Planning a Cemetery Trip

  by Tami K. Pelling, PLCGS. Staff, The National Institute for Genealogical Studies Just  as  many  of  our  ancestors  frequently  visited  cemeteries  on  Sunday  afternoon  to  enjoy  a picnic, tend to the care of a gravesite, or pay respect to their loved ones—we follow in their footsteps. A picnic in the cemetery as a child with my great aunt, Lucille, is a memory that I will always treasure.  Another  childhood  memory  that  I  hold  just  as  dear  is  traveling  from cemetery to cemetery with my mother and Lucille to place flowers on  graves of family members—every holiday, birthday, and anniversary—of course, during the warmer months. So now that it’s summer, you might be ready to plan your own cemetery trips. But first, a bit of caution. Safety first!  It doesn’t matter whether you are visiting a big city cemetery or a pioneer cemetery surrounded  by  cornfields and  woods. Safety cannot be emphasized enough–take someone with you and bring a fully charged cell phone! In planning a cemetery trip, the first item on the agenda is to learn the location of the cemetery or cemeteries you wish to visit and determine if they are located on private property, governed by a trustee, association, organization, or corporation. If you are unfamiliar with the area, you may wish  to  contact  one  of  the  local  funeral  homes,  genealogical  or  historical  society,  library,  or government office to determine ownership. At the same time, inquire whether the cemetery has an office along with contact information. It…

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Course Tip: Chronicling America

Earlier, we spotlighted the US: Newspaper Records  course as part of the My Favorite Course blog series. Are newspapers your favorite genealogy source? Here’s a tip from the course. The website Chronicling  America  is  a  repository of  select digitized  newspapers covering the years 1836-1922. But Chronicling America offers more than digitized newspapers. Chronicling  America is  an  online  resource  that  can  be  used  to  identify newspapers  in  a  particular  area  and  time  period. Each  listing  provides details  about  the  newspaper,  such  as  dates  of  publication,  frequency,  and  language,  as  well  as  what  repositories  hold  either original  or  microform versions  of  the  newspaper. Chronicling  America is  based  on  records  created  during  the  US  Newspaper Program that ran from 1982 to 2009. To  use  this  resource,  visit Chronicling  America and  click  on  the  button that  says  “US  Newspaper  Directory,  1690-Present.”  You  can  browse  by newspaper title using the letters at the top (e.g., clicking on the letter “C” will  list  all  the  newspapers  that  begin  with  the  letter  “c”).  Alternatively,  you  can search for newspapers in  a particular state, county, or  city, using the corresponding drop-down menus, and further limit the time period by selecting a year range. There are other search options such as keyword and language. You can also search by ethnicity or occupation to find specialty newspapers.  When you find a newspaper of interest, you can view the record for more details,   such   as   frequency   of   publication,   dates   of publication,   and  alternate titles. To see a list of repositories that have the…

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My Favorite Course: US Newspaper Records

By Emma Whaley Compton, PLCGS While studying for the American Records Certificate with the National Institute for Genealogical Studies, one of my favorite courses included in the program was US: Newspaper Records. If I had to choose a favorite record group for research, it would be newspapers, so it’s perhaps no surprise that I greatly enjoyed this course! When you think about newspaper research, the most obvious thing that comes to mind is obituaries, which are a wonderful source of genealogical information, particularly if vital records are hard to get or may not even exist for that time period but newspapers offer much more to the researcher than just obituaries. You can frequently find birth, engagement, marriage and anniversary announcements and sometimes court cases, divorces, bankruptcies and real estate transactions will also be included.Then there are the regular newspaper stories or perhaps even photographs that may feature ancestors. Small town newspapers have society pages that give great detail about their inhabitant’s lives, such as who was in the hospital, had visitors from out of town, or may have been out of town visiting relatives, hosting a party or taking part in various club activities. Our ancestors didn’t have Facebook or smart phones, so they got all of their news (or gossip!) through the newspapers and we’re fortunate that many of these day to day records have been preserved and are even becoming accessible over the Internet due to digitization projects. So newspapers can perhaps help us find out information about our…

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My Favorite Course: Methodology Part 2

By Lisa-Dawn Crawley, Student Like the Baseball World Series but waaay better because it’s GENEALOGY, my favourite course from The National Institute for Genealogical Studies is not just ONE course — it’s an entire SERIES. I couldn’t pick just one!! I’m a Genea-Knowledge Nerd and, as such, I triumphantly welcome you back to Nerdville. In case you missed it, I gushed about Methodology Part 1: Getting Started in my previous post. I have to admit that I was definitely most looking forward to Methodology Part 2: Organizing and Skill-Building of all the (six) courses in the series. You should probably know that I’m the kinda gal who enjoys creating organizational systems and cleans when she gets stressed… However, if you want the answer to the question “What the HECK do I do with all this crap I’ve gathered from my own investigating, gramma, auntie, the attic, that nook, yonder cranny…??” this course will help you with that. I say “help” because I still don’t have everything in my vast cavern of accumulated genea-goodies labelled, filed and stored in comprehensive, orderly fashion. [I bow down to the genea-freak who does!! Are you out there?? Please say No so I can continue on in my delusion that everyone else is just as bad as me…] But at least I know what to do and how to do it!! I must pause here to note that this course does NOT address the issue of proper preservation materials and techniques for your precious items.…

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My Favorite Course: Palaeography

By Cheryl Levy, Student The  Palaeography: Reading & Understanding Historical Documents course is compulsory for almost all certificates, and with good reason. My initial expectation for this course, was that it would be mostly learning how to write various old scripts, using the pen and workbook provided. To my surprise, this aspect was only included in the first module. The detailed course notes and excellent companion workbook will stretch your knowledge and transcription skills. The extensive, customized exercises are a valuable component of this learning experience. The course description states: A number of topics linked to palaeography are covered to ensure participants have sufficient background to tackle unfamiliar documents that span the past five hundred years. The primary goal involves transcribing the unfamiliar writing in old documents to the modern day hand. A secondary objective is to provide the student with a feeling of success and achievement when new skills are learned. As Britain had a major influence on the cosmopolitan development of North America, examples will be taken from British and Canadian resources. Canadian resources will focus on The Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, which are British in origin, and are now held at the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives in Winnipeg. These materials reflect the profound influence of British language, culture and economics on the development of North America. Module 1 featured practical handwriting exercises, and a brief introduction on the relevant materials required for experimenting with scripts. Website URLs  were given for a variety of specific scripts and alphabets, as…

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