New German Certificate Course

Germans Outside of Germany is Latest Course Offering in the German Certificate Program from The National Institute for Genealogical Studies Explores German Immigration and Ancestry Worldwide   For Immediate Release 29 August 2017 The National Institute for Genealogical Studies is proud to announce the release of the latest advanced course in the German Certificate program. German: Germans Outside of Germany explores researching German immigrants worldwide.   GERMANS OUTSIDE OF GERMANY COURSE The latest offering from The National Institute for Genealogical Studies, authored by Jean Wilcox Hibben, PhD, MA is an advanced level course in the German Certificate program. Since the 19th century (or earlier), Germans have migrated to other countries to make their home. Whether they were evacuating for the sake of safety, moving into countries where other family members resided, or simply emigrating to remove themselves from the homeland, researching these individuals means considering various types of records found in the country they called home. This course explores the German migration out of Germany as late as the mid-20th century and includes settlements in some locations as early as pre-15th century. The countries addressed are those where significant populations of Germans have been or are still found, include the UK and Ireland; Oceania (Australia and New Zealand); North America (US, Canada, and Mexico); European countries where German is not an official language; Latin American countries (Central and South America and the Dominican Republic); Africa, Asia, and India. The course explores why Germans left Germany and where they went. Germans…

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Let’s Celebrate Canada 150!

It’s Canada’s 150th birthday and we are celebrating with a sale! Choose a 4 course package (limit one per student) and save $150.00. Choose ‘COURSE PACKAGE-4 COURSES‘ and use Code: 150pack4 at checkout. Choose any 4 courses from our list of over 200 courses. The per course cost: $37.50. Never have we offered such a low cost per course. OR Any one Canadian course (title of course starts with CANADIAN): 50% off with code: 50canadian at checkout. Courses include Canadian records in Census, Land, Vital Stats, Wills, Immigration, Migration, Military, Newspaper, Religious and Special Collections. Hurry! This sale ends soon. See our website.

New Course: German Compiled Sources

Our latest course for the German Certificate Program is German: Compiled Sources written by Kory Meyerink,  BS, MLS, AG, FUGA. German genealogical research should include a careful and detailed review of “compiled sources.” Compiled sources are simply defined as the findings of previous researchers. Today they exist as personal websites, online family trees, genealogical articles in periodicals, book-length family histories, genealogical compendia, and even as manuscript collections. What is surprising to most researchers is that these types of records exist for German families. What is perhaps even more unexpected is that there are millions of Germans and their families named in such records. Moreover, many are reasonably well-indexed, and not all that difficult to access, even for researchers who don’t read German well. This advanced level, 8-week course explores various compiled sources including Collections and Databases, Family Histories and Bibliographies, Lineage Books, Periodicals, Biographical and Local Sources. To learn more or register for the course, please see our website.

Learning How to Create Genealogy Programs

By Shannon Combs-Bennett, student I am a teacher at  heart. It comes naturally you see. My parents were teachers, so too were my grandparents, great-grandparents… you get the drift. This is one of the reasons I love to do genealogy presentations. It makes me feel so good to explain something to someone who really wants to learn and watch them walk away with so many new ideas. This is one of the reasons I really wanted to take the course  Creating Genealogy Programs for Adults & the Younger Generation. The instructor, Jennifer Holik, has written several books on teaching genealogy to children that many of my friends who homeschool use as textbooks. Looking through them, and talking to Jennifer in the past, I knew that I would learn a lot of new techniques I could use in the future. Don’t fear though! This course is not one sided at all. She adequately covers how to provide appropriate education for all age groups from child to adult which can be more difficult than it initially sounds. Especially if you are trying to teach younger children and you have never done that before. That is a skill all on its own… and it requires a lot of patience. I really like how she broke down how to create everything from an hour-long presentation to a day-long workshop. Each of which I have done, and it was a lot easier after I put into practice some of her tips. Trust me, it seems…

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Oh the Records You’ll Find for Institutions

by Shannon Combs-Bennett, student Well, color me surprised. You don’t have to have a black sheep ancestor to get a lot out of the course US: Institutional Records. In fact, several of mine and my husband’s ancestors have institutional records. That means you do too! Which, by happy chance, led me to even more records and information on these people. In Module 1 we covered how to dissect the various US census schedules to learn more about where institutionalized ancestors were. Many researchers forget about the various schedules that were created for the census beyond the population schedule. If you have not explored them you are truly doing a disservice to your research! From there we moved on to  different types of institutions. Many of these places hold different records, but they all include similar types of information. I really have an obsession with  jail records. Honestly, I don’t know what it is, but they fascinate me to no end! From these records, you not only learn about a person’s offence (or repeat offences) but you can also glean data to help with your genealogy research. Beyond the vital information data you can also learn about their last address, what they did while in the clink, and even where they were going upon release. For women, you can often times learn their maiden names. Another record set that I am delving more into is orphan and poor house records. My husband has a collateral line ancestor who died in the New…

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