Ukraine genealogical resources

If anyone has deep roots in the Ukraine,  a huge genealogical database containing over 2.5 million names spanning the years 1650 to 1920 as recently been completed and released to the public for viewing online. The project was founded by Igor Hoszowski,  a Ukrainian IT businessman who researches his family history in his spare time. The massive list of names were compiled from birth registers, parish census, voter lists, address directories and other sources. Just to warn you ahead of time. The website is in Ukrainian. If you speak Ukrainian or can find someone able to translate into English, this website is very valuable for genealogists with ancestral roots in the Ukraine.

The link to the database can be found at https://pra.in.ua/



RS

Your Ancestor's Political Affiliation

An underutilized resource for many genealogists are political records. Accessing them may be an unfamiliar process, as D. Joshua Taylor discussed in his program, “Key Player, Participant, or Partisan Follower: Discovering an Ancestor’s Political Leaning” at the recent NGS conference. “These materials are not organized around specific individuals or surnames, but by political movements or parties”. Taylor broke down the steps to begin digging into political records:

Understand local political history à Discover potential affiliations à Access and search political records

The majority of political party records of genealogical interest will exist on a local level. Discover your ancestors’ potential political affiliation by examining the local political environment. Get familiar with the local political environment by referencing mug books, scholarly articles and historical studies, local newspapers, party histories, and congressional district maps.

Understanding the historical political parties of the past will help guide your research. If, for example, your ancestor was a Presbyterian, a farmer, and lived in Northeast United States between 1810 and 1840, you would want to consider the records of the Anti-Masonic Party, which was composed mainly of Northeastern Presbyterian farmers.

There is no “master index” to members of historical political parties. Your search must go beyond genealogical repositories to include state and federal archives, university libraries and special collections, manuscript collections, and private collections of historical memorabilia. Types of political records you might find include membership lists, donation logbooks, fundraising registers, mailing lists, propaganda, party events, convention reports, party leadership records, internal voting records, party correspondence, and miscellaneous records.

Should you hit the jackpot and discover you have an ancestor who was a member of Congress, look into the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress. Clayton Library call number: 328.092273 U58 USA, or view it online, Congressional Biographical Directory.

JO

Prosopography

For every ancestor who leaves a voluminous paper trail scattered throughout the historical record, there are a few who barely leave a footprint in time, if any at all. Some of our forbearers seem to emerge fully-formed, as if by immaculate conception with no evidence of pedigree. Farmers, the poor and former slaves tend to leave less records behind than the wealthy or prominent people of a community with few exceptions.  How can we reconstruct the lives and origins of these obscure ancestors?  Tough challenges call for creative solutions. Enter Prosopography. Stage Right.

So, what is prosopography you say? Prosopography is the attempt by scholars to study the collective history of a certain group of people and their relationships to each other by finding references to them in as many primary sources as possible. Prosopography combines the methods of history, genealogy, demographics and onomastics . It's a One-Place Study on steroids.You create a list of questions or information you want to know about this group. Queries range from occupation, social origins, birthplace or known associates and kin. The goal is to come up with a collective biography of an entire group of people. Like genealogy, Prosopography is about discerning relationships between people and their communities.

For example, say your great-great grandfather, John Smith, was working as a blacksmith in some hit-and-miss town in Nowhere, America who didn't leave much of a paper trail to follow. Instead of screaming at your computer screen at 3 am surrounded by a mess of notebooks and cats, look through the records of your ancestor's town and compile a list of every blacksmith or skilled tradesman working during that time.  Generate a couple of questions you want to know about the blacksmiths and tradesman and find references to them in as many sources as you can find.  If you're diligent and patient enough, you're start to notice that most of these men knew and were affiliated with each other.

You may even discover hidden relationships which would have been unknown if you just focused on John Smith. He may have been an apprentice to his pipe-smoking Uncle Job or a witness to his brother's messy divorce proceedings. Using the methods of prosopography can help you learn about the blacksmiths and skilled tradesmen in your town as well as providing possible clues to the genealogical origins of great-great grandpa, John Smith.

Best of Luck,


RS

You can learn more about Prosopography at http://prosopography.modhist.ox.ac.uk/tutorial/tutorial_3.htm

How Many of Me?

As reference librarians, we occasionally get customers who want to search for the living instead of the dead. Searching for the living is challenging because, unlike the dead, they never stay in one place. While reading Eastman's online genealogy blog, I came across the website "How Many of Me?" This website allows US residents to search how many living people in the country have a certain first, last or even full name. It gives customers a useful tool to narrow down the number of possible candidates or to see the odds of discovering the person they are searching for. Finding lost relatives with unique surnames are one of the useful applications of this website for patrons. You can also can have a bit of fun with the database. I just found out that there are 9 people besides myself named Rodney Sam in the United States. I shouldn't be too hard to find. The link to "How Many of Me?" can be assessed at

http://howmanyofme.com/
Enjoy!


RS

75 Best State Websites (Family Tree Magazine 2016)

More state archives, state and local libraries and many state "memory projects" are offering digitized materials.  For an overview of the 75 best state genealogy websites, visit here.  I bet this helps us to help our customers.  Have fun!

