Climbing the Family Tree

New websites (and a book on English/Colonial history) to aid your research

By Lynda Rego
Posted 8/30/16

It seems as if there’s no end to the new websites you can find for genealogical research. Using a search engine to find just about any topic turns up something interesting.I was doing a little …

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Climbing the Family Tree

New websites (and a book on English/Colonial history) to aid your research

Posted

It seems as if there’s no end to the new websites you can find for genealogical research. Using a search engine to find just about any topic turns up something interesting.
I was doing a little more work on a mystery great-great-grandfather, who lived in Iowa at one point (my only ancestor in the “West”) and found all types of fun things.
• The genealogybooklinks.com site is a trove of material. The page for Iowa had over 100 directories, censuses, dictionaries, biographies, histories, pictorial histories, documents, who’s who lists and more on towns, cities and counties in Iowa. On the homepage, there’s also a list of subjects on the right side if you don’t want to search by state.
• A friend couldn’t find a place name in Canada, so I went searching for new gazetteers online. At www.roadsidethoughts.com, there is a gazetteer for the U.S. and Canada that is added to regularly. They take recommendations, suggestions and corrections. The information is indexed by community, state, province and county. In addition to cities, towns and villages, they include mining and lumber camps, landings, seasonal fishing villages, railway stations, rural post offices, stagecoach stations and ferry crossings. It also has pictures of state quarters.
 Unfortunately, they don’t make any claims as to the listings’ veracity. If they are uncertain of a location, they ask for advice. The Bristol Narrows was listed, but they didn’t know where it was, so I sent them a link to a description. Take any information there and double-check it elsewhere.
• The National Weather Service Cooperative Observer Program has more than 10,000 volunteers who take daily weather observations across the United States. Scans of the original historical observation forms are available through a legacy interface at www.ncdc.noaa.gov/IPS/coop/coop.html, where you can read weather reports dating back to the mid-19th century for any weather station in the country. (There are some that go back even earlier to the 1700s).
Especially if you had ancestors who were farmers or fishermen or anyone affected by the weather (practically everyone), you will enjoy reading these reports.
I did a random search for Rhode Island, then Bristol, and then chose January 1887. The observer was N.G. Herreshoff. The first thing I saw was a note: “Brilliant meteor seen in west about 5 p.m. of 3rd.” A second page has a chart that lists wind direction, rainfall, snow in inches, temperatures and remarks by the observer. This is a great way to add details to your ancestors’ lives.
• Those of you who read my book reviews know how much I love books (fiction or non-) about history. “At Home: A Short History of Private Life” by Bill Bryson was such a treat. If you have English ancestors and early Colonial ancestors, it has so much detailed information you won’t find in any average history. These are the types of books to search out, as they detail people, times and places where your ancestors lived. It’s amazing what you can discover. (His book about Australia? Ditto.)
We all know about the Stamp Act and the tax on tea in Colonial America, but I was astounded to hear that the Colonists didn’t (and couldn’t) make much of anything. “Britain’s philosophy of empire was that America should provide it with raw materials at a fair price and take finished products in return,” Bryson writes. But, it was ridiculous to the point that we shipped beaver pelts to England, where they were made into hats and sold back to us!
And, the English dumped clothes and furnishings here that were no longer fashionable in England. “You cannot really form an idea of the trash that is to be found in the best shops,” an English visitor named Margaret Hall wrote home to a friend. An expression used in England was “It’s good enough for America.”
As Bryson says “British merchants and manufacturers... had a fast-growing continent at their commercial mercy.
“America’s small internal market and problems of distribution over such a large area meant that Americans couldn’t compete even when they dared to try.”
• Irish ancestors? Visit Claire Santry’s “Irish Genealogy News,” a blog at irish-genealogy-news.blogspot.ie. She publishes info on free stuff being offered online, regular updates on the Irish Genealogy Projects Archives, updates on Irish records of all kinds, info on Irish journals, courses and conferences, and other tips.
• And, for those with immigrant ancestors, ancestry.com has a new research guide to help make your search for passenger lists and finding your ancestor here and in the homeland easier with tips and which key resources will garner the best results. Choose “Immigration and Travel” under “Search” on the homepage and look under “More Help” in the righthand column.
Or, for videos, go to Ancestry Academy in the pulldown menus on the homepage and type “finding your immigrant ancestors” in the search field for lots of videos, including some on specific countries.
Lynda Rego has a Facebook page at www.facebook.com/lynda.rego where she shares tips on genealogy and other topics. Stop by, click on Like and share any interests you have for upcoming columns.

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