WWII Hometown Newspaper Collections Project

Good morning all and Happy Holidays! This year has been busy. I would have thought with the continuing Covid pandemic and working from home that things would have calmed down some but that isn't the case. Of course, much of what I am doing is working on my genealogy projects and helping others work on their projects. 

Earlier this month, on December 7, was the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the entrance of the United States into World War II. With the entrance into WWII, the lives of many people were changed. Young men were recruited into the armed forces. Parents said good bye to their sons, some forever. Employers had to find new ways to replace their workforce which introduced many more women into the work force. Our local newspapers chronicled many of these events in their daily or weekly columns. However, 80 years later, many of those events are dim memories for only a few living people and the more recent generations are not aware of all the sacrifices that their predecessors had to endure. It is time for them to learn about their ancestors' lives during WWII so they can understand more about how those events shaped a generation. The WWII Hometown Newspaper Collections Project is a grassroot project to begin chronicling those events in a way that the current generations can discover.

The WWII Hometown Newspaper Collections Project is a volunteer project where individuals or groups can document the individual sacrifices by collecting newspaper articles from the time and attaching them to the family tree on FamilySearch or by creating and publishing biographies of the individuals in those newspaper stories. Volunteers can select their hometown newspapers and discover stories about the local residents from WWII. I will be working on stories from The Minster Post in Minster, Ohio. The articles can be enlistments, promotions, service records, deaths, or any number of other related topics. Some volunteers may want to write something about the individuals. Examples of such stories can be found at my blog with biographies for 2nd Lieutenant Edwin Allen Rodheffer, Ensign Harry Francis Raterman, and Staff Sargent Edward Frederick Gaier. Others may just want to link the stories to the FamilySearch family tree. Whichever way you want to be involved is up to you, but either way will encourage others to learn more about the family members who served during WWII.

I hope that you will join me in this project and help to document how WWII was experienced on an individual level. Contact me if you would like to learn more about this project or join me at RootsTech Connect 2022 on March 3-5, 2022 where I will be talking about this project during a live session.

RootsTech Connect 2021 - 4 Days to Go

We have four days until RootsTech Connect opens the Expo Hall on Wednesday at 7:00pm eastern time and the conference kicks off. Are you counting down the minutes? Yesterday, I wrote about some of the events you can participate in while you attend RootsTech this year. One of those was the Let's Do Good Together virtual booth. But what is that and what can you do there?

The Let's Do Good Together virtual booth will highlight people and the projects they are doing to bring people together through family history. Each panel discussion will be 1 hour in length with open chats throughout the RootsTech conference. You will hear directly from those participating in the various projects and be able to ask them questions. The Let's Do Good Together virtual booth will even allow you to create group chats and build a network of people interested in helping out with your projects. We hope you will come out of these discussions with ideas and be inspired and energized to do good in your community. So what can you expect to see in this virtual booth?

Discussions marked with (*) are panels that I will be participating in. All times listed are eastern time zone.

Thursday, February 25, 4:00pm - DNA Interest Groups - This discussion group will discuss ways we can help each other increase our skills working with DNA through DNA special interest groups. Special interest groups (SIGs) are established to share knowledge about specific topics, in this case DNA. The panel will consist of genealogists who are actively involved in DNA SIGs who will be answering questions from those who are interested in finding a local or virtual DNA group or starting an interest group in their own community.

*Thursday, February 25, 7:00pm - Connecting Your Communities in the FamilySearch Family Tree* - This discussion group will discuss Family and Community Reconstitution Projects. Reconstitution Projects are a way to give back to your community by using existing records to recreate families within a specific community. These communities could be a town, a neighborhood, a specific ethnic community, an organization, or any other community you may be part of. For example, the discussion will include several projects including ones recreating the families of those buried in historic African-American cemeteries and recreating the families of a town from a historic perspective.

Thursday, February 25, 8:00pm - Finding Family History in Newspapers: A Crowdsourcing Project - Many of us have found how valuable newspapers can be as a resource in our family history research but they continue to be an underutilized resource. This panel will discuss how a crowd sourced newspaper indexing project can make using newspapers easier and provide benefits to family historians.

*Thursday, February 25, 9:30pm - Family History and Genealogy in K-12 Classrooms* - This is an opportunity for educators to join a conversation about how to connect with your students through family history and genealogy activities as part of their curriculum. We will discuss how these activities can enhance their learning and provide ideas that you can take back to the classroom. 

*Friday, February 26, 3:00pm - Inspiring Children and Youth to Love Family History* - Children and youth can benefit greatly through experiencing family history, but how can we inspire them to love it? Join in on the discussion and hear about the challenges, successes, and ideas that you can use to inspire them to love family history.

