Repost: Old Genealogies: Research Sources, Book Shelf and a Hat Tip

This was first posted almost three years ago. Since then the Internet Archive has nearly tripled its genealogy resources. (And it's still free.)

Just last week I consulted (via the Internet Archive) an 1868 book whose lengthy title begins "Some records of persons by the name of Worden" where I found a physical description of a sixth great grandfather, so I was excited to read a recent post in Vita Brevis by Emily Baldoni, New England Historical Genealogical Society's Technical Services/Metadata Librarian, about their project to make many of their late 19th and early 20th century genealogical writings available online. This is a big deal because, as Emily explains:

"NEHGS is sometimes the only library that holds a copy of the resource. In these cases, we are particularly happy to be able to preserve a digital copy and put it online so that it can reach a wider audience, now and for years to come."

I will certainly be checking out their collection.

The Internet Archive is also a great resource for books of interest to genealogists* This is how they describe their online holdings:

"The Archive's ever-expanding collection of genealogy resources includes items from the Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center in Fort Wayne, Indiana; Robarts Library at the University of Toronto; the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Library; Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah;, the National Library of Scotland, the Indianapolis City Library's Indianapolis City Directory and Yearbooks Collection, The Leo Baeck Institute Archives of German-speaking Jewry Leo Baeck Institute Archives, and the Boston Public Library.  

Resources include among many things books on surname origins, vital statistics, parish records, census records, passenger lists of vessels, and other historical and biographical documents."

Here's a tiny sample of the titles they have available.

[Source: Internet Archive]

And I found another Worden Book to peruse. (I've heard of it but have never seen a copy before.)

[Worden "a weir in the valley" by Waite W.Worden, 1992.

Source: Internet Archive; original source: Allen County Public Library.]

I've also found old genealogy publications via Google Books but, unlike Internet Archive, not every listing there is available digitally.


*They're claiming 53,534 results from a search for "genealogy."And it's free.

© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

And Now for Something Totally Different: Inside the Denisova Cave

In 2010 DNA sequencing of a young girl's tiny finger bone from this Siberian cave proved to be from an individual who was neither a Neandertal nor a modern human. Since then more discoveries* have been made and this extinct line of ancient humans has been named Denisovan in reference to the location where their traces were found.

Several days ago a new discovery was announced: A woolly mammoth tusk “tiara” that could have been worn by a Denisovan man. The Siberian Times has an extensive article about the find and they also provided a video of a visit to the cave which made me realize I had no idea of what the region looks like.

[Warning: this video's sound is very loud, be prepared to turn down your speakers.]

Oh, and that "tiara"? Here's The Siberian Times' graphic:

[Source: The Siberian Times]

Hat tip to The History Blog.


*Including a female (nicknamed Denny) whose DNA is a mixture from her Neandertal mother and Denisovan father.

© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Fantastic Find Revisited: CSI: Dixie

Here's the site's simplest description of what it contains: "CSI: Dixie collects 1582 coroners reports from six South Carolina counties for the years 1800-1900." The counties include Anderson County, Edgefield County, Greenville County, Kershaw County, Spartanburg County, and Union County.

Put together by historians at the University of Georgia as a part of their ehistory project which seeks "not merely to reach a broader public but to involve a broader public."

[Unitarian Cemetery, Charleston South Carolina Gateway Walk, 2008. My photo.]

If your ancestors lived in one of those six South Carolina counties, you just might find familiar names mentioned in the records and you're welcome to share what you know:

"For all its focus on the dead, then, CSI:D is a living project, inviting users to contribute photos, documents, leads, and details in the cases of 1582 unfortunate souls. Unlike a book, which seeks to be the last word on a subject, CSI:D is just the first word; it is an appeal to the public to join an ongoing investigation."

And even if you don't happen to have anyone from those counties, the site provides a useful description of the history and role of coroners and their juries in the 19th century South.

Hat tip to Erik Loomis of Lawyers, Guns & Money blog.

