.
These are a few of many tools to guide you to the information you need in periodicals. Hopefully your eyes have been opened to a treasure chest of valuable information that will aid in your genealogical research. Some of the information found in periodicals may not be accessible anywhere else so it is important to consider examining periodical resources in your genealogical research.
Caren Winters will graduate with a BA in Family istory/Genealogy in August 2004. Her specialties include German and United States Midwestern research. Caren has been married for more than a year to Shane Winters. To contact Caren you may send an email
to wintersgen@yahoo.com.
Guilford County Genealogical Society:
Meets the third Saturday of January-May and
September-November. Time: 10 a.m. Place:
First Friends Meeting, 2100 West Friendly
Avenue, Greensboro.
Afro-American Historical & Genealogical Society
of NC/Piedmont Triad
Meets the third Saturday of most months.
Time: 10 a.m. to 12 noon. Place: Genesis
Baptist Church, 2812 Bessemer Ave.,
Greensboro.
Genealogy and the Name Game
Genealogists in the Triad will find considerable
help from the North Carolina Collection
of
the High Point Public Library, 901 North Main Street, High Point, NC.
WGOT members interested in genealogy
should
get to know Unit Supervisor Jackie Browning Hedstrom: (336) 883-3637.
The following is from one of their newsletters:
It is not unusual in genealogical research
to find certain families using a given
name
again and again, generation after generation.
While the repetition of names has been
known
to give genealogists migraines, the
establishment
of a good naming pattern can aid the
researcher
in deciphering what may only seem like
a
cloned heritage.
Naming patterns are never conclusive and vary from culture
to culture and region to region. The
most
well known of these patterns belongs
to the
English and was prevalent throughout most of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
It was
then common to name the first son after
the
father's father and the second son
after
the mother's father, while the third
son
received the father's name. The fourth
son
was usually named after the father's
eldest
brother. Likewise, a family's first
daughter
was named after the mother's mother;
the
second daughter after the father's
mother;
the third daughter after the mother
and the
fourth daughter was called after the
mother's
eldest sister.
In German families, the researcher might notice a
few variations from the English pattern
listed
above. The fourth son or daughter might
receive
respectively the names of their father's
paternal grandfather and grandmother,
rather
than their uncle's or aunt's namesake.
Sometimes,
the fourth daughter was named instead
for
the mother's father's mother.
Scottish names tend to follow the English pattern;
however, there is a Scots-Irish variant
whereby
the first son receives the mother's
father's
name and the second son receives the
father's
father's name. Likewise, the first
and second
daughters receive the names of their
father's
mother and their mother's mother.
Sources: In Search of your British and Irish
Roots, Angus Baxter; Tracing your Scottish
Ancestry, Kathleen B. Cory; and for
those
of you online: www.rootsource.com/names.htm
A Great Research Tool - a Baker's Dozen of Important Genealogical
Sites:
The 2001 National Genealogical Society Regional
Conference offered a day of lectures
provided by Cyndi Howells and Sheila Benedict. Many of you online are already familiar
with Cyndi Howells, the "webmaster"
of Cyndi's List of Genealogy Sites. Ms. Howells, who lives in Milton, Washington,
gave a talk entitled Evaluating
Web Sites, whereby she provided research
guidelines for genealogists who might
be
overwhelmed by the variety of information
on the internet these days. Her guidelines
were to help researchers differentiate
between
reliable sites and those less substantive.
Her own site, Cyndi's List, provides
you
with a free jumping-off point for you
to
use in your online research. It provides
you with: a readily accessible "card
catalog"
to the genealogical collection in the
immense
library that is the Internet; a categorized
and cross-referenced index to genealogical
resources; a list of links that point
you
to genealogical research sites online.
Following
are a dozen examples recommended by
Cyndi
Howells. You will be familiar with
some of
these. You will want to become familiar
with
several of them, including Cyndi's
List itself
which wraps up the Bakers Dozen of
genealogical
sites. You will want to visit any of the following websites:
www.ancestry.com
This site is very popular with online researchers.
Along with its sister site, MyFamily.com,
you will find a variety of resources
that
include: free databases, rotated daily,
along
with pay-by-subscription databases,
a historical
map center and learning center, including
tips on getting started, plus a daily
e-mail
newsletter, and much more. You can
order
an heirloom Family Tree chart with
ten different
designs to choose from -- up to 12
generations
in the 16x20 size, up to 14 generations
in
the 18x24 size and up to 20 generations
in
the 24x36 size. Or, order Family Reunion
Organizer or Your Family Reunion: How
to
Plan it, Organize it AND Enjoy it.
www.glorecords.blm.gov
This is the Bureau of Land Management site
(blm) and the General Land Office site
(glo)
and is the Official Federal Land Patent
Records
site. It has a searchable database
and scanned
images of more than two million Federal
land
title records for Eastern Public Land
States,
issued between 1820 and 1908. In addition,
images of serial patents, issued between
1908 and the mid-1960s are now being
added
to the database.
www.familysearch.org
This is the most-visited web site for genealogy.