Friday, February 26, 4:00pm - Search Angels for Adoptees - This panel will discuss ways that you can help adult adoptees find their biological families. Panelists will talk about traditional methods, DNA, and other tools that have helped them help others. Adoptees and families of adoptees who are searching can ask questions and get direction on the next steps. Other attendees will learn how they can become a search angel and help others in their search.

Saturday, February 27, 11:00am - Texas Connect - Join the Texas Connect panel to discuss projects from Texas that will inspire you to do similar project in your community. Learn how you can participate in Texas projects and see how these projects were initiated and how they continue their work.

Saturday, February 27, 1:00pm - Exploring the Psychological Benefits of Family History - Scientific studies have shown the psychological benefits of family history. Children who understand their family history have been shown to be more resilient when faced with adversity. Learn how participating in projects like the 21-Day Family Connections Experiment can help you explore the psychological benefits of connecting with family, both past and present.

What do you think? Is that an incredible line-up of inspiring discussions or what? Just think of all the ideas you will bring back to your community or society. 

So how do you find these sessions on the RootsTech Connect website when it goes live next week? All you have to do is click on the Expo Hall icon in the upper right menu and then go to the bottom of the Expo Hall website where you will find the Let's Do Good Together logo under Featured Booths.

Join us for these discussions and be inspired to do good together with your fellow genealogists.

Enable GingerCannot connect to Ginger Check your internet connection
or reload the browserDisable in this text fieldEditEdit in GingerEdit in Ginger×

Family History Scavenger Hunt - Day 14

Overview & Purpose

We all love scavenger hunts, hunting for the clues and discovering new things. This scavenger hunt will occur during the month of June and will include daily prizes for a lucky winner who gets all the answers correct in the allotted time.

The clues will be posted each morning on the Indian River Genealogy Conference Facebook page (www.facebook.com/IRGConf), Friends of Vero Beach Family History Center Facebook group (www.facebook.com/159642411143167) and the genealogy blog at https://milesgenealogy.blogspot.com/.

The tasks will introduce you to a variety of online sources and help you learn new research sites and how to use them effectively to discover your ancestors. Those who get the answers correct will be entered into the daily drawing for prizes.

Join in the fun, discover new sites, and learn how to research on sites that you may have never used before.

Answers will be submitted using a Google Form found at https://forms.gle/aNgZ8bbHrYdngwEY9. 

  
Today’s Challenge

We are now on Day #14. How many of you have been with us for the entire 2 weeks? Today’s challenge is to research international newspapers. My favorite site to find online newspaper collections is Wikipedia’s List of Online Newspaper Archives (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_online_newspaper_archives).

Questions

1. Using Wikipedia’s List of Online Newspaper Archives, find the newspaper archives for Quebec. How many newspaper titles are listed for the Canadiana Discovery Portal?
2. Check out the newspapers for Ohio. What range of years is available for the Minster Post?
3. Find the newspaper titled “Manx Cat”. What region was this paper published?
4. Which Irish newspaper was published from 1905-1909?
5. How many newspapers are included in the Cuba collection? 

Bonus Points (Optional)

• Find the National Library of Australia Collection. Search the collection to find out what Mr. Bielefeld did with papier mache.

Hint

This one is pretty easy but make sure you are looking in the right countries for the newspapers.

Action

Answers will be submitted using a Google Form (https://forms.gle/aNgZ8bbHrYdngwEY9).  All answers received before 8:00 pm EST on June 14 will be considered for today’s prize which is a 1-year World Explorer Subscription to Ancestry.

Answers

Researching My Hometown Ancestors

It is nearly Christmas and winter still hasn't arrived for us. We had two weeks where the temperatures got down into the 50s and 60s but this week it has been in the mid to upper 70s again with frequent rain showers. It is hard for us here in Florida to realize that many parts of the rest of the country are having winter storm advisories. With weather like that we really don't get forced into staying indoors for days to do our family history research but when I do get a good chance to research, I want to make sure I am getting the most out of my time. So, here are some suggestions on making sure you are focusing on sources with the potential for high returns.

Map of Ohio where my research is focused.

I am one of those lucky people who don't have far flung ancestors to research. My research focuses on a very small area of Ohio consisting of parts of four counties; Auglaize, Darke, Mercer and Shelby. And within those four counties it is mainly within the four corners area as shown in the red square on the map.

First of all, I want to discuss the general process of finding the sources for your locations. This step, developing a locality guide, can help you learn more about the area you are researching and help you find the important resources that you need to be successful. The FamilyLocket blog and podcast have some great tips on creating locality guides. They have three podcasts on this specific topic: RLP 4, RLP 5, and RLP 18.