Note: I first posted this in 2016 and I neglected to mention that some of these coroners reports detail the deaths of slaves. Here are links to reviews and notices of CSI:D that include the insight into the violence of slavery.


© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

RePost from 2015: Catholic Parish Registers at the National Library of Ireland

A post this morning by the New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) brought this to my attention. The National Library of Ireland (NLI) has just put its microfilm collection of Catholic parish registers recording baptisms and marriage from most of Ireland's parishes in Ireland and Northern Ireland up to 1880 online for research and download. Starting dates for these records vary from region to region and parish to parish.*

[National Library of Ireland on The Commons, photostream on flickr]

Read what the NLI says about its mammoth project:

Church registers of marriage and baptism are considered to be the single most important source for family history researchers prior to the 1901 census. In many cases, the registers contain the only surviving record of particular individuals and families. With growing numbers of people engaged in family history research and limited on-site facilities at the NLI in Dublin, the decision was taken in 2010 to digitise the parish register microfilms. Following a tender process, the contract for digitisation was awarded to AEL Data who converted 550 microfilm reels, containing over 3500 registers into approximately 373,000 digital images. These images correspond to a page or two-page opening within a register volume. 

Of course since these records are organized by parish within each county, searching for your Irish ancestors will be easiest for those who know where to start. The NLI has a useful section on its Help page on finding the right parish with links.**

[St Saviour's Church and the Tait Memorial Clock in Limerick. National Library of Ireland on The Commons, photostream on flickr]

The NLI site is well-designed and easy to use. Best of all, it's FREE!

*The several counties (Meath, Armaugh and Galway) didn't have anything earlier than the very late 18th century.
**For more information about Irish genealogy in general, this link is a very good place to start.

© 2015 Copyright, Pat Hartley, All Rights Reserved.


© 2018 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Working on Wednesday: Tudor Christmas Cookalong from Hampton Court Palace

Thanks to The History Blog for bringing these videos to my attention.

© 2016 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Book Shelf: Letters from Alabama on various subjects

My paternal fourth great grandfather Henry Avery's name appears on a "List of Letters, 9 Jan 1819, remaining in Huntsville Post Office" so my eye was caught by Donna R. Causey of Alabama Pioneers recent reference to Anne Royall's description of "some settlers of Huntsville & Madison County, Alabama," in her 1830 book Letters from Alabama.

[Book digitized by Google from the library of New York Public Library and uploaded to the Internet Archive by user tpb.]

I've already posted about Phillip Henry Gosse's eyewitness account of life in Alabama in 1838 in his book with the same name and now I'm looking forward to reading what Mrs. Royall had to say about the state.

[Alabama. Drawn and Published by F. Lucas Jr. J. Cone, Sc. (1822). Source: David Rumsey Historical Map Collection.]

[Detail of above 1822 map of Alabama, showing location of Huntsville.]

Here's a description of her I found at the Library of Congress's website:

"Early in the 19th century the newspaper Paul Pry dedicated itself to exposing political corruption and religious fraud. It was edited by the audacious Anne Newport Royall at a time when few women were newspaper editors and even fewer were willing to take on the establishment. 

The Library's collection of the works of Royall include nine volumes of travel books, one novel and two newspapers that together span more than 30 years -- from Presidents Monroe to Pierce. Royall's travels took her from Louisiana to Maine, and her observations of the people and places she encountered provide a rich glimpse into antebellum America. As the self-appointed guardian of democracy, Royall exposed graft and corruption wherever she went. Her boldness and tenacity were remarkable in an era when society was obsessed with the trappings of gentility."

© 2016 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Fantastic Find: Free Newspaper Archives

[Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. "Woman reading a newspaper in the living room." New York Public Library Digital Collections. Accessed March 20, 2016. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e2-f85e-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99]

David Sarokin at XooxleAnswers, a professional research service website, has done the work so we don't have to. Here's what he has to say about his collection of online newspapers:

Increasingly, there are digital archives of old newspapers available to everyone at no charge…if you know where to look. That’s what my collection of resources is all about: free historical newspapers on the Internet. Here are those links again.

