New York Immigrant Search

I haven't started searching any US based databases for anscestors yet but I'm keeping note of interesting sites containing information that may help when I get to it. One of these is the Ellis Island passenger search.

Ellis Island was known as the 'Gateway to America'. According to the website it's estimated that nealy half of all Americans today can trace their family history to at least one person who passed through the Port of New York at Ellis Island.

They have a page on their website which shows some case studies of family research that involved Ellis Island as well as a list of known famous arrivals.

Categories: genealogy, usa

Porirua Library Genealogy Section

I use the General Register Office to order UK birth, death and marriage certificates for anscestors from England.

To order a certificate you need something known as GRO index reference information. The GRO index reference information comprises the quarter, year, district name, volume number and page number of the record requested.

Some of this information is available online using services line Ancestry, FreeBMD or 1837online. The definitive collection is held on microfiche and available at various places.

What suprised me is the Porirua City Library has an extensive collection of genealogy information, including the GRO indexes on microfiche. Porirua is about 20 minutes drive from where I live so I went in today to do some research.

The genealogy section in the library has lots of stuff. This includes:

• GRO indexes on microfiche for 1837-1930
• IGI information on microfiche
• English census CDROM's and computers to use them on
• Reference book section specifically for genealogy and New Zealand history
• Index of New Zealand birth, deaths and marriages on microfiche
• Cemetry records, transcriptions, etc on microfiche
• Lots of other stuff

They even have a genealogy assistant there to help you out. The person walked me through the entire section showing me what was available and giving advice on how to look up information.

Thanks to the GRO indexes I was able to compile information for lots of people in my family tree, all ready for when I can afford to order the information from the General Register Office.

Looking up the information is easy. The microfiche are seperated into the births, deaths and marriages. For example I was looking for the birth information for Juanita Isabella Halle who I knew to be born in 1864. I took the microfiche for each quarter in 1864, looking up 'Halle', a relatively rare surname. I found the entry in the December quarter (always the last one you look for!):

Juanita Isabella Halle, Islington, 1b, 222

Using this I can order her birth certificate. Juanita's information is actually available on Ancestry so what are the advantages in using the microfiche indexes?

For one, if I didn't have an Ancestry subscription the library option is free. Ancestry's search relies on OCR'd (Optical Character Recognition) versions of computer scans of the index. If the OCR is imperfect it may have the names slightly incorrect resulting in making it hard to find. Looking at the actual record on microfiche may make it easier to identify.

An example of the OCR problem is searching for another ancestory of mine. Cornelius Double, died September quarter in 1856. The record in Ancestry has an incorrect Page number as it couldn't scan the last character. This character is readable (just) on the microfiche.

The big advantage with online search databases is being able to do instant searches across a range of dates. Microfiche records make for a nice backup if the online search finds nothing and its at no cost - except my time.

When searching for marriage records you have the choice of looking for the spouse's surname or the grooms. They both point to the same GRO reference. Pick the name which is likely to be more rare. In searching for the marriage information for Cornelius Double and Mary Fletcher, married in 1843, there were lots of Fletchers. But very few Double's. So it was much easier finding Cornelius' record.

I also did some searching through the New Zealand cemetery records which I'd never done before. More on that in another post.

Categories: genealogy

Online Genealogy Databases

There are a number of online genealogy databases available. These allow users to create or upload existing family tree information so that they can be maintained and searched online.

The main selling point is that the databases provide search capabilities across all genealogy information added by users. If someone else is researching someone who exists in your family tree they can find the information and collaborate with you.

The bigger services also provide the ability to search other information. Things like census data, birth, death and marriage data, etc. By cross referencing this data with information in user submitted family tree it becomes a great resource.

My article on census searching mentioned ancestry.com. This is one of the bigger genealogy database websites around. It's fairly expensive as they charge for access to pretty much everything but in my opinion its well worth it if you are doing active research. My main interest with Ancestry is access to all non-user submitted data. That is immigration information, census, births, etc. The trees submitted by other users are also useful but there are free services that do similar.

One such free service is Rootsweb. You can use this service to upload a GEDCOM file or create a family tree. You can also search across all trees that users have submitted. Rootsweb are actually part of the Ancestry family and they share the family tree database. According to their website they have over 400 million people in the database.

What I tend to do with regards to my family tree information is keep a detailed database of data locally on my computer. I then go around some of the online databases and create copies of portions of my local database. The information I load for each name in my database is usually only:

• Full name
• Date of Birth
• Place of Birth
• Date of Death
• Place of Death

So there exists in the online database a simple copy of the essential data, but none of the extra research I've put in. I include my contact details so anyone interested in more information can contact me and we can collaborate. This helps prevent the problem of people just using your data and never getting in touch with you with their own information.