Where are some good places to begin developing your locality guide? First, I would suggest using the FamilySearch Wiki. If you aren't familiar with the FamilySearch Wiki, it is "a free, online genealogical guide created and maintained by FamilySearch. It contains links to genealogy databases, websites, other resources, research strategies, and genealogical guidance to assist in the search for your ancestors. Articles included are locality pages for countries around the world and topic pages that include pertinent genealogy record types explaining how to use the record, what it contains, and how to find it." The Wiki is developed and edited by teams of users, much like Wikipedia, who are familiar with the research topic and want to help provide the resources necessary for you to have successful discoveries. The Wiki can be searched by genealogy topic as well as locality. Since the topics are developed by volunteers, some sections may be more complete than others. For example, in my research of Auglaize, Darke, Mercer and Shelby counties in Ohio, I would look up each county in the Wiki to see what information is readily available: Auglaize, Darke, Mercer, Shelby.

Another website that I would use to help develop my locality guide is The Family History Guide. The Family History Guide is generally seen as a tutorial for learning how to use the big four genealogy sites (FamilySearch, Ancestry, FindMyPast, and MyHeritage) but it is also a great resource for finding locality information to help research your ancestors. To find the location information, click on Countries in the menu bar at the top of the Family History Guide web page and select the country you want to research. In my case I selected United States. Once on the US page, I selected Ohio from the list of states under the title bar and before the general lessons on US Records and Searches. On the Ohio page there are a series of general lessons to help you understand researching the state and there is a list of county resources at the bottom of the page. This list has the name of each county and a series of letters (for example, Auglaize A L G U). Clicking on the county name will take you to the FamilySearch Wiki page for that county. Clicking the A links you to the Ancestry card catalog for that location, L goes to the Linkpendium list for that location, G goes to Genealogy Inc's list for the location, and U goes to the USGenWeb page for the location. Each of these sites may provide you additional resources to add to your locality guide.

Google is another source for your research. Make sure you do a thorough search on Google and its various sites. Searching Google can help you find the local historical societies, libraries and museums which may have resources of information that can assist you. The search can also link you with others researching the same families and locations. Searching Google Books can provide county histories and other resources that can help build the historical context for your research. For example, I was able to find a book titled "History of Western Ohio and Auglaize County with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of Pioneers and Prominent Public Men" published in 1905. These county histories can provide excellent hints for your research.

Newspapers are also an important resource when researching a particular location. I was lucky enough to have several of my local newspapers already online for free. One of my favorite free sites to look up newspapers is Ancestor Hunt. They have a general page about using newspapers for your research and a more specific page for finding resources by state. For Ohio, they have links to several hundred newspapers around the state in various collections. Two of my most used newspaper resources are the Community History Archive of the Coldwater Public Library and the Minster Historical Society's Newspaper Collection. These collections have more than 100 years worth of local newspapers for the Auglaize County area available online. You might also have luck finding local newspapers on the Library of Congress' Chronicling America site. Other locations to look for newspapers are University collections. For example, Bowling Green State University has their collection of newspapers here.

I also suggest that you look at maps for your area as you are researching. Historic maps will show boundary changes and potentially towns that no longer exist. Plat maps will show land ownership changes over time. Current maps will help provide current landmarks for you to use during your research. One of my favorite mapping sites is Historic Map Works. They provide a variety of old maps including plat maps and gazetteers.  Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps can provide details about buildings in an area. These maps show the footprint, construction materials, and floor plans of various building. Examples of these maps can be found in the Library of Congress map collections.

I hope these links will help you develop your locality guide and set you on the way to successful researching. Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year to all!

German Newspaper Collections

January 1, 2019 - So, it's the first day of 2019 and I have been on furlough since December 24 due to the Federal government not passing a budget. I won't get into all of the politics of the situation but I do hope to make the best of this extra time off and get back into posting a few more articles while I am off.

One of the topics that I have been focusing on lately is my German research. I have discovered many great websites over the last couple months. I will try to discuss some of them in my next couple posts.

One of my favorite resources are newspaper collections. Not only do they contain valuable genealogical information but they also tell the story of what was happening during a person's life. But how do you find German newspaper collections?

Over the last decade, Germany has been working to make its newspaper collections available and many of these collections are now online.

One such collection is found at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin website. This site has over 276,000 issues from 193 historical newspapers. Most of these newspapers are from Germany but they also have some German language newspapers from abroad including Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and other areas. Some of the papers have full text search capabilities but I have not found their metasearch to be very helpful unless you are looking for towns. Most of the newspapers in their collection have publication dates from the later part of the 1800s to the mid 1900s but they have a few from the 1600s and 1700s.

The Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek also has an extensive collection of newspapers with over 1050 titless and 6.5 million pages digitized. I had better luck searching surnames from this site than I had in the Berlin collection.

