Online resources for biography researchers is now a gold mine as well as a time saver in traveling around to the various libraries, newspapers and county offices for information about the person(s) you are researching for your story. The main one we use is https://familysearch.org. You can sign-up for FREE and all of their resources are available to you for FREE that has been digitized. Those items that are still on microfilm you will need to visit your local Latter Day Saints Church with a Research Library. You can find those locations on that site as well. They have all the available Census records, Passport Applications from the 1920s, ship landing records from around the same time period, some Ellis Island Records, Marriage and Death Indexes from all over the U.S. and quite a few from other parts of the world. You can download a picture of the record or print off a copy for your records.
Their search engines work pretty well. Please remember that most of these records were hand recorded and the interpretation of the writings, at times, is not very accurate. And we have found that people are awful about remembering dates or just out-right lie to the census takers. You can get an approximation on dates but look at all of the information and the information on the people listed in the same household to see if you have the right person. Sometimes it really is just a guessing game.
Their volunteers are working every day to make available more records online so that families can create genealogy records of the ancestors as far back as they wish to go. You can create ancestor and descendant charts online but if you are not researching your family we suggest that you print off the ancestor tree charts and write them down on paper. You can link each of the documents you find to the person you are researching and upload pictures too. We hope that soon they can provide a service where you can print off a book with all of your research information, pictures and whatever else you add to the person’s record in book form. I’m sure there is software you can do the same thing. Currently, we are working with their Ancestral Quest Basic software (Free Version). It can connect to your online account and coordinate the information but you only get back names and dates. For $29.95 you can update the program to its full version with more bells and whistles.
There is a movement to scan and reference old newspapers as well. There are several sites you can pay a fee to join and search through old newspapers which can be a great help. However, there reference search by name is not the best so far. There are some FREE resources but most of those are available through your state’s University. You can click on the WIKI Page for more information: https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/Digital_Historical_Newspapers. Check with your local library for a listing of online databases you can use for FREE. With just a library card you might be able to sign on at home and access quite a few historical records as well.
That’s it for now. Our next journey is going to our local college with copies of the newspapers in the area on microfilm.
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