By having this information across a few databases it increases the chances of reaching people who are searching for similar names. The services I use so far for this are:

• Genes Reunited
• One Great Family
• Rootsweb

Rootsweb is free. One Great Family is a subscription service. Genes Reunited is free to upload your information but requires subscription to get in touch with others users.

I've had the most collaboration success with Genes Reunited. They do a regular email listing 'hot matches' of your tree against other users. This indicates names that are potentially the same across other users data. I've added many new people to my family tree as a result of getting in touch with other people as a result of these matches. At times I think I've reached a dead end in my research on a particular line, some information will come up as a result of a Genes Reunited contact.

Now Genes Reunited is not the greatest for holding all your genealogy information. It pretty much only holds the basic information I provide. So I really only use it for the chance to colloborate and find contacts. It does have a nice user interface for adding and updating your tree though. And it's all done in HTML.

The fact that Genes Reunited only holds basic information is actually conducive to collaboration. You need to get in touch with other users to find out what they have. You cannot look at another users family tree information without their permission. So this encourages getting in contact. I like this aspect. They claim to have over 49 million people in their database.

One Great Family is a subscription service. You get a seven day trial but you need to provide your credit card number and it automatically bills it after the seven days. They used to provide regular newsletters to users but for some reason these have stopped in the last 12 months. It may be something to be wary of. It's always nice to see regular updates to sites you subscribe too. One Great Family has been a bit quiet of late.

They take a slightly different approach. Instead of having seperate family trees for each user it is one giant database. Every time someone adds or edits a record the system will search for a matching record. You can choose to indicate they are the same person and it will 'merge' the data. into a single record. In this way there is only one copy of the information no matter how many trees that person appears in. It's like editing a single family tree shared across millions of users with conflict and merge handling built in.

Again, I only use it for basic data. I've never had a response to my emails to colloborate with other users with this service. It's like people start using it and stop updating. Maybe it's the people who upload their data with the seven day trial then quit. On the positive side I have add whole branches to my tree from information already contained in the database.

Rootsweb is like Genes Reunited in that it holds seperate trees for each user. But they are all sharable. You don't need permission from the other tree owner to look at their information. This allows you to quickly find information but does tend to discourage collaboration. I have successfully contacted other tree owners and swapped inforamtion though. Note that Rootsweb does not make data on 'living people' available to anyone but the tree owner for privacy reasons.

Overall I find online databases very useful. There is no guarantee that the data is correct of course so I flag the information as being suspect and use it to confirm information I already know or provide places to look to confirm that information. Then I add it to my own tree.

Some things to be aware of with online databases:

• The subscription services will automatically bill your credit card whenever it is due. You may not get notified in advance. It may be difficult to cancel the subscription. Make sure you are aware of the steps required to cancel it.
• The information may not be accurate or it may be out of date. Contact the original uploader via email to collaborate and get up to date information.
• By uploading your own data you may find that the service uses it on CDROM's it sells or for their subscription searches. I don't mind this personally but some people may not like the idea of others profiting on their work. Hopefully the service is charging for the search and distribution of the data, not the data itself.
• Backup your data. Keep a local copy. Online web services can disappear overnight.

Categories: genealogy

Searching in the UK Census databases

Much of the United Kingdom census data is available online through various paid (and some free) services. This data is a goldmine for finding out family history information but it usually requires a bit of digging.

As an example, I wanted to find out information on 'Marian Barber', born in 1876, in Birmingham, England. I had got this information from the birth certificate of one of Marian's children. Also from the birth certificate I knew that Marian's parents were Joseph and Mary Ann Barber.

My first stop was the online free census database. This is a volunteer effort to enter all the census information and provide it availble for free. It is currently incomplete so there is no guarantee that you'll find what you're looking for but it makes for a good first start.

Using the search facility I started with the 1891 census and searched with Marian's name and birth year. Her entry was there as the only result. From the result you can click on the 'Show Household' button to find out information on all members of the household during the night of the census. This listed:

• Joseph Barber, Head of Household, Aged 53, Pearl Button Maker (Employer)
• Mary Ann Barber, Wife, Aged 50
• Eliza Barber, Daughter, Aged 21
• Minnie Barber, Daughter, Aged 17
• Marian Barber, Daughter, Aged 15
• Eva Barber. Daughter, Aged 10
• Alice Lowe, Servant, Aged 24

It also listed their address as being 4 St Georges Crescent, Birmingham.
Freecen does not have the 1881 or 1901 census information which would be the next ones to try for Marian. To access those I went to Ancestry's census database. This is a paid service but it is well worth it in my opinion. It enables you to search across all the census data they have and view the actual census images.

