Adam Pollicino

by Kory L. Meyerink, AG

The Most Useful Tools for Family History Research

Wondering what tools you can use to make the most of your research time? From filing cabinets to genealogical societies, let an experienced genealogist clue you in to his top ten most useful genealogy resources.

Contemplating such a title, most family historians would first think of key sources, and that was my first inclination. But then, I thought further. You know, each family being so different, there are very few sources that we need for every research project. My professional research extends into every U.S. state and Canadian province, not to mention most European countries. The census, essential in U.S. and British research, is virtually useless for German research. Vital records, another staple, have little use for many colonial problems.

No, I got to thinking, what are the “things” I use in virtually every research project, personal or professional? Once I really started thinking creatively, the number of items was well past ten, with no stopping in sight. Then came the hard part, narrowing the list down to only ten. Well, here they are, with a brief commentary, and not necessarily in priority order.

Read the full article here http://www.genealogy.com/genealogy/71_kory.html

Ellis Island was the main port of entry for immigrants to America. More immigrants arrived through Ellis Island than all the other North American ports of entry combined. Thus, anyone searching for ancestors in North America (even Canada) should check the Ellis Island immigration records. This article shows you what you need to know when searching for Ellis Island immigration records.

Ellis Island operated from 1892 to 1954. During much of that time, Ellis Island was the main port of entry for immigrants not just to America but for much of North America. Ellis Island processed an average of 5,000 people per day and a total of 12 million immigrants passed through the island over the years. As the table below shows, more immigrants passed through Ellis Island than all other North American ports of entry combined.

Read the full article here http://www.genealogyintime.com/GenealogyResources/Articles/Ellis%20Island%20Immigration%20Records%20page1.html

By Kimberly Powell

Google News Archive offers a wealth of digitized historic newspapers online – many of them for free. A simple search of the archive, however, will often fail when searching by name for everything ranging from obituaries to marriage annoucements because the optical character recognition used in the digital scanning process is less than exact. Surnames are often mangled to the point you won’t even recognized them, and sometimes even simple words such as “marriage” or “died” are not to be found.

You can improve your chances of finding great info on your family in Google News Archive with a few simple search tips.

Source Restrict

Generally you’re going to be looking for your ancestors in a specific location, so start by using theadvanced archive search page to restrict your search to a particular source (i.e. newspaper). Google News Archive does not make a list of included sources available, but you can start by trying a simple search for your city, state or country of interest to see what newspapers are available for your time period of interest. You can even use just a single word from the title of the paper to restrict your search – thus a source restriction for “Pittsburgh” will turn up results from both the Pittsburgh Press and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Read the full article here http://genealogy.about.com/od/newspapers/a/Search-Tips-For-Google-News-Archive.htm

By JOHN BRANCH and JACK BEGG

Tim Tebow arrives in New Jersey, where the Jets practice and play, as the world’s most famous backup quarterback. It is a homecoming, of sorts, centuries in the making, because Tebow appears to be the great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson of a man from Hackensack.

MetLife Stadium, home of the Jets and the Giants in East Rutherford, is about 10 miles from where an immigrant, Andries Tebow (spelled variously as Thybaut, Tibout, TeBow and other derivations), settled down after landing from Europe in the late 1600s. One of his children was Pieter, born in Hackensack and baptized there in 1696, records show.

More than 300 years and 10 generations later, Tim Tebow brings the family name full circle, according to the amateur genealogist — and Tebow’s fourth cousin, once removed — Dean Enderlin.

Read the full article here http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/24/sports/football/amateur-genealogist-says-tebow-has-roots-in-north-new-jersey.html?_r=1&ref=genealogy

By ABBY GOODNOUGH AND KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

BOSTON — A genealogist in Boston said Tuesday that he had found evidence that Elizabeth Warren has an American Indian ancestor, a great-great-great grandmother listed as Cherokee on her son’s 1894 marriage record.

