Meet Your Roots in St Louis
If your immigrant ancestors settled in St. Louis—or took advantage of the opportunity to become US citizens there before hitting the westward trail—you may be able to find their naturalization records with a new, easy-to-use source. The Saint
Louis Genealogical Society has posted
online 93,000 index cards to city court naturalizations between 1816 and 1906, when the federal government took over the citizenship process.
Before the society completed an index to the cards last year (see our June 24, 2004, E-mail Update report at http://net.fwpublications.com/newsletters/
NewsletterArchive/Family_Tree_Magazine_E-Mail_Update/6_24_2004.htm) they were scattered among various courts and offices. The Works Progress Administration created the index cards (one is shown at right) from naturalization records in the 1930's.
Search the collection at http://stlgs.org/natsearch.aspx by
your ancestor's name, address, country, year of naturalization or
the last name of the witness. You also can enter a Soundex code. (See http://www.familytreemagazine.com/soundex.html to calculate your ancestor's Soundex code.)
Click on a first name in the results list to see transcriptions of the index cards, which give the person's country of origin, the date and court of naturalization (click on the word "Court" for a key to abbreviated court names), and witnesses' names.
The listing also has a user-friendly "What Do I Do Next?" button linking to instructions on finding microfilm of the original cards and records.
Great Migrations Moves Online
The New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) has launched a new Web site for its Great Migration Study Project, which aims to compile genealogical information on the 20,000 people who settled in New England between 1620 and 1643.
The site, at http://www.greatmigration.org, has information about the project and a list of Great Migration publications. Each book contains biographical sketches on about 200 families; a quarterly newsletter
delivers more information. You can subscribe to the newsletter online for $20 per year ($10 for NEHGS members).
You'll also find a listing of a few hundred names the Great Migrations Project expects to cover in future publications. If you're an NEHGS member, you can use the site to search the three-volume The Great Migration Begins: Immigrants to New England
1620-1633 (NEHGS, $125) by project director Robert Charles Anderson.
If you're not member, unfortunately, there's no way to tell whether a Great Migration book or newsletter covers your family name before you buy it—try checking the index at a library.
Grave Topics
People who like to hang out in ancestral graveyards will soon get their own magazine from TheCemeteryClub.com (http://www.thecemeteryclub.com). The quarterly Epitaphs:
The Magazine for Cemetery Lovers By Cemetery Lovers, will premiere this summer with featured cemeteries, a Q&A column, readers' experiences, poetry, photography, artwork, resource listings, book reviews and a taphophile (or cemetery lover) of the month.
Editors are seeking submissions from anyone with an interest in
cemeteries, regardless of writing experience. For more information, see
http://www.thecemeteryclub.com/magazine.html.
Feeling Green
Everyone's an honorary Eire-lander on St. Patrick's Day, but 34 million US residents are Irish year-round, too, according to the Census Bureau. Their heritage is second only to German as the nation’s most-reported ancestry.
St. Patrick's Day commemorates the saint who introduced Christianity to Ireland in the fifth century. The Emerald Isle has observed the religious holiday for millennia, but the US hosted the first St. Patrick's Day parade when Irish soldiers serving in
the English military marched through New York City on March 17, 1762. Nearly two centuries later, President Harry Truman attended New York City's parade—a proud moment for onlookers whose Irish immigrant ancestors fought prejudice and stereotypes
in
the US.
Since 1995, when Congress first proclaimed all of March as Irish-American Heritage Month, there's been no need to limit the roots revelry to the 17th. Join in by visiting these historical and genealogical Web sites:
• Ancient Order of Hibernians in America
http://www.aoh.com
• Family Tree Magazine Irish Toolkit
http://www.familytreemagazine.com/ethnic_cat.asp?ethnicity=Irish
• Fianna Guide to Irish Genealogy
http://www.rootsweb.com/~fianna
• GENUKI—UK & Ireland Genealogy
http://www.genuki.org.uk
• The History Channel: History of St. Patrick's Day
http://www.historychannel.com/exhibits/stpatricksday
• Immigration...Irish
http://memory.loc.gov/learn/features/immig/irish.html
• Irish Genealogical Society, International
http://www.rootsweb.com/~irish
• Records for Passengers Who Arrived at the Port of New York During the Irish Famine, 1977- 1989
http://aad.archives.gov/aad/series_description.jsp?series_id=639&coll_id=1002
• Your Irish Roots
http://www.youririshroots.com
The Best of AncestorNews: The Soddie
Having trouble tracking down those elusive ancestors? In this biweekly, Web-exclusive column, Family Tree Magazine contributing editor Nancy Hendrickson points to new and helpful ways to do your computer-related
genealogy research.
