African American History Month

Hi everyone, I am back. I keep getting side tracked. This time it was the beta testing of new FamilySearch (nFS) and FamilySearch Tree. There are some new things coming with these updates. Can't talk about them, but it makes some of the functions much easier. Also, I have been trying to sync my AncestralQuest file with nFS. The interface between the two works great. I have also been teaching my Family History classes and have been busy getting things ready for them. Now back to business.

February is African American History Month. The theme this year is "The Quest for Black Citizenship in the Americas."

A proclamation by President Obama states "This year's theme, "The Quest for Black Citizenship in the Americas," is a chance to examine the evolution of our country and how African Americans helped draw us ever closer to becoming a more perfect union.

The narrative of the African American pursuit of full citizenship with all of the rights and privileges afforded others in this country is also the story of a maturing young Nation. The voices and examples of the African American people worked collectively to remove the boulders of systemic racism and discrimination that pervaded our laws and our public consciousness for decades. Through the work of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver, Martin Luther King and Thurgood Marshall, the African American community has steadily made progress toward the dreams within its grasp and the promise of our Nation. Meanwhile, the belief that those dreams might one day be realized by all of our citizens gave African American men and women the same sense of duty and love of country that led them to shed blood in every war we have ever fought, to invest hard-earned resources in their communities with the hope of self empowerment, and to pass the ideals of this great land down to their children and grandchildren."

If you have tried to do African American genealogy research you know that it can be difficult to find records. So I decided to focus on some site that may be helpful in getting the research done.

First of all, FamilySearch Records pilot (http://pilot.familysearch.org) site has the Freedman Bank Records (1864-1874) and the Freedman's Burea Virginia Marriage Records (1815-1866) available online. Additionally, the 1850 US Census Slave Schedule is also available at this site.

Another useful site is Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database (http://www.slavevoyages.org). This site has information on almost 35,000 slave trading voyages with a total of over 10 million slaves who were brought to the Americas. You can research the various ships or look at the slave name database for information.

AfriGeneas (http://www.afrigeneas.com/) is another site that may be useful. Their goal is to encourage and support the research of African ancestored individuals in researching their roots. This site has received awards from DearMyrtle and Dynastree and is consistently listed as one of FamilyTree Magazine's Top 101 Best Websites. This site provides great how-to guides for researching African American ancestory.

Access Genealogy (http://www.accessgenealogy.com/african) has a fairly comprehensive list of websites that are available to assist in your research. It will probably take a while to go through all of the resources listed on this site and hopefully you will be able to find several that are especially of use to you.

I just ran across another great website this morning while doing some research. This website is from Suriname and includes a searchable database of 6,364 emancipated Surinamese slaves from 1832-1863. The site is located at http://tinyurl.com/cgk5y6. The site is in Dutch so you will have to use a translator such as Google Translator or Babblefish. 

I also want to highlight a couple of websites associated with PBS. These are African American Lives 2006 (http://www.pbs.org/wnet/aalives/2006/index.html) and African American Lives 2 (http://www.pbs.org/wnet/aalives/index.html). These sites have copies of interviews for famous African Americans such as Oprah, Chris Rock, Maya Angelou and others. Some of these stories are in video format and just send chills up your spine as you listen to them describe what it was like to find their ancestors. I especially liked Chris Rock's interview. These sites also include lesson plans for teachers to use.

I hope this discussion gives you some ideas on how to expand on African American History Month while doing genealogy research.

Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database

As I mentioned a few entries ago, I was going to work on listing important websites for state records unless something interesting popped up. Well, two things have popped up. First of all, new FamilySearch has released a new update v 0.95. There are some minor changes in the database including the requirement to certify that you are complying with Church policy in submitting names for the Temple including not submitting names of Jewish Holocaust victims and it is now more compatible with Firefox and Safari browsers.  But I am not going to spend time discussing those. I am sure some other blogger will address them in more detail. 

