Ontario Canada Research Tips and other Updates

Good afternoon! It has been a while since my last post and a lot has happened during that time. I retired after over 32 years of working for the government, we had a new house built, sold our old home, and moved to the Orlando area. We are now trying to get settled in our new environment and finding out what is here for us to get involved with. I am trying to get settled back into a regular routine and hope to be able to find more time to blog in the near future.

I have been busy trying to work on my genealogy classes with the International Institute of Genealogical Studies, becoming more active in the Southeast Chapter of the APG, continuing my duties as the Education Director for The Family History Guide, serving as the secretary for the Second Life Genealogical Society, and working on genealogical research projects for OurAncestories Genealogy. I also have a couple presentations coming up in the next two months including the following:

• Genealogical Society of South Brevard - September 10 - Finding Your Family in the Second Hand Store
• Lake Mary Family History Fair - September 13 - Unlocking the Past: How AI Transforms Genealogy
• Martin County Genealogy Fair - October 18 - Unlocking the Past: How AI Transforms Genealogy and Advanced AI Applications for Genealogy Research

And then there is the preparation for RootsTech which will be March 5-7, 2026 in Salt Lake City. I am part of the Media Team again this year and we just had our first coordination meeting earlier this week. There are a lot of things planned for the 2026 conference which I will write about once we have permission to release the information. But I can say that registration will open around September 24. If you are planning on attending RootsTech you need to know that the Plaza Hotel is being demolished beginning November 1. This is a favorite place to stay for some people because it is located on the corner between the Salt Palace and the Family History Library.

Now on to our topic of the day. I have been doing a couple client research projects in the Ontario, Canada region. This is the first time I have researched the region and I have found several websites to be very helpful. Of course I used Ancestry, FamilySearch, FindMyPast, and other well known genealogical websites, but there are more sites beyond those that should be tried.

1.  FamilySearch Wiki - This is always my go to site when I start researching a new area or want to see what resources are available for and area. The Canada Genealogy and Ontario, Canada Genealogy pages provide lists of resources, maps, and links to many helpful resources. If you are new to Canadian research you should try the Getting Started button. If you are experienced in Canadian research, the Online Genealogy Records button provides links to many online resources.
2. Library and Archives Canada - As with many archives, this site has a collection of online digital content as well as physical records which are not available online. I found several record sets helpful in the project that I was working on. Record sets such as Land Petitions of Upper Canada, 1763-1865 were not available in digital format while the War of 1812 records provide digital copies of the microfilmed records. The Archives also has a searchable database of the Canadian census from 1825 to 1931. The census collection is a great tool but I have found a couple downsides while using it. First, it seems to only search for the spelling of the name as you entered it. It does not search for alternative spellings no matter how close they are. For example, I got 7,717 results when searching for Sloan and 1,211 results when searching for Sloane. Another problem is that not every part of the census is digitized. For example, the images of the 1851 census are only of the front page, leaving the information from the back page missing. The back page of this census provides important clues such as whether the person was a member of the family, was the person missing at the time of the census, were they married, single, widowed, etc. Also, not every census is fully digitized. I found myself going to Ancestry to find the missing pages.
3. Trent University Archives - University archives often have valuable information, some of which may be in digital format. I was able to find a substantial amount of genealogical information including photograph collections, correspondence, legal papers, bills and receipts, newspaper clippings, and scrapbooks concerning the families I was researching. However, not all of it was available in digital format.
4. The Canadian County Atlas Digital Project - This page is managed by McGill University's Rare Books and Special Collections Division. They recognize how important historical maps are to genealogical research and have completed a searchable database of property owners names for each township in forty-three county atlases. Many of the maps have been digitized and can be found on their site.
5. The United Church of Canada Archives - This archive has nearly 2,700 record sets pertaining to The United Church of Canada including Methodist, Evangelical, United Brethren, Congregational Union, and much of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. I was most interested in their collection of the Christian Guardian which was a weekly paper covering the period of 1829-1925. Parts of this collection are searchable but it is important to review the pages of interest to find missed information.
6. Ontario Land Registry (ONLAND) - This site provides information on land transfers in the various counties in Ontario. The site has a few quirks that you have to understand in order to use it effectively. First, you need to know the county for your land registry office before you begin searching. Second, the database has operating hours and cannot be used outside those hours. For example, on Saturdays it is only available between 9am and 6pm Eastern. You are not able to research in their databases outside the posted hours.
7. Ontario Ancestors - Ontario Ancestors is managed by The Ontario Genealogical Society and has a variety of resources. One of the pages I used on their site is The Ontario Name Index (TONI). TONI provides information such as location, record type, and repository for names that the OGS has indexed. They also have a listing of nearly 6,400 cemeteries with locations, whether they have been transcribed, and the condition of each.

