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A FREE Course to celebrate RootsTech 2021

A FREE Course to celebrate RootsTech 2021

DISCOUNT CODE for a FREE COURSE The National Institute for Genealogical Studies wants to celebrate RootsTech 2021 by making our conference discounts available to everyone who is at home, whether you attended RootsTech 2021 or not. Therefore, ANYONE can register for these courses using the following discount code. NOTE: All Discount Codes will now expire on March 5, 2021; however, you can choose to schedule the course date that is most convenient for you when you register. Claim your FREE course today! FREE Courses As a conference special, we are offering YOUR CHOICE of ONE of the following four courses for FREE! Research Using Internet Tools courses provide resources and strategies to enhance your virtual research skills. These three Basic courses are foundational for anyone researching their family history online. We recommend you make these a part of your Research Tool Box. Google for the Wise Genealogist Social Media Tools for Genealogists Connecting Family Online & Virtually Description_Free_Courses We are also offering an Intermediate course for those who may have already taken our Internet Tools courses. Life of Our Ancestors explores how to find and incorporate information about your ancestor’s life to write and publish your family history story – the very beginning steps to the final product. Free_Course_How_To_Register  Choose ONE course (Value $89 USD) from the four courses listed above for FREE! Use CODE: 2021free at checkout. Want to take more than one course? More information here: Blog Courses Blog Packages Blog Certificate Program DRAW is now CLOSED —————————————————- Visit our website for…

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February – New Month, New Courses

At The National Institute for Genealogical Studies, the beginning of a new month brings another rotation of online courses opening for our students. Hopefully, February has seen you returning to a more regular routine. Are you starting a new family history course this month? How are you doing with your education goals for 2021? Check the list of topics you wanted to pursue. Have you accomplished any of those goals? Remember, to make small, short-term, achievable goals that will lead to the accomplishment of your bigger goals. This will allow you to see your progress! Keep a log of your family history activities. Did you read a new book on a research topic? Did you watch webinars? Be sure to save those handouts. Does the topic require more in-depth study? How will you pursue that research topic this month? What online educational resources will move you closer to your goals for 2021? Actively make plans and add them to your calendar. Set reminders to keep you on track. Then record your activity and see where you need to make adjustments. Work towards successfully fulfilling your goals. Research + Strategies = Discoveries = Success! Make this the month to move your family history forward. Use your time wisely. Allow us to help you to accomplish those goals! The National Institute for Genealogical Studies offers quality online education with over 230+ courses to choose from. Some of our courses are topic/country-specific, or provide insight into research methodology, while others are skill-building courses…

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Italian State of the Souls Records

Every country-specific certificate program at The National Institute for Genealogical Studies includes courses for Religious Records. Continuing to research our ancestors and their family members through religious records, we will often discover unique types of records created within the church records for that region or country. Becoming familiar with these records will make it easier to understand the information we discover within them. The course Italian: Catholic Church Records-Part 2, begins with the State of the Souls Records and what they cover in Parish records. Let’s explore these Italian church records. State of the Souls Records in Genealogy State of the Souls records can be tremendously helpful in extending a family’s ancestry in those areas of Italy that did not keep civil registration between the years 1816-1865, and in the centuries prior to civil registration. What information they recorded varied depending on the time period, education level or age of the priest, and the location in which it was recorded. The records may be written in the Latin, Italian, and French languages, or in combination with regional dialects. However, they were predominantly written in Italian and Latin. Some records contained two or more languages/dialects within the same register or even on the same record. One such set of parish records had French, Latin, and Italian all mixed together in nearly every record. This made for a confusing translation process. The status animarum were created during annual pastoral visits to each household. In large cities or when the priest was elderly, one…

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Diocese and Archdiocese in Italian Records

Every country-specific certificate program at The National Institute for Genealogical Studies includes courses for Religious Records. As we research our ancestors and their family members, we will undoubtedly be faced with the challenge of locating their religious records within the communities where they spent their lives. In small rural areas, it may be easy as we locate the only village parish. However, it is not always as simple as we may think. As we continue in the course Italian: Catholic Church Records-Part 1, our next task will be to Understand Ecclesiastical Jurisdictions & Archives and how to access the Parish records in local archives. Let’s dig a little deeper. Diocese & Archdiocese Diocese, spelled the same in Italian and English, is a group of parishes within a particular ecclesiastical district. Each diocese has a diocesan archive, usually named Archivio Diocesano or Archivio Storico Diocesano. An archdiocese is a group of dioceses within a particular region (regione ecclesiastica). Some larger cities may contain the seat of the archdiocese as well as one of the dioceses within their jurisdiction. In these cases, the main offices are usually combined and the Archivio Diocesano located in the same building. These archives are usually quite organized, but their hours of operation are few. Often there is only one archivist who is also a priest with all the duties that come with that position. Many diocesan archives will have their own websites containing contact information, hours, and descriptions about their collection. Research in the diocese archive is…

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Understanding Latin in Italian Records

Every country-specific certificate program at The National Institute for Genealogical Studies includes courses for Religious Records. In many cases, the religious beliefs of our ancestors became a vital part of their family story. We explore the records of baptisms, marriages and burials, along with other religious ceremonies relating to their beliefs and customs, to discover information not found in the civil records. In the course Italian: Catholic Church Records-Part 1, we will examine these records, but one of the first challenges may be language. A useful resource is the Italian Genealogical Word List for translating Italian to English. However, Latin may be a bigger challenge. Here are some tips. A Lesson in Latin: Understanding the Italian Records Latin is an inflected language in which all verbs are conjugated, and all the nouns and adjectives use different cases. This means that words have different endings according to the function they play in a sentence, so it really does not matter in what order the words in a sentence are presented. This is different than the English language. Names and words can be seen in the normative, genitive, ablative, and accusative forms. These are defined as: “Nominative (nominativus): Subject of the sentence. Genitive (genitivus): Generally translated by the English possessive, or by the objective with the preposition of. Accusative (accusativus): Direct object of the verb and object with many prepositions. Ablative (ablativus): Used to show means, manner, place, and other circumstances. Usually translated by the objective with the prepositions “from, by, with, in, at.””[1] Some examples include: Nominative Genitive…

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