What I will spend a little time discussing tonight is a new database called Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database at http://slavevoyages.org. This site was launched on Friday in conjunction with a conference at Emory University marking the bicentennial of the official end to the slave trade in 1808. The database documents the slave trade from Africa to the New World between the 1500s to the 1800s and includes searchable information on about 35,000 voyages and the names of over 67,000 Africans aboard these ships. It includes the name, age, gender, origin, and ports of embarkation and landing. The database includes information on 95% of all voyages that left from ports in England, the country with the second largest slave trade. 

Many of the slaves’ names were westernized after their sale while their names in the database are more closely related to their African names. So therefore this database may not list a specific ancestor of a slave descendent but it will give context about their voyage. For someone who knows that an ancestor was enslaved in a certain location, the database might help them trace from where in Africa they most likely came. 

There are two main parts of the database that can be searched in many ways. One part is known as the Voyage Database. The other is called the African Names Database. If you are looking for a specific vessel, know the name of the captain or crew, know the ports of departure or arrival, or know the nationality of the ship, you can use this database to get more information. The African Names Database is a listing of names of a small percentage of the individuals who were shipped to the New World as slaves. All of these search results are linked directly back to a more detailed description of the vessel, its cargo, and trade route. Since there are only a few websites that specialize in this part of our history, it is a major addition and should be used as one more tool in researching African-American roots.

Finding Records Online – Georgia

There are several places online that house records from Georgia. First of all let’s look at the records that have been completed by the FamilySearch Indexing project. One of the first groups of records that were placed online at http://pilot.familysearch.org was the Georgia death certificates. These death certificates cover the time between 1914-1927. Additionally the FamilySearch website has various US census records that also cover the state of Georgia.

The state of Georgia has been putting some of their records online at the Georgia Virtual Vault at http://content.sos.state.ga.us. This site has a variety of records including the same death certificates as found on the FamilySearch website, Confederate enlistment and pension records, wills and deeds from several counties, Spanish-American War records, militia enlistment papers, trademark papers, historic maps and photographs and several other types of records. You can search all of these databases at the same time and download copies of all the documents for your own records. Searching through the Civil War pension records may result in finding other documents. A quick search led me to copies of marriage records, funeral home records, handwritten letters, and other documents used to prove widow’s rights or pensioner's service. The Virtual Vault also has some older records, including colonial wills from 1733-1779.

Another site for Georgia records is the DocuWeb database found at http://docuweb.gsu.edu/scripts/webmain.dll?Anonymous. This site has indexed records from various counties as well as Civil War Pension Records. To use this site select Browse, then select the record type you want to view. A list of names will appear and you can select the names you are interested in. This site has been glitchy lately and it may take several visits to it to get the records you are looking for. It appears that this site is being abandoned for a new system that is currently not active in the public web.

I hope some of these sites are helpful in your search for Georgia ancestors.

Finding Records Online – Florida

Florida has a wealth of records for you to find online. Many of these records are housed at the Florida Memory Project. The Florida Memory Project is a collection of historical archives, photographs, and government documents. This site can be found at http://www.floridamemory.com. Some of the documents that can be searched from this webpage include Spanish Land Grants, Confederate Pension Applications, World War I Service Records, as well as others. All of these records are free to download digital copies. This is a great resource for finding your southern ancestors. 

The Spanish Land Grants can be found at http://www.floridamemory.com/Collections/SpanishLandGrants/. These were land claims filed by settlers in Florida after the transfer of the territory from Spain to the United States in 1821. These grants were used to prove ownership of lands that were granted to settlers by Spain beginning in 1790. These records include descriptions of the property claims and land uses. Some records may include supporting records such as wills, deeds and other correspondence proving ownership.