SK

Non-Population Schedules: Where to Find Them

The U.S. Federal Census includes several non-population schedules, such as agricultural schedules; defective, dependent, delinquent classes; industry and manufacturing schedules; mortality schedules; slave schedules; social statistics schedules; and 1885 non-population schedules for those states with an 1885 federal census.

Unlike most of the population schedules, the non-population schedules are not all in one place. When the National Archives decided to discontinue holding them, the non-population schedules were offered up to state archives, state libraries, university libraries, or historical societies. To locate a non-population schedule for a customer, try the following recommended websites and book.

If a customer is searching for a non-population schedule, check online on Ancestry.com or FamilySearch.org. You can easily view Ancestry’s holdings by using the menu on the right.

The slave schedules are not part of this database. Ancestry has them in separate databases. Search the catalog with the keywords “slave schedules.”

FamilySearch’s holdings do not appear to be indexed, therefore the customer will have to select their geographical location of interest and browse the images.

If the desired non-population schedule is not to be found online, go to William Dollarhide’s The Census Book, call number 929.10973 D665 USA.  In it is a complete listing of available non-population schedules for each state and where the original manuscript is located. The National Archive film number and the location of other microfilm are given if applicable.

JO

South Carolina State Hospital Survey Index

While looking for information on Lunatic Asylums or Insane Asylums for a project I came across an entry on DPLA for the South Carolina State Hospital Cemetery Survey Index.  I have found a few different ways to access this index. Google it!  DPLA search or through the Richland County Public Library.  The survey was done in 2013.  The description also mentions that the original patient records for the State Hospital and Department of Mental Health are house at the South Carolina State Archives.

Read the post found at the web address below. 

www.richlandlibrary.com/how-to/sc-state-hospital-cemetery-records


MH 6/2/17

Understanding Genetic Ancestry Testing

The Molecular and Cultural Evolution Lab at the University College London has created a useful site for anyone interested in understanding the science behind genetic ancestry testing, what DNA results can tell you as well as it's limitations. The site also provides useful links to articles and websites written by geneticists. If you're looking to take a Genetic ancestry Test[whether it's from 23andme, AncestryDNA or MyHeritage], be armed with knowledge and a healthy degree of skepticism in regards to what many of these companies claim. Especially, when these claims are aligned with commercial interests.  The "Understanding Genetic Ancestry Testing " site can be found at http://www.ucl.ac.uk/mace-lab/debunking/understanding-testing.


RS

LOC Launches Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps Resource [Updated]

Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps in the public domain are now available for research on a new Library of Congress website. The LOC published nearly 25,000 maps earlier this week, and expects to release half a million by 2020:

The Library of Congress has placed online nearly 25,000 Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, which depict the structure and use of buildings in U.S. cities and towns. Maps will be added monthly until 2020, for a total of approximately 500,000.

The online collection now features maps published prior to 1900.  The states available include Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, Wisconsin and Wyoming. Alaska is also online, with maps published through the early 1960s.  By 2020, all the states will be online, showing maps from the late 1880s through the early 1960s.

In collaboration with the Library’s Geography and Map Division, Historical Information Gatherers digitized the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps during a 16-month period at the Library of Congress.  The Library is in the process of adding metadata and placing the digitized, public-domain maps on its website.

The Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps are a valuable resource for genealogists, historians, urban planners, teachers or anyone with a personal connection to a community, street or building.  The maps depict more than 12,000 American towns and cities.  They show the size, shape and construction materials of dwellings, commercial buildings, factories and other structures.  They indicate both the names and width of streets, and show property boundaries and how individual buildings were used.  House and block numbers are identified.  They also show the location of water mains, fire alarm boxes and fire hydrants.

While Sanborn Maps covering Texas and Louisiana are not mentioned in the PR, there are a few available on the LOC website. There is a more complete collection of maps for Texas available to Houston Library patrons through our affiliation with ProQuest.

If you are seeking more information regarding these valuable resources, there is a webinar available on the Legacy Family Tree site entitled "Fire Insurance Maps - The Google Maps of Their Day"

[Update -- Diane Haddad has posted a helpful example of how to use the maps for genealogical research on the Genealogy Insider blog. 6 Jun 2017]

MC

Import your pictures from Facebook and Instagram into FamilySearch.org

Looking for another way to get your family interested in family history?  Want to attach photos to family members and their information? Have a ton of family photos that have been shared among your family members via Facebook or Instagram?

Those photos can now be imported directly into  your FamilySearch.org account from these two social networking sites.  This new integration makes it easy to choose which photos from these social networking sites you'd like to link to people in Family Tree and preserve for future generations.  A great way to leave a photo legacy.

Follow these directions:

Preservation is the key to keeping families alive.  Enjoy

SK

The Plymouth Colony Archive Project

The Plymouth Colony Archive Project is a online digital collection of materials relating to the history of the Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts. The collections contain wills,probates, transcripts of 17th century laws, Material Culture, biographies of colonists, Art and anything else shedding a light on the social history of Plymouth. If your ancestors were colonists at Plymouth, the Plymouth Colony archive project will enable you to place the lives of your ancestors within the social and historical contexts of their times. Material culture and Art reveal something how they lived their daily lives.
Sometimes, learning about the wider picture of your ancestor's world can help you break through those pesky brick walls. Genealogy is more than just collecting names and dates. The link to the Plymouth Colony Archive Project is http://www.histarch.illinois.edu/plymouth/index2.html

Happy Searching!

RS