But do you have time to search around for the newspapers you need to further your research? Most of us don't want to spend hours looking for a page that might be useful. So, how do you find a list of sites to start with?

One of my favorite collections of newspaper links is Wikipedia. Wikipedia has a list of online newspaper archives from around the world. You can select the country of interest and see what collections are available.

Another great list can be found at the BYU Harold B. Lee Library's website called Euro Docs. From the Euro Docs website you can select the country of interest and search under several subtopics to find the resource you are interested in. For example, you can find the Historic German Newspaper collection by clicking Germany>>Historic German Newspapers and Journals Online>>Local Newspapers (See Historic German Newspapers Online) or just use the hyperlink I provided. To make it easier to use, the Historic German Newspapers are listed by city of publication.

Now for the hard part - can you read German Fraktur? One way to learn it is to research the alphabet to determine which letters they are writing. BYU provides a great tutorial for reading the Fraktur letters. Once you are able to read the letters, you can try Google Translate and begin typing in the words you see to see what they are translated as. If you have a well typed document you might be able to upload it as a pdf and have Google translate it but that is often questionable because so many Fraktur letters look similar.

These are only a couple of collections but they should be enough to keep you busy for a while. Good luck.

FamilySearch Indexing - Zoning Pilot Project

Ok, I know what you are thinking - Why can't he write on a regular basis like all the other bloggers? The answer is - I don't know. I love to write but I seem to only be able to do it when I get inspired, and then sometimes when I am inspired I don't have the time to focus. So, a few weeks ago I was waiting for my wife in a parking lot, listening to NPR. The program that was on was from The Millennial Podcast titled Nothing to Lose. That show talked about how the host began her podcast and the challenges she faced trying to find her inspiration. It inspired me to think about writing again (that was over a month ago). I had some great ideas but then just never was able to allocate the time to seriously sit down and write. I thought about writing down my ideas, I had many, but that just passed by without being pursued. So, this week when I had a few free hours, I sat down and started a new pilot indexing project for FamilySearch called Zoning. This was a fun project where volunteers view newspaper pages and block out stories with marriage, birth and death information. In the first day I completed over 670 zones in newspapers from Raleigh, North Carolina. I decided that this would be a good story to provide since this such a new project.

So, let's discuss a bit about indexing to start with. Anyone can volunteer to index the records that have already been digitized. To learn more about indexing visit the FamilySearch Indexing webpage. The indexing projects are moving ahead and more records are being made searchable each month. With the success of the indexing program and the addition of more digitized images online there has been a decrease in the need for microfilms to be sent out. Additionally, the cost of copying microfilms has increased substantially over the years. Many of you have probably read that the Family History Library will stop sending out microfilm records at the end of this week (September 7, 2017). The reason they are ending the microfilm rental process is that many of the films are now available online and they believe almost all of them should be available over the next three years, around 2020. Just to point out the major accomplishments achieved already in digitizing microfilm records, think about the following:

• Almost all of the microfilms rented by patrons in the past 5 years have now been digitized.
• Over 1.5 million microfilms (1.5 billion images) are now available online.
• Microfilms are being digitized at the rate of 1,000 rolls per day.
• Images that have not been indexed are available in the FamilySearch Catalog.

So, why is Zoning important? Zoning serves as the first step in indexing newspaper records. The zoners highlight the regions of each newspaper page that contain marriage, birth and death information that will be useful in our family history research. There are sets of key words that the zoners look for such as adoption, birthday, anniversary, divorce, engagement, estate, obituary, probate, etc.

If you are interested in signing up for the Zoning pilot project click here. Once your request has been approved and you are signed up you can begin zoning.

FamilySearch Zoning Pilot Project - initial view

Each batch consists of five newspaper pages that may or may not contain important information. As you read the page, looking for the key words, you begin to note which articles are subject to zoning. Currently the only events that are being zoned are those that contain birth, marriage or death information. 

Page after it has been Zoned for marriage information

The page above has several articles pertaining to marriage events such as engagements, anniversaries, announcements and marriages. Marriage information is highlighted in orange and the areas in blue are stories that are stitched together over several columns.

Page after it has been Zoned for death information

The page above has several articles pertaining to deaths. These stories are highlighted in green. Also, if you look at the side bar there is a page with a large red X on it. That indicates that there are no stories with birth, marriage, or death information. The large black circles indicate that those pages have been zoned.

Once you have zoned all the pages you can submit them and go on to zone more batches. This project is important for future indexing in that it provides the articles which will be added to the newspaper records.

I know some people have been having trouble indexing records, either because of the difficulty reading them or because of other reasons. This Zoning pilot project is an easy way for those who are having trouble contributing to the Indexing project to provide new records to the FamilySearch records.