I have been able to find some interesting information for our current client on these pages. Researching Ontario ancestors may not be the most common area of research but they do have some important resources which you can access for free if you need to.

I hope everyone has a great Labor Day weekend and gets some research done over the 3-day holiday. I'll chat with you all soon (I hope).

RootsTech 2019 - Wednesday - 27 February

Crowds gathering for the first day of RootsTech 2019

Wow! Day one done at RootsTech 2019. Another great day of genealogy and networking down and the crews and volunteers have been doing a wonderful job keeping everything going. So, what did I learn today and how will it affect your genealogy research in the future?

First of all, I attended the Access and Preservation sessions this morning. These sessions were developed to help archivists learn more about what various archives are doing to make their records more available and useful to the public. David Carmichael, archivist for Pennsylvania, commented that archivists know what they do but many don't know why they do it. They need to talk more with the users to see how the materials they have in their archives are being used and hear the stories those records provide, not just know that they have so many linear feet of records on a particular subject. Mr. Carmichael also discussed the different problems they experience with storing digital records versus the physical records. Many archives have records that are several hundred years old but often have difficulty maintaining digital records in a usable format over the period of a few decades. Back in the 1980's his archive scanned many of their collections in a digital format developed by IBM but that format is no longer supported. Luckily they had maintained their physical collections and could scan them in a more modern format. Now they store their records in PDF-A format which is an archival pdf format and should last for the foreseeable future. Another problem they have today is that many modern records have never had a physical presence. These records, such as e-mails and digital photography, have only been digital. Several positive features of digital archives is that they can be monetized and there are companies that are producing digital records for the marketplace at a rapid pace. Additionally, digital records allow cooperative efforts and virtual communities to develop. Groups of people can get involved by providing and indexing collections that might not have been available otherwise.

Joe Price of the BYU Linking Lab discussed several projects his students are working on. One project is working with computer AI to learn handwriting recognition. The billions of digital records that are currently available can be compared with what humans have indexed so the computers can begin to learn to recognize the handwriting patterns. Another project is using these large record databases to begin statistical analysis of communities or groups of people for scientific studies. This moves the records that we think of as genealogy records into a new realm of users which may provide us more insight into their lives. For example, they are taking the 1850-1940 census information and the computers are linking them together into a census tree to follow people and their migration patterns. This analysis can follow individual families across the range of census records and also link them to other records such as school yearbooks and directories to gather more information. They are now linking records from the major genealogy databases to build the stories of individuals. This helps to find people who are not yet in FamilySearch's Family Tree through Tree Extending Hints. One example of this is a webpage called the Social Networks and Archival Context (http://snaccooperative.org).

The third talk in the Archives and Preservation series was from Kris Rcepzynski, archivist for Michigan. He talked about the seekingmichigan.org website and how their partnership with FamilySearch has provided increased access to various Michigan records. This website is undergoing a major facelift and will re-emerge later this year as michiganology.org. They are currently working on putting up county probate records as well as county naturalization records. They currently have naturalization records for 70 out of the 83 Michigan counties online.

During lunch I attended the FamilySearch talk. They discussed the three major problems they are experiencing.
1) My country's records are not a priority. - Priorities are being set by the number of requests they have gotten for various records. Some areas have very few requests and are therefore lower on the priority list.
2) There is a backlog for indexing records. - The current backlog is 40 years. By the end of 2019 the backlog will be 50 years and by the end of 2020 it will be 60 years. This is due to the large number of new records that are being digitized. We either need to find a way to increase the number of indexers from the 300,000 we currently have or find a new way to index records.
3) We aren't getting records fast enough to avoid loss. - Every year more records are lost due to various reasons. There just aren't enough crews out there indexing these at risk documents to avoid losing some.

