This article is a follow-up to my last post about the FamilySearch.org website and covers some of the remaining features offered by the site. First we’ll go through the Family Tree section of the site. You can get to this by clicking the “Family Tree” button on the home page. Doing so takes you to an interactive tree where you can begin adding your family. When you click the prompt in a box to add someone, FamilySearch offers you a template with space to fill in a name and life event such as birth, marriage, or death. You can also add the names of parents…
Author: familyhistorian
Genealogy Resources: Family Search Website – Part 1
In an earlier post I brought FamilySearch as one site offering cloud-based family tree services to genealogists. But that is only one aspect of what FamilySearch offers. So in this article, I’m going to share a few of the other features and benefits you’ll find on the site. Then, the rest of the services will be discussed in the next post or two. Before I begin, I will preface this information by saying FamilySearch has been in constant change over the last year or so as they roll out new services. Because of this, what you see below might change again at some…
Another Census Infographic – the Census over Time
The Census Bureau recently released another infographic illustrating the census over time. For each decade it describes the changes in the way data was collected. You can click the image below to go to the Census Bureau page and pick up your own copy of this in pdf or txt form. [Source: U.S. Census Bureau]
Civil War Resources – The Battle of Gettysburg
Today is the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg so I figured I would post a few resources genealogists can use for research or for family histories. Fold3 Civil War Website First, Fold3, an online site focusing on military records, hosts a separate website dedicated to the Civil War. It’s a great place for browsing photos, maps, and records from the Civil War and just learning more about its history. Unfortunately, if you are looking for resources to use in your own work, the copyright might prevent you from doing so. Although many of these documents appear to have come…
Memorial Day Infographic from our Friends at the Census Bureau
As genealogists, our work in documenting our family’s military record is part of our commitment and contribution to memorializing their life’s dedication and service to our country. Because of this, I figured genealogists reading this blog might be interested in the following infographic created by the Census Bureau. It gives an interesting background to some of the statistics behind each war. And if you want to download a PDF of it for your own records, you can do so by clicking here: Download Census Bureau Memorial Day Infographic. For those of you who might just be getting started in discovering your…
Poznan Databases and the Szwajkowski Family
I’ve been a big fan of the Poznan Marriage Database project for many years. Without it I would probably never have found ancestors who lived in Poznan area. The site definitely helped me figure out my great grandmother, Josephine Szwajkowski, was from the Kurnik area. I discovered this because I had her parent’s names from her marriage record: Joseph and Frances Kasperska Szwajkowski. So I put them into the Poznan Marriage Project site to see if I could find them, and I got the following result: As you can see, this shows Josephine’s parents, Joseph and Frances, married in Krerowo in…
Finding Our Borowiaks in Poland
Fortunately with the help of the Poznan Marriage Project and microfilms from the Church of Latter Day Saints, I’ve finally been able to locate our Borowiak family in Poland. My husband’s great grandfather, Frank Borowiak (1858-1925) immigrated from there sometime between 1879 and 1884. But we never really knew where exactly in Poland he was from. Based on some earlier research, we found his family initially living in Lemont, Ill., then moving to Minnesota between 1893 and 1896. I think we even found the grave of his mother, Michalina Polcyn Borowiak although at the time, in 2004, we were not…
The Illinois Bell Girls
In a previous post, I mentioned I discovered my mother had never graduated high school. She quit right after turning 16 and started working at Illinois Bell as a telephone operator. I am thinking she chose Illinois Bell because her Aunt Sophie worked there. (Unfortunately I was never really told what my Aunt did there other than serve as a union steward.) Anyway, in 1952, when my mom was 20 years old, she won the Illinois Bell Miss Voice contest for our area. It must have been a big deal for her because we heard stories about her experience many…
The US 1940 Census and My Elusive Daltons
Edit (4/25/2020): At the time of the original writing of this post, I had believed this to be one of my paternal ancestral lines based on research I had done. Since then, DNA testing has proven otherwise. However, I am leaving the post live for those who are researching this line. Original Post: The release of the US 1940 census is almost upon us – only 30 more days. And when that day finally arrives, and the records are thrown open, who will be the first person you seek? For me, it will be Joseph Dalton, one of the more…
Family Secrets
Over the last week I’ve been fortunate to have received some correspondence shedding more light on a few unanswered questions in my adoptive family’s maternal tree. This is the second time that a family member has shared what had been a family “secret” or unknown fact with me on my mother’s side of the tree. My mother would have been scandalized, or would she? For I discovered shortly after she died, my mother held her own secret. My mother was English on her father’s side and Polish on her mother’s. She was fiercely close to her father’s sister, Aunt Agnes,…