It comes to us from the Church of Jesus
Christ
of Latter-day Saints. You will find
an easy
to use search form on the first page,
allowing
you to search the Ancestral File, the
IGI
(International Genealogical Index)
and web
sites. In 1999, the LDS church took
on the
behemoth task of making their computer
databases
available on the Internet, and they
have
been updating and enhancing the resources
on their site ever since.
www.rootsweb.com/~jfuller/gen_mail.html
This site, maintained voluntarily by John
Fuller, is the mainstay for genealogy
mailing
list details online. John categorizes
necessary
details for all genealogy mailing lists
available
today. You can browse by topic and
find descriptions
for mailing lists, along with instructions
on how to subscribe and participate
in these
free e-mail discussion forums.
www.genuki.org.uk
GENUKI is the original concept for a coordinated,
geographically oriented, volunteer
project
on the Internet. Begun in 1995, it
is divided
into six regional sections for England,
Ireland,
Scotland, Wales, the Channel Islands
and
the Isle of Man. Each of those sections
is
further divided into counties, then
again
into towns and parishes. If your forebears
come from any of these areas, you will
find
the volunteers that host the regional
sites
most helpful in maintaining surname
lists
and providing pointers and guides to
aid
the visitor.
www.genealogy.net/gene/index.html
German genealogy research on the Internet
begins here. The site features a regional
research index, further divided into
sections
for states, provinces, and regions.
The index
outlines the historic names for states
in
the German Empire prior to 1871, and
points
to the current names for that locality.
You
will also find helpful articles, a
translation
service, and lists of microfilm numbers
for
German resources available through
the LDS
Family History Library.
www.jewishgen.org
Jewish genealogy research on the Internet
begins here. It is the home of the
JewishGen
Discussion Group, and several databases
including
the Family Tree of the Jewish People,
JewishGen
Family Finder (a surname to locality
reference),
ShtetlSeeker and Jewish Records Indexing-Poland.
This site is loaded with reference
material
and tools to aid the Jewish researcher.
www.nara.gov/genealogy
On this site you can visit the National Archives
and Records Administration (NARA) for
genealogical
research, divided into six resource
sections:
Research Facilities; Online Information;
Policy Issues Affecting Genealogists;
Publications;
Genealogy Workshops and Courses; and
Genealogical
Resources on the World Wide Web. Anyone
working
with federal census records, military
records
and immigration records should explore
the
NARA web site thoroughly.
www.rootsweb.com
The ROOTS-L Mailing List was the first genealogy
mailing list, the Roots Surname List
was
the first voluntarily maintained online
surname
database, and RootsWeb is the home
that was
built for both. Beginners find useful
advice
in RootsWeb Guide to Tracing Family
Trees.
RootsWeb also offers unlimited free
web space
to people who want to create their
own genealogy
web sites. RootsWeb hosts a large majority
of the USGenWeb sites, the USGenWeb
archives
and numerous other volunteer projects
online.
www.origins.net/GRO
Scots Origins begin here. This is an online
pay-per-view database of searchable
indexes
of the GRO(S) index to Scottish births/baptisms
and banns/marriages from the Old Parish
Registers
dating from 1553 to 1854, plus the
indexes
to births, deaths and marriages from
1855
to 1897. The site also includes death
records
from 1855 to 1917 and an index to the
1891
census. The 1881 census data is expected
online soon. The initial search of
this database
is for free. After receiving a list
of possible
results, you can pay a small fee online
to
do a more in-depth search. The final
set
of results gives the visitor enough
detail
to determine whether or not they would
like
to order a copy of the original record
from
the General Record Office in Scotland.
www.usgenweb.org
Founded in 1996, this is the first national,
coordinated, volunteer project to focus
on
resources by state and by county. The
purpose
of the USGenWeb project is to make
one central
online entry point for people who are
researching
in a specific locality within the United
States. Many side projects have been
launched
from USGenWeb including the USGenWeb
Project
Archives (transcriptions of public
domain
records), the USGW Census Project,
the USGW
Tombstone Project (cemetery surveys),
the
USGW Digital Map Library and The Pension
Project.
www.vitalrec.com/index.html
Vital Records Information - United States.
This site is simple, clear and invaluable
for basic research in the United States.
The front page on the site has links
to pages
for each state and territory. Each
of those
pages contains addresses, fees and
descriptions
of the birth, marriage and death records
for that state. At the bottom of each
of
those pages, you will find a set of
links
for each county in that state. The
county
information includes the name and address
for the vital records office and a
breakdown
for the fees and for the years covered
by
the vital records. The visitor will
also
find a set of guidelines on the main
page
that gives great advice on how to correspond
with vital records offices.
Source: 2001 NGS Regional Conference, Raleigh,
NC, March 24, 2001, and Cyndi Howells.
Cyndi says that the following site may be
freely linked to but not duplicated
in any
fashion without her consent. The background
and title banner graphics in Cyndi's
List
are the exclusive property of Cyndi
Howells.
www.CyndisList.com