• US state and regional newspaper archives

• College and student newspapers

• Historical magazine archives

• European archives

• Other international archives, including numerous foreign language sources

Thank you David!

© 2016 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Fantastic Find: CSI: Dixie

Here's the site's simplest description of what it contains: "CSI: Dixie collects 1582 coroners reports from six South Carolina counties for the years 1800-1900." The counties include Anderson County, Edgefield County, Greenville County, Kershaw County, Spartanburg County, and Union County.

Put together by historians at the University of Georgia as a part of their ehistory project which seeks "not merely to reach a broader public but to involve a broader public."

[Unitarian Cemetery, Charleston South Carolina Gateway Walk, 2008. My photo.]

If your ancestors lived in one of those six South Carolina counties, you just might find familiar names mentioned in the records and you're welcome to share what you know:

"For all its focus on the dead, then, CSI:D is a living project, inviting users to contribute photos, documents, leads, and details in the cases of 1582 unfortunate souls. Unlike a book, which seeks to be the last word on a subject, CSI:D is just the first word; it is an appeal to the public to join an ongoing investigation."

And even if you don't happen to have anyone from those counties, the site provides a useful description of the history and role of coroners and their juries in the 19th century South.

Hat tip to Erik Loomis of Lawyers, Guns & Money blog.

© 2016 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Old Genealogies: Research Sources, Book Shelf and a Hat Tip

Just last week I consulted (via the Internet Archive) an 1868 book whose lengthy title begins "Some records of persons by the name of Worden" where I found a physical description of a sixth great grandfather, so I was excited to read a recent post in Vita Brevis by Emily Baldoni, New England Historical Genealogical Society's Technical Services/Metadata Librarian, about their project to make many of their late 19th and early 20th century genealogical writings available online. This is a big deal because, as Emily explains:

"NEHGS is sometimes the only library that holds a copy of the resource. In these cases, we are particularly happy to be able to preserve a digital copy and put it online so that it can reach a wider audience, now and for years to come."

I will certainly be checking out their collection.

The Internet Archive is also a great resource for books of interest to genealogists* This is how they describe their online holdings:

"The Archive's ever-expanding collection of genealogy resources includes items from the Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center in Fort Wayne, Indiana; Robarts Library at the University of Toronto; the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Library; Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah;, the National Library of Scotland, the Indianapolis City Library's Indianapolis City Directory and Yearbooks Collection, The Leo Baeck Institute Archives of German-speaking Jewry Leo Baeck Institute Archives, and the Boston Public Library.  

Resources include among many things books on surname origins, vital statistics, parish records, census records, passenger lists of vessels, and other historical and biographical documents."

Here's a tiny sample of the titles they have available.

[Source: Internet Archive]

And I found another Worden Book to peruse. (I've heard of it but have never seen a copy before.)

[Worden "a weir in the valley" by Waite W.Worden, 1992.

Source: Internet Archive; original source: Allen County Public Library.]

I've also found old genealogy publications via Google Books but, unlike Internet Archive, not every listing there is available digitally.




*They're claiming 53,534 results from a search for "genealogy."And it's free.

© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Fantastic Find and Hat Tip: Jones County Newspaper Archive

In this week's email The Weekly Geologist from the New England Historic Genealogical Society, Assistant Editor Valerie Beaudrault spotlights The Anamosa Library & Learning Center's digitized archive of Jones County, Iowa, newspapers from 1856-2011. As the Library points out, "Jones County is one of the few counties in Iowa to have the entire county's holdings scanned." Best of all, access is free.

[Anamosa Library & Learning Center]

A search in GenealogyBank's database holdings shows only the Anamosa Eureka so there may be more information to be gleaned from this source about my Worden and Webb lines.

© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Hat Tip: Genealogy's Star Reminds You To Use the National Union Catalog and OCLC WorldCat

I was reminded once again of the importance of using the Library of Congress's National Union Catalog (NUC) and National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC) for genealogy research, this time by James Tanner at Genealogy's Star.