So, what is FamilySearch doing to address these problems? Imagine is everyone, from individuals to public archives, had the ability to upload any documents they have and those records could be processed, indexed and published all within 24 hours. That would provide unlimited record access and allow communities to work together to preserve their own sets of records. This is happening in several test areas now. Another advancement is the ability of computers to perform Optical Character Recognition (OCR) of not just typed documents but also handwritten ones. Last year in a test of the computer's abilities they were able to OCR 50 million obituaries in only 3 weeks. This is now the GenealogyBank Obituary Collection we find on FamilySearch. They were able to use the Amazon servers to perform this task in record time. Now FamilySearch users are able to go in and fix indexing errors from this test. They are also working on a new image search process where the computer will estimate where a record should be in an unindexed collection of digital images based on the information you put in the search process. This will save countless hours of searching image after image trying to find your ancestor. Once you find the proper record you can attach it to the person as a source and index it right there.

Martin Luther King III speaking live at RootsTech

In other news, tonight Elder David A. Bednar announced a $2 million contribution to the International African American Museum. This money will be used to construct the Center for Family History which will be part of the museum in Charleston, South Carolina. The Church and FamilySearch have been major partners in the development of this museum and will continue to support its mission of providing a source of education about the period of slavery and life after slavery. Martin Luther King III also spoke about the importance of everyone, but especially African Americans, being able to discover their roots.

Devon Noel Lee interviewing me at RootsTech

FindMyPast announced several big items. One is that the Catholic records from the Cincinnati, New York, Philadelphia and Liverpool Diocese are now available on their site. They also discussed their acquisition of RootsFinder and their partnership with Living DNA. These partnerships, along with their exclusive rights to the digital UK 1951 Census collection make it one of the best sites for researching your English and Irish ancestors.

What else happened? Well, I was interviewed by Devon Noel Lee for her Family History Fanatics YouTube channel. We discussed doing research in the European archives. I also manned a table with several of my fellow members of the Second Life Virtual Genealogical Society. We were talking about the benefits of becoming a member of SLVGS to people who came by. All in all, it was a very productive day and I learned some new things about the genealogy world. But now it is time to get ready for some sleep so I can do this all again tomorrow. Good night all.

SLVGS crew manning a table at RootsTech

French Archives

Good morning folks. I decided to take a vacation day today to catch up on some things around the house. Last week we were struck by Hurricane Matthew, a category 4 hurricane. We lucked out and the hurricane stayed just offshore as it made its way up the Florida coast. Our damage was minimal but that put me about a week behind on the typical housework items like mowing the yard. So, as I am waiting for sunrise I decided to write another short blog post.

Yesterday I attended our monthly German Genealogy Interest Group meeting. This was the first meeting of our year. We start in October and have meetings through May while the snowbirds are here and then take off the summer months. One of the members began asking about archives. As you may remember, I started a series of posts on archives in Germany, France and the Netherlands a little while ago. She was interested in the archives for the Alsace region. After her question I decided to provide more information on the French archives that I have been able to find.

In 1791, after the French Revolution, France was divided into departments which are the local divisions of government. Today, there are 96 departments in France and 5 overseas departments. Each of the departments is distinguished by a two digit number as shown in the map below. These departments have their own archives, and many have smaller local archives. Many of these archives are online.

Departments of France

These archives have important collections of records for your genealogy research. I have been able to use several of them for research that I have done for others. You can see my previous posts concerning the Paris, Haut Rhin, Bas Rhin and Moselle archives. My goal this morning is to provide you with a link to a comprehensive list of the French archives that I have been able to find online so you can further your French research.

The national archive for France can be found at http://www.archivesdefrance.culture.gouv.fr/. Once you arrive at the National Archive you can find a list of the departments. Each department lists their main webpage, contact information including e-mail, hours of operation, and any regional or local archives within the department boundaries. You can find the department archives list at http://www.archivesdefrance.culture.gouv.fr/annuaire-services/departement/. The archives also have a specific set of pages for genealogy research - http://www.culture.fr/Genealogie. In case you can't read the French pages, there is an English translation of the pages available by clicking in the upper right corner of the pages for the English link.

If you want to learn more about the departments and other political regions of France this link is a great resource (http://www.map-france.com/departments/).

Hope you have luck and let me know if you find any discoveries in these archives.

Paris, France Archives

I hope everyone is having a good weekend. I had planned on going to see our local airshow today but it was 93 degrees and so humid you started to sweat just walking outside. We decided that we didn't want to sit on the airfield in the sun and get roasted. So instead of that, I ended up picking the bananas in our back yard and made three loaves of banana fig bread.