Aides to Senator Scott P. Brown, a Republican, have accused Ms. Warren, his likely Democratic challenger in the Massachusetts Senate race, of having misled the public by saying that she had American Indian ancestors to advance her academic career at a time when law school faculties were under fire for their lack of ethnic and gender diversity.

Read the full article here http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/02/us/politics/genealogist-finds-record-of-warrens-american-indian-ancestry.html?_r=1&ref=genealogy

Trying to trace an ancestor who migrates within a country can often be challenge. Unlike ancestors who emigrate across an ocean, there are multiple routes that an ancestor can take when migrating within a single country or region.

To understand the complexities of migration within a country, watch the amazing video produced by Bengler, a Norwegian company that specializes in building social websites. It visually traces the migration patterns of every Norwegian who moved within the country during 2006 and 2007.

Read the full article here http://www.genealogyintime.com/GenealogyResources/Articles/migration-within-a-country.html

At GenealogyInTime Magazine, we are always on the lookout for new and innovative ways to help people search for their ancestors.  This article addresses five radically new approaches to Google search to help you find your ancestors.

1. Google Encrypted Search

Google changed their privacy policy in February 2012. The objective was to standardize privacy across some 80 different products and platforms.  The net result of the standardization, however, is that they have reduced their privacy settings to a lower common denominator. They did this to allow different Google applications to share information about the user.

For example, information from Google+, Chrome and from Gmail is now being used to affect your Google search results.  One of Google’s ambitions for doing this is to customize search to the specific user.

Read the full article here http://www.genealogyintime.com/GenealogyResources/Articles/five-new-google-search-tricks-page1.html

By Kimberly Powell

Research online in these historic newspaper collections from around the world. Most include digital images of the actual newspapers as well as a searchable index.

1. Newspaper Archive

Tens of millions of fully-searchable, digitized copies of historic newspapers are available online through NewspaperARCHIVE. Over 2.5 million new pages are added each month from newspapers primarily in the United States and Canada. NewspaperARCHIVE (or a portion thereof) can sometimes be found bundled with subscriptions to other genealogy Web sites such as WorldVitalRecords and Godfrey Memorial Library. Subscription, but with a free membership option allowing up to three newspaper page views each day.

Read the full article here http://genealogy.about.com/od/newspapers/tp/newspapers_online.htm

You can train yourself to read old handwriting. This is a necessary skill if you want to read handwritten census records or any type of record that was produced before the wide-spread use of the typewriter in the 1920s. This article lists the best free online resources and tutorials to help get you started.

Palaeography is the study of old handwriting. At some point, every genealogist comes across an old handwritten record of their ancestor, looks at it and pronounces it totally illegible. It is not necessarily illegible; it just might seem illegible to the modern eye.

Context

There are two aspects to reading handwritten historic documents:

• Understanding what letter of the alphabet the cursive script represents.

• Understanding the words, spelling, abbreviations and acronyms that were typical of the time period and the type of document.

Read the full article here http://www.genealogyintime.com/GenealogyResources/Articles/how-to-read-old-handwriting-page1.html

The Titanic is historically remembered for being the unsinkable ship that sank on her maiden voyage in April 1912. Titanic records mostly consist of plans for the ship, information on how the ship was built, as well as passenger manifests, which are deemed incomplete. Other Titanic records are largely made up from eyewitness accounts and stories and journals passed down in families whose ancestors were part of the Titanic voyage.

Titanic records prove that the ship was the largest one ever made back in 1912. Titanic records also show that the ship cost $7.5 million to construct and was made by Harland and Wolff in Belfast, Ireland. Over 14,000 men helped build this epic ship over three years, and the Titanic was advertised to be the most luxurious and safest floating 5 star hotel, sporting the first swimming pool on a cruise ship.

Titanic records show the ship sailed safely from Belfast to Southampton, England, where it was docked until its maiden voyage was set for April 10, 1912. After only four days at sea, the Titanic hit an iceberg and sank on April 15.

Read the full article here http://www.archives.com/genealogy/newspaper-genealogy-titanic.html