Whether researching genealogy, or any other discipline, Tanner observes that most library patrons (in Utah, probably the greatest genealogical record hotbed in the world, no less!) tend to use electronic records almost exclusively, and "ignore the vast resources in the books surrounding them."  Sadly, I'm guilty of this myself.

He makes a great point:

One symptom of this lack of awareness of genealogical resources is the surprise I get from those who attend my classes when I mention the OCLC WorldCat.org online catalog. The WorldCat.org is the world's largest library catalog. This lack of awareness of the WorldCat.org catalog is strange since the FamilySearch.org Catalog now links almost every entry to the WorldCat.org catalog.

If you want to up your genealogy research game, I suggest you check out his post.






© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Hat Tip: Using Old Newspapers to Find Your Ancestors’ Court Documents

Duncan Kuehn (also her site here) wrote a nice post earlier this week at FamilySearch.org's blog about using old newspapers to find court documents on our ancestors.  She uses GenealogyBank for her examples.  I've had great luck with Newspapers.com and NewspaperArchive as well--they all have slightly different holdings.

She notes some reasons for why a newspaper would have such information:

There are a number of reasons; three come immediately to mind. The first being that there was a legal requirement, in many cases, to publish the date of a hearing so that those who were affected could come and participate. Second, it has always been a part of the American justice system to have an open court, except in unusual circumstances. And lastly, before the advent of TV, this was actually a form of entertainment [emphasis mine].

© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Hat Tip & Fantastic Find, Combined: AncestryDNA Shared Matches Appear

Fellow native San Diego area blogger (and distant cousin) Randy Seaver posted yesterday about Ancestry.com's new tools  "See Your DNA Matches in a Whole New Way" and gave us an example of how "Shared Matches" worked for him on a second cousin.

Here's the video from Ancestry.com that accompanied their post.

Check it out.


© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Hat Tip: Great Fire of London, 1666

If you have ancestors who were in or near London in 1666, today the Museum of London's blog has a great post about the fire and its aftermath. It was an event that would never have been forgotten by those who witnessed it.

[Woodcut from ‘Shlohavot, or, The burning of London in the year 1666′

Museum of London Blog]

[Great Fire painting, 1670s, Showing the fire from either Newgate or Ludgate with St Paul’s Cathedral in the background.

© Museum of London]

Eastcheap, where my ancestor William Heath had lived and worked before he removed to Virginia at least 16 years earlier, was completely destroyed.

[A Plan of the City and Liberties of London,  Shewing the Extent of the Dreadful Conflagration in the Year 1666; Taken from "A New History of London, Including Westminster and Southwark, to which is added, A General Survey of the Whole; Describing The Public Buildings, Late Improvements, &c. Illustrated WIth Copper-Plates." by John Noorthouck. London, 1773. Source: Mapco]

My friend Bonnie's paternal seventh great grandfather Thomas Ambridge (1642-1679) and his bride-to-be Euphemia Tew* (1646-1719) were living in Hampstead which overlooks the City of London and a place where crowds gathered to watch the fire.

[View of the City of London from Hampstead Heath, 2013, my photo]

Note: As you would expect, the Museum of London has a lot more information about the Great Fire, both online and in their War, Plague & Fire (1550s-1660s) gallery.

*This surname was variously spelled as To, Too, Two, and Tow (and probably a few others that I've forgotten.)



© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Fantastic Find: Mapping Norway's Parishes

Fister Parish, screenshot from Norway's Parishes.

If you are trying to figure out where in the heck those Norwegian ancestors lived in Norway, try Norway Parishes, put together by Kristian Ekenes.  Not only can you find the outlines of modern parishes, there are also links to the right connecting to FamilySearch and various Norwegian digital records/archives.  In addition to Parish searches you can do a Property/Farm Search, and there are even more links to look at in the Map Resources link at the upper right.

My grandmother Margaret Fister's parents were Berdines Rasmussen and Mette Karine, but they took on the last name Fister when they came to the United States, I'm assuming in honor to the parish where Berdines was from in Norway.  I plan to use this fantastic resource to map out the various locations where my ancestors were known to live in.