Today I decided to mention the Paris, France archives. The archives can be found at http://canadp-archivesenligne.paris.fr.  This archive has free access to their decennial tables for 1860-1974. There is also a reconstructed alphabetic file constructed from other vital records for the 16th century to 1859. The four centuries of vital records are not yet scanned so you only have the alphabetic index. They also have indexes to the military service records (1875-1921) and children's records (1742-1915). These records are great resources if your ancestors lived in Paris.

In order to search you will select the vital records link and then fill in the search boxes.

Vital Records Search page for the Paris Archives

The results page will give you a range of names and the number of pages that contain those names.

Results Page for the Vital Records Search

When you click on the eye with the number of pages you get the following display.

Results Display

If you look you will see Leon Levy's name. This is the person I was looking for. He was married 3 May 1921 in Paris. At the top of the page, in the title bar, you see the record type (marriages), date range (1913-1922), district (8e), and the name I was searching. The contrast, page number and magnifier controls are located to the right.

I was able to use the alphabetic index to find the marriage date for Leon Levy and then for his wife, Alice Marchessault, on another page. Of course I had to look up both the groom and the bride in the index to see if they had the same date for their marriage. Luckily they did.

Since this is an alphabetic index I noticed a few lines below Leon's name was Rene Levy, his brother. Now I have to find who he married in Paris on 19 November 1921.

One thing to be aware of, Paris is divided into 20 districts and the records are filed as such. If you know which district your ancestor lived in it is easy to search. However, if you don't know their district you will have to go through each file until you find them. Luckily Leon lived in district 8 so I only had to look through the first 8 sets of records. If he lived in district 20 I would have had a long day of searching.

Good luck and may all your ancestors help you in your searches.

Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany Archives

Welcome back everyone. Since I talked about the Alsace-Lorraine, France archives yesterday I figured I would jump across the Rhine and mention the Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany archives today. These archives have been a great help in researching my wife's ancestors. Her German line came from Ellmendingen in Karlsruhe.

The Baden-Wurttemberg archives can be found at https://www2.landesarchiv-bw.de. As you view this page you will see the main search categories. Remember, if you can't read the German, either use the translate function in the Chrome browser or go to the bottom of the page were you will see a note that says View This Page In English. The search section is pretty helpful and is shown below.

Search area of the Baden-Wurttemberg Archives (English version).

Once you know which area of Baden-Wurttemberg your family originated from you can select the correct department and search from there. Since most of the images are not yet indexed you will have to search page by page within the town your ancestors came from. In order to select the town, just type it in the search box and see which records show up. Make sure you search under each category  on the page because you may get different results. Sometimes I like to search page by page because you never know what you will find. Many times I have run across familiar names when I was looking for one person in particular. In many of these records I have found at least one person from my file on each page I looked at.

Example of records found in the archive.

Good luck with these German records, and happy hunting.

Archives for Alsace-Lorraine, France (Bas-Rhin, Haut-Rhin and Moselle)

Hello again, I am now on a two blog post streak (yes, two is a streak for me). I will be focusing on some French archives in the next few posts. Did you know that France was divided into 83 departments during the French Revolution and that each of those departments have their own archives?!

Lately I have been helping someone research their ancestors in the Alsace-Lorraine region. The Alsace-Lorraine region was formed as part of the Germen Empire in 1871 and is located on the west bank of the Rhine River, directly across from Baden-Wurttemberg where my wife's ancestors are from. Because of their close proximity, many of the residents of this region spoke German dialects and many of their records were in German also. This area was transferred to France after WW I but re-annexed by Germany during WW II. Now it is again part of France and is referred to as Alsace-Moselle.

The area is divided into three main regions, Bas-Rhin, Haut-Rhin and Moselle. Each of these regions have their own archives. Many of these records go back into the 1700s and include parish and census records, as well as birth, marriage and death records.

Here is an example of the records that I have found in these archives:

Birth record for Rose Netter - 1832.

The Bas-Rhin archives can be found at http://archives.bas-rhin.fr
The Haut-Rhin archives are located at http://www.archives.haut-rhin.fr
The Moselle archives are at http://www.archives57.com

Many of the records in these archives are not yet searchable so it does take some looking through the pages to find the ones you may be looking for. However, what I have found is that many of the record sets have their indexes included either at the front or the back of the records. So, to make it easier to search you may want to look at a few pages up front and then in the back to find where the index is located. These record sets include multiple years and the indexes are included with each year so you will still have to search the documents to find each year's index. One difficulty that I have found in these records is that all of the records are separated by town. So, just knowing that your ancestor was from Alsace-Lorraine may not be good enough. You will need to know which department to begin searching and then know which town they lived in to find their records. This made it extremely difficult because the family I was looking for began in Fegersheim and then moved to Strasbourg about 1880. All I was given by the person I am helping was that they were from Alsace-Lorraine. I was able to determine the towns based on US records, including immigration, naturalization and passport applications.

