Angela Breidenbach – Page 28 – International Institute of Genealogical Studies

What’s New?: Manitoba Ancestors Course Updated

What’s new at The National Institute? An update to the course Research: Manitoba Ancestors. Have Manitoba ancestors? This course will help you learn more about the specifics of researching in this area. The course description states: “Permanent settlement in Manitoba began in the early 1800s. This course will demonstrate how the records the Hudson’s Bay Company, the Dominion, provincial and municipal governments created help the genealogical researcher trace ancestors in Manitoba. Emphasis will be placed on how to access the records and how to use them effectively. Although the focus will be on the major government and religious records, the course will demonstrate how to supplement these records by using local newspapers, cemetery records, community, school and church histories. Other important resources to be discussed are the collections and programs of genealogical, historical and ethnic societies in Manitoba.” Check out the Course page to learn more.

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 is important to remember if the cemetery is located on private property and the landowner does not allow access to the cemetery, you can be charged with trespassing. The landowner should be contacted prior to the visit to gain permission to access the cemetery and discuss any restrictions. Second, consider what your purpose in going to the cemetery. Do you wish to locate the gravesite of your ancestors? Are you looking to survey, transcribe, and photograph the cemetery? If your visit to the cemetery is to locate the gravesite of your ancestors, a cemetery map should be obtained. If a cemetery map is not available, print a satellite view of the cemetery from Google Maps. The satellite image of the cemetery will allow you to study the surrounding area. If children will visit the cemetery with you, remind them of proper cemetery etiquette. Children can be an asset—prepare index cards with…

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 newspaper, click on the link “Libraries That Have It” at the top of the record. To learn more about newspapers and where they can be found, register for the US: Newspaper Records course.

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 ancestors directly, through announcements and articles but they can also help us understand our ancestor’s lives better through studying social history. What events were happening nationally (wars, recessions) or locally that had an impact on their daily lives? For immigrants, ethnic newspapers helped them keep abreast of what was happening back in their homeland and other specialist newspapers served a similar purpose for religious communities, labor groups or the military. The US: Newspaper Records course covers all these aspects of newspaper research in much greater detail and also goes into the history of newspapers in the United States. I found this very interesting, it’s surprising to learn how long newspapers have been a part of daily life (and no I’m not going to give that detail away, sign up for the course and find it out yourself!). Perhaps the most important part of this course is that it gives detailed…

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. The Naitonal Institute does offer a course on that topic called Protect Your Precious Documents. The material in Methodology Part 2: Organizing and Skill-Building builds slowly and surely upon that which was introduced in the previous course, delving deeper into the development of basic research skills. Emphasis is squarely placed on the importance of accuracy with objectivity and consistency in documentation. Ye olde noggin be not failproof nor foolproof, genea-friends! No matter how spry you think you are, memory alone is never good enough for tracking what you looked at, where it was, what it said, what you did with that information and how it impacted your research. It’s best to learn NOW, at the beginning, to prevent repeated work and wasted time. With that said, my own advice can only be to establish your good habits and best practices as early in your genea-journey as possible… [You don’t really think…