Hat tip to the Slekt og slikt! ("Family and Such!") blog for the review.



© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Research: Were My Kin’s White Neighbors Descendants of My Ancestor’s Owners?

This useful guide to researching relationships between freed people, their descendants, and their white neighbors came to my attention through a post on New England Historic Genealogical Society's (NEHGS) Facebook page.

Originally posted on The Root, Henry Louis Gates Jr. consulting with Christopher Lee, a researcher from NEHGS, responds to the query Were My Kin’s White Neighbors Descendants of My Ancestor’s Owners? with a variety of avenues to explore.

What we found illustrates the close relationship that the emancipated people and their former owners frequently had in the years following the end of the U.S. Civil War, and the ways old patterns of power and economic interdependency endured.

NEHGS also has a free webinar about the topic posted earlier this year on YouTube.

© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Fantastic Find: The McAdory House

For those of us who have ancestors who lived in the state, Alabama Pioneers blog is filled with lots of great stories. A recent post about three historic houses in West Jefferson County that are on the National Register of Historic Places* caught my eye because one of them, the McAdory House, built in 1840/1, is most likely the kind of place my people lived in back in the 19th century, at least when they first arrived in the state.

[McAdory Plantation House. Photo: My Front Porch Photography via Pinterest]

For a description of what life was like in one of these houses, I turn to Philip Henry Gosse and his Letters from Alabama which give an account of the eight months he spent as a teacher (and naturalist) in Dallas County in 1838. It's well-worth reading the whole of his description of Alabama houses, outbuildings and towns, the first part of which is seen below.**

[Letters from Alabama, Philip Henry Gosse via Google Books]

None of my ancestors lived in Jefferson or Dallas Counties but I doubt that building materials and housing styles were significantly different across the region in that early period.

My paternal fourth great grandfather Henry Avery (1753-1836) moved from North Carolina to Huntsville in the northernmost part of the Alabama Territory*** in about 1818. By 1830 he had moved to Bibb County, closer to the center of the state, where he died in 1836.

[The State of Mississippi and Alabama Territory. 1818. Carey's General Atlas, Improved And Enlarged; Being A Collection Of Maps Of The World And Quarters, Their Principal Empires, Kingdoms, &c. ... Philadelphia: Published By M. Carey And Son.

Source: David Rumsey Historical Map Collection]

[Alabama, 1831. A New General Atlas Comprising a Complete Set of Maps, representing the Grand Divisions Of The Globe, ... Philadelphia: Published by Anthony Finley. 1831. Source: David Rumsey Historical Map Collection]

By 1846 my paternal third great grandmother Timney P Watts Warren Phillips (1805-1863) moved with her second husband John P. Phillips and their family (which included my great great grandfather Jesse T.S. Warren) to Cotton Valley in Macon County**** where she and John  remained for the rest of their lives.

[A New Map Of Alabama With Its Roads & Distances from place to place, along the Stage & Steam Boat Routes. Published By S. Augustus Mitchell, N.E. corner of Market & 7th Street Philada., 1846. Entered ... 1846 by H.N. Burroughs ... Pennsylvania.

Source: David Rumsey Historical Map Collection]

[Map of Alabama, Georgia and part of Florida, 1863. The geographical reader, for the Dixie children. By Mrs. M.B. Moore. Raleigh: Branson, Farrar & Co., Publishers. Biblical Recorder Print. Source: David Rumsey Historical Map Collection]

*To see the National Register's Nomination Form for the McAdory House, look here [pdf]. The National Register's photographs of the building are to be found here [pdf]. The property is surrounded on three side by a wilderness area--a Google Maps street view is here.
**His description begins on page 151 and continues through until page 159 of his original book. Read it here. Gosse does note that there were a few houses built of sawed lumber but says that they were "mostly of recent erection." Note: the part where he describes what happens during a rainstorm is hilarious.
***Later called Madison County.
****Macon County was one of the counties carved out of what's labeled as "Upper Creek Indians" in the 1831 map above. The Creeks were displaced by the Indian Removal Act of 1830 signed into law by Andrew Jackson.


© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Fantastic Find: Catholic Parish Registers at the National Library of Ireland

A post this morning by the New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) brought this to my attention. The National Library of Ireland (NLI) has just put its microfilm collection of Catholic parish registers recording baptisms and marriage from most of Ireland's parishes in Ireland and Northern Ireland up to 1880 online for research and download. Starting dates for these records vary from region to region and parish to parish.*

[National Library of Ireland on The Commons, photostream on flickr]

Read what the NLI says about its mammoth project:

Church registers of marriage and baptism are considered to be the single most important source for family history researchers prior to the 1901 census. In many cases, the registers contain the only surviving record of particular individuals and families. With growing numbers of people engaged in family history research and limited on-site facilities at the NLI in Dublin, the decision was taken in 2010 to digitise the parish register microfilms. Following a tender process, the contract for digitisation was awarded to AEL Data who converted 550 microfilm reels, containing over 3500 registers into approximately 373,000 digital images. These images correspond to a page or two-page opening within a register volume. 

Of course since these records are organized by parish within each county, searching for your Irish ancestors will be easiest for those who know where to start. The NLI has a useful section on its Help page on finding the right parish with links.**

[St Saviour's Church and the Tait Memorial Clock in Limerick. National Library of Ireland on The Commons, photostream on flickr]

The NLI site is well-designed and easy to use. Best of all, it's FREE!

*The several counties (Meath, Armaugh and Galway) didn't have anything earlier than the very late 18th century.
**For more information about Irish genealogy in general, this link is a very good place to start.

© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Book Shelf: Blackboard Sketching

This week it seems as if everyone online has been amazed by the chalkboard drawings from Emerson High School in Oklahoma City that were uncovered when workmen removed the chalkboards which had been installed over the top of them in 1917. If you missed that bit of news, you can read about it here.

The History Blog* covered the story yesterday in depth, including a short video, and a history of chalkboards, colored chalk and the use of both in classrooms over time (with links of course). And here's the paragraph where "livius" introduces today's Book Shelf candidate:

"A century later, blackboard drawings as a pedagogical tool had moved far beyond colored maps for geography lessons. Blackboard Sketching by Frederick Whitney, Director of Art, State Normal School, Salem, Massachusetts, was published in 1908 to teach teachers how to make chalkboard masterpieces that would catch the eye of students bored with lectures. It’s brilliant and very short (a pamphlet, really), so be sure leaf through the whole thing."

[Blackboard sketching by Frederick Whitney, published 1908  Springfield, Mass., New York [etc.] : Milton Bradley Company.

Source: Internet Archive, original contributor: University of California Libraries]

I can't help wondering if any of my early 20th century ancestors saw drawings like these in their classrooms or if those of my ancestors who became school teachers during this period used books like this one.

*If you don't regularly visit The History Blog, believe me, you're missing a lot of great stuff.

© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.

Comment: Photoshopping Primary Source Documents

[The family photograph tree. Published by Currier & Ives, c1871. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.]

Following up on the controversy caused by Ben Affleck's expressed (but not originally publicized) wish to have Henry Louis Gates, Jr. overlook part of his family tree on Finding Your Roots last fall, Andy Hall over at Dead Confederates brings up a few more instances where that program has altered things for our viewing pleasure, including (but not limited to) manipulating an original source document.

"This makes for great viewing, but it’s a dishonest depiction of the actual (and critical) document, and that’s a problem. Although in this case Gates is not misrepresenting the information, he’s absolutely misrepresenting the original document. Doing that calls into question anything he and his producers do with primary source materials, and reflects very poorly on his commitment to accuracy. 

Makes you wonder what else he’s shown on that series that’s not entirely real."

It does indeed.

By the way, if you have any interest in the American Civil War, you're missing out if you don't visit Dead Confederates regularly.

© 2015 Copyright, Christine Manczuk, All Rights Reserved.