Good luck finding your Alsatian ancestors, whether they be German or French.

WieWasWie - Dutch Archives - Signs Agreement with Ancestry

Hello everyone, I decided that I would get back to my blogging with a few short posts. I will be focusing my research in the online international archives for the next couple weeks. It is amazing what records you can find in these archives. Over the next few blog posts I hope to provide some short descriptions of the archives so fellow researchers will be able find them more easily.

One of the archives that I have used in the past is WieWasWie. This site is a searchable database of the Dutch records. They have over 110 million names indexed on their site. Their records include:

Population registers

Birth certificates

Marriage certificates

Death Certificates

Burial registers

Baptismal registers

Marriage registers

Sea voyages

and others.

In the past I have been able to find my people in the population registers from Amsterdam and just this morning a fellow researcher sent me the link to my 3rd great grandparents marriage in Amsterdam (9 November 1831). Below is a copy of this marriage record.

Marriage record for Justus Weise and Anna Maria Margarethe Wilken (9 Nov 1831).

Earlier this month, WieWasWie signed an agreement with Ancestry.com. This is a great development for those of us searching for Dutch ancestry. With this agreement, researchers will be able to search their records collection through Ancestry. Their blog post about this agreement can be found at http://wiewaswieblog.nl/2016/06/wiewaswie-op-ancestry.

Celebrate St. Patrick's Day With Your Irish Roots

How in the world can so much time go by without realizing it? I can't believe my last post was February 10th. During that time my family went to the local Scottish Games and my wife talked to the representatives of the Lindsey, Campbell and Stewart Clans. She is descended from all three clans but thinks she will become a member of the Lindsey Clan since they are the closest to her original immigrant. I also attended a conference by Ancestry.com to discuss some of their ongoing activities and their World Archives Project. Visit their website at http://www.ancestry.com/worldarchivesproject for more information on this project. I have also been working on developing a new edition of the new FamilySearch teaching manual for the classes I teach. I am still waiting for FamilySearch to develop an official manual. I have part one in draft format posted at my website http://milesmeyer.googlepages.com/additionalfhcmaterials. If you notice anything that I missed in the document please let me know. It is still a work in progress. I will follow up with a second manual with more advanced options and a third manual discussing FamilyTree.

Now, on to our topic for the day. St. Patrick's Day is coming up. How many of you have found your Irish roots? My wife has traced her Faul line back to Ballywillin, Ireland based on their immigration records. They came to the US before the Civil War and fought on the Union side. These are her black sheep since all the rest of her ancestors were Confederates.

So, where can you look for these Irish roots online? There are many sites but I decided to focus on the National Archives of Ireland in this blog.

The National Archives of Ireland has a searchable database which can be found at http://tinyurl.com/c66k9l. There are several databases on the Archives' website which may be useful in your research. Additionally, they have a link to a large number of websites where additional information can be found. This list is located at http://www.nationalarchives.ie/genealogy/links.html.

I always like looking for black sheep when I do research. It adds a little color to the family. Did you know that Ireland shipped some of their convicts to the Colonies during the mid 1700's? A list of the individuals that were deported from Ireland to what would eventually become the United States during the time period 1737-1747 can be found at http://www.igp-web.com/carlow/deported.htm. Some of these individuals are listed as vagabonds or were arrested for larceny. A few even had their death sentences pardoned so they could be deported. Ireland also transported their convicts to Australia from 1788-1868. The National Archives of Ireland has a searchable index at http://www.nationalarchives.ie/search/index.php?category=18. Check it out to see if any of your surnames are represented.

I hope these links help you get in the spirit of St. Patrick's Day and don't forget to wear your green.

Oh Canada!

Hi again, I know that it has been over a week since my last blog. I have been busy getting a new computer setup in our Family History Center. We have a little problem with it accessing our wireless network properly and it takes some skill to make it work. Hopefully that will be fixed by this weekend when I start my next 8 week Family History class during Sunday School.

I have been following a discussion thread on one of the boards concerning the Canada 1916 census. This census was on the FamiySearch Records site (http://pilot.familysearch.org) for a few days for testing and then was taken down due to contractual agreements. Several users were upset to see it go. After reading this discussion I decided to focus today's blog on online Canadian records.

