Articles with Online Education

Remember to Honour and Be Thankful
Remember to Honour and Be Thankful

Remember to Honour and Be Thankful

Our students at The National Institute for Genealogical Studies are ready to start another round of online courses on November 1st. As 2021 is winding down, there still is time to complete one more course on our Educational Goals List for this year. Professional genealogists and family historians recognize the need to learn all we can about our research topics of interest. We just don’t know what we don’t know. Online courses allow us to explore new subjects relevant to our projects and refine those research skills needed to succeed in our endeavours.  November means Remembrance Day is coming soon. This is a time to Remember those who fought, and made the ultimate sacrifice, and to Honour our veterans for their service. We are Thankful for all they have done. Military conflicts are not a new phenomenon. There is not a generation that has not witnessed some sort of conflict and many have family members who participated at some level. If you want to investigate your family’s military involvement, here a few suggestions to explore and document their service. Current scheduled start dates are given – check for additional scheduled dates to register for these courses. Australian: Military Records (Dec 6th) Australian: Other Sources for Births, Deaths & Marriages (Nov 1st)Canadian: Military Records (Dec 6th) Eastern European: Austrian-Hungarian, German & Russian Empires: Chronology (Nov 1st) Eastern European: Other Records…Including Census, Land, Military & Tax (Nov 1st)English/Scottish: Occupations – Military and Services (Dec 6th) German: Chronological Considerations (Dec 6th) Irish: Military, Naval and…

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Transcription Tuesday: Handwriting

Transcription Tuesday: Handwriting

One of the very first basic skills to develop as a Transcriber is learning to read various handwriting scripts. Start with modern day cursive handwriting. If you cannot master every day current handwriting styles, you will really struggle with older scripts. Practice reading whenever you can. Read handwriting from different people. Everyone develops their own style. Learn to write in cursive yourself. It is a skill that will help you as you are trying to decipher handwritten documents. Soon you will be tackling more difficult handwriting on older documents. These are a few quick examples. The top one is an address from 1891. The first word “Davenport” is not too difficult. Knowing it was an address, helps us to figure out that the second word is “Road.” For this word, the “a” is clear and the “d” will become familiar with its upward curl. The “Ro” is more difficult. The word directly below it is “Richard” and has the same “R” at the beginning. The other two names beside it are both “Wm” – the abbreviation for William. They can look different, depending on who is writing it. These names are from Ontario Birth Registrations in 1880.  The third example is a record from the Drouin Collection in 1791. The handwriting can be quite challenging, especially if the record is in French or Latin! Deciphering the text is compounded when having to translate from an unfamiliar language. If you are researching records in a language you do not understand, the Family Search…

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British Home Child Day

The National Institute for Genealogical Studies offers a number of courses covering immigration, emigration and migration. For some of our ancestors and extended family members, they seldom stayed in the same place for multiple generations. These major, life-changing decisions were made as a result of multiple factors, which varied dramatically depending on their unique situations. For some young migrants, these decisions were made for them. This is true for the Child Migration schemes from Britain. We have designed a course which specifically explores this topic. Research: Child Migration from Britain From the Course Description:This course provides an overview of the history of child migration from Britain and an introduction to the records that can be accessed to research them. Britain has a very long history of exporting children. Child migration from Britain occurred over a period of nearly 350 years through various private and government sponsored emigration schemes. This course is a good starting point for anyone who knows, or even suspects, that they have a British child migrant ancestor in their family tree. Children were sent to the American Colonies, the West Indies, Australia, Canada, Southern Rhodesia, South Africa and New Zealand. The major recipients of children, based upon numbers, were Canada and Australia. The course is structured to address research in each of the receiving countries, in Britain and from the sending agencies themselves. The course concludes with a case study which uses a child who migrated to Canada during a time period when child migration to Canada was…

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Transcription Tuesday: Transcription Definition

As part of the online skill-building education at The National Institute for Genealogical Studies, new students, as well as professional genealogists, learn the importance of Transcribing every document they discover in their family research. Although it may take extra effort to make a transcription, the benefits will soon be apparent. How often have you left a document written in an older script for a few days, and when you returned to your research, you found that you needed to decipher the handwriting again? The first step is to make a copy of the original document and put it away. This is especially true for those of fragile materials. By using this copy to make a transcription, the text of a document can be worked on, while avoiding the wear and tear of the original document. Never write on an original; copies of documents can be marked with notes, highlighters, and notations for further examination and research, preserving the original document. First, let’s look at a definition. What is a Transcription? A transcription is a true, word-for-word rendering of a document with the original punctuation and spelling (i.e., an exact copy of the original, line by line, sentence by sentence, word by word, and letter by letter). All notes and marks on any page are copied as faithfully as possible in the presented formatting. It includes all spellings, capitalizations and punctuations as it was written. No corrections are made to spelling or capitalization. It includes the whole record—front and back, with…

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Celebrating Student Success

The National Institute for Genealogical Studies encourages family historians and researchers to expand their skills, not only for research, but in many areas. Our online courses cover a vast array of topics related to documenting our family history. We strive to assist our students in the development of new skills, while providing the knowledge and practical application for the material covered in their selected studies. We love to celebrate the achievements of our students and share their successes. Today, we want to share a testimonial from our student, Carol Walsh, in her own words as she shared her achievement with her fellow students: I would like to share with you a great thing that comes from these courses. After attending the Roots Tech conference earlier this year, one of the presenters talked about writing stories to share genealogical events with our younger family members. Having completed a segment of work on my Grandfather, I did just that…started to write a book around this event. I am so excited to share that this book has been published. Thank you for all the lessons learned through my experience in this program. This project all started from a couple of photographs, studying the elements in the photographs, investigative research, and bits of retained knowledge from family stories – put this all together. Not only does this book retain the story, but provides some insight into teamwork, dreams, boats, and dreams coming true. I wouldn’t have been able to do it without the training…

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