When our ancestors settled on the prairies, sod often was the only construction material available. In this week's Best of AncestorNews, we take another look at Hendrickson's sod-house story. Read more at http://www.familytreemagazine.com/ancestornews/current.html.
Hendrickson is a family historian, freelance writer and the author of the book Finding Your Roots Online, on sale now at http://www.familytreemagazine.com/store/display.asp?id=70583.
Browse the archive of her AncestorNews columns at http://www.familytreemagazine.com/ancestornews/previous.html.
Portrait of Note
This week's tip comes from Carole Taylor of Fayetteville, NY:
My mother-in-law handed down all her family photos, papers and family Bibles to me because I'm tracing my husband's family. For her 85th birthday, I wanted to thank her in genealogical fashion. At a copy shop, I ordered small notecards printed with this
May 1880 photo of her grandmother Ida Mae Butts wearing a stunning brown silk wedding dress. Ida's name and the date of the photo are printed on the bottom. Everyone was impressed with the personalized gift—and with the wedding dress.
Do you have a great idea for discovering, preserving or
celebrating family history? E-mail us your tip at
ftmnews-editor@fwpubs.com with "TIP OF THE WEEK"
in the subject line. If we publish it, you'll win a free
copy of The Family Tree Resource Book for Genealogists, (Family Tree Books, $29.99)
edited by Sharon DeBartolo Carmack and Erin Nevius, also available for purchase online at http://www.familytreemagazine.com/store/display.asp?id=70636.
Overwhelmed by the number of family history-related Web sites popping up? FamilyTreeMagazine.com sorts through them all—whew!—to bring you only the very best. We recently recommended the following as Sites of the Week:
• Kate and Sue McBeth: Missionary Teachers to the Nez Perce
http://www.lib.uidaho.edu/mcbeth/welcome.htm
Government records, maps and missionary papers tell the story of the church, state and the Nez Perce people.
• American Civil War: Veterans' Organizations
http://www.loc.gov/rr/main/gar
Find out what the Library of Congress has for researching Civil War veterans.
Online Census Sources
You may not have to scroll through miles of microfilm to find your ancestors in the census. Here's just one of the online census resources we explain in the April 2005 Family Tree Magazine:
The USGenWeb Archives at
has posted census-page images donated by individuals with the cooperation of four small publishers. It's now seeking volunteers to index the images. Most states are represented, though some have only a handful of counties or years. The images are generally
clear and easy to save or print, but you don't get the viewing tools, such as zoom, that you'll find on subscription sites.
There's no way to search the names in the image files, and you can't click from an index to the associated census page. The image files are labeled by page; for 1880, 1900, 1910 and 1920 censuses, the file name includes both the enumeration district and
the sheet number. You'll have to use an index file on this or another site to locate an ancestor's name, then use that info to pick the right page image.
There's another way to search for ancestors in USGenWeb census files. You can use the site's national and state search engines at http://searches.rootsweb.com/htdig/search.html and http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/ussearch.htm.
The state search is probably best for census hunting: Just click the button for your ancestor's state, then use terms such as "Wright Co." and census to find, for example, the census transcriptions for Wright County, Minn. Narrow your search by including
a census year, or search for an ancestor's name.
USGenWeb doesn't have transcriptions of all censuses from all states and counties for all years. If you don't find Great-great-grandpa here, it doesn't mean he wasn't enumerated; it probably just means nobody's volunteered to transcribe that census yet.
—David A. Fryxell
See the April 2005 Family Tree Magazine for more information on finding online census records. New Mexico-based researcher David A. Fryxell is a Family Tree Magazine contributing
editor.
A Matter of Interpretation
Expert photo historian Maureen A. Taylor helps readers analyze old family pictures in her Web-exclusive column Identifying Family Photographs. This week, she explains how to interpret the clothing, props and other details in a photograph.
http://www.familytreemagazine.com/photos/current.htm.
If you have a family photo mystery for Taylor to solve, check out our Submission Guidelines at http://www.familytreemagazine.com/photos/photohelp.htm.
Lake Charles, La.
Emily Anne Croom
March 19
Southwest Louisiana Genealogical Society seminar
Topics:
- Proof and the Paper Trail: Documenting Your Genealogy
- Likely, Logical, Convincing: Resolving Conflicting Evidence
Contact Teresa Tatyrek at president@dallasgenealogy.org.
Omaha Nebraska
Paula Stuart-Warren
April 9
Greater Omaha Genealogical Society Seminar
Topics:
- Railroad Records and Railroad History: Methods for Tracking
- Untrodden Gound: Sources You May Not Have Encountered
- Researching Your Ancestral Places of Origin in U.S. Records
- Researching Your Ancestry Via the National Archives of the US
Contact gogensociety@yahoo.com.
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