Genealogy Using Today's Technology

Kathy PetlewskiGenealogy & Local History Librarian

Plymouth District Library2013

Commercial genealogy products on today’s market

Sampling the best of the free sites…

Age of digital publishing – books and blogs

Role of social networking in genealogy.

Genealogy on mobile devices.

Largest commercial genealogy product on the market today.

Over 7,000 databases and 200 billion images, including 15 countries outside of the U.S.

This includes censuses, vital records, immigration records, family histories, military records, court and legal documents, city directories, photos, maps, and more.

Ancestry.com ~ Personal – You get Leaves!

•Over 11 billion searchable records.•Over 44 million family trees•Over 185 million photos, stories and documents in family trees.

More than 50 million pages of historical documents

Documents relating to the Revolutionary War, Civil War, WWI, WWII, and U.S. Presidents

Some city directories & historical newspapers

Owned by Ancestry…focus on military information.

28,000 digitized book titles, including early family histories and local histories.

PERSI index of over 2 million genealogy & local history articles.

Census images 1790-1940, but not all fully indexed.

Revolutionary War Pension files & Bounty-Land Warrant application files

$199.99 per year for access to all resources.

Formerly New England Ancestors Online.

Primary focus is on New England area and New York state.

Personal histories, town histories, vital records & digitized books such as The Great Migration set.

Pay-as-you-go or subscribe – By the month is $24.95.

Has a distinct British Isles / Australia focus.

Wide collection of British newspapers and UK Parish Records.

Now expanding coverage to U.S. and

Canada records.

20 Million Irish family history records including Birth, Death, Marriage and Gravestone records which are not available anywhere else.

It costs €15.00 to view a record.

Pricing: €25.00 - (175 credits plus 175 free pages of search results) - Bulk Saving€45.00 - (350 credits plus 350 free pages of search

results) - Bulk Saving

GenealogyBank currently has 215 million newspaper obituaries and death records covering over 320 years from over 6,500 newspapers.

Currently running a special - $55.95 for a year’s subscription, but also can pay by the month.

New York Times Historic ◦ – dates include from 1851 through 2004.

◦ - full images, keyword searchable.

Detroit Free Press Historic◦ - dates include 1831 through 1922.

◦ - full images, keyword searchable.

FamilySearch.org (LDS site) https://www.familysearch.org/

Castle Garden - information on 11 million

immigrants from 1820 through 1892 – New York Cityhttp://www.castlegarden.org/

Ellis Island – Search by passenger’s name or by

name of ship – New York City

http://www.ellisisland.org/

Chronicling America – from Library of Congress

& Nat’l Endowment for Humanities (6,025,474

newspaper pages available)

http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/

Family History Archive – 36,000 digitized items

from a variety of libraries

http://www.lib.byu.edu/fhc/index.php

Cyndi’s List of Genealogy Sites on the Internet - 327,218+ links for family history!

http://www.cyndislist.com/

U.S. GenWeb Project - http://usgenweb.org/

“Keeping Internet Genealogy Free”

Organized by state and then by county. Content quality varies significantly!

Mocavo – world’s largest free genealogy search engine. http://www.mocavo.com/

RootsWeb – supported by Ancestry.com http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/ The world's largest online genealogy community with over 17 Million

posts on more than 161,000 boards.

GenForum - part of Genealogy.com http://genforum.genealogy.com/index.html

◦ Search by locality, by topic or by surname

Post queries or answers to other’s queries.

Free services, but may lead to fee-based areas.

FamilySearch Research Wiki -https://www.familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/Main_Page

Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter-http://blog.eogn.com/eastmans_online_genealogy/

Genealogy Blog ~ http://www.genealogyblog.com/

Re-connect with distant relatives or those who share common interests.

Find Facebook versions of popular databases/publishers

◦ Facebook | Ancestry.com◦ Facebook | Cyndi's List◦ Facebook | Family Tree Magazine◦ Facebook | Fold3.com◦ Facebook | About Genealogy◦ Facebook | FamilySearch

geneabloggers

A passion for blogging about genealogy and family history

5,565 followers

megansmolenyak

genealogical adventurer who loves to solve mysteries

3,391 followers

footnoteMaven

A Photo Whisperer. Solving the mysteries of genealogy, old photos ..

2,375 followers

FamilyTreeMag

We're a how-to genealogy magazine and online community.

3,441 followers

Ancestry

37,239 followers

rjseaver Genealogy evangelist, husband, father,

grandfather, Christian, Chargers... 1,199 followers

marktucker Software Architect. Silverlight, Windows

Phone 7 developer. UX. Scouter.... 1,666 followers

worldvrecords We help you succeed with your genealogy

and family history by providing... 3,080 followers

michaelhait Pro genealogist - writer and lecturer 1,422 followers

Each family group is $29.95 per year.

Check with library or archives to see if you can use a camera or hand scanner. Depending on the age and condition of materials, you may be able to make copies.

If so, a handheld scanner, a smartphone with a camera, a tablet with a built-in camera, or a digital camera are good tools to have.

Smart phone with GPS is handy for taking photos in cemeteries since you can then document them geographically.

Reunion for iPad - $14.99 – must already have Reunion 9.0 or 10.0 on your Mac.

Ancestry for iPad – free – connect to your Ancestry.com account

FamViewer for iPhone - $9.99 – GEDCOM viewerGedView for iPhone - $3.99 – GEDCOM viewer

BillionGraves Camera App – free

MyHeritage app for Android or IOS – used with MyHeritage account.

Mobile FamilyTree Pro - $14.99 for IOS (Apple devices)

Digital Collections will continue to be released online.

FamilySearch volunteers make more vital records available.

Portable devices replace desktops so better genealogy apps will appear on market.

Online publishing of family history books makes it easy for everyone to put info out there – some good…some not!

Thanks for attending tonight!