Again, searching for Marion provides hits on the 1891 and 1881 census. Looking at the latter finds a number of Marian Barbers but only two with the same approximate birth year. One of these has the address in Birmingham as this seems quite likely. Pulling up the details gives:

• Eliza Barber, Daughter, Aged 11
• Eva Barber, Daughter, Aged 4 months old
• Jesse Barber, Son, Aged 3
• Joseph Barber, Head, Aged 43, Pearl Button Maker, Employs 48
• Joseph Barber, Son, Aged 4
• Marian Barber, Daughter, Aged 5
• Mary Ann Barber, Wife, Aged 40
• Minnie Barber, Daughter, Aged 7
• Rebecca Barber, Daughter, Aged 15
• Rose Barber, Daughter, Aged 14
• Ann M Kelsall, Servant, Aged 18
• Sarah Ann Worley, Servant, Aged 18

This time the address is 2 St Georges Crescent. So we now have more members of the family and a new address. We also know that Joseph employed 48 people in his pearl button making business.

The actual scanned images of the census pages containing this information and more is split across two pages - page 1 and page 2.

The steps I usually follow from here is to search for each person I find in each census result across all available census data. This enables me to get clues as to what other dates I should start researching.

If someone 'drops off' the census then they may have died, moved out or (if female) got married. For example, Jesse Barber is in the 1881 census but not the 1891 one. To see if he may have passed away I would check the death register for this 10 year period. Doing this finds 3 Jesse Barbers who died during this period which gives me something to go on. I don't actually know what happened to Jesse yet - still researching!

One disappearance was Eliza Barber. She is on the 1881 and 1891 census but not the 1901. Interestingly while searching for Eva Barber in the 1901 census I got the following information:

• Eva Barber, sister-in-law, aged 20
• Emma Farmer, Aunt to wife, aged 65
• Harriet Gury, Servant, aged 23
• Donovan Odell, Son, aged 4
• Eliza Odell, Wife, aged 31
• Henry Odell, Head, aged 35
• Kathleen Odell, Daughter, aged 6

Here Eva is listed as being a sister in law. That can only be to the head of the household since that is where all the relationships are based from. This makes her the sister of the wife, Eliza Odell. Eva had a sister Eliza Barber who would be aged 31 at this census, the same age as Eliza Odell. Could Eliza Odell and Eliza Barber be the same person? Possibly and this helps us find her spouse and children.

From here I would use this information to track down the marriage certificate. For marriage searches I tend to use freebmd as the first point of call. This is similar to the free census database but holds volunteer entered birth, death and marriage records. It allows you to search based on both the husband and wife names for the marraige which cuts down the number of matches. And we know that if Eliza Barber married Henry Odell then it must have happened between 1891 and 1901.

Putting these ranges in freebmd immediately comes up with a match. Henry Joseph Odell married in the fourth quarter of 1891 in Aston, folio reference 6d, page 775. Looking on that page shows an Eliza Barber. This would seem to indicate that the theory that Eliza Odell is Eliza Barber. Lots of new people to add to the family tree and to research as a result!

I hope this gives a taste of how census information can be used to find out about family information. While it doesn't guarantee that the information is accurate or correct, it does stand a good chance of giving lots of new names and leads to look for and confirm with other records.

Categories: genealogy, census

Why Research Family History?

Why get interested in researching your family history? For me it was because I knew nothing about where my family came from. I'd heard various things about being related to various historical people and it got me curious about finding out what was true and what was myth.

One christmas I couldn't afford to buy presents for my family so instead I decided to do some research and put together a simple family tree for my parents, sister and nieces, to give them an idea of where we all came from.

My plan was to start really small and just do up to my grandparents. Little did I know how addictive doing this research was! I kept finding snippets of information about my anscestors on the internet and researching in the public library. Each piece of information drove me to find out more.

In the end I wrote a 30 page document detailing some branches of the family with all sorts of interesting facts and information. The receivers of my gift were (hopefully) fascinated by what i'd dug up. Probably boring to anyone outside the family but to us it was very exciting.

There is still much I have to learn and find out. The reason for this blog is to provide information and links to some of the internet based information to do with family research, with a bias towards New Zealand based research and history. And hopefully to receive feedback and tips on how to go about things. Worst case it gives google something to find if anyone searches for names I'm stuck researching :-)

Categories: genealogy