Canada has a rich supply of online records for your genealogical research. I don't use the Canadian databases much since we only have one small line that settled in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia regions. 

FamilySearch Records pilot site currently has two sets of Canadian records indexed. These include the Ontario Death Records (1869-1939 and 1939-1947 overseas deaths only) and the Quebec Catholic Parish Registers (1621-1900). Currently there are no images posted for the Ontario Death Records but the index is fairly complete. Also, the volunteers at FamilySearch Indexing (http://www.familysearchindexing.org) are working on parts of the 1861 census. These volunteers are doing an incredible job and just last month were able to add 40 million new records to the FamilySearch Records site. If you have some free time I would encourage you to volunteer and assist in the indexing of these records.

The Canadian Archives has a large number of records available. There are a couple of sites that I recommend when looking through the Canadian Archives. 

The first is Archives Canada (http://www.archivescanada.ca). This site is the gateway for archival resources found in over 800 repositories throughout Canada and is maintained by the Canadian Council of Archives. This site allows you to search archival holdings across Canada, access Provincial and Territorial archive networks, view digitized photographs, maps and documents, and find where materials are located so you can view the actual records. My luck in finding digital records within this database has not been great but I suppose that is because I haven't used it very often to do research. It does give great details about the collections and their locations as well as telling you whether these colections are open to the public or have restricted access.

The Libaray and Archives Canada collection (http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/) is another great site for researching Canadian roots. They have a searchable database called the Canadian Genealogy Center which provides access to many of the records that you will need during your research. You can select to search all records, only those that are online or only those that are not online. For example, I searched for Smith and had 37,000 results but only 8,000 of those were online records. You can also narrow your search by using a range of years or the record type. The site contains birth, death, and marriage records along with military, employment, immigration, census and land records. The images are high quality, easy to read and easy to copy to your own records. Another thing I like about this site is their Youth Corner. This part of the site is currently down but it is expected to be available by the end of the month. The goal here is to promote interaction between the generations.

That's My Family (http://www.thatsmyfamily.info/) is a site run by the National Archives of Quebec. This search tool leads to genealogy and family history databases hosted by federal, provincial and territorial archives and libraries as well as other partners. This is another very useful search tool since it covers a wide variety of records and has a fairly easy to use interface.

I hope that some of these sites prove useful in your research. And remember, it is cold in Canada during the winter, so curl up next to a nice warm fire with your laptop and do some research for your ancestors from the great white north. Eh?

Europeana Digital Library is back up for testing

A few weeks ago I wrote an article about the Europeana Digital Library. This site crashed almost as soon as it went live due to high traffic volumes. Well, now they have come back online with the test site. You can access it at: http://www.europeana.eu/portal/. This site has over 2 million digital items including images, text, sound and video from museums, archives, libraries and other collections across Europe. This is your chance to try it out. A final version is expected to be available in 2010 with over 6 million digital objects cataloged.

Finding Records Online – Colorado

Colorado has a huge number of records available online. There are literally hundreds of different types of records totaling over 565,000 individual records which can be found on the California State Archives website.  A list of the indexed records can be found at http://www.colorado.gov/dpa/doit/archives/hrd/index.htm.

The Historical Records Index Search page can be found at http://accipiter.state.co.us/archive/publicrecordsearch.do. This page has a database of over 50 types of records including professional licenses, court cases, military records, wills, voter registration, tax lists, naturalization, Indian records, census, birth, death, divorce, and many more. You can select the records that you want, fill in the form and electronically submit it to the Archives for them to research. There are fees associated with getting the actual records but even just searching the indexes can provide some useful information such as name, record type, county and date of event. More information on the record types that have been indexed can be found at http://www.colorado.gov/dpa/doit/archives/online.htm.  Another way to search this site is through the Colorado State Archives Search page at http://www.colorado.gov/dpa/doit/archives/search.html. I would run a search on each of these links because they display the results differently and sometimes additional information can be found.

Another useful site is the Denver Public Library’s Western History and Genealogy site at http://history.denverlibrary.org/research/genealogy.html. Like most libraries, many of their databases require a Denver Public Library card for access. However, you can use the search bar located at the top of the page to search the indexes that are available for free.

I hope these free indexes are useful. Tomorrow I will talk about records from the state of Florida. Have fun digging through all the records.