Mistakes, I've Made a Few

I'm a baby when it comes to this genealogy thing. In my first 30 days of free access to records and family trees, I admit that I went a little crazy.

I didn't know much past my grandparents...a name here, a hometown there. But the thing with some of the more popular sites is that you don't  have to know...they know for you!

I thought that, anyway.

Before I really knew what I was looking for, I was attaching stuff to people in my family tree willy nilly. A 1790 census for a great grandfather born in 1865...you get it? It was rampant and I thought other members' trees were pure gold. I loved stealing generations off their trees...it was ah-may-ZING!

Fast forward four months later and I'm doing preliminary work for a Daughters of the American Revolution application...wherein I must provide honest-to-goodness proof of existence of all these characters that pave the path to my patriot ancestor.

Imagine how much fun it is to watch my branches crumble when I find error after error. That, and I've given up my naivete and working from the bottom of the tree upwards, not vice versa whenever I find an interesting character I want to claim.


Lesson learned, my friends....lesson learned.

AP Archives Now Available at Ancestry.com

As a writer and former reporter, I can only say this: YESSS!!!

(Provo, Utah) – November 18, 2013 - Ancestry.com, the world’s largest online family history resource, is proud to announce a collaboration with the Associated Press that makes fifty years of news stories--in their original wire copy format--available online today.

“We are thrilled to announce this collaboration with the Associated Press to bring its name and subject catalog online,” said Quinton Atkinson, Director of Content Acquisition for Ancestry.com. “It represents a fantastic set of material for our family historians who are researching the news of an era, and gives incredible historical context for the world their ancestors lived in.”

Available at Ancestry.com/AP, the voluminous card catalog of names and subjects links to more than two million records and more than one million AP stories spanning 1937 to 1985, a resource which took Ancestry.com several years to prepare and digitize. 

For Ancestry.com subscribers, the collection of AP stories adds a whole new dimension to the family history experience. Stories complement family trees and genealogical records on Ancestry.com with period news coverage that provides historical context to the times, places and people Ancestry members are researching. Ancestry.com members will be able to search for stories by name, and then click through to view a digitized copy of the full AP story. Stories can also be searched by subject and by date.

The digitization of the AP stories will simplify the research process not only for Ancestry.com members, but also for AP journalists. Reporters and news researchers can now bypass the legacy card catalog and accompanying microfilm for a searchable set of online databases that can be accessed anywhere in the world. In addition, the project has made available a set of internal AP publications dating back to 1904, including the staff magazine AP World, which began publication in 1943.

“The collaboration with Ancestry.com has enabled us to bring AP’s historical news microfilm and its card index not only to the family history community but also to AP journalists, who value their organization’s rich archival record,” said Valerie Komor, Director of the AP Corporate Archives. 

“And AP World offers a rare view into the workings of this 167-year-old news cooperative.“

For those wishing to search the AP archives on Ancestry.com, they may do so by visiting Ancestry.com/AP. For those looking to start researching their own family history, please visit www.ancestry.com.

Genealogy Field Trip Prep: Clayton Library Center for Genealogy Research

I'm still new to genealogy (relatively speaking, haha!) and I haven't really done a research field trip yet. I traveled to Vermont earlier this month, but it really was more of a social visit and while I got the chance to walk the colonial graveyard in Chester, I didn't get a chance to jump into a database or research books unaccompanied (I had my two boys with me and as patient as they are, they weren't ready to spend hours in a dusty library!).

Imagine my surprise when I realized how much of resource I have here right under my nose in Houston!

The Clayton Library Center for Genealogy Research is a little bit of a trek for me, but nothing when compared to what's waiting for me when I get there!

The library is an interenational research collection containing materials for all 50 states and many foreign countries. It contains approximately 100,000 books, 3000 periodical titiles, 70,000 reels of microfilm, fiche, and cards as well as a slew of online databases.

Phew!

In addition to all of that, they have a fantastic calendar of genealogy education events each month. I've already signed up for as many Saturday classes that I can escape for. (My poor, poor husband...)

The one thing I don't want to do is fall into the trap that I did when I was in Vermont. I had so many questions and so many leads I wanted to follow that I got overwhelmed and ended up wasting an opportunity to put in good work.

I know me. I know that I'd be perfectly happy to wander in and drool over all the old maps and atlases...to chat up a librarian or two about how amazed I am, and to generally burn up that free time I'd worked so hard to gain.

To avoid that, I have decided to focus on one ancestor and do my best to answer, at most, three questions about them.

Because my Norwegian great-grandfather arrived in the U.S. through Galveston (an hour away), I'm aiming to answer/prove

• his disembarkation on Galveston in 1905 (a passenger list?)
• try to gain a lead on his parentage in Fredrickstad, Norway (I need help with finding church records, namely)
• learn how he ended up in Massachusetts if he landed in Texas 

I also plan to do a little more digging into what was happening in Norway in 1905, the year he left. Turns out, after very quick glancing, that Norway gained its independence from Sweden the very same month Louis Larsen was aboard the SS Texas en route to Galveston.

Was it a coincidence? Did he leave ahead of what the thought might be a conflict of some sort? I also need to know what was happening in his hometown of Fredrikstad. Maybe more clues will bubble up there.

It's a start. More from the Clayton library next week.

....happy searching...