogy work

Ever worry about what might happen to all the documents you have accumulated over the years when you're gone and your family has expressed little interest in their history? In this post on The Olive Tree Genealogy blog, the author offers a solution.

Genealogy Gophers

Genealogy Gophers is a website that searches a library of 40,000 out-of-copyright works that have been digitized by FamilySearch.org. Enter a name, than click on one of the results to see the full page where your ancestor is mentioned. You will also find the full title of the book, the year of publication, and where it is located.

Mount Holyoke Photo album

Here is something a little different: if one of the women in  your family tree studied or taught at Holyoke College in Massachusetts from 1899-1939, you might find a photo (or photos) of her  here. along with photos of the campus, classrooms, events, etc. Most of the students shown attended the college in the 1920's. Thanks to ResearchBuzz for passing this along.

African- American Genealogy

This series of articles  looks like a good place to start researching your African-American ancestors.

Photos of English towns

For those with English ancestors, from amateurphotographer.co.uk: 

"Nearly a quarter of a million historic images of UK towns, cities and villages dating back to 1857 have been published online, allowing people to see how their local area has changed over the past 150 years"  Ancestry will allow free access through the end of August. The link to the article is here.

 

Best Genealogy Websites

Family Tree Magazine has published its annual list of the 101 Best Websites for Genealogy.

Genealogy on Facebook

Social media websites are a great way to connect with people who share our interests and/or background. This post on the West in New England blog recommends Facebook  and other social media sites as sources for genealogy research. This blogger's  list includes Facebook genealogy groups focused on New England, but no doubt there are plenty out there dedicated to other states, regions, and countries.

Getting Help From Overseas

This article explains how, with persistence and courtesy, you can find that elusive information about your ancestors from sources outside the U.S.

WWI British Merchant Marine

If any of your ancestors served in the British Merchant Marine in 1915, you might find them here.

This link to the National Martime Museum will be helpful in tracking down English merchant seamen from World War I.

Also: This ad from Ancestry provides some interesting, genealogy- related facts about life in colonial America.

Revolutionary War Records

 Fold3 is allowing free access to its Revolutionary War collection until July 15th.

Florida Land records

This post from the Florida Memory blog shows  how to access and use records from the Armed Occupation Act of 1842 when researching your Florida ancestors.

"Researching Relatives" blog

While surfing for genealogy blogs, we found this one.  Brief articles, but interesting and helpful.

Cuban genealogy

Florida International University in Miami has put has put a Cuban genealogy collection online. The source for this material is the Enrique Hurtado de Mendoza Collection held at FIU's Green Library. Here is the article from the FIU News. Thanks to ResearchBuzz for passing this along.

Genealogy Jamboree

The Southern California Genealogy Jamboree is offering free streaming of some sessions from June 5th-7th. The article about it is here. Registration and details are here.

New Genealogy Search Engine

The website Many Roads has created a free search engine that will  perform a keyword search of some the  best genealogy websites of 2015 as selected by GenealogyInTime Magazine. You can read about it and find the link here.Thanks to Geneablogger and ResearchBuzz for the information.

More help from the Florida Archives

This post on the Florida Memory blog discusses another way that the Florida Archives , which holds records of many state agencies,  can provide bits of useful information about your Florida ancestors. In this case, the records are of student farmers in the 1920's who worked on agriculture and home economics projects in a Department of Public Instruction program. 

State archives can be a treasure chest of information. Just enter "Connecticut archives" , for example, in Google or another search engine, and see what you find. State libraries are another potential source.

The Internet Archive

This article from the Genealogy's Star blog talks about the large amount of material available to genealogists on the Internet Archive.

Free people of color in Louisiana

Louisiana State University has put online a collection of letters, records, and public documents from Lousiana pertaining to free black people from from the colonial period to beyond the Civil War. The link to the article from Daily World and the archive itself is here.  
Thanks to ResearchBuzz for letting us know.

This article, published at theverge.com, talks about how the Web has made genealogical research accessible to the average citizen and transformed the way it is done. The article also looks at the history of ancestry.com,  the role of the Mormon church and its Family History Library, and the use of DNA analysis in genealogy. It's close to being an ad for Ancestry, but has a lot of interesting information.

April Fools Day

Here are some April Fools pranks from the past, courtesy of  the Genealogy Insider blog at familytreemagazine.com

The Genealogy Gophers website allows you to search 40,000 genealogy books for free.  The results are from genealogy books only and include the title of the book where the information is found, and a portion of the text including your search term. We learned about this from GeneaPress.com, via ResearchBuzz.

Grave marker photo contest

Its March, and BillionGraves is offering those who aren't basketball fans an alternative to March Madness: a billiongraves-march-madness-competition. Prizes will be awarded for participants willing to take a large amount of gravestone photos, or produce a lot of transcriptions.

Thanks to GeneaMusings and ResearchBuzz for letting us know.
Also from BillionGraves:  a place to go to request headstone photos.

Hernando County Newspapers

As you probably know, the Hernando Today ceased publishing at the end of November. They kindly donated to the library bound copies of the paper covering the period January 1986-June 2013.  They are available at the Main branch at 238 Howell Avenue, in downtown Brooksville. Also donated were microfilm copies of the paper for the period 2010-2014. These are located at the West Hernando branch.
In addition, the library holds old Brooksville newspapers on microfilm. These include a small number from the 1920's, most of the 1930's, and then just about everything up to the final edition of Daily Sun-Journal, published on June 17th, 1992. This microfilm is located at the West Hernando branch, along with a limited number of editions of the New York Times- a few months of each year from 1856-1963, and reels covering all of 1979 and 1980. 

Florida Ancestors

In 1845,  residents voted to make Florida the 27th state. Florida Memory digitized the returns in 2014. This blog post by Josh Goodman  of the State Archives  shows how the data can assist genealogists trying to learn about their ancestors from the Sunshine state.

Black History Month

fold3.com is making its Black History Collection of more than a million photos and documents available for free this month.

Searching categories on Cyndi's list

This May 2014 post on the Cyndi's List blog talks about the advantages of browsing the categories instead of entering keywords in the site's search engine. You may be missing out on some helpful information, or new directions in your research.

Photo detective

We linked to this blog about dating old photos a few years back, but its worth revisiting. Maureen Taylor posts photos submitted by readers and points out clues to when they were taken. Great photos and interesting discussion.There are archives back to 2007, and photos are also archived by decade and by subject and type of photo.

Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness

After 3 years, RAOGK is back in business. The original site ran from 1999 until the passing of its founder in 2011. Volunteers from all over the world offer their assistance with genealogical research. You can find a volunteer to help, or become a volunteer yourself.