Florida Confederate Pension Files can be found at http://www.floridamemory.com/Collections/PensionFiles/.  These records include the complete veterans’ pension request files as well as the widows’ applications. These records start in 1885. The veterans’ claims usually include full name, date and place of birth, unit of service, date and place of enlistment, date and place of discharge, any wounds or outstanding service, place of residence, and other pieces of information needed to verify their service. The widows’ applications include the same information plus date and place of marriage, date and place of husband’s death, and her place of residence. 

The WWI Service Cards is located at http://www.floridamemory.com/Collections/WWI/. These are index cards with the name, age, serial number, race, place of birth, and residence for those service men and women from Florida during WWI. Additionally, these cards have dates of service, where served, and rank during that period. There are over 42,000 Floridians included in this collection. 

Another potentially useful site is the Florida Department of State Library and Archives. This site can be found at http://dlis.dos.state.fl.us/barm/rediscovery/.  This site allows you to search over 40,000 cubic feet of state and local government records from 2,700 collections. The search results will link to the collection that is housed in the State Archives. If you get some good hits here you might want to think about making a trip to Tallahassee to check out the archives. You can also search the Archives collection at http://ibistro.dos.state.fl.us.

The Florida Electronic Library is another potentially useful site.  This site is found at http://www.flelibrary.org/index.cfm. You will need a library card from one of the libraries in Florida to access this database. Once you are able to access it you will find records such as newspapers, including obituaries, magazines, journals, books and other resources. 

In addition to these sources, FamilySearch is beginning to place more Florida records online at http://pilot.familysearch.org. Currently, parts of the 1885, 1934 and 1945 Florida State Census are available to browse.

Well, that should keep all the people in Florida busy for a few days. I think tomorrow I will talk about the records from Georgia.

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.

Newspapers from Oceania (Australia & New Zealand)

We have been having fun looking at old newspapers online lately. Newspapers are a good source for information as you research your genealogy. They can provide hints about important events during the person's lifetime, and details on mariages, births, deaths, etc. Everyone probably realizes that the US newspapers can be found in several subscription places such as Ancestry.com and GenealogyBank.com. But where would you go if, for some reason, your ancestors happened to immigrate to Australia or New Zealand? Several of my wife's lines, the Bielefeld, LeBoeuf and Vickery sides, happened to settle in Australia and travel to New Zealand during the latter part of the 19th century. The sites I have listed below are all free to use and do not require a subscription.

PapersPast is a product of the National Library of New Zealand. It can be found on the web at http://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/. PapersPast contains more than one million pages of digitised New Zealand newspapers and periodicals. The collection covers the years 1839 to 1920 and includes publications from all regions of New Zealand. The site is very user friendly and allows you to perform searches by key words, date, region or publication title. One of the things I love about this site is that the pages have been converted to OCR so you can copy the text as the computer interpreted it, directly into your text editing program or genealogy software. Of course the computer is never 100% correct in its interpretation so you will have to compare the OCR against the digital image.

If you have Maori ancestry you can view the Maori newspaper collection at http://nzdl.sadl.uleth.ca/. Look toward the bottom of the page to find the link to Nuipepa: Maori Newspapers. This site is written in Maori but does have English translations of the site however, the newspapers are all in the Maori language. It covers the Maori newspapers published during the period of 1842 to 1932

Australian Newspapers Online is a product of the National Library of Australia. This site is currently in beta and can be found at http://ndpbeta.nla.gov.au/. This site has digitised images of various newspapers from all regions of Australia during the period of 1803 to 1954. As in PapersPast, the Australian Newspapers Online compares the OCR text alongside the digitised image however this site has some very cool options that I had not seen before on other sites. First of all, you can correct the OCR text online for others to read. That means that any corrections you find will be permanently included in the online record. Additional options include the tagging of images and the ability to leave comments concerning the article.

These are all very user friendly sites and give us an idea of how online newspaper archives should perform. I know that Australia and New Zealand aren't always the hottest locations for genealogical research, but for those of us who have links to the land down under, these are great sites.

G'day mates!